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Good form   /gʊd fɔrm/   Listen
Good form

noun
1.
Behavior that conforms to social conventions of the time.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Good form" Quotes from Famous Books



... if these abominable cruelties were thought mean, it was held lawful to cover a stone with dust and get a boy, not in the secret, to kick the pile over with his bare foot. It was perfectly good form, also, to get a boy, if you could, to shut his eyes, and then lead him into a mud-puddle or a thicket of briers or nettles, or to fool him in any heartless way, such as promising to pump easy when he put his mouth to the pump-spout, and then coming ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... he was but a youth, unused to the ways of the world, had much natural shrewdness. He had been brought up in the breeziness of the West, where it is not considered good form, to say the least, to ask too many questions of a man. If a person wanted to tell you his affairs, that was a different matter. So, as Roy's mission was more or less of a secret one, he decided it would not be well to talk about it, especially to ...
— The Boy from the Ranch - Or Roy Bradner's City Experiences • Frank V. Webster

... word," he says, "I had no idea the St. Vincent was such good form. Floyd has the lucky card everywhere. Is it really true the patent is a success and that there are fortunes ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... since it was good form for a maid to avoid the crass mention of sex. With prohibition has come such an outburst of Get Moral Quick legislation that the reaction is now being felt throughout the length and breadth of the flapper. The legislators would lengthen the skirts ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... the very tip-top of the English here; she has a whole palace, and you meet the very best people at her house. I was afraid when you were singing, Lydia, that they would think your voice was too good to be good form,—that's an expression you must get; it means everything,—it sounded almost professional. I wanted to nudge you to sing a little lower, or different, or something; but I couldn't, everybody was looking so. No matter. It's all right now. If she ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells

... island under an assumed name," said Darrow in tones that had the smoothness and the rasp of silk. "Rather annoying. Not good form, ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... condition. He had had such a little share in her life after all, her real life in the cities, which laid its impress with such certainty on those who were its children. He saw the marks of it all about him, the thing one called "good form," the undercurrent of strife for social honor, the corrugated brow of envy, the pomp and circumstance of spilled riches—ah! here was where his shoe would pinch him the most. For Hermia Challoner was wealthy beyond the touch of Midas. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... increase its sales to ten thousands. Ah, there was the rub. The clue to his remaining in the cave was this very kink in the Celebrity's character. There was nothing Bohemian in that character; it yearned after the eminently respectable. Its very eccentricities were within the limits of good form. The Celebrity shunned the biscuits and beer of the literary clubs, and his books were bound for the boudoir. To have it proclaimed in the sensational journals that the hands of this choice being had been locked for grand larceny was a thought too horrible to entertain. His very ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... concluded it was another joke and paid no more attention. But the room was being rapidly cleared and I was more and more puzzled. He arranged the vases of flowers where he thought they showed to the best advantage, and seemed altogether in extremely good form. ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... I am able to judge, this variety of barbarism shows itself usually in a rather snobbish intolerance of anything not good form in literature. The universities still protect it, but its home is in London, among the professional ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... party had to knock down good form and trample gentle breeding under foot to reach the spot in time. Wayne spoke of a friend in Vienna from whom he had heard that day and turned to Ann with an interrogation about the Viennese. Katie, contemplating the suppleness of Ann's neck, ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... known as "grand-stand plays"; that is, he attempts to make difficult plays or one-handed stops with an unnecessary display of motions, to bring the applause of the spectators. No ball player was ever made by playing to the audience. Good form is not only very desirable but very necessary, but the main thing in ball playing is to play your part and to forget that there is such a thing as an audience or applause. If your form is good so much the better, but if by paying too much attention to it ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... Marquise de Vermandoise and a young man walking in one of the side allees, and when I wanted to wave to them Heloise pinched me, and made me look the other way; and when I asked why, she said it was not very good form to "see" people in Paris out of the Season—that one never was sure what they were there for—and that I was certainly not to mention it either at Tournelle or Croixmare! Isn't ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn

... heaven above, on the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth, that Colonel de Warrenne feared, was breach of good form and ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... was no fool. He had thought a good deal about the lonely life she and her father led. Many men came into this country three jumps ahead of the law. It was not good form to ask where any one came from unless he volunteered information about antecedent conditions. Was it possible that Jake Houck had something on Tolliver, that he was using his knowledge to force June into a marriage ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... as if there might be a jack-rabbit or two in these hills," observed Mr. Bell after the meal had been dispatched. "I know it's not good form in the West to eat jack-rabbits, but they're not so bad if you kill them when they are young. Anyhow, it would be a change from this everlasting ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... for Frank, he was barely allowed the privilege of procuring tickets and buying bonbons, or else making one of a rubber of whist. "Don't you dare to say any sweet things while she is here," Blanch had cautioned him at the outset. "In the first place it is not good form, and in the second it would offend her. Be as gallant as you know how, but do not let mamma see that you are any more attentive to Alice than to Ede and I. If you hope to win your pretty schoolma'am ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... a frame building in a little town up on the Hudson and were showing him off in good form. Business was rushing and we had the S. R. O. sign out all the time, but snake food was getting scarcer than boiled lobsters during the cold snap last winter. The show had closed up for night and we were trying ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe

... himself upon a certain impassivity of features and manner which some fin de siecle oracle of the cities had pronounced good form, but he was not wholly able to conceal his relief. Such an arrangement was entirely to his liking. It solved the situation satisfactorily in more ways ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... friends, Mr. Shafton, it is not considered good form to say such things to a lady of slight acquaintance." She rose and gathered up her book and hat that lay on the floor beside her chair, and drew herself up till she ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... roads. But it must be allowed that the art of constructing a good and firm road was ill understood, and worse attended to; and when, in the beginning of the last century, turnpike roads were first made, it was imagined that the only good form was that of a ridge and furrow lying across the road on the line of its direction. Turnpike gates were also in many places considered as such impositions that even in the beginning of the reign of George the second, some persons contested the payment, ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts

... passages to the billiard-room shivering, their feet aching, feeling very uncomfortable indeed. The waistcoat was now considering if it would be good form to come forward in the Conservative interest at the next election; but every one was too tired, they could not laugh, and amid a few general remarks the young ladies drank their gin and water, casting sheep's eyes at the young men, and then, glad and yet loth to part, all ...
— Spring Days • George Moore

... sometimes in the left hand and sometimes in the right. It should be in the left, when holding foods that are being cut with the knife. It may be held in either hand when conveying food to the mouth. It used to be considered "good form" to use only the right hand in lifting food to the mouth, though this necessitated changing the fork to the right hand after the knife had been laid aside. The common-sense method of keeping the fork in the left hand to carry food to the ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

... of the best riders in Ireland at that time who was quartered at the Curragh, whose riding at Punchestown Races was always good to watch and who had come down for a few days' stay with us. There was a meet of the hounds; he wanted a ride. I offered him Mick Molloy, who was in good form just then, and he accepted the offer. I warned him of his one peculiarity. The morning of the hunt we rode out together. It was in the direction of Ballynegarde. There was often a trap to be met in the way of a sunken ditch over-grown with gorse, and ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... Sansome was, however, a very important figure in the woman's world. Social construction was a ticklish matter. There were so many things to be decided; small items of etiquette, the "proper thing" —procedure, decorations, good form, larger matters as to whether so-and-so should be received, and if so, how extensively. Ben Sansome was past master of such things. He was the only man in town who knew—or cared—how to "draw lines." He became truly a modern arbiter elegantiarum. For San Francisco ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... Indian schoolgirl religion is the natural atmosphere of life. She discusses her faith with as little self-consciousness as if she were choosing the ingredients for the next day's curry. She knows nothing of those Western conventions that make it "good form" for us to hide all our emotions, all our depth of feeling, under the mask of not caring at all. She has none of that inverted hypocrisy which causes us to take infinite pains to assure our world that we are vastly worse than we are. What Lotus feels she ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren

... White House, as one writer has remarked, lost under Jackson something of the good form of the Virginia regime, but it lost nothing of the air of domesticity. Throughout the two Administrations the mistress of the mansion was Mrs. Andrew Jackson Donelson, wife of the President's secretary and in every respect a very ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... Oxford in a quiet, amiable way, not troubling himself more about study than to secure himself from an ignominious pluck, and doing whatever was supposed to be "good form." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the cook, is a person introduced to us as Miss Diggity. We afterwards learned that this is spelled Dalgety, but it is not considered good form, in Scotland, to pronounce the names of persons and places as they are written. When, therefore, I allude to the cook, which will be as seldom as possible, I shall speak of her as Miss Diggity-Dalgety, so that I shall be presenting her correctly both to the eye and to the ear, and giving ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... that fall in good form and there were several members of the book-making fraternity who stood ready to back him whenever he said the word. I had taken a notion into my head that I could beat him, nor was I alone in the opinion, for my friend, "Bart" White, thought the same way. The result ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... for the right side may be followed lying on the left side. This is important to learn as the pupil should swim equally well on either side. It will also help him to acquire good form. Arm Strokes. Movement I.—Draw the right arm forward close to the chest, palm out, elbow at the side. Movement II.—Extend the right arm forward as far as possible, keeping the hand about six inches below the surface. Movement III.—Sweep the right ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton

... action. He finds a new sort of fitness demanded of him, executive, thorough- going, careful of details, full of drudgery and obedience to orders. Everybody is ahead of him. Just now he was a senior, at the top of the world he knows and reigned in, a finished product and pattern of good form. Of a sudden he is a novice again, as green as in his first school year, studying a thing that seems to have no rules—at sea amid crosswinds, and a bit seasick withal. Presently, if he be made of stuff that will shake into shape and fitness, he settles ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson

... when you went by yourself to play singles with Mr. Sutcliffe. But if Mr. Sutcliffe asked you you would simply have to go. You would have to play a great many singles against Mr. Sutcliffe if you were to be in good form next year ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... the fortune of a picture-show company—in England. Not here, however; such types are too common to be remarked, the reason being that boys are seldom sent to boarding schools where stereotyped conventions of "good form" are held up for their imitation, but brought up at home by adoring mothers who care little for such externals or, if they do, have no great authority to enforce their views. On entering the world, these eccentricities in manner are proudly clung ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... add force—they could "run 'em in" so That one to three culprits would find himself equal; He could collar the two, have the other in tow— A very good form of the Tale ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... of good taste, good form, as the world puts it, in preaching as in other matters. It was sufficient to indicate the parallel; people could then look up chapter and verse for themselves. As no doubt ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... merely repeated herself. And her best books—the famous Heir of Redclyffe (1853), which captivated William Morris and his friends at Oxford, and which, with a little unnecessary sentimentality and a little "unco-guidness," is full of cleverness, nature, good sense, good taste, and good form; Heartsease (1854), perhaps the best of all; Dynevor Terrace (1857), less of a general favourite but full of good things; and the especially popular Daisy Chain (1856), with not a few others—are things which ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... to do with gentlemen and ladies. The oath is not going to sanction itself with religious terrors. Good form—we shall appeal to a "sense of form"—now so widely diffused by University Extension Lectures on the ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... seen it, she would have fainted. In the "citizen's class," such and such a sub-class, according to Pennewip, is found a certain scantiness that does not obtain in the common laboring class. In the matter of eating, laborers, who do not invest their money in Geneva, are not troubled so much by "good form" as people who give ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli

... ware "C.C." is beautiful and always good form. For those wanting colour, the same famous makers of England have an ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... will be," Mariana asserted, "I am already overwhelmed. But you never look hot, Howat; you are always beautiful." His flannels and straw-coloured silk coat were crisply ironed; his hair, his scarf and lustrous yellow shoes, precise. "Howat," she continued almost anxiously, "you put a lot on, well—good form. You think that the way a man knots his tie is ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... warlike spear. Men handle those; all manly hopes resign, Thy mistress' ensigns must be likewise thine. 10 Please her—her hate makes others thee abhor; If she discards thee, what use serv'st thou for? Good form there is, years apt to play together: Unmeet is beauty without use to wither. She may deceive thee, though thou her protect; What two determine never wants effect. Our prayers move thee to assist our drift, While thou hast time ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... discovery of you stand as it is, only we'll substitute the swimming-pool of the New York Athletic Club in lieu of the Battery. The Battery wouldn't sound good form. Romanticism always makes truth more palatable. Trust me to work things to a highly artistic and flawless finish. I can procure any number of witnesses—at so much per head—who have time and again distinctly heard your childish prattle ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... to be sure, but of other virtues the craft had none. When loaded she was so clumsy, so obstinate, so headstrong that it required unceasing effort to hold her on a course; as for rowing her, it was almost impossible. She took the first swooping rush into the canon, strange to say, in very good form, and thereafter, by dint of herculean efforts, Royal and his three men managed to hold her head down-stream. Sweeping between the palisades, she galloped clumsily onward, wallowing like a hippopotamus. Her long pine sweeps, balanced ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... public opinion at the present time is being gradually produced which takes it for granted that as a matter of good form young people should not have children for a few years after marriage, and it is becoming a common practice to start married life with sordid and unnatural preparations for a natural act; yet many of these young people, men and women alike, are most anxious ...
— Conception Control and Its Effects on the Individual and the Nation • Florence E. Barrett

... So well, in fact, that you have suffered for it. Can't we start at once?" She was debating within herself whether it would be quite good form to shake hands with the reclining hero. In the glare of the broad daylight he and his followers looked more ragged and famished than before, but they also appeared ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... belongs to the "best set," so she does not take pains to introduce the names of great acquaintances into her conversation. And of course she always tells the truth. She may observe all these things simply because it is good form, but a truthful woman will observe them without knowing they are good form, and she will be ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... arranging beds for winter vegetables, and tending a few simple flowers, you behold Julia Fabens, and she has quite outgrown the bend in her good form, which hard work brought on at Mason's, and looks more mature, and hardy; and she is diligent as a parent robin, and rosy and glad ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... handle about 5 inches long by one-quarter of an inch diameter, or, better still, a bit of pinion wire 6 inches long, of which 1.5 inches are turned down as far as the cylindrical core, An old dentists' chisel or filling tool is also a very good form of instrument. ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... Crawford's girls are in good form this year," said Rachel Hunter, who had a cousin at a school at the other side of Stedburgh. "Nell says they're ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... matter of dress and manners, but as formulating a theory of existence. Mrs. Bracebridge and her husband were the last word in the matter of self-sufficiency, taste in the matter of appointments, care in the matter of dress, good form in the matter of reception, entertainment, and the various usages of social life. Now and then, apropos of nothing save her own mood, Mrs. Bracebridge would indicate her philosophy of life in ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... distorted in a picture; if the attitude be natural or grand or mean; though he has never received any instruction in drawing or heard any conversation on the subject, nor can himself draw with correctness a single feature. A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject, and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the mechanical proportions of the features and head. We may owe to dreams some light on the fountain of this skill; for as soon ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... conclude from this that we are all uneducated—this is all the wife; nothing can knock anything into her head. [To his wife] How many times have I told you: if you want to have a party in the evening, call in the musicians, and have things in good form. You can't say ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky

... sixteen, and not until the last two or three years of my life have I known anything at all of that phase of existence which is expressed by the word 'society.' I indulge in this preamble in order to apologize in advance, for any breaks I may make in that mystical line of talk which you call, 'good form.'" ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman

... place to a great degree of the railroad train; the steamship, which moved most evenly and with less of the jarring and shaking consequent upon high speed, was the favored vessel with ocean travellers. It was not considered good form to read the daily papers; and only those hurried to their business who were obliged to do so in order that their employers might attend to their affairs in the leisurely manner which was then the custom of the ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... Unfortunately, this intangible quality in a speaker, often called "personality" or "magnetism," cannot, to any great extent, be taught. In the main, one must seek this and develop it for himself. A text-book can point out what constitutes good form, what is pleasing and impressive to the eye and to the ear, and, in a word, what make up the externals of a good delivery; but beyond these mechanical directions it cannot go. A student should observe the following ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... trade journals and other periodicals are also open to receive technical descriptions of inventions of merit concerning industrial improvements. Such articles should be written in good form, containing not over five hundred or a thousand words, and if admitted to this class of publications will be of the utmost value and importance in creating favorable public opinion, and ...
— Practical Pointers for Patentees • Franklin Cresee

... Salutation.—Good form in debating requires that each speaker shall begin with a salutation to the various personages whom he addresses. The most common salutation is: "Mr. Chairman, worthy opponents, ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... magistrates who invited me to these feasts, for their purpose was as generously hospitable as the purpose of any American who invites a visitor to dinner. But the Chinese bill-of-fare includes dishes that are rather trying to a Christian palate, and good form requires the guest to taste at least each dish, for if he fails to do so, he makes his host "lose face''—a serious breach of etiquette in China. For example, here is the menu of a typical Chinese feast to which I ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... and the coil of rope. The sun was hot on the plateau and the way very rough. They climbed constantly over ragged boulders, and chaotic rock heaps, or rounded deep fissures that cut the plateau like spider webs. Muscular and in good form as was the trio, frequent rests were necessary. They had one mishap. Na-che, lagging behind, slipped into a fissure. Enoch and Diana blanched at her sudden scream and ran back as she disappeared. Mercifully a great ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... the refreshing vitality of Lady Durwent, who never quite lost her optimism no matter how tight was the grip of good form; and he admired without stint the devotion of every one, regardless of sex, to sport. Throughout the day there were constant expeditions that necessitated long, invigorating hours in the open air; and it seemed to the American that they were never so free ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... not exactly; but to occupy myself with them, yes. Art is a good thing for those who haven't the strength to live, in realities. It is a good form of sport for old maids, for deceived husbands who need consolation, as hysterical persons ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja

... rule, very difficult to clean or to keep clean. Short hopper closets are preferable, as they are easily kept clean and are well flushed. When provided with flushing rim, and with a good water-supply cistern and large supply pipe, the short hopper closet is a good form ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... Esmeer went on, "but a kind of hesitation whether the Ancient of Days is really exactly what one would call good form.... There's a lot of horrid coarseness got into the world somehow. SOMEBODY put it there.... And anyhow there's no particular reason why a man should be seen about with Him. He's jolly Awful of course and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... know,—she says they're not good form, and all that; but I'm sure she knows queer people enough herself. There is that tiresome old Miss Gisborne down in Washington Street,—the girls are forever going there; and I've seen them myself ever so many times coming out of the Hares',—and they ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge

... Corder, for a fellow of his make and inexperience, exhibited good form, and persistently walked his man round the ring, dodging his blows and getting in a knock for himself every now and then. Brinkman soon dropped the disdainful style in which he commenced proceedings, and became ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... take in any fellow who, like all of you, hates cowardice, and meanness, and dirtiness, and that sort of thing. (Cheers, not unmixed with blushes.) We may not all think alike about everything, but, if we are all agreed it's good form to be gentlemen, and honest and brave, I don't see why we can't be 'Select Sociables' still. We pride ourselves at Templeton on being one of the crack schools in the country. (Loud cheers.) Well, any lot of ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... was his driving-cart with two magnificent black horses, alert and eager for the sport. Helen was not much of a judge of horses, having never had one of her own to drive, but she had the eye of a person of aristocratic tastes for what was in good form, and she saw that Mr. Harrison's turnout was all of that, with another attraction for her, that it was daring; for the horses were lithe, restless creatures, thoroughbreds, both of them; and it looked as if they had not been ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... type specimens. Fig. 71 shows a somewhat shallow form of great simplicity and grace. That in Fig. 72 is deeper, with a narrow neck and a more decidedly conical shape. Two minute grotesque figures are perched upon the shoulder. Fig. 73 represents a larger vessel of good form, which has a neat incised pattern encircling the slightly incurved neck. Grotesque heads are set upon the shoulder. A form somewhat more refined is shown in Fig. 74. The neck is furnished with a relieved ornament, consisting of a meandered and indented fillet, accompanied ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... good form, these young men who had come out to a dirty devilish war. It was enormously good to hear them talking to each other in just the same civil, disinterested, casual way which belongs to the conversational range of St. James's Street clubs. Not once—like ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... only use Britain ever contemplated making of her Navy, should peace continue, was that of a policeman who co-operates with others in watching lest anyone should jostle his neighbor on the maritime highway. He believed in the Sittlichkeit, which we here mean when we speak of "good form." But that was not the faith of his critics in Berlin. They wanted to have Russia, and if possible France also, along with their navies, on the side of Germany. Peace, yes, but peace compelled by fear—a very unwholesome and unstable kind of peace, and deadly for the ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane

... rather sniggered. Real honest laughter is not considered 'good form' by certain sections of society. A gentle imitation of the nanny-goat's bleat is the most seemly way for cultured persons to give vent to the expression of mirth. Maryllia alone was grave and preoccupied. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... delight in mere extermination. They used to call our nobility, in the time of Louis XIV and Louis XV, cruel, but they did not kill, they merely taxed. In the height of the ancient regime, it was not good form to kill a peasant, because then the country had one less taxpayer. The height of the art was to take all the peasant had and then to induce him to set to work again. When he had earned another surplus, his lord came and took it. France had an accomplished nobility. England ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith

... which, of course, he attributed to his Duchessa's own good taste. He was not yet familiar enough with the Black aristocracy of Italy, to be aware that in the matter of food and drink simplicity is as much the criterion of good form amongst them, as lavish complexity is the criterion of good form amongst ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... what you want to do. I think it was perfect good form in Laura to bolt from Lupton to the church door. It was almost a masterpiece in good form. It's the hardest thing in the world to act spontaneously on one's impulses—and it's the only really gentlemanly thing to do—provided you're fit to ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... learn little quips of the feminine mind: that a woman who can pay seventy-five will pay double that sum; that it is not considered good form to show surprise at a dressmaker's prices, no matter how high they may be; that long mirrors and artificial light help sales—no woman over thirty but was grateful for her pink-and-gray room with its soft lights. And Harriet herself conformed to the picture. She took ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... laciniata, cut leaves; C. Oxyacantha multiplex, double-white flowers; C. Oxyacantha foliis argenteis, having silvery-variegated leaves: C. Oxyacantha pendula, of semi-weeping habit; C. Oxyacantha stricta, with an upright and stiff habit of growth; C. Oxyacantha Leeana, a good form; ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster

... a very decent fellow, of his sort. I don't say that I care as much for him now as I used to; we've both of us altered; but his worst fault is extravagance. The old man, it must be confessed, isn't very good form; he smells rather of the distillery; but Ted Strangwyn might come of the best family in the land. Oh, you needn't have the least anxiety. Strangwyn will pay, principal and interest, as soon as the old man has retired; and ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... of the Talmud, then casuistry occupied his mind, and, finally, the Kabbalah. The last had but feeble attractions for the future poet. His mental mould was determined by his thorough study of the Bible and Hebrew grammar, which was good form in Wilna as early as his day, and the works of Wessely, for whom he always professed warm admiration, had a decided influence upon his ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... that of Dr. Arnold has been no exception. The earnest enthusiast who strove to make his pupils Christian gentlemen and who governed his school according to the principles of the Old Testament, has proved to be the founder of the worship of athletics and the worship of good form. Upon those two poles our public schools have turned for so long that we have almost come to believe that such is their essential nature, and that an English public schoolboy who wears the wrong clothes and takes no interest in football, is a contradiction in terms. Yet it was not so before ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... will not know," broke in her daughter, leading the elder woman to the door. "You will not tell him. Besides," (she shrugged), "we women are free in England. What would shock my father is good form in this ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume

... three of clubs in mistake for the ace of trumps, and then get mad and jump seventeen feet in the air because you are not permitted to pull it back. It isn't good form to jump seventeen feet in the air. Besides, you might fall and hurt yourself and ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott

... Attention is called to paragraphing and emphasis is laid upon both the form and the manner of writing, but form is made subservient to thought. The interrelation of Art Department helps the student to appreciate the need of good form in the appearance of ...
— The Making of a Trade School • Mary Schenck Woolman

... right," replied Rolfe viciously. "He's the most pig-headed, obstinate, vain, narrow-minded man you could come across." It occurred to Rolfe that it was not exactly good form on his part to condemn his superior officer so vigorously in the presence of a rival, so he broke off abruptly and asked Crewe how he came into possession ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson

... playing in as good form as I had hoped to," Dave nodded. "The worst of it is, I can't find ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock

... the motions are hard, and when the bowels are easily acted upon, two, or three, or four pills made of Castile soap will frequently answer the purpose; and if they will, are far better than any other ordinary laxative. The following is a good form. Take of: ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... be parasites as long as there's easy money—old man Metford eats breakfast in evening dress. And she orders the chiffonier to take the guests down to the depot in their Packer. But one thing has gone to her heart. She didn't realize in time that it wasn't good form to be prolific. Now that she knows three is the limit she has sent the other six to the country. But that isn't what I started on. She called up this morning and gave me hell because I said yesterday that ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... he greets with careful etiquette, Permits his well-poised tail-tip to vibrate, Then treads with them the solemn minuet That antique custom and good form dictate. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various

... conduct, he knew well, was irreconcilable with good form; but Jesson's tone had become grossly offensive. Something about the man repelled Sheard's naturally generous instincts, and no shade of compunction remained. A score of times, during the past quarter of an hour, he had all but determined to throw up this unsavoury affair and to let ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... at the parliament, of course McLeod's ideas of etiquette and good form met with a rude check, and that was the last I ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... or four kinds of bread; whole wheat bread, Boston brown or oatmeal bread, white bread and rye bread made into square, deep loaves; in fact, all bread used for sandwiches should be made especially for the purpose, so that the slices may be in good form, and sufficiently large to cut into ...
— Sandwiches • Sarah Tyson Heston Rorer

... did look remarkably well in spite of a hairless lip and smooth young cheeks. He mentally decided to get his hair cut, buy lavender gloves and Parma violets, and casually inquire of Leslie, their "swell" man down at old Braggart's, whether coloured silk socks were still considered "good form." ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... oblige was one of the most beautiful of human conventions. It was based upon the proposition that a man being noble and the son of a nobleman could not do a mean thing—it was not good form. ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... the making of a packing case; he who had advice and assistance to give to every one, and who was certainly the life and spirit of the party in the evenings when other people seemed tired or out of heart. Eustace was not at all in good form. Mrs. Orban was at times inclined to have grave misgivings as to the wisdom of the step, and of course felt leaving her husband. Mr. Orban himself, though he insisted on the trip, was naturally a little sad at the prospect. Even Aunt Dorothy—the ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield

... corner, the teacher (who was also a slave) taught the children the alpha beta gamma and the tables of multiplication and in still another corner the lady of the house, who rarely left her domain (since it was not considered good form for a married woman to be seen on the street too often) was repairing her husband's coat with her seamstresses (who were slaves,) and in the little office, right off the door, the master was inspecting the accounts which ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... is in theory the same as the Hampstead Smash, but goes over the net. One must be in very good form (or have been recently insulted) to bring ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... genuinely warm-hearted woman, and much of her talk would probably be stigmatised by the young gentlemen of the present generation, who consider the moral temperature of a fish to be "good form," as "gush." How old Landor, who "gushed" from cradle to grave, would have massacred and rended in his wrath such talkers! Mary Mitford's "gush" was sincere at all events. But there is a "hall-mark," for those who can decipher it, "without which ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... and this I readily believe, for the reason that the home surroundings of the black children are seldom as favourable to the development of speed and exactness as they are among Europeans. It is not considered "good form" among Natives to do things in a hurry, slowness is regarded as essential to good manners; moreover the craving for speed and exactitude is everywhere a feature of high-pressure city life rather ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... arranged this effect; and it is doubtful whether he so perfectly expressed his personality in any of his poems. For he was a man who drank and bathed in colours, who indulged his lust for colour somewhat to the neglect of form—even of good form. This it was that had turned his genius so wholly to eastern art and imagery; to those bewildering carpets or blinding embroideries in which all the colours seem fallen into a fortunate chaos, having nothing ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... grapes, which are not always good, and these were not; although they were sweet in the mouth at first, they made it disagreeable and stinking. The small blue grapes are better, and their vines grow in good form. Although they have several times attempted to plant vineyards, and have not immediately succeeded, they, nevertheless, have not abandoned the hope of doing so by and by, for there is always some encouragement, although they have not, as yet, discovered ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts

... would not be reckoned good form for the husband to be continually going into the zenana, except at particular hours for ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... the Church of S. Francesco, which was ruined in certain parts and threatened to go to ruin in certain others. At Civitavecchia he built many beautiful and magnificent edifices. At Civita Castellana he rebuilt more than a third part of the walls in a good form. At Narni he rebuilt the fortress, enlarging it with good and beautiful walls. At Orvieto he made a great fortress with a most beautiful palace—a work of great cost and no less magnificence. At Spoleto, likewise, he enlarged and strengthened the fortress, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... movement by a sense of her presence, stranger and apparently unnoticed though she be, although in the intellectual work of coeducation girls are most influenced thus. In athletics this motive makes for refinement and good form. The ideal knight, however fierce and terrible, must not be brutal, but show capacity for fine feeling, tenderness, magnanimity, and forbearance. Evolutionists tell us that woman has domesticated and educated savage man and taught him all his virtues by ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... unobtrusively, and their attempts at arrogance are depressing. Their chief duty hitherto has been the development of variety, vivacity, and fulness of life; oligarchy was the world's first experiment in liberty. But now they have adopted the opposite ideal of 'good form,' which may be defined as Puritanism without religion. Good form has sent them all into black like the stroke of a funeral bell. They engage, like Mr. Gilbert's curates, in a war of mildness, a positive competition of obscurity. ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... orange orchards and live-oaks and palms, in vales and hills all ablaze with roses and flowers of the garden and the hothouse, which bloom the year round in the gracious sea-air, would you not, we wonder, come to yourselves in the sense of a new life where it is good form to be enthusiastic and not disgraceful to be surprised? It is a far cry from Newport to Santa Barbara, and a whole world of new sensations lies on the way, experiences for which you will have no formula of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Are Doctors of the carnal or the spiritual? They hold me. So soon as I was given a few ducats these banditti rose to rob me. Polite, they are, these modern sons of Dick Turpin, and clever indeed, for they contrive that you shall be helpless, that you may not in good form resist their calculated, schemed, coordinated blood-drawing. And I had as lief have a Sioux Medicine man dance a one-step round my camp fire, and chant his silly incantation for my curing, as any of these blood pressure, electro-chemical, pill, powder specialists. ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... the most notable achievement of his career. Beyond that, he had done little but ornament the Boards of companies with his name; manage his estate (through an agent) with a mixture of cross conservatism and despotic benevolence; and shoot, hunt and fish with impeccable "good form." He was typical of that very large class of leisured landowner in whose creed good form ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... respect, and she was flattered by his timid bearing, as he had in his veins the blood of heroes. He spoke almost entirely of his love, which, however, he never proposed to her to test, and this platonic course, which in Vaudrey's case she would have considered simple, appeared to her to be "good form" in the great nobleman's case. The duke raised ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... as you can get to garnish the pie. Further, you must provide yourself with a little bacon, which must not be in the least rank (reasty), and you must cut it into pieces of the size of a die, and sprinkle them into the pie. If you want it to be in quite good form, you must put some sour grapes in and a very little salt ... ... Have eggs put into the paste, and the crust made rather hard of the flour of pure wheat. Put in neither spice nor cheese ... Put it into the oven just at the proper ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... enough for Tommy, though, for she had seen it and dropped into a seat several feet away, declaring its position was perfect. Gustave put menus before his distinguished clients with a flourish, and indicated the wine card as conspicuously as was consistent with good form. Then he paused and made mental ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... owned quite a library, said in 1869: "I have bought some very interesting books in New York, especially by a writer named Hawthorne, but the type and paper are so poor that they are not worth binding." The reason why American publishers do not bring out books in such good form as foreign publishers—is that there is no demand for a first-rate article. Thus do the fine arts languish. When rich young Americans take as much interest in painting and sculpture as they do in foot-ball and yachting, we shall have our Vandycks ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... about in a natural way but with delicate consideration for the rights and sentiments of others. The atmosphere of the school interdicts rudeness. There is a quiet dignity, serenity, and intensity, with no abatement of freedom. In this school it is not good form for a boy to be less than a gentleman or for a girl to be less ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... interested, such a dispute might have arisen about American poetry. If it had arisen, the jury would probably have shouted "Guilty!" with one voice. We had no faith in our poetry, and we were afraid of enthusiasm. It was not good form. One or two poets refused to despair of the situation. They affirmed their faith in our spiritual and imaginative substance persistently and in the face of apathy and discouragement. They made us believe in ourselves, and now American poetry is at the threshold of a new era. It is ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... are provided terminals for the various conductors in the cord, and it is at this point that the cord conductors join the other wires leading to the other portions of the apparatus as required. A good form of cord weight is shown in Fig. 298; and obviously the function of these weights is to keep the cords taut at all times and to ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller

... again]. Sit down. You mustn't jump up when I do. [He remains standing. Vexed but smiling she sits.] Well, there! [He sits down.] You punned! You mustn't. We all like puns, but it's good form ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various

