A multicolored woolen fabric woven of mixed threads in 14th to 17th century England

Usage examples of motley.

Remade glands and astream with a rainbow mess, and this aggregate of criminals, this motley comes closer in freedom.

Seated with his back to the wall of the low-ceilinged, crowded tavern, Gruntle looked out with narrowed eyes on a motley collection of murderers, extortionists and thugs whose claim to power was measured in fear.

It was a dressing room, with a row of monkish robes in motley hanging upon pegs, and at the end of it there seemed to be a ledge looking down over the area where the light came from.

I do know thee for that same gentle Motley did save me from Black Lewin--a murrain seize him!

A motley troop of creatures-variously taloned and beaked, chitinous and scutellate, some with claws, others with pinchers-began charging up the hill.

So a shambolic group, of all heights and body weights, were shifting about in their motley homespun tunics, while Fusculus gave benign instructions when he felt like it.

The police band under the spathodea trees at the end of the lawn played light Italian operetta with an exuberant African beat, and only the motley selection of guests distinguished the gathering from a Rhodesian governor, general garden party that Craig had attended six years previously.

Quinn corrected before Somerton Taite followed his sister and he could close the door on the whole motley crew.

From other directions a large, motley force of Entropium warships helped the Migaan craft dispose of the outnumbered Thron vessels.

Four men in motley armor were hacking and thrusting like men possessed, up at a half-naked giant of a man, all rippling muscles and hair, who was fending them off with a huge cleaver of a sword.

Chivas Regal, Robert considered the motley collection of individuals who, for reasons of their own, remained like him, unattached and available, and decided he would be better off going home--alone.

It was a noble illusion, doomed to failure, the versatile genius of language cried out against the monotony of their Utopia, and the crowds who were to people the unbuilded city of their dreams went straying after the feathered chiefs of the rebels, who, when the fulness of time was come, themselves received apotheosis and the honours of a new motley pantheon.

Certainly the buildings were unusual: a motley arrangement of unsymmetrical roofs covered them while inside was to be found a seemingly incoherent mixture of large and small rooms, set at many levels and joined by twisting stairways and winding corridors.

But one thing I am sure of -- that the innocent delight of the poor Indian Alferez Real, mounted upon his horse, dressed in his motley, barefooted, and overshadowed by his gold-laced hat, was as entire as if he had eaten of all the fruits of all the trees of knowledge of his time, and so perhaps the Jesuits were wise.

But it was the motley band who brought up the procession that made the women cross themselves, for these were men of all shapes and sizes, some small as dwarves, some long and lanky as clothespoles, less than a dozen of them, in the ragged remains of what had once been bright clothing in the strangest styles.