"Spatter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this sort of mental limitation is far more marked in the young generation, probably because foolish parents seem to think it rather an amusing trait in their offspring. Now, the boy at Chittenden's who allowed his mind to wander, and did not concentrate, promptly made the acquaintance of the "spatter," a broad leathern strap; and the spatter hurt exceedingly, as I can testify from many personal experiences of it. On the whole, then, even the most careless boy found it to his advantage to concentrate. This clever teacher knew how quickly young brains tire, so he never devoted more ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... eyes are laughing, Billy, and a ribald song you sing, While the old men sit and tell us war it is a ghastly thing, When the swift machines are busy and the grim, squat fortress nocks At your bolts as vain as eggs of gulls that spatter ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... been thoughtlessly provided and a couple of big mirrors that looked as if you could throw a catsup bottle clear through them, only you couldn't, because it would stop there after merely breaking the glass, and spatter ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... physical conditions influencing explosions—especially as to barometric influence. There was a good deal of disjointed information on lavas, ropy or rapid flowing and viscous—also on spatter cones and caverns. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Angeline has seen 'em as thick as spatter! They come when you're asleep, and there don't anybody know it. I shouldn't dare open my eyes in the night. They're wrapped in a sheet, all white, and their eyes snap like fire. ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... unconscious of the tap). Time will show, madam. At prisent they seem to be in no hurry to spatter us with their word-jelly. Does some spark of pity linger in their marble bos'ms? or do they prefer inaud'ble chit-chat t' ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... morning we had seen mists in various quarters, betokening that there was rain in those spots, and now it began to spatter in our own faces, although within the wide extent of our prospect we could see the sunshine falling on portions of the valley. A rainbow, too, shone out, and remained so long visible that it appeared to have made a permanent stain in ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... doubt at all the Devil grins, As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins — The other ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... a hostile "bucker," and, clinching his italic legs around the body of his adversary, ride him till the blood would burst from Sam's nostrils and spatter horse and rider like rain. Most everyone knows what the bucking of the barbarous Western horse means. The wild horse probably learned it from the antelope, for the latter does it the same way, i.e., he jumps straight up into the air, at the same instant curving ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... I can do. You have come at just the right time. We are driven with business. By the way, you needn't wait for Mr. Whippleton. I'll set you at work. I've just sold a bill, and want it entered. Take your pen, old boy, and show us whether you can spatter the ink or not. By the way, are you a hard brick ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... is part of the artist's business. The effect is a part of his art-effort in its inception. Emerson's substance and even his manner has little to do with a designed effect—his thunderbolts or delicate fragments are flashed out regardless—they may knock us down or just spatter us—it matters little to him—but Hawthorne is more considerate; that is, he is more artistic, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... he was looking, low in the east. But they saw nothing save boughs indeterminately moving and a spatter of sparkling points not more bright than those ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... with the rest of our company on the day we ran out o' Budmouth because it was thoughted that Boney had landed round the point. There was I, straight as a young poplar, wi' my firelock, and my bag-net, and my spatter-dashes, and my stock sawing my jaws off, and my accoutrements sheening like the seven stars! Yes, neighbours, I was a pretty sight in my soldiering days. You ought to ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... wheels and a spatter of hoofs coming up the drive sent Mrs. Dunlop to the sitting-room window. She tried to see out through streaming ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... Haw! haw! he! he! ho! ho!" roared half a dozen fat men at my faceshusness, and they laffed and shook their sides, ontil I thought they'd colaps a floo and spatter me. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... wheels could stop. When they did stop, as you can imagine, every one was discussing the poor Oldhams. There was the greatest raising of hands and lowering of voices and mopping of eyes whenever their names were mentioned." His arid chuckle seemed to strike Hayden like the spatter of hail. ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... up on thoroughbred hacks, spatter-dashed to the knee, and enter the house to drink cherry-brandy and pay their respects to the ladies, or, more modest and sportsmanlike, divest themselves of their mud-boots, exchange their hacks for their hunters, and warm their blood by a preliminary gallop round the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had just finished rooting, and was starting off. A slight whistle brought him to a standstill, and I drew a bead behind his shoulder, and low down, resting the rifle across the crooked branch of a dwarf spruce. At the crack he ran off at speed, making no sound, but the thick spatter of blood splashes, showing clear on the white snow, betrayed the mortal nature of the wound. For some minutes I followed the trail; and then, topping a ridge, I saw the dark bulk lying motionless in a snow drift at the foot of ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... men stepped outside. In the night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs as the Texans mounted and rode. From across the river came a brief spatter of musket fire, then silence. In the dark, there had been no difficulty in ...
