"Termagant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... please both parties, and in this object I am happy to say I was successful. 'Here,' said I, 'is a wife remarkable for putting as much good-nature into her six or eight hours of day-life as most women put into twice the time. No one can tell what she is in her sleep: perhaps the veriest termagant on earth. Suppose her sleep could be abridged, might not some of this termagantism overflow into and be diffused over her waking existence? I can well imagine this, and you, my friend, reduced to such straits by it that you might wish ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... lief the town-crier spoke my lines. * * * Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow (like yourself) tear a passion to tatters, &c.—I would have such a fellow whipped (give it him, he deserves it) for o'erdoing Termagant. * * * Oh, there be players that I have seen play, (no, we see him,) and heard others praise, and that highly, (oh! oh! oh!) not to speak it profanely, that, having neither the accent of Christians, (ha! ha! ha!) nor the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... great difference. It seems to me that he's altogether under the control of that hideous old termagant. Arabella, I think you'd better make up your mind that it ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... course of my Johnsonian History, has furnished me with a droll illustration about this question. An honest carpenter, after giving some anecdote in his presence of the ill-treatment which he had received from a clergyman's wife, who was a noted termagant, and whom he accused of unjust dealing in some transaction with him, added, 'I took care to let her know what I thought of her.' And being asked, 'What did you say?' answered, 'I told her ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... younger than Milton. "A genteel person, a peaceful and agreeable woman," says Aubrey, who knew her, and refutes by anticipation Richardson's anonymous informant, perhaps Deborah Clarke, who libelled her as "a termagant." She was pretty, and had golden hair, which one connects pleasantly with the late sunshine she brought into Milton's life. She sang to his accompaniment on the organ and bass-viol, but is not recorded to have read or written for him; the only ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... it by a much more recent association. A poor Highland pensioner—a sorely dilapidated relic of the French-American War, who had fought under General Wolfe in his day—had taken a great fancy to the cave, and would fain have made it his home. He was ill at ease in his family;—his wife was a termagant, and his daughter disreputable; and, desirous to quit their society altogether, and live as a hermit among the rocks, he had made application to the gentleman who tenanted the farm above, to be ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... piteously, saying, "Father Jove, are you not angered by such doings? We gods are continually suffering in the most cruel manner at one another's hands while helping mortals; and we all owe you a grudge for having begotten that mad termagant of a daughter, who is always committing outrage of some kind. We other gods must all do as you bid us, but her you neither scold nor punish; you encourage her because the pestilent creature is your daughter. See how she has been inciting proud Diomed to vent his rage on the immortal gods. First ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... of her engagement, Laura knew why. "You saved her," said Helbeck. "Since that evening when you denounced me for selling her—little termagant!—I have racked ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thing to see a young fellow like him bent on taking responsibilities he don't know the heft of." Ketchel only grinned at Bill Sheehan's doleful prophecy for he knew the root of it, as the fireman's wife was something of a termagant and the sound of her scoldings had ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... talk of the pleasures of the milkmaid going out in the balmy freshness of the purple dawn; but imagine a poor fellow pulled out of bed on a drizzly, rainy morning, and equipping himself for a scamper through a wet pasture lot, rope in hand, at the heels of such a termagant as mine! In fact, madam established a regular series of exercises, which had all to be gone through before she would suffer herself to be captured; as, first, she would station herself plump in the middle of a marsh, which lay at the ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... chiefly spent at a club of his countrymen, where the London papers are taken. Sometimes his daughters entice him to the theaters, but not often. He abuses French tragedy, as all fustian and bombast, Talma as a ranter, and Duchesnois as a mere termagant. It is true his ear is not sufficiently familiar with the language to understand French verse, and he generally goes to sleep during the performance. The wit of the French comedy is flat and pointless to him. He would not give one of Munden's wry faces or Liston's inexpressible ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... that a gentleman, named Petruchio, came to Padua purposely to look out for a wife, who, nothing discouraged by these reports of Katharine's temper, and hearing she was rich and handsome, resolved upon marrying this famous termagant, and taming her into a meek and manageable wife. And truly none was so fit to set about this herculean labor as Petruchio, whose spirit was as high as Katharine's, and he was a witty and most happy-tempered humorist, and withal so wise, and of such a true judgment, that he well ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with an outburst of termagant spleen, "I warrant you will be ready enough to eat them by-and-by, you idle dog! and yet you cannot watch them burning under your ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... she answered, firmly. "A vulgar termagant, feeling a sense of injury, finds relief in an outburst of jealousy and a furious quarrel. You have always lived among ladies. Surely you ought to know that a wife in my position, who respects herself, restrains herself. I try ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... turn to show confusion at the old termagant's talk, and she coloured as red as a sunset on the coast of Kerry. I forgave the old hag her discourteous appellation of "baboon" because of the joyful intimation she gave me through the door that Lady Mary was not to be trusted when I was near by. ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... as this great painter saw it, could not be beautiful; one asks one's self what maiden in her teens, a pretty face, would have done in the midst of these good, plain folk, stunted and elderly, with faces like wrinkled apples. A simple accessory most of the time, woman is for him merely a termagant or a blue-stocking who ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... of that sort. I hear you say: "Fie, fie, Ju! Why play with a man's toys?" To return to the subject in hand. Will you put me quite out of your mind and thoughts? Can you? If so, I pray you do so. For I love you not at all. 'Tis so absurd of you to want to marry the little red-haired termagant you used to play with. And believe me, I'm naught now save a big red-haired termagant. And I love you not one whit more than I did in the old days when I used to hate you. Perhaps 'twould be folly ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... the novelist, whose wife's temper was so incompatible that he furnished her a beautiful house near London and withdrew from her company, leaving her with the dozen dogs whom she entertained as pets; by the fate of John Milton, who married a termagant after he was blind, and when some one called her a rose, the poet said: "I am no judge of flowers, but it may be so, for I feel the thorns daily;" by the fate of an Englishman whose wife was so determined to dance on his grave ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... certainly declined in public favour, and the "robustious perriwig-pated fellow" tearing a passion to tatters, to very rags, is a less familiar spectacle upon our boards than formerly; albeit, this statement is obviously open to the reply that the system of "o'er doing Termagant," and "out-Heroding Herod" has ceased to prevail, inasmuch as the tragedies and vehement plays, which gave it opportunity and excuse, have vanished from the existing dramatic repertory. And gag, except perhaps ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... by her self-willedness, prodigality and waywardness drives her would-be husband to despair. She squanders his money, visits the theatre on the very day of their marriage ignoring the presence of her husband in such a manner, that he wishes himself in his grave, or rid of the termagant, who has destroyed the peace of his life.—The climax is reached on his discovery among the accounts, all giving proof of his wife's reckless extravagance, a billet-doux, pleading for a clandestine meeting in his own garden. Malatesta is summoned and cannot help ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... to it? heere's some of us knowes how to runne away and they be put to it. Though wee have left our brave Generall, the Earle of Pembrooke, yet here's Cavaliero Bowyer, Core and Nod, by Jesu, sound cards: and Mahound and Termagant[148] come against us, weele fight with them. Couragio, my hearts! S. George for the honour ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... men who call you a cynic; who speak of "the withered world of Thackerayan satire;" who think your eyes were ever turned to the sordid aspects of life—to the mother-in-law who threatens to "take away her silver bread-basket;" to the intriguer, the sneak, the termagant; to the Beckys, and Barnes Newcomes, and Mrs. Mackenzies of this world. The quarrel of these sentimentalists is really with life, not with you; they might as wisely blame Monsieur Buffon because there are snakes in his Natural History. Had you not impaled ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows, and noise! I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod pray ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... am Quixote enough to revenge the injuries of those who have been forced to submit to her temper; and moreover I hope to effect a cure. Desperate diseases, you must be aware as a medical man, require desperate remedies. I consider that a termagant and a lunatic are during their paroxysms on a par, as rational behaviour in either party may be considered as a lucid interval. Let her, if it be only for one hour, witness herself reflected in the various distorted mirrors of perverted mind; and ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... him. Siding with the mother, they in a manner expel him; and, in his absence, riot away on the remnant of his broken fortunes. As to their mother, (who was once so tender, so submissive, so studious to oblige, that we all pronounced him happy, and his course of life the eligible,) she is now so termagant, so insolent, that he cannot contend with her, without doing infinite prejudice to his health. A broken-spirited defensive, hardly a defensive, therefore, reduced to: and this to a heart, for so many years waging offensive war, (not valuing whom the opponent,) ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... matrimonial. This did not distress her, but none the less was the time that followed an unhappy one. The mother whom she had idolized, and of whom she always remained excessively fond, appears to have been something of a termagant in her later years. The heavy troubles of her life had aggravated one of those irascible and uncontrollable tempers that can only be soothed by superior violence. Aurore, saddened, gentle, and submissive, only exasperated her. Her ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... as a gentleman to say that his bearing through the ordeal did credit