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Innuendo   /ɪnjuˈɛndoʊ/   Listen
Innuendo

noun
(pl. innuedoes)
1.
An indirect (and usually malicious) implication.  Synonym: insinuation.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Innuendo" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the frank recklessness which has unfortunately become a characteristic, I am, for the first time, disguised in careful timidity, and discharge my insinuating initials from the ambush of innuendo. ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... at the pointblank denunciation of a young man, who was himself polite to everybody. She would have done it in a very different way—insinuations, innuendo, etc. ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... [We regret the innuendo in the concluding sentence. The war can never be allowed to terminate, except in the complete triumph of Northern principles. We hold the event in our own hands, and may choose whether to terminate it by the methods ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... consideration in the eyes of the good widow; but the Sub-Prior's particular and somewhat mysterious inquiries had set her brains to work on the subject of Mysie of the Mill; and she had here asked a broad question, and there she had thrown out an innuendo, and there again she had gradually led on to a conversation on the subject of poor Mysie. And from all inquiries and investigations she had collected, that Mysie was a dark-eyed, laughter-loving wench, with cherry-cheeks, and a skin as white as her father's finest bolted flour, out of which ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... in the Lectures, a "something high bred." Motley describes their style as "hovering," and their method as "the perfection of lecturing to high-bred audiences." Mr. Marzials quotes this expression "hovering" as admirably descriptive. It is. By judicious selection, by innuendo, here a pitying aposiopesis, there an indignant outburst, the charges are heaped up. Swift was a toady at heart, and used Stella vilely for the sake of that hussy Vanessa. Congreve had captivating manners—of course he had, the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the innuendo, like the majority of the audience, he did not understand, but he saw the wink which passed between the two elder boys. Ever since that day when he had gathered flowers for his mother in Kensal Green Cemetery he had known of dark things, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... published it merely as an accident—which it really was. But they might have made it, by innuendo, a horror for me. However, they put it so simply and so unsuspiciously that Jose Querida might have been any nice man calling on any ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... developing their countries. Why, in some backward parts, the natives had been content to live by hunting and fishing till we furnished them with employment and paid them enough so they could buy salt fish and canned meats. Fortunately La Prensa's innuendo, so obviously inspired by envy, was not taken up, and attention soon turned from the insoluble problem of the bridging of the gap to the southward progress of ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... Lucy, innocently talking of Bice's English parentage, had suddenly roused him to the question—Who was Bice, and who her parents, English or otherwise? The suggestion was very sudden and very simple, conveying in it no intended hint or innuendo. But it came upon Sir Tom like a sudden thunderbolt, or rather like the firing of some train that had been laid and prepared for explosion. The tenor of his fears and suspicions has already been indicated. Nor has it ever been ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant

... an article for which a coolie would pay a few cash as many dollars are demanded of the foreigner. My boy stands by, however, magnificently proud of his lucrative and important post, yelling precautions to the curious populace to stand away. He hints, he does not declare outright, but by ungentle innuendo allows them to understand that, whatever their private characters may be, to him they are all liars and rogues and thieves. It is all so funny, that one's fatigue is minimized to the last degree by the humor one gets and the novel changes one ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... effect of his which has puzzled some people and shocked others. Burke always argued the point, if he only argued one side of it, and it is the special as it is the saving grace of the pamphlet that it must, or at least should, be an argument, and not merely an invective or an innuendo, ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... models, Balzac, De Musset, Feuillet, Taine, Gautier, Merimee, Sainte-Beuve, especially the three latter. He emulates successfully their suavity, their urbanity, their clever knack of conveying a fuller meaning by innuendo than by direct bluntness of statement. If not the best school for substance, it is an admirable one for method, and for so much of style as is attainable by example. It is the same school in which the writers of what used to be called our classical period learned the ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... was a man of no ordinary intellect. It would be interesting to have his conduct in this point, seemingly so strange, in some measure explained: The words "those mathematics" look like an innuendo, that Baxter's scheme of union, by which all the parties opposed to the Prelatic Church were to form a rival Church, was, like the mathematics, true indeed, but true only in the idea, that is, abstracted from the subject matter. Still there appears a very chilling want of open-heartedness ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... was ever consulted in relation to them. These resolutions elicited a heated debate; in the progress of which all the commissioners, except the attorney-general, were assailed with great bitterness; and charges of corruption by innuendo were unceremoniously made. At a late hour the house adjourned without decision ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... appear that there is no species of peculation from which the Honorable Governor-General has thought it reasonable to abstain." He further says, in answer to Mr. Hastings, "The malicious view with which this innuendo" (an innuendo of Mr. Hastings) "is thrown out is only worthy of a man who, having disgraced himself in the eyes of every man of honor both in Asia and in Europe, and having no imputation to lay to our charge, has dared to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... progress. No great cause was ever won by the half-hearted. Let us be faithful to our convictions, and shun paltering in a double sense. Truth, as Renan says, can dispense with politeness; and while we shall never stoop to personal slander or innuendo, we shall assail error without tenderness or mercy. And if, as we believe, ridicule is the most potent weapon against superstition, we shall not scruple ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... the intelligent face of the Saxon duke, and an answer as full of innuendo as the Emperor's address was already hovering on his lips, when the chief equerry's entrance gave him power to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the truth, perhaps I might have been given a chance. But as it was everywhere, suspicion was aroused by my reticence, my inability to explain, and the interview ended in curt dismissal, or suggestive innuendo." ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... delicate rhetorical weapon, and journalists who aim at the great public are increasingly afraid to use it, lest the readers miss the point. In the editorials in the Hearst newspapers, for instance, there is plenty of invective and innuendo, but rarely irony: it might not be understood, and the crowd must not be left ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... always add what they have of personal, if they be truly historians, though it be without knowing it, or they will believe that they have escaped doing so, only because they have referred to it by innuendo, which is the most insinuating ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce

... grew nervous. Perhaps, after all, this was one of those hatefully clever sahibs who know enough to pretend they do not know! The abuse and vile innuendo changed to more obsequious, less obviously filthy references to other things than Cunningham's religion, likes, and pedigree, and the little crowd of men who had tacitly encouraged him before got ready now to stand at a distance and take sides against him should ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... at him, complacent, curious, blightingly unconscious of his emotions, and the young man felt a stirring of hot impatience. Insinuation and innuendo were of no use where Pixie O'Shaughnessy was concerned; an ordinary girl might scent a proposal afar off and amuse herself by an affectation of innocence, but nothing short of a plain declaration of love would ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... You're not wicked. You're worse. You're a fool. And let me tell you that Paul is the finest boy God ever made. Every decent person is sick and tired of your taking advantage of being a woman and springing every mean innuendo you can think of. Who the hell are you that a person like Paul should have to ask your PERMISSION to go with me? You act like you were a combination of Queen Victoria and Cleopatra. You fool, can't you see how people snicker at you, and sneer ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... aware that they were handling an explosive that might at any moment wreck their most carefully laid plans. They would very much have preferred to have made a tool of the reigning Duke, but Selpdorf, who had been plying him for more than a month with a ceaseless and exhaustive course of innuendo, discouragement, and veiled temptation, was at length convinced, by the Duke's reply on the day of the review, that nothing further was to be hoped for ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... that of on dit, 'they say,' 'it is said,' when used to assail the virtue of women—above all, of women engaged in such a cause as that in question. We believe in our heart, this whole story to be a slander of the meanest description possible—a piece of as dirty innuendo as ever disgraced a Democratic paper. The spirit of the viper is apparent in every line of it. Yet it is in perfect keeping with the storm of abuse and falsehood which has been heaped on these 'contraband' missionaries, teachers, and nurses, since they went their way. They have been accused of pilfering, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... to silence her; or else it was its innuendo that struck the princess dumb with indignation. Lanyard's laugh offered amends for the rudeness, as if he said: "Sorry—but you asked for it, you know." He stepped aside, caught up a handful of ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... in law," said Mr. Locust: "it isn't what a man says, it's what he means: you put that in by an innuendo—" ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... over the paper. The Brown paper of the evening before contained a nasty little story of innuendo about the work of the Survey near Paloma. The morning paper declared in glaring headlines that the President by his pacifist policy toward Mexico was tainting the nation's honor and that it would shortly bring England, France and Germany about ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... from the man Thomas, from whose countenance this last innuendo glanced off as from a stone wall, to 'Liza, who answered him with a puzzled scowl. Her foot began ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... The innuendo contained in this epistle has made the Professor, who, as I have already hinted, is not by nature of a meek disposition, extremely angry. Indeed, notwithstanding all that I could do, he left his London house under ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... thirty miles to have his horse shod, and incidentally smashes the king-bolt of his buckboard at a bad place in the road. The Tribal Herald—a thin weekly, with a patent inside—connects the red nose and the breakdown with an innuendo which, to the outsider, is clumsy libel. But the Tribal Herald understands that two-and-seventy families of the tribe may use that road weekly. It concerns them to discover whether the accident was due to Pete being drunk or, as Pete protests, to the neglected ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... officers; "but," he added, looking fixedly at Mr. Craggs as he spoke, "there were other men in high station, whom, in time, he would not be afraid to name, who were no less guilty than the directors." Mr. Craggs arose in great wrath, and said, that if the innuendo were directed against him, he was ready to give satisfaction to any man who questioned him, either in the House or out of it. Loud cries of order immediately arose on every side. In the midst of ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... written it, and then so late in the day I come with a different story, a truer but different story. What will they do? Reader, the future is dark, uncertain and long; I dare not trust myself to it if I offend History. Clio and Sir Bartimeus will make hay of my reputation; an innuendo here, a foolish fact there, they know how to do it, and not a soul will suspect the goddess of personal malice or the great historian of pique. Rodriguez gazed then through the deep blue window, forgetful of all around, on battles that had not all the elegance or neatness ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... said, smiling into his brown eyes. She was rather fond of Hillard; a gentleman always, and one of excellent taste. There was never any wearisome innuendo in his wit nor suggestion ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... purpose whatsoever, but Mirabelle was firm in her opinion. More than that, she succeeded in making Henry feel that by his conduct he had hurried his uncle into an untimely grave; she didn't say this flatly, nor yet by innuendo, but she managed to convey it through ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... temper burst out at last in one of the most remarkable letters we possess of his. It was obviously intended to hurt and insult Michelangelo as much as lay within his power of innuendo and direct abuse. The invective offers so many points of interest with regard to both men, that I shall not hesitate to translate it ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... Miss Munch's venom was a thing too crude and unconcealed to face with indifference. Her emphatic "you know" was pregnant with innuendo and malice. Still, it did not occur to Stillman that he had any part in Claire Robson's misfortune. But he did know from Miss Munch's tone that the unfortunate situation, growing out of the automobile ride from Yolanda to Sausalito, had received due recognition at the hands of those who ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... the historian of Nepenthe bore a grudge against his Prince (of which likewise more anon), a grudge which he was far too prudent to vent openly; so bitter and personal a grudge that he may have felt himself justified in making a covert innuendo of this kind whenever he ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... something in her ear. There was a suppressed annoyance in Eveena's look which provoked me to interpose. On Earth I should never have been fool enough to meddle in a woman's quarrel. The weakest can take her own part in the warfare of taunt and innuendo, better and more venomously than could dervish, priest, or politician. But Eveena could no more lower herself to the ordinary level of feminine malice than I could have borne to hear her do so; and it was intolerable that one ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... were setting innumerable obstacles in their way. Witnesses disappeared or changed their testimony. Jurors showed evidence of having been tampered with. Through a subsidized press an active propaganda of Innuendo and ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... depressed condition, might have brought about a coldness between them, if not a rupture of their relations. But Hutchings, feeling that he was in the wrong, had contented himself with depreciating Roberts by sneer and innuendo, and so had aroused her generous partisanship. The proceedings of the Faculty naturally increased her sympathy with her lover, and her enthusiastic support did much to revive his confidence in himself. When they parted in the evening ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... it is plain that she seems always to have remembered their difference of rank, and to have been rather cold than encouraging. The issue of the acquaintance is a sorry one. Pope revenged himself for her scorn in his worst and most unmanly fashion of innuendo; she, on her side, retorted with lampoons and satire as cruel. One feels glad that she finally left England and that further bickering was impossible. The other two persons were the already mentioned Blounts, each of whom seems at ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... to hang about her to the amusement of onlookers, to keep alive her passion by look and hint and innuendo, to excite her by advances when he was in the humour, and studiously repulse her when she made any, to act almost as if he were her fiance, and curtly resent it if she ever assumed he was more than an ordinary friend—this ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross

... entire ignorance, partly because of her extreme receptiveness, she soon outstripped her comrades, and before long, was one of the most skilful improvisers of the group: a dexterous theorist: a wicked little adept at innuendo. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... sharp innuendo against Tira Blake, in which she thought she might now safely indulge, Mrs. Jaynes concluded her speech and went out softly, leaving poor Laura in a stupor of despair, sitting with her hands clasped in her lap and her head drooping ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... understand thoroughly the nature of the Prussian Tobacco-Parliament; have studied the conditions of it to the most intricate cranny: no English Whipper-in or eloquent Premier knows his St. Stephen's better, or how to hatch a measure in that dim hot element. By hint, by innuendo; by contemplative smoke, speech and forbearance to speak; often looking one way and rowing another,—they can touch the secret springs, and guide in a surprising manner the big dangerous Fireship (for such every State-Parliament is) towards ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... every part of the matter laid or charged in said indictment or information, comprehending the criminal intention of the defendant, and the evil tendency of the libel charged, as well as the mere fact of the publication thereof, and the application by innuendo of blanks, initial letters, pictures, and other devices; any opinion, question, ambiguity, or doubt ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... forgive him, and so part friends. She felt that she would be unhappy to leave him in her present frame of mind; but yet she could hardly bring herself to speak to him of Mr Slope. And how could she allude to the innuendo thrown out by the archdeacon, and thrown out, as she believed, at the instigation of Mr Arabin? She wanted to make him know that he was wrong, to make him aware that he had ill-treated her, in order that the sweetness of her forgiveness ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... taught him nothing but what I have heard our good Dean of St. Paul's speak before princes and prelates in the pulpit," answered Brother Emmanuel, not pretending to misunderstand the innuendo conveyed. "Methinks it would profit many of our brothers in country places to hear what is being thought and taught in Oxford and London, in all the great centres of the country. The reverend father knows well what I hold and what ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green

