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Crab   Listen
verb
Crab  v. t.  
1.
To make sour or morose; to embitter. (Obs.) "Sickness sours or crabs our nature."
2.
To beat with a crabstick. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crab" Quotes from Famous Books



... of Nature that I know of less negotiable than a coconut as the tree presents it. The man who first showed the way into it deserved a place in mythology with Prometheus, Jason and other heroes of the dawn. There is a crab, I know, which lives on coconuts, enjoying the scientific name of Birgus latro, the Burglar; but it seems to be a special invention, as big as a cat and armed with two fearful pairs of pincers in front for rending the outside casings of the fruits, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... custom is in contradiction to the feeding of the body through a tube, and proves that quite contradictory customs can exist simultaneously, without the natives noticing it. Half-way up the volcano sits a monster with two immense shears, like a crab. If no pigs have been sacrificed for the soul by the fifth day, the poor soul is alone and the monster swallows it; but if the sacrifice has been performed, the souls of the sacrificed pigs follow after the human soul, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... replied Mr. Green; "and I'll tell you wot, our principal book-keeper and I have made many calculations on the subject, and being a man of literature like yourself, he gave it as his opinion the last time we talked the matter over, that it would only be avoiding Silly and running into Crab-beds; which I presume means Quod or the Bench. Unless he can have a wife 'made to order,' he says he'll never wed. Besides, the women are such a bothersome encroaching set. I declare I'm so pestered with them that I don't know vich vay to turn. They are always tormenting ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... trips out of the eight, one hundred and thirty miles of sun-baked, crab-holed, practically trackless plains, no sign of human habitation anywhere, cracks that would swallow a man—"hardly enough wood to boil a quart pot," the Fizzer says, and a sun-temperature hovering about 160 degrees ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... them is familiar to horsemen in the south of England under the name of forest-fly; and to some of side-fly, from its running sideways like a crab. It creeps under the tails, and about the groins, of horses, which, at their first coming out of the north, are rendered half frantic by the tickling sensation; while our own breed little ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... shyly away from her own thoughts, pulling restlessly at the dried weed which clung about the surface of the rock. A little brown crab ran out from a crevice, and, terrified by the big human hand which he espied meddling with the clump of weed and threatening to interfere with the liberty of the subject, skedaddled sideways into the safety ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... from his own hyperbolical absurdities. It was not by a little pruning or weeding that France, according to his original proposition, had bettered our native literature—it was by genial incubation, by acts of vital creation. She, upon our crab-tree cudgel of Agincourt, had engrafted her own peaches and apricots—our sterile thorn France had inoculated with roses. English literature was the Eve that, in the shape of a rib, had been abstracted from the side ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... undoubtedly, evolution has won the day. Nevertheless, in religious circles, old time prejudices and slow conservatism, clinging to its creeds, as the hermit crab clings to the cast-off shell of oyster or clam, still resist it. The great body of the Christian laity looks askance on it. And even in progressive America, one of the largest and most liberal of American denominations has ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... the mast, and the slack in the taut rigging could be seen as the craft heaved lazily to and fro on the gentle swell. Madeleine sat by the window; she did not care to go out. Her eye followed the lobster-cutter, which she knew well: it was the Flying Fish, Captain Crab, of Hull. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... wives of former magistrates: The First (wears a cap with bows, her face is wrinkled, her nose sharp, voice hard, carries a prayer-book in her hand): "What was that Madame Firmiani's maiden name?"—The Second (small face red as a crab-apple, gentle voice): "She was a Cadignan, my dear, niece of the old Prince de Cadignan, consequently cousin to the ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac

... in my memory, enough to keep our parson going through six pipes on a Saturday night—to have it as right as could be next day—a lean man with a yellow beard, too thin for a good Catholic (which religion always fattens), came up to me, working sideways, in the manner of a female crab. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... a rich dark purple. His eyes protruded till they resembled those of a crab. His red hair appeared to flame like very fire. His lips twitched and he gasped for breath. Could he believe his ears. "Let the Major carry on as it is getting late!" Let him step into the breach "as it is getting late!" Let ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... gather a spray or two of wild crab-apple blossoms, then went home. She did not see Alden, but stopped to exchange a few words with Madame, then went on up-stairs. The long walk had wearied her, but it had also made her more lovely. After an hour of rest and a cool shower, she was ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed

... the inhabitants of the world" (498. 90). With these people also the first woman was chan.a.e.lewadi (Mother E-lewadi), the ancestress of the present race of natives. She was drowned, while canoeing, and "became a small crab of a description still named after her e.lewadi" ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... [Cuneiform] Twins. [Cuneiform] Crab. [Cuneiform] Lion. [Cuneiform] Virgin. [Cuneiform] Scales. [Cuneiform] Scorpion. [Cuneiform] Bow. [Cuneiform] Capricornus [Cuneiform] ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum

... within. I have him! I have him! Curse your claws! Why do you fix them on me, you crab? You won't pick up the fiend-spawn so easily, I can tell you. Bring the light there, will you? (One runs out for the light.) A trap! a trap! and a stair, down in the wall! The hell-faggot's gone! After ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... bird which the children had captured, beating his wings about violently, and creating a terrible confusion, "a crab or something has caught hold of my legs, and I am being killed—help!—save ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow

... excludes the Finch, because she "grounded opposite an American battery before the engagement commenced," which reads especially well in connection with Capt. Pring's official letter: "Lieut. Hicks, of the Finch, had the mortification to strike on a reef of rocks to the eastward of Crab Island about the middle of the engagement." [Footnote: The italics are mine. The letter is given in full in the "Naval Chronicle."] What James means cannot be imagined; no stretch of language will convert ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... the pack-train went into camp, and Churchill, slinging the grip on his back, started the steep climb for the summit. For the first time, on that precipitous wall, he realized how tired he was. He crept and crawled like a crab, burdened by the weight of his limbs. A distinct and painful effort of will was required each time he lifted a foot. An hallucination came to him that he was shod with lead, like a deep-sea diver, and it was all he could do to resist the desire to reach down and feel the lead. As for Bondell's gripsack, ...
— Lost Face • Jack London

... evening, and an unequal struggle of macassar oil with salt and stubborn locks, yet the artificiality is kept at a minimum. People really do bathe, really do take walks on the beach for the love of the ocean, really do pick up shells and throw them away again, really do go yachting and crab-catching; and if they try city manners in the evening, they are so tired with their honest day's work that it is apt to end in misery. On the hotel piazzas you see beauties that surprise you with exquisite touches of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... Romanovna, you are awfully like your brother, in everything, indeed!" he blurted out suddenly to his own surprise, but remembering at once what he had just before said of her brother, he turned as red as a crab and was overcome with confusion. Avdotya Romanovna couldn't help laughing when ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... May in Ireland! What does it mean? It means coming out of a dark tunnel into blinding sunshine; it means casting off the slough of winter, and gliding with crest erect and fresh habiliments under leafy trees and by the borders of shining seas, the crab-apple blossoms, pink and white, scenting the air over your head, and primroses and violets dappling the turf beneath your feet; it means lambs frisking around their tranquil mothers in the meadows, and ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan

... crab that likes to live in a shell; so if they find one empty, they take possession of it; they are called "hermit crabs." We often used to pick up a shell ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson

... purposes most effectually. The pipe was hauled over a road built to the inlet end, and shot down the mountain side by means of a V-shaped trough of wood. For the lower end, the joints were hauled up the cliff side into place by a crab worked by horse-power. On steep inclinations, the pipe was held firmly in place by wire ropes fastened to iron pins in the solid rock, as shown by the sketch. The covering of earth and stone was 1 foot to 2 feet in depth; with steep slopes, the earth was kept from sliding by rough ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... appetite was poorly met. What hope, with famine thus infested? Necessity, whom history mentions, A famous mother of inventions, The following stratagem suggested: He found upon the water's brink A crab, to which said he, 'My friend, A weighty errand let me send: Go quicker than a wink— Down to the fishes sink, And tell them they are doom'd to die; For, ere eight days have hasten'd by, Its lord will fish this water dry.' The crab, as fast as she could scrabble, Went down, and told the scaly ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... the roving tenant of the desert. It is curious to find in this remote country a custom similar to that of the fiery cross, which in old times summoned the Celtic tribes to arms. On the alarm of invasion, a branch, torn by the priest from the nebek, (a tree bearing a fruit like the Siberian crab,) is lighted in the fire, the flame is then quenched in the blood of a newly slaughtered ram. It is then sent forth with a messenger to the nearest clan. Thus, great numbers are assembled with remarkable promptitude. In the invasion under Ibrahim Pasha, sixteen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... Denderah, in Egypt, a stone covered with uncouth astronomical, astrological, and hieroglyphic figures, which they insisted was a representation of the sky at the time the temple was built; and finding a division made between the signs of the crab and the lion, and marks for the sun and moon there, they took it into their heads that the sun must have entered the Zodiac at that spot, on the year this Zodiac was made; and, calculating back, found that must be at least seventeen thousand years ago. Hundreds ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... and more furious. At the noise, a large Crab crawled slowly out of the water and, with a voice that sounded like a trombone suffering from a cold, ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini

... are our old friends the hermit-crabs. As a child, I think I believed that these curious creatures killed the original inhabitants of the shells which they take for their own dwelling. It is pleasant to know that this is not the case. The hermit-crab is in fact a sea-gentleman, who is so unfortunate as to be born naked, and quite unable to make his own clothes, and who goes nervously about the world, trying on other people's cast-off coats till he finds ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... he continued, "catch their prey by this highly active poison secreted by the so-called salivary glands. Even a little bit will kill a crab easily." ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... that Flore Brazier should be queen over Jean-Jacques Rouget and his home. She protested against the immorality of the connection, and took a tone of injured virtue; the fact being that she was humiliated by having, at her age, a crab-girl for a mistress,—a child who had been brought barefoot into the house. Fanchette owned three hundred francs a year in the Funds, for the doctor made her invest her savings in that way, and he had left her as much more in an annuity; she could therefore live at her ease without the necessity ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits before this book is published. Here again I find interesting records of imitative dancing. One dance imitates the swimming movements of the large lizard (Varanus), another is an imitation of the movements of a crab, another imitates those of a pigeon, and another those of a pelican. At a dance which I witnessed in the Roro village of Seria a party from Delena danced the "Cassowary" dance; and Father Egedi says it is certainly so called because its movements are in some ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... The girls were much amused at my delight, and I may say terror also, as, looking down into the clear blue water, I saw various small fishes darting in and out among the stones; and even Polly forgot her angry step-mother at home, and screamed with laughter at my sudden fright when a small crab seized hold of my great toe, and hung tenaciously to it, even when I was far up on the ...
— Bluff Crag - or, A Good Word Costs Nothing • Mrs. George Cupples

