11 uses
(click/touch triangles for details)
Definition
unpleasantly and insincerely charming or ingratiating in manner or speech
- A sweet and unctuous duty!Chapters 94-96 — A Squeeze of the Hand; The Cassock; The Try-Works (4% in)
- 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.Chapters 64-66 — Stubb's Supper; The Whale as a Dish; The Shark Massacre (79% in)
- 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.Chapters 76-78 — The Battering-Ram; The Great Heidelburgh Tun; Cistern and Buckets (30% in)
- 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.Chapters 82-84 — The Honour and Glory of Whaling; Jonah Historically Regarded; Pitchpoling (75% in)
- 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.Chapters 88-90 — Schools and Schoolmasters; Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish; Heads or Tails (17% in)
- 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.Chapters 91-93 — The Pequod Meets The Rose-Bud; Ambergris; The Castaway (47% in)
- 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.Chapters 94-96 — A Squeeze of the Hand; The Cassock; The Try-Works (20% in)
- In a word, after being tried out, the crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still contains considerable of its unctuous properties.Chapters 94-96 — A Squeeze of the Hand; The Cassock; The Try-Works (64% in)
- 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.Chapters 97-99 — The Lamp; Stowing Down & Clearing Up; Doubloon (17% in)
- I impute it, though, to their naturally unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game in those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil.Chapters 100-102 — The Pequod meets....; The Decanter; A Bower in the Arsacides (68% in)
- I impute it, though, to their naturally unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the nature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game in those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux country where the convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of train oil.Chapters 100-102 — The Pequod meets....; The Decanter; A Bower in the Arsacides (68% in)
There are no more uses of "unctuous" in Moby Dick.
Typical Usage
(best examples)