What is "surly"

Usage examples of "surly".

With a surly gesture the guard pointed to the heavy bell-pull up against the gate, and de Batz pulled it with all his might.

Will Palmer, emerging from behind a macrocarpa hedge, stopped in the middle of the lawn, looking surly, as Constable Gates grubbed among the flower-pots in one of the greenhouses, and Constable Bryant, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, thrust his arms into the green depths of the lily pond.

Will Palmer, emerging from behind a macrocarpa hedge, stopped in the middle of the lawn, looking surly, as Constable Gates grubbed among the flowerpots in one of the greenhouses, and Constable Bryant, his shirt-sleeves rolled up, thrust his arms into the green depths of the lily pond.

Administrators, undercastes become surly and shiftlesssometimes gold-bricking and malingering to the point of sabotage, to where it actually harms the corporation.

Fire was speedily obtained from one of their guns, and Hobbie was already advancing to the pile with a kindled brand, when the surly face of the robber, and the muzzle of a musquetoon, were partially shown at a shot-hole which flanked the entrance.

If we stayed, I argued, and the king changed his mind, then death for me, and for Heru the arms of that surly monarch, and all the rest of her life caged in these pallisades amongst the uncouth forms about us.

Chinatown, stared at by surly youths in tight black pants and white T-shirts, passing pagodaed restaurants and record stores with pentatonic music tinkling from their loudspeakers.

Eve thanked God she lived and worked on the other coast, where waiters were appropriately surly and never felt obliged to offer you something called Pineapple-Papaya Phizz as the special of the day.

One glance sufficed to identify him: with a surly nod the potman ducked behind a partition to call the proprietor.

It was nearly empty, little more than a roadside farmhouse with boarding rooms in what had once been a hay-loft, and a surly farmer and his sickly wife who served up rancid scrumpy and pie and little in the way of conversation.

She sat down on the bench opposite me, beside a poor cracked old sempstress, whose devotions were disturbed every five minutes by her having to put down her prayer-book and hunt spiders, and old Smith the blind man, who used to say his responses in a surly, defiant tone of voice, as if every response was another item in a bill against heaven, which had already run too long, and ought to have been paid long ago.

She was a hard, feverish, bitter, and over-stimulated woman, and yet she had a kind of harsh loyalty to her family: she was, in a fierce and smouldering way, very ambitious for Abe, who seemed to be the most promising of her brothers: she was determined that he should go to college and become a lawyer, and his fees at the university, in part at any rate, were paid by his sister--in part only, not because Sylvia would not have paid all without complaint, but because Abe insisted on paying as much as he could through his own labour, for Abe, too, had embedded in him a strong granite of independence, the almost surly dislike, of a strong and honest character, of being beholden to anyone for favours.

Thiemo struck the spear haft down with his sword, splintering it, as Matto, Surly, and Everwin waded in with their swords.

Mick yelled over his shoulder and a surly Bermudan slapped the beer down on the red table top.

And there is no one more blackhearted and surly than an ex-king, or a person who harbors, in the dark channels of his body, the memory of kingship.