Vocabulary Word
Word: gruff
Definition: rough-mannered; (of a voice) rough; hoarse
Definition: rough-mannered; (of a voice) rough; hoarse
Sentences Containing 'gruff'
``I hope there ain't, but I can't make so`Nation sure of that,''said the guard, in gruff soliloquy.
After some gruff coughing and rubbing of his chin and signing with his hand, Jerry attracted the notice of Mr. Lorry, who had stood up to look for him, and who quietly nodded and sat down again.
Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no other answer than a gruff sound of acquiescence.
Pretty soon the watchman was back again, and this time he was gruff.
Mr. Larkins (a gruff old gentleman with a double chin, and one of his eyes immovable in his head) is fraught with interest to me.
The main object on my mind, I remember, when we got fairly on the road, was to appear as old as possible to the coachman, and to speak extremely gruff.
She spoke a few words in a foreign tongue in a tone as though asking a question, and when my companion answered in a gruff monosyllable she gave such a start that the lamp nearly fell from her hand.
As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship, Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that craft, unless they previously produced their papers.
Famous for his gruff, ignorant, bigoted persona—blacks, Hispanics, "Communists," hippies, gays, Jews, Catholics, "women's libbers", and Polish-Americans are frequent targets of his barbs—Archie is in fact a complex character.
They were signed to top Welsh music label, Ankst.
The band was made up of SFA's Gruff Rhys as frontman, with SFA's Dafydd Ieuan as drummer.
As with "Love Kraft", all members of the band contributed songs at the recording stage but, besides chief songwriter Gruff Rhys, only guitarist Huw Bunford ("Battersea Odyssey") and keyboard player Cian Ciaran ("Carbon Dating") ended up with their tracks on the finished album.
In an interview with Tiny Mix Tapes in January 2008, the band's vocalist, Gruff Rhys, stated that "Hey Venus!" was deliberately conceived as a 'pop' record following a request from the band's new record label Rough Trade:
Rhys has also stated that after "Love Kraft" the band were "kind of thinking of making a loud record" following the "very different atmosphere" at initial shows on the "Love Kraft" tour, when the group played the "slow" songs from that album.
In Gruff Rhys's words "Hey Venus!" is "a straight up album of songs ... with key changes and a live band playing them" with more emphasis "on songs than the arrangement".
Although Gruff Rhys had initially told fans to expect a "speaker-blowing" LP the addition of instruments such as the harpsichord meant this was not the case; the album instead highlights the band's "musical sweet tooth".
Some of the songs left off the record were "really heavy and raw" as a result of which Gruff Rhys feels "Hey Venus!" is "more consistent with our back catalogue".
The album cover received some criticism from journalists but Gruff Rhys has called it "great" and claims to love the fact that the "graphics and the words are placed in kind of, what seem to be random places ... it's not a predictable record cover, it doesn't look like an album by the Editors or something".
Lead vocals by Gruff Rhys unless otherwise stated.
Reviewers faulted the gruff engine, which was barely up to the task of battling the Pacifica's formidable mass, especially on fully loaded all-wheel-drive models.
The profile noted he was a "gruff and bull-voiced debater" but that "in private conversation his voice is soft and controlled."
Seeking confirmation by an expert on the value of the piece, not in economic terms but artistic ones, he had the audacity to write to none other than the fearsome and gruff Federico Zeri, who, amused instead by such ingenuousness, examined the painting and declared that, yes, it was an attractive piece, but also a piece of worthless junk, a fake!
Sutherland, a liberal whose gruff exterior never resembled his political sentiments, chided his faculty colleagues saying "What are you guys, a bunch of do-gooders?"