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Disreputable   Listen
adjective
Disreputable  adj.  Not reputable; of bad repute; not in esteem; dishonorable; disgracing the reputation; tending to bring into disesteem; as, it is disreputable to associate familiarly with the mean, the lewd, and the profane. "Why should you think that conduct disreputable in priests which you probably consider as laudable in yourself?"
Synonyms: Dishonorable; discreditable; low; mean; disgraceful; shameful.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disreputable" Quotes from Famous Books



... temple is like the old village cathedral of mediaeval Europe. It is in many sects the centre of popular pleasure of all sorts, both reputable and disreputable. Not only shops and bazaars, fairs and markets, games and sports, cluster around it, but also curiosities and works of popular art, the relics of war, and the trophies of travel and adventure. Except that Buddhism—outside of India—never had the unity of European Christianity, the Buddhist ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... a while longer, Bud decided to telephone Morris's home. But at that moment a thin, seedy-looking man came into the lounge. His close-set eyes and loudly striped suit combined to give him a somewhat disreputable appearance. ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... accommodations furnished healthful, convenient, and attractive. The sources of profit from this careful provision are these: the proprietors have control of the territory, and are able to prescribe regulations which keep out the saloon and disreputable characters, and at once there is a saving in police and court and poor taxes; for the same reason the workmen are more regular and steady in their labor, for there is no St. Monday holiday, nor confused head and uncertain hand; the tenants ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various

... reprehensible must be Dorothea Dix, what a model of all that is discreditable is Rosa Bonheur, what a crowning instance of human depravity is Florence Nightingale! Yet how consoling the thought, that, while these disreputable persons were thus wasting their substance in the riotous performance of what the world weakly styled good deeds, there were always women who saw the folly of such efforts; women who by steady devotion to eating, drinking, and sleeping continued to keep themselves in sacred ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... A disreputable cad like you can't hurt me in any way, and well you know it," said Grey with ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson

... a fortune left to Sam Willett, the hero, and the fact that it will pass to a disreputable relative if the laddies before he shall have reached his majority. The story of his father's peril and of Sam's desperate trip down the great canyon on a raft, and how the party finally escape from their perils is described in a graphic style that ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... himself before that in the opinion of the people of his county. He was a black sheep, in fact. Very bad stories were told and believed of him. His marriage certainly was a disadvantage, you know, and the miserable scenes that went on in his disreputable house—all that predisposed people to believe ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... accept a most absurd candidate there, as I have told you, and if we can only keep some of our clerical friends quiet, we shall beat him. But we shall see! If the cures hurt us sometimes by their over-zeal, on the other hand the Republican deputies and functionaries help us by making the Republic disreputable in the eyes of serious people, and that in all ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... Dan saw the letter; but it did bring him, and one November day Mr Laurie helped a feeble man out of a carriage at the door of Plumfield, and Mother Bhaer received the wanderer like a recovered son; while Ted, in a disreputable-looking hat and an astonishing pair of boots, performed a sort of ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... a desolate quay-side of a disreputable town. But though all picturesqueness was given over to utility, there was a sense of homeliness to the traveler after the stormy passage of the North Pacific. Blackrock crouched under the frowning ramparts ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... elegance and safety will be equally consulted. With respect to walls, those who say that a courageous people ought not to have any, pay too much respect to obsolete notions; particularly as we may see those who pride themselves therein continually confuted by facts. It is indeed disreputable for those who are equal, or nearly so, to the enemy, to endeavour to take refuge within their walls—but since it very often happens, that those who make the attack are too powerful for the bravery and courage of those few who oppose them to resist, if you would not suffer the calamities ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle

... had thus drawn his attention was none other than Pierre Lemaire, who stood in the centre of the broad asphalt path, dirty, ragged and disreputable-looking. He had not altered much since he left Ballarat, save that he looked more dilapidated- looking, but stood there in his usual sullen manner, with his hat drawn down over his eyes. Some stray ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... prisoner down with his broadsword. When Colonel Butler returned from Cherry Valley, Sir Frederick Haldimand refused to see him, and wrote to him that 'such indiscriminate vengeance taken even upon the treacherous and cruel enemy they are engaged against is useless and disreputable to themselves, as it is contrary to the disposition and maxims of their King ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace

... tribunal was the governor of the fortress, a tried soldier, but a ruffian of low habits and cruel nature. He had risen under the Landgrave's patronage, as an adventurer of desperate courage, ready for any service, however disreputable, careless alike of peril or of infamy. In common with many partisan officers, who had sprung from the ranks in this adventurous war, seeing on every side and in the highest quarters, princes as well as supreme ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... upon his great play that aroused such wide-spread controversy, the book tells of a secret service officer's investigations into the White Slave traffic; of his discovery of the girl he loved in a disreputable employment agency and of her dramatic rescue. A true situation, depicted boldly and frankly but without pruriency. 12mo. Cloth. Illustrated from scenes ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... a livid mark under your jaw. It is, indeed, terrible that my representative should be going about in so disreputable a condition. How did ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Microbes," a sort of scientific revel—or revelry—the autobiography of a microbe that had been once a man, and through a failure in a biological experiment transformed into a cholera germ when the experimenter was trying to turn him into a bird. His habitat was the person of a disreputable tramp named Blitzowski, a human continent of vast areas, with seething microbic nations and fantastic life problems. It was a satire, of course—Gulliver's Lilliput outdone—a sort of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... attended to the official business of Prouty at a flat-top desk in a large front room where he also wrote an occasional life insurance policy. As the insurance business was a rise from a disreputable saloon and gambling joint, so the saloon and gambling joint had been a step upward from his former means of livelihood as a dance-hall tout ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... you don't leave the room, I will. It's really disreputable to have you for a mother. You've never done ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... certain inclinations in the administration of justice, and complaints from persons to whom he has failed to return money which he received from them to invest in merchandise or to pay to them here, he has become as disreputable as in other matters of his own private affairs. Since he allows one of his sons, the eldest one here, called Don Atanasio de Legazpi, to live so licentious a life, it is said of him that his father is making amends for the fault of his son's bad rearing. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various

