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facetious
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  • "Maybe he's fishing," Dish Boggett said facetiously.†   (source)
  • His words sounded facetious, but his smile seemed sincere, not the lopsided one he wore when he thought he was being clever.†   (source)
  • B.C. was being facetious, but on the sitcoms I caught while going in and out of patients' rooms, I had so far seen a black but very British butler serving a black American family; an eccentric Englishman who was the neighbor to a rich black family on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; and a rich British widower with a pretty Brooklyn nanny.†   (source)
  • "You want to hide?" asked Conklin facetiously, turning the pages of a telephone notebook.†   (source)
  • But I think she's being facetious.†   (source)
  • We wondered, only a little facetiously, whether American men weren't used to having females tell them how to drive.†   (source)
  • By contrast, I was still very much feeling my oats, in every sense of that expression, and had to bring a facetious attitude not only to the whole idea of the editorial side of book publishing, which my fatigued eyes now saw plainly as lusterless drudgery, but to the style, customs and artifacts of the business world itself.†   (source)
  • JAMES [FACETIOUSLY]: Father stands up, that makes it a fact.†   (source)
  • Demina was facetiously patronizing.†   (source)
  • You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.   (source)
  • An oath or two, cat-calls, jeers and bits of facetious advice were given in reply.   (source)
  • For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball—better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest— laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong.   (source)
    facetious = humorous
  • Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.   (source)
  • There was a top-heavy, almost overpowering air of solemnity to the occasion, with not even a breath of the fugitive facetiousness that some deaths permit: the hush and the strained, miserable masks bespoke an awareness of real shock, real tragedy.†   (source)
  • To be sure, for a long time he made an extended joke out of it all, concocting all sorts of gags and stories about chiropractors and their shoddy craft that caused her to laugh despite herself; the general facetiousness of his attitude allowed her to decide that his objections were not to be taken too seriously.†   (source)
  • At the beginning—perhaps only because she recalled him bending over her, murmuring, "Let the doctor take care of everything"—she could not tell that those words had been spoken facetiously, and so she thought he was a doctor even later as with a kind of commanding gentleness he held her against his arm, whispering words of comfort and encouragement while they rode back to Yetta's in a taxi.†   (source)
  • Like most people, Sophie rarely remembered dreams for long in vivid or significant detail, but this dream was so violently, unequivocally and pleasurably erotic, so blasphemous and frightening, and so altogether memorable, that much later she was able to believe (with a touch of facetiousness which only the passage of time could permit) that it might have scared her away from thoughts of sex all by itself, quite aside from bad health and mortal despair ….†   (source)
  • …man who possessed so many literary references and allusions, both classical and modern, and who within the space of an hour could, with no gratuitous strain, weave together Lytton Strachey, Alice in Wonderland, Martin Luther's early celibacy, A Midsummer Night's Dream and the mating habits of the Sumatran orangutan into a little jewel box of a beguiling lecture which facetiously but with a serious overtone explored the intertwined nature of sexual voyeurism and exhibitionism.†   (source)
  • Being facetious is not being a very good father.†   (source)
  • She looked up to see the wisp of a self-mocking smile on his lips, and she realized—for the first time after these many hours in his mechanically impersonal presence, when any inquiry he might have made of her had strictly to do with stenography and translation—that his mildly facetious, rhetorical question was addressed at least partially to her.†   (source)
  • "Goober Haven" was far and away too facetious, and I abandoned all other changes on the nut motif, playing instead with names more cony, stately, dignified: "Five Elms" perhaps (I hoped the farm had five elms, or even one) or "Rosewood," or "Great Fields," or "Sophia," in tribute to my beloved dame.†   (source)
  • My cousin Jasper made good the loss; he was the son of my father's elder brother, to whom he referred more than once, only half facetiously, as "the Head of the Family"; he was in his fourth year and, the term before, had come within appreciable distance of getting his rowing blue; he was secretary of the Canning and president of the J.C.R.; a considerable person in college.†   (source)
  • Barnard managed to exclaim, with desperate facetiousness; but the guides soon showed that their less sinister intention was merely to link the party together in ordinary mountaineering fashion.†   (source)
  • "You mean that purple zebra!" shrieked Axia facetiously.†   (source)
