"Trencher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... leaving in its stead that placid quiet which is apt to linger about the palate long after the cravings of the appetite have been appeased. He had seated himself on one of the trunks of Borroughcliffe, utterly disdaining the use of a chair; and, with the trencher in his lap, was using his own jack-knife on the dilapidated fragment of the ox, with something of that nicety with which the female ghoul of the Arabian Tales might be supposed to pick her rice with the point of her bodkin. The captain drew a seat ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... he was to occupy—one which opened out of the room set apart for Harry and Philip; and soon after he was down in the dining-room eating a meal that called forth the remarks and comparisons of his cousins, who were dreadful trencher-men. They told him that he must learn what a country appetite meant, and so, by way of teaching him, they dragged him off, as soon as dinner was over, to look at all the wonders of the place. First over the flower-garden, and round by the aviary, where Mamma's gold and silver ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... afraid of Perfidy. In this I won't deceive you. But hark you, see that you provide nothing but what you do daily: I would have no holy Day made upon my Account. You know that I am a Guest that am no great Trencher Man, but a very ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... serving boy! I knew him, at Caius' trencher, when for hire He prostituted his abused body To that great gormond, fat Apicius; And was the ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... him, Dorothy," said the old glover; "I will not be used thus by him: his Highland blood, forsooth, is too gentle to lay a trencher or spread a napkin, and he expects to enter our ancient and honourable craft without duly waiting and tending upon his master and teacher in all matters of lawful obedience. Go, call him, I say; I will ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... sou{er}aynes bred thow choppe, & at it be newe & able; se all{e} o{er} bred a day old or {o}u choppe to e table; all{e} howsold bred iij. dayes old / so it is p{ro}fitable; and trencher bred iiij. dayes ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... painful to connect the venerable, almost sacred, name of Richard Hooker with such a specimen of puerile sophistry, scarcely worthy of a court bishop's trencher chaplain in the slavering times of our Scotch Solomon. It is, however, of some value, some interest at least, as a striking example of the confusion of an idea with a conception. Every conception has its sole reality in its being referable ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... city Adida, which is upon a hill, and beneath it lie the plains of Judea. And when Trypho knew that Simon was by the Jews made their governor, he sent to him, and would have imposed upon him by deceit and trencher, and desired, if he would have his brother Jonathan released, that he would send him a hundred talents of silver, and two of Jonathan's sons as hostages, that when he shall be released, he may not make Judea revolt from the king; for that at present ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... position upon the corner of the table, her glance wandered down the board and rested on Rabelais, the gourmand, before whom were an empty trencher and tankard. The priest-doctor-writer-scamp who affected the company of jesters and liked not a little the hospitality of Fools' hall, which adjoined the pastry branch of the castle kitchen and was not far removed from the wine butts, had just unrolled a bundle of manuscript, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... kuracado. Treaty kontrakto, traktajxo. Tree arbo. Trefoil trifolio. Trellis palisplektajxo. Tremble tremi. Trembling tremo—ado. Tremendous grandega. Tremor tremeto, skueto. Tremulous trema, skueta. Trench fosajxo. Trenchant akra. Trencher lignotelero. Trepidation tremeco, tremado. Trespass transpasxo, ofendo. Tress (hair) harligo. Tress plektajxo. Trestle (bench) stablo. Trial (an attempt) provo—ajxo—ado. Triangle triangulo. Tribe gento. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... dinner, and had very good discourse about having of young noblemen and gentlemen to think of going to sea, as being as honourable service as the land war. And among other things he told us how, in Queen Elizabeth's time, one young nobleman would wait with a trencher at the back of another till he come to age himself. And witnessed in my young Lord of Kent, that then was, who waited upon my Lord Bedford at table, when a letter come to my Lord Bedford that the Earldome of Kent was fallen to his servant the young Lord; and ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... emancipation; and so it will be, I suppose, with women. The drunken exultation of Caliban is no bad illustration of the emancipation of a slave; and the ladies, more gracefully intoxicated with the elixir vitae of liberty, may rejoice no more to "scrape trencher or wash dish," but write books (more or ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... religion is a good quiet subject, and he prays as he swears, in the phrase of the land. He is a fair guest, and a fair inviter, and can excuse his good cheer in the accustomed apology. He has some faculty in mangling of a rabbit, and the distribution of his morsel to a neighbour's trencher. He apprehends a jest by seeing men smile, and laughs orderly himself, when it comes to his turn. His businesses with his friends are to visit them, and whilst the business is no more, he can perform this well enough. His discourse is the news that ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... and took a trencher likewise, in doing which he spoke of the two girls and remarked how comely ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... hags! How I would stuff the big wan-eyed rascals till their rags ripped again! There was a knight of old times who built the dining-hall of his castle across the highway, so that every wayfarer must perforce pass through; there the traveler, rich or poor, found always a trencher and wherewithal to fill it. Three times a day in my own chair at my own table, do I envy that knight and wish that I ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... that the powder in ramming be not bruised, because that weakens its effect; that a little quantity of paper, lint, or the like, be rammed over it, and then the ball be intruded. If the ball be red hot, a tompion, or trencher of green wood, is to be driven in before it. Also, in martial law, an indictment or specification of the crime of which a prisoner stands accused. Also, in evolutions, the brisk advance of a body to attack an enemy, with bayonets fixed at the charge, or firmly held at the hip. Also, the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... fish must see to peason and furmety, the tail and the liver; you must look if there be a salt porpos or sole, turrentine, and do after the form of venison; baked herring, lay it whole on the trencher, then white herring in a dish, open it by the back, pick out the bones and the row, and see there be mustard. Of salt fish, green-fish, salt salmon, and conger, pare away the skin; salt fish, stock fish, marling, mackrel, ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May