— Remember the Alamo • R. R. Fehrenbach
... property of those who avoid evil, as others avoid the spatter of mud, through horror of the stains ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... to meet the morn Were all his efforts at the plow; Then the mill-brook—with hay or corn, Good creature! how he'd spatter through. ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... all ears to this conversation, wondering just what had happened. He knew only that Delaney had run, leaving his revolver and a spatter of blood behind him. By degrees, however, he ascertained that his last shot but one had struck Delaney's pistol hand, shattering it and knocking the revolver from his grip. He was overwhelmed with astonishment. Why, after the shooting began he had not so much as seen Delaney with any ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... felt a little easier then, and went to work again: The sky was getting cloudier, 'twas coming on to rain. Before I knew, the clock struck six, and John had not come back; The rain began to spatter down, and all the sky ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... angrily that if it were Collins's blood he had not missed it particularly, for he had moved away without leaving a sign of a trail. Where to I had no means of knowing, till five minutes later I found another spatter of blood on my corduroy road,—and as I looked at it my own blood boiled. There was not only no one but that young devil Collins who could have lain in wait for me; but he had had the nerve to walk away on my own road! Where to, beat me; ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... least, it might be exceedingly agreeable, except for the myriad floating particles of soot from the stove-pipe, and the heavy heat of midsummer sunshine on the unsheltered deck, or the chill, misty air draught of a cloudy day, and the spiteful little showers of rain that may spatter down upon you at any moment, whatever the promise of the sky; besides which there is some slight inconvenience from the inexhaustible throng of passengers, who scarcely allow you standing-room, nor so much as a breath of unappropriated air, and never a chance to sit down. If these difficulties, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shriven many simple souls on the battlefields of the Republic, kneeling by the dying on hillsides, in the long grass, in the gloom of the forests, to hear the last confession with the smell of gunpowder smoke in his nostrils, the rattle of muskets, the hum and spatter of bullets in his ears. And where was the harm if, at the presbytery, they had a game with a pack of greasy cards in the early evening, before Don Pepe went his last rounds to see that all the watchmen of the mine—a body organized by himself—were at their posts? ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... yelled, "that's a bully waterfall!" and he thrust his whip into the stream to see it spatter, hopping about meantime. ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... rose and died away, but a fainter spatter of sounds continued, the deadly counter-melody of machine-gun and rifle fire which went on without intermission. Far below the Schloss, in the direction of the road along the Dukla, he heard the clatter of transport, and ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... made a grand sight, as it rolled toward us, over the timber. And soon it was raining below us, down at the beaver pond—and then, with a drizzle and a spatter, the ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... pikes and pistols strow the decks with dead. Now on the Gallic board the Britons rush, The intrepid Gauls the rash adventurers crush; And now, to vengeance Stung, with frantic air, Back on the British maindeck roll the war. There swells the carnage; all the tar-beat floor Is clogg'd with spatter'd brains and glued with gore; And down the ship's black waist fresh brooks of blood Course o'er their clots, and tinge the sable flood. Till War, impatient of the lingering strife That tires and slackens with the waste of life, Opes with engulphing gape the astonish'd ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... Slim in a serious tone, "I'd rather fall into the hands of the Germans, and have some chance for my life, than spatter myself all over ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... now, and don't spatter me all over the slide," said the cheerful stout girl, whose doll-like face was almost always ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... of ruins around Fricourt a mighty crater of one of the mines exploded on July 1st at the hour of attack was large enough to hold a battalion. Germans had gone aloft in a spatter with its vast plume of smoke and dust scooped from the bowels of the earth. Famous since to sightseers of war were the dugouts around Fricourt which were the last word in German provision against attack. The making of dugouts ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... having Gurgurk's head on the point of it. Gurgurk, they reported had fled to Keegark by air the night before, which explained the incident of the unaccountable aircar and lorry. The Channel Battery stopped firing, and, with the exception of an occasional spatter of small-arms fire, the ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... one of the most engaging and most famous of Greek women. On this point, Mr. Goodchild continued at intervals to breathe a vein of classic fancy and eloquence exceedingly irksome to Mr. Idle, until it appeared that the honest English pronunciation of that Cumberland country shortened Aspatria into 'Spatter.' After this supplementary discovery, Mr. Goodchild ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... Gabriel, with pure irrelevancy; "I'd scotch his sheets; I'd pour water in his boots; I'd sift sand in his hair-brush; I'd spatter vitriol on his shirts. A man who marries a woman deserves ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... because they never reach old age. They find themselves ground up by all kinds of machinery, ground to death under car wheels, sawed to pieces in factories and mills, falling from ten and twelve story buildings, picked up on the ground just one big spatter of blood and bones. They know these conditions are wrong and they can't change them, and the people who have control of it are squeezing them tighter and tighter all the time and they don't know which way to turn. And which way do they turn? They try voting. They don't accomplish it. They ...
