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aloof
in a sentence

show 189 more with this conextual meaning
  • Only Essay stayed aloof.†   (source)
  • Erudite, witty, and aloof, he consistently refused media appearances.†   (source)
  • Their short torsos and long limbs were of the classical style preferred by the director, but their expressions had yet to acquire the aloofness of his more seasoned ballerinas.†   (source)
  • "Yeah," I said, doing my best to sound aloof.†   (source)
  • 'Very well,' he said aloofly.†   (source)
  • But a little part of me stayed aloof during the whole thing.†   (source)
  • It sat back from the street, aloof behind its apron of lawn and its cast-iron fence, not so much looking out on the square as presiding over it.†   (source)
  • "I know that I'm sometimes aloof with you, and I know you complain about it to Dorian, but—"†   (source)
  • He would be grouchy for several days before I left for Sawyer Depot, and he would be peevish and aloof for several days after I got back.†   (source)
  • Werner looks up at the stone houses arrayed wall to wall, tall and aloof, their faces damp, their windows dark.†   (source)
  • The older girl entered so fully into the spirit of her own aloof compliance that she felt beyond reproach.†   (source)
  • Nat remained aloof, absorbed in a totally male world of rigging and canvas.†   (source)
  • If I were you, I'd sit down, look cute, and be your pleasantly aloof self."†   (source)
  • There are nights when she has been woken by her husband's muffled screams, times they have ridden the subway together and the rhythm of the wheels on the tracks makes him suddenly pensive, aloof.†   (source)
  • The mighty Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the Wardens of the West, had remained aloof from the struggle, ignoring calls to arms from both rebels and royalists.†   (source)
  • "Have you noticed that Natalie's getting, I don't know …. more aloof?"†   (source)
  • For my part, I will continue to remain silent and aloof, and I don't intend to shrink from the truth, because the longer it's postponed, the harder it will be for them to accept it when they do hear it!†   (source)
  • His voice was aloof.†   (source)
  • They were his children, in some sense: all of them motivated by his success, his youth, his ability to see ideas into execution, while remaining himself, perfectly aloof and yet furiously productive.†   (source)
  • In real life, she didn't look so pale and aloof—well, not most of the time, anyway.†   (source)
  • You're talking about the American way of survival of the fittest:' While Disney backed right-wing groups and produced campaign ads for the Republican Party, Kroc remained aloof from electoral politics — with one notable exception.†   (source)
  • He was always surrounded by funky, lively people, by cute girls with dyed hair and piercings, by aloof guys who perked up when Adam rock-talked with them.†   (source)
  • It was a grand old house, the Ayemenem House, but aloof-looking.†   (source)
  • He doesn't much like tea, but considers it a social duty to drink it in this country; and to greet all jokes about the Boston Tea Party, of which there have been too many, with an aloof but indulgent smile.†   (source)
  • He seems to have a love/hate relationship with Religion, and maybe even with the God that he suspects is brooding, distant, and aloof.†   (source)
  • I feared she would be distant, aloof.†   (source)
  • Cold and aloof and really calculating—you got the feeling that he was definitely aware of how much money Amy had.†   (source)
  • She wore a diadem with a jewel that hung on her forehead, and the luminous stone was the same aloof color as her eyes, and everything in her breathed an aura of coolness.†   (source)
  • There was Paul in the corner surrounded by a fawning group of the younger Arrakeen richece, and, aloof among them, three officers of the House Troop.†   (source)
  • He was, they decided, not like them at all, and the detached and aloof manner in which he watched the snowfall made this palpable and self-evident.†   (source)
  • Tears threatened to erase the aloofness of their authority.†   (source)
  • If Dolores had been a little less aloof, a little more earthy, she could have discovered that those ingredients were rife in her town proper, and Dad had no need to travel to Mexico to buy provisions.†   (source)
  • I had long observed her from a distance, a slim and lovely girl, and always aloof, because of the way other kids treated orphans there, as if a lack of parents put you somehow beneath everyone else.†   (source)
  • But if you had known me before Gil'ead, if you had known me as I was, you would not have considered me so aloof.†   (source)
  • A few spectators glanced at her, and glanced away, embarrassed; the rest seemed oblivious of the raw dirge counter pointing Dewey's continuing recitation; even her husband, perhaps because he believed it unmanly to take notice, remained aloof.†   (source)
  • The festival encompassed all of Islam, not merely Iran, and, therefore, political rhetoric this day was confined to isolated caucuses of Iranians who chattered happily about the ayatollah's successful attempt to centralize power. i remained aloof from those discussions, socializing instead with my wide circle of women friends who constituted a United Nations in miniature.†   (source)
  • He's trying to stay aloof, but his eyes show a hunger I've seen before.†   (source)
  • Despite the proselytizing of the Mbekela brothers, my father remained aloof from Christianity and instead reserved his own faith for the great spirit of the Xhosas, Qamata, the God of his fathers.†   (source)
  • Sana's eyes widen, and even Keenan looks slightly sick, his aloofness falling away for a moment.†   (source)
  • But as hard as she'd tried to remain aloof, it seemed that every time she saw Alex, something happened to draw them together.†   (source)
  • He hugged Paul, noting the tension in his shoulders, the way he was holding himself: stiff, aloof.†   (source)
  • I kept aloof, I waited, I fantasized, misleading myself.†   (source)
  • How come nearer her when she thus held herself aloof?†   (source)
  • With folks who knew nothing of my criminal secret and looming imprisonment, I was simply not quite myself—pleasant, sometimes charming, but aloof, distant, perhaps even indifferent.†   (source)
  • …in front of barred windows or sitting on a broken sofa in the snow, and Klara thought these pictures were utterly modern in one sense only, that the subjects seemed photographed, overtly posing or caught unaware, sometimes self-consciously aloof, a housing project massed behind them or here's a man with lidded eyes and a watch cap and one of those bloated polyester jackets and a gun with banana clip—you see how Acey belies the photographic surface by making the whole picture float…†   (source)
  • Mom remains aloof.†   (source)
  • He paused as if counting those that were present, and then sat down aloof, with his eyes on the ground.†   (source)
  • They were slender, fair-haired, and fair-skinned, and they bore the aloof demeanor of a race that rarely saw death.†   (source)
  • Yet he remained aloof from me, his eyes alone returning to me.†   (source)
  • Yossarian could make out Major Major by his towering and lanky aloofness and thought he recognized Major Danby mopping his brow with a handkerchief.†   (source)
  • With the prize in hand, he realized his single-minded drive came across as aloof cockiness; his painful martyrdom suddenly looked like self-nomination for sainthood.†   (source)
  • Vlad was about to say that if he was talking about the thing this morning with Bill and Tom, it was really no big deal, but then they were joined by the other goths: a raven-haired girl with black fingernails, a silver-haired boy who always seemed aloof, and a tall, thin boy with black eyeliner.†   (source)
  • The anti-Zionist students remained aloof, bitter, disdainful of our Zionism.†   (source)
  • "Blocking my view," she said with some aloofness.†   (source)
  • He leaned there, looking at us all with a remote aloofness in which I sensed an unstated questioning beneath a friendly charm.†   (source)
  • There could have been ten thousand in the building, and he would have remained aloof from them.†   (source)
  • He found Franklin cordial but aloof, easygoing to the point of indolence, distressingly slipshod about details and about money.†   (source)
  • My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore, My kinsmen stand far off ….†   (source)
  • Joe wanted to be one of the few who could find salvation by reaching out, but male biology or psychology—or pure stubbornness or self-pity—kept him aloof, alone.†   (source)
  • Next door, but standing primly aloof in a coat of fierce green paint, is Kellam's General Store with the post office inside, and behind them, on a narrow spine of fast land, the houses and white picket fences of the village.†   (source)
  • I remember one of them especially: a lean, aloof, superior man of middle age.†   (source)
  • They needed her defences: the crust of independence and indifference: the air of practical, decisive reliability; the unroused interest, the aloof manner.†   (source)
