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The Scarlet Pimpernel vocabulary
143 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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restive
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Definition:fidgety
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Uses:
By what I could discover, the Yahoos appear to be the most unteachable of all animals: their capacity never reaching higher than to draw or carry burdens. Yet I am of opinion, this defect arises chiefly from a perverse, restive disposition; for they are cunning, malicious, treacherous, and revengeful.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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Entertaining as this all was, I could see Mutt becoming rather restive.
Diana Gabaldon. Outlander (1991)
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Driving was out of the question, because one of the horses was restive, and bolted in the shafts.
Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina (Translated by Constance Garnett)
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the boat beneath his feet leaped and bucked and lurched worse than any restive horse.
Cecil Scott Forester. The African Queen, p.66 (1935)
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Even the room felt restive
Gillian Flynn. Gone Girl, p.172 (2012)
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He was restive all through it; he kept tally of the details of the prayer, unconsciously—for he was not listening, but he knew the ground of old, and the clergyman’s regular route over it—and when a little trifle of new matter was interlarded, his ear detected it and his whole nature resented it; he considered additions unfair, and scoundrelly.
Mark Twain. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
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"It's the only thing ye ever was persistent in, Lord knows!" muttered Aunt Chloe, who was getting rather restive; the merriment of the evening being to her somewhat after the Scripture comparison,—like "vinegar upon nitre."
Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin
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