— Industrial Conspiracies • Clarence S. Darrow
... Lights. Blurr. Gone. On, on. Lead. Lead. Hail. Spatter. Whirr! Whirr! 'Toward that patch of brown; Direction left'. Bullets a stream. Devouring thought crying in a dream. Men, crumpled, going down.... Go on. Go. Deafness. Numbness. The loudening tornado. Bullets. Mud. Stumbling and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... rainfall in these colonies at 150 inches on the coast, to 350 on the mountains,—while the annual fall at Paris was only eighteen inches. The character of such rain is totally different from that of rain in the temperate zone: the drops are enormous, heavy, like hailstones,—one will spatter over the circumference of a saucer;—and the shower roars so that people cannot hear each other speak without shouting. When there is a true storm, no roofing seems able to shut out the cataract; the best-built houses leak in all directions; and objects but a short distance off ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... a volley and another volley which answered came from his right, and then there was a spatter of musketry, stray shots following each other and quickly dying away. Talbot saw the flash of the guns, and the smell of burnt gunpowder came to his nostrils. He made a movement of impatience, for the powder poisoned the pure air. He heard ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... fellow, producing one, 'this is the infallible and invaluable composition for removing all sorts of stain, rust, dirt, mildew, spick, speck, spot, or spatter, from silk, satin, linen, cambric, cloth, crape, stuff, carpet, merino, muslin, bombazeen, or woollen stuff. Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains, pitch-stains, any stains, all come out at one rub with the infallible ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... now, and they were fringed with green borders of aquatic plants, rushes, and broad spatter-docks, and flags, and arrow-heads, and marsh-marigolds, and round-leaved pond-lilies, and pointed pickerel-weed. The current was still rapid and strong, but it flowed smoothly through the straight reaches and around the ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... and tell 'em now," said Uncle Tucker with an even increased gloom in his face and voice. "Breaking bad news to women folks is as nervous a work as dropping a basket of eggs; you never can tell in which direction the lamentations are a-going to spatter and spoil things. I'll go get the worst of the muss over before ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... command, the young man moved the barrel of the machine gun from side to side and slightly up and down. The effect was at once apparent. The wall showed spatter-marks of the bullets over a wider area, and had a body of Teutons been before the factory, or even inside it, many of them would have been accounted for, since there were several holes in the wall through which Ned's bullets sped, carrying potential ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton
... in amazement. "I'm sure the white Ducks at the Farm can only waddle on the ground, or swim and spatter along the water when Wolf or Quick chases them for fun. And anyway their legs are very stiff and queer and grow very far back, as if their bodies were too heavy and going to fall down front, and they had to hold up their heads very high to ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... things. I want to work," cried Dora; "it would be cruel to keep me from the fun of helping you get supper. Haven't you something I can slip on instead of this dress? It is not very fine, but I don't want to spatter ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... intrinsic oddity of the London "squash," a thing of vague, slow, senseless eddies, revolving as in fear of some menace of conversation suspended over it, the drop of which, with some consequent refreshing splash or spatter, yet never took place. Of course she was strange; this, as they went, Charlotte knew for herself: how could she be anything else when the situation holding her, and holding him, for that matter, just as much, had so the stamp of ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... "you may set the muffins down and go at once to Miss Pollyanna's room and shut the windows. Shut the doors, also. Later, when your morning work is done, go through every room with the spatter. See that you make a ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... blind—blind in the sense of the dulled window-pane on which the pelting raindrops have mingled and run down, obscuring sunshine and the circling birds, happy fields, and storied garden; blind with the spatter of a misery uncomprehended, unanalysed, only felt as something corporeal in its ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... and there was no use in anybody else's trying to get any attention. Those people had been living in the midst of real war for seven months; and to hear this windy giant lay out his imaginary campaigns and fairly swim in blood and spatter it all around, entertained them to the verge of the grave. Catherine was like to die, for pure enjoyment. She didn't laugh loud—we, of course, wished she would—but kept in the shelter of a fan, and shook ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sat, and read in vain, Nought but mirrors were his eyes; For to and fro through his helpless brain, Went the dance's mysteries; Till a gust of wind against the pane, Mixed with a sea-bird's cries, And the sudden spatter of drifting rain Bade him mark the ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... for a drizzling rain, which resolved itself into a steady downpour as the afternoon wore on. It was so heavy that Mr Sharnall could hear the indistinct murmur of millions of raindrops on the long lead roofs, and their more noisy splash and spatter as they struck the windows in the lantern and north transept. He was in a bad humour as he came down from the loft. The boys had sung sleepily and flat; Jaques had murdered the tenor solo with his strained and ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... people of the Manhattoes were alarmed, one sultry afternoon, just about the time of the summer solstice, by a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning. The rain descended in such torrents, as absolutely to spatter up and smoke along the ground. It seemed as if the thunder rattled and rolled over the very roofs of the houses; the lightning was seen to play about the church of St. Nicholas, and to strive three times, in vain, to strike its weather-cock. Garret Van Horne's new chimney was ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... cooled and flushed through with darkness.... Lidless windows