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Upstart   /ˈəpstˌɑrt/   Listen
Upstart

noun
1.
An arrogant or presumptuous person.
2.
A person who has suddenly risen to a higher economic status but has not gained social acceptance of others in that class.  Synonyms: arriviste, nouveau-riche, parvenu.
3.
A gymnastic exercise performed starting from a position with the legs over the upper body and moving to an erect position by arching the back and swinging the legs out and down while forcing the chest upright.  Synonym: kip.






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"Upstart" Quotes from Famous Books



... between our modern attempts at satire and the ancient achievement of it. The opponents of Lord Randolph Churchill, both Liberal and Conservative, did not satirise him nobly and honestly, as one of those great wits to madness near allied. They represented him as a mere puppy, a silly and irreverent upstart whose impudence supplied the lack of policy and character. Churchill had grave and even gross faults, a certain coarseness, a certain hard boyish assertiveness, a certain lack of magnanimity, a certain peculiar patrician vulgarity. But he was a much larger man ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... white cashmere shawl, and having attended under the gilt cockle-shell, while Mrs. Salmon performed the Battle of Borodino (a savage cantata against the Corsican upstart, who had lately met with his Russian reverses)—Mr. Dobbin tried to hum it as he walked away, and found he was humming—the tune which Amelia Sedley sang on the stairs, as she came ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Mrs Gowan (who piqued herself at once on being Society, and on maintaining intimate and easy relations with that Power), Mrs Merdle occupied a front row. True, the Hampton Court Bohemians, without exception, turned up their noses at Merdle as an upstart; but they turned them down again, by falling flat on their faces to worship his wealth. In which compensating adjustment of their noses, they were pretty much like Treasury, Bar, and Bishop, and all ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... "inside the pale," which means that they stood high in British favour, and contributed heroes to the army or navy from each of their hardy generations. They had no title, but to be The Warren of Warrenstown, Meath, was to be entitled to look down with disdain upon upstart baronets and newly created peers. Sir. Christopher Aylmer's daughter, Catherine, was honoured to marry Captain Michael Warren, and her brother, Admiral Lord Aylmer, only too glad to take charge of her boy ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... about you till the tears would run down her cheeks, wondering why you didn't come, and fearing some evil had befallen you. I've had my misgivings, too, though I never breathed them to mortal ear, ever since you went off with that long-haired upstart, who fumbled so about my wheel, trying to fool me with his soft nonsense. What has ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... Business was left was very Witty, but had but just Beauty enough to keep her from being Ugly, and consequently one that suffer'd most by this new Interloper; which rendered her so Malicious, that she had rather the whole House shou'd be blown up, than that Upstart shoul'd run away with all the Trading: And therefore she Writes the following ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous

... will not prevent me from speedily avenging myself on the young upstart who has appeared so suddenly to claim you for a bride. Stay, you need not go so quickly, or toss your head in pride. I will stand by my word, and let him keep who wins. But I have a word to say to you, Branwen. Come ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... of the treatment, and the disposal of what remains after the treatment is at an end. In the arrangement of details the shaman frequently employs the services of a lay assistant. In these degenerate days a number of upstart pretenders to the healing art have arisen in the tribe and endeavor to impose upon the ignorance of their fellows by posing as doctors, although knowing next to nothing of the prayers and ceremonies, ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... obey And all have humble heart, Nor dare to hold in cursed doubt Those gems of truth the church lets out; But where's the apple-cart, And where's the sacred fiction gone, And who's to have the blame When any upstart takes a hand And, scorning what the priests have planned, Plays Harry with ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... Upright (post) fosto. Uprightly rekte, honeste. Uprightness rekteco, honesteco. Uproar bruego, tumulto. Uproot elradikigi. Upset renversi, renversigxi. Upshot rezultato. Upside down renversite. Upstairs supre. Upstart elsaltulo. Up to (until) gxis. Up to now gxis nun. Urban urba. Urbane gxentila. Urchin bubo. Urge urgxi. Urgent urgxa. Urine urino. Urinal urinejo. Urn urno. Us nin. Usage uzo—ado. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... who was thinking of anything rather than of such sentiments—for, like many genteel persons who have existed at various times, she set her face against death altogether, and objected to the mention of any such low and levelling upstart—had borrowed a house in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, from a stately relative (one of the Feenix brood), who was out of town, and who did not object to lending it, in the handsomest manner, for nuptial ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... their revenues had become so small, that they considered themselves entitled to the monopoly of all the higher offices of state, and regarded every citizen of culture, fortune, and consideration with jealousy, as an upstart. The new monarchic constitution of 1808-12, which has immortalized the names of Frederick William III., and of his ministers, Stein and Hardenberg, altered this system, and abolished the vassalage and feudal service of the peasants in ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... for a lullaby, and could only silence a baby by scaring it. If I should have committed to me the melodies of the world, I would care very little about my right to sing those subordinate parts that gather around them in obedient harmonies. At least, I think I would, unless some upstart man should deny my right to sing any thing but melodies. If it were committed to me to sing like a bird, I would not care, I think, to exercise my right to roar like a bull. If I can witch the ears and win the hearts of men and women by doing ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... were in themselves only a source of weakness. Yet they could enlist powerful allies in the cause of reaction. Heathenism was still a living power in the world. It was strong in numbers even in the East, and even stronger in the imposing memories of history. Christianity was still an upstart on Caesar's throne. The favour of the gods had built up the Empire, and men's hearts misgave them that their wrath might overthrow it. Heathenism was still an established religion, the Emperor still its official head. Old Rome was still devoted ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... not of intoxicating pleasures but of gloomy indignation and sullen regret; to whom the Empire, grounded on usurpation and maintained by injustice, was the quintessence of all that was odious; to whom Nero was an upstart tyrant, and Brutus and Cassius the watchwords of justice and right. Sentiments like these could not but be remembered by one so impressionable. As soon as the sunshine of favour was withdrawn, Lucan's ardent mind turned with enthusiasm towards them. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... 'A meddlesome, upstart, Jacobinical fellow, gentlemen', continued Mr. Dempster. 'I was determined to be rid of him. What does he mean by thrusting himself into our company? A man with about as much principle as he has ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... mind would open to all befitting things. Not until Professor Willows came out of his cabin and joined us, did I feel her grow distant again. Without preliminary, he asked: "What does a man who sits down on a sharp needle most resemble?" And, without waiting, he answered, "A profane upstart." ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister

... III., Calderon was conspicuous for greed, audacity and insolence. He was created count of Oliva, a knight of Santiago, commendador of Ocana in the order, secretary to the king (secretario de camara), was loaded with plunder, and made an advantageous marriage with Ines de Vargas. As an insolent upstart he was peculiarly odious to the enemies of Lerma. Two religious persons, Juan de Santa Maria, a Franciscan, and Mariana de San Jose, prioress of La Encarnacion, worked on the queen Margarita, by whose influence Calderon was removed from the secretaryship in 1611. He, however, retained ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... average every thirty or forty years. In such cases all the members of the existing royal family would be assassinated and all persons who defended them or were suspected of sympathizing with them were put to death. After the murder of hundreds and sometimes thousands the new upstart conqueror would proclaim ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... mental make-up that such a person will be least able to deny his antecedents, but that is due to the circumstance that, with most of such people, after they have reached a certain age, the desire for intellectual improvement is rarely felt; neither do they need it. Such an upstart rarely suffers under this defect. In our days, that look to money and material means, people are far readier to bow before the man with a large purse, than before a man of knowledge and great intellectual gifts, especially if he has the misfortune ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... thought his pedigree of beggarly Barons of Magny was superior to the race of great Irish kings from which I descended; who had sneered at me a hundred times as a spadassin, a deserter, and had called me a vulgar Irish upstart. Now I had my revenge of the gentleman, and took ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... dramas he condescended to rewrite or retouch. That graceless vagabond, Robert Greene, addressing from his penitent death-bed his old friends Lodge, Peele, and Marlowe, and trying to dissuade them from "spending their wits" any longer in "making plays," spitefully declares: "There is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, supposes he is as able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is, in his own conceit, the only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... real exceptions; they were indeed commercial cities, but they were ruling cities also, and, as ruling cities, they reared monuments which could hardly pass away. What are we to say to the modern rival of Venice, the upstart rebel, one is tempted to say, against the supremacy of the Hadriatic Queen? Trieste, at the head of her gulf, with the hills looking down to her haven, with the snowy mountains which seem to guard the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... abundance of expressive gestures, and from time to time, as they paced the vast, deserted square, majestically surrounded by its tightly-closed silent palaces, he looked up toward the bronze man on the column, as if calling to witness that great upstart, whose presence in the heart of Paris justifies the most extravagant ambitions and ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... foreigners of all nationalities; and of these, fifty or more are Americans. It was too much like home and too little like Japan. Should I go to Yokohama, the case was worse. Nearly twelve hundred of the sons of Japheth dwelt there, and to reach that upstart European city one must travel on a railway and see telegraph-poles all along the line. What was the use of living in Japan? Every young Japanese, too, in the capital is brainful of "civilization," "progress," "reform," etc. I half suspect a few cracks in the craniums belonging to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... since there are upstart ministers as well as City-turned gentlemen, I will remember Moliere's M. Jourdain, and feed full the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... Yet many an upstart, with thousands of the most marvelous contrivances in his own body, is ready to shout that there is no God and no design, or that there has been no interference since creation, and that our bodies have reached the dizzy ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... be finishing it the night after he brought it home, indeed; and now the little upstart will be trying his ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... two forms. The man who sins is a slave to the power of sin. Will and conscience are meant to guide and impel us, and we never sin without first coercing or silencing them and subjecting them to the upstart tyranny of desires and senses which should obey and not command. The 'beggars' are on horseback, and the 'princes' walking. There is a servile revolt, and we know ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... then. I won't have that damned rascal set foot in this house. You're a fool, Tuthill, to let that young upstart get all your practice ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson

... to serving Eustace, the clerk, no older than myself, half a head shorter, and a mere landless upstart, that my father's son shall ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... against thee and theirs her mournful cry, The noble Dame who calls thee here to break Away the evil weeds which will not flower. A thousand years and more! and gallant men There fix'd her seat in beauty and in power; The breed of patriot hearts has fail'd since then! And, in their stead, upstart and haughty now, A race, which ne'er to her in reverence bends, Her husband, father thou! Like care from thee and counsel she attends, As o'er his other works the ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... choice could not be selected," said Savelli; "but I should scarce deem it possible that a Colonna could think there was an option between resistance and fealty to this upstart revolution." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... the spirit in which Robert Louis Stevenson tries to free his old-world conscience from the old-world forms. To take a more recent parallel, it is the manner, somewhat exaggerated, in which Mr. G. K. Chesterton examines the upstart heresies of our own agitated day. There would be nothing fanciful in suggesting that all these men owed a direct debt to Hazlitt—Stevenson on many occasions acknowledged it.[13] Hazlitt was as honest and sincere as any of them. Though ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... present. Unbounded ambition and jealousy smouldered within him; he took pleasure in the pain of others, and fomented strife to turn it to his own account. His abilities were but slender, and he had little force of character, but the natural instinct which draws the upstart towards money and power served him as well as fixity of purpose. Lucien and Merlin at once took a dislike to one another, for reasons not far to seek. Merlin, unfortunately, proclaimed aloud the thoughts ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... in the Golden Palace. Queen Maya sat like one in a dream and questioned nothing, and Dwaymenau ruled with wisdom but none loved her. To all she was the interloper, the witch-woman, the out-land upstart. Only the fear of the King guarded her and her boy, but that was strong. The boys played together sometimes, Mindon tyrannizing and cruel, Ananda fearing and complying, ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... to hear others gobble, nevertheless he enjoyed the excuse for a fight that their gobbling gave him. And when he had nothing more important to do he often stood still and listened in the hope of hearing some upstart gobbler testing his voice in a neighboring field. Newly grown cocks had to go a long way off to be safe from ...
— The Tale of Turkey Proudfoot - Slumber-Town Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... deliberate scene shifting of mountains and mesas, showed them up for the brittle, dry hills they were, and left them behind. It was pitiful! It was as though a revered tragedian should overnight find that his vogue had departed; that he was no longer getting over; that an irreverent upstart, breaking in on his most sonorous periods, was getting laughs with slang. We had lots of water; the dust we left behind; it wasn't even hot in ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... neglected as unimportant detail the sole and entirely selfish reason for their graciousness. But enraged though these worthy gentlemen were, and eagerly though they longed to treat the "conceited and grasping upstart" as he richly deserved, they accepted his ultimatum. Even the venerable and venerated Lockyer—than whom a more convinced self-deceiver on the subject of his own virtues never wore white whiskers, black garments, ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... Flam. A new upstart; one that swears like a falconer, and will lie in the duke's ear day by day, like a maker of almanacs: and yet I knew him, since he came to th' court, smell worse of sweat ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... secret and a sort of blackmail.... His glory did not come from the Crusades, but from the Great Pillage.... The oligarchs were descended from usurers and thieves. That, for good or evil, was the paradox of England; the typical aristocrat was the typical upstart. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... cut off the Semites of the west from those of the east. The Israelites poured over the Jordan out of Edom and Moab, and took possession of Canaan, while Babylonia itself, for so many centuries the ruling power of the Oriental world, had to make way for its upstart rival Assyria. The old imperial powers were exhausted and played out, and it needed time before the new forces which were to take their place could acquire sufficient strength ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Tuesday following the boy's visit to his great-aunt that Mrs. Tapping had words with her daughter Alethea. They arose out of Alethea's young man, an upstart. At least, he was so designated by Mrs. Tapping, for aspiring to the hand of this young lady; who, though plain by comparison with her mother at the same age, and no more figure than what you see, was that sharp with her tongue when provoked, it made your flesh curdle within ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... is solidly and profoundly harmonious, without any false luxury and with no need of glitter. His magnificence is that of ancient hereditary fortunes. It has tranquillity, equality, and intimacy. We find no violent reds, greens, nor blues, no upstart glitter, no brilliant gew-gaws. All is restrained and subdued, but with a warm tone like that of old gold, or with a grey tone like the dead sheen of family silver. Gaudy and loud things will do for upstarts, but Don Diego Velasquez de Silva is too true a gentleman ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... of Shakspeare the man, as distinguished from the author, there remains little more to record. Already in 1592, Greene, in his posthumous Groat's-worth of Wit, had expressed the earliest vocation of Shakspeare in the following sentence: "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers; in his own conceit the only Shakscene in a country!" This alludes to Shakspeare's office of recasting, and even recomposing, dramatic works, so as to fit them for representation; and Master Greene, it is probable, had suffered in his self-estimation, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... had extricated herself from her dilemma with considerable tact and ingenuity. Not only had she delivered her godson from the slight of being summarily rejected by this upstart girl, but she had saved herself from all necessity to make ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... troubles which afflicted the Roman Empire at this time were such as might well give him hopes of obtaining a decided advantage. Alexander, his father's adversary, had been murdered in A.D. 235 by Maximin, who from the condition of a Thracian peasant had risen into the higher ranks of the army. The upstart had ruled like the savage that he was, and after three years of misery the whole Roman world had risen against him. Two emperors had been proclaimed in Africa. On their fall two others had been elected by the senate; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... not at all abashed, said that he meant not Sophocles, but Euripides. Whereupon Porson drew from another pocket a copy of Euripides and challenged the upstart to find the quotation in question. Full of confusion, the fellow thrust his head out of the window of the coach and ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... a rival was added the knowledge that she was seeking him in her extremity, such a mighty wave of anger swept the Cardinal that he appeared twice his real size. Like a flaming brand of vengeance he struck that Limberlost upstart, and sent him rolling to earth, a mass of battered feathers. With beak and claw he made his attack, and when he so utterly demolished his rival that he hopped away trembling, with dishevelled plumage stained with his own blood, the ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter

... difference between being in the middle and at the top of the social ladder! Dear, why will you choose anything but the best when you can have the best if you want it? I tell you once for all I do not care how clever you are, or how beautiful you are, the great people will look down on you for an upstart if you cannot match them and make just as much of a show. And why can you not discover what your own tastes are? I watched you last night, child; anyone could have seen that you were in your element! ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... economies in that volume, sir! And see how it lies open anywhere! There is n't a book in my library that has such a generous way of laying its treasures before you. From Alpha to Omega, calm, assured rest at any page that your choice or accident may light on. No lifting of a rebellious leaf like an upstart servant that does not know his place and can never be taught manners, but tranquil, well-bred repose. A book may be a perfect gentleman in its aspect and demeanor, and this book would be good company for personages like Roger Ascham and his pupils ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... bishop; his wife's grandfather was a dean; he has the presentation of the living, which is now in the hands of his brother Ned; and he has himself all the great tithes which, in the days of popery, belonged to it. He loves it all the better, because he thinks that the upstart dissenters want to pull it down; and he hates all upstarts. And what! Is it not the church of the queen, and the ministers, and all the nobility, and of all the old families? It is the only religion for a gentleman, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... one person in the congregation who looked savagely at him,—Miss Dobb. "It is a shame," she said, when the people came out of church, speaking loud enough to be heard by all, "that such a young upstart and hypocrite should be allowed to worm himself into Mr. Quaver's seat." She hated Paul, and determined to ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin

... she parried them easily, and even the refusal of the parish priest to accept her aid in his bazaar did not diminish the delight of her happy situation. She knew the meaning of his refusal: she, an upstart, having got within the gates of Castle Moyna by some servility, when her proper place was a shebeen in Cruarig, offered him charity from a low motive. She felt a rebuke from a priest as a courtier a blow from his king; but keeping her temper, she made many ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... joined by his brother Thomas, who came full of descriptions of the princely courtesy and sweetness of manner of the royal Edward, which contrasted so strongly with the presumption of his upstart cousins that the young Earl was brought over to concert measures with the Prince's friend, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... science of medicine, is the one who appreciates least that it is due to the skill and intelligence of the medical men of to-day that he owes his comfort, his health, and his freedom from pestilence, plague and disease. Unthinking people laud and praise some upstart whose ability lies in his faculty to fool the gullible, or they will rush to seek the false aid of some nondescript science, because it is popular and well advertised, while they pass by or ignore the men whose labors have made the world what it is, and who alone possess ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague

... one line of the Heracleid kings was extinct, Cleomenes made his brother Euclidas reign with him, and was able to bring back all the old ways of Lycurgus, the hard fare and plain living, so that those who had seen the Eastern state of the upstart Macedonian soldiers wondered at the sight of the son of Hercules, descendant of a line of thirty-one kings, showing his royalty only in the noble simplicity ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge

... conscious and wholesale plagiarism [there is no such accusation in 'Evolution, Old and New'] than it would be to men of science in general for requiring such elementary instruction on some of the most famous literature in science from an upstart ignoramus, who, until two or three years ago, considered himself a painter by profession."—'Nature,' Jan. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... called Lodz, near the German frontier, grew rapidly into a prosperous town of 300,000 inhabitants, and became a serious rival to the ancient Muscovite capital. So severely was the competition of this young upstart felt, that the Moscow merchants petitioned the Emperor to protect them by drawing a customs frontier round the Polish provinces, but ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... of their service are taken into account, it is not surprising that there was a considerable amount of dishonesty among them. These conditions apart, they were neither worse nor better than the men of their time. As the original Company gained stability by the incorporation of its upstart rival established in 1698,[2] which put an end to a condition of affairs that promised to be ruinous to both, and by the grant of perpetuity issued in the year following incorporation, there was a gradual improvement in the quality of their civil servants. Though no increase ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph

... mythology was not without its own dark powers; but though they too were ejected and dispossessed, they, according to that mythology, had rights of their own. To them belonged all the universe that had not been seized and reclaimed by the younger race of Odin and Aesir; and though this upstart dynasty, as the Frost Giants in Promethean phrase would have called it, well knew that Hel, one of this giant progeny, was fated to do them all mischief, and to outlive them, they took her and made her queen of Niflheim, and mistress over nine ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... marriage between Joseph and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased that a member of a family into which he, George Osborne, was going to marry, should make a mesalliance with a little nobody—a little upstart governess. "Hang it, the family's low enough already without her," Osborne said to his friend Captain Dobbin. "A governess is all very well, but I'd rather have a lady for my sister-in-law. I'm a liberal ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... his girls, had foolishly permitted them to see certain letters addressed to him by the eccentric Sir Laurence Altham, justifying himself concerning the peculiar clause introduced into his deeds of conveyance of his Hall estate, on the grounds of the degraded origin of "the upstart" he was so ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... impossible that, in the ruin imminent from our contentions for power, and in the necessary extinction both of ancient families and of generous sentiments, our consular fasces may become the water-sprinklers of some upstart priesthood, and that my son may apply for lustration to the son of my groom. The interest of such men requires that the spirit of arms and of arts be extinguished. They will predicate peace, that the people may be tractable to them; but a religion altogether ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... desert our cause on the first opportunity he had of showing his gratitude? It was impossible to anticipate such ingratitude; still less, that he would sacrifice the real and permanent interests of Sweden to his former jealousy of Napoleon, and perhaps to a weakness too common among the upstart favourites of fortune; unless it be that the submission of men who have newly attained to greatness to those who boast of a transmitted rank, is a necessity of their position rather than an error ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... First Northern Cruise. Arrive at Moreton Bay. Proceedings there. Natives at Moreton Island. Arrive at Port Curtis. Settlement of North Australia. Excursions made in Neighbourhood. Natural Productions. Call at the Percy Isles. Port Molle and Cape Upstart. Unable to find Fresh Water. Return to Sydney. Recent Occurrences there. Sail for Bass Strait. Visit Port Phillip and Port Dalrymple. Inspect the ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... his resolution. Second by second it was becoming more and more difficult and seemingly more ungracious to return a gift so graciously given, a gift of no inconsiderable intrinsic value. Moreover, Mr. Flint had ingeniously contrived almost to make the act, in Austen's eyes, that of a picayune upstart. Who was he to fling back an annual pass in the face of the president ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of the Stuart dynasty would have been different, and the Crown and the Parliament would have wrought together for the good and the honor of the nation, at least through a generation to come. But the upstart Buckingham was supreme. He had studied Bacon's strength and weakness, had laid him under great obligations, had at the same time attached him by the strongest tie of friendship to his person, and impressed upon his ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... "An upstart multitude and sudden gains, Pride and excess, O Florence! have in thee Engender'd, so that now in tears thou mourn'st!" Thus cried I with my face uprais'd, and they All three, who for an answer took my words, Look'd ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... decide upon questions before which man's reason stands impotent; and imagination and emotion, those great auxiliaries to all deep religious feeling, were bid to stand rebuked in her presence, as hinderers of the rational faculty, and upstart pretenders to rights which were not theirs. 'Enthusiasm' was frowned down, and no small part of the light and fire of religion ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... quailing with a quip, The upstart I can wither with a whim; He may wear a merry laugh upon his lip, But his laughter has an echo that is grim. When they've offered to the world in merry guise, Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will - For he who'd make his fellow-creatures wise Should ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... they were aware of the danger. He believed that the match was in every respect such as to flatter the ambition of Mr. Falkland; and he was stung even to madness by the idea of being deprived of the object dearest to his heart by this tramontane upstart. ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... all systems built on abstract rights, Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims 525 Of Institutes and Laws, hallowed by time; Declares the vital power of social ties Endeared by Custom; and with high disdain, Exploding upstart Theory, insists Upon the allegiance to which men are born—530 Some—say at once a froward multitude— Murmur (for truth is hated, where not loved) As the winds fret within the AEolian cave, Galled by their monarch's chain. The times were big With ominous change, which, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... a dang about your law!" Webb broke in. "I'm law-abidin', but when a law is passed givin' an upstart like you the right to make a decent man jump out of your way, like a frost-bitten grasshopper, I'll break it. The minute a skunk like you buys a machine on credit an' starts out he thinks ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... had no warrant in the usages of England; and the fact that he was allowed to appropriate a place in the procession for his own "Master of the Horse," and that the holder of the honoured place was a youthful member of the upstart family of the Jermyns, was enough to stir up much heartburning amongst the older Royalist nobility, and to engage the attention and compel the anxiety even of Clarendon himself. The Chancellor had to steer his course amidst a very hotbed of popular excitement, and of Court factions and intrigues, ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... whom (indirectly, perhaps, but not the less effectively) I help to govern. I am entitled therefore to have a heart-to-heart talk with my bosom-friend, and, anyhow, whether I am entitled or not, that is what I propose to have. You may tell me in your genial way that I am only an upstart, but I answer that I occupy my position not because my father and my grandfather were big men, but because I myself, through my own plans and by my own strength, did certain things which in my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various

... fellow-Collegian, Gregory Martin, who will do this work with more learning and abundance of detail than I could; nor from others whom I understand already to have that task in hand. More wicked and more abominable is the crime that I am now prosecuting, that there have been found upstart Doctors who have made a drunken onslaught on the handwriting that is of heaven; who have given judgment against it as being in many places defiled, defective, false, surreptitious; who have corrected some passages, tampered with others; torn out others; who have ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... it was with a manifest touch of pride that the old verger who guided us through the cathedral dwelt on the long line of kings who had reigned at Winchester before the Norman conquest. To him, London at best was only an upstart and an usurper. Why, ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... pervert our gifts, and beate us with our owne weapons) hath so contriv'd it, that any truth doth now seeme distastefull for that very reason, for which errour is entertain'd—Novelty, for let but some upstart heresie be set abroach, and presently there are some out of a curious humour; others, as if they watched an occasion of singularity, will take it up for canonicall, and make it part of their creede and profession; whereas solitary truth cannot any where finde so ready entertainement; but the same ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins

... only difference is this: Naaman listened to wise counsel, and finally did what he had been told to do, and was cleansed. Rome disdains to this day to listen to the ill-bred son of a peasant, the theological upstart Luther, and remains as ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... called that morning, a knave and a fool; he had been browbeaten and threatened; and he had swallowed it all, and almost turned to lick the hand that administered the dose. Dame! What manner of cur was he become? And the man who had done all this—a vulgar upstart out of Paris, reeking of leather and the ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... came to it, a fellow with a ream on his back laboured out. I had expected naught but the desolation and silence which I last remembered in the place, and it staggered me to find all going on as before. No doubt here was some upstart printer, standing in my late master's shoes and working at his ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... against what was base or unworthy in themselves, but I am forced to defend myself for my best heritage of understanding. Would it help me in your esteem if I flung away all my hard-won philosophy and ranged myself with the sentimentalists of the day? I will not believe it. I will fight this upstart folly while breath is in me, and I will teach you to fight it with me. This morning I took that poor book of Miss Addams's and, in place of what you sent me, wrote such a review as will quite astound the "forty-million ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... something about "upstart impudence," and obeyed the O.C. Troops, who thereupon boarded the rocking lighter, and exchanged with one step the fatal Peninsula for ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... "I know that she will not be invited. The marchioness hates her; Mrs. Gilmer is the only rival whom Madame de Fleury takes the trouble to detest; and it makes me indignant to see a lady of her superlative fascinations annoyed by this little upstart American. One must admit that Mrs. Gilmer is very pretty; her figure scarcely needs help, and she is so vivacious, and has so much aplomb, so much dash, that the notice she attracts renders her alarmingly ambitious. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... against Davies, the trickery of his methods, one and all be brought to light. Already, through Haney, he heard of the sensation created among the men by his defence of Howard, and of the depth of feeling among the old hands against this airy upstart recruit, not a year in service, who frequently boasted that he had more influence with "Cap." than all the rest of them put together. Haney himself could not cipher out the secret of Howard's importance, and was plainly and palpably jealous. Ever ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... of the nightwatch are badly informed," grumbled the ostler, pushing the dog into a corner. "I know what it was, for one of the theatrical players is a lady lodger of ours. She was unfairly supplanted by some insignificant young upstart and, of course, the public, always knowing true talent from shallow pretension, broke up the seats and pelted the manager with it ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... year, Why glows the peach with crimson hue, And why the plum's inviting blue; 20 Were they to feast his taste design'd, That vermin of voracious kind? Crush then the slow, the pilfering race; So purge thy garden from disgrace.' 'What arrogance!' the snail replied; 'How insolent is upstart pride! Hadst thou not thus with insult vain, Provoked my patience to complain, I had concealed thy meaner birth, Nor traced thee to the scum of earth. 30 For scarce nine suns have waked the hours, To swell ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... and many persons of culture and influence. Nevertheless, the predominating influence at the Ki[o]to court was that of Buddhism; and as the cult that winks at polygamy was less opposed to Hideyoshi's sensualism and amazing vanity, the illustrious upstart was easily made hostile to the alien faith. According to the accounts of the Jesuits, he took umbrage because a Portuguese captain would not please him by risking his ship in coming out of deep water and nearer land, and because there were Christian maidens of Arima who scorned ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... in tears The love of years Is wasted like the snow, And the fine fibrils of its life By the rude wrong of instant strife Are broken at a blow— Within the heart Do springs upstart Of which it doth now know, And strange, sweet dreams, Like silent streams That from new fountains overflow, With the earlier tide Of rivers glide Deep in the heart whose hope has died— Quenching the fires its ashes hide,— Its ashes, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... a blawsted upstart," said Paulding, lazily puffing at his cigarette. "He needs to be called ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish

... face; To Grandeur with his wise grimace; To upstart Wealth's averted eye; To supple Office, low and high; To crowded halls, to court and street; To frozen hearts and hasting feet; To those who go, and those who come; Good-bye, proud world! I'm ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... calmly, coolly, as though caring nothing, told that story in the face of all the world? Was she never to get rid of the spell he had cast on her before she knew what he really was? For a man like this she had sacrificed her self-respect, bandied insults with a vulgar upstart, and brought on her head a reproach more fitting for an ill-mannered child. She threw the paper from her and rose to her feet. She would think no more of him; he might be what he would; he was no fit subject for her thoughts, and ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... a short time the congregation was beside itself with rage, and the pretended righteous indignation of a flock of hypocrites and formalists who had heard themselves described in disrespectful terms by one they regarded as an upstart young man from the lower classes of their virtuous community. They felt that they had bestowed a flattering honor upon Him, as a mark of consideration for a young townsman upon His return from a foreign and domestic missionary tour. ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka

... once mentioned to you the darling view some of us have long had of raising a family, as it is called. A reflection, as I have often thought, upon our own, which is no considerable or upstart one, on either side, on my mother's especially.—A view too frequently it seems entertained by families which, having great substance, cannot be satisfied without rank ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... meet? Why do not they petition? Why do not they besiege the throne with their clamors? They are no better than beasts of burthen! If they were any thing else, the whole kingdom would rise, as one man, and drive this arrogant upstart from the helm. I say, Mr. Evelyn, I love the people; I love my country; I love the constitution; and I hate the swarms of mushroom peers, and petty traders, that are daily pouring in upon us, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... astonishment at his son's audacity seemed to have bereft Ralph Mainwaring of the power of speech, but now he demanded in thunderous tones, while his face grew purple with rage, "What do you mean, sir, by daring to address such language to me? You impudent upstart! let me tell you that you had best attend to your ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... anger grows, A mighty spirit fills my nose, My inward feelings all revolt. A creature such as thou! a dolt! Pipi, a squirrel able nuts to crack! I bristle up my shaggy back Unused a slave to be. I'm laughed at by each trim and upstart tree To ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... family to such a height as was dangerous to the prince, and gave umbrage to the state: when he conferred favor on any person of meaner birth, on whose submission he could more depend, the barons of his kingdom, enraged at the power of an upstart minion, proceeded to the utmost extremities against their sovereign. Had Henry entertained the ambition of conquests, a tempting opportunity now offered of reducing that kingdom to subjection; but as he was probably sensible that a warlike people, though they might be overrun ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... the abominable Cambaceres!" I cried, stung with rage. "To wear a duchess's coronet, Blanche! Ha, ha! Mushrooms, instead of strawberry-leaves, should decorate the brows of the upstart French nobility. I shall withdraw my parole. I demand to be sent to prison—to be exchanged—to die—anything rather than be a traitor, and the tool of a traitress!" Taking up my hat, I left the room in a fury; and flinging open the door tumbled over Cambaceres, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... hold on to their prerogative as banishers of epidemics. Who knows what day the Lord may see fit to rebuke the upstart teachers of impious and atheistical inoculation, and scourge the people back into His fold as in the good old days of Moses and Aaron? Viscount Amberley, in his immensely learned and half-suppressed work, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... understanding with Sweden, Prussia, and Denmark; and when he has made the best alliances in Christendom. When the Emperor, King of Great Britain, the French King, the King of Sardinia, are all in the quadruple alliance against the Spaniard, his upstart cardinal,[3] and the Pretender; when bloody plots against Great Britain and France are blown up; when the Spanish fleet is quite dispersed; when the French army is overrunning Spain; and when the rebels in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... tight thing, as fair as may be, Without a dad conceived a baby, And brought him forth without the pother In labour made by teeming mother. Yet the cursed brat feared not to gripe her, But gnawed, for haste, her sides like viper. Then the black upstart boldly sallies, And walks and flies o'er hills and valleys. Many fantastic sons of wisdom, Amazed, foresaw their own in his doom; And thought like an old Grecian noddy, A human spirit ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... charming figure that the lady made in her quaint frock against the crumbling garden wall. He spoke a very pretty speech about her appearance. But he found her haughty indeed considering that she was nothing but an upstart vaudeville performer. She had no manners at all, he decided, for she did not even suggest that he sit down. He actually had ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke

... Jackson Park, there had been a scene. The old gun maker had blustered and roared and forbidden, pounding on his desk with his fist. When Sam remained cool and unimpressed, he had stormed out of the room slamming the door and shouting, "Upstart! Damned upstart!" and Sam had gone smiling back to his desk, mildly disappointed. "I told Sue he would say 'Ingrate,'" he thought, "I am losing my skill at guessing just what ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... now occupied by the brick range of stores, as well as the present court-yard, was laid out in grass-plats overshadowed by trees and bordered by a wrought-iron fence. Now the old aristocratic edifice hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart modern building; at one of the back windows I observed some pretty tailoresses sewing and chatting and laughing, with now and then a careless glance toward the balcony. Descending thence, we again entered the bar-room, where the elderly gentleman above ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... admitted, he finds a contest on the point of being held before the King of Hades and the Initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries, who form the Second Chorus, between Aeschylus, the present occupant of the throne of tragic excellence in hell, and the pushing, self-satisfied, upstart Euripides, who is for ousting him ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... lived in splendid hotels. In Venice the palace they occupied was six times as big as the whole Marshalsea. Mr. Dorrit, when he remembered Arthur Clennam at all, spoke of him as an upstart who had intruded his presence upon them in their poverty, and quickly forgot all his kindness and his efforts to help and ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... him, what we call Warden of the Marches, with some annual pay for his Goths. He was insolent to Theodemir and his family, and they retaliated by bitter hatred. It was intolerable for them, Amals, sons of Odin, to be insulted by this upstart. So they went on for years, till the miserable religious squabble fell out—you may read it in Gibbon—which ended in the Emperor Zeno, a low-born and cunning man, suspected of the murder of his own son by the princess Ariadne, being driven out of Constantinople by Basiliscus. We need not enter ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... action. He fancied the prostration was meant as a sign of devotion to his will, signed to him to rise, and whispered, as if afraid of hearing his own words: "Act quickly and secretly; and, as you value your life, let no one know of the upstart's death. Depart, and when your work is finished, take as much as you like out of the treasury. But keep your wits about you. The boy has a strong arm and a winning tongue. Think of your own wife and children, if he tries to win you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... twice a day, at dawn and at night, as the train tore a noisy tunnel in the quiet air, like the plebeian upstart it was, he sprinkled every grave, rising sometimes from a bed of pain, at other times defying wind and rain and hail. And for a while he believed that his holy device had deepened the sleep of his dead, locked them beyond the ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton

... "falsifier," "upstart," "pretender," were freely used, and poor Newton for a time was almost ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... want to know what this means. I've discovered that that young upstart of a son of yours, who ought to be in short trousers yet, has been courting my niece, Madge Oliver, all summer. He has had the impudence to tell me that he wants to marry her. I won't have it, I tell you, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... society in which he moved, and which delighted in the enjoyment of his friendship, John Leech was the keenest of observers, noting and satirizing as no one before his time had attempted, or indeed had been able to do, the cant and hypocrisy, the pride and selfishness, the upstart and arrogant exclusiveness, the insular prejudices and weaknesses, which form a part of our national character; but doing this, he loved his countrymen and countrywomen for their finer qualities, and hated the bungling foreigners who presume to ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... a pamphlet entitled, "A Groat's-worth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance:" this is full of contrition, and of advice to his fellow-actors and fellow-sinners. It is mainly remarkable for its abuse of Shakspeare, "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers;" "Tygre's heart wrapt in a player's hide;" "an absolute Johannes factotum, in his own conceyt the onely shakescene in ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... to my house early this morning and told me that at the meeting of the Young People's Society last night, that young upstart Falkner, laid down plans for doing church work, and that you were there and approved of them. That rattle-headed boy of ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... was one person who did hate him most bitterly, and that was the Duchess of Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV. and Richard III.: the same who, as I told you, encouraged printing so much. She felt as if a mean upstart had got into the place of her brothers, and his having married her niece did not make it seem a bit the better to her. There was one nephew left—the poor young orphan son of George, Duke of Clarence—but he had ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

... not believed that the young man had really wished to leave the ministry. He was quite sure now that the preacher, recognizing at last the power that had thrust him from his position and place in the church, wished to sue for peace, that the same power might help him to another position. So this big upstart was ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... men have seen their father put no restraint upon his passions. Why should they put restraint on theirs? How can he command them when he has not commanded himself? And yet self- restraint is what they, above all men, need. Upstart princes—the sons of a shepherd boy—intoxicated with honours to which they were not born; they need the severest discipline; they break out into the most frantic licence. What is there that they may not do, and dare not do? Nothing is sacred in their eyes. Luxury, ambition, revenge, vanity, ...
— David • Charles Kingsley

... ear, so that I thought I was dead. Good Cook, I love thee well, and thou shalt have a good pottle of our master's best wine every day, for thou art an old and faithful servant. Also, good Cook, I have ten shillings that I mean to give as a gift to thee. But hatest thou not to see a vile upstart like this Reynold Greenleaf taking ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... her wrinkled old head in solemn deprecation of tke evil omen. She knew it as well as Mrs. Oswald herself did, having heard the fact at least a thousand times before; but she made it a matter of principle never to encourage these upstart pretensions on the part of the lower orders, and just to keep them rigorously at their proper level she always made a feint of forgetting any steps in advance which they might have been bold enough to take, without humbly obtaining her previous permission, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... but nothing had come from thence for either the princesses, Sir Patrick, or Geordie of the Red Peel, so that the strange situation of the latter must needs continue as long as he insisted on being beholden for nothing to the English upstart, as he scrupled not to call Lord Suffolk, whose new-fashioned French title was an offence in ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... political and exchange editors, wretches running after a hundred sous, statesmen in a fair way to fortune; and he distributed to this little crowd, just as he would throw food into a kennel, the discounts and clippings of his ventures, taking malicious pleasure, the insolent delight of a fortunate upstart, in feigning at the moment when loans were issued, sickness that had no existence, in order to have the right of keeping his chamber, of hearing persons of exalted names ringing at his door and dancing attendance upon him,—powerful, influential and illustrious persons,—him, the second-hand dealer ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... district of Yalookiang. That territory was soon overrun and annexed; but it roused such a fear among the other Niuche chiefs, lest their fate should be the same, that seven of them combined, under Boojai, to overthrow the upstart who aspired to play the part of a dictator. They brought into the field a force of 30,000 men, including, besides their own followers, a considerable contingent from the Mongols; and as Noorhachu's army numbered only 4,000 ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... embodiment of what had gradually become the most objectionable type of Teuton existence—the unmitigated squireen or Junker, with his poverty and arrogance, with his hunger and thirst after position and good living, with his hatred for the upstart liberal burgher class. "Away with the cities! I hope I may yet live to see them levelled to the ground." Is there not a ring of many centuries of social strife, so laboriously kept down by the reigning dynasty, in these ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... ways did the British officers seem to rack their inventions to insult, terrify, and vex the poor prisoners. The meanest, upstart officers among them would insult and abuse our colonels and ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... she cried, losing sight of all the brown faces. "They are some European race which colonized America long before that modern upstart, Columbus. They are undoubtedly the descendants of the Northmen who built the old mill at Newport and sculptured ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... robbed her son of the heritage of his father, Caesar, and whose mention in the will was like an imputation on her fidelity—the cold-hearted, calculating upstart, whose nature from their first meeting in Rome had repelled, rebuffed, chilled her; of the man by whose cajolery and power her husband—for in her own eyes and those of the Egyptians Antony held this position—had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... and ninety miles. As my instructions did not authorise my delaying to examine any part of this coast I could not penetrate into the many numerous and extensive openings that presented themselves in this space; particularly in the neighbourhoods of Cape Gloucester, Upstart, and Cleveland; where the intersected and broken appearances of the hills at the back are matters of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... polished manners can wind them round his finger, while white soldiers seem rather to prefer a certain roughness. The demeanor of my men to each other is very courteous, and yet I see none of that sort of upstart conceit which is sometimes offensive among free negroes at the North, the dandy-barber strut. This is an agreeable surprise, for I feared that freedom and regimentals ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... have it done," said Mrs. Kinloch, decisively. "Mildred, who has always been foolishly partial to the young upstart, insists that her father intended to give up the notes to Mark, and she thinks that was what he wanted to send for Uncle Ralph about, just before he died. I don't believe it, and I don't intend to fling away my money ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... hand at altering plays, at rewriting them, and making them popular; we know that he had translated them upon the stage before 1592, because of Greene's notice then published by Chettle, of "the upstart crow."[143] And he probably had written some. But his first firm step on the staircase of fame was taken in the publication of his "Venus and Adonis" by his friend Richard Field in April, 1593, and his first grip of success in his dedication thereof to the young Earl of Southampton. The kindness ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes

... instance of the latter, he mentioned the case of a young upstart squire named d'Urberville, living some forty miles off, in the neighbourhood ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... heart. Matilda Drummond even said—and I have never forgotten it to her—that if she was my nephew, Jarvis, she'd have my condition of mind inquired into. Yet see how it has turned out! Is she spoilt? Is she an upstart? Is she set above her family? She's over there this minute with that poor little drab stepmother of hers. She worships her father. The joys and sorrows of the poor little household are as much to her to-day as the ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... short, Monsieur de Trailles was sent to Arcis to put an end to the candidacy of an upstart of the Left centre, a certain Simon Giguet; and having brought forward the mayor of the town as the ministerial candidate, he finds the said mayor, named Beauvisage, possessed of an only daughter, rather pretty, and able to bring her husband five hundred thousand francs amassed ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... red-brick Georgian repose. There was never a town so inimitably drowsy or so sternly uncompetitive. A hundred years ago it must have presented almost precisely the same appearance as it did in the summer of 1913, if we leave out of reckoning a few dozen of modern upstart villas that line its outskirts, and the very inconspicuous railway station that hides itself behind the warehouses near the river's bank. Most of the trains, too, quite ignore its existence, and pass through it on their way to more rewarding stopping-places, ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... of warfare when men were always plugging one another full of holes in the name of religion or disputed territory, merely to amuse themselves with a tryout of Right against Might, or to gratify the insane ambition of some upstart like Napoleon. To-day the business world was the battlefield, and it was his capital a man was always healing, his poor brain that collapsed nightly after the strain and nervous worry of ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... All-Highest as a target for our banter was the offence of offences in his estimable conceit. When we reached the entrance to the field we had to pass a small office in which we were registered and we discovered the immature upstart loudly and excitedly dwelling upon the enormous indignity to which he had been submitted ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... latest four: public places then began early; the curtain at the grand French opera drew up at a quarter past five. At the present day, the workman dines at two; the tradesman, at three; the clerk in a public office, at four; the rich upstart, the money-broker, the stock-jobber, the contractor, at five; the banker, the legislator, the counsellor of state, at six; and the ministers, in general, at seven, nay not unfrequently ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... not 'to spend their wits in making plaies.' He especially warns them against actors—because these, it seems, had given him up. His rancorous spite against them he expresses in the well-known words:—'Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is in his owne conceit the onely ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... Meadow Saffron rises bare from the earth, and is, therefore, called "Upstart" and "Naked Lady." This plant owes its botanical name Colchicum, to Colchis, in Natalia, which abounded in poisonous vegetables, and gave rise to the fiction about the enchantress Medea. She renewed the vitality of her aged father, AEneas, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... determined by competition, a profit under other circumstances absorbed by a single manufacturer. The centralising tendency of capital holds them down. For one who grows rich ten are ruined, and a hundred placed at a greater disadvantage than ever, by the pressure of the one upstart who can afford to sell more cheaply than they. And in the cases where they have to compete from the beginning against great capitalists, it is self-evident that they can only toil along with the greatest difficulty. The apprentices are, ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... red fields of slaughter, through death and defeat and disaster, Still flared thy banner aloft, tattered, but free from a stain, - Now to the upstart Savoyard thou bendest to beg for a master! How the red flush of her shame mars the proud ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... terror against the nobles. In a few days he sacked and burned their strongholds, and the high and mighty lords who had made the reigning Pope, and had fought to an issue for the Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, were conquered, humiliated and imprisoned by an upstart plebeian of Trastevere. The portcullis of Monte Giordano was lifted, and the mysterious gates were thrown wide to the curiosity of a populace drunk with victory; Giovanni degli Stefaneschi issued edicts ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... maximorum virorum plerosque patres ignoratos, matres impudicas fuisse. [3657]"I could recite a great catalogue of them," every kingdom, every province will yield innumerable examples: and why then should baseness of birth be objected to any man? Who thinks worse of Tully for being arpinas, an upstart? Or Agathocles, that Silician king, for being a potter's son? Iphicrates and Marius were meanly born. What wise man thinks better of any person for his nobility? as he said in [3658]Machiavel, omnes eodem patre nati, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... own!—And what return do I get for it? A new-comer only needs to wave a red flag before them, and all alike rush blindly to him. A pupil of Liszt?—bah! Who was Liszt? A barrel-organ of execution; a perverter of taste; a worthy ally of that upstart who ruined melody, harmony, and form. Don't talk ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... natural result of the revolution. Although at first an attack was only made against the noblesse, yet latterly, every rich and powerful family was included among the proscribed, and all the commercial houses of the first respectability were annihilated. These have never been replaced, and the upstart race of petty traders have not yet obtained the confidence of foreigners. The trade of France is therefore very confined; and even were opportunities now afforded of establishing a trade with foreign nations, it would be ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... coast, and explore the north-western part of the continent, this time taking the inside passage between the east coast and the Barrier Reef to reach her destination, and after discovering the mouth of a river near Cape Upstart (the present Burdekin), and making other minor corrections and additions in King's chart, the vessel anchored at the new settlement of Port Essington. In 1829, it will be remembered that Fort Dundas and Fort Wellington had been abandoned, and it was not until the year 1829 that any fresh attempt ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... bright days, halcyon days; piping times, tide, flood, high tide. Saturnia regna[Lat], Saturnian age; golden time, golden age; bed of roses, fat city [coll.]; fat of the land, milk and honey, loaves and fishes. made man, lucky dog, enfant gate[Fr], spoiled child of fortune. upstart, parvenu, skipjack[obs3], mushroom. V. prosper, thrive, flourish; be prosperous &c adj.; drive a roaring trade, do a booming business; go on well, go on smoothly, go on swimmingly; sail before the wind, swim with the tide; run smooth, run smoothly, run on all fours. rise in the world, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... wars of the French, many chiefs have been deposed, and many so-called chiefs appointed. We have seen, in the same house, one such upstart drinking in the company of two such extruded island Bourbons, men, whose word a few years ago was life and death, now sunk to be peasants like their neighbours. So when the French overthrew hereditary tyrants, dubbed ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... mistake—a grave mistake in the interests of their own people. Georg Brende was in Washington—that was true. But Georg Brende was a silly, conceited young man, flattered by his prominence in the public eye, his head turned by his own importance. Dr. Brende had been a genius. The son was a mere upstart, pretending to a scientific ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings

... "The damned Southern upstart," growled Teerswell, forgetting Stillings' birth-place. "Do you mean to say he's actually slated for ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... circumstances, to accept any future invitations to her house, for I overheard a conversation between Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Montgomery which I believe was intended to reach my ears, and consequently wounded and mortified me very much. I was ridiculed and denounced as a 'poor upstart and interloper,' who was being smuggled into society far above my position in life, and pronounced an avaricious schemer, intent on thrusting myself upon Mr. Leigh's notice, and ambitious of marrying him for his fortune. They sneered at the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... happy lot I gladly share, And breathe a purer, freer air; No more by wealthy upstart spurn'd, The bread is sweet by labour earn'd; Indulgent heaven has bless'd the soil, And plenty ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... was wrong, very wrong; and I feel my inferiority every time I come to Germany, and have to pause and think by what combination of words I can express the true Germanic functions and nature of booking offices and bicycle labels. For it was long ago: Count Bismarck was still looked on as a dangerous upstart, and we reckoned in kreutzers; blue and white Austrian bands played at Mainz and Frankfurt. It was long ago that I was, so to speak, a small German infant, fed on Teutonic romance and sentiment (and also funny Teutonic ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... oppressed nobility of the country, the Colonna and the Orsini, who rose against the hated foreigner. Soon afterwards, in December the same year, death suddenly terminated the career of this young and brilliant upstart, then in Civitavecchia. It is not known whether Don Pedro Luis Borgia was married or whether he ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... three brother dramatists—Marlowe, Nash, and Peele or Lodge—he bade them beware of puppets 'that speak from our mouths,' and of 'antics garnished in our colours.' 'There is,' he continued, 'an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum is, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... said Conrad cunningly. "I would rather have had any boy beat me than that upstart, Andy Grant. He will put on no end of airs. Besides, I ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger

... to me as if they had been on the stage, especially the one to whom you were talking. I will do him the justice to say he is a handsome wretch, but like all those foreign adventurers he has a dissipated air. As for the other, he is simply commonplace and vulgar, with little upstart ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... time had come to insist firmly upon his rights which were being seriously threatened by this sleek brown upstart. He possessed a weapon against which the fox would be helpless and in this extremity he prepared to use it. Still, the skunk was a gentleman and scorned to attack ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer



Words linked to "Upstart" :   pretentious, parvenue, wise guy, wisenheimer, climber, junior, wiseacre, parvenu, smart aleck, disagreeable person, gymnastic exercise, arriviste, social climber, unpleasant person, kip, weisenheimer, nouveau-riche



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