  • "Fourth of July," Amory suggested facetiously.†   (source)
  • Ralph had usually treated it facetiously; but present circumstances proscribed the facetious.†   (source)
  • "Sulk at you?" said Mr. Glegg, in a tone of angry facetiousness.†   (source)
  • , "make one; that is the usual way, is it not?" and the king laughed facetiously.†   (source)
  • "I guess you don't know every one I know," Mr. Bantling rejoined facetiously.†   (source)
  • As there are no dromedaries at hand, the band facetiously plays "The Camels are coming."†   (source)
  • '—Which makes three,' observed Mr. Bumble, essaying a stroke of facetiousness.†   (source)
  • "What you doin here?" said Sambo, coming up to Tom, and poking him facetiously in the side.†   (source)
  • CHAPTER I I scarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth's credit.†   (source)
  • Philip thought this answer would cause the boy a certain awkwardness, but Venning was not to be turned from his facetiousness for so little.†   (source)
  • He winked facetiously.†   (source)
  • Their humour was a low facetiousness.†   (source)
  • One of the hunters, a tall, loose-jointed chap named Henderson, was going aft at the time from the steerage (the name the hunters facetiously gave their midships sleeping quarters) to the cabin.†   (source)
  • He was serious for a while—suddenly an irrepressible facetiousness broke through and he laughed, saying, "It's hopeless.†   (source)
  • He had also a considerable facetiousness, which he exercised impartially on the patients and on the students.†   (source)
  • They both had a vulgar facetiousness which tickled her simple sense of humour, and a certain coarseness of nature; but what took her perhaps was the blatant sexuality which was their most marked characteristic.†   (source)
  • Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a whale is an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever found that when narrating to them some specific example of this two-fold enormousness, they have significantly complimented me upon my facetiousness; when, I declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of being facetious than Moses, when he wrote the history of the plagues of Egypt.†   (source)
  • He is facetiously understood to entertain a passion for a lady at a cigar-shop in the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane and for her sake to have broken off a contract with another lady, to whom he had been engaged some years.†   (source)
  • We passed the scattered box-like cabins of the brickyard hands, and the long tenement-row facetiously called "The Ark," and were soon in the open country, and on the confines of the great plantations of other days.†   (source)
  • Muskrat Castle, as the house had been facetiously named by some waggish officer, stood in the open lake, at a distance of fully a quarter of a mile from the nearest shore.†   (source)
  • He kept him in his own room for the evening and saw him to bed, Raffles all the while amusing himself with the annoyance he was causing this decent and highly prosperous fellow-sinner, an amusement which he facetiously expressed as sympathy with his friend's pleasure in entertaining a man who had been serviceable to him, and who had not had all his earnings.†   (source)
  • 'What's the reason,' said Mr Squeers, deriving fresh facetiousness from the bottle; 'what's the reason of rheumatics?†   (source)
  • 'You had better be careful how you indulge in such jokes again,' said Nicholas, 'or you may find an allusion to pulling noses rather a dangerous reminder for the subject of your facetiousness.†   (source)
  • Rendered additionally witty by this applause, Sir Mulberry Hawk leered upon his friends most facetiously, and led Kate downstairs with an air of familiarity, which roused in her gentle breast such burning indignation, as she felt it almost impossible to repress.†   (source)
  • The jefe said with facetious brightness, 'A little blood never hurt anyone.†   (source)
  • The local population, who so far had made a point of masking their anxiety by facetious comments, now seemed tongue-tied and went their ways with gloomy faces.†   (source)
  • Some of these books were, on the face of it, frivolous and facetious; but many, on the other hand, were serious and prophetic, moral and hortatory.†   (source)
  • Buzzy had once written a sonnet that had been taken for Shakespeare's, and liked to make little facetious jokes with young ladies — I remember Susan Lushington "didn't know which way to look", she said, when he chaffed her about a husband —"I seemed to be sitting on a tripod and looking into the future", Buzzy said, having archly used the word husband when it should have been father —Buzzy lived chiefly in Egypt, and Mrs Hills —Anna her name was —lived mostly alone at Corby.†   (source)
  • The man in seat 6 was a noisy fellow, inclined to be facetious and boisterous, and Poirot asked the girl in a low voice if she would like to change seats with him.†   (source)
  • Mallinson enunciated the proposition a shade nervously; but Barnard, the American, chose to be heavily facetious.†   (source)
  • The concierge had lingered in the doorway for quite a while, holding the rats by their legs and keeping a sharp eye on the passers-by, on the off chance that the miscreants would give themselves away by grinning or by some facetious remark.†   (source)