... them upside down. Look over Channing's poems and quote what he says about a 'fat little man with a delusive show of Can.' Put in something about the Supernal Oneness. Don't say a syllable about the Infernal Twoness. Above all, study innuendo. Hint everything—assert nothing. If you feel inclined to say 'bread and butter,' do not by any means say it outright. You may say any thing and every thing approaching to 'bread and butter.' You may hint at buck-wheat cake, or you may even go so far as to insinuate oat-meal porridge, but if bread ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... was several times made to make it appear that Stephens had been slaughtered by his political friends, to get rid of him, or for effect. For instance, six years had elapsed when the Milton Chronicle, published in Caswell county, charged by innuendo, under the head of "Revelations," that "Hester, Holden, Settle, Smith, Albion (meaning Judge Tourgee), Albright, Boyd, Ball and Keogh" had accomplished this murder most foul. But Mr. Boyd, at the time of the Stephens homicide, was himself a ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... alluded to his affianced wife. It is not such a tragic admission, is it? I would scarce have given it another thought were it not for your manner this morning and your words last night. I paid no heed at the time to the innuendo that I had come on deck to find him—to waylay him, as I have heard men say when speaking of a type of woman I despise. So I resolved to straighten out a stupid little tangle. It would be ridiculous, in our present state of suspended animation, to let such a slight ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... dear children, are the parties about to be united?" said he, addressing Roberts and Lady Emily, with a bow that had in it a strong professional innuendo, but of what nature was yet ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... of the press. One of the most virulent attacks upon him was in a criticism on this treatise, and appeared in the "Monthly Review," to which he himself had been recently a contributor. It slandered him as a man while it decried him as an author, and accused him, by innuendo, of "laboring under the infamy of having, by the vilest and meanest actions, forfeited all pretensions to honor and honesty," and of practicing "those acts which bring the sharper to the cart's tail or ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... gull would show no more relish for the compliment than he has hitherto shown distaste for the innuendo; both of them being inedible, and he of a happy disposition, indifferent to purely academic opinions of his rank and station in the universe. Imagine a gull being disquieted because some naturalist solemnly averred ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke

... and he smiled confidently, so confidently that Asad scarce needed to hear the words that so cunningly gave the lie to the innuendo. "Had I no trust in ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... always considered Kenneth's life an open book. She thought she knew his every action, his every thought. The mere suggestion that her husband might have other interests, other attachments of which she knew nothing took her so by surprise that she was disarmed, powerless to answer. The innuendo that he might be unfaithful had gone through her heart like a knife. Of course it was quite ridiculous. He was not that kind of man. It was true he had often gone away on trips that seemed unnecessary, and now she came to think of it Kenneth's absences ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow

... regret the refusal of the authorities to accede to his wish, when rumour and vague innuendo concerning himself and Mrs. Markham came to his ears. He wondered that so much had been made of a mere passing incident, but he forgot that his fortunes were intimately connected with those of many others. He passed Harley once in the ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... French blighter said that when an innocent man was being made a political scapegoat?... Of course, the mother is a Eurasian, and he has met her. A nice dish he served up! A salad of easily ascertainable facts with a dressing of lying innuendo. Name of a pipe! If Master Hilton hadn't been in ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... dissipated age, they preserved two houses in the capital, where the conversation was always moral at least, if not entertaining! Dang. Now, egad, I think the worst alteration is in the nicety of the audience!—No double-entendre, no smart innuendo admitted; even Vanbrugh and Congreve obliged to undergo a bungling reformation! Sneer. Yes, and our prudery in this respect is just on a par with the artificial bashfulness of a courtesan, who increases the blush ...
— Scarborough and the Critic • Sheridan

... the size of a ham, and his little gleaming eyes like crumbs of glass in the centre of it, is the king of all seafaring desperadoes. Observe how the strong effect is produced in his case: seldom by direct assertion on the part of the story-teller, but usually by comparison, innuendo, or indirect reference. The objectionable Billy Bones is haunted by the dread of "a seafaring man with one leg." Captain Flint, we are told, was a brave man; "he was afraid of none, not he, only Silver—Silver was that genteel." Or, again, ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... not been ignorant that there has been a studied effort— ascribed by me to the common tactics of political warfare—to create the impression, by vague innuendo, that I have used my official position to make money for myself. I know that this charge or imputation is without the slightest foundation, and I now repeat that I never was pecuniarily interested in any question, bill or matter before Congress; that I never received ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... me, for though he no more addressed me directly, he sang at me as he went in a very impudent manner of innuendo, and with an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... have welcomed war for reasons personal as well as professional, for money and for glory, can readily be believed; but his measures in this case give no ground for such an innuendo as Sandwich conveyed. Therefore, after making full allowance for the panic of ministers ready to fear the worst, and to throw blame on anybody, it is the more significant that he should have been ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. The lady yet more angrily repeated her question. The lover answered by an innuendo, which at once astonished and doubly enraged her. She eagerly demanded explanation; and his lordship, who had gone further than he intended, left the room. But his words had sunk deep into the breast of this unhappy woman, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... was a disappointed solicitor for high office, and whom the government had declined to assist in an unwarrantable arrangement of the duties and salary of the judicial post he at present occupied. The learned Recorder, justly indignant at this depreciating innuendo, resolved to make an opportunity on the following Monday for his vindication and retort. He rose, therefore, immediately after the skilful and winning appeal of the secretary, and pronounced an invective against the right honourable gentleman which was neither ill-conceived nor ill-delivered. ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli

... home, still further humiliating him in the eyes of the woman he loved, Luisa Valverde. But he now knew she loved not him, and had made up his mind to humble her in a way hitherto untried. Stung by the innuendo, and dropping his clumsy pretence at politeness, ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... freely in Greek, Latin, and English, both in prose and verse. Nothing, however, but The Temple has held popular estimation, and that has held it firmly, being as much helped by the Tractarian as by the Romantic movement. It may be confessed without shame and without innuendo that Herbert has been on the whole a greater favourite with readers than with critics, and the reason is obvious. He is not prodigal of the finest strokes of poetry. To take only his own contemporaries, and undoubtedly pupils, his gentle moralising and devotion are ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... the lines over twice, to convince himself that he was not mistaken, and that it was Prince Zilah who was designated with the skilfully veiled innuendo of an expert journalist. There was no chance for doubt; the indistinct nationality of the great lord spoken of thinly veiled the Magyar characteristics of Andras, and the paragraph which preceded the "Little Parisian Romance" ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... to revolt or to regale his readers with grossness. He had too much of the Neapolitan's frank self-abandonment to nature for broad indecency in art to afford him special satisfaction; and the taste of his age demanded innuendo. The laureate of Courts and cities saturated with licentiousness knew well that Coan vestments are more provocative than nudity. It was his object to flatter the senses and seduce the understanding rather ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... races, and in the less polished ranks of civilized life, men who disagree, or have any grudge against one another, resort to physical blows or coarse invective. In polite and educated circles, these weapons are replaced by sarcasm and innuendo. There are, of course, many advantages gained by the substitution of this more refined mode of warfare, but the mere fact that the intellectual skill which it displays gives pleasure to the bystanders, and wins social applause, renders ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler

... son Dick!—and like a true courtier, too! Ah! thou hast the palabras, and the knee, and the cap, and the quip, and the innuendo, and the true town fashion of it all—no old tarry-breeks of a sea-dog, like thy dad! My lord, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... was conceived; and frequently in my presence was allusion made to the blind folly of him, who should take a cold and slimy serpent to his bosom only to feel its fangs darted into it at the moment when most fostered by its genial heat. All, however, was in vain. On a nature like mine, innuendo was likely to produce an effect directly opposite to that intended; and the more I found them inclined to be severe on him I called my friend, the more marked became my preference. I even fancied that because I was rich, generous, and heir to a title, their observations were prompted ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... as well smoke now—as later!" and there was a wealth of innuendo in the emphasis. "Is that all you are going to ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... point. It is that the means of our education, other than the schools, are also prejudiced by prudery. Upon the stage there is permitted almost any indecency of word, or innuendo, or gesture, or situation, provided only that the treatment be not serious. Almost anything is tolerable if it be frivolously dealt with, but so soon as these intensely serious matters are dealt with seriously, prudery protests. The consequence ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... the real innuendo is that we in Ireland are burning to levy war on Great Britain, and would welcome any foreign invasion to that end. On these two points one is happy to be able to give assurances, or rather to state ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... taken great risks for him. Of all the women he had known, she had most truly and unselfishly loved him. And for her years of service he had given her contempt. He reflected, too, that he had, perhaps, made an enemy where he needed a friend. How easy, by innuendo and suggestion, to turn Hedwig against him, Hedwig who already ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... of there has been no opportunity for you to meet your fellow-men, therefore these inferences are apt to take the color that reference is made to one or the other of the three personages you did meet. I therefore counsel you either to abstain from innuendo or ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... of the bond-servant, leaving the sting of innuendo behind him, had turned all eyes toward the traveller, and Bagby but voiced the curiosity of the roomful when he inquired, "What did Fownes call you ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... purveyor of puerile gossip, or seriously to believe that such gossip had been the cause of his disaster. That was only the last of a long train of undignified circumstances which had made his position in Drayton Parva insupportable; it lent a little more point to the innuendo on every tongue, the intelligence in every eye. He was sick with disgust, and consumed with the desire to get out of it all, to cut Drayton Parva for good. The accursed place was trying to stare him ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... could never quite forgive for his share in the disgraces of Nero's reign. That avarice was one of Seneca's temptations is too probable; that expediency was a guiding principle of his conduct is but too evident; and for a man with such a character to rebut an innuendo is never an easy task. Nay more, it was after this foul event, at the close of Nero's first year, that Seneca addressed him in the extravagant and glowing language of his treatise on Clemency. "The quality of mercy," and the duty of princes ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... the boy. If he had blabbed what he saw, it was incredible that somebody should not take the subject up, and impart a scandalous twist to it, and send it rolling like a snowball to gather up exaggeration and foul innuendo till it was big enough to overwhelm him. What would happen to him if a formal charge were preferred against him? He looked it up in the Discipline. Of course, if his accusers magnified their mean suspicions and calumnious imaginings to the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... certain extent he was a judge of human nature, and he realized that no explanation to such a man was safer than the most adroit and elaborate one, so he elected to ignore the obvious innuendo. Chatting with him a few minutes longer, ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... of a tactful consideration of circumstances which Donna apparently had overlooked; circumstances which, while savoring slightly of girlish indiscretion, might, nevertheless, be construed as a distinct slip from virtue. An attack, whether by innuendo or direct assertion, on a sister's virtue is ever the first weapon of a mean and disappointed woman, and having no other charms to speak of, Miss Pickett chose to assume that of superior virtue; so, with the subtle sting of her species, she ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... gladsome; but at sundown in September, with a high wind, and a heavy surf rolling in close along the links, the place told of nothing but dead mariners and sea disaster. A ship beating to windward on the horizon, and a huge truncheon of wreck half buried in the sands at my feet, completed the innuendo ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... silence. In his opinion, Moya's interest in Jack Kilmeny had nothing to do with the relationship between that scamp and the captain. He would have liked to say so flatly, but he felt it safer to let his manner convey the innuendo. In her heart Lady Farquhar was of the same belief. She resolved to have a serious ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... canoe-dotted river. Where the promenaders gather, and the bands are playing, and the pretty little theatres compete, the pleasure seeker will be seeking such pleasure as he pleases, no longer debased by furtiveness and innuendo, going his primrose path to a congenial, picturesque, happy and highly desirable extinction. Just over the hills, perhaps, a handful of opulent shareholders will be pleasantly preserving the old traditions of a landed aristocracy, with servants, tenants, vicar, and other dependents all complete, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... was hot with vexation at the scene that followed. He liked Helen; he was unutterably shocked by Millicent's attack; and he resented the unfair and untrue construction that must be placed on her latest innuendo. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... house, recognized in my cousinly capacity by the family, and treated accordingly, and for more than half that time like a wolf in sheep's clothing, have I sought the avuncular mansion with an eye to Miss Dora, a fact she seems surprisingly unconscious of, considering how many times, by hint and innuendo, by sigh and look, and tender courtesy, and honest speech, I have shown her the place she occupies in my mind, and given her, as it appears, the right to drive me out of it, if possible. Tom Hayes is her favorite instrument of torture. He is the young lawyer of the place, as I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... hitherto, that Polly was a man-hater. The manner in which she had scorned Jimmy Osgood on that tour of England would have led anyone to believe that such was the case. Now the tell-tale blush and Eleanor's innuendo, caused Dorothy ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... advanced a project that I should accompany him to a spot where, as far as I was competent to grasp the idiom, he was in the habit of sitting (doubtless in an abstruse reverie), in the country; and having assured myself by means of discreet innuendo that the seat referred to would be adequate for this person also, and that the occasion did not in any way involve a payment of money, I at once expressed my willingness towards ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... if there were anything new at the Varieties, which he pronounced in the American manner. They talked about the Varieties—Strether confessing to a knowledge which produced again on Pocock's part a play of innuendo as vague as a nursery-rhyme, yet as aggressive as an elbow in his side; and they finished their drive under the protection of easy themes. Strether waited to the end, but still in vain, for any show that Jim had seen Chad as different; and he could ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... of the girls In the West Dormitory, and some others, were asked to Helen's tea (at which Ruth likewise did the honors, and "helped pour") there was an undercurrent of joking and innuendo among certain of the visitors that showed they had knowledge of further hidden goodies which would, at fit and proper season, be divulged. Jennie Stone, gobbling almond cakes and chocolate, said ...
— Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall - or Solving the Campus Mystery • Alice B. Emerson

... in business nowadays," she returned, not perceiving the innuendo. "I am sure Papa ought to know all about it from the amount of money he ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne

... he came, but not to beat his beautiful daughter. On the contrary, he made much of her. Fuddled he was, but not drunk. He took her incontinent upon his knee and began to deal in rather liberal innuendo. Divining him darkly, she went to work with such arts as she had to wheedle ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... hip at last. More than arrogance had kept him off from the bodies of the town; a consciousness also that he was not their match in malicious innuendo. The direct attack he could meet superbly, downing his opponent with a coarse birr of the tongue; to the veiled gibe he was a quivering hulk, to be prodded at your ease. And now the malignants were around him (while ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... company in which I find her. The old Spanish proverb is as true as Holy Writ, viz., "Show me the company you keep, and I will tell you who you are." If she chooses to write novels, and bring grave charges against others by insinuation and innuendo, in order to evade the responsibility of defining her position clearly and openly, she will not, I hope, take offense if ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward

... the Vulgarian; and again, between that of the educated and uneducated man. This you may see from a comparison of the Old and New Comedy: in the former obscene talk made the fun; in the latter it is rather innuendo: and this is no ...
— Ethics • Aristotle

... supernaturals, genii, elves, gnomes, ghouls, or vampires, to make up a competent corps de ballet; work out your dialogue in slipshod verse, with as much slang repartee as you possibly can cram in, and let every couplet contain either a pun or some innuendo upon the passing events of the day. This in London is considered as the highest species of wit, and seldom fails to bring down three distinct rounds of applause from the galleries. I fear you may be trammelled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... without any invitation from him at all. However, since Woggs is there, we must make the best of her. I fancy that she was a year or two younger than Wiggs and of rather inferior education. Witness her low innuendo about the Lady Belvane, and the fact that she called a ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne

... litigation it seems to me as if the lawyers spend most of their time trying to make the judge and jury believe the witnesses are all criminals. Everything a man says on the stand or has ever done in his life is made the subject of a false inference—an innuendo. The law isn't constructive—it's destructive; and that's why I want my boy to ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... 'shaver,' in the sense in which it is applied to the use of money, be bringing him into discredit, then was the plaintiff's declaration sufficient; if not, it was insufficient, being wanting in what is called an 'innuendo.' The dictionaries, and men in general, understand by 'shaving,' 'extortion,' and nothing else. To call a man a 'shaver' is to say he is an 'extortioner,' without going into details. But, in Wall street, and among money-dealers, certain transactions that, in their eyes, and by the ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... with Striker's speech, disregarding the innuendo. He had no thought it would come to this, and now looks as if he would surrender up his sweetheart without striking a blow. He makes no rejoinder; but shrinks back, cowed-like ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... together. Lord Byron rarely used flattering language to those he loved. It was rather by looks than by words that he expressed his feelings and his approbation. His delight with intimates was to bring out strongly their defects, as well as their qualities and merits, by dint of jests, clever innuendo, and charming sallies of humor. The promptitude with which he discovered the slightest weakness, the faintest symptom of exaggeration or affectation, can hardly be credited. It might almost be said that the persons on whom he bestowed affection became transparent for him, that he dived ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... loyally to church and state, in passages sometimes sounding ludicrously hollow, sometimes conveying the most biting mockery and satire, and again in words hardly to be distinguished from the heartfelt language of devotion. They became skillful at hinting, and masters of the art of innuendo. They attacked Christianity under the name of Mahometanism, and if they had occasion to blame French ministers of state, would seem to be satirizing the viziers of Turkey. Politics and theology are subjects of unceasing and vivid interest, and their discussion cannot be suppressed, unless ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... hinder no one. Only remember who they are and let me know." And Wogan got back to his lodging and mounted his black horse. He could trust O'Toole to play watchdog in his absence. If the mysterious visitor who had bestowed upon Clementina with so liberal a hand so much innuendo and such an artful combination of truth and falsity, were to come again to the little house to confirm the slanders, Wogan in the end would not fail to discover ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... to her former manner of speech, might have drawn all eyes to the speaker had not the person she mentioned offered a still more interesting subject to the general curiosity. As it was, all glances flew to that silent and seemingly impassive figure upon which all open suggestions and covert innuendo had hitherto fallen without creating more than a pressure of her interlaced fingers. This direct attack, possibly the most threatening she had received, appeared to produce no more effect upon her than the others; less, perhaps, ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green

... chevalier!" he said in a good-humored tone. "Mr. Lennox meant no innuendo. He merely stated a ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler

... tired of his ill-breeding: it shocked her to observe his coarse familiarity, to see him sit on a favorite's knee, or twist a bystander's ear till it was afire; to hear him sow dissension among families by coarse innuendo, and to see him crush society that he might rule it. But such things would not have shocked the masses of plain burgher Frenchmen at all. When the querulous lady opened her troubles to the sympathetic Talleyrand, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... betray and ruin him in October, 1862, he could have scarcely used stronger expressions than he did in 1863. Russell must have been greatly annoyed by Sir Robert Collier's hint of collusion with the rebel agents in the Alabama Case, but he hardened himself to hear the same innuendo repeated in nearly every note from the Legation. As time went on, Russell was compelled, though slowly, to treat the American Minister as serious. He admitted nothing so unwillingly, for the nullity or fatuity of the ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... resented sincerely his inability to feel as confident that the Count, with his gossip about the Lone Wolf, had been merely seeking to divert Roddy's interest to putatively larger game. It was just possible that De Morbihan's identification of Lanyard with that mysterious personage, at least by innuendo, had been unintentional. But somehow Lanyard ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... She owed her no little spite, and wished for revenge. Ladies will go very far to obtain this. How far Mrs Lascelles would have gone, I will not pretend to say; but this is certain, that the last innuendo of Miss Ossulton very much added to her determination. She took her bonnet and went on deck, at once told Pickersgill that he could not please her or Cecilia more than by frightening Miss Ossulton, who, under the idea that it was all a hoax, had quite recovered her spirits; talked ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... capricious is leaping about like a goat, cross (disagreeable) is shaped like a cross, wrong is wrung (or twisted). Crisscross is Christ's cross, attention is stretching toward, expression is pressed out, dexterity is right-handedness, circumstances are things standing around, an innuendo is nodding, a parlor is a room to talk in, a nostril is that which pierces the nose (thrill means pierce), vinegar is sharp wine, a stirrup is a rope to mount by, a pastor is a shepherd, a marshal is a caretaker of horses, a constable ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... most of them the dregs of the South Seas, casting their evil glances at this exquisite creature and trying to smirch with innuendo the crystal clearness of her mind. Perhaps there were experiences she would never confide to any man. Sudden indignation boiled up in him. The father was a madman. It did not matter that he wore the cloth; something was wrong with ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... wondered, been like this in her mother's youth? Was it from such speeches that her mother had turned, in helplessness or distaste, to the delicate implications, the finished innuendo of ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley

... Casanova a tender good-night, Teresina behaving exactly like her sisters. He made them promise that they would soon come with their father and mother to visit him in Venice. When they had gone, he spoke with less restraint, but continued to avoid any unsuitable innuendo or display of vanity. His audience might have imagined themselves listening to the story of a Parsifal rather than to that of a Casanova, the dangerous seducer and ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... with disfavour. It always irritated him. The information, conveyed to him by amused friends, that his Aunt Lora had once described Ruth as a jewel in a dust-bin, seemed to him to carry an offensive innuendo directed at himself and the rest of the dwellers in the Bannister home. Also, she had called him a worm. Also, again, his actual encounters with the lady, though few, had been memorably unpleasant. Furthermore, he considered that she ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... more than probable that, having heard by some means of Trevethick's hoard, he had come down to Gethin with the express intention of becoming possessed of it, which his accidental discovery of the secret of the letter padlock enabled him to do. In short, by artful innuendo at this or that part of the story, Richard was painted as a common thief, whose possession of such faculties as dexterity and finesse only made him a more dangerous enemy of society. There had ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... penalty, to wear any but regulation dress. Nevertheless, the lucky dogs who had relatives near by would take the risk and borrow a cousin's rig-out, but we hated them as mean dogs, feeling they were taking an unfair advantage; and, if we got a chance, we would, by innuendo, hint to the lady in the case that these fellows did so much dixie-cleaning that their dungarees were too stiff ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... Medici, so amazing. The crudest forms of debauchery receive the most refined and highly finished treatment in poems which are as remarkable for their wit as for their cynicism. A like vein of elaborate innuendo runs through the Canti Carnascialeschi of Florence, proving that however profligate the people might have been, they were not contented with grossness unless seasoned with wit. The same excitement of the fancy, playing freely in the lawlessness of sensual self-indulgence and heightening the consciousness ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... what is beginning to be called the Throckmartin Mystery and to kill the innuendo and scandalous suspicions which have threatened to stain the reputations of Dr. David Throckmartin, his youthful wife, and equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton ever since a tardy despatch from Melbourne, Australia, ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... the aid of these institutions. Let us for a moment endeavour to fancy Whiggism in a state of rampant predominance; let us try to contemplate England enjoying all those advantages which our present rulers have not yet granted us, and some of which they have as yet only ventured to promise by innuendo. Let us suppose our ancient monarchy abolished, our independent hierarchy reduced to a stipendiary sect, the gentlemen of England deprived of their magisterial functions, and metropolitan prefects and sub-prefects established in the counties and principal towns, commanding ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... and altogether amazing desire to defend Jasper against the innuendo in the other's tone, and it was with difficulty that she ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace

... not married yet," continued Mrs. Tucker, oblivious of the innuendo. "Ah Cal," she added archly, "I am afraid you are as fickle as ever. What poor girl in Vineville ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... supposed, was a fling at her, and she stiffened under it. But when she spoke it was to ignore the innuendo, intended or not. For, wherever they might be led, she hoped it would not ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... to shake Leigh's hand with an apparent cordiality that contrasted strongly with his final innuendo, but now their hands fell apart with mutual repulsion. Leigh had been prejudiced against the lawyer beforehand, and his first remarks at their introduction contained a grisly jest and an implied slight. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... absurd prediction that she might never go back to her own country; the second was all that extraordinary talk about her pearls. As to the promised lover, the memory of the soothsayer's words made her feel very angry. No doubt Frenchwomen liked that sort of innuendo, but it only ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... Volney's eyes. He understood it for no chance remark, but as an innuendo tossed forth as a challenge. Of all men Sir Robert Volney rode on the crest of fortune's wave, and there were not lacking those who whispered that his invariable luck was due to something more than chance and honest skill. For me, I never believed the charge. With ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine



Words linked to "Innuendo" :   implication, insinuation



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