... down and spoon. I never saw anything like it. First it's Corthell and then Landry, and next it will be somebody else. Laura regularly mortifies me; a great, grown-up girl like that, flirting, and letting every man she meets think that he's just the one particular one of the whole earth. It's not good form. And Landry—as if he didn't know we've got more to do now than just to dawdle and dawdle. I could slap him. I like to see a man take life seriously and try to amount to something, and not waste the best years of his life trailing after women who are old enough to be his grandmother, and don't mean ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... women upon whose education and accomplishments a fortune had been spent. "It is stupid," she said, "to print articles about bringing up children and furnishing houses, setting tables and feeding families—or whether it is good form for the host to suggest another service at the ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... thunderstorm) to their deep-level homes. From all parts of the city streams of families were converging towards the "Kimberley" and the "De Beers" mines. There were a few bejewelled dames whose ideal of good form and adoration of the convenances would not allow them to entertain such a "fall"; it was asking too much; what would Mrs. Grundy say? There was again a timid set whose notions of a pilgrimage to the bowels of the earth were peculiar; who associated with it all the dangers attending ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... in good form to-day," remarked one ugly old Frenchwoman who had been a well-known figure at the tables for the past ten years, and who played carefully and lived by gambling. She was one of those queer, mysterious old creatures who enter the Rooms each morning ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux

... 398), "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," and "The Stories of Sindbad the Sailor." Almost any of the accessible versions will be satisfactory. For Reynard the Fox, the one adaptation that presents the story in a fairly good form for children is that made by Sir Henry Cole, available as edited by Joseph Jacobs (Nos. 399 and 400). Perhaps as much of Don Quixote is given in this text (Nos. 405-411) as teachers can use. A full translation is a satisfactory source for this story, although the ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... it is not a disadvantage to be small of stature. It is not good form to put one's head over the sandbags; the Turks invariably objected, and even entered their protest against periscopes, which are very small in size. Numbers of observers were cut about the face and a few lost their ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston

... cleaned out Charing Cross, With St. Pancrust and Ludgit chucked in; fairly hopened the eye of the boss; Him as rented the shootings, yer know, big dry-salter in Thames Street, bit warm In his langwige occasional, CHARLIE, but 'arty and reglar good form. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various

... reasons both of correspondence and contrast, masses of type or lettering of good form are admirable as foils to figure designs, in which commemorative monuments of all kinds and book designs afford ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane

... It is not in good form for Corkey to rise. He is a passenger, with a navigator's ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... "It's hardly good form to remind you of it, Jack, but there was a time when we took a grading contract on the line and you got into trouble close in front ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... go, which is more than can be said of the reformers. I am always nervous when he and father get on to social questions, they feel so differently. Fidus was quite angry with me the other day because I said I was thankful that we had learned to have some appreciation of taste and good form and elegance and that we should never go back to being boors and prudes. He insisted that if by boors and prudes I meant men and women who cared more for courage and virtue than for 'hypocrisy' and ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... New Salem debating club. Young Lincoln joined this society, and when he first rose to speak, everybody began to smile in anticipation of a funny story, but Abe proceeded to discuss the question before the house in very good form. He was awkward in his movements and gestures at first, and amused those present by thrusting his unwieldy hands deep into his pockets, but his arguments were so well-put and forcible that all who heard him ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... looked bored. Such things were not in good form; they came from the trade element in the family. His cousin Caspar had Miss Lindsay's attention. She was describing a Polish estate where she had visited ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... conscience in the sense of individual prepossession or institutional authority, even if these be interpreted as the oracles of God, is to justify the suspicion that it is groundless and arbitrary, at best a matter of loyalty or good form. I shall present morality as a set of principles as inherent in conduct, as unmistakably valid there, as is gravitation in the heavens. I shall hope to make it appear that the saving grace of morality is directly operative in life; needing no proof from any adventitious source, ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... become of the British army; the most generally accepted story is that troops have been landed at Calais, Dunkirk and Ostend, but although this is generally believed, there seems to be absolutely no official confirmation of it. Everyone seems to take it for granted that the British will turn up in good form when the right time comes, and that when they do turn up, it will have a good effect. If they can get to the scene of hostilities without everybody knowing about it, it increases by just so much their ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... crop is fed to livestock, and all the manure is returned to the land that produced the crop without loss by leaching or fermentation, there is a return to the land of four fifths of the fertility, and a good form of organic matter is supplied. A portion of the crops cannot be fed upon the farm, or otherwise the human race would have only animal products for food. The welfare of the people demands that a vast amount of the soil's crops be sold ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... Absolute good form, however, demands that a gentleman, wishing to converse with a lady on the street, should, instead of stopping her, turn and walk with her for a short distance in the direction in which she may be going. When the conversation is finished, he should lift ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke



Words linked to "Good form" :   propriety, properness, correctitude



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