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upstart
in a sentence

show 94 more with this conextual meaning
  • Kill this upstart for me, the Emperor was saying.†   (source)
  • They were mistaken; the upstart's experiments succeeded-partly because, in the beginning years, he labored eighteen hours a day.†   (source)
  • This upstart chief was ruining my day, spoiling the proud feeling with wrongheaded remarks.†   (source)
  • Bibbit, you tell this young upstart McMurphy that I'll meet him in the main hall at high noon and we'll settle this affair once and for all, libidos a-blazin'.†   (source)
  • Nevertheless, she was not about to let the upstart whelp best her in battle.†   (source)
  • I won't let you do this, you upstart, demon-loving slime— With a look very close to boredom, Valentine reached out a hand, almost as if he meant to touch the Inquisitor on the shoulder.†   (source)
  • Upstarts from previously unremarkable houses who suddenly find themselves in positions advantageous for business.†   (source)
  • The artist's a young upstart who wants to be a rock star or something, but he's the rage and everyone will be there.†   (source)
  • One was the King of England, the other a Yankee farmer's son—John Yankee—who spoke now for an upstart nation the survival of which was anything but assured.†   (source)
  • To be uprooted by an upstart forty-three-year-old woman, and English to boot, was intolerable.†   (source)
  • Now here were these foreigner upstarts unmasking religion!†   (source)
  • I think he's an irresponsible upstart who's been grossly overrated.†   (source)
  • And beware the wrath of a patient soul, for when Vainamoinen shared his wisdom and sang his songs, the young wizard's arrows flew away as hawks, his horse became as stone, and the upstart himself was swallowed up by the earth until only his head remained to beg forgiveness….†   (source)
  • They had used her as no more than a means to an end, to make a point to a competitor, an upstart.†   (source)
  • It has always rankled him that older houses look down on the Freys as upstarts.†   (source)
  • The Appalachians might pale in size if leveled against the upstart Rockies, but to the Cardinal children they seemed abundantly tall enough.†   (source)
  • I said, "Listen, you upstart collection of semi-conductors, you are merely a minister-without-portfolio while I am Minister of Defense.†   (source)
  • For her part, Natalie was content to play the role of terrorist upstart.†   (source)
  • I will not step down to be the dotard chamberlain of an upstart.†   (source)
  • It was just all the upstarts who had turned the world on its head and unsettled the ways of decent living.†   (source)
  • Norris, the unyielding bitter-ender; Adams, the irritating upstart; Webster, the businessmen's beneficiary; Benton, the bombastic bully—of such stuff are our real-life political heroes made.†   (source)
  • Older than your upstart father, by the way.†   (source)
  • Gaea hates you above all others … except perhaps for that upstart Jason Grace.†   (source)
  • As much as I dislike certain upstart demigods, it would not do for Olympus to fall.†   (source)
  • You desire my throne for your husband, the upstart Osiris.†   (source)
  • Curse that upstart!†   (source)
  • The famous upstart neurologist wanted to be my lover, it turned out, and actually won me to his bed for a time.†   (source)
  • Paul thought then of prescient glimpses into the possibilities of this moment — and one time-line where Thufir carried a poisoned needle which the Emperor commanded he use against "this upstart Duke."†   (source)
  • The same ladies from fine families who at first had scorned and ridiculed her for being an upstart without a name went out of their way to make her feel like one of them, and she intoxicated them with her charm.†   (source)
  • If I let you go, and if you can beat Loki at his own game, then I get the same rewards, plus the satisfaction of knowing the upstart god of mischief has been humiliated with my help.†   (source)
  • On the contrary, they were happy that up until then it had let them grow in peace, and he hoped that it would continue leaving them that way, because they had not founded a town so that the first upstart who came along would tell them what to do.†   (source)
  • The upstart West had the new Santa Anita Handicap, but the East, seat of racing's elite governing bodies and home to all of America's venerable old races and stables, had prestige.†   (source)
  • He couldn't stand the upstart Sheng.†   (source)
  • Privately, Jones referred to Adams as a "wicked and conceited upstart," and expressed the wish that "Mr.†   (source)
  • Let's kill this upstart.†   (source)
  • And he knew that what Will had come to do was not really necessary, had been unnecessary from before the beginning of Luke's spat with humanity, because Hodge loved his upstart son, though love was not a word with which Hodge was comfortable, any more than Luke was comfortable with it.†   (source)
  • You see our dad Mr. Peregrin, he's never had no truck with this Lotho, not from the beginning: said that if anyone was going to play the chief at this time of day, it would be the right Thain of the Shire and no upstart.†   (source)
  • My kin, all you upstarts!†   (source)
  • "You young upstart!" he panted.†   (source)
  • If a boy was impudent to him he would rip him powerfully from his seat, drag his wriggling figure into his office, breathing stertorously as he walked along at his clumsy rapid gait, and saying roundly, in tones of scathing contempt: "Why, you young upstart, we'll just see who's master here.†   (source)
  • The little upstarts!†   (source)
