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Roughness   Listen
noun
Roughness  n.  The quality or state of being rough.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Roughness" Quotes from Famous Books



... knows. People who differ from him will respect him, because he acts up to his principles. When they are in difficulty or trouble, they will go and ask his advice, just because they know they will get an honest answer. They will overlook a little roughness in him; they will excuse his speaking unpleasant truths: because they can trust him, even ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... extensive sale, and its popularity was increased by the appearance of the third volume, containing various imitations of the old ballad by Mr. Scott, in which the feelings and character of antiquity were faithfully preserved, while the language and expression were free from the roughness of obsolete forms. The copyright of the second edition was sold to the Messrs. Longman for L500, but the great extent of the sale made the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... relieved them by sending corn from Katana in small fishing-smacks and boats, which, chiefly in stormy weather, stole in through the triremes of the barbarians when they were scattered by the roughness of the sea. Mago and Hiketes, perceiving this, determined to take Katana, from which place the besieged drew their supplies, and they sailed from Syracuse with the best of their troops. The Corinthian Neon, the General in command of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... Monitor, was not one of this party. Churchill did not confine his criticisms to his professional activities, but had a disposition to carry them into private life, injecting roughness into social intercourse, which ought to be smooth and easy. Therefore, somewhat to his own surprise, which ought not to have been the case, he had not become a member of this family group, and had much to say about the "frivolous ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... has its root in the mind's craving for totality. It is Nature seen as a whole; all the characteristics and prerequisites of it come back to this,—such as roughness, wildness, ruin, obscurity, the gloom of night or of storm; whatever the outward discrepancy, wherever the effect is produced, it is because in some way there is a gain in completeness. On this condition everything is welcome,—without it, nothing. Thus, a broken, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... another full-length marble Madonna of Nino, representing with great grace the mother offering a rose to the child, who takes it in childish fashion, and so prettily, that one may say that Nino had made some steps to subduing the roughness of the stone, and endowing it with the attributes of living flesh. The figure is between a St John and a St Peter in marble, the head of the latter being a portrait of Andrea. Nino also made two marble statues for an altar of S. Caterina ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... weak man might stay his faltering, tottering steps upon some strong staff, or might lean upon the outstretched arm of a friend, so we, conscious of our weakness, aware of our faltering feet, and realising the roughness of the road, and the smallness of our strength, may lay the whole weight of ourselves upon ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... pale to the lips and breathless, for the storm of sobbing which he thought would come, but though she put up her shaking hands to hide her face and the crimson patches left by the roughness of his kisses, she did not shed a tear. She only said over and over again in a broken-hearted little whisper, "Oh, ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres

... from some of the circus men accounts of the roughness and brutality of the miners, or at least of a certain class of them, for some were quiet and peaceable men, and he knew that there was no extreme of which they were not capable. Life is sweet, and to a boy of sixteen, in good health and strength, it is especially dear. Suppose he should lose his ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.

... remembered, however, that although harm in the forge may frequently arise from culpable roughness or carelessness, such is not necessarily always the case, and that quite as much injury may result from careful and conscientious workmanship when it is unfortunate enough to be based upon principles wrong in themselves to ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... like a bird's was too painful, recalling as it did the bright Stella of yesterday. Her hair was roughened like the feathers of a sick bird. Lady O'Gara, her hand passing softly over it, had felt the roughness with a pang. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... comfortable modes of friendship; but Archie explained that on such an occasion as this there need be no fear on that head; he and his brother were going away together, and there was a certain feeling of jollity about the trip which would divest Sir Hugh of his roughness. "And besides," said Archie, "as you will be there to see me off; he'll know that you're not going to stay yourself." Convinced by this, Doodles consented to walk ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... ceases, at its base; but now that the volute is developing, I am enabled to complete the line, which brings the whole to its actual junction with the mainspring of conception. This, in a very great state of roughness, I show at an angle (fig. 23), and I reverse the sides, cutting the other in the same manner. It is necessary to have the wood firmly cramped to the bench ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... elderly lady and I had the conversation to ourselves. She complained frequently of her poor bonnet, which, from its extraordinary elevation (having to all appearance antiquity to boast of) was frequently forced in contact with the top of the carriage by the roughness of the pavement. I told her, I had heard that the bonnets at Paris had been much reduced in point of height, and that perhaps something between the French and English fashions would in time be generally worn. But although she had to complain of the inconvenience arising ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard

... angrily, and Lionel recoiled, deeming that roughness and anger aimed at himself. He sank into a chair, his knees loosened by his sudden fear. So it seemed that he had had more than cause for his apprehensions. This brother of his who boasted such affection for him was not equal to ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... is going to school regularly," the other continued, "he will, I think, soon lose this roughness of speech; and you can see that he is anxious to learn, ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... are ready to finish our panel. Take the grounders, according to the size required, always using the biggest possible. Keep the tool well pressed down, and shave away the roughness of the ground, giving the tool a slight sideway motion as well as a forward one. Work right up to the leaves, etc., which, if cut deep enough, should allow the chips to come away freely, leaving a clear line of intersection; if it does not, then the upright sides must be cut down until ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack

... objects had any influence upon them, except in this one particular, namely, if I saw them in a neat, well furnished room, there was a neatness and polish in their form and motions; and, on the contrary, if I was in an unfinished, rough apartment, there was a corresponding rudeness and roughness in my aerial visitors. A corresponding difference was visible when I saw them in the woods or in the meadows, upon the water or upon the ground, in the air ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... which must be remembered in connection with the conception of matter is this, that the qualities of all the mahabhutas are inherent in the parama@nus. The special characteristics of roughness (which naturally belongs to earth), viscousness (which naturally belongs to water), heat (belonging to fire), movableness (belonging to wind), combine together to form each of the elements; the difference between the different elements ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... luxurious and extravagant, he took a revengeful pleasure in having his shoes halfsoled a second time, and in getting the last wear out of a broken collar. He had first been interested in Thea Kronborg because of her bluntness, her country roughness, and her manifest carefulness about money. The mention of Harsanyi's name always made him pull a wry face. For the first time Thea had a friend who, in his own cool and guarded way, liked her for whatever was least ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... fatherland, every place adheres to its own fashion, and carries out, even to the last, its own characteristic peculiarities: exactly the same thing holds good of the universities. In Jena and Halle roughness had been carried to the highest pitch: bodily strength, skill in fighting, the wildest self-help, was there the order of the day; and such a state of affairs can only be maintained and propagated ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... sorry to get rid of this load," Hector said. "It is not the weight but the roughness of the poles. My hands are quite ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... to fill your life by thoughts of God first and then of others, instead of filling it with purely selfish joys. You are going to walk up the road of life, my child, with duty to guide you over the roughnesses and hard stones that will bestrew your path: and every roughness which is surmounted, every hardship which is endured, every sacrifice of self which is offered up to One who made the greatest possible sacrifice for us all, will leave you happier than before . . . happier in God's way, the ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... Skin friction is that part of the drift due to the friction of the air with roughness upon the surface of ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber

... glittering and round and black as ink. After a time the mouth opened in a silent snarl, showing great white fangs and recurved simitars of teeth. The head was snow white, leperous in its scabby, scaly roughness, with here and there a patch of what looked like greenish fungus. From the rounded body trailed a short, unnatural, sickening growth of—feathers. Old and evil and very wise the Feathered Serpent seemed as his forked tongue ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... and hard she struggled, and tears often fell; but after each new trial, brighter shone her magic flower, and sweeter grew its breath, while the spirits lost still more their power to tempt her. Meanwhile, green, flowering vines crept up the high, dark wall, and hid its roughness from her sight; and over these she watched most tenderly, for soon, wherever green leaves and flowers bloomed, the wall beneath grew weak, and fell apart. Thus little Annie worked and hoped, till one by one the evil spirits fled away, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... he said, with brutal roughness. "And you'll grow no mushrooms! And let that be understood once for all! You've got to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... breathed upon by the prayer and lighted by the eye of family love, depend upon it that far from the ungentlest is that, whose presence has brought to rude and rough natures the putting off of their roughness, and the recognising of the sweet faculty of compassion. Happy is that desolation, even in the last hour, which can awaken the heaven-like eagerness to be to the dying one a minister from his far-off home! A man might be happy so to die, that he might light ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... across the table, and in that posture lay as one dead. Some one dragging at my arm, with very little tenderness, awoke me. I was in the midst of a dream of the schooner having been boarded by a party of French privateersmen, with Tassard at their head, and the roughness with which I was aroused was exactly calculated to extend into my waking the horror and grief of ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... something to you, Duffer," she murmured; and the roughness of the way excused me for ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... on the hinder feet and the extremity of the folded wings, she rises proudly to a vertical position, holding the bee facing her by her four anterior claws. In order to get the bee into the proper position for the final stroke, she swings the poor creature round and back again with the careless roughness of a child dandling a doll. Her pose is magnificent, solidly based upon her sustaining tripod, the two posterior thighs and the end of the wings, she flexes the abdomen forwards and upwards, and, as before, stings the bee in the upper part of the thorax. ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... poem is an imitation of what was the rude dialect of some parts of Pike County, Indiana. One must not be too critical of the roughness and the apparent irreverence of some of the lines, for the sentiment is a pleasing one. An ignorant man who believes in "God and the angels" may be forgiven for the crudity of his ideas, and the mistakes he makes in bringing ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... gifts to the needs of the nation in their times. Hopkinson and Joel Barlow lightened the woes of the Revolution by the touch of nature that makes the whole world grin. Seba Smith relieved the Yankee sense of tension under the impact of Jacksonian roughness, by tickling its ribs with a quill. Lieutenant Derby turned the searchlight of fun on the stiff formalities of army posts, on the raw conditions of alkali journalism and on the solemn humbugs of frontier politics. James Russell Lowell used dialect for dynamite to blow the front off ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... smiled now. Miss White thought she was grieving over her stepmother's death; and Elizabeth said, pityingly, "I didn't realize she was so fond of her." Perhaps Nannie did not realize it herself until she began to miss her stepmother's roughness, her arrogant generosity, her temper,—to miss, even, the mere violence of her presence; then she began to grieve softly to herself. "Oh, Mamma, I wish you hadn't died," she used to say, over and over, as she lay awake in the ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... stream of hurrying men, who, seeing that he was a stranger and alone, jostled him with little ceremony. He had too much wit and perhaps too much self-respect, to rouse a street brawl on his own behalf, and when any one ran against him with unnecessary roughness he contented himself with stiffening his back and holding his own in passive resistance. He had reached his full strength and was a match for many little Greeks, yet the annoyance was distasteful to him, and he was glad to find himself pushed into a narrow lane between high walls ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... said, "surely this quarrel might be arranged without fighting. Monsieur de Fontaine addressed my principal, doubtless under a misapprehension, with some roughness, which was not unnaturally resented. If Monsieur de Fontaine will express his regret, which he certainly could do without loss of dignity, for the manner in which he spoke; my principal would, I am sure, gladly accept ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty

... me ridiculous. But one never outlives all one's contemporaries; one may assort with them. Few Englishmen, too, I have observed, can bear solitude without being hurt by it. Our climate makes us capricious, and we must rub off our roughness and humours against one another. We have, too, an always increasing resource, which is, that though we go not to the young, they must come to us: younger usurpers tread on their heels, as they did on ours, and revenge us that have been deposed. They may retain their titles, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... hatchet, and there results a nose; another such cut with a hatchet, and there materialises a pair of lips; two thrusts with a drill, and there issues a pair of eyes. Lastly, scorning to plane down the roughness, she sends out that person into the world, saying: "There is another live creature." Sobakevitch was just such a ragged, curiously put together figure—though the above model would seem to have been followed more in his upper portion than in his lower. One result ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... did nothing formally to press his suit. Indeed, his occasional air of gentle diffidence puzzled and amused her. She had a queer sense, when she beheld him so, that she liked it in him less than some of his old uncouthness, and only a trifle better than such roughness of the heart as that passage with the Chinese waiter. This new attitude was loose in the back, tight across the shoulders, short in the seams—it was not made to fit Bertram Chester. When he launched out into rudimentary art criticism, stringing together ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... and they can't do much at long range, and they won't get more than one shot close to us." At that moment the men in the British boat fired a volley, after the manner which was in vogue with British troops at that day. The two boats were not a hundred yards apart, but the roughness of the water, on which the row boat bobbed about like a ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston

... knew would delight the company. Reformer as Mrs. Lee was, and a little alarmed at the roughness of Ratcliffe's treatment, she could not blame the Prairie Giant, as she ought, who, after knocking poor French down, rolled him over and ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... in the field (piling stones on a dyke), and he gives it to his companion to choose whether he will be with him or against him. It is a pity, perhaps, to have represented him as having begun life as a blacksmith, for one grudges him the advantage of so logical a reason for his roughness and hardness. ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... very crude and awkward, being formed of limbs of trees of different sizes, jointed with wooden pegs. But it was a substantial body and not likely to break or wear out, and when it was dressed the clothes covered much of its roughness. The head of Jack Pumpkinhead was, as you have guessed, a ripe pumpkin, with the eyes, nose and mouth carved upon one side. The pumpkin was stuck on Jack's wooden neck and was liable to get turned sidewise or backward and then he would ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... on so smoothly and to think of the roughness of the suitors' lives and deaths; to see all that full dress and ceremony and to think of the waste, and want, and beggared misery it represented; to consider that while the sickness of hope deferred was raging in so many hearts this polite show went calmly on from day to day, and year ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... with the roughness of the way, the start the rustlers had, their fresher horses and the fact that Del Pinzo and his crowd were more familiar with the trail than were the boy ranchers. So though our heroes rode on as fast as they could go with comparative ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker

... of firemen as of the first importance in the organization of a fire brigade, Mr. Braidwood gave a large share of attention to the improvement of fire-engines and their kindred appliances. While in Edinburgh, where the steepness of many of the streets, and the roughness of the pavements in the older parts of the town prevented the rapid and easy movement of heavy engines, he recommended and adopted a lighter description, but in London he recognised the necessity for greater ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood

... Here he was joined by two barefooted regiments that had come down from the north with the refugees, but they were too exhausted to be of much value for fighting. Altogether they numbered about 7,000, while the pursuing Bulgarians were at least 30,000 strong. At Resen, where the roughness of the country enabled them to make some resistance, they fought the last battle, or skirmish rather, that was to take place between the Serbians and the invaders, then retired down along the eastern shore of Lake Prespa and so over ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... themselves in male and female; undoubtedly the male is more frequently a sadist than is the female. Though the majority of women may thrill in the strength and power of the lover, there are relatively few American women who will tolerate real roughness or cruelty. As a matter of fact the basic feelings in sex love, aside from the sexual urge itself, are tenderness and admiration. Naturally men desire to protect, and this becomes part of their tenderness; they admire ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... steal away his adopted daughter, and the various scrapes into which his proteges had fallen under his guidance. He has, moreover, pet theories of his own on the phenomena of the Nile, the cause of the roughness of the Ionian Sea, and various other matters, in which he indoctrinates Cnemon par parenthese: he is an enthusiastic admirer and constant quoter of Homer, whose Egyptian birth (at Thebes the hundred-gated) he maintains with all the zeal of a Highlander defending the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... drop into the ling, but he did not. If the men were following him, it would take them half an hour to reach the spot he occupied and, if necessary, the roughness of the ground would enable him to reach the edge of the moor without their seeing which way he went. Besides, since he would be visible as long as he stood up, he could find out whether they were looking for him or ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... said, had the clue to his discovery, if he did not already know where to place his hand on him. When therefore, Rolf, feeling that he might have been too abrupt and uncourteous in the way he had addressed him, apologised for his roughness, the priest answered blandly— ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... must be pleased, sir, to excuse any roughness or want of good manners and politeness on the part of my friend Yussuf; he is perhaps a little bit jealous of the good fortune of one who has been regarded as ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin

... studied complaisance approaching to servility; who may think it better to be robbed openly than cheated civilly, will be apt to give the preference to the Tartar character. Yet those Tartars of distinction, who fill some of the higher situations in the state, soon lose their native roughness and are scarcely distinguishable in their manners and demeanour from ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... coffee instead of something stronger. Among the accomplishments that he acquired at the Euclid House was the art of making delicious coffee, an art which bid fair to do him good service now. He set a very inviting looking table. A very coarse, but delightfully clean white cloth, hid the roughness and imperfections of the dry-goods box; and his stock of crockery, consisting of three cups and saucers, three large plates, and three pie plates, purchased at the auction rooms, were disposed of with all the skill which his native tact ...
— Three People • Pansy

... say that—lately?" asked Overton, earnestly, everything else forgotten for the moment in his strong desire for her recovery. "Who said it—Miss Slocum? Well, she seems like a sensible woman, and I hope to God she is right about this! Don't mind my roughness just now. I was too quick, maybe; but spies around a new gold mine or field are given pretty harsh treatment up here sometimes; and you were liable ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan

... house. It was better thus. Conceived in a manner which had then its distinction and its value, but which seems to-day banal and outlandish, having lost little by little its large frame of gardens, cramped now between the walls of the tall buildings, Philippe Dechartre's little house, by the roughness of its stones, by the naive heaviness of its windows, by the simplicity of the roof, which the architect's widow had caused to be covered with little expense, by all the lucky accidents of the unfinished and unpremeditated, corrected the lack of grace of ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... drawn away from it by an engagement at another place. I had, for a part of the evening, been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an observation now and then, which he received very civilly; so that I was satisfied that though there was a roughness in his manner, there was no ill-nature in his disposition. Davies followed me to the door, and when I complained to him a little of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly took upon him to console me by saying, 'Don't be uneasy. I can ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... (with a more tender intensity). We're seven years without roughness or growing weary; seven years so sweet and shining, the gods would be hard set to give us seven days the like of them. It's for that we're going to Emain, where there'll be a rest forever, or a place for forgetting, in great crowds ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... forwards evidently did not relish this state of things; they had expected an easy win, and began to show their disappointment in the increased roughness of ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... Beau Twain, called "the Scholar." He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. And he could imitate anybody's hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head off to see it. He had infinite sport with his talent. But by and by he took a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness of the work spoiled his hand. Still, he enjoyed life all the time he was in the stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, was some forty-two years. In fact, he died in harness. During all those long years he gave ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... power. On this point I would remind you of certain aphorisms in the marriage catechism from which you will see that you are violating its most sacred precepts. Whether a woman yields, or does not yield, this institution of twin beds gives to marriage such an element of roughness and nakedness that the most chaste wife and the most intelligent husband ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... quantities, we can have recourse to a common measure, which may decide the question with the utmost exactness; and this, I take it, is what gives mathematical knowledge a greater certainty than any other. But in things whose excess is not judged by greater or smaller, as smoothness and roughness, hardness and softness, darkness and light, the shades of colors, all these are very easily distinguished when the difference is any way considerable, but not when it is minute, for want of some common measures, which perhaps may never come to be discovered. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... it was all so simple and familiar to him; but when he turned to look at Belle, she was white and ill. "Let's go home, Jim," she whispered. He looked at her in some surprise; then slowly it dawned on him—she had never before seen the roughness of men fighting. To him it was no more than the heavy sport of the football field. To her it was brutality unloosed; it was shocking, disgusting, next to murder. With mingled feelings of regret, amusement, and surprise he said, "Dear heart, you take it all too seriously." ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... agitated, opened a window; then she threw water into Samuel Brohl's face, rubbed his temples with a vivacity that was not altogether exempt from roughness, and made ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... after some old, old model; it stood as quietly in the green solitude of trees and rocks, as if it and they had grown up together. It was almost so. The walls were of native greystone in its natural roughness; all over the front and one angle the American ivy climbed and waved, mounting to the tower; while at the back, the closer clinging Irish ivy covered the little "apse," and creeping round the corner, was advancing to the windows, and promising to case the first one in a loving frame of its ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... manage him. I felt my advantage at once. His supple nature was one which yielded to roughness far more readily than to entreaty. He flushed with shame, and his eyes filled with tears. But MacCoy saw my advantage also, and was determined that ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... sympathises with him. In common with every child, he delights in the discovery of his powers. He wishes for more victories, and goes in quest of more things about which to tell her. As his faculties unfold she adds quality after quality to his list: progressing from hardness and softness to roughness and smoothness, from colour to polish, from simple bodies to composite ones—thus constantly complicating the problem as he gains competence, constantly taxing his attention and memory to a greater extent, constantly maintaining ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... youth, with his majesty's permission, which being granted, he caused the boy to be plunged several times in the sea and then drawn up into the ship, after which the youth retired to a corner and remained perfectly quiet. The king inquired why the lad had been subjected to such roughness, to which the sage replied: "At first he had never experienced the danger of being drowned, neither had he known the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... says of this pamphlets "Common enough ideas, expressed in a style only remarkable for its 'Italianisms,' but becoming singularly firm and precise every time the author expresses his military views. Under an apparent roughness, we find in it a rare circumspection, leaving no hold on the writer, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... world than their geography books told them. When any one died, a strand in the Life hanging above the town broke and flapped in the wind, growing more and more frayed with the passing of time, until after a year or so its tatters were noticeable only as a sort of roughness upon the pattern. When a child was born, a thin tentacle from the central mass of strands reached out and fastened itself upon him, dragging out his desire year by year until the strand was thick and strong and woven in securely among the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the refined and slightly artificial beauty of his style, and his persistently genial and sympathetic attitude have begun to pall upon readers who demand a more nervous and accented kind of writing. It is felt that a little roughness, a little harshness, even, would give relief to his pictures of life. There is, for instance, something a little irritating in the old-fashioned courtliness of his manner toward women; and one reads with a certain impatience smoothly punctuated ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... skilful with hurts, but he was using such unnecessary roughness in this case as set the plucky little chap to sobbing, and, just as Johnnie entered the room, got him heavy-handed punishment for it. It was an unfortunate time to bring up the question of Deanie; yet it must be settled ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... having been so little shot at, with an ordinary amount of care the hunter can ride to within shooting distance of the animal he would fain lay low. Should they take fright and be off, we found to gallop after them was not much use, owing to the roughness of the veldt and the smallness of the ponies. Occasionally we had to pursue a wounded animal, and one day we had an exciting chase after a wildebeeste, the most difficult of all bucks to kill, as their vitality, unless absolutely shot through the heart, is marvellous. When we at ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... at last, his voice unduly harsh, as if to cover emotion with its roughness, and they noticed that he did not ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... us an excellent opportunity of comparing the peasants of the United States with those of England, and of judging the average degree of comfort enjoyed by each. I believe Ohio gives as fair a specimen as any part of the union; if they have the roughness and inconveniences of a new state to contend with, they have higher wages and cheaper provisions; if I err in supposing it a mean state in point of comfort, it certainly is not in taking too ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... lines; his pronunciation of the words was not incorrect, and when he spoke, as I heard him on sundry subsequent occasions, his language, though emphasised rather, as it seemed, than marred by a certain roughness of Lancashire accent, was not that of an uncultivated man. Yes! Oastler, the King of Lancashire as the people liked to call him, was certainly a man of power, and an advocate whom few platform orators would have cared to meet ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... with lettering, a bark that has no roughness and a newspaper all this together makes printing and this is not disappointing, it is so singular ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... forbearance which chivalry bids us show to the weak and ailing. She made allowances for him; but she did more than that for him: she did not let him see that she made allowances. Moreover, she recognized amidst all his roughness a certain kind of sympathy which she could not resent, because it was not aggressive. For to some natures the expression of sympathy is an irritation; to be sympathized with means to be pitied, and to be pitied means to be looked down upon. She was sorry for him, but she would not have told him ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden

... Cossacks formed a line across the street, from wall to wall, and swept everybody before it into stores, courtyards, and other openings. Even this did not do much good, for as soon as the horsemen passed, the mob fell in behind and cheered the Cossacks. There was no roughness, but at the same time it was easy to see that the crowd did not yet know to what extent the army could ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,

... evangelist with harsh words and startling roughness of expression, declare the awful, eternal disaster that would befall every soul that did not accept the peculiar brand of salvation which he and his church alone offered. He listened to the long arguments planned to prove the rightness, and therefore righteousness, of ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... The roughness of the water under the high, steady wind might well cause the men to hesitate over the other plan that had been spoken of—that of swimming the stream and bearing the women and children with them. The project of constructing a raft upon which to float them over was open to the fatal ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis

... precisely the same as this or very similar is Hesiod's[261] very ancient definition of progress in virtue, namely, that the road is no longer very steep or arduous, but easy and smooth and level, its roughness being toned down by exercise, and casting the bright light of philosophy on doubt and error and regrets, such as trouble those who give themselves to philosophy at the outset, like people who leave a land they know, and do not yet descry ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... and there was Ailwin, bent and aged indeed by the troubles, but well, and rejoiced to see me once more, and that I and Hertha were so happily together. But I had to ask his pardon for my roughness to him ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... Drummond, was constituted of different materials. Courteous, honourable, and high-minded, like his brother, he added to those attributes of the gentleman a strong capacity for military affairs, to which he had applied himself from his earliest youth. Intrepid and resolute, the roughness of the soldier was softened in this fine martial character by an elegance and ease of manner which sprang from a kind and gentle temper. The energy of Lord John Drummond's mind was shown by the enlistment of the Scottish Legion, under the protection ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... to him the first Christmas after we was married, before he got to developing rough. I been through his things now entire. I got 'em all with me. If there's such a thing as a recordin' angel, you'll go down on the book. Will was a bad lot, but he's done with it now, dearie. I never seen the roughness crop up in a man so sudden the way it did in Will. You can imagine, dearie, when the men in the troupe horsewhipped him one night for the way he lit in on me one night in drink. That was the night he quit. O Gawd! maybe I don't look it, dearie, but ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... he hurried to the front door to welcome the visitor and drew him into the room with friendly roughness. ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... privation was the increasing roughness of the sea. It was a blithesome wind, rollicking across a sparkling carpet of blue, with the little white clouds in flocks above, like lambs at play. But the raft was more and more tossed about and the waves gushed over it like foam ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... reports of the troop commanders of the Tenth Cavalry bring out a few more particulars which serve to give us a more vivid conception of this moving line. The entire cavalry division advanced together, and notwithstanding the roughness of the ground, Major Norvell assures us the line was pretty well preserved. Troops A, B, E and I were in the First Squadron, which was in the lead; Troops C, F and G were in the second line; Troop D made its advance with the infantry off to the left. We ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... there is a profound knowledge of the means to be employed and a great economy in their use, and there is no approach to indiscriminate or meaningless loading. "Things are where they are for a purpose," and if the surface of a picture is rough in any place it is because just that degree of roughness was necessary to attain the desired effect. He could make mere paint express light as few artists have been able to do—"The Shepherdess" is flooded with it—and he could do this without any sacrifice of the sense of substance in the things on which ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox

... cried the chestnut woman, "your house is the worst place she can go to—let her come to my cellar—the poorest cellar in these days is safer than the grandest palace." So saying, she seized the nun with honest roughness, and hurried her away. As soon as she was gone, the children ran different ways, each to collect some favourite thing, which they thought they could not leave behind. Victoire alone stood motionless beside Mad. de Fleury; her whole thoughts absorbed by the fear that her benefactress ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... hoot in all the chimneys of the city; it swept about the wine-shop, filling the room with eddies; the chill and gritty touch of it passed between the nearest clothes and the bare flesh; and the two gentlemen at the far table kept their mantles loose about their shoulders. The roughness of these outer hulls, for they were plain travellers' cloaks that had seen service, set the greater mark of richness on what showed below of their laced clothes; for the one was in scarlet and the other in violet and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... that Dr. Duchesne was setting a broken bone in the settlement, and after the operation was over, had strolled into the Palmetto Saloon. He was an old army surgeon, much respected and loved in the district, although perhaps a little feared for the honest roughness and military precision of his speech. After he had exchanged salutations with the miners in his usual hearty fashion, and accepted their invitation to drink, Cy Parker, with a certain affected carelessness ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... plain. He should acquit the innocent man. But he dare not do so immediately. That howling mob of Jews and those odious priests and Sadducees of the council are determined on the death of their victim. Pilate has made himself well hated by the roughness of his government. Nothing would please the Jews and their leaders better than to have some chance of impeaching him before his jealous master at Rome, on the charge of leniency to treason. Pilate quails before the terrible possibility. In face of it he simply ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... little alarmed at her daughter's demure face: "Nan, darling, you know I am as fond of Dick as possible; but I cannot help being pleased with my new nephew, can I? And I must say I think Harry is very nice, in spite of his roughness." But here Phillis, who had been unaccountably silent, ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... course, dined with the other officers; and he found little difference here. Ten sat down, including the principal medical officer and a captain—the head of the station intelligence department, Major Wingate, being at present at Wady Halfa. Except for the roughness of the surroundings, it was like a regimental mess, and the presence of the General commanding in no way acted as ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty

... giant said this with a degree of roughness and decision that at any other time would have made the obstinate old grandfather refuse point blank; but as there was every probability of having to flee for his life ere the break of another day, and as his old ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... sore fingers rebelled against the roughness of husks, he began work, touching the frosty ears gingerly; then as he warmed to the task, stopping at nothing. The frost, dense, all-covering, shook from the stalks as he moved, coloring the rusty blue of his overalls ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... see what it was that had startled her. No sooner did she perceive them than she started up, and, without staying to put on her shoes or tie up her hair, seized her bundle, and took to flight full of alarm, but she had not run six yards when her delicate feet, unable to bear the roughness of the stones, failed her, and she fell ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... Their object, it turned out, was to examine the four walls and the floor very minutely, to see if the prisoners were making any holes or planning any attempt to escape. They spent a full half an hour in routing out the prisoners and searching high and low with their lanterns, using great roughness and the most abominable talk. Tristram watched their movements for some time, but at length curled himself up in his corner, which had already been explored. He was closing his eyes, and putting a finger in each ear to ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... spread. Settlers, who delighted in their controversies, or dreaded their censure, subscribed to them all. With a few honorable exceptions they rivalled each other in recklessness of statement and roughness of diction. No lover of truth will accept their testimony, or transmit their praises. They were often what they were denominated by the chief ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... rather adorns and preserves, than destroys, the metal. It would be a profanation to touch with a tool the stones which construct the sacred altar of peace. I would not violate with modern polish the ingenuous and noble roughness of these truly Constitutional materials. Above all things, I was resolved not to be guilty of tampering, the odious vice of restless and unstable minds. I put my foot in the tracks of our forefathers, where I can neither wander nor stumble. Determining to fix articles of peace, I was ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke

... off into one of the gray notches between the tumbled streams of lava. These streams were about thirty feet high, a rotting mass of splintered lava, rougher than any other kind of roughness in the world. At the apex of the notch, where two streams met, a narrow gully wound and ascended. Gale caught sight of the dim, pale shadow of a one-time trail. Near at hand it was invisible; he had to look far ahead to catch the faint tracery. Yaqui led Diablo into it, and then ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... was talking to her in loud rallying tones, asking questions in German and answering them herself. Miriam glanced round at her face. It was crimson and quivering with laughter. The strong laughter and her strong features seemed to hide the peculiar roughness of her skin and coarseness of her hair. They made the round of one of the long tables. When they were on the far side Gertrude said, "I think you'll see a friend ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson

... good rowing continuing, by burnt lands, and banks over which many cascades tumbled. Monday, the last day's advance in the boats was made, the water becoming too swift to be stemmed, This day Cary got the second ducking of the trip—a very good record in view of the roughness of the work and the smallness of the boats. During this and the day previous an otter, a crow and a robin were seen. As a rule the river was almost entirely deserted by ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley

... to me these things were not the raw scene they were to her. It has been a very sad time for her. You see, there is not much natural softness in her, and she was driven into roughness and impatience when he worried her over racing details and other things. And then she was hurt at his preferring to have me with him. It has been very good and generous in her not to have ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... edge and, looking over, could see that the jagged roughness of the wall made the descent, though difficult, not exceptionally hazardous. Below them, not more than twenty feet, a wide ledge jutted out, and beyond that they could see other similar ledges and crevices ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... the baseball season of America, and I deplored an element of roughness and loaferism that attached itself to the greatest game of our country. One of the national events of this season of that year was a proposal to remove the battle-flag of the late war. Good sense prevailed, and the controversy was ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... not travelling over a featureless plain. It is passing through streets which have a determined position and direction and which are accurately represented on the ordnance map. I think, Jervis, that, in spite of the apparent roughness of the method, if you make your observations carefully, we shall have no trouble in narrowing down the inquiry to a quite small area. If we get the chance, ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman

... over her arm, stood looking at the strange sights, admiring the tall houses and the terraces of the cafes. She was pink and white, without the hard coppery roughness of the country women. Her features had the delicacy of an aristocratic and well cared for nun, the pale texture of milk and roses, lightened by the luminous reflection of her teeth and the timid glow of her eyes, under a ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... hoarse grunts from time to time, sufficient, however, to encourage the two prisoners to think that they might venture upon an observation or two in Boer-Dutch, both imitating their captors' tones and roughness as far as they could. But they did not venture upon much, and carefully avoided whispers as being likely to ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn

... Turks. The fiery wines of Sicily and the Greek islands are freely indulged in, and tipsy cavaliers, caracoling on the hacks of Pera and Galata, are not infrequent accessories, aggravating the danger and discomfort to the stranger of the return in carriage or on horseback. The roughness of the road, its heat and dust, are bad enough; but to aggravate these discomforts you have a crowd of hacks and a swarm of cavaliers pursuing the same route, with all the collisions inevitable from unskillful coachmen and tipsy riders. It is a long, dreary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... it seemed to be pleasant enough, but scarcely were we outside of the breakwater before the steamer began to roll and pitch like an awkward mule under the tickling application of the spur. Too much accustomed to the roughness of the sea to heed this, we were nevertheless very sorry for these exposed deck-passengers, few of whom escaped seasickness. Crowded together as they were during the copious rainfall, their sufferings that afternoon and night ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... subsistence; a circle of helpless children raise to him the supplicating hand for food. He may be driven to the desperate act by the high mandate of imperative necessity. The mild features of the husband and father may intermingle with those of the robber and soften the roughness of the shade. But the robber of character plunders that which "not enricheth him," though it makes his neighbor "poor indeed." The man who at the midnight hour consumes his neighbor's dwelling does him an injury which perhaps is ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... beating of the tom-tom sounded louder and nearer. They walked a mile or so, then, as Hippolyte suggested, at a small half-abandoned plantation, they found mules. Once mounted, the negro set off at breakneck speed, caring nothing about the roughness of the road, all the more treacherous because of the dead-black of the shadows against the vivid green-silver patches where the tropical moonlight ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... he describe his favorite authors, Donne or Sir Philip Sidney, and call their most crabbed passages delicious! He tried them on his palate, as epicures taste olives, and his observations had a smack in them, like a roughness on the tongue. With what discrimination he hinted a defect in what he admired most,—as in saying the display of the sumptuous banquet, in "Paradise Regained," was not in true keeping, as the simplest fare was ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... captain was a middle-sized, slightly-made young man, apparently not more than twenty-five years old. His face was oval, with a remarkably pleasing expression; his eye small and brilliant; and, notwithstanding the roughness of his outward attire, there was a degree of precision in the arrangement of his hair and whiskers, which proved that with him neatness was habitual. He had a worsted mitten on his left hand; the right, which held his pipe, was bare, and remarkably white and small. Perceiving the situation of the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... with Bobbie at the cabin door, and flung her aside very roughly indeed; if they had been playing, such roughness would have made Bobbie weep with tears of rage and pain. Now, though he flung her on to the edge of the hold, so that her knee and her elbow were grazed and bruised, ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit

... shew that we should not describe the Country in it's Fatigues, it's Roughness, or it's Meanest, take these Few Considerations. For, as no Writer whom I have read (but that excellent Frenchman FONTENEL,) has raised his Shepherds and Shepherdesses above the vulgar and common sort of Neat-herds and Ploughers, I am oblig'd to dwell a little ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney

... to it, till I seemed to be drawing it into my veins. It had no warmth, and as it entered my blood my heart grew colder, and my muscles more rigid. My fingers clutched the dagger-hilt till its jeweled roughness pressed painfully into my palm. All the strength of my strained powers seemed gathered in that grasp, and the more tightly I held the more vividly did the rock gleam and quiver with infernal life. The dead woman! The dead woman! What had I to do with her? Let her bones ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... the Glen noticed that the doctor's hair had turned grey, and that his manner had lost all its roughness. A feeling of secret gratitude filled their hearts, and they united in a conspiracy of attention. Annie Mitchell knitted a huge comforter in red and white, which the doctor wore in misery for one ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... his unrequited attachment by him as men keep a well-smoked pipe—for comfort's sake, and because it had grown dear in the using. It brought him happily through one Simla season. Hannasyde was not lovely. There was a crudity in his manners, and a roughness in the way in which he helped a lady on to her horse, that did not attract the other sex to him. Even if he had cast about for their favor, which he did not. He kept his wounded heart all to himself ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... quarrels, although he was much weaker than Antoine, he always got the better of the contest, beating the other with all the authority of a master. With regard to Ursule, a poor, puny, wan little creature, she was handled with equal roughness by both the boys. Indeed, until they were fifteen or sixteen, the three children fraternally beat each other without understanding their vague, mutual hatred, without realising how foreign they were to one another. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... streets meant the encounter of roughness and rudeness which would now be thought intolerable. There were no police to keep order: if a man wanted order he might fight for it. Fights, indeed, were common in the streets: the waggoners, the hackney coachmen, the men with the wheelbarrows, the porters who carried things, ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... man, leaning against a rock, and smoking his pipe in contemplative silence; his face bronzed with the sun and the roughness of many seasons, and his grey hairs not hidden by his long blue cap. Herbert saluted him, and, pointing to the phenomenon, requested an ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... completely, and we next hear of him in London in 1665, a nobleman's chaplain, setting the table in a roar by making fun of his former friends, "a mimical way of drolling upon the puritans." "He followed the town-life, haunted the best companies and, to polish himself from any pedantic roughness, he read and saw the plays with much care and more preparing than most of the auditory." In 1667 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Sheldon, a very mundane person indeed, made Parker his chaplain, and three years later Archdeacon of Canterbury. He reached many preferments, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... value of the habitual courtesies of the regular army is exceedingly apparent with these men: an officer of polished manners can wind them round his finger, while white soldiers seem rather to prefer a certain roughness. The demeanor of my men to each other is very courteous, and yet I see none of that sort of upstart conceit which is sometimes offensive among free negroes at the North, the dandy-barber strut. This is an agreeable surprise, for I feared that freedom ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... growth of Richelieu's power, and of the action he universally exercised upon French society, at the outcome from the moral licentiousness which Henry IV.'s example had encouraged in his court, and after a certain roughness, the fruit of long civil wars, a lesson was taught at Madame de Rambouillet's of modesty, grace, and lofty politeness, together with the art of forming good ideas and giving them good expression, sometimes ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Hutchison, on being allowed a portion of something else. The day of his arrival he was placed in a small court, leading to the private rooms of the governor, and after dinner was led by a thin cord into the room, where he received our salutations with some degree of roughness, but with perfect good-humour. On the least encouragement he laid his paws upon our shoulders, rubbed his head upon us, and his teeth and claws having been filed, there was no danger of tearing our clothes. He was kept in the above court for a week or two, and evinced no ferocity, except ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various

... surprise, and perhaps with indignation; though, after a time, those of our sex, at last, become reconciled, if not pleased with it, because there is a kind of military frankness interwoven with the military roughness. Our ladies, however (I mean those who have seen other Courts, or remember our other coteries), complain loudly of this alteration of address, and of this fashionable innovation; and pretend that our military, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... words and phrases to those particular uses. The stateliness and gravity of the Spaniards shows itself to perfection in the solemnity of their language; and the blunt, honest humour of the Germans sounds better in the roughness of the High-Dutch than it would ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... impression of the heathen Chinee at Bhamo was tremendously in his favour; in many ways even the coolies, or Chinese porters, struck me favourably, by their simple kit, blue tunic and shorts, and their sturdy limbs and absence of any roughness of manner. ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... seemed, from side to side of the lake. They could not see what lay beyond it. Janice expected the others would drop the sail and bring the ice boat to a halt. Some roughness in the ice, or perhaps a narrow opening, had caught the first driven flakes of snow here the night before. The snow had gathered rapidly when once a streak of it lay across the lake. Deeper and deeper the drift had grown until tons of the white crystals had been heaped here in ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... assuredly be, sir, if he be jolted and shaken along the Portsdown roads—yea, I question whether you would get him to Oakwood alive," said Brent, with naval roughness. ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... has just died,-a very remarkable person. He was a sailor, and more than [313] forty years ago he came from before the mast into the pulpit. He brought with him, I suppose, something of the roughness of his calling; for I remember hearing of his preaching in the neighborhood of New Bedford when I first went there, and of his inveighing against paid preachers as wretched hirelings, "rocked upon five feather-beds to hell." This, I was told, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... monsieur—he said it was, but that monsieur was somewhere out of town, and there was no surety that he would come. The other chair was for the Chevalier de la Darante, one of the oldest and best of our nobility, who pretends great roughness and barbarism, but is a kind and honourable gentleman, though odd. He was one of your judges, Robert; and though he condemned you, he said that you had some reason on your side. And I will show you how he stood for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... weapons, kept in a bag, and used for smiting a small ball over great expanses of country, but beyond these facts her knowledge stopped. Mrs. Rainham had set her to clean the clubs one day, but her father, appearing unexpectedly, had taken them from her hands with something like roughness. "No, by Jove!" he said. "You do a good many odd jobs in this house, but I'm hanged if you shall clean my golf sticks." Cecilia did not realize that the assumed roughness covered ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... good view of the extreme north-eastern promontory of the island, a tall cliff known as the Punta del Imperatore in honour of the great Emperor Charles the Fifth, beyond which visitors rarely penetrate owing to the roughness, or rather non-existence of roads, though the southern side of the island, which lies between this cape and the castle of Ischia, is fully as beautiful as ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan



Words linked to "Roughness" :   abrasiveness, corroding, huskiness, granularity, raggedness, graininess, pitting, tweediness, spininess, nubbiness, shagginess, smoothness, knot, bumpiness, erosion, hoarseness, indentation, burl, scratchiness, gruffness, slub, coarseness, disorderliness, scaliness, rough water, bristliness, corrosion, rowdyism, rough, intensification, crudeness, unpleasantness, harshness, storminess, rowdiness, disorder



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