  • It was a surprising association of men quite eminent in their professions who met once a month for an evening of ceremonious buffoonery; each had his sobriquet—Bridey was called "Brother Grandee"—and a specially designed jewel worn like an order of chivalry, symbolizing it; they had club buttons for their waistcoats and an elaborate ritual for the introduction of guests; after dinner a paper was read and facetious speeches were made.†   (source)
  • Here, discordantly, in Eights Week, came a rabble of womankind, some hundreds strong, twittering and fluttering over the cobbles and up the steps, sight-seeing and pleasure-seeking, drinking claret cup, eating cucumber sandwiches; pushed in punts about the river, herded in droves to the college barges; greeted in the Isis and in the Union by a sudden display of peculiar, facetious, wholly distressing Gilbert-and-Sullivan badinage, and by peculiar choral effects in the college chapels.†   (source)
  • STEPHEN [keeping his temper with difficulty] You are pleased to be facetious.†   (source)
  • "Settembrini," the Italian corrected him with particular verve, accompanied by a facetious bow.†   (source)
  • You are pleased to be facetious, Alfred.†   (source)
  • Instead, the crowd began sarcastically to cheer him on and showered him with facetious advice.†   (source)
  • She had caught something facetious in his eye and she changed the subject.†   (source)
  • We might have treated this subject in the genteel, or in the romantic, or in the facetious manner.†   (source)
  • 'You are facetious, sir,' said Nicholas, scornfully.†   (source)
  • But Esther was far from giving the proposal so facetious a reception.†   (source)
  • Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding.†   (source)
  • "That's happen one o' the symptims, John," said the facetious coachman.†   (source)
  • What did the man mean? and what was the use of saying facetious things at a time like this?†   (source)
  • He seemed to be in a facetious mood, and I expected some jeers were coming.†   (source)
  • 'Where is she?' said Mr. Bumble, whom the gin-and-water had rendered facetious.†   (source)
  • Ralph had usually treated it facetiously; but present circumstances proscribed the facetious.†   (source)
  • The discourse was resumed presently, but it went lame and halting, all possibility of impressiveness being at an end; for even the gravest sentiments were constantly being received with a smothered burst of unholy mirth, under cover of some remote pew-back, as if the poor parson had said a rarely facetious thing.†   (source)
  • As Rosemary returned the gaze the man dislodged the monocle, which went into hiding amid the facetious whiskers of his chest, and poured himself a glass of something from a bottle in his hand.†   (source)
  • With the passionate song of the bullets and the banshee shrieks of shells were mingled loud catcalls and bits of facetious advice concerning places of safety.†   (source)
  • There was an excuse for his remaining, for when the threshed rick drew near its final sheaves a little ratting was always done, and men unconnected with the threshing sometimes dropped in for that performance—sporting characters of all descriptions, gents with terriers and facetious pipes, roughs with sticks and stones.†   (source)
  • Bill seemed to have forgotten his forebodings of the previous night, and even waxed facetious with the dogs when, at midday, they overturned the sled on a bad piece of trail.†   (source)
  • This altogether admirable tradition rules the vaudeville stage, facetious illustrators, and syndicated newspaper humor, but out of actual life it passed forty years ago.†   (source)
  • And so in any event he would embellish all his facial expressions with the offer of a conditional, a provisional smile whose expectant subtlety would exonerate him from the charge of being a simpleton, if the remark addressed to him should turn out to have been facetious.†   (source)
  • There was no word assigned to any of them, but on the evening when Hurstwood was housing himself in the loft of the street-car barn, the leading comedian and star, feeling exceedingly facetious, said in a profound voice, which created a ripple of laughter: "Well, who are you?"†   (source)
  • He pointed out—writing in a foolish, facetious tone—that the perfection of mechanical appliances must ultimately supersede limbs; the perfection of chemical devices, digestion; that such organs as hair, external nose, teeth, ears, and chin were no longer essential parts of the human being, and that the tendency of natural selection would lie in the direction of their steady diminution through the coming ages.†   (source)
  • Everyone laughed at all this facetious erudition and looked now at Hans Castorp, who was also laughing and lifted his glass of vermouth to toast his "Virgil."†   (source)
  • Nicole refused her turn; then Rosemary rode the board neatly and conservatively, with facetious cheers from her admirers.†   (source)