  • These upstarts—the Clarks, the Haydocks—had no dignity.†   (source)
  • Was it possible she was beginning to like this young upstart who had this car?†   (source)
  • The newspapers laughed the wretched upstart and swindler to scorn.†   (source)
  • Why, any upstart who has got neither blood nor position.†   (source)
  • The upstart pretensions of a young woman without family, connections, or fortune.†   (source)
  • You've always been an upstart, and you've always been against me.'†   (source)
  • 'By putting an upstart's hire in his pocket?' said Gowan, frowning.†   (source)
  • 'YOU offended me!' retorted Miss Knag, 'YOU! a chit, a child, an upstart nobody!†   (source)
  • 'I can't bear any insolent upstart to dare to touch ….' he whispered a few minutes later.†   (source)
  • Like all upstarts, he had had recourse to a great deal of haughtiness to maintain his position.†   (source)
  • This is an age of upstarts.†   (source)
  • Indignation lent him a scathing eloquence, and it was clear that if others had followed his example, and acted as he talked, society would never have been weak enough to receive a foreign upstart like Beaufort—no, sir, not even if he'd married a van der Luyden or a Lanning instead of a Dallas.†   (source)
  • At the height of Napoleon's unexampled conquests, there were Americans who had fought at Bunker Hill who looked forward to the possibility that the Atlantic might prove no barrier against the ultimate schemes of this French upstart from the revolutionary chaos who seemed in act of fulfilling judgment prefigured in the Apocalypse.†   (source)
  • As an instance of the latter, he mentioned the case of a young upstart squire named d'Urberville, living some forty miles off, in the neighbourhood of Trantridge.†   (source)
  • …to enjoy the fruits of those friendly relations with people of good position which prudent parents cultivate and store up for their children's benefit, for my great-aunt had actually ceased to 'see' the son of a lawyer we had known because he had married a 'Highness' and had thereby stepped down—in her eyes—from the respectable position of a lawyer's son to that of those adventurers, upstart footmen or stable-boys mostly, to whom we read that queens have sometimes shewn their favours.†   (source)
  • Who was this ill-bred upstart, that he should criticize the leading Mohammedan landowner of the district?†   (source)
  • On this occasion the preparations were of a more elaborate nature than usual, owing to the fact that for the past four days Mr. Samuel Griffiths, the husband and father, had been absent attending a conference of shirt and collar manufacturers in Chicago, price-cutting by upstart rivals in the west having necessitated compromise and adjustment by those who manufactured in the east.†   (source)
  • There are always some honest men in every nation, though heaven knows, too, that they are scarce among the Maquas, to look down an upstart when he brags ag'in the face of reason.†   (source)
  • I see little to choose, between assistant to a brutal pedagogue, and toad-eater to a mean and ignorant upstart, be he member or no member.'†   (source)
  • And you must understand, the young upstarts are present all the while, and I have to keep the peace between them.†   (source)
  • Yonder stretch the wide acres of Bildad Reasor; he died in war-time, but the upstart overseer hastened to wed the widow.†   (source)
  • I have quite a horror of upstarts.†   (source)
  • What would a lord say—yes, or any other person of whatever condition —if he caught an upstart peasant with a dagger on his person?†   (source)
  • I never like upstarts.†   (source)
  • There were no uniforms, as Madame de Bellegarde's door was inexorably closed against the myrmidons of the upstart power which then ruled the fortunes of France, and the great company of smiling and chattering faces was not graced by any very frequent suggestions of harmonious beauty.†   (source)
  • Remark of Dr. Baldwin's, concerning upstarts: We don't care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles.†   (source)
  • He had learnt by personal inquiry at the time that it was to Donald Farfrae—that treacherous upstart—that she had thus humiliated herself.†   (source)
  • In the French revolution of July 1830, and in the English reform agitation, these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart.†   (source)
  • The old man Prokofitch was the only one who did not like him; he handed him the dishes at table with a surly face, called him a 'butcher' and 'an upstart,' and declared that with his great whiskers he looked like a pig in a stye.†   (source)
  • Complicated garnish of iron-work entwines itself over the flights of steps in this awful street, and from these petrified bowers, extinguishers for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the upstart gas.†   (source)
  • 'I consent, count, and am ready to overlook it; but you perceive that my wife—my wife's a respectable woman —has been exposed to the persecution, and insults, and effrontery of young upstarts, scoundrels….'†   (source)
  • A little upstart, vulgar being, with her Mr. E., and her caro sposo, and her resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and underbred finery.†   (source)
  • True, the Hampton Court Bohemians, without exception, turned up their noses at Merdle as an upstart; but they turned them down again, by falling flat on their faces to worship his wealth.†   (source)
  • But the supplanter was the upstart (as Henchard called him) who had mounted into prominence upon his shoulders, and he could bring himself to show no mercy.†   (source)
