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untoward
in a sentence

show 92 more with this conextual meaning
  • If anything…untoward happens, can we handle their surface force with what we have at hand?†   (source)
  • Depending onwhat they find—and it will be nothing untoward, I'm sure—I am honored to form an alliance between you and the Varden, King Halfpaw.†   (source)
  • Clara was a good wife and worked hard; she never did anything untoward or unrespectable, and yet the fact that she had that Texas money made Bob uneasy.†   (source)
  • There was no fire, no smoke, not the slightest untoward noise.†   (source)
  • He's got tenure, though, and he's never been caught at anything completely untoward.†   (source)
  • After a few minutes and a second ginger ale, though, he realizes that nothing untoward is bound to happen, that, instead, he feels loose and sort of relaxed here with the always provocative Molly.†   (source)
  • No charges were filed, and an audit turned up nothing untoward.†   (source)
  • Nothing untoward was reported or hinted at in the newspapers, and importantly, nothing was ever said or written by John Adams, who, of all men, would have been enraged by any disrespect shown a minister of the United States being presented under his sponsorship.†   (source)
  • You are forever thrashing innocent boys who come in this room and even look at Theresa in an untoward way, yet you insult my friend and my rela-tionship with her by asking me to describe our acts of love together.†   (source)
  • I think it's a good thing for all concerned that nothing untoward occurred.†   (source)
  • For I should say that I know from experience that the bearing of those in extreme circumstances can sometimes be untoward and even shocking, and we must try our best to understand what is actual and essential to a person, and what is by any indication anomalous, a momentary lapse that is better forgotten than considered time and time again, to little avail.†   (source)
  • Eventually we had everything tidy—not a job that would fool Interpol but one as to make it seem unlikely that anything untoward had taken place.†   (source)
  • 'And there is nothing untoward involved, of course.†   (source)
  • To make my waking life American-normal, I turn on the lights before anything untoward makes an appearance.†   (source)
  • As a result, all day long in school I sat perpetually alert, fearing for the untoward to happen.†   (source)
  • She could hardly have made a more untoward choice.   (source)
    untoward = unfavorable
  • Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram received her very kindly; and Sir Thomas, seeing how much she needed encouragement, tried to be all that was conciliating: but he had to work against a most untoward gravity of deportment; and Lady Bertram, without taking half so much trouble, or speaking one word where he spoke ten, by the mere aid of a good-humoured smile, became immediately the less awful character of the two.   (source)
  • She had found a seat, where in excessive trembling she was enduring all these fearful thoughts, while the other three, no longer under any restraint, were giving vent to their feelings of vexation, lamenting over such an unlooked-for premature arrival as a most untoward event, and without mercy wishing poor Sir Thomas had been twice as long on his passage, or were still in Antigua.   (source)
  • …needed all the felicity of being again at home, and all the forbearance it could supply, to save Sir Thomas from anger on finding himself thus bewildered in his own house, making part of a ridiculous exhibition in the midst of theatrical nonsense, and forced in so untoward a moment to admit the acquaintance of a young man whom he felt sure of disapproving, and whose easy indifference and volubility in the course of the first five minutes seemed to mark him the most at home of the two.   (source)
  • If their surface ships did anything untoward, Eaton had the means to deal with them.†   (source)
  • She saw nothing untoward, but her apprehension increased.†   (source)
  • But Mr. Ugone, with his untoward respect for Poldy, went on above all confusion.†   (source)
  • Instead I wanted to tell her that everything about us wasn't really as it seemed, that nothing was, not even the war, which had never quite arrived and probably now never would, that we—the soldiers, officers, the girls—all had somehow entered an untoward region of stasis from which we would soon find deliverance, that we needed only to persist for a short time longer, that we must hold fast to the general order of things.†   (source)
  • Henderson laughed to show that he had no untoward intentions—which of course he did, though he was a patient man in such matters.†   (source)
  • She had obstinately refused to say that anything untoward had occurred, and in any case she was fifteen and legal.†   (source)