... fairly well-educated girl. At the ale-house, however, she formed an acquaintance with a woman named Mary Tracey, a dissolute character, and with two thieves called Alexander. Of these three disreputable people we shall be hearing presently, for Sarah tried to implicate them in this crime which she certainly committed alone. It is said that the Newgate officers recognized Sarah on her arrival. She had often been to ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... fence surrounded the property on three sides, the fourth being bounded by a sluggish, disreputable creek whose fetid waters seemed to crawl onward even more slowly after receiving the noisome waste liquor from the tan-pits. At only one point, that nearest the village, did any of the buildings touch the encircling fence. There its sweep was broken by the facade of a ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... causes of uneasiness, which attach to the world at large. Some go to the gaming-table, and ruin themselves and their families, and destroy the peace of their minds. But the Quakers are never found injuring their fortunes or their happiness by such disreputable means. ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... imitation of his example. Favour the candid and honest man who has nothing to say but what is truthful, charitable, and wise. Cultivate the same disposition in your own bosom, and so avoid in yourself the disreputable character of a Whisperer, and prevent the mischievous consequences ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... fifty thousand go upon the street as a praying-band?' The liquor-dealers said: 'Send committees of two or three and we will talk with them; but coming in a body to pray with us brands our business as disreputable.' The time came when the Master seemed to call for a mightier power to bear upon the liquor traffic, and a company of heroic women, many of them the wives of prominent clergymen, led by Mrs. W.A. Ingham, said: 'Here am I; the Lord's ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... part of the world, it must be said that you have to do with the most easy and good-natured of great cities. If the proud aristocracies of the rest of Europe refuse admittance among their ranks to a disreputable millionaire, Paris stretches out a hand to him, goes to his banquets, eats his dinners, and ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... in a row of high, disreputable-looking houses that were, however, picturesque enough, and across the pave in front of them commenced the docks. One walked in and out of harbours and waterways, the main stretch of harbour opening up more and more on the right hand, and finally showing two great encircling ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... who knew why Quintana might come to America was James Darragh, recently of the Military Intelligence, but now passing as a hold-up man under the name of Hal Smith, and actually in the employment of Clinch at his disreputable "hotel" at Star Pond in the ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... that he had hold of Barbara's small hand, which he seemed to be clutching eagerly. Yes, it must be the man had a daughter of his own far away, and memories of her might be making him sorry that he had engaged in such a disreputable business as tempting Barbara's brother to betray his mates ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton

... could be so enhanced by a white robe and a black veil——Oh, well! Her mind was in a rebellious mood; it had been in leash too long. And what of it for once in a way? No ball dress she had ever seen in the gay disreputable little city—where the good citizens hung the bad for want of law—was half as becoming as the habit of the Dominican nun, and if it played a part in weaning frivolous girls from the world, so much more to the credit of Rome. God knew she had never regretted her flight up the bays, and ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... Christianity. When then three well-informed writers call Christianity a superstition and a magical superstition, they were not using words at random, or the language of abuse, but they were describing it in distinct and recognized terms as cognate to those gloomy, secret, odious, disreputable religions which were making so much disturbance up and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... imitation of a fierce and bloody orgy, such as the Bedouins indulge in after a great victory. They were to shout, grunt and brandish their guns, dirks, pistols and swords, and to behave generally in a very disreputable manner; in fact, Ali gravely intimated that it would be no place for timid ladies. This simply whetted our appetites and we promptly closed with him for the dance for a certain amount of "teep." The hat was passed and the tips put in. Then a row of about twenty-five ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... greater abhorrence of the infliction of such punishment than I have, and a stronger conviction that severity is bad policy with a crew; yet I would ask every reasonable man whether he had not better trust to the practice becoming unnecessary and disreputable; to the measure of moderate chastisement and a justifiable cause being better understood, and thus, the act becoming dangerous, and in course of time to be regarded as an unheard-of barbarity—than to take the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... together would not console her for the absence of Wriggly. If the family go to the seaside, Wriggly must come too. She will not sleep without the absurd bundle in her arms. If she goes to a party she insists upon dragging its disreputable folds along with her, one end always projecting "to give it fresh air." Every phase of childhood represents to the philosopher something in the history of the race. From the new-born baby which can hang easily by one hand from a broomstick with its legs drawn up ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... "So disreputable a lot as you are I never saw!" said a sleepy rat to the casks in a wine-cellar. "Always making night hideous with your hoops and hollows, and disfiguring the day with your bunged-up appearance. There is no sleeping when once the wine has got ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... didn't seem to like their form exactly, and muttered something to a by-stander as they went in. They saw a long, low room, brilliantly lighted by flaring gas jets. Down one side, on wooden forms, was seated a row of flashily-dressed girls—larrikin-esses on their native heath, barmaids from cheap, disreputable hotels, shop girls, factory girls—all sharp-faced and pert, young in years, but old in knowledge of evil. The demon of mischief peeped out of their quick-moving, restless eyes. They had elaborate fringes, and their short dresses ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... hoarsely whispered, and the speaker leaned back in her fauteuil, a spark of fierce eagerness in her dilated eyes, Mabel, in her own anxiety, did not consider overstrained solicitude in behalf of a disreputable stranger. She had more sympathy with it than with the relapse into apparent nonchalance that succeeded her repetition ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... ear-racking hail, a man, clothed simply in dirty shirt and disreputable trousers, showed himself in the doorway above, rubbing the sleep out of a red, bloated countenance with a mighty ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... this open move was a secret castle plot so utterly disreputable that, as we shall see, the Attorney-General, startled by the shout of universal execration which it elicited, sent his official representative into public court to repudiate it as far as he was concerned, and to offer a public apology to the gentlemen aggrieved by it. The history ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan

... noted in the morning was, I knew, within a few minutes' walk of the spot; but it belonged to Dawson, upon whom the first weight of my suspicions rested. I called to mind the disreputable character of that man, and the still more daring and hardened one of his companion Thornton. I remembered the reluctance of the deceased to accompany them, and the well-grounded reason he assigned; and my suspicions ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... attributes of the Nugent Pagets; and a resemblance to the lower part of Miss Paget's face might have been traced in many a sombre portrait of dame and cavalier at Thorpehaven Manor, where a Nugent Paget, who acknowledged no kindred with the disreputable Captain, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... to Cargill incredulously. These things could not be true. These groups of jovial, candid-looking men could not be the moral wrecks they were represented. He had expected to see men who looked villainous in some way, with bloated faces—disreputable, beery fellows. He had not risen to the understanding that the successful villain is ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... active sympathy with active wickedness, or from a grim sense of his own mental superiority at such moments. But the general belief leant toward his kindred sympathy as a "yaller dog" with all that was disreputable. And this was supported by another very singular canine manifestation—the "sincere ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... with a dainty lady, who will constantly distract him with finicking civilities and speculations in unprofitable regions? What he does want is a woman amiable as a surface of parchment, serviceable as his inkstand; one who will be like the wig in which he closes his forensic term, disreputable from overwear, but suited ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... came through an illegitimate granddaughter, and eighty-five through legitimate grandchildren. Out of the thirty-eight, sixteen have been in jail, six of them for heinous offences, one of these having been committed no less than nine times; eleven others led openly disreputable lives or were paupers; four were notoriously intemperate; the history of three had not been traced, and only four are known to have done well. The great majority of the women consorted with criminals. As to the eighty-five legitimate ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... as he had hoped, a very disreputable-looking stranger came from the direction of the upper carry, approaching Jet ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis

... Richard the Third, with whom all our play-going friends are familiar, and who made the disgraceful offer, if Shakspeare is to be believed, of parting with the whole kingdom for a horse, though it does not appear that the disreputable bargain ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... strong for me. After about twenty minutes an old Fan gentleman came down river in a canoe and gave me good advice in Fan, and I got him to take me in tow—that is to say, he got into my canoe and I held on to his and we went back down river. I then saw his intention was to take me across to that disreputable village, half Fan, half Bakele, which is situated on the main bank of the river opposite the island; this I disapproved of, because I had heard that some Senegal soldiers who had gone over there, had been stripped ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... became king of England; because he was the son of Sophia, granddaughter of James I., and professed the Protestant religion. He was a Hanoverian German, and did not understand the English language; he was stupid and disreputable, and better fitted to administer a German bierstube than a great kingdom. But the Act of Settlement of 1701 had stipulated that if William or Anne died childless, the Protestant issue of Sophia should succeed. That such a man should prove an acceptable sovereign both to ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... Grant Park and the sombre black void beyond that was Lake Michigan. A tiny satin bedroom slipper on a chair, its mate, sole up, peeping out from under the bed. A pair of satin slippers alone, distributed thus, would make a nun's cell look disreputable. Over all this disorder the ceiling lights, the wall lights, and the light from two rosy lamps, beat mercilessly down; and upon the white-faced woman in ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... position with his friends did not suffer at all in consequence of his disclosures. Personally, he exulted in his conduct to the end of his life, and took pleasure in watching and recording Deane's disreputable career and miserable end. "As he rose like a rocket, so he fell like the stick," a metaphor which has passed into a proverb, was imagined by Paine to meet Deane's case. [1] The immediate consequence of Paine's resignation was to oblige him to hire himself out as clerk to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... matters went on till my hero was nearly fourteen years old. If by that time he was not actually a young blackguard, he belonged to a debateable class between the sub-reputable and the upper disreputable, with perhaps rather more leaning to the latter except so far as vices of meanness were concerned, from which he was fairly free. I gather this partly from what Ernest has told me, and partly from his school bills ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... Mr Wentworth, with an impatience of her simplicity which it was difficult to restrain, was reading the letter, in which he perceived a very different intention from any divined by Miss Wodehouse. The billet was disreputable enough, written in ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... is a very common impression that a principal evil of the condition of the southern blacks, is the severity of their treatment. THIS IS AN ERROR. It is almost every where disreputable to treat slaves with severity; and though there are indeed exceptions, yet in most cases in the South, even tyranny itself could not long withstand the reproaches of public opinion. A STILL GREATER AND MORE DANGEROUS ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... redoubtable Thomas Morton himself was sometime student of the law and a dweller in these precincts. It is now the hall of the Art Workers' Guild, and anywhere but in London would be incredibly quiet and quaint in that noisy, commonplace, modern neighborhood. It in nowise remembers the disreputable and roistering antipuritan, who set up his May-pole at Wollaston, and danced about it with his debauched aboriginies, in defiance of the saints, till Miles Standish marched up from Plymouth and made an end of such ungodly doings at ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... musing, "that Aram should know a man, who, if not a highwayman as we suspected, is at least of rugged manner and disreputable appearance; it is strange too, that Aram always avoided recurring to the acquaintance, though he confessed it." With this he broke into a trot, and the Corporal ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... bottles by himself.' By this time Latham was a little unsteady, he slipped from his chair as if it had been an inclined plane and lay on the carpet. He was unable to rise, but he held his head up with a cunning smile, saying, 'This must be a very disreputable house.' Borrow saw Latham after this at times on his way to me, and always stopped to say a kind word to ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt

... Virgile; but here is meant a person unknowne and secrete, against whome he often bitterly invayeth. Underfonge, undermyne, and deceive by false suggestion." The immoral flippancy of the remarkable dialogue between the disreputable Parolles and the otherwise sweet and maidenly Helena, in Act I. Scene i. of All's Well that Ends Well, has often been noticed by critics as a peculiar lapse in dramatic congruity on the part of Shakespeare. This is evidently one of several such instances in his plays where ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... and growing evil of smoking, the practical question arises; 'What shall be done?' The answer is—Render it unfashionable and disreputable. Do you ask, 'How is this to be accomplished?' Why, how has alcohol been rendered unpopular? Do you still say, 'One person alone cannot effect much?' But so might any person have said a few years ago, in regard to spirits. Individuals ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... disreputable march, Lord George Murray knew nothing until it was begun. The very morning on which it took place, the church of St. Ninian's, where the powder was lodged, was blown up. Lord George Murray was in his quarters ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... Fetters. But Ben was drunk and the other two were sober, and in three minutes Ben lay on the floor with a sore head and a black eye. His nose was bleeding copiously, and the crimson stream had run down upon his white shirt and vest. Taken all in all, his appearance was most disreputable. By this time the liquor he had drunk had its full effect, and complete unconsciousness supervened to save him, for a little while, from the realisation ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... unsuccessful attempt to get the appointment to distribute stamped paper in New Hampshire, and the other James Albert, a half-breed Indian, who was well known in Portsmouth as a quarrelsome fellow, ready to take part in any business, however disreputable, so long as he was provided with an ample ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis

... divorce court proceedings now. But she's not that sort of woman at all. I had every opportunity of studying her character in the train, and I'm certain that she wouldn't mix herself up with anything of a disreputable kind. Whatever poor Lorimer may have had to complain of—and I don't in the least deny that he had a grievance—he'd have been the last man to accuse her of anything of that sort. I never met a woman who impressed me more ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham

... what Peter called his language-master. He was taking lessons in French and Spanish, finding a knowledge of these useful in business. To his extreme distress, my father fell on him at once, demanding what he knew of the way Griffith was spending his time, 'coming home at all sorts of hours in a disreputable condition. No prevarication, sir,' he added, as the only too familiar look of consternation and bewilderment came over Clarence's face. 'You are doing your brother no good by conniving at his conduct. Speak truth, if you can,' he added, ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Nigel, desiring to avail himself of this young man's local knowledge, yet unwilling and ashamed to acknowledge his intention to take refuge in so disreputable a quarter, or to describe the situation in which he stood—"I have some curiosity ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... cardamom seeds out of the cracks in the stone flagging, he handed me the tattered, disreputable-looking copy of "A Modern Circe" with a bow that wouldn't have disgraced a Chesterfield, and then went back to his easel, while I fled after aunt Celia and ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... excused themselves was in some sort my intimate. I reproached him and said, "He is base and ungrateful, mean and disreputable who, on a trifling change of circumstances, can desert his old master and forget his obligation of many years' employment." He replied: "Were I to speak out, I swear by generosity you would excuse me. Peradventure, my horse ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... saw was a small fire built upon the earth floor in the center of the building and around the warming blaze the figures of six men. Some reclined at length upon old straw; others squatted, Turk fashion. All were smoking either disreputable pipes or rolled cigarets. Blear-eyed and foxy-eyed, bearded and stubbled cheeked, young and old, were the men the youth looked upon. All were more or less dishevelled and filthy; but they were human. They were not dogs, ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Waldensian Protestant ancestry in Italy, this alert, efficient, cultured Italian pastor. He found the parish to which he was assigned composed of several thousand of his countrymen in a Hudson river town; the building to be used for church purposes a dirty, run-down old hall, a part of the most disreputable ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen

... him that this might be a good chance of pursuing some of the investigations he had planned. Since noticing the disreputable condition of the fence the afternoon of his arrival, he had kept his eyes open, and a number of other little signs had confirmed his suspicion that the ranch had very much gone to seed. Of course this might ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... this deep plotter and conspirator, refused to join in the laughter when the flight was made and safety secured. They were like a couple of children with a mystification in hand, notwithstanding that they were planning an invasion so serious of all the proprieties, and meant to make so disreputable and revolting a bargain. But this was not in their ideas. Bice went out very early in the morning before any one was astir, to take needful exercise in the park, and gather early primroses and the catkins that ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... social relations with the interests of one group distinctly before his mind, and the interests of all other groups thrown into the background. When I have read certain of these discussions I have thought that it must be quite disreputable to be respectable, quite dishonest to own property, quite unjust to go one's own way and earn one's own living, and that the only really admirable person was the good-for-nothing. The man who by his own effort raises himself above poverty appears, in these discussions, ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner

... curiously stupid swarm, like sheep that get up on to one another's backs and look foolish. "What a cargo of cattle!" cries the fat pilot up to the captain, tramping delightedly on the breakwater with his wooden-soled boots. There are sheepskin caps, old military caps, disreputable old rusty hats, and the women's tidy black handkerchiefs. The faces are as different as old, wrinkled pigskin and young, ripening fruit; but want, and expectancy, and a certain animal greed are visible in all of them. The unfamiliarity of the moment brings a touch ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... in a barbarous style, are exposed to laugh and to despise holy things." Santeuil (1630-1697) characterised the Breviary hymns as the product of ignorance, the disgrace of the Latin language, the disreputable relics of the early ages, the ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... China many years. Had he been of that sort, he might have written rather valuable books, containing his shrewd observations and intimate, underhand knowledge of political and economic conditions. But he was emphatically not of that sort, so continued to lead his disreputable, roving life for a period of ten years. At the end of which time he met a plaintive little Englishwoman, just out from Home, and she, knowing nothing whatever of Rivers, but being taken with his glib tongue and rather ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte

... Mary Wellington perceived that Jim Daly's performance was a disreputable piece of business, which merited the censure of all decent citizens. Having reached this conclusion, she dismissed George Colfax on his travels with a sense of satisfaction that he viewed the affair with such abhorrence. For, much as she liked George, her hesitation to become his wife and renounce ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... reinforced in this valley by eighteen lodges of renegade Nez Perces, who lived off the reservation, under the leadership of the disreputable ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields

... on the platform before the train started they were hailed and loudly cheered, averred the journal of this same Briton, "by a crowd of the outlaw's companions, at least a score and a half of most disreputable-looking wretches, unshaven, roughly dressed, heavily booted, slouch-hatted (they swung their hats in a drunken frenzy), and to this rough ovation the girl, though seemingly a person of some decency, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... the celebrated French nobleman, and his Excellency Baron von Punter from Baden; there was Lady Blanche Bluenose, the eminent literati, author of "The Distrusted" "The Distorted," "The Disgusted," "The Disreputable One," and other poems; there was the Dowager Lady Max and her daughter, the Honorable Miss Adelaide Blueruin; Sir Charles Codshead, from the City; and Field-Marshal Sir Gorman O'Gallagher, K.A., ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... morning round, and with no one there to superintend him, the dear old absent-minded thing had forgotten to change his breeches. From a little above the knee upward he was a perfect Christian; but his legs were just those of a disreputable sinner. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... can compensate to the freshman, in whom we have interested ourselves, for the poorness of his lodging and the turbulence of his companions. In every thing there is a better side and a worse; in every place a disreputable set and a respectable, and the one is hardly known at all to the other. Men come away from the same University at this day, with contradictory impressions and contradictory statements, according to the society they have ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... the box with the beautiful Frenchwoman. To say truth, Linden was far too much in love with Lady Flora, and too occupied, as to his other thoughts, with the projects of ambition, to be easily led into any disreputable or criminal liaison; he therefore conversed with his usual ease, though with rather more than his usual gallantry, without feeling the least touched by the charms of La Meronville or the least desirous of supplanting Lord Borodaile ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a most friendly and encouraging manner. He went farther, and lifted his disreputable white ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... there came bustling round the right-hand horn of the bay a most disreputable, bedraggled-looking vessel. By her lines a yacht, her decks would have been a disgrace to the oldest and most battered tin-pot of an ocean tramp. Her masts had gone, there were gaps in her bulwarks, and the smoke of her furnaces, pouring through a hole in her deck over which her funnel had once ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson

... days after Mrs. Hading's arrival, Lundi Druro disappeared from every-day life in Wankelo. It was a way he had of doing, and everyone who sought him at such times would find him at the Leopard in pants embroidered with great holes burned into them by cyanide and acids, a disreputable shirt without any buttons or collar, and face and hands blackened beyond recognition with the machine-oil and grime inseparable from a large mining plant. He always did his own assaying, taking both time and trouble over it. It must certainly be admitted that, if he knew ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... four before the door opened, and a drunken-looking groom, ill-kempt and side-whiskered, with an inflamed face and disreputable clothes, walked into the room. Accustomed as I was to my friend's amazing powers in the use of disguises, I had to look three times before I was certain that it was indeed he. With a nod he vanished into the bedroom, whence he emerged in five minutes ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... several loaves along; neither of them had the nerve to think of baking the staff of life in that disreputable oven, even ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne

... great man's hall. He played the fiddle and the harp; he sang songs, he brought his daughter, who walked on her hands and executed astonishing capers; the gleeman, minstrel, or jongleur was already as disreputable as when we find him later on with his ribauderie. Again, we play chess; so did our ancestors. We gamble with dice; so did they. We feast and drink together; so did they. We pass the time in talk; so did they. In a word, as Alphonse Karr ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... looking for rewards. It is reward enough that they were able to serve the authorities in the capture of a very bad man. We shall do whatever we can in our small way to help the Rangers round up the rest of this disreputable gang." ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin

... gang work awhile "for the church"? This was a savage witticism the men had, which Jurgis had to have explained to him. Old man Jones was great on missions and such things, and so whenever they were doing some particularly disreputable job, the men would wink at each other and say, "Now we're ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... Always in want of money, because he spent it foolishly on galas or presents to his favorites, he had recourse, for the purpose of procuring it, at one time to the very worst of all financial expedients, debasement of the coinage; at another, to disreputable imposts, such as the tax upon salt, and upon the sale of all kinds of merchandise. In the single year of 1352 the value of a silver mark varied sixteen times, from four livres ten sous to eighteen ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... conclusion that it was best to discharge them, and accordingly sent the Sepoys back to the coast; but not without having first furnished them with the means of subsistence on their journey to the coast. These men were such a disreputable set that the natives spoke of them as the Doctor's slaves. One of their worst sins was the custom of giving their guns and ammunition to carry to the first woman or boy they met, whom they impressed for that purpose by such threats or promises as they were totally unable to perform, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... the Bald-faced Kid who christened him Little Calamity because, as he explained, Jockey Gillis was a sniffling, whining, half portion of hard luck and a disgrace to the disreputable profession of touting. "Every season," said the Bald-faced Kid, "is a tough season for a guy like that. He carries his hard luck with him. He's cockeyed something awful; his face was put on upside down; you can't ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... mother-in-law, on the stage and in divers domestic circles, have become a synonym for firebrand? Look at your wife's maid, for instance. She will spend two thirds of her wages and the product of many silk dresses ("scarcely soiled") in furnishing that objectionable and disreputable suitor of hers with funds for his extravagance. He has beggared two or three of her acquaintance already, under the same flimsy pretense of intended marriage, that scarcely deludes poor Abigail; she has sore misgivings as to her own fate. Alternately he ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... Sampaolo," she continued her illustrations, "formerly kept a disreputable public house, a sailors' tavern, at Ancona. He is known to be a Camorrista; and though his salary is only a few thousand lire, he lives with the ostentation of a parvenu millionaire, and no one doubts where he gets his money. These evils are felt by everyone. But the worst evil of all is the ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... pretext! Was it to benefit the poor that that odious Countess Strahlberg made all those disreputable grimaces? I have seen kermesses got up by actresses, and, upon my word, they were good form ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... every nonjuring priest is forbidden to say mass. The Department, which is disposed to resist, has its hands tied and confesses its powerlessness. "The people," it writes, "know their strength: they know that we have no power; excited by disreputable citizens, they permit whatever serves their passions or their interests; they influence our deliberations, and force us to those which, under other circumstances, we should carefully avoid."—Three days after ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... through loss of office, some in a vague hope of preserving the old condition of things, will not only hold off from all participation in your government, but will make all sympathy with it, all advocacy of its principles, and especially all office-holding under it, odious—disreputable—infamous. You may find yourself constrained to fill your offices with men who can face down the contumely of a whole people. You know what such men generally are. One out of a hundred may be a moral hero—the ninety-nine will be scamps; and the moral hero ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... with frantic haste we cut the rope, and in a few seconds he rose to his feet, discovering that he was in the land of the living with a joyful whinnying. If he had not been endowed with the suavity of a gentleman and the long-suffering of a saint, he would have walked off, for the yard was in a disreputable state of repair, and we were all shaky from the effects of nerve-shock. But no, in spite of abuse and misunderstanding, he was resolved at cost of whatever discomfort to himself to give us further lessons in the science of horse-breaking. He stood patiently ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... was even held to be somewhat disreputable to eat them; and the story is told of a family in Hadley, Massachusetts, who were about to dine on shad, that, hearing a knock at the door, they would not open it till the platter holding the obnoxious ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... mouse which is found in the hand, or the hair, or beside the feet of the statues of Apollo, the owl of Minerva, etc.) are relics of the earlier worship. This would satisfactorily explain much of the disreputable element which lingered on side by side with the noble thoughts of Greek religion. The Olympians, a splendid race of gods, representing the highest human ideals, arrived with the Greeks; but for the sake of safety, or of old association, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... fresh counsel with the formula, "You'll excuse me," he gave me some excellent advice as we threaded the greasy streets, and jostled the disreputable-looking population of the lower part of the town. General counsels as to my conduct, and the desirableness of turning over a new leaf for "young chaps" who had been wild and got into scrapes at home. And particular counsels ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... from the other side of the room, where Mabane, attired in a disreputable smock, with a short black pipe in the corner of his mouth, was industriously defacing a small canvas. Mabane was tall and fair and lean, with a mass of refractory hair which was the despair of his barber; a Scotchman with keen blue eyes, and humorous mouth amply redeeming his face from the plainness ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... not tell her anything of my successful brother's performances, though I have heard that a man always tells his sweetheart all the disreputable side of his family history. What he forgets to tell her she worms out of him after they are married. It may be so. I must be an exception, then. As I have said, Rosa was curious about England, and in trying ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... a short distance up the deserted street to a disreputable looking shanty. Here they were forced inside and compelled to ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... of muddy water and a formidable fleet of old hulks, disreputable barges and "small fry broad-horns," lay Algiers, graceless itself as the uninviting foreground; looking out contemplatively from its squalor at the inspiring view of Nouvelle Orleans, with the freighters, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... with affection and contentment and lifts up a soft voice and says, "Come, kitties, supper's ready"; we understand her when she goes mourning about and says, "Where can they be? They are lost. Won't you help me hunt for them?" and we understand the disreputable Tom when he challenges at midnight from his shed, "You come over here, you product of immoral commerce, and I'll make your fur fly!" We understand a few of a dog's phrases and we learn to understand a few of the remarks ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of a stranger—a man who would inexorably present it for payment on the day when it fell due? I tried to persuade myself that Frau Meyer had not told me the truth. Perhaps I might have succeeded—but for my remembrance of the disreputable-looking stranger on the door-step, who had been so curious to know if Madame Fontaine intended to ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins

... want you and the boy Harrigan—or rather, the captain wants you, for remember he gives the order—to go first and pretend that you have run away from a man-of-war, and want to be kept in hiding till she has sailed. You, of course, are to dress up as seamen in old clothes—the more disreputable and dirty you look the better. We know the houses where the men are stowed away, in the lowest slums of Cork, and we can direct you to them. You're to get into the confidence of the men, and learn what they intend doing; when you've gained that, you're to tell them that ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... for a charming trip to speed me, I left the Ritz, and luckily no vision was vouchsafed me of the condition in which I should return: Two crutches, a bandaged head, an utterly disreputable aspect; my bedraggled state equaled—and this I would maintain with swords and pistols if necessary—that of any poilu ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... in the river not far from my hospital windows. She was not a yacht when I first saw her, nor at any time, technically, unless I use the word in the broad sense of a pleasure-boat. She was a two-master, and, when I saw her first, as dirty and disreputable as are most coasting-vessels. Her rejuvenation was the history of my convalescence. On the day she stood forth in her first coat of white paint, I exchanged my dressing-gown for clothing that, however loosely it hung, was still clothing. Her new sails marked my promotion to beefsteak, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... watched children playing in the street. Some purpose or other is so natural to every one, that a mere loiterer always looks and feels remarkable. When the first hour was out, Stephen even began to have an uncomfortable sensation upon him of being for the time a disreputable character. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... not many strangers pass this way, for never was a shy Englishman so stared at as this dust-begrimmed traveller. I became painfully self-conscious of the generally disreputable appearance of my cart and horses, the driver and myself, when two remarkably pretty girls tripped by, casting upon me well-bred but amused glances. All the womenkind of Oravicza must have turned out at this particular hour, for I had hardly passed the sisters with the ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... sent him to Eton in his fifteenth year. The Oxford professor of Arabic, Joseph White (1746-1814), was son of a poor weaver in the country and a man of reputation for learning, although now remembered only for a rather disreputable literary squabble. Robert Owen and Joseph Lancaster, both sprung from the ranks, were leaders in social movements. I have already spoken of such men as Watt, Telford, and Rennie; and smaller names might be added in literature, science, and art. The individualist virtue of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... clever plot," he ground out, taking a step nearer us. "With the aid of your sister and a disreputable gang of chauffeurs you planned to hasten the death of Mrs. Blake, to hasten the inheritance of the Blake fortune by your future wife. I think your creditors will have less chance of collecting now than ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... obviously interesting side of Voltaire's life in England, that some writers have been led to adopt a very different theory from that which is usually accepted, and to suppose that his relations with Pope's circle were in reality of a purely superficial, or even of an actually disreputable, kind. Voltaire himself, no doubt, was anxious to appear as the intimate friend of the great writers of England; but what reason is there to believe that he was not embroidering upon the facts, and that his true position was not that of a mere literary hanger-on, eager simply ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... see a "Jim-Crow" waiting-room? There are always exceptions, as at Greensboro—but usually there is no heat in winter and no air in summer; with undisturbed loafers and train hands and broken, disreputable settees; to buy a ticket is torture; you stand and stand and wait and wait until every white person at the "other window" is waited on. Then the tired agent yells across, because all the tickets and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... surviving relative at Pompeii, and that was Burbo. Various dark and disreputable ties, stronger than those of blood, united together their hearts and interests; and often the minister of Isis stole disguised and furtively from the supposed austerity of his devotions; and gliding through the back door of the retired gladiator, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... which he had figured his balance, and darted to the washstand behind the narrow partition. Nor could it be compared to the way in which he stripped off his black bombazine office-coat with its baggy pockets—quite a disreputable-looking coat I must say—taking it by the nape of the neck, as if it were some loathsome object to be got rid of, and hanging it upon a hook behind him; nor to the way in which he pulled up his shirt sleeves and plunged his white, ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... not be noticeable. What is now Fourteenth Street was then a place given over to market-gardens. Rutgers Street, Rutgers Place, Henry Street, were fashionable localities, and the adjacent quarter, now so malodorous and disreputable, was eminently respectable. Freund's daughters, as they left the parental roof for modest houses of his gift close by, no doubt had reason to consider themselves abundantly fortunate ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... change of atmosphere on his entry. The door slammed behind him. The hall with its insistent scholastic suggestions, its yellow marbled paper, its long rows of hat-pegs, its disreputable array of umbrellas, a broken mortar-board and a tattered and scattered Principia, seemed dim and dull in contrast with the luminous stir of the early March evening outside. An unusual sense of the greyness of a teacher's life, of the greyness ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... Aminta's throat, and squared it and flattened it with dainty precision, speaking on under dropped eyelids, intent upon her work, 'Lady de Culme will be happy to welcome you whenever it shall suit the Countess of Ormont to accompany her disreputable friend. But what can I do, dear?' She raised her lids and looked beseechingly. 'I was born with this taste for the ways and games and style of men. I hope I don't get on badly with women; but if I 'm not allowed to indulge my natural ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of him; and he was, of course, at once discharged. The reward was payable only upon conviction of the offender, and the disappointment of poor Madame Jaubert was extreme. She wept bitterly at the thought of being compelled to continue her present disreputable mode of life, when a thousand francs—a sum she believed Martin's capture would have assured her—besides sufficient for her traveling expenses and decent outfit, would, she said, purchase a partnership ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... had taken it, he fell asleep once more, and when he woke again, it was in the middle of the night. The lamp was nearly burned out: it had a long, red, disreputable nose, that spoke of midnight hours and exhausted oil. The old lady was dozing in her chair. The clock had just struck something, for the sound of its bell was yet faintly pulsing in the air. He sat up, and looked out into the room. Something seemed upon him—he could not tell what. He felt ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... despatch which conveyed my anticipations of another deliberate insult being offered to the Irish nation, was not forwarded from the House of Commons more than an hour before the 'count' took place. There can be little doubt that the Government were privy to this disreputable manoeuvre, as a debate upon the subject of reclaiming Irish waste lands, particularly after their broken promises, would, just at the present moment, and on the eve of a general election, be exceedingly inconvenient and distasteful.... ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... boots with vexation. But I'll tell you one thing—I'll have that eight hundred pound—I'll have that and go to Swan River—that's mine, anyway, and your friend must have forged to cash it. Give me the eight hundred, here, upon this platform, or I go straight to Scotland Yard and turn the whole disreputable story inside out." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... had cast off when the work of fighting fire was begun, had been tossed about, trampled on, or scorched until they could no longer be called serviceable, and, half-clothed, dirty and disreputable-looking generally as they were, they started wearily for the town in search of rest, and, what was ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis

... of molten blue, and the disreputable honey-gatherer who gets himself turned out-of-doors at the sign of the Foxglove, are very taking matters. I know of more important things that interest me vastly less. This is one of the ten or twelve brief pieces so nearly ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... with her husband, today. I am sorry to say that they do not view your wild and lawless conduct in the same light that I do, and that they are unable to see there is anything positively disreputable in your being mixed up in midnight adventures with burglars. I am glad to gather, from Admiral Langton's letter, that Mr. Tulloch has seen your conduct in the proper light, and has inflicted a well-merited punishment ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... A more disreputable-looking front door I have not seen,—it was in perfect harmony with the remainder of the establishment. The paint was off; the woodwork was scratched and dented; the knocker was red with rust. When Sydney took it in his hand I was conscious ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... items: One iron pot, one rusty tin pail, two delf bowls,—I noticed them particularly, for they rolled down the dungheap on the side where I stood,—one rheumatic chest, one rickety table, one armful of disreputable straw, and one ragged coverlet. This was supposed to be the bed, for I saw no bedstead; there was no chair, no stool, or seat of any kind. The sub-sheriff with the bailiff's assistance fastened the door with a padlock. He handed the agent a tuft of grass ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall

... Alice had known herself in disgrace with her father and that small set in which she moved. Her part in the big World story had been "most regrettable." It was felt that in letting her name be mentioned beside that of one who was a thoroughly disreputable vagabond she had compromised her exclusiveness and betrayed the cause of her class. Her friends recalled that Alice had ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... articles, and took these opportunities of asking if they knew of any one in want of such assistance as he could give. But unpleasant as he felt it to make such inquiries, he soon found that to most people it was equally unpleasant to reply to them. There seemed to be something disreputable in having to answer such questions, to judge from the constrained, indifferent, and sometimes, though not often, surly answers which he received. "Can it be," thought Hugh, "as disgraceful to ask for work as to ask for bread?" If he had ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... held the certitude that it was not a nightmare, but a waking misery. Mr. Bulstrode felt a shuddering nausea, and did not speak, but was considering diligently whether he should not leave Raffles to do as he would, and simply defy him as a slanderer. The man would soon show himself disreputable enough to make people disbelieve him. "But not when he tells any ugly-looking truth about you," said discerning consciousness. And again: it seemed no wrong to keep Raffles at a distance, but Mr. Bulstrode ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... had carried me thus far when I became aware of a small, furtive figure, dodging from one patch of shadow to another. Leaning from the window, I made out the form of a somewhat disreputable urchin, who, dropping upon hands and knees, proceeded to crawl towards me over the grass with a show of the ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol



Words linked to "Disreputable" :   sordid, unrespectable, dishonourable, dishonorable, shady, sleazy, seedy, damaged, ill-famed, disreputableness, discreditable, infamous, reputable



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