  • Lady Bareacres and the chiefs of the English society, stupid and irreproachable females, writhed with anguish at the success of the little upstart Becky, whose poisoned jokes quivered and rankled in their chaste breasts.†   (source)
  • She was nobody when he married her, barely the daughter of a gentleman; but ever since her being turned into a Churchill she has out-Churchill'd them all in high and mighty claims: but in herself, I assure you, she is an upstart."†   (source)
  • You would be no longer a lost child found, but you would be looked upon as an upstart, who had sprung up like a mushroom in the night.†   (source)
  • He had been revolving in his mind the marriage question pending between Jos and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased that a member of a family into which he, George Osborne, of the —th, was going to marry, should make a mesalliance with a little nobody—a little upstart governess.†   (source)
  • Why, how many lies, what mean and abject evasions, what humbled behaviour from upstarts who, but for my money, would spurn me aside as they do their betters every day, would that ten thousand pounds have brought me in!†   (source)
  • …could, upstairs: not a little nettled, however, to observe that Miss Squeers and Master Squeers, and the servant girl, were enjoying the scene from a snug corner; the two former indulging in many edifying remarks about the presumption of poor upstarts, which occasioned a vast deal of laughter, in which even the most miserable of all miserable servant girls joined: while Nicholas, stung to the quick, drew over his head such bedclothes as he had, and sternly resolved that the outstanding…†   (source)
  • When the Countess Dowager of Southdown fell foul of the Corsican upstart, as the fashion was in those days, and showed that he was a monster stained with every conceivable crime, a coward and a tyrant not fit to live, one whose fall was predicted, &c.†   (source)
  • When the eagles of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart, were flying from Provence, where they had perched after a brief sojourn in Elba, and from steeple to steeple until they reached the towers of Notre Dame, I wonder whether the Imperial birds had any eye for a little corner of the parish of Bloomsbury, London, which you might have thought so quiet, that even the whirring and flapping of those mighty wings would pass unobserved there?†   (source)
  • Here too his aunt, Mrs. Frederick Bullock (whose chariot might daily be seen in the Ring, with bullocks or emblazoned on the panels and harness, and three pasty-faced little Bullocks, covered with cockades and feathers, staring from the windows) Mrs. Frederick Bullock, I say, flung glances of the bitterest hatred at the little upstart as he rode by with his hand on his side and his hat on one ear, as proud as a lord.†   (source)
  • He carried about Amelia's white cashmere shawl, and having attended under the gilt cockle-shell, while Mrs. Salmon performed the Battle of Borodino (a savage cantata against the Corsican upstart, who had lately met with his Russian reverses)—Mr. Dobbin tried to hum it as he walked away, and found he was humming—the tune which Amelia Sedley sang on the stairs, as she came down to dinner.†   (source)
  • MRS BELLINGHAM: Tan his breech well, the upstart!†   (source)
  • /Allrightnick/ means an upstart, an offensive boaster, one of whom his fellows would say "He is all right" with a sneer.†   (source)
  • Next to the savage struggle for land and dollars, party politics was the chief concern of the people, and with the disappearance of the old leaders and the entrance of pushing upstarts from the backwoods, political controversy sank to an incredibly low level.†   (source)
  • From them I go This uncouth errand sole, and one for all Myself expose, with lonely steps to tread Th' unfounded Deep, and through the void immense To search, with wandering quest, a place foretold Should be—and, by concurring signs, ere now Created vast and round—a place of bliss In the purlieus of Heaven; and therein placed A race of upstart creatures, to supply Perhaps our vacant room, though more removed, Lest Heaven, surcharged with potent multitude, Might hap to move new broils.†   (source)
  • Therewith the fire of jealousy upstart Within his breast, and hent* him by the heart *seized So woodly*, that he like was to behold *madly The box-tree, or the ashes dead and cold.†   (source)
  • I'm going to use sex, since I'm reduced to it, To strip off the cloak of this hypocrite; I'll stoke up the fires of his insolent heart And give a free field to this base upstart.†   (source)
  • Unto his brother's bed he comen is, And such comfort he gave him, for to gon To Orleans, that he upstart anon, And on his way forth-ward then is he fare,* *gone In hope for to be lissed* of his care.†   (source)
  • Justly thou abhorrest That son, who on the quiet state of men Such trouble brought, affecting to subdue Rational liberty; yet know withal, Since thy original lapse, true liberty Is lost, which always with right reason dwells Twinned, and from her hath no dividual being: Reason in man obscured, or not obeyed, Immediately inordinate desires, And upstart passions, catch the government From reason; and to servitude reduce Man, till then free.†   (source)
  • And with that word he fell down in a trance A longe time; and afterward upstart This Palamon, that thought thorough his heart He felt a cold sword suddenly to glide: For ire he quoke*, no longer would he hide.†   (source)
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  • Upstarting, he laid back his ears and eyed her.†   (source)
  • I shrieked, upstarting— "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!†   (source)
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