to his noble family and his personal character. The Archduchess, who is foolhardy and insolent, does not deserve such a lover, and it is grievous to think that such a termagant should have so much power over such a man. I regard her as I would some poisonous reptile. Piety—which improves most women—only seems to render her the more defiant, and love—which softens most wills—makes hers the more ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... The old termagant traversed the waiting-room, got her ticket punched—it was a return ticket—and stepped on to the platform at the precise moment a porter was crying in an ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the fit's on me. However, you did right in stopping—I'll own—a piece of folly, and shutting the mouths of those two; though it caused me to come in for a regular drencher. But a pretty woman in a right-down termagant passion is good theatre; because it can't last, at that pace; and you're sure of your agreeable tableau. Not that I trust her ten minutes out of sight—or any woman, except one or two; my wife and Diana Warwick. Trust those you've tried, old boy. Diana ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hymn which after various mutilations and vicissitudes survives as the key-note of a valued song of trust, seems to illustrate the Providence that will never let a good thing be lost. It is related of the Rev. David Williams, of Llandilo, an obscure but not entirely forgotten preacher, that he had a termagant wife, and one stormy night, when her bickerings became intolerable, he went out in the rain and standing by the river composed in his mind ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Disobedient Child" concludes unhappily, though without any attempt at a highly wrought tragical catastrophe; the Rich man persists in his unrelenting conduct, and we are left to imagine that his son returns to live and die in misery with his termagant wife.] ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... that I now had two friends, both at important points—Mas' Daniel at the great house, and Miss Lucretia at home. From Mas' Daniel I got protection from the bigger boys; and from Miss Lucretia I got bread, by singing when I was hungry, and sympathy when I was abused by that termagant, who had the reins of government in the kitchen. For such friendship I felt deeply grateful, and bitter as are my recollections of slavery, I love to recall any instances of kindness, any sunbeams of humane treatment, which found ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... recognise me. I set this fact down to the fortunate circumstance that the evening papers had published rough wood-cuts which professed to be my portrait, and which naturally led the public to look out for a brazen-faced, raw-boned, hard-featured termagant. ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... married Philip V. of Spain, when her bold and energetic nature soon made itself felt in the councils of Europe, where she carried on schemes for territorial and political aggrandisement; was an accomplished linguist; is called by Carlyle "the Termagant of Spain"; her Memoirs are published ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... ways of the Seaton towards his own door, he met sounds of mingled abuse and apology. Such were not infrequent in that quarter, for one of the women who lived there was a termagant, and the door of her cottage was generally open. She was known as Meg Partan. Her husband's real name was of as little consequence in life as it is in my history, for almost everybody in the fishing villages ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Anthony had been used very ill. At first, bound to the oar of Love, he had pulled vigorously and found the sea silken, his chains baubles. Then a storm had arisen. In his hands the docile oar had become a raging termagant, and, when he would have been rid of it, the baubles had opposed his will. He had been dragged and battered unspeakably. Over all, the lash had been laid upon his bare shoulders; and that with a nicety ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... and had not won the heart of my Lady Castlemaine, since he had made no love to her, which was not a thing to be lightly forgiven to any handsome and stalwart gentleman. Besides this, he had been so moved by the piteous case of the poor Queen, during her one hopeless battle for her rights when this termagant beauty was first thrust upon her as lady of her bedchamber, that on those cruel days during the struggle when the poor Catherine had found herself sitting alone, deserted, while her husband and her courtiers gathered in laughing, ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hell:—He who is purified by poverty; he who is purged by a painful flux; and he who is harassed by importunate creditors; and some say, he also who is plagued with a termagant wife. ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... characteristic of this Poet's art, serves here, as elsewhere, to disguise the internal continuities of the poetic design. The careless eye will not track it in these finer touches. 'Where some stretched-mouth rascal' would have roared you out his prescribed moral, 'outscolding Termagant' with it, the Poet, who is the poet of truth, and who would have such fellows 'whipped' out of the sacred places of Art, with a large or small cord, as the case may be, is content to bring in his 'delicate burdens,' or ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... idea Mrs. Sylvester was such a termagant. I must cheer him up a bit. So there was a girl, was there, and Mrs. Sylvester is jealous of her? Wonder who she was! Nice girl I daresay—Sylvester's taste was always good excepting when he married. Where is Bob with my model?—time he was back! ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... money in business or who are making a determined effort to do so. Good clothes, quiet demeanour, and numerical smallness are the striking characteristics. Nothing approaching fervour ever takes possession of the general body. Religion with them is not a termagant, revered for her sauciness and loved for her violent evolutions. It is a reticent, even spirited, calmly orthodox affair, whose forerunner fed on locusts and wild honey, and whose principles are to be digested quietly. There may be a few very boisterous sheep in the fold, who get on fire ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... on the walls and in the cells—all remind him of the day when he was, as he now sees it, happy and free ... he forgets entirely, in the midst of the jail's black restraints, the lesser evils of outside, daily life. Even the termagant wife is ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... performed, and, as darkness now began to conceal the objects on the surrounding prairie, the shrill-toned termagant, whose voice since the halt had been diligently exercised among her idle and drowsy offspring, announced, in tones that might have been heard at a dangerous distance, that the evening meal waited only for the approach of those who were to consume it. ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the enraged termagant, catching her breath like a person that had just been submerged in water longer than is agreeable to human nature, and forcing her way through the crowd, with such vigour as soon to be in a situation to fly to her secret hordes, in order to ascertain the extent of her misfortune; "the sacrilegious ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... you have a great responsibility, for you have to judge whether human law may interfere with the working of divine justice. It was the decree of fate, your Honour, following his own word and action, that this man should become as a rag doll in the hands of a termagant. I submit to you that Providence, in the memory of the living, has done ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... is vulgar and vicious, despotic, reckless, so as to have no devotion for the august prizes and incorruptible pleasures of existence; if she is an unappeasable termagant, or a petty worrier, so taken up with trifling annoyances, that, wherever she looks, "the blue rotunda of the universe shrinks into a housewifery room;" if the presence of each acts as a morbid irritant ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... also a sort of winter kitchen; and side by side with relics of Kilquhanity's soldier-life were clean, bright tins, black saucepans, strings of dried fruit, and well- cured hams. Certainly the place had the air of home; it spoke for the absent termagant. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... no reply. He was fond of the child, but knowing what a termagant his wife was, he thought that silence like discretion was the better part of valor, and hastily beat a retreat ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... applying the name of a character in Dickens, she spoke of Hollingford's representative as Robb the Grinder; which, when Mr. Robb heard of it, as of course he did very soon, by no means sweetened his disposition towards "the termagant of Rivenoak"—a phrase he was supposed to have himself invented. "I'll grind her!" remarked the honourable gentleman, in the bosom of his family, and before long he found his opportunity. In the next parliamentary recess, he again spoke at Hollingford, this time ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... enabling them to bear up cheerfully under heavy griefs and sufferings. She was very little, very thin, very lame, very old-looking (ninety at least, in appearance), very tremulous, very subdued, and very sweet. Even that termagant gossip, Mrs Hard-soul, who dwelt alone in a tumble-down hut near the quay, was heard upon one occasion to speak of her as "dear old ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious perrywig-pated fellow[44] tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings,[45] who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant;[46] it out-herods Herod:[47] Pray ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... "Confound the little termagant!" broke out Harry. "What does she mean by being so pert to me? She treats me as if I was ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Baby sons had arrived in the same week in the families of both Sewall and Dow. The ministrations of Dr. Stickney had not been available, and the two mothers had survived because they had the constitutions of frontierswomen rather than because they had the benefit of the nursing of the termagant who was Jerry Tompkins's wife. The babies—known to their families, and to the endless succession of cowboys who came from near and far to inspect them, as "the Bad Lands babies"—were just ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... knew that kind-hearted termagant, Aunt Becky, too well, to be long cast down or even flurried by her onset. When the same little Puddock, about a year ago, had that ugly attack of pleurisy, and was so low and so long about recovering, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... might be said to be carrying on with her own hands the entire work of a house which sheltered five lodgers; and, as a fact, it was rarely that a day passed without her suffering actual physical violence at the hands of that gin-soaked termagant, her mother. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... mother's return from Bath, where the compact with Lady Aresfield was fully determined, the persecution has been fiercer. I may have aroused suspicion by failing to act my part when she triumphantly announced my uncle's marriage to me, or else by my unabated resistance to the little termagant who is to be forced on me. At any rate, I have been so intolerably watched whenever I was not on duty, that my hours of bliss became rarer than ever. Well, sir, my uncle charges me with indiscretion, and says my ardour aroused ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Reformation. Two of the bairns, after no small sifting and searching, we got fathered at last; but the third, that was by Meg Glaiks, and given to one Rab Rickerton, was utterly refused, though the fact was not denied; but he was a termagant fellow, and snappit his fingers at the elders. The next day he listed in the Scotch Greys, who were then quartered at Ayr, and we never heard more of him, but thought he had been slain in battle, ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... Vittoria's attitude as one of 'innocence-resembling boldness.' In the trial scene, no less than in the scenes of altercation with Brachiano and Flamineo, Webster clearly intended her to pass for a magnificent vixen, a beautiful and queenly termagant. Her boldness is the audacity of impudence, which does not condescend to entertain the thought of guilt. Her egotism is so hard and so profound that the very victims whom she sacrifices to ambition seem in her sight justly punished. Of Camillo and Isabella, her ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... A VERY termagant woman, if she happens also to be a very artful one, will be conscious she has so much to conceal, that the dread of betraying her real temper will make her put on an over-acted softness, which, from its very excess, may be distinguished ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... Margaret. You must bear with her, for her heart is breaking now, and if she has become a termagant it is because her shamed pride has driven her mad. Bear with her, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... sympathy for the distress of her friend, that she had gone out and talked to the boys—even scolded them, so that they slunk away ashamed, and began to stand as much in dread of her as of the clutches of their prey. So she, gentle and timid to excess, acquired among them the reputation of a termagant. Popular opinion among children, as among men, is of ten just, but as often very unjust; for the same manifestations may proceed from opposite principles; and, therefore, as indices to character, may ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... and masters' leave; and if they were married, the children should never cry, nor the servants commit a fault: they'd set the house to rights; they would do every thing. But the lion-like talkers abroad are mere baa-lambs at home, being generally dupes and slaves to some termagant mistress, against whose imperiousness they dare not open their lips, {50}but are frightened even if she frowns. Old bachelors, in this, resemble your pretenders to atheism, who make a mock in public of what in private they tremble ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... guilty conscience, or as an unbearably henpecked husband. The probabilities, when reckoned up, certainly pointed to the last idea; but, still, the impression conveyed was that of a more formidable persecutor even than a termagant wife. ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects be considered a tolerable blessing, and if so, rip ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... embowel me to-day, I'll give you leave to powder me and eat me too to-morrow. 'Sblood, 'twas time to counterfeit, or that hot termagant Scot had paid me scot and lot too. Counterfeit! I lie; I am no counterfeit: to die, is to be a counterfeit; for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man: but to counterfeit dying, ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... same ungovernable termagant as ever—conceited little puss! But she always amuses me—that's one consolation!" He laughed, and taking out his cigar-case, opened it. "Will you have one?" Longford accepted the favour. "Who is this old fellow, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... ship was no longer buffeted on her bows by the furious wind: as the haughty Essex turned on his heel from the blow of his termagant mistress queen, so did the Eos turn her back to the insulting blast, and flew rapidly before it. Owing to the darkness of the night, assisted by the weak voice of Mr Pond, whose orders could not be very distinctly heard, perhaps ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... fathers, his mysterious encounter formed the theme of thrilling and whispered narrative. The mountain was generally shunned. It is true that Senor Joaquin Pedrillo afterward located a grant near the base of the mountain; but as Senora Pedrillo was known to be a termagant half-breed, the Senor was not ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte
... thought the Chamberlain to himself, with a swift side glance at this termagant, and a single thought ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... a fair chance of being wholly spoiled, and growing up to one of those termagant, mammythrept romps we used to laugh at in Mr. Colley Cibber's plays. The schoolmistress fawned upon her, for, although untitled, Esquire Greenville (from whom my descent is plain), and he was so much respected in the West, that the innkeepers were used to beseech him to set up achievements ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Why don't you drink, devil take you? If you wakened me, then drink with me! It is an interesting tale, brother, that of the boot! I didn't want to go with Olga. I don't like to be bossed. She came under the window and began to abuse me. She always was a termagant. You know what women are like, all of them. I was a bit drunk, so I took a boot and heaved it at her. Ha-ha-ha! Teach her not to scold another time! But it didn't! Not a bit of it! She climbed in at the window, lit the lamp, and began to hammer poor tipsy me. She thrashed ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... daughter of Don Caesar. She fixed her heart on having Julio de Melessina for her husband, and so behaved to all other suitors as to drive them away. Thus to Don Garcia, she pretended to be a termagant; to Don Vincentio, who was music-mad, she professed to love a Jew's-harp above every other instrument. At last Julio appeared, and her "bold stroke" obtained as its reward "the husband of her choice."