self-important-looking

Updated: May 9, 2025

At a more elevated desk in the centre, sat a very fat and red-faced gentleman, in tortoise-shell spectacles, whose dignified appearance announced the judge; and round a long green-baized table below, something like a billiard-table without the cushions and pockets, were a number of very self-important-looking personages, in stiff neckcloths, and black gowns with white fur collars, whom we at once set down as proctors.

Charles Dickens - Sketches by Boz, illustrative of everyday life and every-day people

I was busily building around me a vaporous rampart of tobacco-smoke, as a barrier to gloomy suggestions from without, when the door suddenly opened, and in walked two gendarmes one a very self-important-looking brigadier, with thin sharp nose and keen, weasel-like eyes.

Edward Harrison Barker - Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine