Sample Sentences for

unctuous

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They stood paralyzed by their anger; but the major stepped smartly forward to greet Owen; the chauffeur opened the tailgate of the long, silver-gray hearse; and the mortician became the unctuous delegate of death—the busybody it was his nature to be.  (source) John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany, 1989

Baby Kochamma recognized at once the immense potential of the situation, but immediately anointed her thoughts with unctuous oils.  (source) Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, 1997

He had dropped his unctuous tone and his smile now.  (source) J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2000

That's the huge Chinese who's always polite — unctuous, actually, but rather sincere.  (source) Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Supremacy, 1986

MRS. KREBS (Unctuously, to HORNBECK) You're a stranger, aren't you, mister?†  (source) Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind, 1955

His voice was as soft and sympathetic as a mortician's but with no unctuousness.†  (source) Dean Koontz, Sole Survivor, 1997

General Peckem roused himself after a moment with an unctuous and benignant smile.  (source) Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 1961

I made my voice unctuously polite.†  (source) Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders, 2001

Many of them came out to look after him, and to observe to one another, with great unctuousness, that he was 'pulled down by it.'†  (source) Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, 1857

The Reverend Dameron, a Dickensian personage, an unctuous and jolly brimstone-and-damnation orator, was minister of the Grandview Baptist Church in Kansas City, Kansas, the church the Andrews family attended regularly.  (source) Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, 1966

The minutes turned into quarter hours as the retired Deuxième officer went to work, unctuously, with promises of reward for the wives of telephone technicians, if they would do what he asked them to do.  (source) Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Ultimatum, 1990

They admire his unctuousness.†  (source) Sinclair Lewis, Main Street, 1920

Cedric—his black jeans and long-sleeved black pullover shirt conspicuous in a sea of khakis and blazers, a long piece of celery with goat cheese (he hates goat cheese) dangling from his long fingers—offers a sickly smile to the unctuous eyes.  (source) Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen, 1998

This box contained an unctuous substance partly solid, of which it was impossible to discover the color, owing to the reflection of the polished gold, sapphires, rubies, emeralds, which ornamented the box.  (source) Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo, 1846

She leaned over him, kissed him with her Nubbin-smeared mouth. Unguent, unctuous, sumptuous, voluptuous, salacious, lubricious, delicious, went the inside of Jimmy's head.  (source) Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, 2003

And, meanwhile, Francoise would be turning on the spit one of those chickens, such as she alone knew how to roast, chickens which had wafted far abroad from Combray the sweet savour of her merits, and which, while she was serving them to us at table, would make the quality of kindness predominate for the moment in my private conception of her character; the aroma of that cooked flesh, which she knew how to make so unctuous and so tender, seeming to me no more than the proper perfume of one of her many virtues.  (source) Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, 1913

But glimpses were to be caught of a roast leg of pork bursting into tears of sage and onion in a metal reservoir full of gravy, of an unctuous piece of roast beef and blisterous Yorkshire pudding, bubbling hot in a similar receptacle, of a stuffed fillet of veal in rapid cut, of a ham in a perspiration with the pace it was going at, of a shallow tank of baked potatoes glued together by their own richness, of a truss or two of boiled greens, and other substantial delicacies.  (source) Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit, 1857

Then up comes Maryann; throws the loose locks into the middle of the fleece, rolls it up, and carries it into the background as three-and-a-half pounds of unadulterated warmth for the winter enjoyment of persons unknown and far away, who will, however, never experience the superlative comfort derivable from the wool as it here exists, new and pure—before the unctuousness of its nature whilst in a living state has dried, stiffened, and been washed out—rendering it just now as superior to anything WOOLLEN as cream is superior to milk-and-water.  (source) Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874

Betty Jay scented the boiling of Squire Cass's hams, but her longing was arrested by the unctuous liquor in which they were boiled; and when the seasons brought round the great merry-makings, they were regarded on all hands as a fine thing for the poor.  (source) George Eliot, Silas Marner, 1861

Queequeg believed strongly in anointing his boat, and one morning not long after the German ship Jungfrau disappeared, took more than customary pains in that occupation; crawling under its bottom, where it hung over the side, and rubbing in the unctuousness as though diligently seeking to insure a crop of hair from the craft's bald keel.  (source) Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light.  (source) Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Granting other whales to be in sight, the fishermen will seldom give chase to one of these Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks are too lavish of their strength, and hence their unctuousness is small.  (source) Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Regarding the Sperm Whale's head as a solid oblong, you may, on an inclined plane, sideways divide it into two quoins, whereof the lower is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the upper an unctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward end forming the expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale.  (source) Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the whale's flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and often participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness.  (source) Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Dropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew out handfuls of something that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled old cheese; very unctuous and savory withal.  (source) Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

One day the planks stream with freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous masses of the whale's head are profanely piled; great rusty casks lie about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has besooted all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the entire ship seems great leviathan himself; while on all hands the din is deafening.  (source) Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851

Furiously he snatched up his tube of shaving-cream, furiously he lathered, with a belligerent slapping of the unctuous brush, furiously he raked his plump cheeks with a safety-razor.  (source) Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt, 1922

A touch of red over the lips of Esther had strayed beyond their outline; the yellow on her dress was spread with such unctuous plumpness as to have acquired a kind of solidity, and stood boldly out from the receding atmosphere; while the green of the trees, which was still bright in Silk and wool among the lower parts of the panel, but had quite 'gone' at the top, separated in a paler scheme, above the dark trunks, the yellowing upper branches, tanned and half-obliterated by the sharp though sidelong rays of an invisible sun.  (source) Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, 1913

The truth was, nevertheless, that it had been planted by Alice Pyncheon,—she was Phoebe's great-great-grand-aunt,—in soil which, reckoning only its cultivation as a garden-plat, was now unctuous with nearly two hundred years of vegetable decay.  (source) Nathanial Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, 1851

Martin Poyser's large person shook with his silent unctuous laugh.  (source) George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859

The good neighbor charged into the living-room, waving the most unctuous of black kid gloves and delightedly sputtering: "You may well ask how I am!"  (source) Sinclair Lewis, Main Street, 1920