  • …for seventeen psychiatric books from a German concern, a bill from Brentano's, a letter from Buffalo from his father, in a handwriting that year by year became more indecipherable; there was a card from Tommy Barban postmarked Fez and bearing a facetious communication; there were letters from doctors in Zurich, both in German; a disputed bill from a plasterer in Cannes; a bill from a furniture maker; a letter from the publisher of a medical journal in Baltimore, miscellaneous…†   (source)
  • He delivered one woman of twins (a source of humour to the facetious) and when she was told she burst into a long, shrill wail of misery.†   (source)
  • He was bored at the vicarage, and when on the last day his uncle put him the usual question in the usual facetious tone: "Well, are you glad to be going back to school?'†   (source)
  • Dick became facetious.†   (source)
  • The soldier went to sleep, but the others crowded round the big window in their pyjamas and night-shirts and, throwing remains of their sandwiches at the women who passed in the street below, shouted to them facetious remarks.†   (source)
  • Macalister began to talk of other things and Philip, while he was answering him, kept thinking that if the venture turned out well the stockbroker would be very facetious at his expense next time they met.†   (source)
  • With a facetious smile on his face, he was telling the ladies about last Wednesday's meeting of the Imperial Council, at which Sergey Kuzmich Vyazmitinov, the new military governor general of Petersburg, had received and read the then famous rescript of the Emperor Alexander from the army to Sergey Kuzmich, in which the Emperor said that he was receiving from all sides declarations of the people's loyalty, that the declaration from Petersburg gave him particular pleasure, and that he…†   (source)
  • Unlike our irascible friend Wrench, he had the easiest way in the world of taking things which might be supposed to annoy him, being a well-bred, quietly facetious man, who kept a good house, was very fond of a little sporting when he could get it, very friendly with Mr. Hawley, and hostile to Mr. Bulstrode.†   (source)
  • And, with that, aunty gave George a nudge with her finger, designed to be immensely facetious, and turned again to her griddle with great briskness.†   (source)
  • "Yah!" cried Wemmick, suddenly hitting out at the turnkey in a facetious way, "you're dumb as one of your own keys when you have to do with my principal, you know you are.†   (source)
  • So imposing, indeed, had been the quiet superiority of the Tuscarora's reserve, that Charles Cap, for so was the seaman named, in his most dogmatical or facetious moments, had not ventured on familiarity in an intercourse which had now lasted more than a week.†   (source)
  • Ivanhoe, who had other web to weave than to stand canvassing a palfrey's paces with its owner, lent but a deaf ear to the Prior's grave advices and facetious jests, and having leapt on his mare, and commanded his squire (for such Gurth now called himself) to keep close by his side, he followed the track of the Black Knight into the forest, while the Prior stood at the gate of the convent looking after him, and ejaculating,—"Saint Mary! how prompt and fiery be these men of war!†   (source)
  • However, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature to do, and entertained himself with the facetious idea of the training more than once.†   (source)
  • Sometimes these correspondents assumed facetious names, as the Brick, Bellows, Old Gooseberry, Wideawake, Snooks, Mops, Cutaway, the Dogs-meat Man; but he considered this in bad taste, and was always a little hurt by it.†   (source)
  • A chance meeting, a service rendered, a happy phrase, a knack of facetious mimicry, and a man's career might be made in a trice.†   (source)
  • But, making Oliver cry, Noah attempted to be more facetious still; and in his attempt, did what many sometimes do to this day, when they want to be funny.†   (source)
  • "My captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir"—said the imperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to Ahab—"is apt to be facetious at times; he spins us many clever things of that sort.†   (source)
  • They were tender or jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love, others that asked for money.†   (source)
  • He was even foremost in assisting in the appalling arrangements, and of all the actors, in that solemn tragedy, his voice alone was facetious and jocular.†   (source)
  • "I was about observing, sir, before Captain Boomer's facetious interruption, that spite of my best and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse; the truth was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw; more than two feet and several inches long.†   (source)
  • All fled in different directions, except Sambo, who, presuming on the favor which the keeper had to him as a licensed wag, stood his ground, ducking his head with a facetious grin, whenever the master made a dive at him.†   (source)
  • He was lively and facetious at dinner.†   (source)
  • Isabel continued to warn her good-humouredly; Lady Pensil's obliging brother was sometimes, on our heroine's lips, an object of irreverent and facetious allusion.†   (source)
  • Missis wouldn't hear of our ridin' the critters over Lizy's bridge tonight;" and, with a facetious poke into Andy's ribs, he started off, followed by the latter, at full speed,—their shouts of laughter coming faintly on the wind.†   (source)