Glazed with a flashy luster From some little pert cafe chirping up like a sparrow. And down among iron guts Piled silver Throwing gray spatter of light... pale without heat... Like the pallor of ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... Yes, he would kill him like a dog, if the other—but no! The Hungarian, struck in the presence of the Tzigana, would certainly not recoil before a pistol. Marsa should be the sole witness of the duel, and the blood of the Prince or of Menko should spatter her face—a crimson stain upon her pale cheek should ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... were exploding all about her, and at times she was almost entirely enveloped in smoke. Between the reports of the heavier artillery could be heard the staccato spatter of bullets on her iron sides as the machine-guns sprayed her from end to end. Now and then one of the gunners would reach one of her searchlights, and as the ray was extinguished, one almost expected ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... Pete, turning swiftly and trudging down the road. He would have liked to howl himself. Montoya's kindliness at parting—and his gift—had touched Pete deeply, but he had fought his emotion then, too proud to show it. Now he felt a hot something spatter on his hand. His mouth quivered. "Doggone the dog!" he exclaimed. "Doggone the whole doggone outfit!" And to cheat his emotion he began to sing, in a ludicrous, choked way, that sprightly ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... gesture of—strangely enough—both greeting and farewell, but we both realized that this might well be a final parting. The door closed behind him, and Correy and I were left together to watch the creeping hands of the Earth clock, the twin charts with their thick spatter of green lights, and the two fiery red sparks, one on each chart, that represented the Ertak sweeping recklessly ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... Crack! Crack!" came the spatter of German bullets against the side of the house; and occasionally a bullet struck home and left no sound, unless it was the sound of a man toppling over backwards to the floor, or a man as he clapped his hand to his head. The rifle ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... a dismal winter's night, very cold and gusty, with the wind whooping in the chimneys and blustering against the window-panes. A thin spatter of rain tinkled on the glass with each fresh sough of the gale, drowning for the instant the dull gurgle and drip from the eaves. Douglas Stone had finished his dinner, and sat by his fire in the study, a glass of rich port upon the malachite table at ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... No spatter of fire greeted him from the knoll; no flitting figures retreated before him. All was peace, and the ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... valley roused At length to vengeance. With a rapid hand The blockhouse-door I opened and rushed out, Wielding my rifle. Youth, this arm is old And withered now, but every blow I struck Then made the blood-drops spatter to my brow, Until I bathed in crimson. With deep joy I felt the iron sink within the brain And clatter on the bone, until the stock Snapped from the barrel. But the fight soon passed, And as the last red foe beneath my arm Dropped dead, I sunk exhausted at the feet ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... of flour a pound of sugar, and twelve new laid eggs, beat them in a deep dish, then put to them two grains of musk dissolved, rose-water, anniseed, and coriander-seed, beat them the space of an hour with a wooden spatter; then the oven being ready, have white tin molds butter'd, and fill them with this Bisquite, strow double refined sugar in them, and bake them when they rise out of the moulds, draw them and put them on a great pasty-plate or pye-plate, and dry them ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... jerked, the soldier saw a blue flicker of sunlight on the steel as it whirled, saw the arm of Poleon Doret fling itself across the bar with the speed of a striking serpent, heard a smash of breaking glass, felt the shock of a concussion, and the spatter of some liquid in his face. Then he saw the man's revolver on the floor half-way across the room, saw fragments of glass with it, and saw the fellow step backward, snatching at the fingers of his right hand. A smell of powder-smoke and rank ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... Times, who dated back to the days of Washington flat-bed hand-presses and pure Jeffersonian politics, and feared neither man nor devil, though he was uneasy in the presence of his landlady. He ostentatiously flapped a wad of copy-paper in his left hand, and shook a spatter of ink-drops from a fountain-pen as he interviewed the Greek professor, who could be seen answering pompously. Carl was hating them both, fearing the Greek as a faculty spy on Frazer, picturing himself kicking the editor, when he was aware of a rustling all over the room, of a general ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the pent-up wrath of the Intendant broke forth. "Damn the Golden Dog and his master both!" exclaimed he. "Philibert shall pay with his life for the outrage of to-day, or I will lose mine! The dirt is not off my coat yet, Cadet!" said he, as he pointed to a spatter of mud upon his breast. "A pretty medal that for the Intendant to wear in a Council ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... too late. Relying upon the manacles, the quartermaster had taken his hands for a moment off Craddock's arm. In that instant he had flung off the carpenter, and, amid a spatter of pistol bullets, had sprung the bulwarks and was swimming for his life. He had been hit and hit again, but it takes many pistols to kill a resolute and powerful man who has his mind set upon doing something before he dies. He was a strong swimmer, and, in spite of the ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... air, swinging his drum back into place again, and then—Zou!—starting off at the head of the Fifty-first Demi-brigade with such a rousing play of drum-sticks that I protest we fairly heard the rattle of them, along with the spatter of Italian musketry in the face of which Andre Etienne ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... morrow, Gossip Joan." "Polly. Why, how now, Madam Flirt? If you thus must chatter, And are for flinging dirt, Let's try who best can spatter, Madam Flirt! "Lucy. Why, how now, saucy jade? Sure the wench is tipsy! How can you see me made The scoff of such a gipsy? [To him.