... or foure of his blinde brothers and sisters went to it: I haue taught him (euen as one would say precisely, thus I would teach a dog) I was sent to deliuer him, as a present to Mistris Siluia, from my Master; and I came no sooner into the dyning-chamber, but he steps me to her Trencher, and steales her Capons-leg: O, 'tis a foule thing, when a Cur cannot keepe himselfe in all companies: I would haue (as one should say) one that takes vpon him to be a dog indeede, to be, as it were, a dog at all things. If I had not had more wit then he, to take ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... which is a secret of the Order, is of excellent quality, and deserves its reputation. The monastery bread, made from the wheat grown by the monks, was of the substantial and honest kind which in England would probably be called 'farmhouse bread,' although the great wheel or trencher-shaped loaves of the French provinces might cause some surprise there. My meal, therefore, might have been worse than it was, and as it was given to me for nothing, it would have been very bad manners not to appear pleased. The truth is, the novelty of my position—that of a tramp taken in ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... late before the supper was served, but when every man had his trencher filled Rainouart entered the hall, armed with his staff, and stood leaning against a pillar, watching the noble company. 'Sir,' said Aimeri, the man whom the Saracens most dreaded, 'who is it that I see standing there holding a piece of wood that five ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... that I lived in days of yore, When outlaws bold were rife, The days of dagger and of bowl, Of dungeon and of strife. Oh! for the days when forks were not, On skewers came the meat; When from one trencher ate three foes: Oh! but those times were sweet! When hooded hawks sat overhead, And underfoot was straw Where hounds and beggars fought for bones Alternately ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... housekeeping was long remembered in the household. In the first place, the breakfast, though fairly abundant, was plain. A large piece of cold bacon graced one end of the board, a brown loaf stood on a trencher in the center, and when Helen took her place opposite the tea-tray she found herself provided with plenty of milk and sugar, certainly, and a large tea-pot of strong tea, but the sugar was brown. No butter, no marmalade, no jams, no hot cakes, ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... fastidious people, the proceedings of those who were not such may be discreetly left to imagination. The second table was served in a much more ordinary manner. In this instance the knife was iron and the spoon pewter, the plate a wooden trencher (never changed), and the drinking-cup of horn. In the midst of the table stood a pewter salt-cellar, formed like a castle, and very much larger than ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... Carteret, I afterwards giving him an account of what he said, says that it is true that he was ordered up to the Nore.) But I remember he said, had all his captains fought, he would no more have doubted to have beat the Dutch with all their number, than to eat the apple that lay on his trencher. My Lady Duchesse, among other things, discoursed of the wisdom of dividing the fleet; which the Generall said nothing to, though he knew well that it come from themselves in the fleet, and was brought up hither by ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... if these lazy ones delighted in filth. Again and again have I seen one or another throw the scrapings of the trencher bowls just outside the door of the tent or hut, where those who came or went must of a necessity tread upon them, and one need not struggle hard to realize what soon was the condition of ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... mere cup and trencher, we no doubt Fared passing well; but as for merriment 10 And sport, without which salt and sauces season The cheer but scantily, our sizings were ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... heard the chatter of small voices, and presently came upon the Scobels and the school-children. The juveniles were in a state of alarm at having lost you. They had been playing the game in severe silence, and at a turn in the grove missed you altogether. Oh, here comes Scobel, with his trencher on the back ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... whet on to write a Comedy, Wherein shall be compos'd dark sentences, Pleasing to factious brains: And every other where place me a Jest, Whose high abuse shall more torment than blows: Then I my self (quicker than Lightning) Will fly me to a puissant magistrate, And weighting with a Trencher at his back, In midst of jollity, rehearse those gauls, (With some additions) So lately vented in your Theater. He, upon this, cannot but make complaint, To your great danger, ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... he found a guest quite different from Jacqueline's victims. He was a singular-looking old man, clad in worn butternut jeans; an uncouth, uncombed, manifestly unwashed person at whose side on the floor rested a peddler's pack. He was doing some alarming trencher-work with his knife, and kept a supply of food convenient in his cheek while he greeted Channing with ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Over the mantel-piece he was represented in a hunting costume, on his favorite horse; there was a sticking-plaster silhouette of him in the widow's bedroom, and a miniature in the drawing-room, where he was drawn in a gown of black and gold, holding a gold-tasselled trencher cap with one hand, and with the other pointing to a diagram of Pons Asinorum. This likeness was taken when he was a fellow-commoner at St. John's College, Cambridge, and before the growth of that blue beard which was the ornament of his manhood, and a part of which now formed a beautiful blue ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... in the treaty of fellowship. As to the hardy feats, both of sword and trencher, performed by this "curtal fryar," behold are they not recorded at length in the ancient ballads, and in the magic pages ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... Upmost, at the groom porter's, all the Christmas: And for the whole year through, at every place, Where there is play, present him with the chair; The best attendance, the best drink; sometimes Two glasses of Canary, and pay nothing; The purest linen, and the sharpest knife, The partridge next his trencher: and somewhere The dainty bed, in private, with the dainty. You shall have your ordinaries bid for him, As play-houses for a poet; and the master Pray him aloud to name what dish he affects, Which must be butter'd shrimps: and those that drink ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... the entrance of a college they glanced in at the cool grey patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of a window flowerbox—secluded, mysteriously calm—a narrow vision of the sacred past. Pale and trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face and random nose, grabbing at his cloven gown, was gazing at the noticeboard. The college porter—large man, fresh-faced, and small-mouthed—stood at his lodge door in a frank and deferential attitude. An image ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the mailed fist. But you shall not see the hand that smites, nor even know the quarter from whence it comes. Build high your walls and your bulwarks; they shall but prove the greater peril when they crumble under the impact of our lord's hammer. You will believe; yes, when trencher-mate and bedfellow are stricken at your side, and yet no man shall be able to say at what instant the avenger's shadow passed between, or catch the faintest sound of his retreating footsteps. All in his good time to whom a day and an hour and a cycle ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... one end of this was laid a cloth, with a few trenchers on it, and horn cups, surrounding a barley loaf and a cheese, this meagre irregular supper being considered as a sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats which had abounded at Beaulieu. John Birkenholt sat at the table with a trencher and horn before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble, rather than cut, his bread. His wife, a thin, pale, shrewish-looking woman, was warming her child's feet at the fire, before putting him to bed, and an old woman sat spinning and nodding on a settle ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... TRENCHER-CAP. A-name, sometimes given to the square head-covering worn by students in the English universities. Used figuratively to ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... of the banquet, the trencher cuts, foh! nankeen displays: as intersticed with many a brilliant drop to friendly beck and clubbish hail, to moisten the viands or cool the incipient cayenne. No unfamished livery-man would desire better dishes, or high-tasted courtier better ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... any knowing reader, that for some few years yet, I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine; like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... (1.) Your trencher chaplains, that thrust themselves into great men's families, pretending the worship of God, when in truth the great business is their own bellies; and were notably painted out by Ahab's prophets, and also Nebuchadnezzar's wise men, who, though ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... set half the lads of the country-side at loggerheads about her—would be decidedly bettered by this discipline under Mise Fougueiroun: whose name long has been one to conjure with in all the kitchens between Saint-Remy and the Rhone. For the Provencaux are famous trencher-men, and the way that leads through their gullets is not the longest ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... enjoyed himself amazingly, and made more marks than ever on the white tablecloth—for he began jumping about like a pea on a trencher, in order to make his particularly large supper agree ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... of Flowers well picked and beaten in a Mortar, and put them into a Syrup, so much as the Flowers will stain, boil them, and stir them till you see it will turn Sugar again, then pour it upon a wet trencher, and when it is cold cut it into Lozenges, and that which remaineth in the bottom of the Posnet scrape it clean out, and beat it and searce it, then work it with some Gum Dragon steeped in Rosewater and ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley
... a good deal here besides,' said Rollo. 'Mrs. Charteris, don't you want a bread trencher? Or a rocking chair? ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... carried on at the upper end of the table; as the authors there seemed to possess the greatest courage of the tongue. As to the crew at the lower end, if they did not make much figure in talking, they did in eating. Never was there a more determined, inveterate, thoroughly-sustained attack on the trencher, than by this phalanx of masticators. When the cloth was removed, and the wine began to circulate, they grew very merry and jocose among themselves. Their jokes, however, if by chance any of them reached the upper end of the table, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... nourishment, pabulum, nutrition, fare, diet, bread, meat, rations, victuals, subsistence, commons, provisions, viands, regimen, finding, sustenance, eatables, refreshments, comestibles, trencher, ambrosia, broma, manna. Associated Words: bromatology, bromatologist, alimental, alimentary, pabular, appetite, alimentation, nutrition, superalimentation, pantophagist, pantophagous, pantophagy, polyphagous, polyphagy, bromography, dietary, regimen, dietarian, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... which characterized the rest of the house. A table in the centre of the room took up the chief of the space, and at this table sat a bronzed and stalwart man, whom Corinne instantly recognized as her protector in that forest adventure of long ago. He was seated with a trencher before him, and was doing an justice to the fare set out; but he was also in earnest conversation with Madame Drucour, who was seated opposite, her elbows lightly resting upon the table, and her chin upon ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Burma; he also enjoyed the stimulating company of Miss Maitland; and in this delightful, highly coloured atmosphere, surrounded by agreeable companions, he