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Racy   /rˈeɪsi/   Listen
Racy

adjective
(compar. racier; superl. raciest)
1.
Full of zest or vigor.  Synonym: lively.
2.
Marked by richness and fullness of flavor.  Synonyms: full-bodied, rich, robust.  "Full-bodied wines" , "A robust claret" , "The robust flavor of fresh-brewed coffee"
3.
Suggestive of sexual impropriety.  Synonyms: blue, gamey, gamy, juicy, naughty, risque, spicy.  "Blue jokes" , "He skips asterisks and gives you the gamy details" , "A juicy scandal" , "A naughty wink" , "Naughty words" , "Racy anecdotes" , "A risque story" , "Spicy gossip"
4.
Designed or suitable for competing in a race.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Racy" Quotes from Famous Books



... steel plates. They gave details of hotel accommodation and of means of communication, such as we now expect to find in any well-regulated guide-book, and they dealt largely in reported conversations with intelligent foreigners, racy innkeepers, and garrulous peasants. In a word, they ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James

... keeps the rude And racy flavour of the wood. And you that loved the empty plain All redolent of wind and rain, Around you still the curlew sings - The freshness of the weather clings - The maiden jewels of the rain Sit in your dabbled ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in 1474 fell on April 10th, thus giving, as the day of the conclusion of the translation, 31 March 1475, the same year being the earliest possible period of its appearance as a printed book." Then there is Caxton's own racy account of the circumstances under which the book ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton

... there, in that cozy little parlor, with its sunny bow window full of flowers, and its bright Lehigh fire, and softly cushioned chairs; that cozy parlor, where the little round table, with its snowy cloth, had been so often spread; and the fragrant coffee, and delicate tea-biscuit, and racy newspaper had been so often discussed; where John, in his slippers and dressing-gown, with his dark hair pushed off his broad forehead, read to us page after page of some favorite author, while the wind was welcome to whistle itself dumb outside the threshold, and old Winter ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... is undoubtedly much larger, coarser, stronger—much more racy and democratic—than the ideal we are familiar with in current literature, and upon which our culture is largely based. He applies the democratic spirit not only to the material of poetry,—excluding all the old stock themes of love and war, lords and ladies, myths and fairies and legends, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... a story the other day, "a true one," that I treasured for you as racy, as characteristic of slavery and human nature. A most notoriously atrocious, dissolute, hellish slave-owner died, and one of his slaves—an old woman—said to a lady, "Massa prayed God so to forgive him! Oh, how he prayed! And I am ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... Woman Suffrage; women of South Australia enfranchised; resolution against Woman's Bible; speech on Religious Liberty; grief over action of convention; view of the Bible; Suffrage will emancipate from Superstition; Nelly Bly's racy interview; loud call from California; can not refuse but goes to ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... at the door tossing their heads and eager to be off. They were cherry bays and so much alike that even Jim sometimes got them mixed. They were clean-limbed and racy looking, with flanks well drawn up, but with a broad bunch of powerful muscles which rolled from hip to back, making a sturdy back for the splendid full tails which almost touched the ground. In front they stood up straight, deep-chested, with clean bony heads, large luminous eyes and long ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... but a gladiator who is armed with Ricardian weapons will cut your net to pieces. He is too strong in his cause, as I am well satisfied from what passed yesterday. He'll slaughter you,—to use the racy expression of a friend of mine in describing the redundant power with which one fancy boxer disposed of another,—he'll slaughter you "with ease and affluence." But here he comes.—Well, X., you're just come in time. Philebus says that you are a fly, whilst he ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... followed in this volume is that of Mr. Isaac Foulkes' edition, but recourse has also been had to the original edition for the purpose of comparison. The only translation into English hitherto has been that of George Borrow, published in London in 1860, and written in that charming and racy style which characterises his other and better known works. He has, however, fallen into many errors, which were only natural, seeing that the Visions abound in colloquial words and phrases, and in idiomatic forms ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... He is an earnest preacher, has good intellectual constructiveness, and if he had not to battle so much with our English idioms and curious modes of pronunciation he would be a very potent speaker, and a racy homilist. He has a sweeping powerful voice; you could almost hear him if you were asleep, and this fact may account for the peculiarly contented movements of several parties we observed recently at the church whilst Father Papall was ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... train that halts at every barn-door in the vast flat, featureless fields of yellow stubble, rolling sometimes over a muddy, brown river, and skirting now and then a welcome wooded cleft in the monotony of the landscape. The scenes at those barn-doors were full of the picturesque and of the racy. A farmer with a gun and a brace of rabbits and a dog leaping up at them, while two young women talked to or at the farmer from a distance; a fat little German girl in a Scotch frock, cleaning outside windows with the absorbed ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... as tempting as our own minnows, and the trout simply lived in an atmosphere of them. Our Canadian brother anglers here, as elsewhere, are of the real good stamp, sportsmen to the core, pisciculturists, botanists, naturalists, racy conversationalists, and big-hearted to a man. Please fortune I shall shake hands with ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... future! Flow on, beautiful one!—which of the world's streams canst thou envy, with thy beauty and renown? Stately is the Danube, rolling in its might through lands romantic with the wild exploits of Turk, Polak, and Magyar! Lovely is the Rhine! on its shelvy banks grows the racy grape; and strange old keeps of robber-knights of yore are reflected in its waters, from picturesque crags and airy headlands!—yet neither the stately Danube, nor the beauteous Rhine, with all their ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... change. I tear up this stuff before you, here in your own garden; I ask your pardon, I ask the pardon of the Princess; and I give you my word of honour as a gentleman and an old man, that when my book of travels shall appear it shall not contain so much as the name of Gruenewald. And yet it was a racy chapter! But had your Highness only read about the other courts! I am a carrion crow; but it is not my fault, after all, that the world is ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the preparations of William on his landing, with a graphic vigour, which would be wholly lost by transfusing their racy Norman couplets and terse Latin prose into the current style of modern history. It is best to follow them closely, though at the expense of much quaintness and occasional uncouthness of expression. They ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.

... we must wake up to the fact that, as the very heart of our problem, we have a bolshevist nucleus in America composed of virile, red-blooded Americans, racy of our soil and history, whose conditions of life and labor are such as to develop in them the psychology of reckless, despairing, revengeful bolshevism. They really are little concerned with theories of the state and of social development, which to our intellectuals ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... anecdote, and could describe graphically the men he had met, the orators he had heard, the occasions of importance where he had been an interested spectator. His conversation was delightfully fresh and racy because of the vividness of the original impressions, the unusual force of the ideas which were the copies of these impressions, and the fine artistic sense which enabled him to determine at once what points should be omitted, and ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... or Fowler either," said Curly. "But I happen to have discovered something that both those gentlemen have been mixed up in, in Mexico, something—oh, by Jove, but it's racy!" ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... remember, either of fiction or truth. Had poor Dick Tillard been alive and with us, his fund of yarns would have been invaluable. We frequently spoke of him, and mourned his loss. Mudge had seen a good deal of service, but he had not the happy knack of describing what had happened to him in the graphic, racy way poor Dick had of spinning a yarn. Mudge had been with Lord Cochrane during the war, and had taken part in some of his most gallant adventures. He was with him on board the Pallas when her boats had gallantly cut out the ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston

... boldly, and his eyes had the prominence that indicates, I believe, volubility of speech, nor did he fail to talk from the instant of his appearance; and in the tone of his voice, and in his glance, and in the whole man, there was something racy,—a flavor of the humorist. His step was that of an aged man, and he put his stick down very decidedly at every footfall; though as he afterwards told me that he was only fifty-two, he need not yet have been infirm. But perhaps ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... under the canopy of some primeval oak, with implements of woodland sport, rifle or shot-gun by my side, and well-broke setter or stanch hound recumbent at my feet. And one of these tales will I now venture to record, though it will sound but weak and feeble from my lips, if compared to the rich, racy, quaint and humorous thing it was, when flowing from the nature-gifted tongue of our old friend ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... only a moment ago; and now in another moment, because some profane eye had looked at them too closely, or some intruder had cast a shadow on their mirth, the sylvan pageant had utterly disappeared. If a few of the merry-makers lingered among the trees, they had hidden their racy peculiarities under the garb and aspect of ordinary people, and sheltered themselves in the weary commonplace of daily life. Just an instant before it was Arcadia and the Golden Age. The spell being broken, it was now only that old tract of pleasure ground, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... will mention is Carlyle, seen by me several times at my brother's house, and two or three times at my own house. His talk was very racy and interesting, just like his writings, but he sometimes went on too long on the same subject. I remember a funny dinner at my brother's, where, amongst a few others, were Babbage and Lyell, both of whom liked to talk. Carlyle, however, silenced ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin

... were Salvation Army bands and spectrum-shawled old ladies on door-steps and sugary, sticky candy in the grimy hands of shiny-haired children—and the late sun striking down on the sides of the tall tenements. All very rich and racy and savory, like a dish by a provident French chef that one could not help enjoying, even though one knew that the ingredients were ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... she wrote them racy and informative letters; and she also got into touch with their mothers, sisters, and wives at home, who welcomed her news of the absent ones, and were good to her in turn. One lady she delighted ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... principally shown in his wonderful power as a player, and his works written for the violin. Spohr was a man of immense self-assertion, and believed in the greatness of his own musical genius as a composer in the higher domain of his art. His "Autobiography," one of the most fresh, racy, and interesting works of the kind ever written, is full of varied illustrations of what Chorley stigmatizes his "bovine self-conceit." His fecund production of symphony, oratorio, and opera, as well as of the more elaborate forms of chamber music, for ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris

... this series of vignettes in verse Mr. Bradley has presented the Kentucky mountaineer as imaginatively as Robert Frost has presented the farmer-folk of New Hampshire in "North of Boston" and "Mountain Interval." The racy humor of these narratives is thoroughly indigenous, and Mr. Bradley's work has a vivid dramatic power which challenges successfully a comparison with the stories of John Fox, Jr. These poems prove Mr. Bradley's rightful claim to be the first adequate imaginative interpreter ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... a bugbear; Slang. Could not endure the smart technicalities current; their multitude did not overpower her distaste; she called them "jargon"—"slang" was too coarse a word for her to apply to slang: she excluded many a good "racy idiom" along with the real offenders; and monosyllables in general ran some risk of' having to show their passports. If this was pedantry, it went no further; she was open, free, and youthful with her young pupils; ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... affection. He understood them, and they him. For nearly a century they were almost the only readers of his published writings. They came to call him Bishop Bunyan. His native genius, his great human-heartedness and loving-kindness, his burning zeal and indomitable courage, his racy humor and kindling imagination, all vitalized by the spiritual force which came upon him through the encompassing atmosphere of devout Puritanism, were consecrated to the welfare of his fellow-men. His personal friend, Mr. Doe, describes him as "tall in stature, strong-boned, of a ruddy face, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... own, I put my wares on the market. I became Governor of Virginia in spite of everything you did, or did not do, to prevent it." There was a strange effectiveness in the simplicity of the man's speech. It was natural; it was racy; it was like nothing that Stephen had ever heard before. He wondered if it could be traced back to the phraseology of the circus? "Of course you think I am an extremist," concluded Gideon Vetch abruptly, "but before you are as old as I am you will have learned that the only way to get half ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... a noble and everlasting structure. Their works are all Parian marble, alabaster, porphyry, and royal cement; they treat of nothing but heroic deeds, mighty things, grave and difficult matters, and this in a crimson, alamode, rhetorical style. Their writings are all divine nectar, rich, racy, sparkling, delicate, and luscious wine. Nor does our sex wholly engross this honour; ladies have had their share of the glory; one of them, of the royal blood of France, whom it were a profanation ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... apartment of the latter personage, holding grave converse on the important event of the day, sweetened by a small treat of comfits, to which the providence of Mr. Wingate had added a little flask of racy canary. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... said Levitt in his strong, sarcastic voice, "has gone too far. It was all right to get rid of the actual filth ... and everyone will agree there was some. But when you banned the sale of some magazines and books because they had racy covers or because the contents were a little too sophisticated to suit the taste of members of this board ... well, you can carry protection of our youth to the point of insulting the intelligence of adults who have a right to read what they ...
— The Gift Bearer • Charles Louis Fontenay

... heard of years before, little thinking, as he listened "till he was sick with desire to go there," that talk was to be as a sign-post to him where to travel to. "For Louis' sake," his mother explains in her racy journal letters, speaking of having chartered the Casco, "I can't but be glad, for his heart has so long been set upon it, it must surely be good for his health to have such a desire granted." Louis warned his mother years before she had a nomad for a son, but she had never ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson

... started about Irish sports and shoneen games the like of lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once again and all to that. And of course Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom: Look ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... dull, never insincere, and has the genius to make the reader care for all that he cares for. Cut these words and they bleed; they are vascular and alive." Such a voice, speaking at Shakspere's ear in an English nearly as racy and nervous as the incomparable old-new French of the original, was in itself ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... like the reform administration. Why? Because these administrations, with their daily rows, furnish as racy news as prizefights or divorce cases. Tammany don't care to get in the papers. It goes right along attendin' to business quietly and only wants to be let alone. That's one reason why the papers ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt

... unexpected or thrilling incident, for their days were occupied in the pursuit of enough money to get a night's lodging and such food as would stay the pangs of hunger. But I wish I could give here the pictures, coloured and racy, which Captain Nichols' vivid narrative offered to the imagination. His account of their discoveries in the low life of a seaport town would have made a charming book, and in the various characters that came their way the student might easily have ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... racy, vigorous and often very beautiful; but the language of any book is nothing except in so far as it reveals the writer. The words in which a man clothes his thoughts are like all other clothes—the cut raises presumptions about his ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... unfortunately, the authorities are wanting for stating whether the Convention danced or not. In any event, it is present at the dance, and thus consecrates an unique orgy, not Rubens' "Kermesse" in the open air, racy and healthy, but a nocturnal boulevard-jollification, a "Mardi-gras" composed of lean and haggard scapegraces.—In the great nave of the Cathedral, "the dancers, almost naked, with bare necks and breasts, and stockings down at the heel," ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... and less genuine chansons borrow to some extent the methods and incidents in the romances; but the romances at no time exhibit much resemblance to the chansons proper, which have an extremely distinct, racy, and original character of their own. Hallam, writing later than Dunlop, and if with a less wide knowledge of Romance, with a much greater proficiency in general literary history, practically passes the chansons de geste over ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... The "rich and racy" scenes that came off in the Convention, we will leave our several friends from Nashville, who were there as reporters in the Convention for the American papers, to set forth. With more truth than poetry, the "unterrified Democracy" convened at Cincinnati can say, "Our army ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... mulish, beetle-headed, doddering, too vacant to be vicious, too doltish to do amiss, does not exist as a type in England. What does exist in every corner of the country is a peasantry speaking a patois that is often of varying inflections, but is always full of racy poetry, illiterate and yet possessed of a vast oral literature, sharing brains with other classes more equally than education, humorous, nimble-witted; clear-sighted, astute, cynical, not too virtuous, and having a lofty, ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... mark," and retained to the last that sort of wheedling tone which is common in the South of Ireland. Yet he had none of that good-natured insincerity, to which a particular class of Irish are given. He was thoroughly sincere and genuine, and ready to support his words by deeds. His humour was racy. As when the Prince of Wales was sympathising with him on a false report of his death, adding, good naturedly, "I really was afraid, Dr. Quain, that we had lost you, and was thinking of sending a wreath." "Well, Sir," said the medico, "recollect that you are now committed to the wreath." ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

... trash, ballads, squibs, epigrams, &c., till at length he revived in the listener such a sort of recollection of them, as made him imagine that Mr. Smith must have recently committed them to memory for some special purpose, but for their appearing so really fresh and racy to him, and plainly suggested by the casual current of conversation. He was, about this time, and for years afterwards, a very frequent visiter at my house; and never was any one, independently of my personal regard for him, more ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... so they added William Tuft. One more was wanted that was plain, That one was found in John McKane, But when the five were call'd to meet There were but four came to the seat; There are but four, said one so racy, So they elected William Gracy. Now you perceive this grave committee Which numbers five both wise and witty, Has got into a pretty fix With but five seats and numbers six. The question for the next debate Was then selected, which I'll state ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... were close at hand, and that the horses did not get out on the slope of sage. He sat back and gloried in the sight. He owned bands of mustangs; near by was a field of them, fine and mettlesome and racy; yet Bostil had eyes only for the blooded favorites. Strange it was that not one of these was a mustang or a broken wild horse, for many of the riders' best mounts had been captured by them or the Indians. And it was Bostil's supreme ambition to own a great wild stallion. There was Plume, ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... avoided treating his subject from a too human point of view, and we are paying him a very high compliment when we say that the more we study the work the more we are impressed with what we may best describe as the "vegetability" of the writer's mind. The book is racy of the soil; it is written in a charming and convincing style, and bears the stamp of imaginative originality. An acquaintance to whom we lent the book admirably expresses the impression we had formed of it by saying that it might have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various

... was constantly in the public eye. Her house, during the hours at any rate in which her boy was at school, was little else than a halting-place between two journeys. Visits to the poor, long watches by the sick; committees, in which her racy breadth of character gave her always an important place; discussions with the vicar, arguments with the curates, a chat with this person and a walk with that—these were the incidents and occupations which filled her day. Life was delightful ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... that they were 'lewd strumpets gathered up by the officers of the city,' and even the saintly Mere Marie de l'Incarnation confessed that there was beaucoup de canaille among them. La Hontan has left us a racy picture of their arrival and their distribution among the rustic swains of the colony, who scrimmaged for points of vantage when boatloads of women came ashore from the ships. [Footnote: Another view ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro

... merry heart the fellow went Direct to Mr. Centpercent, Who loved, as well was understood, Whatever game was nice and good. This gentleman, with knowing air, Survey'd the dainty lot with care, Pronounced it racy, rich, and rare, And call'd his wife, to know her wishes About its purchase for their dishes. The lady thought the creatures prime, And for their dinner just in time; So sweet they were, and delicate, For ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... and responsibility to which the Parliament raised him during the last phase of the war. Physically strong, despite his advanced age, he is mentally brilliant and superficial, with a bias for paradox, epigram, and racy, unconventional phraseology. His action is impulsive. In the Dreyfus days I saw a good deal of M. Clemenceau in his editorial office, when he would unburden his soul to M.M. Vaughan, the poet Quillard, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... over the charming little volume, Home Pictures of English Poets, which thou wast kind enough to send me, and which I hope is having a wide circulation as it deserves. Its analysis of character and estimate of literary merit strike me as in the main correct. Its racy, colloquial style, enlivened by anecdote and citation, makes it anything but a dull book. It seems to me admirably adapted to supply a ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... Marthorne was always there. It sometimes happened that while Hodge the lately intoxicated, or Hodge the recent pugilist, was stolidly waiting for his sentence, the two justices in the retiring room were convulsed with laughter; the one recounting, the other imbibing, some curious racy anecdote concerning the family ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... to the numerous readers of the Christian World as "Christopher Crayon," has the pen of a ready, racy, refreshing writer. He never writes a dull line, and never for a moment allows our interest to flag. In the work before us, which is not his first, he is, I should think, at his best. The volume is the outcome of extensive reading, ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... Coined in the early 1960s to replace earlier 'sexadecimal', which was too racy and amusing for stuffy IBM, and later adopted by the rest of ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... wild nectar-brewers could be chosen than the hollow bough of a giant tulip,—a den whose door is curtained with leaves and washed round with odorous airs, where the superb flowers, with their wealth of golden pollen and racy sweets, blaze out from the cool shadows above and beneath. But the sly old 'coon, that miniature Bruin of our Western woods, is a great lover of honey, and not at all a respecter of the rights of wild bees. He is tireless in his efforts to reach every deposit of waxy comb and amber distillation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... Aladdin and Beau Larch made the evening spin. Aladdin, talking eagerly and with the naivete of a child, wondered why he had never liked this man so much before. And Larch told the somewhat abject story of his life three times with an introduction of much racy anecdote. ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... plucked their pigeon with the most graceful negligence in the world. They might live by their wits, but they knew how to wear always the jauntiest indifference of manner. Out came the feathers with a sure hand, the while they exchanged choice bon mots and racy scandal. Hazard was the game we played and I, Kenneth Montagu, was cast for the role of the pigeon. Against these old gamesters I had no chance even if the play had been fair, and my head on it more than one of them rooked me ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... or both of them, in the following paper of the Tatler (No. 221, Sept. 7, 1710), has given one of those quietly satiric pictures of many a well-known man of the day, some Petiver or Hans Sloane. The widow Gimcrack's letter is peculiarly racy. Although old books, the Tatler and Spectator still furnish rare material to many a popular magazine writer of the day, who sometimes does little more than dilute a paper in these and other rare repertories of the style and wit of a golden age. We meditated ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... spring may here with autumn twine And both combined may rule the year, And fresh-blown flowers and racy wine In frosted clusters still be near— Dearer the wild and snowy hills Where ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor

... natural growths; they have their own circulation of vital juices, their own peculiar properties; they smack of the soil, are racy and strong and aromatic, like ground-juniper, sweet-fern, and the arbor vitae. Set them out in the earth, and would they not sprout and grow?—nor would need vine-shields to shelter them from the weather! They are living and local, and lean toward ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... "Michael Armstrong," in which her Ishmael hand fell heavily on the narrow-mindedness of the manufacturing class—anticipating, in some degree, Dickens's "Hard Times." "One Fault," a satire upon romantic exaggeration; and the coarse, but clever "Widow Barnaby," a racy history of the troubles of a vulgar-genteel bourgeoise in search of a second husband, were published in 1839; and in the following year appeared its sequel, "The Widow Married," which is quite as coarse as its predecessor, ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams

... you know that? Is this the nature of the conversation in that house on Beretania Street which the cabman envied, driving past?—racy details of the misconduct of the poor peasant priest, toiling ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... round him spread out, moving nearer to me; and they laughed at his comical threat—which sounded all the more humorous from the Irishman's racy brogue, which became all the more prominent when Garry was at all excited. God knows, though, their merriment, untimely as it might have sounded to outside ears, betrayed no want of sympathy with their comrade. They laughed, as sailors will do sometimes, holding their ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... a word of opprobrium, mundane or nautical, which the port skipper didn't shout at that submarine commander, the port engineer supplied it. In all his life Cappy Ricks had never listened to such rich, racy, unctuous abuse; it lifted itself about the level of the commonplace and became a work of art. Cappy ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... if it is not read as much as it used to be, and still deserves to be, is certainly far from being forgotten—Gil Blas. Published in 1715—that is, its first two parts—it has now two centuries of popularity to its credit, and is still as racy with humanity as ever; but, though Le Sage was a rapid and voluminous writer, over this one book which alone the world remembers it is significant to note that he expended unusual time and pains. He was forty-seven years old when ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... charming little book, written for children's entertainment and instruction, is equally delightful to the fathers and mothers. It is life in New England, and the racy history of a long railway journey to the wilds of Colorado. The children are neither imps nor angels, but just such children as are found in every happy home. The pictures are so graphically drawn that we feel well acquainted with Rob and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... remain in this land rather than penetrate the questionable beyond. As they crossed the open spaces the racy smell of the sage leaked through the packed drifts underfoot and they knew that parts of these valleys were carpeted with the same brush that clothed the foothills of their home land. This was the summer ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... works, the most racy and original, are undoubtedly those which relate to Greece; but it is only travellers who have visited the scenes that can appreciate them properly. In them his peculiar style and faculty are most eminent; in all his other productions, imitation, even mere translation may be often traced, and ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... of effort he had scarcely an equal. His command of language was extraordinary, tho he had little imagination and his vocabulary was limited; but he possest the faculty of expressing himself in a racy, virile manner, within the apprehension of every reader. As he treated every topic in a practical rather than a philosophical spirit, and with strong feeling rather than infallible logic, so he never wrote above the heads of the public. What he said was plain, clear, striking. His ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... began. Marjorie, posing as a wild Irish girl, put on a capital imitation of the brogue, and urged her own merits with zeal. She evaded the question of her right age, and offered a whole catalogue of things she could do, from dressing a wound to mixing a pudding and scrubbing the passages. She was so racy and humorous, and threw in such amusing asides, that the audience shrieked with laughter, and were quite disappointed when the five minutes' bell put a sudden and speedy end to the interesting performance. As Marjorie walked back to her seat she became well aware that she had ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... evening. Is there any use in such a journal as mine? Will the celebrated New Zealander, that is to be, discover the volumes amidst the ruins of Clapham? and shall I be quoted as the Pepys of the nineteenth century? But then I am by no means as racy as that worldly-minded little government clerk; or perhaps it may be that the time in which I live wants the spice and seasoning of that golden age of rascality in which my Lady Castlemain's white petticoats were to be seen flaunting in the wind by any frivolous-minded lounger who chose to take ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... "As a racy humorist and a brilliant wit using verse as an instrument of expression, he has no clear superior, probably no equal, so far at least as American readers are concerned, among writers who have employed the English language. As a satirist he has superiors, but scarcely as an inventor of jeux ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... it be a small one, requires dexterous hand work. To publish such a paper demands business gifts to secure means and to plan the work. To edit such a paper calls for readable and racy writing. Few forms of business require a greater variety of manual, skilful and facile ability. For these reasons we are glad to find that in nearly all our larger schools in the South, monthly papers are printed and published—with little or no expense to the ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 2, June, 1898 • Various

... his style never betrays the inadequate effort to describe thoughts or emotions that are but vaguely perceived, which is the characteristic of the best sensational writing. Indeed, there is little poetry by the eminent contemporary masters which is so ripe and racy as his. He does not make rhetoric stand for passion, nor vagueness for profundity; nor, on the other hand, is he such a voluntary and malicious "Bohemian" as to conceive that either in life or letters a man is released from the plain rules of morality. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... life of the lover, the warrior, the poet, the statesman, Jochanan Hakkadosh found absolute peace and joy. Few poems contain more of Browning's matured theory of life than this of the Jewish Rabbi; and its seriousness is happily mingled with imaginative illustrations and with racy wit. The sketch of Tsaddik, who puts us in mind of Wagner in the Faust, is done with a sarcastic joy in exposing the Philistine, and with a delight in its own cleverness ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... warmth to Trans-atlantic banquets. Even as it is now made, with very little care bestowed on cultivation and none to speak of on selection of the grape, the wine is rich and noble, slightly rough to a sophisticated palate, but clean in quality and powerful and racy. It deserves the enthusiasm attributed ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... dumbfounded at first. The Theatre des Nouveautes, situated at the heart of the boulevard, where its main entrance was a blaze of light, among the fashionable restaurants and select clubs,—a theatre to which small parties used to adjourn after a choice dinner to hear an act or two of something racy, had become in the hands of its clever manager the most popular of all Parisian play-houses, with no well-defined speciality but providing a little of all sorts, from the spectacular fairy-play which exhibits the women in scant attire, to the great modern drama ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... I have said," continued the duchess, "try, if you can, to be novel, and be a bodkin only to the victim's face, save, of course, in the case of a new bit of racy scandal. That must be used to the greatest advantage as soon as possible, for scandal, like ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major

... legs on the thick buffalo-skin which served as a rug to his cosy dining-room fire-place. "I'll continue the narrative as old Short told it to me, though not exactly in his own words, for those I cannot pretend to repeat—I cannot even hope to imitate his quaint expressions and racy humour. Noggin stood the attacks of his tormentors with as much heroism as could the most stoical of red warriors. We longed to rush in to his rescue, but we knew full well that the attempt would be worse than useless, and we should inevitably lose our own lives and not save his. The ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... the Works of the Royal Society of London, &c., by John Hill, M.D., London, 1751." It evinces an acute mind, ready wit, and a general acquaintance with the subjects of natural history, antiquities, and philosophical research, adverted to. It is a racy work, which all modern naturalists, and modern discoverers of secrets and inventions ought to read. I should think it must have made some of the contributors to the "Transactions" of the Royal Society wince ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... a heap too slight,' goes on Colonel Sterett, followin' a small libation, 'to strike a blow for the confed'racy, but my soul is shorely in the cause. I does try to j'ine, final, an' is only saved tharfrom, an' from what would, ondoubted, have been my certain death, by a reb gen'ral named Wheeler. He don't mean ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis

... possibly would not have been so effective for the purpose which they were intended to serve, if their writers had been more fanciful and imaginative, or less intent upon what they had to say than upon the manner of saying it. But if not extremely poetical, they are extremely national, and racy of the soil; and some of them are certain to live as long as the language which produced them. For the convenience of reference and consultation they have been arranged chronologically; beginning with the discontents that inaugurated the reign of Charles I., and following regularly to the ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... geographical notes, including a number of quotations from Homer and Herodotus, bearing on the spread of Greek culture in the Aegean. During the course of them he broke out once or twice into his characteristic sayings and illustrations, racy or poetic, as usual, and Elizabeth would lift her blue eyes, with the responsive look in them, on which he had begun to think all his real power of work depended. But not a word passed between them on any other subject; ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... presentation. In Jersey she had shown herself an historian, in Guernsey a poetess, in Alderney a political economist, and in Sark a humorist: there were sketches of character scattered through the pages which might put our "fictionists" to the blush; the style was eloquent and racy, studded with gems of felicitous remark; and the moral spirit throughout was so superior that, said one, "the recording angel" (who is not supposed to take account of literature as such) "would assuredly set down the work as a deed ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... of these among the "Fruits and Fruit-Trees of America," though they are more memorable to my taste than the grafted kinds; more racy and wild American flavors do they possess, when October and November, when December and January, and perhaps February and March even, have assuaged them somewhat. An old farmer in my neighborhood, who always selects the right word, says that "they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... He is steeped in Russian popular and legendary lore. His roots are deep down in the Russian soil. He is the greatest living master of racy and idiomatic Russian. He has also written prose that elbows poetry, and that was looked upon with surprise and bewilderment until people realised that it was poetry. But his importance in the history of the Russian Novel is of another kind. It is firstly in his deliberate ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... upon me by various other books, and especially by Fra Paolo Sarpi's "History of the Council of Trent," probably the most racy and pungent piece of ecclesiastical history ever written; and though I also read as antidotes the history of the Council by Pallavicini, and copious extracts from Bossuet, Archbishop Spalding, and Balmez, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... composed his natty outfit. By his side on the box sat the zagal, his assistant, whose especial function seemed to be to swear at the cattle. I have heard some eloquent imprecation in my day. "Our army swore terribly" at Hilton Head. The objuration of the boatmen of the Mississippi is very vigorous and racy. But I have never assisted at a session of profanity so loud, so energetic, so original as that with which this Castilian postilion regaled us. The wonderful consistency and perseverance with which the role was sustained was worthy ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... stove in the parlor attracted every one. A San Francisco lady, much "got up" in paint, emerald green velvet, Brussels lace, and diamonds, rattled continuously for the amusement of the company, giving descriptions of persons and scenes in a racy Western twang, without the slightest scruple as to what she said. In a few years Tahoe will be inundated in summer with similar vulgarity, owing to its easiness of access. I sustained the reputation which our country-women bear in America by looking a "perfect guy"; and feeling ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... for his boldness and hardihood, and for the number of his previous convictions. He entertained us with a long account of his achievements, which he narrated with such infinite relish, that he actually seemed to lick his lips as he told us racy anecdotes of stolen plate, and of old ladies whom he had watched as they sat at windows in silver spectacles (he had plainly had an eye to their metal even from the other side of the street) and had afterwards robbed. This fellow, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... could get from Alathea was interesting to me. Apart from the sadly interesting subject, she had admirable powers of narration. Her language (when it did not become too local for my comprehension) was forcible and racy to a degree, and she was not checked by the reserve which clogged Mr. Jonathan's lips. The following morning she came to the door of the drawing-room (a large dreary room, which, like the rest of the house, was handsomely ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... others is once more beyond cavil or dispute. The Hassenreuter family, Alice Ruetterbusch, the Spittas, Paul John and Bruno Mechelke, Mrs. Kielbacke and even the policeman Schierke—all are superbly alive, vigorous and racy in speech and action. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... theatrical folk, shall be Earl Blank and the Baroness de Dash. The editors of society journals shall pay me a shilling a line for them. Jarman—yes, Jarman shall be the son of a South American millionaire. Vulgar? Nonsense! you mean racy. Minikin—he looks much more like forty than twenty—he shall be an eminent scientist. His head will then appear the natural size; his glass eye, the result of a chemical experiment, a touch of distinction; his uncompromising rudeness, a lovable characteristic. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... by the bed of Death. John Barton had revived to fitful intelligence. He spoke at times with even something of his former energy; and in the racy Lancashire dialect he had always ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... are the class of voters with which I am most familiar; and an intimate acquaintance with these men has taught me increasingly to admire their staunchness, their shrewdness, and their racy humour. Two or three of the old sayings come back to memory as I write. "More pigs and less parsons" must have been a survival from the days of Tithe. "The Black Recruiting Sergeant" was a nickname for a canvassing Incumbent. "I tell you how it is ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... Congressional service became an auditor, and was known as "the Watch Dog of the Treasury." Tom Corwin, of the same State, with a portly figure, swarthy complexion, and wonderful facial expression, and an inexhaustible flow of wit, who was not a buffoon, but a gentleman whose humor was natural, racy, and chaste. Gulian C. Verplanck and Thomas J. Oakley, two members of the New York bar, who represented that city, were statesmen rather than politicians. John Chambers, of Kentucky, a gigantic economist, was ever ready to reform small expenditures and willing to overlook ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... to offer to the public gaze as the true cause of all my tragic heritage; no pale-faced and partially poisoned mother whose suicidal instincts have cursed me with the temptations of the artistic temperament. I regret that there was nothing in the range of our family much more racy than a remote and mildly impecunious uncle; and that I cannot do my duty as a true modern, by cursing everybody who made me whatever I am. I am not clear about what that is; but I am pretty sure that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... is not obscure. Too original to be an imitator, he was in his handling of English an apt pupil of Newman. There is the same ease, the same grace, the same lightness of elastic strength. Froude, like Newman, can pass from racy, colloquial vernacular, the talk of educated men who understand each other, to heights of genuine eloquence, where the resources of our grand old English tongue are drawn out to the full. His vocabulary was large and various. He was familiar with every device of rhetoric. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... for thy letter, and the new plays thou sentest me down, and that droll new paper, the "Spectator:" it is a pretty shallow thing enough,—though it is not so racy as Rochester or little Sid would have made it; but I thank thee for it, because it shows thou wast not angry with thine old uncle for opposing thee on thy love whimsies (in which most young men are dreadfully obstinate), since thou didst provide so kindly for his amusement. Well, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to the rank and dignity of an English classic. Plot, style, and truthfulness are of the soundest British character. Racy, idiomatic, mirror-like, always interesting, suggesting thought on the knottiest social and religious questions, now deeply moving by its unconscious pathos, and anon inspiring uproarious laughter, it is a work the world will not willingly let die. ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous

... flavour of his venison upon the absurd strength of his never touching it himself. On the contrary, we love to see a wag taste his own joke to his party; to watch a quirk, or a merry conceit, flickering upon the lips some seconds before the tongue is delivered of it. If it be good, fresh, and racy—begotten of the occasion; if he that utters it never thought it before, he is naturally the first to be tickled with it; and any suppression of such complacence we hold to be churlish and insulting. What ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... Little Nell on more than one occasion without floods of tears. How can I explain to myself the tears that came into my eyes at sight of the Morris? They are not within the rubric of the tears drawn by mere contemplation of visual beauty. The Morris, as I saw it, was curious, antique, racy, what you will: not beautiful. Nor was there any obvious pathos in it. Often, in London, passing through some slum where a tune was being ground from an organ, I have paused to watch the little girls ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... whom these racy descriptions appeal, it is suggested that they familiarize themselves with the "Reprinted Pieces," edited by Charles Dickens the younger, and published in New York in 1896, a much more complete edition, with ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed"—so redolent of the soil and of the hardiness and plenitude of rural things is the influence that emanates from him. His works are as the raiment of the man, and to them adheres something as racy and wholesome as is ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... spirited; but as well might the campaign itself have been conducted in the poet's study as its situations be deliberately transferred there to verse. The "Wallenstein's Camp" of Schiller is not poetry, but racy and sparkling pamphleteering. Its rhyming does not prevent it from belonging to the historical treatment of periods that are picturesque with many passions and interests, that go clad in jaunty regimental costumes, and require not to be idealized, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the verse, sometimes so stately and majestic, is frequently disfigured by the commonest faults; yet the breath of a lofty purpose has been breathed upon every page. The personality of the author never pierces through his theme. The language is fresh, racy, vigorous, and utterly free from the impress of modern masters: much of it might have been written by a contemporary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... down and went his way, tickled as a dog with two tails. Others were victimized by notes from Barnum (!) or Miss Lind's "private secretary," offering an interview, and many of these transactions were "rich and racy" enough, in all conscience, for the pages of a modern Joe Miller. But Aunt Nabby Folsom's time was about as rich as the raciest, and ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... allusion to the present crisis of public affairs—(he called it cresses)—and assured his masses that the Tories were about to be for ever plucked from the pedestal on which they had long been planted by ascendency and greed! This was not so racy as the mixed metaphor of a Galway paper, which assures its readers that "the Unionist party will soon be compelled to disgorge the favouritism which for so long has been centred in their hands;" but it might pass. His Rivirince ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... of the circle. He drew, as it were, for his mental album, a series of portraits of these folk, with their angular, wrinkled faces, and hooked noses, their crotchets and ludicrous eccentricities of dress, portraits which possessed all the racy flavor of truth. He delighted in their "Normanisms," in the primitive quaintness of their ideas and characters. For a short time he flung himself into their squirrel's life of busy gyrations in a cage. Then ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac

... poured him out a cup of tea; gloomily he watched him drink it. Heedless of his gloom, Mr. James plunged into an account of his stay in Scotland, telling of the country, the food, and the people with an agreeable, racy vivacity. Slowly the great cloud lifted from Hilary Vance's ample face. He grew interested; he asked questions; at ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... deliberately chosen task to bring to the new country some savour of things gentle and mellow caught from the literature of Europe. But, in the first place, no writer could in the detail of his work have been more racy of that New England countryside which lay round his home; and, in the second place, no writer could have spoken more unerringly to the ear of the whole wide America of which his home was a little part. It seems strange to couple the name ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... have a specimen, Bogle, of this extremely racy production, which I strongly recommend you to keep in view as model. You cannot have forgotten the tale of the poor deserted maiden, whose loneliness is thus ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... the comedy than the opera. It is hardly by any chance that the Italians play ill, and I have seen excellent acting at the Venetian theatres, both in the modern Italian comedy, which is very rich and good, and in the elder plays of Goldoni—compositions deliciously racy when seen in Venice, where alone their admirable fidelity of drawing and coloring can be perfectly appreciated. The best comedy is usually given to the educated classes at the pretty Teatro Apollo, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... finished a most racy story concerning his first introduction to a certain countess. Cooper had listened in silence, but when Mike turned at the end of his tale and asked him what he thought of his conduct, Cooper rose ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... her sisters, and heard a racy account of Gwen's experiences on board ship. She had fallen in with nice people—a Mr. and Mrs. Montmorency, going out to California for the third time to look after some property ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... work of a clever man, who, after amusing himself to some extent with the Theological literature of the last century, had desired to preserve some record of his reading; and had here thrown his random jottings into connected form. There is a racy freshness in a few of Mr. Pattison's sketches, (as in his account of Bentley's controversy with Collins[131],) which forcibly suggests the image of an artist whose pencil cannot rest amid scenery which stimulates his imagination. To be candid, we are ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... clad in velveteen coats, that bulged about the pockets, and wrinkled leather gaiters reaching halfway up the thigh—charmed Richard, when his first shyness was passed. They were eager to please him. Their talk was racy. Their laughter ready and sincere. Did not Stamp point out to him a water-ouzel, with impudently jerking tail, dipping and wading in the shallows of the stream? Did not Moorcock find him a water-rail's nest, hidden in a tuft of reeds and grass, with ten, yellowish, speckled eggs in it? ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... Humphrey J. Desmond. A book of racy and elegant short essays on subjects of everyday interest. ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... whitewash-brush. Whosoever sleeps there of a night shall be crowded by walls which rub off into a faint feather-bed of the flavor and consistency of geese used whole, and have for his feverish breakfast in the morning a version of broiled ham as racy of attic-salt as the rasher of BACON'S essays. And to him who pays his bill there, ere he straggles weakly forth to repair his shattered health by frenzied flight, shall be given in change such hoary ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various

... browned, Is flanked by the spiciest a la mode "round;" The great "priestly ham," in its juiciest pride, Is there,—with the tenderest surloin beside; Neat bottles, suggestive of ketchups and wines, And condiments racy, of various kinds; And firm rolls of butter as yellow as gold, And patties and biscuit most rare to behold, And sauces that richest of odors betray,— Are marshalled in most appetizing array. Then Beverly brings of his nuts ...
— Beechenbrook - A Rhyme of the War • Margaret J. Preston

... most stimulating. Its racy humour, its original imaginings, make it one of the freshest, ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow

... as he was noble and fervent and humane a preacher. On Sundays a party always went from the Farm to Mr. Parker's little country church. He was there exactly what he was afterwards when he preached to thousands of eager people in the Boston Musichall; the same plain, simple, rustic, racy man. His congregation were his personal friends. They loved him and admired him and were proud of him; and his geniality and tender sympathy, his ample knowledge of things as well as of books, drew to him all ages and sexes ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... as true and as deeply felt as those of Hardy and Synge. They are provincial only in the sense that Wordsworth's dalesmen and women are provincial; that is, they are, in the true sense, universal.... No recent work is more worth reading.... Mr. Gibson has fashioned for his peasants the rich, racy, coloured, vigorous speech that is essential to them. No thing of book this.... As peasant talk it rings true; its rich tang ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... brave, with old-fashioned ways which, with a pleasant obstinacy, he would be loath to change. I heard Mrs. Tupper quote two or three quaint proverbs which were new to me, but Sir Lionel said they were old, almost, as the Sussex downs, and as racy of the soil. I always associated Brighton with Sussex, which made it seem a sophisticated county: but you see, true Sussex—the Downs—stands all independent and sturdy, between the pleasure-places by the sea and ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... every Mind, with a preface by the Rt. Rev. Bishop of New York, Dr. Hughes. This work holds a high rank in modern Catholic literature, and is brought before the American public by Bishop Hughes in a warm introductory encomium. It discusses many of the leading religious questions of the day in a racy and pointed style, and while opposing what the author deems the errors of Protestantism in general, reserves its hottest fire for modern Pantheism, Socialism, Rationalism, and other kindred innovations, which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... calculated his expenses, and for lack of means to carry out his plans. There were few public matters in which Mr Planner did not meddle. He wrote pamphlets, and "hints," and "original views" by dozens. His articles on the currency and corn-laws were full of racy hits and striking points—his criticisms on the existing state of art worthy of the artist's best attention. The temper of Mr Planner was such as might be expected from such a mass of arrogance and conceit. A man who, in the easiness of his heart, would listen humbly, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... adventures they met with in that strange country, their encounter with the Dragon, and their remarkable voyage home. Mr. Orr exhibits in these designs a rare combination of humorous invention with brilliant draughtsmanship and command of colour, and the author supports him with a series of racy verses. ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... very good. That by C. Poyard (in the series of "Chefs-d'oeuvre des Littratures Anciennes") combines scholarly precision with an easy, racy, vernacular style in a way that seems impossible to any but a ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... subject under the sun, which had endeared him to his comrades in Glasgow. Every Cheshunt man of that day readily recalls, and rejoices as he does so, the memory of his good-natured practical joking, of his racy and pointed speeches upon all momentous 'house questions,' of his power as a reciter, and of his glowing personal piety. To know him even slightly was to respect him; and to enter at all into sympathy with him was to love him as long ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... twice he delivered the annual address before the alumni; several times he secured appropriations for his alma mater from the State. His visits to Athens were always occasions of honor. Young men flocked wherever his voice was heard, fascinated by his racy conversation. No "Disinherited Knight" ever returned to more certain ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... vomiting, is a sign that you will be afflicted with a malady which will threaten invalidism, or you will be connected with a racy scandal. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... think, that Arthur's grave and humorous ways attracted her. He, when at his best, was a racy and paradoxical talker—with that natural tinge of veiled melancholy or cynicism half-suspected which is so fascinating, as seeming to imply a "past," a history. He ventured to speak to her more than once about her tendency to "drift." ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... sensuous literature of England drop from our people's hands. Let us encourage native genius to dip her pen into the old holy well of Catholic truth, and build up a literature that will be racy of the soil and redolent of its Faith. Let us feed the minds of the young on the untainted productions of our own countrymen and women. Let us brace them with robust Catholic principles that are mortised into the solid bed-rock of knowledge. Then the most powerful foe the future holds will blow ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan

... adequate support. Newspapers have played a far more important part in our literary world. 'The Australasian', 'Sydney Mail' and 'Queenslander' have done a good deal to encourage local writers, but the most powerful influence has been that of 'The Bulletin', started in Sydney in 1880. Its racy, irreverent tone and its humour are characteristically Australian, and through its columns the first realistic Australian verse of any importance — the writings of Henry Lawson and A. B. Paterson — became widely known. When published ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... sounding the first notes of his mad eloquence,—the wild revolt of a passionate and diseased genius against a world of falsities and wrongs. The salons of Paris, cloyed with other pleasures, alive to all that was racy and new, welcomed the pungent doctrines, and played with them as children play with fire, thinking no danger; as time went on, even embraced them in a genuine spirit of hope and goodwill for humanity. The Revolution ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... be well to fortify this point by a racy extract from that rare and amusing old book, the pioneer of its class, entitled "The Lawes Resolutions of Women's Rights, or the Lawes Provision for Woman. A Methodicall Collection of such Statutes and Customes, with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... depression, and also that the question represented a real matter of debate in her mind), "I want your opinion; will you give it me? Apropos of slang, why does it sit well on some people? It certainly does not vulgarize them. After all, in many cases, it is what they call 'racy idiom.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Edinburgh Magazine, in 1817, he became a contributor, and under the title of the "Literary Legacy," wrote many curious snatches of antiquities, sketches of modern society, and scraps of song and ballad, which imparted a racy interest to the pages of the new periodical. A slight difference with the editor at length induced him to relapse into silence. Fitful and unsettled as a cultivator of literature, he was in the business of life a model of regularity ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... 16th and Champa streets, with others, particularly fine—some with tall storehouses of stone or iron, and windows of plate-glass—all the streets with little canals of mountain water running along the sides—plenty of people, "business," modernness—yet not without a certain racy wild smack, all its own. A place of fast horses, (many mares with their colts,) and I saw lots of big greyhounds for antelope hunting. Now and then groups of miners, some just come in, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... picturesque sight. After breakfast calls are made upon all the camps and bungalows round the station. Croquet, badminton, and other games go on until dinner-time. I could linger lovingly over a camp dinner; the rare dishes, the sparkling conversation, the racy anecdote, and the general jollity and brotherly feeling; but we must all dress for the ball, and so about 9 P.M. the buggies are again in requisition for the ball room—the fine, large, central apartment in the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... of which in this volume I am striving to give a history as little inadequate as possible. They had in the air around them an English purged of archaisms and uncouthnesses, fully adapted to every literary purpose, and yet still racy of the soil, and free from that burden of hackneyed and outworn literary platitudes and commonplaces with which centuries of voluminous literary production have vitiated and loaded the English of our own day. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... of season! 'Tis not thirst but better reason Bids you tope on steadily!— Pass the wine-cup, let it be Filled and filled for bout on bout Never sleep! Racy jest and song flash ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... party was such that we now took every opportunity of spooning in odd corners. Amelia declares that ever since she has, as the result of that experience, advised all her friends to take a friend on the honeymoon. Well, we 'did' Nurnberg together, and much enjoyed the racy remarks of our Transatlantic friend, who, from his quaint speech and his wonderful stock of adventures, might have stepped out of a novel. We kept for the last object of interest in the city to be visited the Burg, and on the day appointed for the visit strolled round the outer ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... John, named for the two uncles, would prove racy reading through many chapters. "The Twins" were the father's text for spicy stories galore many years before their death. From the first, they were "two young sinners." They both had active minds— ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... now to the Doctor's immediate contemplation of Boulogne, a city described in the Itineraries as containing rien de remarquable. The story of the Capuchin [On page 21. A Capuchin of the same stripe is in Pickle, ch. Ill. sq.] is very racy of Smollett, while the vignette of the shepherd at the beginning of Letter V. affords a first-rate illustration of his terseness. Appreciate the keen and minute observation concentrated into the pages ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... narrative of his perilous journey. He went on a professional retainer. You don't catch Bedford Row in Swazieland on other terms. Being there, he kept his eyes open, saw a good deal, and describes his impressions in racy fashion. He did not like the coffee served en route, and was disappointed with the Southern Cross; but on the whole enjoyed the trip. One would naturally expect that the price of his book would be six-and-eight-pence, or, regarding it in the form of a letter, three-and-fourpence, but BRADBURY, ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various

... Heathcote. That most charming mixture of dignified self respect, with unfailing gracious courtesy to others, those manners in which frankness and refinement mingled with and set off each other, that perfect purity of thought and utterance, and yet that thorough enjoyment of all that was good and racy in wit or humour—this has passed away with him. So beautiful and consistent a life in that kind of living we ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge



Words linked to "Racy" :   race, tasty, juicy, spirited, sexy, robust, mobile, raciness



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