—Mrs. Cowley, A Bold ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... waxed wroth, And vowed, by his troth,— While the beggar slunk into a corner,— If his termagant wife Did not end her ill strife, He would change words for blows, ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... certain great manufacturing town—heartily repented their temerity, and were in the act of seeking for the speediest exit from the gardens; rather choosing to resign their share of the dinner, than to abide the farther consequences that might follow from the displeasure of this highland Termagant. ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... air of heaven. Black indeed must be the soul of a man who could stoop to such deception! As the days went on the public became more excited and the attacks more ferocious. It was rumored that his fiancee had married him against his will, that she was a virago and a termagant. Would the country be contented to see the Executive Mansion ruled by petticoats, and by those of a hussy at that? What sort of a hero was the man who could be ordered about by a woman and could not call his soul his own? Then they began to ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... who had charge of it, as a warning to scolding or swearing women. Dr. Heginbotham states that: "There is no evidence of its having been actually used for many years, but there is testimony to the fact, that within the last forty years the brank was brought to a termagant market woman, who was effectually silenced by ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... say, as forms avaunt At sleep's departure: toiling long and sore He seeks the damsel there, 'twixt plant and plant, Now can his wretched eyes behold her more. Blaspheming his Mahound and Termagant, And cursing every master of his lore, Ferrau returned towards the sylvan fount, Where lay on earth the helmet of ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... this juncture his brother officer slipped out some languid words in his ear, indicative of his astonishment that he should be championing a termagant, and horror at the idea of such a thing being publicly imagined, tamed Wilfrid quickly. He recovered himself with his usual cleverness. Seeing the signs of hostility vanish, Mr. Pericles said, "You are on a search for your father? You have found him? Hom! I should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... by this new complication in the life of the girl he was beginning to love, stared at his companion in dismay. Was it not enough that Virginia's mother should be a slattern and a termagant? At last he spoke: "Where have ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... the present, lying there while she sponged my wound, I saw only that she was a great deal younger than I had deemed; and not only young but in distress; and not only distressed but in some sort helpless. In short, here was a woman so unlike the termagant who had charged across the bridge that I could hardly reconcile the two or ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Gray's Inn, some years ago was prevailed upon by his friends to dismiss a mistress, by whom he had a child, but who was so great a termagant and scold, that she was believed to use him very ill, and even to beat him. He became melancholy in two days from the want of his usual stimulus to action, and cut his throat on the third so ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... capturing Crop-eared Jose here in Colina, so run along, run along. The girl's too pretty to be hurt with a frisky horse. My Lord!" striding down the hall again, "you fools stop scrapping with that termagant and put her out, put her ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... resolv'd to marry to morrow—either to the Apothecary or the Farmer, Men I never saw, to be reveng'd on thee, thou termagant Infidel. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... often the nature of parents to grow most fond of their youngest and disagreeablest children, so it happened with Liberty, who doted on this daughter to such a degree, that by her good will she would never suffer the girl to be out of her sight. As Miss Faction grew up, she became so termagant and froward, that there was no enduring her any longer in Heaven. Jupiter gave her warning to be gone; and her mother rather than forsake her, took the whole family down to earth. She landed at first in Greece, was expelled by degrees through all the Cities ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... woman! You mustn't leave the poor child to her tender mercies. What can she turn out, brought up under such a termagant? Suppose I try and bring the old lady round with a ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... too late with some of you young, termagant, flashy sinners—you have all the guilt of the intention, and none of the pleasure of the practice—'tis true you are so eager in pursuit of the temptation, that you save the devil the trouble of leading you ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... very willing to leave me with my grandmother, who promised to leave her property to me; but this offer in my favour enraged my mother still more; she declared that I should not remain; and my father had long succumbed to her termagant disposition, and yielded implicit obedience to her authority. It was lamentable to see such a fine soldierlike man afraid even to speak before this woman; but he was completely under her thraldom, ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... Mahomed, insensible to female honour?" "My ranks are wonderous scant," returned Milo Fitzwalter, "I may not reckon twenty men at arms in the whole train, and varlets have I none; but it boots not to number spears when danger presses; so to horse and away. Beshrew me, were it the termagant Queen Maude herself, I'd do my best to rescue her in this extremity."