fished, joked, flirted, and appeared to have shed his formal Oxford manner, along with his Oxford trencher and gown. He remembered Shafto's father and, on the strength of this memory, the two became excellent friends, and Shafto gave him assistance in the way of adjusting his puttees, helping him over awkward places, advising him what food to avoid ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... distance from him on the table, which was thirty foot high from the floor. I was in a terrible fright, and kept as far as I could from the edge for fear of falling. The wife minced a bit of meat, then crumbled some bread on a trencher, and placed it before me. I made her a low bow, took out my knife and fork, and fell to eat, which gave them exceeding delight. The mistress sent her maid for a small dram cup, which held about two gallons, and filled it with drink. I took up the vessel with much ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... A wooden trencher, scoured white as ivory, separates the friends, leaving them face to face. In supping they have reached what we call ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... forgot Each joy domestic of my little cot. For at this hour my wife with watchful care Was wont each humbler dainty to prepare, The keenest sauce by hunger was supplied And my poor children prattled at my side. Methinks I see the old oak table spread, The clean white trencher and the good brown bread, The cheese my daily food which Mary made, For Mary knew full well the housewife's trade: The jug of cyder,—cyder I could make, And then the knives—I won 'em at the wake. Another has them now! I toiling here Look backward like a child and drop ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... he awoke, exceeding hungry, and looking forth into the court he had it in his mind to carve meat from the dead boar. But he was astounded beyond measure to find that it was not there. In its place was a great trencher of steaming hot collops of meat, and toasted bread, with hot milk in ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... the best of my power, with fare of a more excellent quality than is commonly set before others; and, calling to mind the falcon which you now ask of me, and his excellence, I judged him meet food for you, and so you have had him roasted on the trencher this morning; and well indeed I thought I had bestowed him; but, as now I see that you would fain have had him in another guise, so mortified am I that I am not able to serve you, that I doubt I shall never know peace of mind more." In witness whereof he had the feathers and feet and beak ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... hills, with lakes among them. It has lawns and shrubberies, but few flowers; Nature frowns on every hand, even in sunshine, when the waterfalls flow like silver, and the crags are decked with diamonds. There are no 'trencher-scraping, napkin-carrying,' waiters in the house, but country damsels attend upon you, and a motherly dame, their mistress, expresses her hope every morning that you have slept well. If you have not, it is the fault of your conscience: ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... better certainty, the Mistriss commands her to draw some Wine in a glass that was very clean rinsed; which she no sooner brought back, but the Mistriss observed that greasy lips had been at it; yet before she sent her the second time, she takes a trencher and holds it over the smoke of a Candle to grow black, then with her finger rubs that soot upon the edge or hollow part of the glass; and commanded her, as she did before, to draw some Wine; but when she came back ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... another, that it was most pleasant to behold; then they leaped out of the window and vanished away. Then they set before Dr. Faustus a roasted calf's head, which one of the students cut a piece off, and laid it on Dr. Faustus his trencher, which piece was no sooner laid down but the calf's head began to cry mainly out like a man, "Murder, murder! Out, alas! what dost thou to me?" Whereat they were all amazed, but after a while, considering of Faustus's jesting tricks, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... a brief space of something like sleep-walking as the soldiers led her through branching corridors to this room, and fetched for her attendant the only woman available, a wench they had taken from trencher-washing in the royal kitchen. She remembered irritably rejecting the woman's clumsy services and sending her to sleep on her pallet, while she herself walked to and fro with her surging thoughts until sheer physical exhaustion forced her to throw herself ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... desist from your sport, about two or three days: and in the meantime, on the place you late baited, and again intend to bait, you shall take a turf of green but short grass, as big or bigger than a round trencher; to the top of this turf, on the green side, you shall, with a needle and green thread, fasten one by one, as many little red worms as will near cover all the turf: then take a round board or trencher, make ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... days the daily ration per head at the Company's prairie posts was eight pounds of fresh meat, which was all eaten, its equivalent being two pounds of pemmican, the enormity of this Gargantuan feast may be imagined. But we ourselves were not bad hands at the trencher. In fact, we were always hungry. So I do not reproduce the foregoing facts as a reproach, but rather as a meagre tribute to the prowess of the great of old—the men ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... extraordinary sweetness in the grass, suffer the cattle to eat the grass closer till Lammas (August 1). Though some do not hold with him, he thinks reading and writing not unprofitable to a husbandman, but not much material 'to his bailiff'; for there is more trust in an honest score chalked on a trencher than 'in a commen writen scrowle'. Landowners derived a good income from their woods and coppices. An acre of underwood of twenty-one years' growth, was at this time worth from L20 to L30; of twelve years' growth, L5 to L6; but ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... tasteful baskets of her own braiding, and Tontz Main de Fer, the chivalric companion and friend of La Salle, was moved like Geraint, served by Enid, "to stoop and kiss the dainty little thumb that crossed the trencher." The salutation was received with unconscious dignity by little Marie; once only was Pere Francois Xavier annoyed by the absence of a display of childish pleasure in an ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... feeling of competence and hope of the night before had gone with them. I could see no sign of the woman nor of Starling. Pierre's red head was a beacon, but I dared not go to him. He was bending over a caldron of boiling meat, and I saw that my man was himself again, and that the trencher called him more winningly than any voice of mine. I shrugged, and went to the beach to make what toilet I could. The cold water recreated me. I was more a man when I ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... to an Uzcoque seated beside him, who left the room. While the pirates were still asking one another the meaning of Jurissa's words, the man returned, bearing before him a trencher covered with a cloth, which he placed at the upper end ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... cups and saucers, that an Irish girl would break a half-dozen of every week,—was laid with exquisite preciseness; the square white napkins at top and bottom over the crimson cloth, spread to the exactness of a line, and every knife and fork at fair right angles; the loaf was upon the white carved trencher, and nothing to be done when Kenneth should come in, but to draw the tea, and bring the brown ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... if the room be scattered with alder leaves the fleas will get caught therein. Item, I have heard tell that if you have at night one or two trenchers of bread covered with birdlime or turpentine and put about the room with a lighted candle set in the midst of each trencher, they will come and get stuck thereto. Another way which I have found and which is true: take a rough cloth and spread it about your room and over your bed and all the fleas who may hop on to it will be caught, so that you can carry them out with the cloth wheresoever you will. ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... and forks—nobody used those! Every one ate with his fingers. Think how primitive it must have been to go to a banquet of the Lord-Mayor of London arrayed in your silk or velvet costume, and eat roasted ox with your fingers from a trencher, or square slab of wood! Yet such a procedure was considered entirely ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... called cumber-minds. It is time to protest against this minute style of editing and commenting great poets. Gulliver's microscopic eye saw on the fair skins of the Brobdignagian maids of honor "a mole here and there as broad as a trencher," and we shrink from a cup of the purest Hippocrene after the critic's solar microscope has betrayed to us the grammatical, syntactical, and, above all, hypothetical monsters that sprawl in every drop of it. When a poet has been ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... disposable pipette, syringe, vial, carboy, vacuum flask, Petri dish, microtiter tray, centrifuge tube. bail, beaker, billy, canakin; catch basin, catch drain; chatti, lota, mussuk, schooner [U.S.], spider, terrine, toby, urceus. plate, platter, dish, trencher, calabash, porringer, potager, saucer, pan, crucible; glassware, tableware; vitrics. compote, gravy boat, creamer, sugar bowl, butter dish, mug, pitcher, punch bowl, chafing dish. shovel, trowel, spoon, spatula, ladle, dipper, tablespoon, watch glass, thimble. closet, commode, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... years of the monarchy of July, ever once put his feet inside the Tuileries. At the Italian Opera or the Varietes, sometimes at the Cafe de Paris, the Maison Doree, or the Trois Freres, M. Bertin may be seen enjoying the music, or his dinner and wine, but never was he a servile courtier or trencher-follower of the Monarch of the Barricades. It is after these enjoyments, or after his petit souper, that M. Bertin proceeds for the last time for the day, or rather the night, to the office of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... keep him. So he hurried back to the dining hall and showed the empty dishes to the Abbot. That settled the lion's fate. Thenceforth he became a member of the monastery. He ate with the other monks in the great hall, having his own private trencher and bowl beside Gerasimus. And he grew to like the mild fare of the good brothers,—at least he never sought for anything different. He slept outside the door of his master's cell and guarded the monastery like a faithful watch-dog. The monks grew fond of him and petted him ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... lover. And I was still thinking of this without having settled the point to my satisfaction, when the curtain was thrust aside again. A very tall man, wearing a splendid suit of black and silver and a stiff trencher-like ruff, came quickly in, and stood smiling at us, a little dog in his arms. The little dog sat up and snarled: and Croisette gasped. It was not our old friend Louis certainly! It was not Louis de Pavannes at all. It was no old friend at all, It ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... French influence. Some, however, have called attention, perhaps too much attention, to the French words found in Lowland Scotch; and it is common to adduce always the same set of examples, such as ashet, a dish (F. assiette, a trencher, plate: Cotgrave), gigot, a leg of mutton, and petticoat-tails, certain cakes baked with butter (ingeniously altered from petits gastels, old form of petits gateaux), by way of illustration. Indeed, a whole book has been ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... and a very hard eater, as men of his figure often are. Being a hard sleeper likewise, he divided his time pretty equally between these two recreations, always falling asleep when he had done eating, and always taking another turn at the trencher when he had done sleeping, by which means he grew more corpulent and more drowsy every day of his life. Indeed it used to be currently reported that when he sauntered up and down the sunny side of the street before dinner ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... is your great man's darling, And your ladies' sport and pleasure; Tongue and bauble are his treasure. E'en his face begetteth laughter, And he speaks truth free from slaughter; He's the grace of every feast, And sometimes the chiefest guest; Hath his trencher and his stool, When wit waits upon the fool: O, who would ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... that goodnesse; and why? for a little letchery of revenge? it's a lye: the Burre that stickes in your throat is a throane: let him out of his messe of Kingdomes cut out but one, and lay Sicilia, Arragon, Naples or any else upon your trencher, and you'll prayse Bastard[196] for the sweetest wine in the world and call for another quart of it. 