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Nasty   /nˈæsti/   Listen
Nasty

adjective
(compar. nastier; superl. nastiest)
1.
Offensive or even (of persons) malicious.  Synonym: awful.  "A nasty accident" , "A nasty shock" , "A nasty smell" , "A nasty trick to pull" , "Will he say nasty things at my funeral?"
2.
Exasperatingly difficult to handle or circumvent.  Synonym: tight.  "A good man to have on your side in a tight situation"
3.
Characterized by obscenity.  Synonyms: cruddy, filthy, foul, smutty.  "Foul language" , "Smutty jokes"
4.
Disgustingly dirty; filled or smeared with offensive matter.  Synonyms: filthy, foul.  "A foul pond" , "A nasty pigsty of a room"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Nasty" Quotes from Famous Books



... it out and examined it. "I'm going across to see this gent," he announced. "It's convenient, 'im living so close. Perhaps he'll 'ave a word to say about this 'ere disease. Fair spread over Birmingham, so they say. It would be nasty if any bloke was responsible for it. Good day to yer." He opened the door slowly, and glanced back at us standing in the middle of the room watching him. "Look 'ere," he said swiftly, "what did 'e mean, saying I was never going to die and——" The light from ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... much the same; While George, who was in part to blame, Received, you will regret to hear, A nasty lump ...
— Cautionary Tales for Children • Hilaire Belloc

... "A very nasty looking affair," returned the investigator. "Osborne has been good enough to let me glance about," ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... "A nasty raw day, Kate," she remarked as we emerged from the hothouse into the moist, heavy air. "How I hate the country! except whilst the strawberries are ripe. Let's go back to the house, and read with our feet on the fender ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... increased violence the sounder seeming like the roll of a drum. I think I broke him about ten times and finally he said, "For heaven's sake go wake up the day man. You're nothing but a ham." Strangely enough I could take all of his nasty remarks without any trouble while the order almost completely stumped me. However, I finally succeeded in putting it all down, repeated it back to him, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... for selling a tobacco substitute, has stated that there is nothing in the Act to prevent a man from smoking what he likes. In the trade this is generally regarded as a nasty underhand jab at the British ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various

... gone. She sprang up, lighted a twig of the pine tree, and looked about; and, to her amazement, she saw, in the part of the bed to which she stretched her feet, not the beautiful infant, but a great ugly frog. She was so much disgusted with it that she took up a heavy stick, and was going to kill the nasty creature; but it looked at her with such wonderfully sad and speaking eyes that she could not strike it. Again she searched about. The frog gave a faint, pitiable cry. She started up, and sprang from the bed to the window; she opened the shutters, and at the same moment the ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... hands. When you come to-morrow, I don't know how I shall look at you. Ah, Alexey Fyodorovitch, what if I can't restrain myself like a silly and laugh when I look at you as I did to-day. You'll think I'm a nasty girl making fun of you, and you won't believe my letter. And so I beg you, dear one, if you've any pity for me, when you come to-morrow, don't look me straight in the face, for if I meet your eyes, it will ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... it my duty to see you, Mr. Johnson, and to tell you that it is a very nasty case. Your wife's heart is not strong, and she has some symptoms which I do not like. What I wanted to say is that if you would like to have a second opinion I shall be very glad to meet anyone ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... up in all, to make the rural schools character-builders, to rid the districts of surroundings which destroy character, such as unkept school yards, foul, nasty outhouses, poor, unfit teachers. These reforms, you understand, come only through a healthy educational sentiment which is aroused by a sympathetic co-operation ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield

... As the Judges came down on your Parnellite allies, eh? Perhaps, as we're getting to some nasty places, we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 22, 1890 • Various

... drove to Coraline's, where I related the adventure. She laughed heartily, and agreed with me that the prince had played me a nasty trick. She praised the presence of mind with which I had invented an impediment, but she did not give me an opportunity of proving to her that I had deceived ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... nasty quarrel over the cards, the high words and a snatch for the winnings, a tilted table, an extinguished taper, a stab in the dark and a groan. Exit Thevenin Pensete. Your dagger doesn't ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... round, Wish I'd time to describe our Big Boar Hunt—DIANNER's pet pastime I found, Can't say it was mine; bit too risky. Pigsticking in Ingy may suit White Shikkarries or Princes, dear boy, but yer Boar is a nasty big brute. ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various

... chance we knew we'd have to take. We don't dare raise any suspicion. Yactisi, for one, is no fool, neither is Starns. Chambriss just wants to get his water-cat, but he could become nasty if anyone tried ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton

... produce no impression upon them whatever, or an unfavourable one. The chances are ten to one they send you the most rubbishy thing they can find in their lumber-room. But send for one of them in a hurry, and tell him the rats have gnawed a nasty hole behind the parlor door, and you want it plastered and painted over;—and he does you a masterpiece which the world will peep behind your door to look at ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... like a swan, that, after living six weeks in a nasty pool upon a common, is got back into its own Thames. I do nothing but plume and clean myself, and enjoy the verdure and silent waves. Neatness and greenth are so essential in my opinion to the country, that in France, where I see nothing but chalk and dirty ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... the eighteenth of February, at about half past eleven o'clock, Marshal Waggoner was completing his regular before-midnight round of the business district. The weather was nasty, with a raw wet wind blowing and half-melted slush underfoot. In his tour he had encountered not a single person. That dead dumb quiet which falls upon a sleeping town on a winter's night was all about him. But as he turned ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... sending a vessel of his own at that time?-He could not get a vessel to go. It is such a nasty coast for inexperienced men, that it is difficult to ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... a secret association engaged in keeping dangerous scientific developments under cover could be considered an open question. The most hopeful thought was that Dr. McAllen was indulging an unsuspected and nasty sense of humor. ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz

... external publick worship of God, so much slighted in divers parts of this kingdom, might be preserved, and that with as much decency and uniformity as might be. For I evidently saw that the publick neglect of God's service in the outward face of it, and the nasty lying of many places dedicated to that service, had almost cast a damp upon the true and inward worship of God, which while we live in the body, needs external helps, and all little enough to keep it in ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... the midst of all these comfortable proceedings, and my further charming hopes, a nasty masquerade threw into his way a temptation, which for a time blasted all my prospects, and indeed made me doubt my own head almost. For, judge my disappointment, when I found all my wishes frustrated, all my prayers rendered ineffectual; his very morality, which I had ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... pupil now came out of the stable, which he had entered from the other side, so as to come upon Lasse unexpectedly. The bailiff had sent him. "Is that you, you nasty spy!" muttered Lasse when he saw him. "Some day I'll kill you!" But he took off his cap with the deepest respect. The tall pupil went up the yard without looking at him, and began to talk nonsense with the maids down in ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... themselves for having been too ambitious, and they resolved to husband thenceforth their labour and their money. An occasional pruning would suffice for the orchard. The counter-espaliers were forbidden, and dead or fallen trees should not be replaced; but he was going to do a nasty job—nothing less than to destroy all the others which remained standing. How was he to ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... soldiers as if they despised you and themselves even more than you. It is a part, I suppose, of the realism of the nation which has made it good at war and science and other things in which what is necessary is combined with what is nasty. And the soldiers and the civilians alike had most of them cropped hair, and that curious kind of head which to an Englishman looks almost brutal, the kind that we call a bullet-head. Indeed, we are speaking very appropriately when we call it a bullet-head, for in intellectual history the heads ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... treat the moderns with a curious elaborate banter such as one might apply to the antics of a promising child. So this evening, after five pages or so of one of these masters, Mrs. Hilbery protested that it was all too clever and cheap and nasty ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... where the snake had been killed they found a spring of water bubbling up, as clear as crystal, from a bed of white sand, but giving forth such a disagreeable odor that the children declared it was nasty. Mr. Elmer, however, regarded it with great satisfaction, and told them it was a sulphur spring, stronger than any he had ever seen, and that they would find it very valuable. They all drank some of the water out of magnolia-leaf ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... Nonsense! I'm only doing what any decent fellow would do; you'd do as much and more for me if things were reversed," he said, taking her hand. "Great Scott, what sort of a crawler did you take me for? Did you think I'd cut up nasty about it? Surely you knew I'd wish you well even if you were not for me; but won't you tell me who it is that ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... seems so easy!—and here you have been for quite half an hour muttering and shaking your head over it, and taking you can't think what a lot of nasty snuff." ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... very good it was, although we had not thought about wanting it. We lit a little fire, and made some hot tea, but soon had a message from the Rajah's boat to put out the fire lest we should be seen. The only thing that troubled me was a nasty faint smell, for which I could not account; but next morning we found a Chinaman's head in a basket close by my corner, which was reason enough! We had taken a fine young man on board to help pull the sweeps, a Dyak, and this ghastly possession was his. He said he was ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... consoled me not at all, so contrary a maid is Speculation. For the next two hours Vexation rode me on the curb. I quarrelled with Berry, I was annoyed with myself, and when the hall-porter at the Club casually observed that there was "a nasty wind," I agreed with such hearty and unexpected bitterness that he started violently and dropped the pile of letters which he was searching ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... perfectly respectable neighbors, or an occasional note from Cousin George Henry of Stamford. Lulu was acutely curious regarding it; she almost smelled it, with that quivering sharp-pointed nose of hers that could tell for hours afterward whether Father had been smoking "those nasty, undignified little cigarettes—why don't you smoke the handsome brier pipe that Harris gave you?" She brightly commented that the letter was from Boston. But Father didn't follow her lead. He defensively tucked the letter in his inside coat pocket and trotted up-stairs to read ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis

... is des tremenjus. Wat you gwine ter do wid freedom? Does you tink you kin git lazy en thievin' en drunken? Is dere any sech foolishness yere? Will eny man or ooman call deysefs free w'en dey's slabes ter some mean, nasty vice? Sech folks al'ays be slabes, en dey orter be slabes ter a man wid a big whip. See how de young mars'r' haves dat brung de news ob freedom. He know he juty en he does hit brave. He mek de w'ite sogers he 'mands des toe de mark. We ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe

... a pretty place at 'seeds of love.' and 'twas well heaved out. Though 'love' is a nasty high corner when a man's voice is getting crazed. Next ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... women-women that will appeal to you two years hence precisely as Miss Brookes appeals to you now. Were I to whisper that it is unwise to give up all women for one woman, you could not fail, in your present mood, to see in my philosophy only the nasty wisdom of a cynical old reprobate. Therefore I will not weary you with advice—what I have said must be considered not as advice, but rather as an expression of personal experience in the love passion, serving as illustration ...
— Spring Days • George Moore

... under a gaping hole in the roof, and a stream of water is dripping steadily down upon it. The coarse coverings must be soaked through already, and the hard mattress too. It is really less like a bed than a damp and nasty little pond. No wonder the prisoner does not choose to lie there. But then, why not move the bed somewhere else? And what is that round thing like a platter in his hand, and what is he doing with it? Is he playing 'Turn the Trencher' to ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... prevent hanging yourself with the ropes which were strung across and about, slap came the hedge of a pail against your shins, till one was like to be drove mad with hagony. The great slattnly doddling girls was always on the stairs, poking about with nasty flower-pots, a-cooking something, or sprawling in the window-seats with greasy curl-papers, reading greasy novels. An infernal pianna was jingling from morning till night—two eldest Miss Buckmasters, "Battle of Prag"—six youngest Miss Shums, "In my Cottage," ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... eyes, were left behind, and the country became more broken, but the land was still excellent for agricultural purposes. After crossing a well-constructed iron bridge resting on two masonry pillars and spanning the picturesque rapids of the Rio das Velhas—the river, with its turbid, muddy, nasty-looking water, being there some 80 yards wide, at an elevation of 2,050 ft. above the sea level—we again began a steep ascent by a gradient of over 3 per cent, following most of the time the river course. The thickly wooded ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... here sains et saufs with our awfully large Nursery Establishment yesterday morning. It was a nasty warm and very rainy day, but to-day is very bright, clear and dry, and we walked out early and felt like prisoners freed from some dungeon. Many thanks for your kind letter of the 2nd, by which ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... naughty tongue! Are you going to begin backbiting again? You are playing a mean part, Trumeau. I have never hinted to Maitre Quennebert all the nasty little ways in which you have tried to put a spoke in his wheel, for if he knew he would ask you to prove your words, and then you would look ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... then a pea hits him on the nose, and some catches his cob behind and makes him dance up on his hind legs. I see'd the old boy's face flush and look plaguy awkward, and I thought we was in for somethin' nasty. ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... Stanley; and it is evident that these stockades of theirs are nasty places to attack, and that they ought to be breached by guns before the men are sent forward to storm them. However, as the Burmese have gone, our repulse ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... wasn't at all a nice girl to play with. The rose-cakes she pronounced "nasty." When Lota explained about Lady Green, she stared and said it was ridiculous, and that there was no such person. She turned up her nose at Pocahontas's journal, and declared that Lota wrote it herself! "Did you ever hear of such a thing?" asked ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... "Would I give him $1 to get a bit of grub for his family?" Got flour and molasses. Started in the Mayflower, a leaky little craft, about 5 P.M. No wind to speak of. Cold drizzle and fog. About 11 we landed at Winter's Cove. Nasty place to land among the rocks on a desolate point. From a shanty on the beach came a yelling and hallooing from several voices to know who we were and what we were doing. Went into cabin, two rooms—one frame and the other sod. Room about 12 x 14—desolate. Two women like furies—ragged, ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... think I can't see through your game?" says Sir Hastings, in his most offensive way, which is nasty indeed. "You hope to keep me unmarried. You tell yourself, I can't live much longer, at the pace I'm going. I know the old jargon—I have it by heart—given a year at the most the title and the heiress will both be yours! I can read you—I—" He breaks off to ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford

... there's so much demonstration in your family you can't understand anybody's keeping themselves exclusive. I don't like to fuss over people or have them fuss over me. Kissing comes as easy to you as eating, but I never could abide it. A nasty, common habit, I call it! I want to give what I like and where and when I like, and act as I'm a mind to afterwards. I don't give because I see things are needed, but because I can't spend my income unless I do give. If I could have my way I'd buy you a good house ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the monster," cried Leaena, in violent agitation, "the nasty thing! Plotinus, how can you? Oh, I shall faint! I shall die! Take it away, I say. You must choose between it ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... with means about 'em (Like essence-peddlers[23]) thet'll make folks long to be without 'em, Jes heavy 'nough to turn a scale thet's doubtfle the wrong way, An' make their nat'ral arsenal o' bein' nasty pay.— Long 'z them things last, (an' I don't see no gret signs of improvin',) I sha'n't up stakes, not hardly yit, nor 'twouldn't pay for movin': For, 'fore you lick us, it'll be the long'st day ever ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... whistles, he blows a horn. The war, beloved, appears to have ended this noon and the Jabberwock is endeavoring to disgorge four and a half years in a single shriek. 'The war,' says the Jabberwock, in his own way, 'is over. It was a rotten war, nasty and hateful, as all wars are rotten and hateful, and everything I've said and done hinting at the contrary has been a lie and I'm so full of lies I ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... under to grab all that he can for himself. There would be no motive, and no fortunes available, for, at least, the most striking forms of that corruption of the press which is such a grave problem today. Municipal theaters would be under no temptation to produce nasty plays. All this exploitation of human weakness and passion is done because it PAYS; if the men at the top were on a salary there would be no such inducement to cater to vicious instincts. The economic pressure that now pushes so many girls in the direction of prostitution ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... picturesque to look at. But the very appearance of poverty seems to act as a reproach on some of the rich—at least why else are they so anxious to get it out of their sight?—and Lord Lickmyloof—that was not his real title, but he was better known by it than by the name of his land: it came of a nasty habit he had, which I need not at present indicate farther—Lord Lickmyloof could not bear the sight of the cottage which no painter would have consented to omit from the landscape. It haunted him like ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... vivaciously, "that it leads to matrimonial complications, as the men who seek employment as Brothers are usually so very impecunious that they understand that marriage is out of the question for them. I was told by my friends, by which I mean all those who felt themselves privileged to say nasty things to me, that we should degenerate into a matrimonial agency, but I have not found it so. On the contrary, every man entering his name on our books, and every girl engaging a Brother, signs a paper agreeing to pay a large prohibitive ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... O viper vile! The "solus" in thy most mervailous face; The "solus" in thy teeth, and in thy throat, And in thy hateful lungs, yea, in thy maw, perdy, And, which is worse, within thy nasty mouth! I do retort the "solus" in thy bowels; For I can take, and Pistol's cock is up, And flashing fire ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]

... for a week or so before we return to them to take over part of the line. Where we are going is, I believe, a fairly nice peaceful spot. I shall try and stir them up if I have half a chance. What happens in trenches is: that if the Germans get nasty and shell us, or send a few bombs from trench mortars, we try to make ourselves nastier still and send over twice as many. Then the Germans get nastier still, till both sides have got thoroughly bad tempered at having their parapets spoiled and trenches messed about. Then it gradually ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack

... you may suppose, is not a genius. He is far too nice," declared Catherine's old self, "to be anything so nasty. But I always thought he had his head screwed on, and his heart screwed in, or I never would have let him loose in a Swiss hotel. As it was, I was only too glad for him to go with George Kennerley, who was as good at work at Eton as Bob was ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung

... spent the rest of the year at Foxholes, He had intended going to London and possibly to Scotland in October, but an accidental stumble in his library over a heavy despatch box made a nasty wound on the left shin, which took many weeks in healing and prevented his travelling till the middle of December. On the 19th he went to town, where, with the exception of some short visits to Bath or to Foxholes, he remained till June, dining several times at The Club, entertaining at home in his ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... not better. He had received a very nasty flesh-wound in the thigh; but the bullet had been extracted. There was not the slightest clew to the identity of his would-be murderer. The Squire himself had said nothing. He had been found almost bleeding to death by the roadside; the alarm had been ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade

... showing your nasty temper, George, you'd better hold your tongue," said the skipper severely. "What's your opinion about ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs

... said, no material traces have ever been discovered, nor can degeneration be recent. Our earliest account of the Australians is that of Dampier, who visited New Holland in the unhappy year 1688. He found the natives 'the miserablest people in the world. The Hodmadods, of Mononamatapa, though a nasty people, yet for wealth are gentlemen to these: who have no houses, sheep, poultry, and fruits of the earth.... They have no houses, but lie in the open air.' Curiously enough, Dampier attests their unselfishness: ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... sir; don't you remember the rats came under the forest laws—a minor species of venison? 'Rats and mice, and such small deer,' eh?—Shakespeare, you know. Our ancestors ate rats ('The nasty fellows!' shuddered Miss Julia, in a parenthesis); and owls, you know, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... Paul's Cathedral, the Monument, and the Banqueting House at Whitehall. The Mansion House and the Bank of England were not yet built, and between them and the Royal Exchange (the which, noble enough in itself, was girt about, and choked up with Shops and Tenements exceeding mean and shabby), was a nasty, rubbishing, faint-smelling place, full of fruiterers and herbalists, called the Stocks Market. The crazy and rotten City Gates blocked up the chief thoroughfares, and across the bottom of Ludgate Hill ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... always difficult to please, Gudrid," said Freydissa; "surely you don't think Greenland—cold, windy, bleak, nasty ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... mustn't, for instance, be expected to spend my working hours always at the bottom of a coal-pit. I think such work as that ought to be largely volunteer work, and done, as I say, in spells. And what I say of very rough work I say also of nasty work. On the other hand, I should think very little of the manhood of a stout and healthy man who did not feel a pleasure in doing rough work; always supposing him to work under the conditions I have been speaking of—namely, ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... a nasty ride, for both P. and Stephan's horses came down repeatedly, and the path was constantly about two hundred feet above the Lim. It requires care in the daytime, but in the uncertain light of evening ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... "If you'd been a-coming to me with them violets and buttercups, instead of old Hans with his nasty bitter yarbs, I'd a been off that bed many a day ago. There was nothing but darkness, and the shadows of tomb-stones, and the damp smells of the lonely bogs about his roots and his leaves. But there was the heavenly sunshine in your flowers, ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... this interesting problem on its merits, we have to get over one nasty puddle that lies at the beginning of it. Much of the prejudice against financiers is based on, or connected with, anti-Semitic feeling, that miserable relic of medieval barbarism. No candid examination of the views ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... busy with bright conversation. Buck up his spirits a bit. The old boy's had a nasty shock, and unfortunately, he's due for another one. Too bad, but it's for the best. I'll take it ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole

... chiffonier. At last she found the article, and eagerly read him the description of the strange forms of the coral animals, and the beauties of their flower-like feelers and branching fabrics. It would once have delighted him, but his first comment was, "Nasty little brutes!" However, the next minute he thanked her, took the book, and said he could hammer something out of it, though it was too bad to give such an unclassical subject. At dusk he left off, saying he should ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... and balls, all the same as at home. We enjoy our newspaper, as usual, in our comfortable reading-room. In the morning, we take a stroll or a dip, or drink water at the Wells, which, although undoubtedly nasty, is undeniably wholesome. Then there is a steamer in sight, and we all hasten to the pier, to ascertain if we know anybody on board. Then we dine early, for one must dine early in the country. Then we take a nap; then another stroll; then there is another steamer to watch; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... game begun, Sir, Sixty years since I took the crease! Sixty years in the rain an' sun, Sir, Death's been tryin' to end my lease. Oh, but he's sent me down some corkers, Given me lots of nasty jobs; Mixed length-balls with his dazzlin' Yorkers, Kickers ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale

... got your nasty letter, putting me second to your mother." And she laughed, and was still laughing, when she added: "So, you see, I was ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... winged it all right! My God, what a nasty beast! Looks like one of those allosaurs I read about in college. It couldn't be, though—that tribe of dinosaurs died ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... you think so? I'm not queer, but I'm nasty. I am like that sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It's very stupid, but it'll pass off," said Anna quickly, and she bent her flushed face over a tiny bag in which she was packing a nightcap and some cambric ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... Four paints its stations a nasty orange color. How I hated that color! My brother was always covered with it. On pay days he used to get drunk and come home wearing his paint-covered clothes and bringing his money with him. He did not give it to mother but laid it in a pile ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... don't mind a drink aboard a plane myself. Helps me relax. But I have seen some pretty unpleasant things develop during a flight when you get a nasty drunk riled up." ...
— The Last Straw • William J. Smith