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... these thou wilt, without casting lots, I grant thee freely, that thou mayst not blame me hereafter. Bind them about thy hands; thou shalt learn and tell another how skilled I am to carve the dry oxhides and to spatter men's cheeks with blood." ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... much regretted that I had not perforated his papers with a bullet as they rested in his breast pocket. He tramped along the road, and my sentries deflected his course away from the trenches, but he saw my men scattered about in the wood behind, and at daybreak the enemy artillery began to spatter the wood with a plentiful supply of shrapnel and shells. One dropped within twenty yards of myself and officers whilst at breakfast; pitching just under a tree, it lifted it into the air in a truly surprising manner. ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... he raised his rifle, and a vivid spatter of fire followed. As the report died out, one of the great forms sank to the ground with a scream that sounded almost human. The others glided off in the same direction as they had the night before, and vanished in the same mysterious way, before the thunderstruck Jack ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... stink &c 401; mold, molder; go bad &c adj.. render unclean &c adj.; dirt, dirty; daub, blot, blur, smudge, smutch^, soil, smoke, tarnish, slaver, spot, smear; smirch; begrease^; dabble, drabble^, draggle, daggle^; spatter, slubber; besmear &c, bemire, beslime^, begrime, befoul; splash, stain, distain^, maculate, sully, pollute, defile, debase, contaminate, taint, leaven; corrupt &c (injure) 659; cover with dust &c n.; drabble in the mud^; roil. wallow ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... vanished, and he heard only a crash behind him. The mare, excited by Gladiator's keeping ahead, had risen too soon before the barrier, and grazed it with her hind hoofs. But her pace never changed, and Vronsky, feeling a spatter of mud in his face, realized that he was once more the same distance from Gladiator. Once more he perceived in front of him the same back and short tail, and again the same swiftly moving white legs ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... real picture; it was all in your imagination, spurred by twenty-one simple words. And it was a moving picture, too, and it went away past the word-spurs, because you painted the balance of it yourselves like a flash. You saw the glass fall and smash on the floor, and you saw the water spatter the man's feet and trousers—then some of you saw him jump back and look up quick and kind of mad like at the person passing, and maybe ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... crawl over the stern of a canoe in the spatter of slugs, with the roar of muzzle-loaders above. It's shakin' to the nerves, but the maid never flinched, not even when a bullet split the gunnel. She ripped a piece of her dress and plugged a hole under the water line while I ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... jolly. Soom, to swim. Soor, sour. Sough, v. sugh. Souk, suck. Soupe, sup, liquid. Souple, supple. Souter, cobbler. Sowens, porridge of oat flour. Sowps, sups. Sowth, to hum or whistle in a low tune. Sowther, to solder. Spae, to foretell. Spails, chips. Spairge, to splash; to spatter. Spak, spoke. Spates, floods. Spavie, the spavin. Spavit, spavined. Spean, to wean. Speat, a flood. Speel, to climb. Speer, spier, to ask. Speet, to spit. Spence, the parlor. Spier. v. speer. Spleuchan, pouch. Splore, a frolic; a carousal. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... through the timberlands toward the west, shivered as a drop of rain touched his hand. He glanced up through the trees. The sky seemed clouded to the level of the pine-tops. He spurred his horse as he again felt a spatter of rain. Before him lay several miles of rugged trail leading to an open stretch across which he would again enter the timber on the edge of the hollow where Soper's cabin was concealed. When Corliss had ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... "Lady S. But, Spatter, I have something of greater confidence now to entrust you with. I think I have some claim ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... bayonets a-twinkle, while down the wind came the regular tramp of their feet and the wild, frenzied wailing of their pipes. Soon we were up with them, bronzed, stalwart figures, grim fighters from muddy spatter-dashes to steel helmets, beneath which eyes turned to stare at us—eyes blue and merry, eyes dark and sombre—as they swung along to the lilting music of ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... few things more delightful than to be at sea on a fine summer day, with a bright blue sky above and a bright blue sea below, while the fresh breeze fills your sails, and the great smooth waves toss you lightly along, and spatter you at times with their glittering spray, like frolicsome giants. But it is a very different thing to be out in the teeth of a real equinoctial gale, with the whole sky black as ink, and the whole sea one sheet of boiling foam, and a huge wave coming thundering over the deck every other minute, ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... on. The sailors, British and American, toiled until they dropped in their tracks, pulling at the kedge anchors and hawsers or bending to the sweeps of the cutters which towed at intervals and were exposed to the spatter of shot. It seemed impossible that the Constitution could slip clear of this pack of able frigates which trailed her like hounds. Toward midnight the fickle breeze awoke and wafted the ships along under studding sails and all the light cloths ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... when I first took John Spatter (who had been my clerk) into partnership, and when I was still a young man of not more than five- and-twenty, residing in the house of my uncle Chill, from whom I had considerable expectations, that I ventured to propose to Christiana. I had loved Christiana a long time. She was very beautiful, ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... nothing worse than a cold plunge, with a few pistol bullets to spatter harmlessly around us when we came up for air. Moreover, there were the camp-fires of Davidson's men on the farther bank to encourage us; and so swimming and wading by turns we got across in ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... with me in a strap; but the thought that he might consider me "ondelicate," like Mr. Glegg, deterred me. Presently I was shown into what, only too evidently, was our host's own room, for a servant snatched away some last remaining effects of his master—a spatter-brush and a slipper—as I entered. I sat down on the bed and pondered over what I would have felt had I been a man, and shy, and seedy, and a strange female had been suddenly shot ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... little place." It recalled to them all most delightful moments. And even in Paris they had never eaten anything so delicious as M. Paul's cakes. Henceforth they should buy all their desserts of "Madame Millernine," and there was a spatter of French phrases all over ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... there came a yell, a chatter of barbaric voices, a scuffle and a scream; a gray-black figure mounted the rail, and poised there a moment, an offence to the sunlight, and then, falling convulsively downwards, hit the yellow water with a smack and a spatter of spray, and sank ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... itself. But somehow when I got up before that "last day of school" audience and opened my mouth, it was a great opening, but nothing came out. It came out of my eyes. Tears rolled down my cheeks until I could hear them spatter on my six-dollar suit. ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... handsome,—the face all a spatter with the color of the hair? He's nice eyes of his own, but his skin's deesgustin'." Which speech, if Donald had overheard it, would have caused that there should never have been this story to tell. But luckily Donald did not. ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... whisper," said he, squaring his arms belligerently, "in half a pig's whisper or less, blood will flow, gore will gush and spatter—" Here, chancing to catch sight of me in the doorway, he flourished off his hat, a miserably sorry-looking object, and bowed profoundly. "Aha, Sir Oswald," quoth he, "you arrive most aptly—in the very nick, the moment, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... remark was drawn by a shout and another spatter of shots. Two or three bullets struck alarmingly close, and they increased the speed of their horses, while the Lipans urged their ponies to ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... politicians, jobbers, contractors, and newspapers, already scream "Hosanna," and attempt to spatter with lies and dust the road to the White House, and thus to prepare the way. And the medley already shakes hands, and enemies kiss each other, because if their elect succeeds, there will be peace over, and pickings for all the world. But the justice of history will ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... cuckoo clock doesn't fall down off the wall and spatter the rice pudding all over the parlor carpet, I'll tell you in the story after this one ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... unslinging their carbines. Blaine anticipated them with a spatter of bullets from their own weapon. At this ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... bullets came singing about the stone parapet, some of them chipping off little fragments from the top of the parapet itself, but most of them striking the great mass of rocks overhead and doing no harm whatever, except to spatter little fragments of lead upon the ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... and plates. Wherefore'—she looked funnily over her shoulder—'you are to think of Gloriana in a green and gold-laced habit, dreadfully expecting that the jostling youths behind her would, of pure jealousy or devotion, spatter it with sauces and wines. The gown was Philip's gift, too! At this happy juncture a Queen's messenger, mounted and mired, spurs up the Rye road and delivers her a letter'—she giggled—'a letter from a good, simple, frantic Spanish gentleman ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... work, Autumn Leaves, Wax Work, Painting, Leather Work, Fret Work, Picture Frames, Brackets, Wall Pockets, Work Boxes and Baskets, Straw Work, Skeleton Leaves, Hair Work, Shell Work, Mosaic, Crosses, Cardboard Work, Worsted Work, Spatter Work, Mosses, Cone Work, etc. Hundreds of exquisite Illustrations decorate the pages, which are full to overflowing with devices to ornament a home cheaply, tastefully, and ...
— The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Unknown
... They stood in their trenches. We fired. We got them by the ones and twos. They ducked, then—swoop—again the major was over them, and again they forgot. Up went their rifles, and spatter, spatter, the ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... on to rain," supplied Pendrilla piteously, and a gusty spatter on the small-paned window confirmed her words, as the three girls went back into the room where the candle stood in the middle of the floor with the three portions of bread ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... got used to things. One morning we bound up each other's burns. Ivory had three fingers and I two, done up in buttery rags to take the fire out. Ivory called us 'Soldiers dressing their Wounds after the Battle.' Sausages spatter dreadfully, don't they? And when you turn a pancake it flops on top of the stove. Can you flop one ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... glance swept Julio from head to foot; taking in all the details of his military elegance. His cloak was worn thin and dirty; the leggings were spatter-dashed with mud; he smelled of leather, sweaty cloth and strong tobacco; but on one wrist he was wearing a watch, and on the other, his identity medal fastened with a gold chain. She had always admired her brother for his natural good taste, so she stowed away all these little details in her ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... from its holster on his hip and as the plane swept past the beach, down-stream, let fly a spatter of steel jacketed souvenirs at the fast-thickening pack ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... down on the asphalt; and when their friend next poked his head and shoulders around the corner, they fired. They saw the adobe plaster spatter from a corner of the building just under the man's chin; but that wasn't getting him. They jacked their sights up 50 yards, making it 800 yards; and when next the native showed around the corner they both got him—one plumb ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... farther end of the church. From the open floor between, the buzz of many voices and the smoke of many pipes rose to the roof; from the vestry room behind him, he heard the cleaner-cut accent of the officers. Outside, above the light spatter of rain on the windows, he could hear the horses stamping contentedly in the leafy avenue without the churchyard wall, and the brawl of the stream beyond. The twilight lay heavy over the church, heaviest of all over the distant organ gallery, where Weldon could barely make ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... tarnish the mirror