  • Suddenly her world had changed, and she was a different person with new rooms in the palace, a new view from her windows, the comforting presence of her nurse replaced by the aloof faces of unfamiliar attendants.†   (source)
  • For all her aloof reserve, he knew she was sinfully proud of the achievement.†   (source)
  • This ability to laugh at herself gives Jackie that precious gift of appearing vulnerable and shy, rather than aloof, even as she speaks with an upper-crust accent.†   (source)
  • Turning to look at him, she thought: From his aloofness, from his manner of glass-enclosed formality, from his pride in never being made to feel anything-to this, to Hank Rearden in bed beside her, after hours of a violence which they could not name now, not in words or in daylight-but which was in their eyes, as they looked at each other, which they wanted to name, to stress, to throw at each other's face.†   (source)
  • There was thunder and lightning in this man, deep under the strangely aloof, oddly open exterior.†   (source)
  • For the most part, I was aloof to this inconsequential suffering.†   (source)
  • There's something noble and aloof about him.†   (source)
  • My paternal grandfather—Philip—was a strict, aloof man.†   (source)
  • I must help myself, yes, but I am not such a self-contained unit that I can live aloof, unto myself.†   (source)
  • The store was on Madison Avenue in the Eighties and my father made all the employees dress up for the blue-haired matrons, and the fancy dogs, and the sensible young mothers pushing antique velvet-draped prams, and their most quiet of infants, and the banker fathers brooding about annoyed and aloof and humorless.†   (source)
  • In the end, we lost interest in staying aloof, because we wanted the Alto Adige from the Austrians far more than we wanted Corsica from the French.†   (source)
  • His mother will remain cool and aloof, as if she is alone on the plane.†   (source)
  • Merrick got her husband, but he was a cold, aloof man unless he was drinking, in which case he grew argumentative and boorish.†   (source)
  • Helene and Germaine, a little disdainful, aloof perhaps, but Louise, not even that.†   (source)
  • A four-story private school for girls stood directly across the side street—a stolid and rather aloofly anonymous-looking building that rarely came alive till about three-thirty in the afternoon, when public-school children from Third and Second Avenues came to play jacks or stoop-ball on its stone steps.†   (source)
  • His dignity was unassailable, yet he was by no means aloof.†   (source)
  • Stay aloof Follow the herd but don't join it.†   (source)
  • Perhaps these purely physical problems accounted fbr their aloofness.†   (source)
  • Perhaps she'd be hounded someday as far as joining Tristero itself, if it existed, in its twilight, its aloofness, its waiting.†   (source)
  • The brittle aloofness with which I had so willfully armored myself I felt crumbling away utterly.†   (source)
  • She stood aloof: disapproving.†   (source)
  • The Ford stood tall and aloof and dour under the oak tree where Will had stopped it.†   (source)
  • Aloof from all this bustle, I am anointing Thy most immaculate feet With myrrh from a small bowl.†   (source)
  • Upon their faces the air was so marvelously pure, aloof and tender; and the silence of the late night in the city, and the stars, were secret and majestic beyond the wonder of the deepest country.†   (source)
  • Kali's and Janaki's children were much older, and as for Kunthi, she preferred to keep aloof.†   (source)
  • Yet at the same time, in contrast to this, her expression shows more of that strange aloofness which seems to stand apart from her nerves and the anxieties which harry them.†   (source)
  • He moved exactly like a cat, perpetually on the balls of his feet, and with a cat's impressive, indifferent aloofness, his face closed, in his eyes no light at all.†   (source)
  • The sight, the memory now, of the aloof and ravenous face opposite his, dark in the pearly window light, and the sorrowful mouth devouring the very best food until all had disappeared except for a pile of bones and a frill of paper-this filled him with a glow that began to increase while they smilingly nodded and rose.†   (source)
  • She moved among all those young women with a faint aloofness that said as clear as words: I will not be drawn in.†   (source)
  • This room was swept and fairly neat, for Crooks was a proud, aloof man.   (source)
    aloof = thinking of himself as superior
