What is "stilted"

Usage examples of "stilted".

Other Norman-French poems were written in England on the rebellion, on the conquest of Ireland, on the life of the martyred Thomas--poems which threw off the formal rules of the stilted Latin fashion, and embodied the tales of eye-witnesses with their graphic brief descriptions.

Lady Merel asked in the stilted and insulting manner she always assumed with Barak.

I had expected Scorf to sit bolt upright behind the wheel of the dark blue unmarked Cougar and fumble it along at a stilted thirty-five.

A regular speech must be in stilted, archaic talk, delivered in a high, unmodulated voice, in rapid sentences broken by short silences.

The couple had been with her for almost six years, and yet Karl was a mask--- a talking, breathing, untranslated hieroglyph running her errands on stilted legs.

Yes, Tim and his exuberant excitement over worms, hooks, and bluegill had gone a long way toward lightening his mood, but being stuck having another stilted dinner with his family plunged him right back into the depths without any problem.

Ancient trunks and knotted vines, giant ferns and stippled foliage, the languid monotone of botanical patterning interrupted, at precisely the proper moment, by a sudden caesura in the greenery, bright orchids dazzling as summer clouds, flavored cups of epiphytic ice protruding from their beds of root growth thick as pubic hair up in the crotches of the stilted mangrove trees, or the swoop of incandescent plumage as a blue-throated flycatcher sailed out into the open river space and vanished, the eye barely registering its passage.

With a cakey dryness about the lips, the sweetness of cotton candy filming her teeth, numb to cacophony and in her element, little Linds saw out of the corner of her eye a switched-on filament of stilted brilliance in the no-color sky, heard mobbed shrieks out of tenor with the cries of thrillseekers.

Stilted verse, deathlessly chiseled, eulogized the departees -- vanity plates in suburbia for the lifeless.

Getting to me, the essayist mentioned the fact that my style was clumsy, my dialog stilted, my characterization non-existent, but that there was no question that my books were -turners.

He observed the trio of riders herding a small band of cattle toward the feedlots, his attitude stilted and cool.

The Shadow raced across the tracks toward a stilted structure where a lonely towerman sat with a bewildering array of polished lever handles.

The poet and his pale woman were locked in some curious, stilted, yet private and unsharing communion.

The conversation was terribly stilted and carried on mostly by the old lady in Dutch, although from time to time she addressed herself to Prudence, but as her remarks were for the most part searching questions about her work, home life and family, which Prudence answered politely but briefly, she gave up and began a lengthy conversation with Aunt Emma and Aunt Beatrix, which left Prudence stranded with the self-effacing lady, who spoke rather less English than Prudence did Dutch.

They drank a Cabernet from the Cape of Good Hope and from a stilted beginning their conversation eased as Craig drew her out.