of life, A spatter of rust on its polished steel! The seasons reel Like a goaded wheel. Half-numb, ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... out of the window for some time, unmindful of the spatter of rain. But nothing happened. The man was gone. Of course the incident might not have the slightest bearing upon the previous adventures of this amazing night; still, it was suggestive. The young man had ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... it was all over with MacKenzie. The big guns of the Toronto troops shelled the woods, killing one patriot rebel and wounding eleven, four fatally. In answer, only a clattering spatter of shots came from the rebel side. The patriots were in headlong flight with the mounted men ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... reached the third story he heard a cry from above. Then a spatter of revolver-shots punctured ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... well together, in an instant, Mr. Smithers is off and away in pursuit. His heavy rubber-boots spatter over the bricks with an echo that startles the sober residents from their slumbers. Strong of limb, and not wholly unaccustomed to such exercise, he rapidly gains upon the fugitive, who, finding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... and filled the great dome with uncanny light. Sometimes the flood of radiance would spread and flutter in waves, like a great, gorgeous canopy stirred by the wind, and fragments and balls of fire would spatter the breadth of the heavens. As always, in the face of the great phenomena of nature, Bill ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... Followers of Outis, whose escape from death Shall not be made to-day? Ah! that thy heart 540 Were as my own, and that distinct as I Thou could'st articulate, so should'st thou tell, Where hidden, he eludes my furious wrath. Then, dash'd against the floor his spatter'd brain Should fly, and I should lighter feel my harm From Outis, wretch base-named and nothing-worth. So saying, he left him to pursue the flock. When, thus drawn forth, we had, at length, escaped Few paces from the cavern and the court, First, quitting ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... houses are scattered; but here they are as thick as spatter. There isn't near so many things going on there ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... makes lots of fun for us, partly because he is full of it himself, and partly because he is green, and don't know any better." Tucket muttered and spat, then broke forth again, "I be darned ef that pesky football didn't take me right in the face, and spatter ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... There was a spatter of bullets in the sandy ground about them; and then, with scarcely an appreciable interval, a second flutter of an automatic. This time the reports came from the pistol in Iff's hand. He was standing in full glare at the bottom ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... washable apron which covers her dress. She should be sure that her hair is tidy, and she should remember to wash her hands before beginning work. She should try to use as few dishes as possible and not to spill or spatter. She should remember that her cooking is not finished until she has cleaned up after herself, has washed and put away the dishes, washed the dish towels and left the kitchen ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... relieved them of their burdens. My sympathies constantly went out to this man. There was no room for him inside, and certainly no wish for his company, and so he must, perforce, balance himself under his umbrella, first on one leg and then on the other, in his effort to escape the spatter which now reached his knees, quite as would a wet chicken ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... bellied roundly out, laying the vessel over until the water hissed beneath her lee bulwarks. Broad and ungainly, she floundered from wave to wave, dipping her round bows deeply into the blue rollers, and sending the white flakes of foam in a spatter over her decks. On her larboard quarter lay the two dark galleys, which had already hoisted sail, and were shooting out from Freshwater Bay in swift pursuit, their double line of oars giving them a vantage which could not fail ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a scream from Alice, a big whoosh of wind, a flash way ahead (where I'd aimed), a spatter of hot metal inside the cabin, a blinding spot in the middle of the World Screen, a searing beam inches from my neck, an electric shock that lifted me from my seat and ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... for the official announcement. At the first movement of feet, he dived headlong for the shelter of the exit. There was a spatter of tiny missiles on the wall next to him and he had a brief glimpse of raised blowguns before the wall intervened. He went up the dimly lit stairs three at ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... with a bowl of broth, stood in the doorway petrified. Under her spatter of freckles, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... are found lava formations of many strange and wonderful kinds. Hot springs and bubbling paint pots abound; and in the Yellowstone National Park, geysers. Fields of fantastic, twisted shapes, masses suggesting heaps of tumbled ropes, upstanding spatter cones, caves arched with lava roofs, are a very few of the very many phenomena which the climber of a volcano encounters on his way. And at the top, broad, bowl-shaped craters, whose walls are sometimes many hundred feet deep, enclose, if the crater has long been dormant, sandy floors, from ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... right enough, the sharp spatter of rifle and musket fire, the deeper sound of field guns. It was a clamor they had listened to only too often lately, but now it was forceful enough to suggest that this was ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... hurrying to the well, which was soon completely surrounded by a thirsty mob, yelling and pushing and pulling to get to the bucket as the windlass brought it again and again to the surface. But their impatience and haste would soon overturn the windlass, and spatter the water all around the well till the whole crowd were wading in mud, the rope would break, and the bucket fall to the bottom. But there was a substitute for rope and bucket. The men would hasten away ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... even for my Latin style, and spatter me with epigrams. Fame I would have parted with; but to be the sport of blackguards—to be pelted with potsherds and dirt and ordure—is not ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... late hour at night. Here is a group of extremely diminutive ones, dancing an elf-like measure to the music of an itinerant organist. Darting about, here, there, and everywhere, are packs of ragged little urchins. They paddle along in the dirty gutter, the black ooze from which they spatter over the passers on the sidewalk, and run with confiding recklessness against the legs of hurrying pedestrians. Ragged and poor as they certainly are, they do not often ask for alms, but continually give themselves up, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... parts had been renewed. Particularly it required imagination to realize that this tower had ever been struck; visually more convincing was a plate elsewhere which had been left unpainted, showing a spatter of dents ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... something worth while, now," said Grace, after they had at last reached the field, and were seated in the tall grass. "The strawberries are as thick as spatter." ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... nerves. He stood up in the firing-line. He drew himself up to the full of his height, and seemed to inhale with pleasure the dangerous air. All the time bullets were humming overhead like swift and malignant insects, or striking the ground with a spatter of brown earth. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... good one for poets as respects truth to Nature. But it is a mischievous fallacy in historian or critic to treat as a blemish of the man what is but the common tincture of his age. It is to confound a spatter of mud ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... stars, gilded the sun and cleaned the moon 8.02 Reanimated the flames of Purgatory and restored some souls 3.06 Revived the flames of Hell, put a new tail on the devil, mended his left hoof and did several odd jobs for the damned 4.10 Put new spatter-dashes on the son of Tobias and dressing on his sack 2.00 Rebordered the robe of Herod and readjusted his wig 3.07 Cleaned the ears of Balaam's ass, and shod him 2.08 Put earrings in the ears of Sarah 5.00 Put a new stone in ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... way of it. These objections are the following. 1. The Hebrew usus loquendi is in [Hebrew: nzh] so sure, that we are not entitled to take the explanation from the Arabic. The verb is, in Hebrew, never used except of fluids. In Kal, it does not mean "to leap," but "to spatter," Lev. vi. 20 (27): "And upon whose garment is spattered of the blood;" 2 Kings ix. 33; Is. lxiii. 5. In Hiphil, it is set apart and used exclusively for the holy sprinklings; and the more frequently it occurs in this signification, the less are ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... May afternoon: all the little flowers were stretching up their heads to catch the rain that was falling patter-spatter everywhere. Francis stood by the window pouting. He had been playing lovely games outside, and now the rain ...
— Dew Drops - Volume 37, No. 18, May 3, 1914 • Various
... Find the bottle marked "HCl, dilute 1-3," in which the acid is already diluted. Before you open the bottle, get some solution of soda, and keep it near you; if in this experiment or any other you spatter acid on your hands or face or clothes, wash it off immediately with soda solution. Remember this. Ammonia will do as well as the soda solution to wash off the acid, but be careful not to get it ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... holding a crab full of yellow meat, which she was in the act of cleaning. As soon therefore as she heard this taunt, she came, crab in hand, to spatter Hu Po's face, as she laughingly reviled her. "I'll take you minx with that cajoling tongue of yours" she ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... spatter no grease a-fryin' that mush, or you'll wish you hadn't. I believe in the good old-fashioned rod, and there's one stuck up over that door, handy ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... Throw and scatter her!" Shouts each stony-hearted chatterer! "Dash at the heavy Dover! Spill her! kill her! tear and tatter her! Smash her! crash her!" (the stones didn't flatter her!) "Kick her brains out! let her blood spatter her! Roll on ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... report, and the spatter of red dust from a bullet near his feet, told him he was recognized. He stirred not; but another shout, and a cry, "There they are—BOTH ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... destin'd inn he gains, And trembling under complicated pains, Prone from his nostrils, darting on the ground, His breath emitted floats in clouds around: Drops chase each other down his chest and sides, And spatter'd mud his native colour hides: Thro' his swoln veins the boiling torrent flows, And every nerve a separate torture knows. His harness loos'd, he welcomes eager-eyed The pail's full draught that quivers by his side; ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... Yellow landscape, spatter cones, glittering streaks that might be metal in the volcanic ground—created by dusting ground mica on wet glue to catch the reflection of the sun. It was ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... how now, Madam Flirt? If you thus must chatter; And are for flinging Dirt, Let's try who best can spatter; Madam Flirt. ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... dull and overcast, there was a spatter of rain on the sidewalk, as Susan loitered over her late holiday breakfast, and Georgie, who was to go driving that afternoon with an elderly admirer, scolded violently over her coffee and rolls. No boarders happened ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... past the sentries without being seen. I'd hate to spoil any of them if we can help it. We're liable to get ourselves disliked if our guns spatter too much." ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... skirts of his fine dark-colored frock-coat a red-orange border sewed with tiny round black buttons; across the middle of his fore-wings, like the sash of an order, was a broad red ribbon, and the spatter of white on the tips may have been his idea of epaulets; or maybe they were nature's Distinguished Service medals given him for conspicuous bravery, for there is no more gallant sailor of the ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... girlish waist, all the points of delicacy or charm he had worshipped through his pain these many weeks. To think of them in the mere neighbourhood of that coarse and sensual lad had always been profanation. And now who would not be free to talk, to spatter her girlish name? The sheer unseemliness of ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