—"Thou art a true knight, Fitzwalter," replied the king, "and wilt prosper: the Saint's benizon be with thee, for thou must speed on this errand with such tall men as thou ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... "free from affectation." But one historian not only says this, he adds: "She was the protector of her country, and the prudent executor of its will." She was nothing of the sort; on the contrary, she was a cold, greedy, heartless termagant, who risked the loss of her country by her parsimony, and it was only saved by the dauntless courage of the famishing seamen. I think that is one of the most gruesome and humiliating pieces of British ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... Are there no restraints (supposing them necessary) short of absolute slavery to keep "troublesome characters" in order? But this, I suppose, is the argumentum ad gubernatorem—to frighten the governor. She is such a termagant, it seems, that if she once gets back to the colony free, she will not only make it too hot for poor Mr. Wood, but the police and courts of justice will scarce be a match for her! Sir Patrick Ross, no doubt, will take care how he intercedes farther for so formidable a virago! ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince
... been opened, and in place of some dark-browed and termagant sorceress, with the mark of every evil passion in her face, there appeared before the spectators crowding into every available corner, the slim, youthful figure—was it boy or girl?—the serene and ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... I will do," cried the Baron, beginning to ascend the companion-ladder. "Captain Jan Dunck, keep the Count down here below; don't let him show himself on any account. I will settle the matter. This female, this termagant, will carry off one of your passengers, and, as an honest man, you are ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... is as perfect and as delightful as any in the English language. Any one who cannot enjoy this has no perception of human nature, and no love of humor in his composition. In time Rip discovered that his only escape from his termagant wife was to take his gun, and stroll off into the woods with his dog. "Here he would sometimes seat himself at the foot of a tree, and share the contents of his wallet with Wolf, with whom he sympathized ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... I am so intimately acquainted with, that I can assure him, he will never have her: for would you believe it, though Cynthio has wit, good sense, fortune, and his very being depends on her, the termagant for whom he sighs, is in love with a fellow, who stares in the glass all the time he is with her, and lets her plainly see, she may possibly be his rival, but never his mistress. Yet Cynthio, the same unhappy man whom I mentioned in my first narrative, pleases himself with a vain imagination, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... little termagant as Bessie Hatch looked at that moment, with her black eyes flashing, her hands clinched, and her cheeks like two flaming poppies! Half irritated, half amused, Annie, the Irish nurse, regarded her ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the fashions of that land, Their way of worship viewed he, But to Mahound or Termagant Would Beichan never bend ...
— Ballad Book • Katherine Lee Bates (ed.)
... the hills an hour more, we came out upon the town of Jenin, a Turkish village, with a tall white minaret, at the head of the great plain of Esdraelon. It is supposed to be the ancient Jezreel, where the termagant Jezebel was thrown out of the window. We pitched our tent in a garden near the town, under a beautiful mulberry tree, and, as the place is in very bad repute, engaged a man to keep guard at night. An English family was robbed there ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... those things which in those days fell to men of his profession. It was in this little shop that the great artist grew up. Father Turner was ambitious for his son, who was anxious to study art. The less said of the artist's mother the better, for she was a termagant and finally went crazy, so that the father and his little boy were soon left alone, to plan and work and strive to make each other happy. The pair were ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... Quality Originals, from whom (with Exception perhaps of her Wit) one wou'd swear the Author had taken her Copy.—-What a Sum might these Objectors ensure, to be paid, by the Husbands and Sons, of such termagant, hermaphrodite Minds, upon their making due Proof, that they were no longer to be found, in ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... but the only outward symptoms were a white face and a cold steely voice that grated like a rasp on the susceptibilities of the adherents of Aphrodite. At this period Sophia had certainly developed into a termagant—without ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... simultaneously swept her with one comprehensive glance and turned away. Students of women, experienced adventurers in matrimony, these plumbers, bird merchants "delicatessens" and the rest looked, perceived and comprehended that here was the very devil of a woman—a virago, a shrew, a termagant, a natural-born trouble-maker; and they shivered and thanked God that she was Tunnygate's and not theirs; their unformulated sentiment best ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... pass from him to his reader without considerable deflection. He cannot say exactly what he would. His words do not hold the same meaning for him as for others. "Mother" to him is a dear woman with a gentle voice, always dressed in black, sitting by the window of home; to another she is a shrieking termagant, whose phrases are punctuated by blows. There is not a word that means exactly the same to two persons; yet with words men must express their thoughts, their feelings, their hopes, their purposes,—always changing, ever new,—and for all ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... and Termagant. I saw a blackamoor last week behind his master, a merchant of Genoa, in Paul's Walk. He looked like the devils in the Miracle Play at Christ Church, with blubber lips and wool for hair. I marvelled that he did not writhe and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... smuggled over (if the English do not seize them); wherein, once more Beaumarchais, dimly as the Giant Smuggler becomes visible,—filling his own lank pocket withal. But surely, in any case, France should have a Navy. For which great object were not now the time: now when that proud Termagant of the Seas has her hands full? It is true, an impoverished Treasury cannot build ships; but the hint once given (which Beaumarchais says he gave), this and the other loyal Seaport, Chamber of Commerce, will build and offer them. Goodly vessels bound into the waters; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... had from myself intercepting this remarkable retribution. The villain had again been attempting to play off the same hellish scheme with a beautiful young rustic which had succeeded in the case of my ill-fated Agnes. But the young woman in this instance had a high, and, in fact, termagant spirit. Rustic as she was, she had been warned of the character of the man; everybody, in fact, was familiar with the recent tragedy. Either her lover or her brother happened to be waiting for her outside the window. He saw in part the very ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... derided who should bear from a wife of exalted rank and spotless virtue half the insolence which the King of England bore from concubines who, while they owed everything to his bounty, caressed his courtiers almost before his face. He had patiently endured the termagant passions of Barbara Palmer and the pert vivacity of Eleanor Gwynn. Lewis thought that the most useful envoy who could be sent to London, would be a handsome, licentious, and crafty Frenchwoman. Such ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by his [v]termagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquility of the assemblage, and call the members all to naught; nor was that august personage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue of this terrible virago, who charged him with encouraging ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... dogmatist and hypochondriac of the eighteenth century, how one would like to sit at some ghastly Club, between you and the bony, "mighty-mouthed," harsh-toned termagant and dyspeptic of the nineteenth! The growl of the English mastiff and the snarl of the Scotch terrier would make a duet which would enliven the shores of Lethe. I wish I could find our "spiritualist's" paper in the Portfolio, in which the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... gruff laugh. It was practically impossible not to confide in Bernard Monck. "She wants to get right away from that vicious little termagant of a mother of hers. There's no love between them and never will be, so what's the use of pretending? She wants to get into a wholesome bracing, outdoor atmosphere with someone who knows how to love her. She'll ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... up courage to go and see Mrs. Tetchy and ask her to sell me some plants. I had great misgivings as to my success; and in addition, the fear of her sharp temper and language made me nervous. I could stand up and face and argue with a man without flinching; but somehow the rasping savagery of a termagant woman always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... his mind whether it would be well for him to tell this termagant at once that he should call on whom he liked and do what he liked, but he remembered that his footing in Barchester was not yet sufficiently firm, and that it would be better ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... iron tongue, none too gently fitted by her rough torturers, and then being dragged about the town amid the jeers of the populace, or chained to the pillory in the market-place, an object of ridicule and contempt. Happily this scene has vanished from vanishing England. Perhaps she was a loud-voiced termagant; perhaps merely the ill-used wife of a drunken wretch, who well deserved her scolding; or the daring teller of home truths to some jack-in-office, who thus revenged himself. We have shrews and scolds still; happily they are restrained in a less barbarous ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... shaper; If at the world you're a green-gosling gaper, Or of old "JUNIUS," juvenile aper; Bumptious Scotch Duke, or irate Irish Draper, Crammed with conceit, which must publicly caper; Angry old woman, or frivolous japer; Thraso or termagant, Tadpole or Taper, To blow off your steam, or your gas, or your vapour, There's one fool-loved fashion—'tis write to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... the late Marquis had appended in pencil. "Of course Rochebriant never denies the claim of a kinswoman, even though a drawing-master's daughter. Beautiful creature, Louise, but a termagant. I could not love Venus if she were a termagant. L.'s head turned by the unlucky discovery that her mother was noble. In one form or other, every woman has the same disease—vanity. Name of her intended not mentioned—easily ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Peter, 'I'll be a termagant again when she's gone; see if I won't. I'll get up an awful racking cough at night, and I'll worry that nasty Mr Martin much more than Dickory has worried him, see if I don't; and I'll sing on the stairs, and I'll whistle ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... an anxious search have I had, to discover your abode, since you so suddenly left town! The termagant, Madame Duval, refused me all intelligence. Oh, Miss Anville, did you know what I have endured! the sleepless, restless state of suspense I have been tortured with, you could not, all cruel as you are, you could not have received me with such ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney |
