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Corduroy   Listen
verb
Corduroy  v. t.  To form of logs laid side by side. "Roads were corduroyed."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Corduroy" Quotes from Famous Books



... varieties of the jackets of our post-boys, blue or yellow, as supposed to indicate the politics of their inns, were interesting to us, as everything was interesting then. Otherwise their equipment was exactly alike— neat drab corduroy breeches and top-boots, and hats usually white, and they were all boys, though the red faces and grizzled hair of some looked as if they had faced the weather for ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Wilhelmus Kieft, having dispatched his proclamation to the frontiers, he put on his cocked hat and corduroy small clothes, and, mounting a tall, raw-boned charger, trotted out to his rural retreat of Dog's Misery. Here, like the good Numa, he reposed from the toils of state, taking lessons in government, not from the nymph Egeria, but from the honored wife of his bosom, who was one of that class ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... to Toby's place, the main trail through the swamp going right by the hummock on which the old man's farm was situated. She knew there was a corduroy road most of the way—that is, a road built of logs laid side by side directly over the miry ground. Save in very wet weather this road was passable for ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... that those same worn, faded garments bore the stamp of one of New York's most exclusive tailors! that the boots were London-made, and the golf-stockings which met the corduroy knickerbockers came from one of Scotland's famous mills, it would have meant just exactly ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant

... and the candle flame flickered and sputtered in the night air. Roy Glenister stood there, grim and determined, his soft, white Stetson pulled low, his trousers tucked into tan half-boots, in his hand a Winchester rifle. Beneath his corduroy coat she saw a loose cartridge-belt, yellow with shells, and the nickelled flash of a revolver. Without invitation he strode across the threshold, closing ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... startling in its originality, still Sammy gathered the gist of the story. He puffed at his pipe so furiously that the foreign gentleman's turbaned head was emptied with amazing rapidity, and it was necessary to refill it two or three times; he rubbed his corduroy knees with both hands, occasionally he slapped one of them in the intensity of his interest, and when Jud stopped he could only express himself in his ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... to Ohio and become the president of Lane Theological Seminary at Cincinnati, he accepted. Singularly dependent upon his family, Catharine and Harriet must needs go with him to the new home. The journey was a toilsome one, over the corduroy roads and across the mountains by stagecoach. Finally they were settled in a pleasant house on Walnut Hills, one of the suburbs of the city, and ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... treacherous things, for their sides were steep and hard to climb. The darkness made it doubly hard, and sometimes we were pretty well frightened as we let ourselves down a greasy clay bank into the muddy water. Later on we found some corduroy bridges that the hay-makers ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung

... introduce you. They lead you often into familiarity with human nature in undress, rejoicing in the liberty of old clothes, or of none at all. People do not mince along the banks of streams in patent-leather shoes or crepitating silks. Corduroy and home-spun and flannel are the stuffs that suit this region; and the frequenters of these paths go their natural gaits, in calf-skin or rubber boots, or bare-footed. The girdle of conventionality is laid aside, and the skirts ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... young engineer, with his clear eyes, pleasant voice, and quick ways, immediately ingratiated himself with both General Keith and Gordon. The sight of the instruments and, much more, the appearance of the young "chief," his knowledge of the world, and his dazzling authority as, clad in corduroy and buttoned in high yellow gaiters, he day after day strode forth with his little party and ran his lines, sending with a wave of his hand his rodmen to right or left across deep ravines and over eminences, awakened new ambitions ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... went along a beach path toward a group of whitewashed cabins, intent on replenishing the canteen. Upon opening the gate of one of them, two grizzly dogs came bounding out, threatening to test the strength of my corduroy trousers. The proprietor cautiously peered from a window, and, much to my relief, called off the animals. Satisfied, apparently, that I was not the visitor he expected, the fellow lounged out and sat upon the steps, where I joined him. He was ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... gatherings." In fact, it is generally spoken of as the Costermonger's race, at which a mere welsher is a comparatively respectable character, and every man in a good coat a swell. I was nicely attired, by chance, for the occasion, for I had come out, thinking of a ride, in a white hat, new corduroy pantaloons and waistcoat, and a velveteen coat, which dress is so greatly admired by the gypsies that it may almost be regarded ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... as Steve had always seen him, in black corduroy breeches, high black boots, broad black hat—a man standing upward of six feet, carrying himself as straight as a ramrod, his chest as powerful as a blacksmith's bellows, the calf of his leg as thick ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... with the account of her doings in Paris. She had met all the nicest and naughtiest people. She had been courted and flattered. An artist in a slouch hat, baggy corduroy breeches, floppy tie and general 1830 misfit had made love to her on the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... since been docked by the encroachment of thorn-bushes and cat-briers, with the mouth-piece of a powder-horn peeping from its breast pocket, and a full shot-belt crossing his right shoulder; a pair of fustian trowsers, patched at the knees with corduroy, and heavy cowhide boots completed his attire. This, as it seemed, was to be our huntsman; and Booth to say, although he did not look the character, he played the part, when he got to work, right handsomely. At a more ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... coats which this monarch had had for fifty years before, three hundred whips, canes without number, every sort of uniform, the costumes of all the order of Europe, splendid fur pelisses, hunting coats and breeches; among other etcetera, a dozen pair of corduroy breeches made to hunt in when Don Miguel was in London. His profusion in these articles was explained by the fact that he never paid for them; but his memory in relation to them was nevertheless so accurate that he recollected every article of dress, no matter how old, and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... unknown, requires explanation. In the first place, it was not really a road. It was a trail, and in places barely that. But, sixteen years before, a road had been cleared through the forest by some people who believed there was oil near the Canadian line. They cut down trees and built corduroy bridges. But in sixteen years it has not been used. No wheels have worn it smooth. It takes its leisurely way, now through wilderness, now through burnt country where the trees stand stark and dead, now through prairie or creek-bottom, ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... took my helpers into the car and drove out the Atwater road—you know it well Daddy, the road that runs smooth over miles of country and then instead of jumping into a lake as it seems to be going to, it swings into corduroy through a marsh, runs up on a little bridge spanning the channel between two lakes, lifts to Atwater lake shore, than which none is more lovely—you remember the white sand floor and the clean water for swimming—climbs another hill, and opposite beautiful wood, there ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... fit him; one pair alone took his fancy, though he knew the rich black leather and the shapely high heels would cause him to hurl them away to-morrow as things unfit for the foot of man. He selected corduroy breeches and a soft black hat and returned to his dugout, leaving fifty dollars upon the counter. And when he had dressed and had laughed at himself he went back up the muddy road for Ygerne. But ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... day Mr Sudberry and his boys learned a great deal about their new home from McAllister, whom they found intelligent, shrewd, and well-informed on any topic they chose to broach; even although he was, as Mr Sudberry said in surprise, "quite a common man, who wore corduroy and wrought in his fields like a mere labourer." After dinner they all walked out together, and had a row on the lake under his guidance; and in the evening they unexpectedly met Mr Hector Macdonald, who was proprietor of the estate on which the White House stood, ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... would commend the lesson of a little incident I saw in a tram on the Embankment the other evening. There entered and sat beside me a working man, carrying his "kit" in a handkerchief, and wearing a scarf round his neck, a cloth cap, and corduroy trousers—obviously a labourer earning perhaps 25s. a week. He paid his fare, and then he took from his pocket a packet tied up in a handkerchief. He untied the knot, and there came forth a neat pocket-book with pencil attached. He ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... a corduroy road hastily laid down by a grre (engineer) regiment in war-wasted land. The piece of wall on the right is all that remains of a French village of ...
— "I was there" - with the Yanks in France. • C. LeRoy Baldridge