  • It was nearly unimaginable, of course, to think such a relationship was possible, and yet in a strange way the doctor's untoward interest in her, and his highly irregular orders, let me believe that my befriending her and showing her kindness and constantly thinking of her when she wasn't present was almost ordinary.†   (source)
  • Out there, nuns, swept by untoward blasts of wind, shrieked soundlessly as in nightmares in the corridors.†   (source)
  • Eugene felt untoward visions churning, the Spaniard with his great knees bent and his black slippers turning as if on a wheel's rim, dancing in a red smoky place with a lead-heavy alligator.†   (source)
  • He bore the honor gravely and with no untoward conceit, as though it were only his due.†   (source)
  • It is true that with him, as with all men of his kind, every shock, every pain, every untoward predicament at once called forth the wish to find an escape in death.†   (source)
  • The evening passed off without any untoward incident, but on the following morning my wife was seriously unwell.†   (source)
  • He took the strings of the stays in his hands and jerked them so hard that she cried out, frightened, humiliated, embarrassed at such an untoward performance.†   (source)
  • This man was looking for untoward reactions in the people around him.†   (source)
  • An inkling of untoward deeds on the part of Hurstwood had come.†   (source)
  • She was watching for Florence, listening for some sound fraught with untoward meaning.†   (source)
  • "No; indigestion," I retorted, and continued my walk as if nothing untoward had occurred.†   (source)
  • While she waited there she forgot the prospect of untoward change.†   (source)
  • Nothing untoward occurred until the pudding.†   (source)
  • His query shocked the Hudnall women into what seemed sudden recollection of something untoward.†   (source)
  • THAT, signor professor, were an untoward experiment.†   (source)
  • He has a sullen, rebellious spirit; a violent temper; and an untoward, intractable disposition.†   (source)
  • Let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting.†   (source)
  • It was necessary to choose some less untoward hour than ten o'clock at night.†   (source)
  • Marguerite St. Just was from principle and by conviction a republican—equality of birth was her motto—inequality of fortune was in her eyes a mere untoward accident, but the only inequality she admitted was that of talent.†   (source)
  • They had a very good time and nothing untoward happened until after tea, when they found themselves in the Barry garden, a little tired of all their games and ripe for any enticing form of mischief which might present itself.†   (source)
  • The Rev. Dr. Drew, his rustic bang flopping with the intensity of his poetic and sociologic ardor, trumpeted: "During the untoward series of industrial dislocations which have—let us be courageous and admit it boldly—throttled the business life of our fair city these past days, there has been a great deal of loose talk about scientific prevention of scientific—SCIENTIFIC!†   (source)
  • He knew that between M. de Charlus and her nothing untoward could ever happen, that when M. de Charlus went anywhere with her, it was out of friendship for himself, and that he would make no difficulty about telling him everything that she had done.†   (source)
  • Coffee and cognac followed with sufficient speed to prevent any untoward consequence, and they settled down to smoke in comfort.†   (source)
  • When Phillotson saw the blood running down the rector's face he deplored almost in groans the untoward and degrading circumstances, regretted that he had not resigned when called upon, and went home so ill that next morning he could not leave his bed.†   (source)
  • Any one who had known his life's history would have said it was the expression, slightly emphasized, with which he had received most of the untoward blows of his life in the past.†   (source)
  • In spite of the untoward surroundings, however, Tess bravely made a little cross of two laths and a piece of string, and having bound it with flowers, she stuck it up at the head of the grave one evening when she could enter the churchyard without being seen, putting at the foot also a bunch of the same flowers in a little jar of water to keep them alive.†   (source)
  • She knew that it was all sentiment, all baseless impressibility, which had caused her to read the scene as her own condemnation; nevertheless she could not get over it; she could not contravene in her own defenceless person all those untoward omens.†   (source)
  • She had a gloomy expectancy of untoward circumstances, and with it a keen-edged curiosity to watch developments.†   (source)
  • "Roberta," corrected Titus Alden, a titillating sense of something untoward affecting his nerves as he said it.†   (source)
  • When Sir Andrew once more looked at her, he only saw upon her face alarm at the untoward accident and relief at its happy issue; whilst the tiny and momentous note had apparently fluttered to the ground.†   (source)
  • For about this entire clandestine procedure there hung, as she saw it, a sense of something untoward and even sinful, and then on top of it all, quarreling and then breaking with Grace Marr, her one girl friend here thus far, and the Newtons on account of it, when, as she well knew, it was entirely due to Grace that she was here at all.†   (source)
  • In something less than an hour-and-a-half he had skirted the south of the King's Hintock estates and ascended to the untoward solitude of Cross-in-Hand, the unholy stone whereon Tess had been compelled by Alec d'Urberville, in his whim of reformation, to swear the strange oath that she would never wilfully tempt him again.†   (source)
  • —Dr. Todd, I will thank you to attend to the injury which Hiram Doolittle has received in this untoward affair,—Richard, you will oblige me by sending up the carriage to the top of the hill.†   (source)
  • Inward melancholy it was impossible for a man like Oak, introspective far beyond his neighbours, to banish quite, whilst conning the present untoward page of his history.†   (source)
  • He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art which was her rival; dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover.†   (source)
  • Here was an untoward event!†   (source)
  • I reflected that even in those untoward times there must have been latent in Biddy what was now developing, for, in my first uneasiness and discontent I had turned to her for help, as a matter of course.†   (source)
  • Then Clara broke out: "Kinsman, I don't like this: something or another troubles me, and I feel as if something untoward were going to happen.†   (source)
  • Still, it was not absolutely love that Hetty felt for Hurry, nor do we wish so to portray it, but merely that awakening sensibility and admiration, which, under more propitious circumstances, and always supposing no untoward revelations of character on the part of the young man had supervened to prevent it, might soon have ripened into that engrossing feeling.†   (source)
  • This young gentleman was of an excellent--indeed of an illustrious family, but, by a variety of untoward events, had been reduced to such poverty that the energy of his character succumbed beneath it, and he ceased to bestir himself in the world, or to care for the retrieval of his fortunes.†   (source)
  • She lived with her single daughter in a very small way, and was considered with all the regard and respect which a harmless old lady, under such untoward circumstances, can excite.†   (source)
  • To regard the event as an untoward accident seemed, to Farfrae, truest consideration for the dead one's memory, as well as best philosophy.†   (source)
  • 'Amy, my dear, if you can persuade Mr Clennam to stay longer, I can leave the honours of our poor apology for an establishment with confidence in your hands, and perhaps you may do something towards erasing from Mr Clennam's mind the—ha—untoward and unpleasant circumstance which has occurred since tea-time.'†   (source)
  • And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten.†   (source)
  • I should have been glad to have met Daniel Dodge himself; to have had him seen me and known me, that he might have mourned over the untoward circumstances which compelled him to sell me for three hundred dollars.†   (source)
  • Her efforts in this line, however, were brought to an abrupt close by an untoward accident, which quenched her ardor.†   (source)
  • The heath-croppers had returned noiselessly, and were looking on with erect heads just as before, their timid eyes fixed upon the scene, as if they were wondering what mankind and candle-light could have to do in these haunts at this untoward hour.†   (source)
  • Nevertheless, as be harangued them, the satisfaction and admiration unanimously excited by his costume were dissipated by his words; and when he reached that untoward conclusion: "As soon as his illustrious eminence, the cardinal, arrives, we will begin," his voice was drowned in a thunder of hooting.†   (source)
  • 'It is in vain,' said Mrs Gowan, 'for people to attempt to get on together who have such extremely different antecedents; who are jumbled against each other in this accidental, matrimonial sort of way; and who cannot look at the untoward circumstance which has shaken them together in the same light.†   (source)
  • It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his luckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Ahab.†   (source)