'Tis not because the man has left you but because you are not the woman you would be, that mads you: a shee-cuckold ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... and so will run A course in thy fame's pledge, thy son. Thus, like a Roman Tribune, thou thy gate Early sets ope to feast, and late; Keeping no currish waiter to affright, With blasting eye, the appetite, Which fain would waste upon thy cates, but that The trencher creature marketh what Best and more suppling piece he cuts, and by Some private pinch tells dangers nigh, A hand too desp'rate, or a knife that bites Skin-deep into the pork, or lights Upon some part of kid, as if mistook, When checked by the butler's ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... the emperor that they have not lost their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summersault several times together upon a trencher,[20] fixed on a rope, which is no thicker than a common packthread in England. My friend Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial, the second after the treasurer; the rest of the great officers ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... might they be?" Her curiosity was reaching the breaking-point. "If ye bring out another thing from that basket I'll believe ye're in league with Bodh Dearg himself, or ye've stolen the faeries' trencher of plenty." ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... You once thought a great matter, And tied it so pretty and neat; Now see how 'tis crumpled, No trencher is flatter, It grieves your ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... the mantelpiece, in which is stuck a large card with the list of the meets for the week of the county hounds; the table covered with the whitest of cloths and of china, and bearing a pigeon-pie, ham, round of cold boiled beef cut from a mammoth ox, and the great loaf of household bread on a wooden trencher. And here comes in the stout head waiter, puffing under a tray of hot viands—kidneys and a steak, transparent rashers and poached eggs, buttered toast and muffins, coffee and tea, all smoking hot. The table can never hold it all. The cold meats are removed to ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... trencher man; one who has a good appetite, or, as the term is, plays a good knife ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... "that's his gift. But a poor trencher-man; and I declare I'm ashamed to eat all the vittels that are eaten here, and me ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... and put a cushion of dried hay at her back. The food was on a small trencher with a flat bottom, and was placed on the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... arrival of the supper; but, with the sagacious knowledge of physiognomy peculiar to their race, forbore to intrude upon the moody silence of their master, apprehensive probably of a small white truncheon which lay by Cedric's trencher, for the purpose of repelling the advances of his four-legged dependants. One grisly old wolf-dog alone, with the liberty of an indulged favourite, had planted himself close by the chair of state, and occasionally ventured to solicit notice ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... and dignity were in her limbs and neck; and about her simply parted hair and candid eyes the large round poke which was then in the fate of women, seemed no more odd as a head-dress than the gold trencher we call a halo. By the present audience of two persons, no dramatic heroine could have been expected with more interest than Mrs. Casaubon. To Rosamond she was one of those county divinities not mixing with Middlemarch mortality, whose slightest ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... waiters had just succeeded in depositing safely upon the table an enormous dish, or trencher, containing what I supposed to be the "monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." A closer scrutiny assured me, however, that it was only a small calf roasted whole, and set upon its knees, with an apple in its mouth, as is the English ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... eggs on the platter that Swan Carlson's woman put before him when he sat down to his supper. One end of the great trencher was heaped with brown bacon; a stack of bread stood at Swan's left hand, a cup of coffee at his right. Before this provender the flockmaster squared himself, the unwelcome guest across the table from him, the smoke of his pipe drifting languidly ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... when the man has perfected his instrument, the body and brain. Because this instrument is temporal, it has a height and limitation to reach. There is a year in which the sutures close. That man is a master, who has fulfilled his possibilities—whether tile-trencher, stone-mason, writer, or a carpenter hammering his periods with nails. Real manhood makes lowly gifts significant; the work of such a man softens and finishes him, renders ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... Salt and Water for about two Hours; then boil them very tender till a Pin will easily go into them; then drain them well from the Water, and put them into your preserving Pan, putting as much clarified Sugar to them as will cover them, laying some Trencher or Plate on them to keep them down; then set them over a Fire, and by Degrees heat them till they boil; then let them have a quick boil till the Sugar comes all over them in a Froth; then set them by till next Day, ...
— The Art of Confectionary • Edward Lambert
... a boy entered with a wooden trencher of poee-poee; and in regaling myself with its contents I was obliged again to submit to the officious intervention of my indefatigable servitor. Various other dishes followed, the chief manifesting the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... knowing reader that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, not to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... heaven, Jack Ireton, 'tis you who are the true lover and the gentleman; and I am naught but a selfish churl with my face in my own trencher!" he burst out, wringing my hand yet again. "'Tis as you say; yet I will not be driven from this; for aught you have told me to prove it otherwise, Madge has yet to choose between us, and she shall have that choice, ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... cities this was an age of luxury; but on the farms the laborer was glad to get a bundle of straw for a bed, and a wooden trencher to eat from. Vegetables were scarcely known, and fresh meat was eaten only by the well to do. The cottages were built of sticks