  • As they issued out of the custom-house precincts, Georgy broke out on them, with his telescope up to his eye, and a loud laugh of welcome; he danced round the couple and performed many facetious antics as he led them up to the house.†   (source)
  • With this irrepressible ebullition of mirth, Master Bates laid himself flat on the floor: and kicked convulsively for five minutes, in an ectasy of facetious joy.†   (source)
  • Secondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a whale is an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever found that when narrating to them some specific example of this two-fold enormousness, they have significantly complimented me upon my facetiousness; when, I declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of being facetious than Moses, when he wrote the history of the plagues of Egypt.†   (source)
  • Indeed, there sprung up quite a flirtation between Miss La Creevy and Tim Linkinwater, who said a thousand jocose and facetious things, and became, by degrees, quite gallant, not to say tender.†   (source)
  • …looked better if she had made herself ten years younger, and whether he didn't think, as a matter of general observation, that young ladies looked better not only in pictures, but out of them too, than old ones; with many more small jokes and facetious remarks, which were delivered with such good-humour and merriment, that Smike thought, within himself, she was the nicest lady he had ever seen; even nicer than Mrs Grudden, of Mr Vincent Crummles's theatre; and she was a nice lady too,…†   (source)
  • He took great notice of me, called on me often to converse on those subjects, carried me to the Horns, a pale alehouse in —— Lane, Cheapside, and introduced me to Dr. Mandeville, author of the "Fable of the Bees," who had a club there, of which he was the soul, being a most facetious, entertaining companion.†   (source)
  • He said to himself:--I shall see whether the wise Socrates will discover my facetious contradiction, or whether I shall be able to deceive him and the rest of them.†   (source)
  • But this is what I call the facetious riddle invented by you: the demigods or spirits are gods, and you say first that I do not believe in gods, and then again that I do believe in gods; that is, if I believe in demigods.†   (source)
  • The two honest men (for so let me now distinguish them) thought their three countrymen only jested, and one of them invited them in, to see their fine habitations; while the other facetiously told them 'that since they built tenements with great improvements, they should, according to the custom of lords, give them a longer lease;' at the same time desiring them to fetch a scriviner to draw the writings.†   (source)
  • Matters of a much more extraordinary kind are to be the subject of this history, or I should grossly mis-spend my time in writing so voluminous a work; and you, my sagacious friend, might with equal profit and pleasure travel through some pages which certain droll authors have been facetiously pleased to call The History of England.†   (source)
  • If the speaker chooses to be intimate or facetious, he may say "my honorable /friend/."†   (source)
  • This therefore was the reason why the still comparatively young though dissolute man who now addressed Stephen was spoken of by some with facetious proclivities as Lord John Corley.†   (source)
  • But /wiseheimer/ remains [Pg152] in colloquial use as a facetious synonym for /smart-aleck/, and after awhile it may gradually acquire dignity.†   (source)
  • "It is quite true," said the curate, who saw the object of his friend the barber; and Cardenio, Don Fernando and his companions agreed with him, and even the Judge, if his thoughts had not been so full of Don Luis's affair, would have helped to carry on the joke; but he was so taken up with the serious matters he had on his mind that he paid little or no attention to these facetious proceedings.†   (source)
  • To say the truth, these soporific parts are so many scenes of serious artfully interwoven, in order to contrast and set off the rest; and this is the true meaning of a late facetious writer, who told the public that whenever he was dull they might be assured there was a design in it.†   (source)
  • "You're facetious with me!†   (source)
  • WHEREIN IS RELATED THE STRANGE AND UNDREAMT-OF ADVENTURE OF THE DISTRESSED DUENNA, ALIAS THE COUNTESS TRIFALDI, TOGETHER WITH A LETTER WHICH SANCHO PANZA WROTE TO HIS WIFE, TERESA PANZA The duke had a majordomo of a very facetious and sportive turn, and he it was that played the part of Merlin, made all the arrangements for the late adventure, composed the verses, and got a page to represent Dulcinea; and now, with the assistance of his master and mistress, he got up another of the…†   (source)
  • "—"Ay, ay, you need not mention it, I protest: we understand what that fate is very well," cries Dowling, with a most facetious grin.†   (source)
  • The good people now ranged themselves round the kitchen fire, where good humour seemed to maintain an absolute dominion; and Partridge not only forgot his shameful defeat, but converted hunger into thirst, and soon became extremely facetious.†   (source)
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