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Hen   Listen
noun
Hen  n.  (Zool.) The female of the domestic fowl; also, the female of grouse, pheasants, or any kind of birds; as, the heath hen; the gray hen. Note: Used adjectively or in combination to indicate the female; as, hen canary, hen eagle, hen turkey, peahen.
Hen clam. (Zool.)
(a)
A clam of the Mactra, and allied genera; the sea clam or surf clam. See Surf clam.
(b)
A California clam of the genus Pachydesma.
Hen driver. See Hen harrier (below).
Hen harrier (Zool.), a hawk (Circus cyaneus), found in Europe and America; called also dove hawk, henharm, henharrow, hen driver, and usually, in America, marsh hawk. See Marsh hawk.
Hen hawk (Zool.), one of several species of large hawks which capture hens; esp., the American red-tailed hawk (Buteo borealis), the red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus), and the goshawk.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hen" Quotes from Famous Books



... Wales, where similar rites were performed for the cure of insanity, viz., purification in the sacred well, and forced detention of the patient for a night in the church, under the communion-table, the lunatics or their friends were obliged to leave a cock in the church if he were a male, and a hen if she were a female—an additional circumstance in proof of the AEsculapian type of the superstition. But perhaps, after all, the whole is a medical or mythological belief, older than Greece or Rome, and which was common to the whole Aryan or Indo-European race in Asia before they sent ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... the moment when Aunt Jane's letter descended upon me like a bolt from the blue. The fact is, I was taking a vacation from Aunt Jane. Being an orphan, I was supposed to be under Aunt Jane's wing, but this was the merest polite fiction, and I am sure that no hen with one chicken worries about it more than I did about Aunt Jane. I had spent the last three years, since Aunt Susan died and left Aunt Jane with all that money and no one to look after her but me, in snatching her from the brink of disaster. Her most recent and narrow escape was from a velvet-tongued ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... wonderment was the manner in which ulcers, cancers, all sorts of horrible, visible sores were cicatrised as by a breath from on high. A Jew, an actor, whose hand was devoured by an ulcer, merely had to dip it in the water and he was cured. A very wealthy young foreigner, who had a wen as large as a hen's egg, on his right wrist, beheld it dissolve. Rose Duval, who, as a result of a white tumour, had a hole in her left elbow, large enough to accommodate a walnut, was able to watch and follow the prompt action of the new flesh in filling up this cavity! The Widow Fromond, with a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... inoculated, remained the same and the fowl died. But he discovered that if a flask containing the bacilli were left exposed to the air for two weeks, and the fowls were then inoculated with bacilli from this flask, they became sick, but did not die. Following this up, he inoculated a hen that had recovered from a sickness so produced, with the bacilli in their strongest and most virulent form, and the hen showed no effect whatever. Then he took two hens, one fresh from the coop and the other well again after the sickness produced by the inoculation with the exposed ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... that staunch and sturdy royalist, Peter Heylin, whether Old Tom is not sometimes more facetious than correct; and whether, in the extract given above, we should not read Richard I. for Edward I. In Knyghton's Chronicle, lib. II. cap. viii. sub Hen. I., we find, "Mercatorum falsam ulnam castigavit adhibita brachii sui mensura." See also William of Malmsbury in Vita Hen. I., and Spelm. Hen. I. apud Wilkins, 299., who inform us, that a new standard of longitudinal measure was ascertained by Henry I., who commanded that the ulna, or ancient ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various

... keping, Of the Hundred of Cholmer and Daucing, To Randolph Peperking and to his kindling, (heirs) With heart and hynd, doe and bock, (buck) Hare and fox, cat and brock, (badger) Wild fowell and his flock, Partridge, fesant hen, and fesant cock, With green and wyld stob and stock, To kepen and to yemen (hold) by all his might, Both by day and eke by night: And hounds for to holde, Gode and swift and bolde, Four greyhounds and six beaches, (hound bitches) For hare and fox, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various

... off one of us so well," said the doctor. "Well! I'm off. I must see old Southern. You'll be ready by three? Good- bye, hen ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... beautiful women and the good women he had seen there. No; it would not deceive me, that; it would not give me any pleasure. We have a proverb in the Highlands, that Annapla will often be saying, that the rook thinks the pigeon hen would be bonny if her wings were black; and that is a seanfhacal—that is ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... Profond's defection with curious quietude; or was his "small" voyage just a blind? If so, he should refuse to see it! Having promenaded round the pitch and in front of the pavilion, they sought Winifred's table in the Bedouin Club tent. This Club—a new "cock and hen"—had been founded in the interests of travel, and of a gentleman with an old Scottish name, whose father had somewhat strangely been called Levi. Winifred had joined, not because she had travelled, but ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... least they would do, would be to kill me for their supper, and devour me saltless. But gazing steadfastly upon them I perceived that they were of better and fairer complexion than that lying, tawny crew; so I plucked up courage and drew near them, slowly, like a hen treading on hot coals, in order to find out what they might be; and at last I addressed them over my shoulder, thus, "Pray you, good friends, I understand that ye come from afar, would ye take into your midst a bard who wishes ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... es lechos elthen e teke Persephonen leukolenon, hen Aidoneus herpasen hes para metros, edoke de ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... the little naturalist; two hen-birds flew off, and at the bottom of each nest he could see a couple of eggs of a greenish color, and about the ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... it to a hill on the other side of the road, and looked for a place to spread it. John knew as much about pigeon catching as a hen does about skating. But he ordered us about, right ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan

... she was, often crossed my mind in those days of youth and comparative innocence. Awake I was, and walking in the weather-gangway, in a sailor's trot. Mr. Marble, he I do believe was fairly snoozing on the hen-coops, being, like the sails, as one might say, barely "asleep." At that moment I heard a noise, one familiar to seamen; that of an oar falling in a boat. So completely was my mind bent on other and distant ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... dog house, Bravo in the stable, Putte with the stableman, Murre a little here and a little there, and Kuckeliku lives in the hen ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... followed. Mr. and Mrs. Stonehouse coming next, and last the nurse, who manifested a phase of the anxiety of a hen who sees her foster ducklings ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... usual fate of such things on appropriate occasions. There were also a few cats and kittens, which later on were joined by a couple of mongrel dachshund pups born on the Wolf. The Spanish carpenter had a sporting hen, which had some lively scraps with the dogs, the latter always coming ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes

... roared in the groves, on the plains, on the ice-covered lakes and the river, The blasts of the fierce hurricanes blown abroad from the breast of Waziya. [3] The bear cuddled down in his den, and the elk fled away to the forest; The pheasant and gray prairie-hen made their beds in the heart of the snow-drift; The bison herds huddled and stood in the hollows and under the hill-sides, Or rooted the snow for their food in the lee of the bluffs and the timber; And the mad winds that howled from the north, from the ice-covered ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... state agricultural bulletin in the public library, even you could learn, Matthew Berry, with your lack of sympathy with the great American wealth producer, the humble female chicken known in farmer patois as a hen. Did you know that it only costs about two dollars and thirteen cents to feed a hen a whole year and that she will produce twenty-seven dollars and a half for her owner, the darling thing? I know I'll just love her when I get to know her—them better, as I will in only ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... cry—just like a hen squawked when Jerry Simms grabbed it by the neck and had his hand on ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope

... phoenix, which is supposed always to spring up alive out of its own ashes. "It was," said Sheridan, "a poulterer's description of a phoenix." That is, Tierney, from defect of imagination, could not lift his poetic bird above the rank of a common hen or chicken. ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... were caught, and were lodged in the county jail, and all the farmers who had hen-roosts robbed, and the farmers' wives who had their doughnuts stolen, kept coming over to the little brown house or stopping Mrs. Pepper after church on Sunday to thank her for what her boy had done, until it got so that when Joel saw a bonnet coming along the dusty road, or a wagon stop in ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... general sense of the mercantile world, which holds that desks are not deadly. It is the mind, good B.B., and not the limbs, that taints by long sitting. Think of the patience of taylors—think how long the Chancellor sits— think of the Brooding Hen. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... it, my boy. Then I suppose you'll finish your plan of coloring hen's eggs by feeding a peculiar ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... I dug in the ground. What of it!" he ended, violently. And, as she did not speak, he gave voice to the sullen rage within him—"I took his cattle and his ploughs as I take his birds. They ain't his to give; they're mine to take—the birds are. I guess when God set the first hen partridge on her nest in Sagamore woods he wasn't thinking particularly about breeding them for ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... soldiers," feeling quite sorry that it was the last day after what she called "such a pleasant, gay, and interesting tune in Ireland." Loyal multitudes waited at the station and at Kingstown, cheering the travellers. Lord and. Lady St. Germains went on board the yacht, and dined with hen ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... regained consciousness. He was about four years of age. He remembers learning his "A-b ab's," as they were called, and just how the column of letters looked in the old spelling-book; remembers sitting on the floor under the desks and being called out once in a while to say his letters: "Hen Meeker, a boy bigger than I was, stuck on e. I can remember the teacher saying to him; 'And you can't tell that? Why, little Johnny Burroughs can tell you what it is. Come, Johnny.' And I crawled out and went up and said it was e, ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... you when you watch them closely. Ducklings dabbling along the edge of the water or turning head over heels in their feeding trough, young shoots thrusting forth their tender little leaves above ground, little chickens running along before their mother hen, or little men staggering among the grass-all these little creatures resemble one another. They are the babies of the great mother Nature; they have common laws, a common physiognomy; they have something inexplicable about them which is at once comic and graceful, awkward and tender, ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... odd times you may afford yourselves an old hen or cock; and when this occurs, this is the way in which I recommend that it be cooked, viz.:—First pluck, draw, singe off the hairs, and tie the fowl up in a plump shape; next, put it into a boiling-pot with a gallon ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli

... the dog and the hen? The dog bit the hen, and she was mad. My dog bit a fox on the hip. One day the fox bit the dog on the lip and ran off. Tom and I had a gun, and we set off to get the fox; but the sun was so hot we did not go far, but sat on the hay, and ...
— The History Of Tom Thumb and Other Stories. • Anonymous

... the same effect. Schenck tells of a man who swooned at the sight of pork. The Ephemerides contains an account of a person who lost his voice at the sight of a crab, and also cites cases of antipathy to partridges, a white hen, to a serpent, and to a toad. Lehman speaks of an antipathy to horses; and in his observations Lyser has noticed aversion to the color purple. It is a strange fact that the three greatest generals of recent years, Wellington, Napoleon, and Roberts, could never tolerate the sight of a cat, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... taken from Ernest: this terrified the animal so much, that he took the bit in his teeth, and flew out of sight like an arrow. We followed, in some uneasiness, but found him safe. Master Lightfoot had stopped of himself when he reached his stable. My wife placed the valuable eggs under a sitting hen, the true mother refusing to fulfil her office. She was then put into the cage of the poor parrot, and hung in our dining-room, to accustom her to society. In a few days the eggs were hatched, and the poultry-yard had an increase ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... we see in the Heavens in a cloudless night is a sun shining upon its own curvilinear, with light of its own manufacture; and as it would be absurd to suppose its light and heat were made to be diffused for nothing, it is presumed farther, that each sun, like an old hen, is provided with a parcel of little chickens, in the way of planets, which, shining but feebly by its reflected light, are to us invisible. To this opinion we are led, also, by reasoning from analogy, on considering our own ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... did. He guessed that a fellow who could run the hundred in 10: 2 and out-box anybody in high school wasn't such a baby. Why, he had overheard one of the old maid teachers call him sweet. Sweet! Cripes, that old hen made him sick. She was always pawing him and sticking her skinny hands in his hair. He was darn glad to get to college where there ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... were only the fowls," said Heyton. "But I daresay some of them would fly higher than hen-roosts. For instance, nothing would be easier than to break into the house here; and there's plenty to tempt them—plenty of silver, I mean," he added, hastily and with a furtive ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice

... possessed that most valuable but often dangerous asset, initiative. The very evening that he arrived at the homestead, while Annersley was milking the one tame cow out in the corral, Young Pete decided that he would help matters along by catching the hen which Annersley had pointed out to him when he drove into the yard. Milking did not interest Young Pete; but chasing ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... are able to prey for themselves, but by the joint care of male and female. The same is to be observed in all birds, (except some domestic ones, where plenty of food excuses the cock from feeding, and taking care of the young brood) whose young needing food in the nest, the cock and hen continue mates, till the young are able to use their wing, and provide for themselves. Sec. 80. And herein I think lies the chief, if not the only reason, why the male and female in mankind are tied to a longer conjunction than other creatures, viz. because the female is capable ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke

... eighteenth baron of his name, is the author of a number of stories and plays unique in their type of clever imaginativeness. Besides the inimitable Five Plays and other dramas listed in the bibliography, his best writings are to be found in Fifty-One Tales, which includes "The Hen," "Death and Odysseus," "The True Story of the Hare and the Tortoise," and other highly entertaining matters. Fame and the Poet, originally published in the Atlantic, has been recently produced with good effect by the Harvard Dramatic Club. Fame's startling revelation ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... approach of it. On the other Hand, if Oxen lie on their Right Sides, look towards the South, and lick their Hoofs, if Cows look up in the Air, and snuff it, if Asses bray violently, and if Cocks crow at unusual Hours, but especially when a Hen and Chickens crowd into the House, these ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge

... new—never thought of before)—must be Wright's; nothing left about it; intoxicating portion of a bird, getting drunk with pheasant's eye. What gender's wine? Why hen's feminine. Safe three rounds; and some others ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... game. It consists in choosing beforehand a "hen" or half-character, opening a book and seeing which of the players can most quickly pick out the words beginning with ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... and two out of the three adepts were the heads of Lancashire families—viz., Sir Thomas Ashton of Ashton, and Sir Edmund Trafford of Trafford. These worthy knights obtained a patent for changing metals, 24 Hen. VI. The philosophers, probably imposing upon themselves as well as others, kept the king's expectation wound up to the highest pitch; and in the following year he actually informed his people that the happy hour was approaching when, by means of the stone, he should be ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... when, should friendly overtures prove of no avail, an appeal, might be made to the King's better judgment with the aid of our six guns and brass bowchaser. It is certain that pearls of great size do exist on these islands. The King wore one in his crown the size of a hen's egg. ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... had come on, and the days were very hot,—so hot and changeless, with their unclouded skies and their glowing centre, that they seemed to grow stupid with their own heat. It was as if—like a hen brooding over her chickens—the day, brooding over its coming harvests, grew dull and sleepy, living only in what was to come. Notwithstanding the feelings I have just recorded, I began to long for a wider horizon, ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... to the Wizard two other personages from the outside world had been allowed to make their home in the Emerald City. The first was a quaint Shaggy Man, whom Ozma had made the Governor of the Royal Storehouses, and the second a Yellow Hen named Billina, who had a fine house in the gardens back of the palace, where she looked after a large family. Both these had been old comrades of Dorothy, so you see the little girl was quite an important personage in Oz, and the people thought she had brought them good luck, and ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... too," were included in the native ransom, "such that one day men saw at the Infant's table three dishes of the same, as fresh and as good as those of any other domestic fowls." Did the Court of Sagres suppose the ostrich to be some large kind of hen? ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... Abraham, nurtured by Jacob's and Joseph's dying wish to be buried in Canaan, and matured by the tyranny of Pharaoh. Their faith, at all events, grasped the unseen God as their helper, and made Jochebed bold to break the terrible law, as a hen will fly in the face of a mastiff to shield her brood. Their faith perhaps also grasped the future deliverance, and linked it in some way with their child. We may learn how transfiguring and ennobling to the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... in Central and Western Asia, David et Oustalet, Oiseaux de la Chine, 401-421; the Phasianus Reevesii or veneratus is called by the Chinese of Tung-lin, near Peking, Djeu-ky (hen-arrow); the Crossoptilon auritum ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... night lately, in my fun, I gaed a rovin' wi' the gun, An' brought a paitrick to the grun'— A bonie hen; And, as the twilight was begun, Thought nane ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... chosen to represent the "Old Buzzard"; another player represents a hen, and the remainder are chickens. All the players circle around the buzzard, saying ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... respect an Englishman again." "And yet," adds the writer, "this gentleman (had an officer been billeted there) would have sold him a bottle of wine out of his cellar, or a billet of wood from his stack, or an egg from his hen-house, at a profit of fifty per cent., not only without scruple, but upon no other terms. It was as common as ordering wine at a tavern, to call the servant of any man's establishment where we happened to be quartered, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... the palm of his hand. In the intervals of articulating he made various sounds with his mouth, sometimes as if ruminating, or what is called chewing the cud, sometimes giving a half whistle, sometimes making his tongue play backwards from the roof of his mouth, as if clucking like a hen, and sometimes protruding it against his upper gums in front, as if pronouncing quickly under his breath, TOO, TOO, TOO: all this accompanied sometimes with a thoughtful look, but more frequently with a smile. Generally when he had concluded a period, in the course of a dispute, by which time he ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... make the most of 'em. Hold 'em up to the light and see how handsome they are. I don't know, after all, but they are worth while for a man to pitch overboard off Cape Horn and harpoon whales two years for. All is, just tell folks they cost five hundred dollars, and they 'll be just as good as hen's-egg diamonds. ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin

... I exclaimed, when the man had bustled off, "you are a pretty object at present. There is a lump as large as a hen's egg on your head, and your face is covered with bruises, which will show more distinctly when ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx

... flames and smoke. It seemed as if her crew were not aware of the fate awaiting them. Before another minute had elapsed shrieks and cries arose. Men were seen rushing up from below, and clambering on the bulwarks. Others were engaged in lowering the boats and throwing overboard planks and hen-coops, and pieces of furniture, and whatever they could lay their ...
— The Boy who sailed with Blake • W.H.G. Kingston

... street-crossing for fully ten minutes. The badgering crowd had been shouldering her one way, pushing her the other, until, being a stranger and not very big, she had become so bewildered that she lost her head completely, and, with the blind impulse of a hen with paresis, darted straight out, in amidst the crush of traffic, with all the chances strong in favor of her being instantly trampled under foot, or ground under wheel, and never a one to know ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann

... enthusiasts. None, however, commanded as much attention as an exhibit by Paul C. Crath, of Toronto, of walnuts from the Carpathian Mountains in Europe. There were more than forty varieties of walnuts represented in it, in sizes ranging from that of a large filbert to that of a very large hen's egg, and in shape being globular, ovate or rectangular. The exhibitor had these identified by varietal numbers until testing and propagation should suggest appropriate names. In several talks which Rev. Crath gave during ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke

... certain sly knave with a beastly name; From a Parliament that's wild, and a people that's tame; From Skippon, Titchbourne, Ireton, - and another of the same; From a dung-hill cock, and a hen of the game; From fools and ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... in the old hen-house that was Nicky's workshop, watching him as he turned square bars of brass into round bars with his lathe. She had plates of steel to polish, and pieces of wood to rub smooth with glass-paper. There were sheets of brass and copper, and bars and lumps of steel, and ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... are already forming.... Look up there," she said as she brushed the leaves aside just above his head. "These grapes here are the earliest; but I must show you my domain, and my cousins and the hen ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... a time the cock and the hen went to the nut mountain, and they agreed beforehand that whichever of them should find a nut was to divide it with the other. Now the hen found a great big nut, but said nothing about it, and was going to eat it all alone, but the kernel was such ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm

... KATE slyly). I believe that once Sarah puts a price on a thing, like a pig or a sow, or a hen, the divil himself couldn't beat her down in the price of it. And Andy, they say, can beat the best dealer in the county from here to the Mourne. (DANIEL, who has been listening uneasily, gets up and turns round to look ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne

... an hour ago. He was in the hotel then, flying around like a hen minus her head. He asked for you, and said he'd be in the buffet ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... sparrow that was hatched last spring makes her first nest the ensuing season of the same materials, and with the same art as in any following year; and the hen conducts and shelters her first brood of chickens with all the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... came a rustling sound in the underbrush. "P'raps it's savages," thought Archie, and, half pleased, half frightened at the idea, he gave a loud whoop. Out flew a fat motherly hen, cackling and screaming. What she was doing there in the woods I cannot imagine. Perhaps she had lost her way. Perhaps she had private business there which only hens can understand. Or it may be that she, too, had built a little house and hidden it away so ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... manner of the surface of a Poppy-seed, but that these holes are not an hundredth part scarce of their bigness; the Shell, when the young ones were hatch'd (which I found an easie thing to do, if the Eggs were kept in a warm place) appear'd no thicker in proportion to its bulk, then that of an Hen's or Goos's Egg is to its bulk, and all the Shell appear'd very white (which seem'd to proceed from its transparency) whence all those pittings did almost vanish, so that they could not, without much difficulty, be discern'd, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... so as it has an open mouth and the belly is engraved with an elegant engine-turned pattern, produced by the insect's tarsi. One seems to see a pitcher protected by a wickerwork covering. The whole attains and even exceeds the size of a Hen's egg. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... highly tickled; and Josiah, before he had read the telegraf ten minutes, was out killin' a hen. The plumpest one in the flock was the order I give; and I wus a beginnin' to make a fuss, and ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... sick, most of 'em. They haven't any more business sense than a hen, the heft of 'em ain't. Go into a deal with their eyes open and then, when it don't turn out to suit 'em, lay down and squeal. Yes, ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln

... wunst he clumbed on our back'fence An' flop his arms an' nen commence To crow, like he's a hen; But when he failed off, like he done, He didn't fool us childern none, Ner didn't crow again. An' our Hired Man, as he come by, Says, "Tom can't crow, but ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley

... board, writing a different phonogram in each, explaining that these are the names of the families living there, as, "ed," "eg," "est," "en," etc. Distribute to the class cards containing a word with one of these endings, and let "the children run home." Those holding the words ten, pen, men and hen, will run to the house where "en" lives. The children holding rest, best, nest, etc., will group themselves at the ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams

... and the tin coffee-pot, so high and so narrer at the top, was turned sideways on the shelf, so as to make the most on 't; and the little brown earthen-ware teapot was histed atop o' that. We had a dozen eggs we had been a-savin', for we kep' a hen on the ruf, and them I took and sot endwise in the sand-bowl, so that, to all appearance, the whole bowl was full of eggs; and I raly thought the appintments, one and all, made us look considerable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... was a handsome black Spanish hen who had a large brood of chickens. They were all fine, plump little birds except the youngest, who was quite unlike his brothers and sisters. Indeed, he was such a strange, queer-looking creature that when he first clipped ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... spades, rakes and other tools, planks and pails, had neither yard nor fence; two windows looked out on the vegetable garden, two others on the field. In the shed were two horses, here was a pig surrounded by a litter of young, and a hen wandered around with her chickens. A little further off stood some ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov

... circle on the grass and had "stunts." Babbie recited "Mary had a little lamb," for possibly the thousandth time since she had learned to do it early in her junior year. Emily Davis delivered her famous temperance lecture. Madeline sang her French songs, Jane Drew did her ever-popular "hen-act," and Nancy Simmons gave "Home, Sweet Home," as sung into a phonograph by Madame Patti on her ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde

... Giles described the habits of the birds which frequented this reedy spot. Jamie listened open-eyed to his accounts of the moor-hen, flapper, coot, water-rail, dab-chick, and sand-piper, to say nothing of rats in abundance, and an otter now and then. If you crept upon the islet very quietly, you could hear the rats before you saw them. Carefully listening ...
— A Vanished Hand • Sarah Doudney

... the earth by the copal gatherers at various depths, from two or three to ten or more feet, in a manner resembling gold-digging; and great excitement appears when a good amount is discovered. The gum is found in various shapes and sizes, resembling a hen's egg, a flat cake, a child's head, etc. There are three kinds, yellow, red, and whitish; and the first furnishes the best varnish and fetches the highest price from the dealers. Many of the natives assert that the ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead

... instance, here comes one slipping up to me, 'You never lived on a farm,' he says. 'Why not'? says I. 'Well,' he says, 'a turkey-cock gobbles, but he doesn't ky-ouck as your poetry says.' He has me right there. It's the turkey-hen that ky-oucks. 'Well, you'll never hear another turkey-cock of mine ky-ouckin,' says I. But generally I hit on the right symbols. I get the frost on the pumpkin and the fodder in the shock; and ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford

... papers, neatly folded, bound with red tape and sealed with bright red wax,—an object which, to my certain knowledge, had no more business among my belongings than the knives and plates that the conjurer snatches from the surrounding atmosphere, or the hen which he evolves, clucking, from ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... a few domestic animals, as horse, cow, sheep, hen, duck; the uses of these animals, and how to take care ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... round ones: for, being tough-shelled, they contain a male yelk. Cabbage that grows in dry lands, is sweeter than that about town: nothing is more insipid than a garden much watered. If a visitor should come unexpectedly upon you in the evening, lest the tough old hen prove disagreeable to his palate, you must learn to drown it in Falernian wine mixed [with water]: this will make it tender. The mushrooms that grow in meadows, are of the best kind: all others are dangerously trusted. That man shall spend his summers healthy who shall ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... both trouble, and me most. I'm not one of those clever Clarences that can keep up a bluff, making out I know things I don't know. I couldn't deceive a setting hen or ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... his Blazon of Jealousy, telleth a story of a swan about Windsor, that finding a strange cock with his mate, did swim I know not how many miles after to kill him, and when he had so done, came back and killed his hen; a certain truth, he saith, done upon Thames, as many watermen, and neighbour gentlemen, can tell. Fidem suam liberet; for my part, I do believe it may be true; for swans have ever been branded ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... hen thoroughly, but with a detached air, and selected the proper stamp from the box at her elbow. Thump! On the broad pasteboard sheet before her appeared the figures $1.75 ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... addressed was a fine dark-eyed girl, not exactly handsome, but capable of passing as such at a little distance, despite some coarseness of skin and fibre. She had a round and prominent bosom, full lips, perfect teeth, and the rich complexion of a Cochin hen's egg. She was a complete and substantial female animal—no more, no less; and Jude was almost certain that to her was attributable the enterprise of attracting his attention from dreams of the humaner letters to what was simmering in the ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... of Thetis Had pluck enow. What then? Each hero here, whose meat is "Hard steak and harder hen," As stalwart and as fleet is As the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various

... constantly occasion to pass under her window, or to talk to some one opposite to it. He, of course, looks up; Pompilia looks down; the neighbours say, 'What of that?' The Count is uncomfortable, but he is only laughed at for his pains; the fox prowls round the hen-roost undisturbed. He wakes one morning, after a drugged sleep, to find the house ransacked, and Pompilia gone, and everyone able to inform him that she has gone with Caponsacchi, and to Rome. He pursues them, and overtakes them where they have spent the night together. She brazens ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... the foot of the oak, Meroe found her poniard. It was cased in a sheath hardly as long as a hen's feather, and not much thicker. Meroe fastened it anew under her blouse, and started again on the road with her husband. After some little travel along deserted paths, the two arrived at a plain. They heard far in the distance the great roar ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... you may think of her, she really enjoyed the boiled salmon, roasted moor-hen, and cabinet custard she had ordered for dinner. After the service was removed she sat comfortably in her easy-chair before the fire, and reflected on ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... strayed in the night, every man was employed in searching for them. In passing through those barren brushes yesterday, a great quantity of small iron-stones was picked up, from the size of a large pea to a hen's-egg, all nearly round, being washed into heaps by the waters, which in time of rain sweep over those flats. The front of Mount Aiton was found to decline about fifteen degrees from the perpendicular; the rocks were composed of a hard sandy free-stone. It was eight o'clock in the evening before ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley

... have to look out for President's island, and all that country clear away up above the Old Hen and Chickens. The banks are caving and the shape of the shores changing like everything. Why, you wouldn't know the point about 40. You can go up inside the old ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... wider than that which is considered by physical hygiene. The mother who has given her child his bath and sent him in his perambulator to the park has not fulfilled the mission of the "mother of humanity." The hen which gathers her chickens together, and the cat which licks her kittens and lavishes on them such tender care, differ in no wise from the human mother in ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori

... men as gets hen-pecked," remarked Henry—I forgot how the subject had originated, but we had been discussing the merits of Henry VIII., considered as a father and a husband,—"the sort as likes it and the sort as don't, and I wouldn't be too cocksure that the sort as does isn't ...
— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome

... of Albany, that perhaps are not familiar to you gentlemen nearer the capital. The trut' is, that we are not always as wise and as sober as our parents, and grandparents in particular, could wish us to be. It is t'ought a good thing among us sometimes, to rummage the hen-roosts and poultry-yards of the burghers, and to sup on the fruits of such a forage. I do not know how it is with you, gentlemen; but I will own, that to me, ducks and geese got in this innocent, game-like ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... for. Ostensibly engaged with the life of the Bobbin Boy, we are covertly introduced to the majority of all the boys that ever were born and came to anything. The advertised story is a kind of mother-hen who gathers under her wings a numerous brood of biographical chicks. Quantities of recondite erudition are poured out on the slightest provocation. Nat's unquestioned superiority to his schoolmates ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... virtues, says that "the devil did reveal it as a secret and divine medicine." Belladonna, writes Mr. Conway, is esteemed in Bohemia a favourite plant of the devil, who watches it, but may be drawn from it on Walpurgis Night by letting loose a black hen, after which he will run. Then there is the sow-thistle, which in Russia is said to belong to the devil; and Loki, the evil spirit in northern mythology, is occasionally spoken of as sowing weeds among the good seed; from whence, it ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... that, Jack. If a hen raises a flock of chickens and she and they are fed regularly, they will never leave the place; but chickens who are allowed to run everywhere, as most ranchmen let their chickens, will, of course, become wild like ...
— Fred Fearnot's New Ranch - and How He and Terry Managed It • Hal Standish

... realised the hippogriff of Ariosto. Just consider what a world this would be if ruled by the best thoughts of men of letters! Ignorance would die at once, war would cease, taxation would be lightened, not only every Frenchman, but every man in the world, would have his hen in the pot. May would not marry January. The race of lawyers and physicians would be extinct. Fancy a world the affairs of which are directed by Goethe's wisdom and Goldsmith's heart! In such a case, methinks the millennium were already come. Books are a finer world ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... you're wrong," I retorted. "I want three of the biggest, yellowest, roundest poached eggs your fattest hen ever laid—and a schooner ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... on, talking on, garrulous as a guinea hen. The squire didn't heed him. Hunched back in the buggy, he harkened only to those busy inner voices filling his mind with thundering portents. Even so, his ear was first to catch above the rattle of the buggy ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... obscure thy sky, E ach future prospect fades; B ut there's a kind protector nigh, O n him rely for aid. R ich treasures are locked up in store, A ffliction turns the key; H ow oft when dreadful thunders roar, M ay showers bid famine flee. O sister, never yield to fears W hen tempests roar aloud, E 'en then, the bow of hope appears, R ich hues bedeck ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower



Words linked to "Hen" :   hen harrier, marsh hen, mallee hen, hen of the woods, maori hen, jungle hen, water hen, hen-peck, gray hen, fat hen, chicken, hen party, cackler, bird, mother hen, biddy, volaille, poulet, Mother Carey's hen, broody hen, Rock Cornish hen



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