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Rot   Listen
verb
Rot  v. t.  
1.
To make putrid; to cause to be wholly or partially decomposed by natural processes; as, to rot vegetable fiber.
2.
To expose, as flax, to a process of maceration, etc., for the purpose of separating the fiber; to ret.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rot" Quotes from Famous Books



... conditions which we can only imagine with difficulty. As one advances through the moral waste of that strange book one slowly perceives that he is in a land of No Use, in an ambient of such iron fixity and inexorable bounds that perhaps Foma's willingness to rot through vice into imbecility is as wise as anything else there. It is a book that saturates the soul with despair, and blights it with the negation which seems the only possible truth in the circumstances; so that one questions whether the Russian in which Turgenieff and Tolstoy, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... a million? And could you not stop your fatal career, if you did not do evil for the infinite and supreme joy of doing it? Oh, be assured, if the memory of my brother were not sacred to me, you should rot in a state dungeon or satisfy the curiosity of sailors at Tyburn. I will be silent, but you must endure your captivity quietly. In fifteen or twenty days I shall set out for La Rochelle with the army; but on the eve ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... said, afterward. "He was so funny, and he didn't know it! As if anyone would take a man who talked such rot as that seriously!" ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart

... left me I received a letter from Rome, from which I see clearly that I must rot away in this state of disfranchisement: for I can't believe (don't be offended at my saying so) that you would have left town at this juncture, if there had been the least hope left of my restoration. But I pass over this, that I may not seem to be ungrateful ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... broad panelled staircase, with massive balustrades of some dark wood; cornices above the doors, ornamented with carved fruit and flowers; and broad seats in the windows. But all these tokens of past grandeur were miserably decayed and dirty; rot, damp, and age, had weakened the flooring, which in many places was unsound and even unsafe. Some attempts had been made, I noticed, to infuse new blood into this dwindling frame, by repairing the costly old wood-work here and there with common deal; but it was like the marriage ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... turf doth stink and rot The body of old Dr. Gott; Now earth is eased and hell is pleased, Since ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... caused me to shun, and some of which old Pierre had once told me had not been trodden by human foot for over four centuries. Strange and awsome were many of the objects I encountered. Furniture, covered by the dust of ages and crumbling with the rot of long dampness met my eyes. Cobwebs in a profusion never before seen by me were spun everywhere, and huge bats flapped their bony and uncanny wings on all sides ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... to his feet; but he added something rather stronger. "Confound you, Herrick, what do you mean by talking such infernal rot?" ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... you. Fifty years is too much: I should say thirty.... And even less!... It is a hygienic measure. One does not keep one's ancestors in one's house. One gets rid of them, when they are dead, and sends, them elsewhere,—there politely to rot, and one places stones on them to be quite sure that they will not come back. Nice people put flowers on them, too. I don't mind if they like it. All I ask is to be left in peace. I leave them alone! Each for his own side, say I: the dead ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... the beggar maid so vividly, and with such an illusion of beauty, that we did not wonder in the least at the king's love for her. I had read the story before, and it had been my opinion that it was "rot." No king, I felt certain, would ever marry a beggar maid when he had princesses galore from whom to choose. But now I ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... was followed by the usual tortures. The head of Tiumman was fixed over the gate of Nineveh, to rot before the eyes of the multitude. Dunanu was slowly flayed alive, and then bled like a lamb; his brother Shamgunu had his throat cut, and his body was divided into pieces, which were distributed over the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... to paint you out," said Harringay. "I don't want to hear all that Tommy Rot. If you think just because I'm an artist by trade I'm going to talk studio to you, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... desperate robbers issuing from their dens and staggering through the open streets where no man dared molest them; there were vagabond servitors returning from the Bear Garden, where had been good sport that day, dragging after them their torn and bleeding dogs, or leaving them to die and rot upon the road. Nothing was abroad but cruelty, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... orators were those with whom our readers have already made slight acquaintance in our account of the sortie by Captain Erskine's company for the recovery of the supposed body of Frederick de Haldimar. One was for impaling him alive, and setting him up to rot on the platform above the gate. Another for blowing him from the muzzle of a twenty-four pounder, into the centre of the first band of Indians that approached the fort, that thus perceiving they had lost the strength and sinew of ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... to the Menai Straits. [139] In some parts of Kent and Sussex, none but the strongest horses could, in winter, get through the bog, in which, at every step, they sank deep. The markets were often inaccessible during several months. It is said that the fruits of the earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while in another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far short of the demand. The wheeled carriages were, in this district, generally pulled by oxen. [140] When Prince George of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... who had suggested it as a possible outcome of British irrationality? Think what it carries with it! The man who has proved himself fit to serve his country by serving it in twenty foreign fields, who has bled for his country and perhaps preserved his country, shall rot in obscurity because he has no money to buy promotion, whereas the young dandy who has done no more than glitter along the pavements with his sword and spurs shall have the command of men;—because he has so many thousand ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... Ibid. I Hen. V. n. xxii. It is remarkable, however, that in the reign of Richard II. the parliament granted the king only a temporary power of dispensing with the statute of provisors. Rot. Parl. 15 Rich.[** 15 is a best guess] II. n. i.: a plain implication that he had not, of himself, such prerogative. So uncertain were many of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... off drinking invariably I am invited to an ushers' dinner. Whenever I am rich, only the highbrow publications that pay the least, want my work. But the moment I am poverty-stricken the MANICURE GIRL'S MAGAZINE and the ROT AND SPOT WEEKLY spring at me with offers of a dollar a word. Temptation always is on the job. When I am down and out temptation always is up ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis

... referred to was only physic—a simpler matter. As to philosophy, not only will you never attain it, however long you study, unless you are wide awake all the time, contemplating it with intense eager gaze; the stake is so tremendous, too,—whether you shall rot miserably with the vulgar herd, or be counted among ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... are made in hell, and toll ruefully for the dead whose shoes are worn already! Call men to prayers who are godly because not found out, and ring chimes for the coming in of every year that brings this cursed world nearer to its end. No bell or book for me! Throw me on a dunghill, and let me rot there, to ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... to smother them by pushing his branches and leaves over them. Then they get spindly and weak, and worse and worse, because the big one shoves his roots among them too; and at last they wither and droop, and die, and rot, and the big strong one regularly eats up with his roots all the stuff of which they were made; and in a few years, instead of there being thirty or forty young trees, there's only one, ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... have discovered some new agency or force, don't you know, and tries to prove by a lot of double-exposed photographs that he has broken down the fundamental laws of physics, neutralizing the force of gravity, or annihilating space by the polarization of light, or some such rot. ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... Frankland's, who treated us most sumptuously. He told us of a curious disease which had lately attacked the vines, and which he feared would ultimately destroy them. The grapes growing on the diseased vines, instead of ripening, wither up and rot. He said that he had urged the inhabitants of the island not to depend solely on their vines, but to endeavour to produce other articles for which their soil and climate was especially suited. Among ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... is a "good parish; the soil is excellent, mostly in wood and pasture, the surplus being in tillable land for wheat, rye and oats. . . . The roads are bad, especially in winter. The trade consists principally of horned cattle and embraces grain; the woods rot away on account of their remoteness from the towns and the difficulty of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... iniquity, and will procure a double damnation. And he that takes a covenant to reform, and yet continueth unreformed, his covenant will be unto him as the bitter water of jealousy was to the woman guilty of adultery, which made her belly to swell, and thigh to rot. 3. You must be careful to reform your families, according to your covenant, and the example of Jacob and Joshua, and the godly kings fore-mentioned. 4. You must endeavour, according to your places and callings, to bring the churches of ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... "Rot!" Carew observed profanely. "Look here, Weldon, you've no business to funk in this fashion. It's not like ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... modern tools and equipment is a slow laborious process. Cutting down the trees is only a beginning. The stumps with their interlocking root systems have to be removed. It takes many years for hardwood stumps to rot to a condition that they may be easily destroyed. Although the trees on Jamestown Island were large, they could be cut, and those with straight grained boles rived into clapboards, or the logs rolled into piles and burned for their ashes, a product that was in demand in England for use ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier

... rot, Deleah! They tell you anything, my dear. Don't you believe it. I've never been in love—not head over ears, as I am now—in all my life before. You ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... nach,'[13-13] hatte der letzte Senne gesagt, 'da knnen's nit fehlen.' Und da sind wir endlich mit unsern verfrorenen Nasen hier aufgestoen, als wir das Licht flimmern sahen, denn von Nasen war rein nichts mehr zu sehen, so[14-1] rot ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel

... More weariness bends our spines again, more obscurity hums in our heads. By following the bed of a valley, we have found trenches again, and then men. These splayed and squelched alleys, with their fat and sinking sandbags, their props which rot like limbs, flow into wider pockets where activity prevails—battalion H.Q., or dressing-stations. About midnight we saw, through the golden line of a dugout's half-open door, some officers seated at a white table—a cloth or a map. Some one cries, "They're ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... riddle me, rot, tot, tot, A wee, wee man in a red, red coat, A staff in his hand, and a stane in his throat, Riddle me, riddle ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright

... more of them than present necessity, not barreling up any store against the season [when] the sturgeon returned to the sea. And not to dissemble their folly, they suffered fourteen nets, which was all they had, to rot and spoil, which by orderly drying and mending might have been preserved but being lost, ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... that have succeeded his dismissal, a certain dry rot, due to the tendency of the Prussian Government to distribute its diplomatic offices among highborn but incompetent Junkers,—une petite gentilhommerie pauvre et stupide, as Bismarck once described them—had affected the efficiency of German diplomacy. Feebly attempting ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... said the young man. 'I thought you had dropped that rot. I've simply got to go. You can have my address, and I'll ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan

... clever, of course I know that"—but it was a thing, in fine, this author made nothing of. "Lord, what rot they'd all be if I hadn't been I'm a successful charlatan," he went on—"I've been able to pass off my system. But do you know ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James

... wiser fool Work to one end by differing deeds;— The weeds rot in the standing pool; The ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... one who taught me ever distinguished between what was good and what was bad. Whatever it was—a Greek play, Homer, Livy, Tacitus—it was always supposed to be the best thing of the kind. I was always sure that much of it was rot, and some of it was excellent; but I didn't know why, and no one ever ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... such things, and I don't want to take his jobs from him. He does little enough as it is, dear knows. He spends so much of his time at the store that he won't look after the garden. The strawberries are getting ripe, and I expect they'll rot before he'll touch them. I never saw such a man. I wish to goodness he had to work for his living instead, of depending upon what his father ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody

... is diseased!" he cried, upright and austere. "Such a question is rot—utter rot. Look round you—there's your answer, if you only care to see. Nothing that outrages the received beliefs can be right. Your conscience tells you that. They are the received beliefs because they are the best, the noblest, the only possible. They ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad

... 'Rot your mistakes!' interrupted Jack; 'there's no mistake in the matter. You've reglarly impeached my integrity—blood of the Spraggons won't stand that. "Death before Dishonour!"' shouted he, at the top of his voice, flourishing his nightcap over his head, and then ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... the little man, "Pedantic rot!—the tree's me, I repeat. Every tree has its gnome or elf; they used to call us dryads in old times; but nowadays people are getting so cock-sure of knowing everything, that they can't see what is going on right under ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt

... marriage was left; and on the 10th of March 1554, men—not God—took that dearly-prized darling from her. The custody of the person and marriage of Arthur Basset was granted to James Basset, his Popish uncle [Rot. Parl., 1 Mary, part 7]. This is sufficient to indicate that the Roman proclivities of Mr Monke and Lady Frances were at least doubtful. The double death—of the Queen and James Basset—freed Arthur; and ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... grown in a new country is often fair.—Every horticulturist knows that apples grown in a new country, that is suited to them, are healthy and fair; but, sooner or later, the scab, and codling moth, and bitter rot, and bark louse arrive, each to begin its particular mode of attack. Peach trees in new places, remote from others, are often easily grown and free from dangers; but soon will arrive the yellows, borers, leaf curl, rot, and other enemies. For a few years plums may be grown, in certain ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal

... compelled to stand still looking at her. "Orazio, I hope you and your ugly fool of a mother will die slowly of a horrible disease, and be tormented in hell for ever. May your flesh be covered with sores while your bones rot and are ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... which the people clung has been taken from them. Without trial, without appeal, without accuser even, our brothers will be taken from their houses, shot in the streets like dogs, sent away to die in the snow, to starve in the dungeon, to rot in the mine. Do you know what martial law means? It means the strangling of a whole nation. [9]The streets will be filled with soldiers night and day; there will be sentinels at every door.[9] No man dare walk abroad now but the spy or the traitor. Cooped up in the dens we hide in, meeting ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde

... of you!" exploded his lordship anew. "And, make it worse, no longer young fools. Young and a fool, people make excuses. Say, 'Fool? Yes, but so young!' But old and a fool—not a word to say, what, what! Silly rot at forty." He clutched his side-whiskers with frenzied hands. He seemed to comb them ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... they fall, In their last journey downward from the bough, To rot within the clay; yet, lovely still, Hiding the horror of the last decay, With all the wayward ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... infallibly be brought to the German heel next time, if we are not self-supporting. But if we are, there will be no next time. An attempt on us will not be worth the cost. Further, we are running to seed physically from too much town-life and the failure of country stocks; we shall never stem that rot unless we re-establish agriculture on a large scale. To do that, in the view of nearly all who have thought this matter out, we must found our farming on wheat; grow four-fifths instead of one-fifth of our supply, and ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... "Rot!" said Wratislaw. "In that sort of thing you have the courage of your kind. You are the wrong sort of breed for common shirking cowards. Why, man, you might get the Victoria Cross ten times over with ease, as far as that goes. Only you wouldn't, for you are something much more ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... "Rot," snapped Captain Scraggs. "I've had the Maggie overhauled and shipped a new wheel, and she's a mighty smart little boat, I'll tell you. I'll land them arms in ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... can speak out decently. No one could think I cared for her money, or any of that rot now. How unexpected!—this morning! Now I can tell her I'm free, independent! I am glad I waited—it was much better. Far better, as I said, to be patient. Last night I almost—and now I'm ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross

... rot," he said, "talking like that to a man in my position. Cursing a married man with a family as if he were a rotten schoolboy. If I met him in ordinary life he'd say 'Sir' to me—probably ask me for a job, and go about in a holy fear that I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various

... them, if necessary, into larger pots. They succeed best in a compost of half leaf mould and half loam. They grow luxuriantly in a soil composed entirely of decayed vegetable matter; but in that they are liable to rot off at the base ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane

... paused there beside her. Oh! she Was seven million times lovelier close to than far away. All the rot about Venus and statues and paintings and Helen of Troy was nowhere beside Her and he felt his strength come surging mightily upward and ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... the sword, fell in the bed of honour, and did worthily for their Country; their Loyalty and their Religion will be renowned in the History of Ages, and pretious to their memory, when your names will rot with your Carkasses, and your remembrance be as dung upon the face of the Earth. For there is already no place of Europe where your infamy is not spread; whilst your persecuted brethren rejoyce in their sufferings, can abound, and can want, blush not at their actions, nor are ashamed at their ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn

... he declared, "I'll never hire another tramp and hereafter I'll let the crops rot before I'll have one ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... our backs, and even then winter would be down on us, and we should all be frozen to death before the end of the journey. Besides, even if we were to escape, how could we ever show face after leaving all our supply of goods and stores to rot in the wilderness?" ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... not separate, though the Winkelried rot where she lies. 'Twere easier to separate our faithful ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... weight of dry fibre extracted from one plant equals 10 ounces, or say 2 per cent, of the total weight of the stem and petioles; but as in practice there is a certain loss of petioles, by cutting out of maturity, whilst others are allowed to rot through negligence, the average output from a carefully-managed estate does not exceed 3-60 cwt. per acre, or say 4 ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... end. The Book, sirs—take and read! You have my history in a nutshell,—ay, indeed! It must off, my burden! See,—slack straps and into pit, Roll, reach, the bottom, rest, rot there—a plague on it! For a mountain's sure to fall and bury Bedford Town, 'Destruction'—that's the name, and fire shall burn it down! O 'scape the wrath in time! Time's now, if not too late. How can I pilgrimage ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... flew. The present author would have known instantly that it was rot that about cleaving chines, but the man who wanted to let the Disenchanteried House and the man who wanted to have it let to ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit

... leaves, let in more of the sky, more of the infinite possibilities of the region of truth which is the matrix of fact; we should go marching down the hill of life like a battered but still bannered army on its way home. But alas! how often we rot, instead of march, towards the grave! "If he be not rotten before he die," said Hamlet's absolute grave digger.—If the year was dying around Lady Florimel, as she looked, like a deathless sun from a window of the skies, it was dying at ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... Factory alone; and probably not fewer than 230,000 head of buffalo were slaughtered in the previous year. This number would have been sufficient to sustain a population of a quarter of a million. Yet so vast a number of the animals are left to rot on the ground, that in all probability not more than 30,000 Indians fed on the flesh of the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... he had written. "Maybe she is. Some women are, perhaps. But don't forget that if she loves you, you will be dragging her down there too. Pretty thought, isn't it? I don't mean any future-life business either. That's rot. I heard enough of that when I was a boy to sicken me of it forever. It is the here and now Hell a man pays for his sins with, and that is God's ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... trees are, besides, more liable to rot than those of grain; the latter have their flowers in the form of spikes, often bearded with prickly fibres, which not only protect them from marauders, but likewise serve as little roofs to shelter them from the rain; and besides, as Fritz has just told us, owing to the pliancy ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien

... live out of port. Indeed, they are good for nothing but in smooth water during a calm; when, by dint of rowing, they make good way. The king of Sardinia is so sensible of their inutility, that he intends to let his gallies rot; and, in lieu of them, has purchased two large frigates in England, one of fifty, and another of thirty guns, which are now in the harbour of Ville Franche. He has also procured an English officer, one Mr. A—, who is second in command ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... not pass the prison door; Here must I rot from day to day, Unless I wed whom I abhor, My ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... is no hope for nations!—Search the page Of many thousand years—the daily scene, The flow and ebb of each recurring age, The everlasting to be which hath been, Hath taught us nought or little: still we lean 60 On things that rot beneath our weight, and wear Our strength away in wrestling with the air; For't is our nature strikes us down: the beasts Slaughtered in hourly hecatombs for feasts Are of as high an order—they must go Even where their ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... hours. But he knew this was impossible, for the monks were singing the Lord's Prayer when he awoke. He grew exasperated; why need they pray over him? Why did they not take him to his damp cell to rot or to be eaten by vermin? This blaze of light was unendurable; it penetrated his closed eyelids, painted burning visions on his brain, and the music—the accursed music—continued. Again the Lord's Prayer was solemnly intoned, and noticing the freshness ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... is," said Simon to himself, "to take such a wallopin' as that. Why, the old man looks like he wants to git to the holler, if he could,—rot his old picter! It's wuth, at the least, fifty cents—je-e-miny, how that hurt!—yes, it's wuth three-quarters of a dollar to take that 'ere lickin'! Wonder if I'm 'predestinated,' as old Jed'diah says, to git the feller to it? Lord, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... hast died for us!' cried the priest, 'convince her of our nothingness! Tell her that we are but dust, rottenness, and damnation! Ah! suffer that I may hide my head in a hair-cloth and rest it against Thy feet and stay there, motionless, until I rot away in death. The earth will no longer exist for me. The sun will no longer shine. I shall see nothing more, feel nothing, hear nothing. Nought of all this wretched world will come to turn my soul from its ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... humanity, which have been or can be attained by the highest. In any social or political fabric, wide differences of wealth, of education, of refinement in its sub-divisions are dangerous, they swiftly lead to the introduction of caste. Caste is the dry rot, which, when once established, will surely destroy all progress, all vitality, by slowly eating away the social, industrial and political life of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... when led by British officers, to annihilate the army of the Khalifa; and in South Africa Kitchener wound up with success a war that had been horribly bungled by others. Military critics had long been aware that the army of India was antiquated, honeycombed with dry-rot, and largely ruled by favorites sitting in high places at Whitehall. Consequently, Kitchener was sent to India with instructions conferring almost plenary power to reorganize the forces, British as well as native. He prefers work to participating ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield

... up character if you like,' said Henry shortly, 'but I call it a lot of damned rot.' He pulled hard at his cigar, and then added, 'You're suffering from softening of the brain, my boy, or something ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick

... miasmatic gas constantly arise and give forth a stench unendurable even on the bridge forty or fifty feet above the surface of the stream. But besides this, the stream itself is checked every few paces by high weirs, behind which slime and refuse accumulate and rot in thick masses. Above the bridge are tanneries, bonemills, and gasworks, from which all drains and refuse find their way into the Irk, which receives further the contents of all the neighbouring sewers and privies. ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... that loss does not in reality affect the food of the people so much as would appear at first sight; for the cattle and pigs which used to get sound potatoes in other years, were exclusively fed on diseased ones in this: neither has the rot been attended with pecuniary loss to any considerable extent; for the diseased part being removed, the remainder was as fit to use as the soundest potato; and more pigs were reared and fatted than usual on the rotted portions, and they never fatted better or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... her, moreover, that all she could say or do would be thrown away, because everything had been so arranged that she could prove nothing, and that if she dared to speak, preparations were made for condemning her as a calumniator and impostor, to rot with a shaven head in the prison of a convent! Breteuil placed these two important documents in the hands of Dubois, and was (to the surprise and scandal of all the world) recompensed, some time after, with the post of war secretary, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... about me, Thor—never had an appetite for drink. Not to say drink. Thing I despise. Your father's all wrong about me. Don't know what's got into him. Thinks I take too much. Rot! That's what it is—bally rot! You know that, Thor, don't you? Appetite for drink ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... Hinnom they reach the Dung Gate, the gate outside which lay piles of rubbish and offal, swept out of the city, and all collected together by this gate and left to rot in ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton

... turning on him with eyes ablaze. "Torture and slay me if you will, but my wealth you shall not thieve. I know not where these jewels are, but wherever they may be, there let them lie till my heirs find them, or they rot." ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... but now I am blind, I shall never see a ship or anything else again. God help me! I shall die and rot on this cursed island." ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... just that," returned the girl, with heat. "It is terrible to leave men lying out who have got wounded. It is all rot to say the open air does them good. If the wound was clean from a bullet, and the air pure, and the soil fresh as in a new country, that would be true in some of the cases. The wound would heal itself. But a lot of the wounds are from jagged bits of shell, driving pieces of clothing and mud from ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason

... their stock as the autumn comes on and returning to the shelter of some permanent ranche. The very severity and steadiness of the winters are an advantage to cattle, which do not suffer so much from low temperature as from lack of food. Farther south, the frequent thaws rot the dried grasses, which are otherwise admirable fodder, but in Montana the steady cold is rather preservative, and the winds leave large parts of the plains so free from snow that cattle readily provide themselves ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... forehead and laughed. "What rot! Do you think I'd have asked to have you, if I hated ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... was an object of much interest to the native, whose amusement soon took the form of a trip there and back. Political influence was then brought to bear, and the whole thing was purchased by the Government; the rails were torn up and sent to Formosa, where they were left to rot upon the sea-beach. ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... most ignorant or hollow, and may be loosely rendered Hollow-Bosh. When Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into the popular ferocity which precedes its decease, the name for that state of things is Glek-Nas; namely, the universal strife-rot.] ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... arrangements. "It's some like gittin' a tooth hauled; you kind o' dread it, but when 't is done you feel like a man. I ain't said nothin' to nobody, but I hoped you'd do what you was a-mind to with your own property. You can't afford to let all that money rot away; ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... "Oh, rot! People don't sneak their clothes over into the river for nothing. What are you going to stand me not to ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... a heap of men who were idling through life because they'd made money or inherited it, and so far as I could see, about all that they could do was to read till they got the dry rot, or to booze till they got the wet rot. All books and no business makes Jack a jack-in-the-box, with springs and wheels in his head; all play and no work makes Jack a jackass, with bosh in his skull. The ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... "I'm not at all killed. Why should I be killed?" Then, clearer consciousness returning: "Am I talking rot? What's happened?" ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... "It's pretty fair rot, you know. Here have I been fair sweating away at the exams, every minute of my time, and Jeffries, who has not done a stroke, is ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... dropped the lantern to his side, amazed that the dignified old man could be guilty of such an obscenity. Perhaps he'd misheard. "Haruna, you have damned yourself!" Musa bellowed. "Cursed be this farm! Cursed be thy farming! May thy seedlings rot, may thy corn sprout worms for tassles, may your cattle stink ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang

... a manager who once bought the option on a foreign play from a scenario provided by a clever friend of mine—and paid a stiff price for it, too, and when he got the manuscript wrote to the chap who did the scenario—'Play dashety-dashed rot. If it had been as good as your scenario, it would have gone.' And, what is more, he sacrificed the tidy five thousand he had paid, and let his option slide. Now, when the fellow who did the scenario wrote: 'If you found anything in the scenario that you did not ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich

... have we not reason to admire Theodorus the Cyrenean, a philosopher of no small distinction? who, when Lysimachus threatened to crucify him, bade him keep those menaces for his courtiers: "to Theodorus it makes no difference whether he rot in the air or under ground." By which saying of the philosopher I am reminded to say something of the custom of funerals and sepulture, and of funeral ceremonies, which is, indeed, not a difficult subject, especially if we recollect what has been before ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... resident spirit in them and in the charms and plants, which are also regarded as residences of spirits, has to be placated with offerings of food and other sacrifices. You will see in the Fetish huts above mentioned dishes of plantain and fish left till they rot. Dr. Nassau says the life or essence of the food only is eaten by the spirit, the form of the vegetable or flesh being left to be removed when ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... off the slip (but do not entirely sever it from the parent stock), leaving it hanging for ten or twelve days; then remove and plant in a box of half sand and half leaf mold and it will be well rooted in a week. Do not water too freely or the slip will rot. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... diversified, and this it still is, though the increase and systematization of Gypsy studies are said to have superseded it. A book of spirit cannot be superseded. But pure information does not live long, and the fact that its information is inaccurate or incomplete does not rot a book like "The Compleat Angler" or the "Georgics." Thus it may happen that the first book on a subject is the best, and its successors mere treatises destined to pave the way for other treatises. "The Gypsies of Spain" is still ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... had fallen away in the most deplorable manner. Marvel could scarcely believe that these were his sheep; or that these were the sheep which he had expected to be the pride of Lincolnshire, and which he had hoped would set the fashion of jackets. Behold, they were dying of the rot! ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... the flesh feels tender when pinched; if too old, on being pinched it wrinkles up, and so remains. In young mutton, the fat readily separates; in old, it is held together by strings of skin. In sheep diseased of the rot, the flesh is very pale-coloured, the fat inclining to yellow; the meat appears loose from the bone, and, if squeezed, drops of water ooze out from the grains; after cooking, the meat drops clean away from the bones. Wether mutton is preferred ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... moral to my song, and it won't detain yez long, Of Party spirit e'en the merest "nip" shun. It's poison, that is clear, Ballyhooly "ginger-beer," As ye'll own when I have given the prescription. You take heaps of Party "rot," spirit mean, and temper hot, Lies, blasphemy, and insult; mix them duly; For sugar put in salt, bitter gall for honest malt, Faith, they call it "Statesmanship" in "Ballyhooly." Chorus—Whililoo, hi, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 93, August 13, 1887 • Various