... (1819-92) most characteristic poems. I love the swing and the stride of his great long lines. I love his rough-shod way of trampling down and kicking out of the way the conventionalities that spring up like poisonous mushrooms to make the world a vast labyrinth of petty "proprieties" until everything is nasty. I love the oxygen he pours on the world. I love his genius for brotherliness, his picture of the Negro with rolling eyes and the firelock in the corner. These excerpts are some of ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... a sort of stile at the end of about three hundred yards," Furley continued. "You get over that, and the bank breaks up into two. You keep to the left, and it leads you right down into the marsh. Turn seaward. It will be a nasty scramble, but there will only be about fifty yards of it. Then you get to a bit of rough ground—a bank of grass-grown sand. Below that there is the shingle and the sea. That is where ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... "The nasty fellow!" said Mrs. Cat, "to demean himself with such low people as Nan Fantail, indeed! Why, upon my conscience now, Corporal, it was but an hour ago that Mr. Trippet swore he never saw such a pair of eyes as mine, and would like to cut the Captain's throat for the love of me. ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... this unexpected sequel to his arrogant order that he merely stood still, spluttering and cursing. Then he grabbed his rifle. At the same moment I threw the bucket itself at him, catching him a nasty blow on the shoulder. The girls who had been laughing at me now chaffed the discomfited sentry unmercifully. Foaming with rage and swearing terribly he lowered his rifle to run me ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... I say, sir? Well, you've heard that funny fable Consekint the tortoise and the race it give an 'are? This was curiouser than that! At first I wasn't able Quite to size the memory up that bristled thro' my hair: Suddenly, I'd got it, with a nasty shivery feeling, While she walked and walked and yet was not a bit more near,— Sir, it was the tread-mill earth beneath her feet a-wheeling Faster than her feet could trot to heaven or anywhere, Earth's revolvin' stair Wheeling, while my wayside ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... task, and tied Aubrey's handkerchief round his head, which was bleeding freely. After a few moments the first Samaritan succeeded in stopping a touring car which was speeding over from Brooklyn. The driver willingly agreed to take Aubrey home, and the other two helped him in. Barring a nasty gash on his scalp he ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... across at him under the droplight. "Say, you look as if you'd lost a dozen dear friends. Anything wrong? Look here, has Walton been acting nasty?" ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... his lips, Squirming at Nature and Society, Drawing with tingling finger-tips The clothes off naked Impropriety! So nice, so nasty, and so grim, He hugs his gloomy bottled thunder; To summon up one smile from him Would ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... carried on in pigs and potatoes. Cook says: "No people could trade with more honesty than these people, never once attempting to cheat us, either ashore or alongside the ship." They seem to have dropped their thieving very quickly. At night a nasty sea got up, and as Cook did not like the position of his ship he weighed to run a little further out, but the wind suddenly dropping round to the east, he had to set all sail to clear the shore. For ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson

... 'Bounty is a nasty word, and I hate it. You accepted me as your brother, and as such I mean to act.' The word almost stuck in his throat, but he brought it out at last in a fierce tone, of which she understood accurately the cause and meaning. 'All money matters about the place must ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... what happiness! She could take her place among the daughters of the great citizens in the processions, no less richly apparelled than they, and still there would remain a nice little sum for her father and sister; and the work in the factory, the nasty dirty work, which she hated and loathed, would be at an end, it was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... all that has taken place, nobody would ever have supposed that his engagement need go for anything. But what can he say to her now that he is with her, except just do the mischief all over again? I call it quite wicked in that woman's interfering. I do, indeed! She's a nasty, insolent, impertinent creature;—that's what she is! After all the trouble I've taken, she comes and undoes it all with ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... place smells!" muttered Poynter. "Any one would think that chap was here now. A nasty, damp, ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... barbarism. Immediately across the border line may be seen in the Afridi tribes a complete and living picture of man in his aboriginal condition of perpetual war, under no government at all, in daily peril of ending by a violent death a life that in the pithy words of Hobbes is 'poor, nasty, brutish, and short.' A few steps back into the British district brings us among men, often of the same breed and tribe, dwelling without arms in peace and security, pleading before regular law courts, learning in English schools, occupied in commerce and industry under the protection ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... about that," replied Vance, dismally; "if I must be cooked whether I like it or not, I rather think I would like to taste particularly nasty." ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam

... require. There were several tons of ice in the store-room, which had been filled at Havre; and there was no danger of any suffering for the want of the needed element. The principal went on deck with the steward, and observed that the wind was freshening, with a decidedly nasty look to windward. It might not be possible to go into Cherbourg the next morning with safety; and Mr. Lowington did not like the idea of being driven into port before the mutiny had been suppressed. The Josephine was half a mile to windward, under easy sail; and, ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... that was a nasty one! You really would not have expected me to introduce that fellow at my clubs, would you?" "No," said Edestone, toying with something on the table to hide the smile that played across his lips. "No, no, not at all. The Lord Mayor of London ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... no time on our arrival there, but early the next morning boats were ordered alongside the troopships to convey us on shore, which movement, as the enemy was on the banks about fifteen thousand strong to receive us, put rather a nasty taste into our mouths, there seeming nothing but death or glory before us. The signal was hoisted from the admiral's ship, and we started for the shore amid the fire of the enemy's artillery. They killed ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence

... broken ribs and some nasty gashes and scratches, there was nothing seriously the matter, and with the help of a litter and half-a-dozen natives summoned by the shikari, we got him home to the bungalow without further damage. There he told me his ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... because he hasn't got nerve enough to do anything wrong himself. You couldn't keep it to yourself, for all your promises and your crocodile tears! I ought to have known better than trust you with anything. But I'll tell you one thing more, you two nasty nice creatures that are worse than scrawling snakes—I'll tell you this: It won't do you one particle of good to set the police after Jack. So go ahead and tell, and be just as treacherous and mean as you like. You won't have the pleasure of sending him to jail—because they'll ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower

... little distance from my face; the creatures were struggling in it, I remember, and I thought to myself, how much more comfortably off I was than they; I was taking my ease on the nice open hill, cooled with the breezes, whilst they were in the nasty close bag, coiling about one another, and breaking their very hearts, all to no purpose; and I felt quite comfortable and happy in the thought, and little by little closed my eyes, and fell into the sweetest snooze that ever ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... bar already!" said Cleopatra, gazing out of the window at a nasty choppy sea that was adding somewhat to the disquietude of the fair gathering. "If this is merely a joke on the part of the Associated Shades, it is a mighty poor one, and I think it is time ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... it is usually made from bad coffee, served out tepid and muddy, and drowned in a deluge of water, and sometimes deserves the title given it in "the Petition against Coffee," 4to. 1674, page 4, "a base, black, thick, nasty, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... at in wonder at Dalkeith—pleasant Dalkeith! ay, how different, with its bonny river Esk, its gardens full of gooseberry bushes and pear-trees, its grass parks spotted with sheep, and its grand green woods, from the bullying blackguards, the comfortless reek, and the nasty gutters of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... back to the rear a Mauser bullet shot off the tip of the man's finger, as it was resting on Mr. Huskisson's shoulder. Had there not been the weight of the man's arm to depress the body this would have resulted in a nasty wound in the shoulder. At another time the case of field glasses hanging by his side was hit ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers

... I spent a happy winter, and was more comfortably off than many of the officers, who had built none, but lived in tents and took the chances of "Northers." During this period our food was principally the soldier's ration: flour, pickled pork, nasty bacon—cured in the dust of ground charcoal—and fresh beef, of which we had a plentiful supply, supplemented with game of various kinds. The sugar, coffee, and smaller parts of the ration were good, but we had no vegetables, and the few ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... ear, if one may be pardoned the expression, in consequence; and the other was a carnivorous beetle, in black, purple-shot armor, and armed with jaws toothed like lobsters' claws. The queen took some nasty scars from those same jaws before she got home with the poisoned point, a clean thrust 'twist breastplate and armlet, and the invader doubled up on the spot where he was, and had to be dragged out in the morning—not the dawning, for the sun had ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... "but it is not all gold that glitters: in these sweet smells a nasty fever is concealed, with which I have no wish to renew ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... that I was getting involved in a nasty business. 2. You should have seen the air he put on in answering me. 3. I raised my arm as if to seize him by the coat-collar. 4. All the spectators at once clapped their hands. 5. Just fancy! the marquess brought to his senses by this slip of an usher! 6. My friend has not yet arrived, ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet

... hated to think of it. Then little by little the first taint crept in, the innate vice stirred in him, the brute began to make itself felt, and a multitude of perverse and vicious ideas commenced to buzz about him like a swarm of nasty flies. ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... Caroline had to take off her brown holland apron, and wash her hands, while Emma composed her cap, in haste and not very good will, for she could not but think them her natural enemies, though she was ready to beat herself for being so small and nasty "when they could ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Yankees are brought low—the nasty, mercenary, low-born, infernal mudsills are defiled, and become as ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... bound to eat one of those nasty durians," said a friend living in the town, "please take it on the ship and have the captain anchor out farther at sea. If you attempt to open one here, you'll have the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... mornin he knew nowt abaat it till he saw his wife wor i'th' sulks, an' he ax'd her "what ther wor to do." "Ther's plenty to do, aw think," shoo says; "ha can ta fashion to put thi heead aght o'th' door? But tha can have yond nasty gooid-for-nawt as soain as tha likes, for awst leeave thi if aw live wol awm an haar older! It's a bonny come off, 'at me at's barn ommoss a duzzen children to thi should be shoved o' one side far a thing like yond!" "Why, ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... amusements, their literature, their clothes, their manners,—especially in regard to men,—their gestures and color, were distasteful to her. "They hide their dirt with a thin veneer of cheap finery," said Dolly to her father. He had replied by telling her that she was nasty. "No; but, unfortunately, I cannot but see nastiness." Dolly herself was clean to fastidiousness. Take off her coarse frock, and there the well-dressed lady began. "Look at the heels of Sophie's boots! Give her a push, and she'd fall off her pins as though they were ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... abroad upon the world, and see men shaving their heads, and wearing nasty hair shirts, and shutting themselves up in cells, and living lives of celibacy, and when I see women retiring from the world which they were sent to adorn, populate, and bless, and Shakers driving around ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... that I had a steady pull; for under the lee of the wall there was a heap of rugged logs into which Bob plunged gallantly, and, in spite of my hard hold on him, floundered a moment, and went over. Had I been going at top speed, a very nasty fall must have been the immediate consequence—as it was, both of us rolled over; but with small violence, and on soft snow, so ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... be serious, and may lead to far-reaching complications. The one good thing is that Bismarck is honestly friendly, and I believe will support us in whatever we propose. Austria seems to be almost as nasty as Russia, and France naturally jealous. I suppose Bismarck can and will keep Austria in order. Please write me a real ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... "He came back all dirty. And Hare went down to the edge of the cities once. He says it too. Man was too sick to chase him. He thinks that Man will die, and his wicked friend Dog with him. Dog, he will die. That nasty fellow Dog. He will ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... nasty little beast; She's seen at many a fete and feast. She's spiteful, sly and double-faced, Exceeding prim, exceeding chaste. And while a soft, sleek smile she wears, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... so much land, indeed, that my eyes get tired of looking at it: a dreadful road, wagons of goods, swearing carriers, drunken stage inspectors; beetles creeping on every wall; soups with the smell of tallow candles! How is it possible for any respectable person to occupy himself with such nasty stuff? And what is yet more provoking, is the doleful uniformity which tires you so much, and affords you no rest whatever. Nothing new, nothing unexpected! To-morrow what has been to-day; to-day what has been yesterday. Here, a post-stage, there a post-stage, and further ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... Oliver's intentions. 'Must stay here,' was the answer. 'Can't leave that child alone with the property. I can look to the Equatorial Company here—must do without me out there. No, no, I can't leave the girl to her brother; he'd teach her his own nasty, spiteful temper, and waste the property on all those brats. No, I'm fixed here; I must look after Henry's child, fine girl, good-tempered girl; takes after ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... it," said Wyn, briskly. "But I know that he and Polly are very poor, and with a motor boat and five thousand dollars' worth of silver, it looks to me as though they would be very foolish to suffer the privations they do. It's nasty gossip, ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... "Ah, that nasty Barber!" he cried; "this must be his doing!" And instead of going home, he ran as fast as he could, very far, far, away into the jungle, and stretching himself out on a great flat rock, ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... pigsty, he told her how he had caught a great fish, and how it had told him it was an enchanted prince, and how, on hearing it speak, he had let it go again. 'Did not you ask it for anything?' said the wife, 'we live very wretchedly here, in this nasty dirty pigsty; do go back and tell the fish we want a snug ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm



Words linked to "Nasty" :   cruddy, difficult, hateful, grotty, nastiness, hard, lousy, soiled, nice, unpleasant, unclean, dirty, tight, mean



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