and mud, without chimneys, and were nearly as bare of furniture as the wigwam ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... youth next announced that he smelt bacon frying, and that his stomach cried "Trencher!" and started off in a lope for the quarters, now only a few yards distant. Landless followed more sedately, and reached his cabin without being ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... not to cry—'t would soon be breakfast-time. Nick thought he could not eat at all; but when the savory smell crept out and filled the chilly air, his poor little empty stomach would not be denied, and he ate heartily. Master Heywood sat beside him and gave him the choicest bits from his own trencher; and Carew himself, seeing that he ate, looked strangely pleased, and ordered him a tiny mutton-pie, well spiced. Nick pushed it back indignantly; but Heywood took the pie and cut it open, saying quietly: "Come, lad, the good God made the sheep that is in this ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... angrily exclaimed Giles. "Good father, heed not a woman; they are caught by the lip and the fist, like my lord's trencher-man. This Sir Osmund is both lean and ill-favoured. I wonder what the Lady Mabel saw above his shoe to wed with an ugly toad spawned i' the Welsh marshes. Had ye seen her first husband, Sir William Bradshaigh—rest his soul! he was killed in ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... blood of Lancaster, Must not be shed by such a jaded groom. Hast thou not kiss'd thy hand and held my stirrup? Bare-headed plodded by my foot-cloth mule And thought thee happy when I shook my head? How often hast thou waited at my cup, Fed from my trencher, kneel'd down at the board, When I have feasted with Queen Margaret? Remember it and let it make thee crest-fallen, Ay, and allay thus thy abortive pride, How in our voiding lobby hast thou stood And duly waited for my coming forth. This hand of mine hath ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... winne an opinion of holinesse: or pray still apace, but neuer do good deede, and geue a begger a penny and spend a pound on a harlot, to speake faire to a mans face, and foule behinde his backe, to set him at his trencher and yet sit on his skirts for so we vse to say by a fayned friend, then also to be rough and churlish in speach and apparance, but inwardly affectionate and fauouring, as I haue sene of the greatest podestates and grauest iudges and Presidentes of ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... of all came the Van Bummels, who inhabit the pleasant borders of the Bronx: these were short fat men, wearing exceeding large trunk-breeches, and were renowned for feats of the trencher. They were the first inventors of suppawn, or mush and milk.—Close in their rear marched the Van Vlotens, of Kaatskill, horrible quaffers of new cider, and arrant braggarts in their liquor.—After them came the Van Pelts of Groodt Esopus, dexterous horsemen, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... soldiers prefer enlisting to starvation. But they are not soldiers, least of all to meet the hot-blooded, thorough-bred, impetuous men of the South. They are trencher-soldiers who enlisted to make war upon rations, not upon men. They are such as marched through Baltimore, squalid, wretched, ragged, half-naked, as the newspapers of that city report them; fellows who do not know the ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... and low-bred people, who thought it necessary to inform all their acquaintance where they had been, by a very unbecoming dress and a very awkward address: "not knowing that an Englishman's beef-and-pudding face will not agree with a hat no bigger than a trencher; and that a man who never learned to make a bow performs it worse in a head of hair dressed a L'aille Pidgeon, ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... or lying down unharnessed as yet to them: but in the very midst of that place was a wain unlike to them; smaller than they but higher; square of shape as to the floor of it; built lighter than they, yet far stronger; as the warrior is stronger than the big carle and trencher-licker that loiters about the hall; and from the midst of this wain arose a mast made of a tall straight fir-tree, and thereon hung the banner of the Wolfings, wherein was wrought the image of the Wolf, but red of hue as a token of war, and with his mouth open and gaping upon the foemen. Also whereas ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... We unpacked them very carefully and pulled them to pieces and scattered the straw about. It made a lovely straw pallet, and took ever so long to make—but Albert-next-door has yet to learn what gratitude really is. We got the bread trencher for the wooden platter where the prisoner's crusts were put—they were not mouldy, but we could not wait till they got so, and for the ewer we got the toilet jug out of the spare-room where nobody ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit
... to that ancient and comfortable inn the Trencher, which stands in Main Street, Oxbridge, and Pen with delight and eagerness remarked, for the first time, gownsmen going about, chapel bells clinking (bells in Oxbridge are ringing from morning-tide till even-song)—towers and pinnacles rising calm and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Archbishop of Dublin, having invited several persons of distinction to dine with him, had, amongst a great variety of dishes, a fine leg of mutton and caper sauce; but the doctor, who was not fond of butter, and remarkable for preferring a trencher to a plate, had some of the abovementioned pickle introduced dry for his use; which, as he was mincing, he called aloud to the company to observe him; "I here present you, my lords and gentlemen," said he, "with a sight ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... hand knocks at the ill-hung door, so roughly that it trembles on its hinges, and the instant after a wooden trencher is shoved in through the wide chink by which the cat made her escape; on it are a thin round cake of bread and a shallow earthen saucer containing a little olive-oil; there is no more than might perhaps be contained in half an ordinary egg-shell, but it looks fresh ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... no more, though, with one of his most excellent touches of art, the author has suggested the contrast of youth and age by a single gipsy interview in one of the later chapters. Borrow, like all sensible men, was at no time indifferent to good food and drink, especially good ale; but the trencher plays in Wild Wales a part, the importance of which may perhaps have shocked some of our latter-day delicates, to whom strong beer is a word of loathing, and who wonder how on earth our grandfathers and fathers used to dispose of "black strap." A very different set of readers may be repelled by ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Eustace, in a trance?" said d'Aubricour. "Waken, and carry this trencher of beef to your brother. Best that you should do it," he added in a low voice, taking up a flask of wine, "and save our comrade from at ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of this new chance of helping another. Striding into the kitchen, he laid hands upon the pewter dishes, of whose polish Sally Lawrence was so proud, and handed them to the widow with the remark that "a wooden trencher served better." ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... say—that Mr. Amyas is as good as three to his trencher: but still there's crumbs, Mr. Brimblecombe, crumbs; and waste not want not is my doctrine; so you and I may have a somewhat to stay our ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... as at a Roman repast, were occasionally brought in, and removed, with the dishes on them; sometimes each joint was served up separately, and the fruit, deposited in a plate or trencher, succeeded the meat at the close of the dinner; but in less fashionable circles, particularly of the olden time, fruit was brought in baskets, which stood beside the table. The dishes consisted of fish; meat boiled, roasted, and dressed in various ways; game, poultry, and a profusion of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... the first by Mnesitheus of Athens, in conservation of the honour of Orestes, who had not yet made expiation for the death of his adulterous parents, Aegisthus and Clytemnestra) much idle tippling is furthermore cut off; for, if the full pots should continually stand at the elbow or near the trencher, divers would always be dealing with them, whereas now they drink seldom, and only when necessity urgeth, and so avoid the note of great drinking, or often troubling of the servitors with filling of their bowls. Nevertheless in the noblemen's halls this order is ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... all came the Van Bummels, who inhabit the pleasant borders of the Bronx. These were short, fat men, wearing exceeding large trunk-breeches, and are renowned for feats of the trencher; they were the first inventors of suppawn, or mush and milk.... Lastly came the Knickerbockers, of the great town of Schahticoke, where the folks lay stones upon the houses in windy weather, lest they should be blown away. These derive their name, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... gymnasium, in the council chamber, in all the situations of thought and activity, he tested their abilities. But he particularly considered their behavior at the banquet-table. From first to last they were sumptuously entertained, and their demeanor over the trencher-board and the ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the caraffe of water in Mendoza's hand)—"a Town and Gown row is a novelty to me. The Town has the best of it, clearly, though: the men outnumber the lads. Ha, a good blow! How that tall townsman went down before yonder slim young fellow in the scarlet trencher cap." ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... (that we may take the provinces in their order), were it not for a temperament peculiar to the place, is rather of the hottest to produce those who are properly called good trencher-men. Its utmost point, which other geographers call the Promontory of the Terra Australis, is of the same latitude as the most southerly parts of Castile, and is about forty-two degrees distant from the equator. The inhabitants ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... lamps, we're just in time—spin down the hill, my boy—let me get in as they're at supper, and 'faith they'll want it, after coming off a coach such a night as this, to say nothing of some of them being aldermen in expectancy perhaps, and of course obliged to play trencher-men as often as they can, as a requisite rehearsal for the parts they ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... was a saving woman, took the money, for I heard it rattle in her hand, hung the jars about my shoulders, and gave Martina the meat and corn in a basket. The flat cakes, however, she carried herself on a wooden trencher, because, as she said, she feared lest we should break them and anger the ghosts, who liked their food to be well served. So we started, and presently entered the mouth of that awful valley which, Martina told me, looked as though it had been ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... play'd at forfeits, an' we spun The trencher roun', an' meaede such fun! An' had a geaeme o' dree-ceaerd loo, An' then begun to hunt the shoe. An' all the wold vo'k zitten near, A-chatten roun' the vier pleaece, Did smile in woone another's feaece. An' sheaeke right hands wi' hearty cheer, An' let their left hands spill their beer, ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... with some great force. Captain Hart, being in a slumber, was taken by the shoulder and shaked until he did sit up in his bed, thinking that it had been one of his fellows, when suddenly he was taken on the pate with a trencher, that it made him shrink down into the bed-clothes, and all of them, in both rooms, kept their heads at least within their sheets, so fiercely did three dozen of trenchers fly about the rooms; yet Captain Hart ventured again to peep out to see what was the matter, and what it was that ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... dissolute character of the age is taken into consideration. Besides this, Cyprien, a stout well-favoured young Gascon, who filled the posts of drawer and chamberlain, together with two or three other trencher-scrapers, who served at table, and waited on the guests, were generally sufficient to clear the house of any troublesome roysterers. Thus the reputation of the Three Cranes was unblemished, in spite of ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... Mistris: I have heard That Dames of highest place, nay Queens themselves Disdain not to be serv'd by such as are Of meanest Birth: and I shall be most happie, To be emploi'd when you please to command me Even in the coursest office, as your Page, I can wait on your trencher, fill your wine, Carry your pantofles, and be sometimes bless'd In all humilitie to touch your feet: Or if that you esteem that too much grace, I can run by your Coach: observe your looks, And hope to gain a fortune by my service, With your good favour, ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher |
