What is "reluctant"

Usage examples of "reluctant".

Saturday, 18870618:1900 Four hours after they had begun to trickle through the beach gate, the women of Joy Hall, even the most reluctant Sarah, were still happily engaged in gossip, comparison of the males, claims of sexual prowess, reminiscences of Earth, wading in the surf, and general appreciation of the great open vistas.

When the clamor of the soldiers invested the reluctant victims with the ensigns of sovereign authority, they sometimes mourned in secret their approaching fate.

There was no doubt that she needed some analgesia, but she was reluctant to ask for it because of the inevitable hypnotic effects.

We sat in silence, reluctant to take the machine on-line, to bring up the doctored version of programs whose results, both digital and analog, we had no way of forecasting.

Rapt and prophetic, his plump hands clasped round the handle of his umbrella, his billycock hat a trifle askew, this irascible little man of the Voice, this impatient dreamer, this scolding Optimist, who has argued so rudely and dogmatically about economics and philosophy and decoration, and indeed about everything under the sun, who has been so hard on the botanist and fashionable women, and so reluctant in the matter of beer, is carried onward, dreaming dreams, dreams that with all the inevitable ironies of difference, may be realities when you and I are dreams.

Galloping over the few patches that the starblaze showed comparatively free of traps, walking again, forcing the reluctant beasts through thick patches of bramble, on and on, until the whole world seemed to shake and the noise was a thousand hammers beating on them, a noise so pervasive it was around them as solid as the air slamming against them.

As he looked down intently at the dull black toecap gradually coming to a reluctant shine, Brigg guessed what was coming next.

Sharpe said, reluctant to admit that he had been reduced to being a bullock guard.

I lifted the bag of bones onto the back of the truck, oblivious to its shrivelled eyes, like black raisins above its yawning, meatless mouth, and it slithered down at me from the pile, a reluctant evacuee.

It was as if they were all in possession of some secret that they were reluctant to share with her and Jenny was miserable, intercepting strange, meaningful glances between Melia and Ned and half-hearing conversations among the three of them, which, in her presence, broke off abruptly and were continued when she left them.

In midstream Hadrios clung to Helane with one hand, used the other to flog a reluctant dromedary with a wand.

But Chamberlain and Halifax were most reluctant to violate Norwegian neutrality, and the proposal was for the time being dropped.

It took a good deal longer than usual, for she was reluctant to use her crutches, declaring the physiotherapist had hurt her abominably that morning.

Stark said noncommittally, with a reluctant, but real understanding that made Prew so warm inside he forgot that it was Stark who told him Willard would not bother him.

Stark said, handing him the last of the pans that they had got through fast, so incredibly fast Prew could not believe that they were done, was almost reluctant they were done, in the warmth of grateful friendliness he felt for the other.