The Thirty-Nine Steps (27 page)

cravats
NOUN
a cravat is a folded cloth that a man wears wrapped around his neck as a decorative
item of clothing
we’d’a’ slept in our cravats to-night
(
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain)

crock and dirt
PHRASE
crock and dirt is an old expression meaning soot and dirt
and the mare catching cold at the door, and the boy grimed with crock and dirt
(
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens)

crockery
NOUN
here crockery means pottery
By one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery
(
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain)

crooked sixpence
PHRASE
it was considered unlucky to have a bent sixpence
You’ve got the beauty, you see, and I’ve got the luck, so you must keep me by you
for your crooked sixpence
(
Silas Marner
by George Eliot)

croquet
NOUN
croquet is a traditional English summer game in which players try to hit wooden balls
through hoops
and once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a
game of croquet
(
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
by Lewis Carroll)

cross
PREP
across
The two great streets, which run cross and divide it into four quarters (Gulliver’s
Travels by Jonathan Swift)

culpable
ADJ
if you are culpable for something it means you are to blame
deep are the sorrows that spring from false ideas for which no man is culpable
. (
Silas Marner
by George Eliot)

cultured
ADJ
cultivated
Nor less when spring had warmed the cultured Vale
(
The Prelude
by William Wordsworth)

cupidity
NOUN
cupidity is greed
These people hated me with the hatred of cupidity and disappointment
. (
Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens)

curricle
NOUN
an open two-wheeled carriage with one seat for the driver and space for a single
passenger
and they saw a lady and a gentleman in a curricle
(
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen)

cynosure
NOUN
a cynosure is something that strongly attracts attention or admiration
Then I thought of Eliza and Georgiana; I beheld one the cynosure of a ballroom, the
other the inmate of a convent cell
(
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë)

dalliance
NOUN
someone’s dalliance with something is a brief involvement with it
nor sporting in the dalliance of love
(
Doctor Faustus Chorus
by Christopher Marlowe)