hobbledehoy

• “When Grandpa wasn’t a grandpa and was just instead a small-fry, hobbledehoy boy blowing out thirteen dripping candles on a lopsided cake, his savvy hit him hard and suddenjust like it did to fish that day of the backyard birthday party and the hurricaneand the entire state of Idaho got made.”

  Excerpt: Savvy by Ingrid Law

• ““A black-haired, red-cheeked, long-legged hobbledehoy of 26, though not looking or seeming near that age,” he wrote.12”

  Simon & Schuster: Louisa May Alcott

• “Nights of Villjamur is an occasionally hobbledehoy, sometimes rich and atmospheric Fenrir-Devouring-The-Sun Dying Earth fantasy.”

  Archive 2010-01-01

• “Geiton the hero, a handsome, curly-pated hobbledehoy of seventeen, with his câlinerie and wheedling tongue, is courted like one of the sequor sexus: his lovers are inordinately jealous of him and his desertion leaves deep scars upon the heart.”

  The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night

• “‘This is a boy, or a youth, or a lad, or a young man, or a hobbledehoy, or whatever you like to call him, of eighteen or nineteen, or thereabouts,’ said Ralph.”

  Nicholas Nickleby

• “I retain the keenest sympathy and something inexplicably near to envy for my own departed youth, but I should find it difficult to maintain my case against any one who would condemn me altogether as having been a very silly, posturing, emotional hobbledehoy indeed and quite like my faded photograph.”

  In the Days of the Comet

• “The bandages and false hair flew across the passage into the bar, making a hobbledehoy jump to avoid them.”

  The Invisible Man

• “And he had a younger sister who loved him dearly, who had no idea that he was a hobbledehoy, being somewhat of a hobbledehoy herself.”

  The Small House at Allington

• “But the hobbledehoy, though he blushes when women address him, and is uneasy even when he is near them, though he is not master of his limbs in a ball-room, and is hardly master of his tongue at any time, is the most eloquent of beings, and especially eloquent among beautiful women.”

  The Small House at Allington

• “When I compare the hobbledehoy of one or two and twenty to some finished Apollo of the same age, I regard the former as unripe fruit, and the latter as fruit that is ripe.”

  The Small House at Allington

Show 10 more examples...