  • It seemed that the omen was an unpropitious one, for, as the rather untoward commencement of Oak's overtures, just as he arrived by the garden gate, he saw a cat inside, going into various arched shapes and fiendish convulsions at the sight of his dog George.†   (source)
  • With one hand employed in averting these dangers, and the other grasping his bridle to check an untoward speed that his horse was assuming, the native of France responded as follows: "Sucre! dey do make sucre in Martinique; mais—mais ce n'est pas one tree—ah—ah—vat you call—je voudrois que ces chemins fussent au diable — vat you call—steeck pour la promenade?"†   (source)
  • I have observed, Mrs. Elton, in the course of my life, that if things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.†   (source)
  • He spoke in a tone which had just severity enough in it to show that he remembered the untoward event of the forenoon, and his conviction that Henchard had been drinking.†   (source)
  • Bear in mind, too, that under these untoward circumstances he has to cut many feet deep in the flesh; and in that subterraneous manner, without so much as getting one single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus made, he must skilfully steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts, and exactly divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion into the skull.†   (source)
  • What if he had been mistaken in his views; if there had been no necessity that his own absolute separation from her he loved should be involved in these untoward incidents?†   (source)
  • George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day—another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise.†   (source)
  • But Catherine did not know her own advantages—did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward.†   (source)
  • Impatient to get rid of those hateful evidences of her folly, those detestable papers then scattered over the bed, she rose directly, and folding them up as nearly as possible in the same shape as before, returned them to the same spot within the cabinet, with a very hearty wish that no untoward accident might ever bring them forward again, to disgrace her even with herself.†   (source)
  • Have to my widow! and if she be froward, Then hast thou taught Hortensio to be untoward.†   (source)
  • O day untowardly turned!†   (source)
  • Men, upon too many occasions, do not give their own understandings fair play; but, yielding to some untoward bias, they entangle themselves in words and confound themselves in subtleties.†   (source)
  • "Oh," said the goatherd, "I do not know even the half of what has happened to the lovers of Marcela, but perhaps to-morrow we may fall in with some shepherd on the road who can tell us; and now it will be well for you to go and sleep under cover, for the night air may hurt your wound, though with the remedy I have applied to you there is no fear of an untoward result."†   (source)
  • …me seated in this chair, here in the middle of the kingdom of Aragon, and in the attire of a despised outcast duenna, I am from the Asturias of Oviedo, and of a family with which many of the best of the province are connected by blood; but my untoward fate and the improvidence of my parents, who, I know not how, were unseasonably reduced to poverty, brought me to the court of Madrid, where as a provision and to avoid greater misfortunes, my parents placed me as seamstress in the…†   (source)
  • …bells, and armed with three blown ox-bladders at the end of a stick, joined them, and this merry-andrew approaching Don Quixote, began flourishing his stick and banging the ground with the bladders and cutting capers with great jingling of the bells, which untoward apparition so startled Rocinante that, in spite of Don Quixote's efforts to hold him in, taking the bit between his teeth he set off across the plain with greater speed than the bones of his anatomy ever gave any promise of.†   (source)
  • The drums beat, the sound of the trumpets filled the air, the earth trembled under foot, the hearts of the gazing crowd were full of anxiety, some hoping for a happy issue, some apprehensive of an untoward ending to the affair, and lastly, Don Quixote, commending himself with all his heart to God our Lord and to the lady Dulcinea del Toboso, stood waiting for them to give the necessary signal for the onset.†   (source)
  • …that such a humour could become dominant in the heart of man; he was extremely glad, therefore, to meet him and test at close quarters what he had heard of him at a distance; so he said to him, "Despair not, valiant knight, nor regard as an untoward fate the position in which thou findest thyself; it may be that by these slips thy crooked fortune will make itself straight; for heaven by strange circuitous ways, mysterious and incomprehensible to man, raises up the fallen and makes rich…†   (source)
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