... paying his debt to Kwaiba by becoming an outcast, perhaps a beggar somewhere on the highway. If she shows her face in the ward, seeking 'cash' to keep life in a wretched carcass, this Kwaiba will send her to the jail, to rot as vagrant. But what did become of her? Iemon has never spoken." Kibei shrugged his shoulders. "A close mouthed fellow; too wise to talk of himself. He would but say that Cho[u]bei took the affair in hand." Kwaiba threw up his ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... "That's specious rot, and platitudinous rubbish such as any soft idiot who's been glued all his life to an armchair can reel off by the mile. I know better. A couple of years ago Liosha would have eaten out of my hand, to say nothing of dining with me at the Canton. It's all this infernal ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... Vermont! for the land which we till Will have some to defend her from valley and hill; Leave the harvest to rot on the field where it grows, And the reaping of wheat for ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... encroach on the plantation, the rural nobility give place to the higher nobility of intelligence; social culture based on mudsills must make way for the mudsills themselves—for lo! the sills which they buried are not dead timber, neither do they sleep or rot—they were fresh saplings, and with the reviving breath of spring and at the gleam of the sun of freedom, they will shoot up ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... off the blacktop. The path led through some scrub growth that ended on the edge of an acre or so of dump heap. Rusted heaps of broken cars were scattered about. A foul odor came from the left as though garbage, too, had been dumped and left to rot. There was a flat one-storied wooden shack close by to which Evin directed him ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer

... to drop it, ourselves. Not until we'd lost ten thousand dollars in advertising, though, and gained an extra blot on our reputation as being socialistic and an enemy to capital and all that kind of rot." ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... "What rot!" I said. "Why the deuce should they want to write paragraphs about me? I'm not a celebrity. You're ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... withered a "few" for his present position and movements. I cannot remember the gentleman's precise language; but I do remember he put Van Buren down, down, till he got him where he was finally to "stink" and "rot." ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... Let him succeed in growing apple-trees and pear-trees weighed down to the ground with choice fruit; let him produce enormous cherries by grafting, and gigantic nectarines upon his sunny wall, and acres of strawberries too large for the mouth. After that they may all rot where they grow; he troubles his head no more. This is more than his old friend Hope can stand; he interferes, and sends the fruit to market, and fills great casks with superlative cider and perry, and keeps the account square, with a little help from ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... thirty varieties of plums, including many of Prof. Hansen's new hybrids. Of these the Opata seems to be the most hardy and prolific, but it is subject to brown rot, which, this past year was so bad that we lost more than half the fruit. We have it top-worked on several varieties of native plums, and it was similarly affected there also. This was the only variety in our orchard of ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... fight fearlessly. Full of Gandharva girls, those regions are eternal and capable of granting every wish. There, on the other side, are the regions of hell, intended for those that fly away from battle. They would have to rot there for eternity in everlasting ingloriousness. Resolved upon casting away your very lives, do ye conquer your foes. Do not fall into inglorious hell. The laying down of life, (in battle) constitutes, in respect of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... on an elbow of one of his stocky arms. The force of the fall not only broke the trunk in two, but badly shattered it. The damage to the log was so general that the sawmill-man said it would not pay to saw it into lumber and that it could rot ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... crop, I purpose to hoe it again, and harrow it fine, and then sow it with turnip-seed, which will mellow and prepare it for next year. My straw, I mean to bury in pits, and throw in with it every thing which I think will rot and turn to manure. I have no person to help me, at present, but my wife, whom I married in this country; she is industrious. The governor, for some time, gave me the help of a convict man, but he ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... "Rot!" snorted Milo with needless vehemence. "All poppycock! Look at it sanely for a minute, and you'll see that all the yarns of pirate gold-including Captain Kidd's—are rank idiocy. In the first place. the pirates never seized any such fabulous sums of money as they were credited ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune

... talk that sort of rot here," he said angrily. "Norah's not a town girl, and her head isn't full of idiotic, silly bosh. ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... than carmine, vermilion, crimson, Costlier than diamond or ultramarine— A deuce of a theme to chant lyrics or hymns on, Or rummage for orotund "rot," is Ruthene. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various

... "Od rot your bones!" snarled the one-eyed man and spat towards me, whereat I raised my staff and he, lifting an arm, took the blow on his elbow-joint and writhed, cursing; but while I laughed at the fellow's contortions, the plump ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... put on stone or brick foundations. If the wood were put right down on the earth, the damp would soon rot it, and the house would fall, so strong stone or brick foundations are first laid, and then the wooden house is built ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... promising; the curtains and blinds were clean, the step was washed and whitened, the brass plate shone, the panes of glass had at all events acquaintance with a duster. A few yards in the direction away from the Square, and Tysoe Street falls under the dominion of dry-rot. ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... "Rot!" exclaimed Dick. "Bernard is satisfied and I'd sooner trust him than Hodson. In fact, Bernard's a better judge than anybody in Hodson's ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss

... Oh, rot! do you think I read novelettes? And do you suppose I believe such superstitions as heaven? I go to church because the boss told me I'd get the sack if I didnt. Free England! Ha! [Lina appears at the pavilion door, and comes swiftly and noiselessly forward on seeing ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw

... Trespass." On the opposite side of the wide strip of meadow-land, in which cattle grazed placidly, he could see the abandoned house where Alix Crown was born,—a colourless, weather-beaten, two-storey frame building with faded green window shutters and a high-pitched roof blackened by rain and rot. Every shutter was closed; an atmosphere of utter desolation ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... to rot where they fell, and to feed the crows and vultures;[423] but it is impossible to believe that the Assyrians paid no honours to the bodies of their princes, their nobles, and their relations, and some texts recently discovered make distinct ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... gossip, Parson John, the man most vitally concerned, was perfectly oblivious of the disturbance. Of a most unsuspecting nature, and with rot a particle of guile in his honest heart, he could not imagine anyone harming him by word or deed. Happy in his work, happy in the midst of his flock, and with Ms pleasant little home guarded by his bright housekeeper, he had no thought of trouble. ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... deep and far. For miles, no doubt. Nobody could tell; no one had seen the end of it. This cavern had been known of old. This brushwood, these dead leaves, that would make a couch for her Excellency, had been stored for years—perhaps by men who had died long ago. Look at the dry rot. These large piles of branches were found stacked up when he first beheld this place. Caramba! What toil! What fatigue! Let us ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... with the costume of a sober character which its owner was enacting, was moderated by his wife, who, with laudable anxiety to keep down its "rosy hue," was constantly behind the scenes with a powder puff, which she was accustomed to apply, ejaculating, "'Od rot it, George! how you do rub your poor nose! Come here, and let me powder it. Do you think Alexander the Great had ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various

... its title would indicate, with anything but the War—a sentimental tale of the old South, full of lattices and siestas through long, slow afternoons, and whispered words of love, and light conversations at dusk, and all that sort of rot. And all the while, outside his door the guns were booming; at the gates of the world a perilous storm had broken. The earth was on fire; but while Rome burned, he, like Nero, played a ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... it had found new conditions and new competition which he had ignored, or met in a half- hearted way, standing on its reputation, its financial strength, and on the glory of its past achievements. Dry rot ate at its heart. The damage done was not great, but was growing greater. The heads of the departments, in whose hands so much of the running of the business lay, were many of them incompetent men with nothing to commend them but long years of service. And in the treasurer's ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... "What Tommy rot is this?" he demanded of her angrily. "What lunatic trick have you played me now, Kate? Where's the last number ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner

... particularly liable to accidents, and suffers immensely in "wet seasons" from the "rust" and "rot." The first named affects the leaves, giving them a brown and deadened tinge, and frequently causes them to crumble away. The ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... Object, matrimony." Hillard fidgeted. "Young man known as Adonis would adore stout elderly lady, independently situated. Object, matrimony." Pish! "Girlie. Can't keep appointment to-night. Willie." Tush! "A French Widow of eighteen, unencumbered," and so forth and so on. Rot, bally rot; and here he was on the way to join them! "Will the lady who sang from Madame Angot communicate with gentleman who leaned out of the window? J.H. Burgomaster Club." Positively asinine! The man opposite folded the paper and stuffed it into his ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... republican in his early days, and when Charles the First's head fell at Whitehall, he had confided to a friend the dangerous remark that if he were to preach a sermon on that event he would choose as his text the words, "The memory of the wicked shall rot." The later turn of events gave him abundant opportunities for repenting of that indiscretion, and he repents at intervals all through his Diary. For now he is a royalist in his politics, having in him not a little of the spirit of the Vicar of Bray, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... her, then burst into a laugh. "Rot!" he said thickly. "Talk sense, Leila! And keep this hard-headed Dutchman for yourself, if you feel that way about it. I don't want to butt in. I only thought—for old times' ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... where, afar, sidereal orbits gleam, What first impelled, impelling still, directs: Urges and guides each solar chariot, The mundane mass of every globe connects, By its own energy cohering not, E'en as dead leaves, decaying languidly, Not from themselves derive the force to rot. ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... "Rot!" said Dan briskly. "I was the only man. Couldn't do anything else. I say, you know, it was your doing that I came to this blessed old picnic at all, and you have let me in for a day! Eleven to eleven before we've done with it—twelve solid hours! I've ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... busy as a one-legged sword-dancer, but I don't do anything. It's the same old thing: leases to sign, rents to collect, and that sort of rot. My agent does most of it, however. I wish I were like you, Boyd; you always were a lucky chap." Emerson smiled rather grimly at thought of the earlier part of the evening and of ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach



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