  • She said, one day, that she found him aloof and often arrogant.†   (source)
  • "But Paul Muad'Dib has held himself aloof from these ceremonies," Chani said.†   (source)
  • But he was much too serious, aloof, and uninteresting.†   (source)
  • As he lost his aloof, thorny manner, he was welcomed by the fashionable crowd.†   (source)
  • Was this her penalty, then, her punishment for being aloof to her own mother's suffering?†   (source)
  • In the summer of '27 he was seventeen, aloof, clever, and utterly singular.†   (source)
  • The only child who remained quiet and aloof was Mina.†   (source)
  • The Dornishmen thus far have held aloof from these wars.†   (source)
  • It isn't distant like a laser, or aloof like poison.†   (source)
  • Other evenings he was aloof and threatening.†   (source)
  • There is something different about his usually aloof features—surprise?†   (source)
  • The colonel lifted his eyes as though affronted and studied the chaplain with aloof distrust.†   (source)
  • He loved most animals but was aloof from cats.†   (source)
  • The tavern owner and his wife had been aloof to him ever since they left Palancar Valley.†   (source)
  • But you did not stand aloof from Mr. Viccars; you did not stand far off.†   (source)
  • Given enough time, she could capture that air of aloofness and earthiness on film.†   (source)
  • Aloof, confident, self-indulgent, highly intelligent.†   (source)
  • She was …. aloof, from both her father and me.†   (source)
  • All his aloofness dissolves as he stares at the scar.†   (source)
  • It was no longer possible for her to answer coolly, to rebuff with aloofness.†   (source)
  • Otherwise, Yamacraw remains aloof and apart from the world beyond the river.†   (source)
  • He was friendly enough and courteous enough, but he was aloof and suspicious.†   (source)
  • The Overlords remained aloof, hiding their faces from mankind.†   (source)
  • He was aloof, official, for he knew nothing yet of R. V. Kleppmann: another debtor, merely.†   (source)
  • All those years of aloofness, of cooping herself up and not caring where Laila went and whom she saw and what she thought… It was unfair.†   (source)
  • I thought about how different she was from Zoe—Zoe all formal and aloof like a princess, Thalia with her ratty clothes and her rebel attitude.†   (source)
  • Because Dan wasn't my real father, I had never developed any resentment toward Dan; I always loved having Dan around—my grandmother, although she was a loving grandmother, was aloof.†   (source)
  • He seemed aloof from the rest of the group, not an actual member of the coalition, somehow dismissive of it all.†   (source)
  • It stood aloof on the Georgia coast—dignified, sedate, refined—looking down its nose at Atlanta, which was then a twenty-year-old frontier town three hundred miles inland.†   (source)
  • "There he is," said the one who saw him first, suppressing her laughter, before he raised his eyes and saw the two rigid, aloof women of his life as they crossed the park without looking at him.†   (source)
  • His thin clothing had dried on him, but the friendly grin of that morning had been replaced by an aloof and mocking smile that showed only too well that his morning's ducking had not been forgotten.†   (source)
  • He was hyperkinetic, aloof, and so socially inept that the interviewers often came away with the impression he was mentally ill.†   (source)
  • So with utmost attention, he watched as Rick disregarded Ugarte's pleas for help; he saw the saloonkeeper's expression remain cool and aloof when the police dragged Ugarte from his lapels; but then, as Rick began making his way through the disconcerted crowd toward the piano player, something caught Viktor's eye.†   (source)
  • And yet, for all his aloofness toward his family in the past, his years at college and then in New York, he has always hovered close to this quiet, ordinary town that had remained, for his mother and father, stubbornly exotic.†   (source)
  • Only the man called Jamis seemed to stand aloof from the ceremony, holding himself apart with arms folded across his breast.†   (source)
  • She was no more than twenty-five, she was slender and golden, she had Portuguese eyelids that made her seem even more aloof, and any man would have been satisfied with only the crumbs of the tenderness that she lavished on her son.†   (source)
  • She remained silently aloof, but he caught a brief flash of sensations: a medley of images—trees, grass, sunshine, the mountains of the Spine—as well as the cloying scent of red orchids and a sudden painful, pinching sensation, as if a door had slammed shut on her tail.†   (source)
  • Edward remained aloof.†   (source)
  • Then she seemed to draw on some inner strength, squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin so she was distant and aloof.†   (source)
  • For the moment he held the riverlands, but his kingdom was surrounded by enemies to every side but east, where Lysa sat aloof on her mountaintop.†   (source)
  • The dog's expression was aloof and wary at the same time—intelligent, almost—which was the same way Panther often appeared before Moore set him loose.†   (source)
  • He's considered a touch aloof, in part because he won't simply offer the full, instant disclosure that is common currency among college freshmen.†   (source)
  • There was something about them he did not trust; they were too aloof, too well practiced, and above all, too different.†   (source)
  • He remained aloof, however, never participating in the quarrels between the pro-Zionist and anti^Zionist groups.†   (source)
  • Trace was kind and good to Doro, who clearly adored him, and if he seemed aloof to Caroline, a bit distant and reserved, it really wasn't any of her business.†   (source)
  • Adams, however, took this first real exchange of views with the aloof Foreign Minister as a long-awaited opportunity to broaden discussions on matters of more importance.†   (source)
  • Everything I read only serves to confirm me in the opinion of the absolute necessity of our keeping aloof from all European powers and influences, and that a navy is the only arm by which it can be accomplished.†   (source)
  • She was cool, aloof, suppressing her anger, but only about as well as her lacy chad or covered the garments underneath.†   (source)
  • The aloofness drops.†   (source)
  • …forty years' unceasing engagement in the turbulent and triumphant scenes, both at home and in Europe, which have marked our history; learned in the language and arts of diplomacy; more conversant with the views, jealousies, resources, and intrigues of Great Britain, France and Holland than any other American; alike aloof to flattery and vulgar ambition, as above all undue control [he has as] …. his sole object …. the present freedom and independence of his country and its future glory.†   (source)
  • Shade took another of a trio of boys in muscle shirts standing apart and doing their best to look tough and aloof.†   (source)
  • One moment he might be generous and something close to sweet, and the next he could be as cool and aloof as a stranger.†   (source)
  • There's an aloof streak in him, bound so tightly around his private life that I've found no way through it.†   (source)
  • She could be just as aloof as he.†   (source)
  • "She's a poet, all right," Clumly said, bothered by the way Boyle seemed now to have withdrawn, aloof from their awkward little ring of conversation.†   (source)
  • …side yard and down into the street and tried to interest themselves in what they saw, and to forget the thing which so powerfully pervaded their thoughts, and to subdue their physical restiveness in order that they should not be disapproved; and tiring of these, would look over once more at their aunt, who was as aloof almost as their father; and uneased by that, would look once more into each other's eyes; and so again to the yard and the street, upon which the sunlight moved slowly.†   (source)
  • And I think they liked me okay too, though they had always been a little suspicious of me, and curious, because I would never tell much of my past life and remained a little aloof.†   (source)
  • But then, there was such a gulf between what she now was, and that shy, aloof, yet adaptable girl with the crowds of acquaintances.†   (source)
  • On the wall hung a huge tinted photograph of Samuel, which had captured a cold and aloof dignity, a scrubbed and dressed remoteness, which did not belong to him living.†   (source)
  • I have always been aloof.†   (source)
  • I wanted Mary to be aware and proud of her aloof, unspoken beauty and Anna to somehow fathom the wonder of her smile.†   (source)
  • Yet here and there faces were turned anxiously towards the sky, to the aloof silver shape fifty kilo-metres above Madrid.†   (source)
  • Mary would stand there for half an hour perhaps, holding herself aloof, drumming with her fingers on the wood, answering questions about price and quality briefly.†   (source)
  • One scheme after another passed idly through her mind, and she watched them pass like images in a dream but remained aloof from them, abstracted.†   (source)
  • With all six of the California boys I worked with during the year there was a period of aloofness, of detoxification, before we could communicate on a serious level with each other.†   (source)
  • Clumly felt queerly removed from it all, emotionally as aloof from the world where hooligans ran through people's yards as he was physically aloof from the street.†   (source)
  • He had laboured to take men to the stars, and in the moment of success the stars-the aloof, indifferent stars-had come to him.†   (source)
  • The years went past; her friends got married; she had been bridesmaid a dozen times; other people's children were growing up; but she went on as companionable, as adaptable, as aloof and as heart-whole as ever, working as hard enjoying herself as she ever did in office, and never for one moment alone, except when she was asleep.†   (source)
  • After all, even in her most miserable recollections, she had to concede that he was not actually cruel to either of them; he had a playful if crude sense of humor and was, despite all his aloofness and majesty, not above bestowing, on rare occasions, small rewards.†   (source)
  • When they came out, she came out, dried her shoulders with her own towel and seated herself aloofly in her own spot, her back rigid and a ring of reflected sunlight burnishing her light-blond hair like a halo.†   (source)
  • They were aloof, and at the same time possessive.†   (source)
  • The party leader, aloof and amused, gave Young the signal to begin.†   (source)
  • 'You were so aloof,' he said, 'always wandering into the garden with Jasper, going off on your own.†   (source)
  • She was aloof from him now in her beauty, in her sadness.†   (source)
  • Siva, sitting aloof and afar, was approached.†   (source)
  • But his general attitude was aloof—was he not a man?†   (source)
  • There was something that he lacked: discretion, aloofness, a sort of saving stupidity.†   (source)
  • They are both cold and aloof and rather self-sufficing.†   (source)
  • The further they got from Third Avenue, the more aloof grew the houses, the more silent the streets.†   (source)
  • He was courteous always, but aloof, remote.†   (source)
  • Mr. So-and-so, having discovered himself big with man, becomes indrawn and aloof.†   (source)
  • Siva, however, was the pattern god of yoga—aloof, alone, indrawn in meditation.†   (source)
  • Under the sheer, unswerving steep of his aloofness, there was shelter sometimes, but never foothold.†   (source)
  • She swallowed her wrath and tried to assume an aloof air of dignity but with little success.†   (source)
  • The drowsy aloofness had gone from his gray eyes and they were wide and unmasked.†   (source)
  • It was the unhappiest face she was ever to see, a face from which all aloofness had fled.†   (source)
  • Only Napoleon held aloof.†   (source)
  • He had kept himself aloof from the pains of Guenever and Lancelot, unconsciously trusting them not to bring the matter to his consciousness, not from motives of fear or of weak connivance, but from the noblest of motives.†   (source)
  • The white house reared its tall columns before her, seeming to withdraw with dignified aloofness from her.†   (source)
  • But the thing that had struck him most about the man was his aloofness, not to say his mistrust of everyone he met.†   (source)
  • Something deeper than his usual aloofness rose in him--not quite excitement, still less fear, but a sharp intensity of expectation.†   (source)
  • He remained aloof; enigmatic; a scholar capable of that inspired accuracy which has something formidable about it.†   (source)
  • Now it came over him in a flash, how the Bishop had held himself aloof from his activities; it was a very hard thing for Father Latour to let him go; the loneliness of his position had begun to weigh upon him.†   (source)
  • At Brideshead he performed all unavoidable local duties, bringing with him to platform and fete and committee room his own thin mist of clumsiness and aloofness.†   (source)
  • He seemed to stand aloof and watch himself, for all his haste, thinking with a kind of grim unsurprise: 'Byron Bunch borning a baby.†   (source)
  • Sylvester was toting a fat briefcase and looking up at Frazer and talking with special slowness in a kind of political accent while Frazer was looking past and over him with aloof gravity and had his hands clasped at his back.†   (source)
  • His face wore an expression of grim aloofness as though it were not his own hand he was experimenting with but someone else's.†   (source)
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