... he caught sight of the priest he stuck his spade in the ground and came to meet him. He wore a pair of torn corduroy trousers out of which two long naked feet appeared; and there was a shirt, but it was torn, the wind thrilled in a naked breast, and the priest thought his housekeeper was right, that James must go back to the poor-house. There was a wild look in his eyes, and he seemed to the priest ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... in hand upon the railway platform watching my train steam away to the east. He is glad to see me. I am of his own kind, and there are so few of his kind about that his welcome is strong and warm. He is brown and spare and tough-looking. For six months he has driven along the pitching trails and corduroy roads, drenched by rains, scorched by suns, and pursued by the flies. As to the flies there is something to be said. They add much to the missionary's burden, and furnish unequaled opportunity for ...
— Beyond the Marshes • Ralph Connor

... half-holiday, with the warning from the gaoler, Johnnie Barr, that if they did not come back by eight o'clock they would be locked out for the night.[1] The usual dress of the settlers was a blue shirt, moleskin or corduroy trousers, and a slouch hat. Their leader, Captain Cargill, wore always a blue "bonnet" with a crimson knob thereon. They named their harbour Port Chalmers, and a stream, hard by their city, the Water of Leith. The plodding, brave, clannish, and cantankerous little community ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... Merkle's car seemed to leap into the air; there was a report of an exploding tire; Lorelei felt a sickening sense of insecurity, and found herself hanging, bruised and breathless, across the back of the driving-seat. The automobile was bucking and bumping, as if the pavement had been turned into a corduroy road; then it came to a pause, half in the ditch. Merkle was jammed into an awkward coil on the floor of the tonneau, but raised himself, swearing softly. The other car held to its course, and whizzed onward, leaving in its wake a drunken ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... gayest colors. In an empty tobacco sack, worn like an amulet around her fat neck and resting on her bosom, Carolina carried some twenty-eight dollars earned as a laundress to Kay and her mother; while in the pocket of Pablo's new corduroy breeches reposed the two hundred-dollar bills; given him by the altogether inexplicable Senor Parker. Knowing Brother Anthony to be absolutely penniless (for he had taken the vow of poverty) Pablo suffered keenly in the realization that Panchito, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... was all their actions connotated. His hat was a light fawn, stiff-rimmed John B. Stetson, circled by a band of Mexican stamped leather. Over a blue flannel shirt, set off by a drooping Windsor tie, was a rough-and-ready coat of large-ribbed corduroy. Pants of the same material were thrust into high-laced shoes of the sort worn by surveyors, ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... of that burly, bald-browed, sharp-eyed, grizzle-bearded, square-jawed farmer, of the bronzed and sun-cracked countenance, implacable under the slouch-hat with the orange-leather band. We know the old green overcoat, and coarse corduroy breeches, and roughly tanned leather boots, with heavy, old-fashioned spurs, to have been the husk of a fierce, and indomitable, and relentless warrior, twinned with a quiet family-man of bucolic ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... enthusiastically, "if it will make ye feel any more comfortable I'll put on the corduroy outfit I go trout fishing in, bespattered and patched as it is. And De Soto will appear in the white duck trousers and blazer he tries to play tennis in,—though, God bless him, poor wretch, he hates to put them on after all he's heard ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... sent out an odour of burning wood that Darnell never forgot, and the room seemed to him full of women who talked all together in frightened tones. Mr. Darnell beckoned to a tall, grey old man, who wore corduroy knee-breeches, and the boy, sitting on a high straight-backed chair, could see the old man and his uncle passing to and fro across the window-panes, as they walked together on the garden path. The women stopped their talk for a moment, and one of them brought him a glass of milk ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... the section where he was to work, and was set to felling trees to make corduroy roads over which guns and supplies could be brought up from the enemy's rear to ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... house. She asked her way to the nearest station, which was Notting Hill; here she took a ticket to Hammersmith and then walked to Kiva Street, where she knocked at the familiar door. A powerful-looking man in corduroy trousers and shirt ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... regarded by George Sea Otter as the king of automobiles, since it was the only imported car in the county. Upon receipt of orders, therefore, from Sinclair, to drive the Napier over to Red Bluff and meet his future boss and one-time playfellow, George Sea Otter arrayed himself in a pair of new black corduroy trousers, yellow button shoes, a blue woollen shirt with a large scarlet silk handkerchief tied around the neck, a pair of beaded buckskin gloves with fringe dependent from the gauntlet, and a broad white beaver hat with a rattlesnake-skin band. Across the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... appearance attractive in the witness-box. He wore a wideawake hat thrown back on his head, thus displaying his brown country-looking face to full advantage. His coat was a kind of dark velveteen which had probably seen better days in the Squire's family; so had the long drab waistcoat. His corduroy trousers, of a light green colour, were hitched up at the knees with a couple of straps as though he wore his garters outside. His neckerchief was a bright red, tied round his neck in a careless but not unpicturesque manner. Take him for all in ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... he had prophesied. The dog-cart was brought round to the door by a clumsy-looking man in corduroy, who seemed half groom, half gardener; and Mr. Egerton drove us home; Milly sitting next him, I at the back. His horse was very good one, and the drive only lasted a quarter of an hour, during which time our new acquaintance talked very pleasantly ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon

... schoolboys. Some of them gathered in a ring and sang in parts for some time; the music sounded better a little way off than near. There were also Montenegrins on board who had been working on some railway in course of construction. One of them had two pairs of corduroy trousers on, the upper whitish, the ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... dollars for a little silk suit. Both were dirt cheap, Florrie agreed. She looked four times at a dear of a hat going begging for seventy dollars, but with only three hundred you have to draw the line somewhere, so Cally simply purchased a plain gray motor-coat lined with gray corduroy, which she really needed, at sixty dollars. She also sought a gift for papa, in recognition of his liberality, and finally selected a silver penknife as just the thing. The knife, luckily enough, could ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... incident, as on the whole we had a very quiet time, but for us, as for all others on their first visit to the line, many little incidents of everyday trench routine were novel and exciting. Recollection lingers on the long, slow tramp to the trenches, along corduroy tracks in thick darkness lighted up from time to time by Very lights from our own trenches and by the infinitely superior ones from the enemy (we recollect that some of us, faithful to our instructions, but slightly misguided, began ducking ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman

... addressed was very different from the men amongst whom he stood. He was a thin, slightly-made, yet strong and active young man, in a very short grey coat, a very long striped vest, and very tight corduroy trousers—a sort of compound of footman and jockey. In truth, Daniel Horsey was both; being at once valet and groom to the romantic Kenneth, whose fate it was, (according to the infallible Mrs Niven), ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... pomatum-pots, spencers, white satin shoes, false fronts, the old flaccid boneless stays tied up in faded riband, the dusky fans, the old forty-years-old baby linen, the letters of Sir George when he was young, the doll of poor Maria who died in 1803, Frederick's first corduroy breeches, and the newspaper which contains the account of his distinguishing himself at the siege of Seringapatam. All these lie somewhere, damp and squeezed down into glum old presses and wardrobes. At that glass ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... covered over with carbuncles; he wore a broad slouching hat, and was dressed in a gray coat, cut in a fashion which I afterwards learnt to be the genuine Newmarket cut, the skirts being exceedingly short; his waistcoat was of red plush, and he wore broad corduroy breeches and white top-boots. The steed which carried him was of iron gray, spirited and powerful, but covered with sweat and foam. The fellow glanced fiercely and suspiciously around, and said something to the man of the tent in a harsh ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... A sort of corduroy road led into the swamp, and disappeared amid the trees. Upon a post near by was an old marlin spike with something white fluttering beneath. This attracted ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown

... jacket was the badge and advertisement of my class, which was their class. It made me of like kind, and in place of the fawning and too respectful attention I had hitherto received, I now shared with them a comradeship. The man in corduroy and dirty neckerchief no longer addressed me as "sir" or "governor." It was "mate" now—and a fine and hearty word, with a tingle to it, and a warmth and gladness, which the other term does not possess. Governor! ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... as years have a way of doing, and found Calmar Bye, the city man, metamorphosed indeed. Bronzed, bearded, corduroy-clothed, cigarette-smoking,—for cigars fifty miles from a railroad are a curiosity,—as the seasons are dissimilar, so was he unlike his former inconsequent self. In his every action now was a directness and a purpose of which he had not even a conception ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... ever, they turned their backs on Dawson, crossed the lower corner of Lot 6, behind the Government Reserve, stared with fresh surprise at the young market-garden flourishing there, down to the many-islanded Klondyke, across in the scow-ferry, over the Corduroy, that cheers and deceives the new-comer for that first mile of the Bonanza Trail, on through pool and morass to the thicket of white birches, where the Colonel thought it well to ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... from the climb, pushed through the scrub pines at the path's end and stopped suddenly at the marge of the clearing. Her slender girlish figure, clad in corduroy skirt and blue jersey, was poised with lance-like straightness, and a grace as free as a boy's. Her hands, cased in battered gauntlets, went suddenly to her breast, as though she would muffle the palpitant heart beneath the jersey. She ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... European Sweet Waters you may go by carriage, but if wise will go there also by caique; for even the corduroy roads of our Southern country, so famous for their dislocating qualities, can be paralleled by the so-called road over which once (and once only), for our sins, we suffered ourselves to be shaken, not driven. It is the fashion at Constantinople to visit the Asiatic Sweet Waters ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... side by side across the center of the road. Some of the logs, that he put into the road on the lowest ground, were more than a foot through; of course smaller poles answered where the ground was higher. We called this our corduroy road. In doing our road work and others doing theirs, year after year, in course of time we had the log way built across the wettest parts of the road. When it was still I could hear a cart or wagon, coming or going, rattling and pounding ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin

... tendency to dark hats. His refusal had been so unexpected that the blow, when it came, fell with all the more crushing force. His self-love and self-esteem had been wounded; but so had something else. Under the velvet corduroy waistcoat, which he wore in imitation of Ralph, he had a heart. Whether it was one of the very best of its kind or warranted to wear well is not for us to judge; but, at any rate, it was large enough to take in a very real ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... the kennels. The same feeder in corduroy and fustian came out of the cooking-house when Vixen opened the five-barred gate. The same groom was lounging in front of the stables, where the horses were kept for the huntsman and his underlings. The whole place had the same slumberous out-of-season look she remembered ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... had no brothers and sisters, he had a great many friends, the chief of which were Eli and Hercules Colfox, his next door neighbours, who were very kind and condescending to him in spite of the dignity of their corduroy trousers. ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... owned with an inward smile that Jeff had certainly made the best of himself for the time being. He had taken a leaf from the book of the summer folks; his stalwart calves revealed themselves in thick, ribbed stockings; he wore knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket of corduroy; he had style as well as beauty, and he had the courage of his clothes and looks. Westover was still in the first surprise of the American facts, and he wondered just what part in the picnic Jeff was to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... lads were exotics in New Zealand, and exceedingly fragile. In the very height of summer they had to wear corduroy trousers, blue serge shirts, red woollen comforters, and blue Scotch caps, and the more delicate a thick woollen jersey in addition; and with all these precautions they were continually catching cold, or getting disordered, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... washed, and then strolled over to the hotel to meet his father. Old Hector grinned as Donald, in woolen shirt, mackinaw, corduroy trousers, and half-boots came into the little lobby, for in his son he saw a replica ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... to wave a careless farewell to the two thus left somewhat unceremoniously in the pergola. She was in brown corduroy with suede leather sailor collar and broad belt, a costume which brought out vividly the pure, clear coloring of her face. "Good-bye," she called to them with a pointedly casual accent, nodding her ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... in which you have come down from London, you are greeted with no clamor of bawling hack-drivers and hotel-omnibus men roaring in stentorian tones the names of their various houses. Three or four quiet serving-men in corduroy small-clothes and natty coats touch their hats to you and look in your face inquiringly. They represent the various hotels in Tenby, and at a gesture of assent from you one of them takes your bags, your wraps, whatever you are burdened with, and conducts you to a somewhat antiquated vehicle which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... amazement, showing whitey-yellow in the firelight, their hands thrown above their heads. Facing them on the other side of the fire, with his profile to Nicholas Crips, was a short, stoutly-built man, in a coarse blue shirt and corduroy riding pants, with a white handkerchief tied loosely about his neck. A fine chestnut horse stood behind him. The rein was looped over his arm. In his right hand this man held a long, business-like Colt's revolver pointed at ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... clothes," she had said, realizing distinctly that fustian and corduroy would not do. She was even a little doubtful of the best clothes. The gardener's little boy, once his mouth had shut and his legs come back to their locomotion, brought them at once. If there was a suspicion of alacrity in his obedience towards the last, it escaped ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... white, and a handsome lover in top-boots and white trousers, and a cruel uncle who wanted her property. And there was a particularly brutal villain with leery eyes, ugly mouth, with one tooth gone, and an iron jaw like a hull-dog's. He was attired in a fur cap, brown corduroy jacket, with a blood-red handkerchief twisted about his throat, and he carried a bludgeon. When the double-dyed villain proceeded in the third act to pound the head of the lovely maiden to a jelly at the instigation of the base uncle, concealed ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... as of a drove of buffaloes, behind me; and turning round, beheld the entire middle of the street filled by a great crowd of these men, who had just emerged from Brunswick Dock gates, arrayed in long-tailed coats of hoddin-gray, corduroy knee-breeches, and shod with shoes that raised a mighty dust. Flourishing their Donnybrook shillelahs, they looked like an irruption of barbarians. They were marching straight out of town into the country; and perhaps out of consideration for the finances of the corporation, took ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white corduroy breeches." ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... had been sent to him lately, 60 And the metre and sentiment puzzled him greatly; 'Mehercle! I'd make such proceeding felonious,— Have they all of them slept in the cave of Trophonius? Look well to your seat, 'tis like taking an airing On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing; It leads one, 'tis true, through the primitive forest, Grand natural features, but then one has no rest; You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing distance, When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence,— Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any?' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Fustian, a kind of corduroy or velveteen, was originally woven at Fustat on the Nile. The warp was stout linen, the woof of cotton so twilled and cut that it gave a low thick pile. Chaucer's knight in the fourteenth century wore fustian. In the fifteenth century Naples was famous ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson

... four o'clock on a sunny October day, when a stranger, who had ridden over the "corduroy" road between Applegate and Old Church, dismounted near the cross-roads before the small public house known to its frequenters as Bottom's Ordinary. Standing where the three roads meet at the old turnpike-gate of the county, the square brick building, which had declined ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... below. It was the first sea-interior I had ever seen. The clothing on the wall smelled musty. But what of that? Was it not the sea-gear of men?—leather jackets lined with corduroy, blue coats of pilot cloth, sou'westers, sea-boots, oilskins. And everywhere was in evidence the economy of space—the narrow bunks, the swinging tables, the incredible lockers. There were the tell-tale ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London

... be found in Canada. I know well what the men mean when they offend in this manner. And when I think on the subject with deliberation at my own desk, I can not only excuse, but almost approve them. But when one personally encounters this corduroy braggadocio; when the man to whose services one is entitled answers one with determined insolence; when one is bidden to follow "that young lady," meaning the chambermaid, or desired, with a toss of the head, to wait for the ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... Square toes and a Buffer, Still I've sunshine in my heart; Still I'm fond of tops and marbles Can appreciate a tart. I can love my Neighbor Nelly, Just as though I were a boy, And would hand her cakes and apples, From my depths of corduroy. ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... his mother. Like the younger boys, whose almost confluent freckles had been brought into unusual prominence by violently applied soap and water, and whose hair dripped on their collars, he had brushed up for dinner, but his negligee shirt and corduroy trousers were stained and spotted from machine oil. Margaret, comparing him secretly to the men she knew, as daintily groomed as women, in their spotless white, felt a little resentment that Bruce's tired face was so contented, ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris

... all rummage in attics and trunk-rooms for those disreputable looking articles of wearing apparel dear to all sportsmen; oil soaked boots, water soaked and sun bleached woolen, corduroy, leather or canvas garments and hats, each looking too shabby from their wives' (or valet's) point of view to be offered ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... evening last, a person, in passing from the Long-Wharf to Dock-Square, was assaulted and knocked down, by a single villain, who robbed him of a box, containing a coat, two waistcoats, a pair of corduroy breeches, a piece of calico, in which was wrapped up three watches, and a ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks

... screamed as a man darted out to the spade, which he was about to carry in out of the wet, when he perceived the company under the veranda, and stood still in amazement. He was a young laborer with a reddish-brown beard of a week's growth. He wore corduroy trousers and a linen-sleeved corduroy vest; both, like the hasp and spade, new. A coarse blue shirt, with a vulgar red-and-orange neckerchief, also new, completed his dress; and, to shield himself ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... other recreation, fighting excepted. Pass through St. Giles's in the evening of a week-day, there they are in their fustian dresses, spotted with brick-dust and whitewash, leaning against posts. Walk through Seven Dials on Sunday morning: there they are again, drab or light corduroy trousers, Blucher boots, blue coats, and great yellow waistcoats, leaning against posts. The idea of a man dressing himself in his best clothes, to lean against a ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... walk along the streets, Sybil, without looking in all the shop windows for what I think would become you best. [As awkwardly as though his heart still beat against corduroy, he takes from his pocket a pendant and its chain. He is shy, and she drops pearls over the beauty of the ruby which is its only stone.] It is a ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie

... become aware that he is laying down in gritty lines the walls of a house, the mansion of his dream. Here spread along the pavement are large rooms, these for his friends, and a tiny room in the centre, that is his own. So his thought plays. Just then I catch a glimpse of the corduroy trousers of a passing workman, and a heavy boot crushes through the cinders. I feel the pain in the child's heart as he shrinks back, his little lovelit house of dreams all rudely shattered. Ah, poor child, building ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... cigar from his waistcoat pocket, and began to smoke with great gusto. A man of means, I concluded, to be able to smoke at this hour of an ordinary week-day. He was warmly dressed, with flowing brown tie and opulent vest and corduroy trousers. His feet were encased in rough riding-boots. Some peasant proprietor, very likely, who rode his own horses. Was he going to tell me anything of interest about Artena? Presumably not. He said never another word, but continued to smile at me rather wearily. I ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... was big. From the broad shoulders that bulged the gray flannel shirt, down the yellow corduroy trousers that encased his legs to the tops of the boots with their high heels and dull-roweled spurs, Lawler looked what he was, a man who asked no ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... was a black cutaway or morning coat, ordinary trousers strapped under the ordinary walking boot, top hat, and gloves, but the present riding costume for the morning in New York and the country consists of whipcord or corduroy riding breeches and jacket, brown leather waistcoat, brown Derby hat, boots or leggings, and dark gloves. You can wear this in the afternoon, but the ordinary costume is considered smarter and more convenient. Men in New York only ride in the Park, and many of them ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain

... given some repair work to do near the outer prison-gate. It was opened to admit a tradesman's automobile. As Guard Lambwell turned to close the gate, Ruggam felled him with his shovel. He escaped to the adjacent railroad-yards, stole a corduroy coat and pair of blue overalls hanging in a switchman's shanty and caught the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... Spagna, in a modest little violet of a tea-room, which was venturing to open in the face of the old-established and densely thronged parterre opposite, I noted from my Roman version of a buttered muffin a tall, young Scandinavian girl, clad in complete corduroy, gray in color to the very cap surmounting her bandeaux of dark-red hair. She looked like some of those athletic-minded young women of Ibsen's plays, and the pile of books on the table beside her tea suggested a ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... rainy day in London. This is the American vaquero—usually a short, fat man with dumpy legs, who dons a flapping sombrero, buys a new Mexican saddle, wooden stirrups, and leather riata, sometimes adding a coil of rope at left side, wears the botas with a corduroy suit at dinner at hotel, and doesn't know at all how comical an appearance he presents. The very next to pass is one of the pioneers, who, although worth a million or more, puts on no style, and surveys the mongrel in front ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... figure was clothed in a remarkably picturesque manner: it wore a dark sombrero-like hat with a large drooping brim, a bright red gipsy shirt of some remarkably fine material with huge sleeves loosely falling, and baggy corduroy trousers whence escaped two brown, shapely, naked feet. On moving a little I discovered a face—perhaps the handsomest face that I have ever seen, of a gold brown color, framed in an amazingly large and beautiful black ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... of hunter-green corduroy, with knitted green caps. Cora wore mole-color cloth, with a toque to match, and as they now stood before the garage, waiting the coming of the others, who had stopped at the post office, many admiring eyes turned ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose

... slightly stooped shoulders; the round felt hat that crowned his thick, close-cut hair, the dejection that seemed expressed in so many trifles at such moments,—as in his manner of dropping his hands loosely into the pockets of his corduroy coat, and standing immovable. Without taking his eyes from the fire he sat down presently on a log and she saw him fumbling for his pipe and tobacco. He bent to thrust a chip into the fire with the deliberation that marked his movements in these moods. Now and then ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... and mossy descent of a dislodged boulder that bounded from the hill and fetched up with a final splash in the torrent that rushed over a wild chaos of rocks beneath him. Now and again he caught glimpses, framed in green foliage, of the golden brown of Lute's corduroy riding-habit and of the bay ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... beetle of a car; that agile, cheerful, rut-jumping model known as a "bug"; with a home-tacked, home-painted tin cowl and tail covering the stripped chassis of a little cheap Teal car. The lone driver wore an old black raincoat with an atrocious corduroy collar, and a new plaid cap in the Harry Lauder tartan. The bug skipped through mud where the Boltwoods' Gomez had slogged and rolled. Its pilot drove up behind her car, and leaped out. He trotted ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... or oftener to the stream down which the logs are to be floated. This road has to be as wide as a city street, 25 feet. The route is carefully chosen, and the grade is made as easy as possible. Much labor is spent upon it, clearing away stumps and rocks, leveling up with corduroy, building bridges strong enough to carry enormous loads, and otherwise making it as passable as can be; for when needed later, its good condition is of first importance. This main road is quite distinct from and much ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes

... gardener's armpits one branch of the apple-tree passed; behind his knees another. Between them hung his heavy seat. Whitely a square of it peered downwards; melancholy upon the sward lay the lid of corduroy that should have warmed the space. For ten paces outwards from the tree-trunk there stretched a pitted path. Abiram, as George came, turned at this path's extremity; set his sloe eye upon the dull white patch in Mr. Fletcher's stern; hurled forward up the track; sprang and ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... night before at Storm, to be in time for a sunrise start, and he appeared at breakfast in a costume which he and Farwell had evolved as suitable for mountaineering; an affair of riding-boots, pale corduroy breeches, flannel shirt, and a silk handkerchief knotted becomingly about the throat. He was disconcerted to discover that the suit-case of other appropriate garments he had brought with him must be left behind, his luggage being finally reduced to a package of handkerchiefs ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... adage whose truth I needed no further proof of. Its first line apostrophises the 'Gods and little fishes.' My chief need was for the garment which completes the rhyme. Indians, having no use for corduroy small clothes, I speedily donned mine. Next I quietly but quickly snatched up William's rifle, and presented it to Robinson Crusoe, patting him on the back as if with honours of knighthood. The dispossessed was not well pleased, but Sir Robinson was; ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... between the Lower and the Upper Town. To-day the visitor landing at the quay reaches the terrace by the same route; but the present graceful declivity of Mountain Hill is little like the tortuous pathway of corduroy by which De Tracy and his glittering retinue made their toilsome way to the public square by the Jesuits' College. First came a company of guards in the royal livery, then four pages and six valets, and ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... wool shirt was wrinkled and stained by weather and wear, the roomy corduroy trousers were worn from saddle chafing, the big spurs were rusted of rowel and shank. But the boots were new—he had bought them before leaving the range, to wear in college, laying them aside with regret when he found them not just the thing in vogue—and they were still ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... and alert, flashing eyes, that denoted a quick, nervous energy. In repose his face was serious; when he smiled, revealing fine strong teeth, it was prepossessing. He wore his hair rather long, and with his loose corduroy jacket, top boots, and cowboy hat, suggested the Western ranchman. The girls of Bismarck were all in love with him, and his mere presence doubled the business of the store, but the young man resisted ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... Newman were in astonishing contrast to the three who had dined at the Newman ranch the night of Cartwell's introduction to Porter. Their khaki clothes had gradually been replaced by nondescript garments picked up at various ranches. DeWitt and Porter boasted of corduroy trousers, while Jack wore overalls. On the other hand, Jack wore a good blue flannel shirt, while the other two displayed only faded gingham garments that might have answered to almost any name. All of them were a deep mahogany color, with chapped, ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... downstairs and hurried through Sullivan Street off toward the river. He wanted to be among rough, honest people, to get down where the big drays bumped over stone paving blocks and the men wore corduroy trowsers and kept their shirts open at the neck. He stopped for a drink in one of the sagging bar-rooms on the water front. He had never in his life been so deeply wounded; he did not know he could be so hurt. He had told this girl all his ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... this garment to be carried through the village and cried by the town-crier. And we blush to be obliged to say that the demoralized miller never offered to return the banknotes, although he was so mighty scrupulous in endeavoring to find an owner for the corduroy portfolio in which ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray

... forgotten, for they did not give many feasts, and this was one of gratitude. Peter was late, because he had gathered his whole establishment to dress him, including the old groom, who wished him to go in corduroy breeches and top boots, and Speug was polished to the extent of shining. He was also so modest that he would not speak, nor even look, and when Nestie began to discourse on his goodness he cast glances at the door and ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... at the Orphanage in an antique, preposterous suit—snuff-coloured coat with lappels, canary waistcoat, and corduroy small-clothes. And they gave him his meals regularly. There were ninety-nine other boys who all throve on the food: but Kit pined. And the ninety-nine, being full of food, made a racket at times; but Kit found it quiet—deathly quiet; and his eyes ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... millstones arrived, and I spent a joyous morning of final bargaining with Mr. Myron Scarlett. This Mr. Scarlett was from Connecticut, had been a quartermaster in the army, and at much risk brought ploughs and hardware, and scissors and buttons, and broadcloth and corduroy, across the Alleghanies, and down the Ohio in flatboats. These he sold at great profit. We had no money, not even the worthless scrip that Congress issued; but a beaver skin was worth eighteen shillings, a bearskin ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... forthcoming the two mounted police rode into camp. They were bronzed, burly men, arrayed in a corduroy uniform, with a wide felt hat bearing a large Imperial crown in gilt as a badge, and were fully armed with Mauser rifles, ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... boat on the lake. The air was crisp and cold although the sun blazed overhead. Clavering was happy in a disreputable old sweater that he kept at the camp, and baggy corduroy trousers tucked into leggins, but Mary wore an angora sweater and skirt of a vivid grass green and a soft sport hat of the same shade, the rim turned down over eyes that might never have looked upon life beyond these ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... of the country, where swamps and watercourses are frequent; these are commonly overlaid also, as far as may be necessary, by a back-wood railway; that is, by trunks of trees packed closely side by side, over which the machine is dragged at a trot: in Canada this sort of road is termed a corduroy. ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... of shoes, smoking a sandstone pipe with a reed stem. Mrs. Kinemon was seated in a rocking-chair with a stained and torn red plush cushion, that moved with a thin complaint on a fixed base. Allen was over against the stove, his corduroy trousers thrust into greased laced boots, and a black cotton shirt open on a chest and throat like pink marble. And David supported his lanky length, in a careless and dust-colored garb, with a capacious hand on the oak ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Journeying on to Bumpville; It's over the hilltop and down through the bog You ride on your way to Bumpville; It's rattletybang over boulder and stump, There are rivers to ford, there are fences to jump, And the corduroy road it goes bumpytybump, Mile after ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various

... evening at sun set with the empty coal-train—his dull young face pale and heavy-eyed with weariness, his corduroy suit dusty and travel-stained, his worldly possessions tied up in the smallest of handkerchief bundles and slung upon the stick resting on his shoulder—and naturally his first appearance attracted some attention ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... time when, in the face of every natural obstacle, the army toiled across the mountain chains. Where the earth in yonder ravine is whipped to a black froth, the engineers have thrown down the timber cut in widening the trail and have constructed a corduroy bridge, or rather a loose raft on a sea of muck. The wreck of the last wagon which tried to pass gives some additional safety to the next. Already the stench from the horse killed in the accident deadens the heavy, heated air of the forest. The ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert

... disappointment. When he returned to his room he found that Josephine had not forgotten the condition of his wardrobe, and he guessed immediately why she had surprised them all by rising so early. On his bed were spread several changes of shirts and underwear, a pair of new corduroy trousers, a pair of caribou skin leggings, and moccasins. In a box were a dozen linen handkerchiefs and a number of ties for the blue-gray soft shirts Josephine had chosen for him. He was not much ahead of Metoosin, who came in ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... the time when the horses came out on a strange road they had to travel. The wilderness of pine forest had been left on the right after leaving Lone Pine, and the trail led down gradually to a bottomland of brilliant green herbage. Directly over this emerald valley ran a corduroy roadway. ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... opened the window and whistled twice on a certain low note. A minute later Hans shuffled in, shaking the wet off the new corduroy clothes which he had bought upon the strength of his return to affluence, for it was raining outside, and squatted himself down upon the floor at a little distance. In the shadow of the table which cut off the light from the hanging ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... increasing holes in his boots, and bargained hard with the village cobbler to make him cheap a rough, strong pair, which he would never have dreamt of looking at in the old days; he thanked Mrs. Eames more humbly for the well-worn corduroy jacket she made down for him than he had ever thanked his mother for the nice clothes which it had not always been easy for her to procure for him. Yes, Geoff was certainly ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth

... and only freshly ballasted, was as rough as corduroy, and the lurching of the big diamond stack made the cab topple at every rail joint. But Sollers was not the runner to lose nerve under difficulties and did not lessen the pressure on the pistons. If Stanley, determined and silent, ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman

... kind of humble and sheepish. He wore his Prince Albert coat and his silk hat. He didn't want to—he thought it wasn't the thing for a picnic, but I held him up to it, for I didn't want the people to see him in his corduroy hunting suit. I know how impressed they would be with the fine clothes, and I was determined they ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... Merritt, and Carr were in rough hunting rigs, utterly without any mark of their rank. Deerskin, buckskin, corduroy, canvas, and rags indiscriminately covered the rest of the command, so that unless you knew the men it was totally impossible to distinguish between officers and enlisted men. However, every one in the commands knew every one else, and there ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)

... struggle it is often the thing least hoped for that comes to pass. At Argentine, Winton's speed was a mile a minute over a track rougher than a corduroy wagon-road; yet the octopod held the rail and was neck and neck with the runaway. Whisking past the station, Winton had a glimpse of a white-mustached old man standing bareheaded on the platform and gazing horror-stricken at the tableau; then ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... afternoon, an old Algerian soldier, homeward bound, with a big, round loaf of bread and a military pass. He had a blue robe, bright-red, soft boots, a white turban wound with a sort of scarf of brown cord and baggy corduroy underneath, concealing various ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... boots laced over corduroy trousers nodded. "He's smooth as a pump plunger, and he sure has luck. He can buy up a dry hole any old time and it'll be a gusher in a week. He'll bust Em Crawford high and dry before he finishes with him. Em had ought ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... her lofty citadel by the cry of hounds and harum-scarum fellows sweeping along her ravines, are evident improprieties; while the having all one's senses assailed and offended together by the scent of highly-ammoniated bandy-legged fellows in fustian or corduroy, (their necessary satellites,) who inundate street and piazza with the slang of the London mews, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... at all. For several hours he lifted up his voice in continuous song. His repertoire was extensive and varied. To this day I can clearly recall the words as well as the tune of two of his ditties. One related to the history of a pair of corduroy breeches, year by year, since the close of the last decade, each year being treated of in a couplet. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... who left for Portland by night steamer, Friday, was headed by a bulky-shouldered boss, who wore no coat and whose corduroy vest swung cheerfully open. A motley troupe were the cattlemen—Jews with small trunks, large imitation-leather valises and assorted bundles, a stolid prophet-bearded procession of weary men in ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... highroad, highway, street, lane, passage, artery, roadstead, boulevard, esplanade, turnpike, tramroad, causeway, corduroy ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... lingerie, chastely French-embroidered in little scallops, with fresh white ribbons run in, was laid out on the bed in neat piles. There was also a gray corduroy dressing-gown, lined with silk. ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... porch, first floor. That was my room before I married. Strangers have been here and called the place home. It can never be home to any but me and Rowsley. He sees the carriage. He little thinks! He's dressed in his white corduroy and knee-breeches. Age! he won't know age till he's ninety. Here he comes marching. He can't bear surprises. I'll wave my ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... drive into town, mail his painfully written letter and order at the post-office, dispose of his load of apples, or butter, or cheese, or vegetables, and drive cheerfully back again, his empty wagon bumping and rattling down the old corduroy road. Express, breakage, risk, loyalty to his own region—an these arguments ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... bring you news of your husband, and having met with an accident I am unable to come further. You will find me at the Green Tavern two miles out on the corduroy road. As the business ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... in the kitchen with his corduroy-clad legs stretched on the fender. His wife's half-eaten dinner was getting cold on the table; Mr. Grummit, who was badly in need of cheering up, emptied her half-empty glass of beer and wiped his lips with ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs

... sentiment in sackcloth and ashes. We have, however, improved upon the ignorance of primitive days; and though we still admit the covering of man to be typical of his condition of mind, we wisely keep our respect for super-Saxony, and expend contempt and ridicule on corduroy and fustian. We yet hope to see the day when certain political meetings will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various

... bonny dresses of the riders. One had a napkin tied round his head, with the flaps fleeing at his neck; and his coat- tails were curled up into a big hump behind; it was so tight buttoned ye would not think he could have breathed. His corduroy trowsers (such like as I have often since made to growing callants) were tied round his ankles with a string; and he had a rusty spur on one shoe, which I saw a man take off to lend him. Save us! how he pulled the beast's head by the bridle, and flapped up and down on the saddle when he tried a canter! ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... measure at his head. Fairies, you know, don't throw peck measures at small boys' heads. The spell was broken. The golden chain which for a moment bound us fell to pieces. We meet an eccentric individual in corduroy pantaloons and pepper-and-salt coat, who wants to know if we didn't sail out of Nantucket in 1852 in the whaling brig "Jasper Green." We are compelled to confess that the only nautical experience we ever had was to once temporarily command a canal boat on the dark-rolling ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... the logs to the yard or mill. Care should be exercised in the logging operations not to tear or damage the bark of trunks of standing timber. If possible, only the trees of unimportant timber species should be cut for making corduroy roads in the forests. This will be a saving of ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack

... done; though it was midwinter; and Konigsberg (for Prussia is to be our title, "King in Prussia," and Konigsberg is Capital City there) lies 450 miles off, through tangled shaggy forests, boggy wildernesses, and in many parts only corduroy roads. We order "30,000 post-horses," besides all our own large stud, to be got ready at the various stations: our boy Friedrich Wilhelm, rugged boy of twelve, rough and brisk, yet much "given to blush" withal (which is a feature of him), shall go with us; much more, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle

... hobnailed boot appeared, his corduroy leg followed, and next moment he stood in the room with a menacing look and attitude and a short thick bludgeon in his knuckly hand. Bill quickly stood beside him. After another cautious look round, the two advanced with extreme care—each step so carefully taken that the hobnails fell like rose-leaves ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... get a better look at you," Prescott replied. "I want to be able to know you anywhere. Tan colored woollen shirt; brown corduroy trousers; low-cut black shoes; cap defies description. Now, let me ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... man's coat, which reached nearly to his heels. He had turned the cuffs back, half-way up his arm, to get his hands out of the sleeves: apparently with the ultimate view of thrusting them into the pockets of his corduroy trousers; for there he kept them. He was, altogether, as roystering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood four feet six, or something less, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... fare. I should be heartily ashamed if a word of complaint ever fell from my lips. But the men! Whenever I wake up at night with my feet in a puddle between the blankets, I think of the men. The corduroy roads which our horses stumble over through the mud, they make as well as march on. Our flies are carried in wagons, and our utensils and provisions. They must often bear on their backs the little dog-tents, under which, put up by their ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... wore a broad band of plaited ribbons on their hats some two-and-a-half inches wide, in red, green and white. The elaborately frilled and pleated white shirt is also typical; this was tied at wrist and elbow with blue ribbons, the ends left hanging. The breeches were of fawn-shaded corduroy, with braces of white webbing; on the braces were pinned, in front and at the back, level with the breast, rosettes of red, white and blue ribbons, the ends left hanging. The tie was of the same blue ribbon as ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp

... gray corduroy it was his habit to wear in open country, with leggings of russet leather, and he traveled very swiftly, with a long, easy stride, though never rapidly enough to wholly escape the dust he disturbed. Once he stopped and bent to fasten a loose strap, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... miles. Here at Reading whilst changing horses I got some most excellent bread, butter and milk for which I paid 12-1/2 cents. This seems a better conveyance than the old crazy steamer. Took a cup of buttermilk for which they would not receive anything. A truly corduroy road, that is logs of wood laid across the road. Nearly upset into the river by running against a tree. Arrived at Lebanon 1/4 before 7. This last stage to Wainville, the driver drove most furiously and the horses went like mad. ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood

... and York hams, that would made a Jew's mouth water. While, in America, the change is greatest of all, as any one can vouch for who has been suddenly emancipated from the stove-heat of a "nine-inside" leathern "conveniency," bumping ten miles an hour over a corduroy road, the company smoking, if not worse; to the ample display of luxurious viands displayed upon the breakfast-table, where, what with buffalo steaks, pumpkin pie, gin cock-tail, and other aristocratically called temptations, he must be indeed fastidious who cannot employ his ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... gravel and well packed, the above method of planking is unnecessary. The bank should have a few stringers and braces to support it. When only a few planks are used the term "corduroy the bank" is ...
— Elements of Plumbing • Samuel Dibble

... begin Western life, Bob quickly took off his new suit and put on a pair of the corduroy trousers and one of the blue flannel shirts Mr. Nichols had bought him and then proudly placed ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster

... to be old and done with and behave as such. The moment I realized who it was standing there I could think of nothing but my age-worn self, and how to stand and bow with ease and respect. Now, I had among my possessions a blouse, and breeches of brown corduroy such as labourers wear in the south; an excellent, well-looking suit, and new. But, alas! I had not put it on today. And the lack of it at that moment irked me. I was down-hearted at the thought. And, while the two stood there talking, I fell to wondering why the engineer had ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... Stowey, one of those who were attracted to Coleridge's discourse as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time to the sound of a brass pan. He 'followed in the chace, like a dog who hunts, not like one that made up the cry.' He had on a brown cloth coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low in stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his walk like a drover, which he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a sort of trot by the side of Coleridge, like a running footman by a state coach, that he might not lose a syllable or sound, that fell from Coleridge's lips. He ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... of smoked buckskin, moccasins of moose-hide, and blue cloth leggings. A fur cap was on my head, and a strip of Scotch plaid about my neck. Baptiste was dressed like all the company's voyageurs and hunters, in a blue capote, red flannel shirt, beaded corduroy trousers and fringed leggings, and a cap decked out with feathers. We each carried a musket and a hunting knife, a powder horn, ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon

... acknowledge our presence, and as a token of greeting sent some twelve-pound shells crashing among the trees about us. The firing now became brisk on our side, and the rebels replied spiritedly with their twelve-pounders. Hundreds of men were now called up from the rear brigades and detailed to build corduroy roads. Trees were cut down and trimmed of their branches, and laid side by side so as to form a kind of bridge over the swamp to enable more artillery to come up. The rapidity with which such roads ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... mean Marie Lloyd species of lyrical concupiscence, the "Quat'-z-Arts," with its charge of two francs the glass of beer and its concourse of loafers dressed up like Harry B. Smith "poets," in black velvet, corduroy grimpants and wiggy hirsutal cascades to impress "atmosphere" on the minds of the attendant citizenry of Louisville. And gone, too, with the song of Clichy, is the song from the heart of St. Michel, the song from the heart of St. Germain. "Tea rooms," operated by ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... the Captain came back, to our great delight. He had been away since Winberg, getting stores for us at Bloemfontein. He brought a waggon full of clothing and tobacco, which was distributed after we had come in. There were thick corduroy uniforms for winter use. If they had reached us in the cold weather they would have been more useful. It is hot weather now; but a light drill tunic was also served out, and a sign of the times was stewed ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... instance I have met with of a gentlewoman's speaking to an unintroduced gentleman. Besides these, a middle-aged man of the lower class, and also a gentleman's out-door servant, clad in a drab great-coat, corduroy breeches, and drab cloth gaiters buttoned from the knee to the ankle. He complained to the other man of the cold weather; said that a glass of whiskey, every half-hour, would keep a man comfortable; and, accidentally hitting his coarse foot against one of the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Unionists, General Lovell with his Confederate troops retreated into the interior of the State, and left the city without any other defense except our company of cavalry; but as we had buried our arms and cut the brass buttons off our beautiful brown corduroy suits, the citizens hadn't as much confidence in our ability to defend as they had when the enemy was five hundred miles away. The merchants expected that the Yankees would sack the city, so they threw open their stores and told everybody to take all they wanted. Bush was boarding ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... the corduroy that crosses the lower end of the Limberlost. At a glance he might have been mistaken for a tramp, but he was truly seeking work. He was intensely eager to belong somewhere and to be attached to almost any enterprise that would furnish him food ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... edge of what seemed a thicket covered with low bushes, which rose above green moss and tufts of grasses. In places the swamp looked as though it would hold up either a man or a horse. None the less, the boys could see where long ago an attempt had been made to corduroy the bog. Some of the poles and logs, broken in the middle, stuck up out of the mud. A black seam, filled with broken bits of poles, trampled moss and bushes, and oozing mud, showed the direction of the trail, as well as proved how deceptive the surface of an unbroken ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough

... may be treated in various ways to suit their surroundings. It is suggested in The Decorator and Furnisher that one stained the natural oak and upholstered in green rep, turcoman, corduroy, burlap or denim would be most attractive, or for green, substitute brown in the same materials and put on with dull brass nails, making an ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke

... curtain of her bonnet over her pretty face, and leaned back in her seat to nod and dream over japonicas and jumbles, pantalets and poetry; the old gentleman, proprietor of the Bardolph nose, looked out at the corduroy and swashes; the gambler fell off into a doze, and the circus convoy followed suit, leaving the preacher and me vis-a-vis and saying nothing to nobody. 'Indiany,' he stuck his mug out of the window and criticized ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... to New Madrid was, for the most part, a dilapidated corduroy, tumbling about a broken causeway through a swamp. M. Jeff. Thompson, "Brigadier-General of the Missouri State Guard," designed to hold a "very important session of the Missouri Legislature," at New Madrid, on March 3d—a session which was to last, however, ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force

... Faircloth's Inn, induced desire for a certain easiness of costume. His waistcoat hung open—he had laid aside his coat—displaying a broad stitched leather belt that covered the junction between buff corduroy trousers and blue-checked cotton shirt. On his head, a high thimble-crowned straw hat, the frayed brim of it pulled out into a poke in front for the better shelter of small, pale twinkling eyes set in a ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... novelty and excitement, was overcome with interest in everything, but especially in her father. Sitting at the head of the table—at one end of which fresh places had been set—he maintained her first impression of his stature. His spreading frame was covered with loose corduroy clothes—which could hardly be said to fit—and his whole appearance conveyed the impression of unusual physical strength. It had been said of Barb Doubleday, as a railroad builder, that he could handle an iron rail alone. His powerful jaw and large mouth—now fitted, or rather, supplied—with ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... until they reached the prairie land of Manitoba. They were about three months on the way, arriving at Port Garry on the 24th of August. During this time it became necessary for the men to cut trails through brake and bramble, construct corduroy roads, build boats, ascend dangerous rapids, portage stores and supplies over almost insurmountable places, meanwhile fighting mosquitoes and black flies, and encountering countless dangers, all of which they cheerfully performed with their characteristic bravery until the whole expedition ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald

... the foreman, an' one day he was on his way to the office to make a report to Dick when this imitation dog came sailin' around the corner an' took a grab at his leg. He had a brand-new pair of pants on, an' they was outside his boots. You know how corduroy tears when the dye has been a bit too progressive. Well, the pup loosened up a piece like a section of pie. Bill Andrews lost his Christian fortitude, give that toy muff a kick that landed him fifteen feet—an' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... hitching and limping along, all strings, and tapes, and ends, as usual, followed by Mr. Sponge in the strict and severe order of sporting costume; double-stitched, back-stitched, sleeve-strapped, pull-devil, pull-baker coat, broad corduroy vest with fox-teeth buttons, still broader corded breeches, and the redoubtable vinegar tops. "Now we're all ready!" exclaimed Bob, working his arms as if anxious to be off, and giving a shrill shilling-gallery whistle with his fingers, causing the stable-doors to fly open, and the variously tackled ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... figuring out the value of the jettisoned cargo, and whilst pompous Mr. Isaac was shaking him by the hand and making a neat speech for the ear of casual reporters, poor Kettle was conjuring up visions of the workhouse and pauper's corduroy. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... five grown persons and two children, it seems that the coach was by no means considered full. The horrors of that night's journey I shall not easily forget. The road lay almost the whole way through swamps, and was frequently itself under water. It was made of logs of wood (a corduroy road), and so dreadfully rough and unequal, that the drawing a coach over it at all seemed perfectly miraculous. I expected every moment that we must be overturned into the marsh, through which we splashed, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... three of the convalescents. One was a sturdy, farmhand sort of fellow, with yellow hair and a yellow mustache—the kind of man who might have been a Norman; he wore khaki puttees, brown corduroy trousers, and a jacket which fitted his heavy, vigorous figure rather snugly. Another was a little soul dressed in the "blue horizon" from head to foot, a homely little soul with an egg-shaped head, brown-green eyes, a retreating chin, ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... Bruce spent much time wandering, plundering and exploring from the edge of the corduroy road where the musk and marigolds and fleur-de-lis grew in glorious profusion all through the green and golden depths to where the River Oro slipped from its sweet enthralment of reeds and water lilies to go bounding away down the valley to Lake Simcoe. The whole place ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... ten cents each, and a watch worth five dollars valued at twenty dollars, so he left the place in disgust and hurried home, through the woods, in no placid frame of mind. Of four new shoes put on his horse that morning, three had been torn off by the mud, roots, and corduroy between Cleveland and Middleburg. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin



Words linked to "Corduroy" :   textile, route, road, make, narrow wale, cloth, material, Bedford cord, cord, build, wide wale, construct



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