Wiredrawn

Here was no pindling fowl that had taken the veil and lived the cloistered life; here was no wiredrawn and trained-down cross-country turkey, but a lusty giant of a bird that would have been a cassowary, probably, or an emu, if he had lived, his bosom a white mountain of lusciousness, his interior a Golconda and not a Golgotha. ❋ Peter Newell (1910)

The other letter consists of the usual wiredrawn argument for fatalism. ❋ Unknown (1905)

The thought is wiredrawn to inanity, but the words make it perfectly clear that the poet was the only one of the lady's lovers -- to the definite exclusion of all others -- whose name justified the quibbling pretence of identity with the 'will' which controls her being. ❋ Sidney Lee (1892)

One scribe will probably make something like an inverted cornucopia, or wiredrawn extinguisher; and one will cross it with a dash, and another with a loop; while another will make ❋ Various (1841)

Small substance in that Figaro: thin wiredrawn intrigues, thin wiredrawn sentiments and sarcasms; a thing lean, barren; yet which winds and whisks itself, as through a wholly mad universe, adroitly, with a high-sniffing air: wherein each, as was hinted, which is the grand secret, may see some image of himself, and of his own state and ways. ❋ Thomas Carlyle (1838)

By which last wiredrawn similitude does Teufelsdröckh mean no more than that young men find obstacles in what we call 'getting under way'? ❋ Thomas Carlyle (1838)

As, I assure you, were I to fill the remainder, all I should say would be terribly wiredrawn, do excuse me: you shall hear an ample detail of the first Admiral Vernon that springs out of our ❋ Horace Walpole (1757)

Here was no pindling fowl that had taken the veil and lived a cloistered life; here was no wiredrawn and trained-down cross-country turkey, but a lusty giant of a bird that would have been a cassowary, probably, or an emu, if he had lived, his bosom a white mountain of lusciousness, his interior a Golconda and not a Golgotha. ❋ Unknown (2009)

This, I supposed, would have engaged her into a subject from which I could have wiredrawn something: — for Hickman is one of her favourites — why, I can’t divine, except for the sake of opposition of character to that of thy honest friend. ❋ Unknown (2006)