... canonic imitation to a much finer point than had been reached before his time. He is generally credited with having composed a motette in thirty-six parts having almost all the devices later known as augmentation, diminution, inversion, retrograde, crab, etc. The thirty-six parts here mentioned, however, were not fully written out. Only six parts were written, the remainder being developed from these on the principle of a round, the successive choruses following each other at certain intervals, according to Latin directions ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... the poisonous yew, Beneath whose ill shade no plant ever grew. Some say he's a birch, a thought very odd; For none but a dunce would come under his rod. But I'll tell the secret; and pray do not blab: He is an old stump, cut out of a crab; And England has put this crab to a hard use, To cudgel our bones, and for drink give us ver-juice; And therefore his witnesses justly may boast, That none are more properly knights of the post, But here Mr. Wood complains that we mock, Though ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... corn and fodder. The waste of those articles in the South, through shameful carelessness and neglect, is immense; as food for stock, they are most expensive articles. Oats, millet, peas (vine and all), broadcast corn, Bermuda and crab-grass hay, are all much cheaper and equally good. Any one of these crops, fed whilst green—the oats and millet as they begin to shoot, the peas to blossom, and the corn when tasseling—with a feed of dry oats, corn, or corn-chop at noon, will keep a plow-team in fine order all the season. ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... might have brewed their unholy decoctions, or such as the dreadful giants that formed the nightmare of my childhood might have used in preparing those Brobdignagian repasts among the ingredients of which a plump child held the same rank as a crab in ours. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... Michaelmas time, or a little before, Half an apple goes to the core; At Christmas time, or a little after, A crab in the hedge, and ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... bread yesterday. Then generally a walk to meet people at different villages, and talk to them, trying to get them to ask me questions, and I try to question them. Then at 6 P.M., a tea-ation, viz., yam and coffee, and perhaps a crab or two, or a bit of bacon, or some good thing or other. But I forgot! this morning we ate a bit of our first full-grown and fully ripe Mota pine-apple (I brought some two years ago) as large and fine as any specimens I remember in hot-houses. If you mention all these luxuries, we shall have no more ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and held it fast. But the snake wrapped itself around one of his feet. Then he began with his sword to cut off its heads. But this looked like an endless task, for no sooner had he cut off one head than two grew in its place. At the same time an enormous crab came to the help of the hydra and began biting the hero's foot. Killing this with his club, he called to ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... dressed in black and drab, With horns and visage grim, Preceded the meandering crab; The ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... 'ee to-all?" he asked, smashing a spider-crab and picking it out piecemeal from the net. "Pretty fair catch to-day, id'n-a? spite of all the weed; an' no harm done by these varmints that a man can't ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... food was cooked for poor Haensel, but Grethel got nothing but crab-shells. Every morning the woman crept to the little stable, and cried, "Haensel, stretch out thy finger that I may feel if thou wilt soon be fat." Haensel, however, stretched out a little bone to her, and the old woman, who had dim eyes, could not see it, and thought it was Haensel's finger, and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... to pitch upon me here in broad daylight, so I paid them little heed at the moment. I found old Crab Bolster and his skiff to lighter my cargo across the inlet, and when the boy came down from the store with the barrow, Crab and I loaded the provisions and spring water into his boat. Paul and his companions looked on, whispering ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... Owenia acidula, F. v. M.; called also Native Nectarine and Native Quince. Petalostigma quadriloculare, F. v. M.; called also Crab-tree, Native Quince, Quinine-tree (q.v.) ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... crustaceans and mollusks, gathered in the river and picked up in the sementeras by the women, are cooked and eaten. All these are considered similar to fish and are eaten similarly. Among these is a bright-red crab called "agkama."[30] This is boiled and all eaten except part of the back shell and the hard "pinchers." A shrimp-like crustacean obtained in the irrigated sementeras is also boiled and eaten entire. A few mollusks are eaten after being ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... putrefying entrails. These, after the manner of their producers, inhabit the fields, delight in toil, and labour in hope. The warlike steed,[40] buried in the ground, is the source of the hornet. If you take off the bending claws from the crab of the sea-shore, {and} bury the rest in the earth, a scorpion will come forth from the part {so} buried, and will threaten with ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... "The Dove," or "The Crab," as the collegians called it when it skidded sideways, perched precariously that well-known, beloved youth, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. He clutched his pestersome banjo and was vigorously strumming the strings and apparently howling a ballad, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... play ends, and I have to ask them out to supper. Then I am always greatly alarmed, for you never can tell what will happen, sir, with two ladies at supper and only twenty dollars in your pocket, and both ladies fond of game and crab-meat. It's really very trying. I sit and tremble as I watch them, and go home with only a feeble remnant of my salary, and next day I have ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller

... was floating about, and just beyond lay a star-fish clinging to a bunch of seaweed. She found other treasures scattered about by the largess of the tide—tiny spiral shells, stones of all colors, and a horseshoe crab, besides seaweed with pretty little pods which popped delightfully when she squeezed them with her fingers. Then she heard the cries of gulls overhead and watched them as they wheeled and circled between her and the sky. When they flew out to sea she ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... when it is sense; but please don't treat me like a heroine. I am sure there is quite enough in the world that is worrying, without picking shades of manner to pieces. It is the sure way to make an old crab of me, and so I am going off. Only, one parting piece of advice, Miss Bracy—read 'Frank Fairlegh', and put everybody out of ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... himself together a bit, wiping the gouts of blood from his face and spitting out the snags of his broken teeth. He drew a knife from inside his shirt, a long, curving blade, and sidled, like a crab, toward Lund, murder in his piggy, bloodshot eyes, waiting for a chance to slip in and stab Lund in the back, calling to a comrade to ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... He caught a crab that landed him in a graceful parabola in the bow, where he lay biting at the air to recover his breath. Then his boat's nose plowed into the sandy neck of land; he clambered to his feet, jumped out, and ran headlong into ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... afforded by the apple and the melon, and some account of these will be given as illustrating the effects of slight variations accumulated by selection. All our apples are known to have descended from the common crab of our hedges (Pyrus malus), and from this at least a thousand distinct varieties have been produced. These differ greatly in the size and form of the fruit, in its colour, and in the texture of the skin. They further ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... affirmed Father Roland, cheerfully. "That's one reason for the peculiar psychological value of beans. They begin to tell you when you're getting weaned away from a lobster palate and a stuffed-crab stomach, and when you get to the point where you want 'em on your regular bill of fare you'll find more fun in chopping down a tree than in going to a grand opera. But the beans must be cooked right, David—browned like a nut, juicy ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... and cuffes. A lowse that was anie Gentlemans companion they thought scorne of, their nere bitten beardes must in a deuils name bedewdeuerie daiewith rosewater, hogges could haue nere a hayre on theyr backes, for making them rubbing brushes to rouse theyr crab lice. They woulde in no wise permitte that the moates in the Sunnebeames should be full mouthde beholders of theyr cleane phinikde appareil, theyr shooes shined as bright as a slike-stone, theyr handes troubled and soyled more water with washing, than the camell ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash

... neighbouring hill. Heracles now rushed forward and endeavoured to crush her heads by means of well-directed blows from his tremendous club; but no sooner was one head destroyed than it was immediately replaced by two others. He next seized the monster in his powerful grasp; but at this juncture a giant crab came to the assistance of the Hydra and commenced biting the feet of her assailant. Heracles destroyed this new adversary with his club, and now called upon his nephew to come to his aid. At his command Iolaus set fire to the neighbouring trees, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... from the best and most principallest fruit you can taste, for although the kernell doe bring forth no other tree but the plaine stocke vpon which the fruit was grafted, as thus, if the graft were put into a Crab-stocke the kernell brings forth onely a Crab-tree, yet when you taste a perfect and delicate Apple, be assured both the stocke and graft were of the best choise, and so such kernells of best reckoning. When you haue then ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham

... of the catbird wake I' the boughs o' the gnarled wild-crab, Or there where the snows of the dogwood shake, That the silvery sunbeams stab: And it seems to me that a magic lies In the crystal sweet of its notes, That a myriad blossoms open their eyes As ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

... comfortable. The licking ended, the foster rose, and stepped off the bed to stretch her limbs. Finn rolled rollickingly over on his back, and then staggered up and on to his absurdly large and spreading feet. Then he backed sideways among the straw, like a crab. Then he tried to rub one eye with one of his mushroom-like fore-feet, and, failing abjectly in that, fell plump on his nose. Staggering to his feet again, Finn turned his face once toward the broad sunbeam that divided the ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... cried Peter, with his hearty laugh, "she will always hear a step, or the wing of a sea-swallow flying overhead, or perhaps a crab crawling in the bay, if Peter is not at home to ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall

... the same sessions. We had fulminated together within the walls of the Juridical Society on legal topics which might have broken the heart of Erskine, and rewarded ourselves diligently thereafter with the usual relaxations of a crab and a comfortable tumbler. We had aggravated the same grinder with our deplorable exposition of the Pandects, and finally assumed, on the same day, the full-blown honours of the Advocate's wig and gown. Nor did our fraternal parallel end there: for although we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... foreign product, imported from a neighbouring country famous for its barrenness, counted the most; and the fruit faction which chiefly frightened the Vraibleusian Government was an acid set, who crammed themselves with Crab-apples. ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... Carriere[492] in the cherry. The calyx in these fruits was completely superior, the succulent portion of the fruit being made up of the dilated extremity of the peduncle, and possibly in part of the base of the calyx. The general appearance was thus that of a crab-apple. There was no stone in the interior, but simply a ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... through the liquid waste. Some are rapidly borne along On the mailed shrimp or the prickly prong, Some on the blood-red leeches glide, Some on the stony star-fish ride, Some on the back of the lancing squab, Some on the sideling soldier-crab, And some on the jellied quarl that flings At once a thousand streamy stings. They cut the wave with the living oar, And hurry on to the moonlight shore, To guard their realms and chase away The ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... of the Caribbean race, although it assuredly is one of the Caribbean Islands. If you are unfortunate enough to speak in favour of any of the other West Indian Islands in their presence, they immediately exclaim, "Me tankey my God dat I needer Crab nor Creole, but true Barbadeen born." They drawl out their words most horribly. I happened one day to hear two of the dignity ladies of Bridge Town, as black as ink, returning the salutations of the morning. The first began by drawling out, "How you do dis maurning. I hope you berry well, ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman

... not fly off the rocks till you are two or three feet away. Several gannets were caught in the men's hands. All the fish which the biologist collected to-day can travel quite fast on land. When the Discovery was here Wilson saw a fish come out of the sea, seize a land crab about eighteen inches away and take it back ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... from that part which is call'd the Beard, and also particular care must be taken to examine whether there are any Crabs in them, for they are very poisonous, and as they lie in the Mouth of the Mussel, may easily be discover'd; they are commonly as large as a Pea, and of the shape of a Sea-Crab, but are properly Sea-Spiders: the Mussels however where you find them, are not unwholesome, and it is only the eating of this little Animal, which has been the occasion of People's swelling after they had eaten Mussels, but the goodness of the Fish is well enough worth the ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... would suit me better to come for a visit when the spring of next year is a little advanced, and if you renew your hospitable proposition then, I shall probably be glad to accept it; though I have now been a hermit so long, that the thought affects me somewhat as it would to invite a lobster or a crab to step out of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... species seldom larger than two inches and a half across the shell, to a maximum of three inches; these are in season until the middle of June, after which they become light and empty. When alive they are a brownish green, but when boiled they are the colour of the ordinary crab, and are exceedingly full in flesh, and delicate. The shell is extremely hard compared to the small size, and the claws must be broken by a sharp blow with the back of a knife ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... Iswara, put in the waters in a chest, 428-u. Cancer and Capricorn, the Gates of the Sun were the tropical points of, 437-l. Cancer includes the stars Aselli, little asses, device of Issachar, 461-l. Cancer, the Crab, named because Sun began to retreat southward, 440-u. Candelabrum, golden, ID Temple; seven lamps, 10-m. Candidate first brought to the door in a condition of blindness, 639-u. Candidate for baptism among Gnostics repeats formula, 561-l. Candidate in India listened ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... to the other side of the harbour, where, as he walked along a sandy beach, he found innumerable fruits, and many of them such as no plants which he had discovered in this country produced: Among others were some cocoa-nuts, which Tupia said had been opened by a kind of crab, which from his description we judged to be the same that the Dutch call Beurs Krabbe, and which we had not seen in these seas. All the vegetable substances which he found in this place were encrusted with marine productions, and covered ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... crawled sluggishly away to the place from which it had been taken. Of bird-life there is a large representation, both native and migratory. Among them are some fifty species of "waders." In some parts of the island, the very unpleasant land-crab, about the size of a soup-plate, seems to exist in millions, although thousands is probably nearer the actual. The American soldiers made their acquaintance in large numbers at the time of the Santiago campaign. They are not a proper article of food. They have a salt-water ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... her bath that morning. If he should have the good fortune to see her again, he would show her a place far fitter for the purpose—a perfect arbour of rocks, utterly secluded, with a floor of deep sand, and without a hole for crab or lobster. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... Greg," said Jerry; "you don't understand. There's more in this than meets the eye, Chris. I didn't get on to this crab salad business when ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price

... is witty, elfin, very engaging. He is a seaside Pan instead of the woodland dweller usually portrayed. His foot is - rather recklessly one would think, were this not a magical, superhuman being - placed heel-down upon the back of a great crab. A pretty pedestal base, with sea-shell decoration, supports the baby god. This base, by the way, Miss Scudder attributes as the work of Laurence Grant White. Pan is enjoying the music of the two long pipes he blows-playing one ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry

... "You old crab, you," chirped Bill, cheerfully, when Courtland had gone out. "Can't you see you've got to humor him? He needs homeopathic treatment. 'Like cures like.' Give him a good dose of religion and he'll get good and tired of it. Church won't hurt him any, just ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... mean and dirty town of Stratford-on-Avon. There is a tradition that Shakespeare as a very young man was one of the Stratfordians selected to drink against "the Bidford topers," and with his defeated friends lay all night senseless under a crab tree, that was long ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... what Luigi told me. She was born, he said, in the shipyards, and at the moment lived in the top of the rookery nearest the bridge. She had an only sister, who was ten years older; the mother was the wife of a crab fisherman who had died some years before; the two children and mother were cared for by a brother crab fisherman. His son Francesco, if report were true, was to marry the sister when she turned fifteen, Francesco being four years older. This last reference to Francesco ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... to be faced at last. There is a demand for them occasionally, and people won't put up with that excellent one taken under the crab-apple tree any longer. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various

... more brush. Almost hidden in this was a tumbled-down shack, hardly bigger than a closet, in which boys who had been wont to dive from the old bridge had donned their bathing suits. It had been thrown together as a storage place for fishing tackle and crab nets and these latter, rotten and gray with age still hung in the dank, ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... "You see, dad told me I could pick up some pet animals while I was in Texas, and I got quite a collection while dad was in the hospital. Here is one in my pocket," and the boy took a horned toad out of his pocket, about as big as a soft-shelled crab, and put it ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck

... good gravy, a lobster or crab, which you can get, dress and put it into your gravy with a little butter, juice of lemon, shred lemon-peel, and a few shrimps if you have them; thicken it with a little flour, and put it into your bason, set the oysters on one side of the ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon

... fishing improved, and with the little fiddler or soldier crab we caught fish of three and four pounds instead of those of one and two pounds that had a month ago employed us. And then the striped bass, the Labrus lineatus, the king of saltwater game fish— what splendid ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston

... pecaries[12] quit their watery dens and remain on the branches. Aquatic birds spring upon the trees to avoid the cayman[13] and serpents that infest the temporary lakes. The fish forsake their ordinary food, and live on the fruits and berries of the shrubs through which they swim,—the crab is found upon trees, and the oyster multiplies in the forest. The Indian, who surveys from his canoe this new chaos, this confusion of earth and sea, suspends his hammock on an elevated branch, and sleeps without fear in the midst of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... slime, The dull green ooze of the receding deep, Is with the dashing of the spring-tide foam That drives the sailor shipless to his home— Are they to those that were; and thus they creep, Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets. Oh, agony! that centuries should reap No mellower harvest! Thirteen hundred years Of wealth and glory turned to dust and tears; And every monument the stranger ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... rorquals and killers. On the pack, sea-leopards and crab-eater seals sometimes appeared. At one time as many as a hundred would be counted from the bridge and at other moments not a single one could be sighted. They were not alarmed, unless the ship happened to bump against ice-masses ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... with brown skin and rings in his ears. The level rays of the sun, just rising over Venice, shone full upon his weather-beaten face and astonished eyes, as he gazed at the apparition before him. Just then Beppo's head appeared beside his sister's, and the man, overcome with astonishment, "caught a crab" and splashed both children with water before he ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... the devil and his wife flew away to with my hat? Them guys is always swiping it. Picture, mister? Why, I didn't see it no more 'n—Say you, Pink Eye, say you crab-footed usher, did you swipe my hat? Ain't he the cut-up, mister! Ain't both them ushers the jingling sheepsheads, though! Being cute and hiding my hat in the box-office. Picture? I don't get no chance to see any of 'em. Funny, ain't it?—me ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... Crab said to his Son, "Why do you not walk straight forward? Your sidelong gait is ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... had to support the load by tying up branches to keep them off the ground. This tough winter caused almost every variety of apple tree to be barren, such as Wealthy, Northwestern Greening, Whitney Crab, Haralson and Malinda. Only two varieties, Lowland Raspberry and Hibernal, bore fair crops. Last winter killed outright (to the ground) most of my Thomas black walnuts, some of which were more than 25 years old, and damaged severely such ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... varieties of European type: Livonian and Spanish, Graeco-Italian and miscellaneous German, English aristocratic and English plebeian. Here certainly was a striking admission of human equality. The white bejewelled fingers of an English countess were very near touching a bony, yellow, crab-like hand stretching a bared wrist to clutch a heap of coin—a hand easy to sort with the square, gaunt face, deep-set eyes, grizzled eyebrows, and ill-combed scanty hair which seemed a slight metamorphosis of the vulture. And where else would ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... on her shoulder. "I can't, either," he said, and laughed a little, as if incapable of understanding the reason. "I think late eating doesn't agree with me. It must have been the deviled crab." ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... to be seen, As he sprawled like a crab on its back; While the waterman cried—"Ho! my lads! I think you'd ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... quickly hoisted in the crane shackle,—Thomas Jefferson sweating manfully at the crab crank,—clamped on the axle of a pair of wagon wheels, cleaned, swabbed, loaded with quarry blasting powder and pieces of broken iron to serve for grape, and trundled out on the pike at the ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... person of Hyde, Who walked by the shore with his bride, Till a Crab who came near fill'd their bosoms with fear, And they said, "Would ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... with an affection found in no one else nowadays. In these dingy homes they live and rear their hideous little progeny: for in the cold light of a microscope these tiny brown book-dwellers are not beautiful; they are flat, crab-like, goggle-eyed, hairy; and they zigzag across the page on their ugly crooked legs in a sprawling, drunken fashion. They do not eat the books; they live apparently on air; yet if you crush them between the pages they leave a stain ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... approve—mostly Guardsmen; also friends of my own—medical students, and one or two fellow-chemists, who were serious, and pleased my father. We often had a capital time: chemical experiments and explosions, and fearful stinks, and poisoned waters of enchanting hue; also oysters, lobsters, dressed crab for lunch—and my Burgundy was good, I promise ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... are occupied by a force of rebel Tennesseeans, under the command of Zollicoffer. Thomas occupies the position at London, in front of two roads which lead to the fertile part of Kentucky, the one by Richmond, and the other by Crab Orchard, with his reserve at Camp Dick Robinson, eight miles south of the Kentucky River. His provisions and stores go by railroad from Cincinnati to Nicholasville, and thence in wagons to his several regiments. He ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... towards the tail of the Whale. The Censer is under the Scorpion's sting. The fore parts of the Centaur are next to the Balance and the Scorpion, and he holds in his hands the figure which astronomers call the Beast. Beneath the Virgin, Lion, and Crab is the twisted girdle formed by the Snake, extending over a whole line of stars, his snout raised near the Crab, supporting the Bowl with the middle of his body near the Lion, and bringing his tail, on which is the Raven, under and near ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius

... fish that swims—better even than the pompano of the Gulf—and when you say that you are saying about all there is to be said for a fish. And the big crabs of the Pacific side are the hereditary princes of the crab family. They look like spread-eagles; and properly prepared they taste like Heaven. I often wonder what the crabsters buy one-half so precious as the stuff they sell—which is a quotation from Omar, ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... slandering, and here again, to paraphrase the Irishman, too much heat had produced the coldness already referred to. Sanders scoffed at the idea of Natzie's infatuation being sufficient ground for family ostracism. "If there is a man alive who owes more than Wren does to Blakely, I'm a crab," said he, "and as soon as he's well enough to listen to straight talk he'll get it from me." "If there's a girl in America as heartless as Angela Wren," said Mrs. Sanders, "I hope I never shall have to meet her." But then ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King

... the Bull Gemini the Twins Cancer the Crab Leo the Lion Virgo the Virgin Libra the Balance Scorpio the Scorpion Sagittarius the Archer Capricornus the Goat Aquarius ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard

... still kept his back turned to her, but began sidling slowly toward the gate, with a clumsy, crab-like motion. "I'm a poor feller, lady!" he whined, in the same disagreeable tone. "I ain't had nothin' to eat for a week, and I've got ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards

... for it was not still like the others, but went stopping and starting and scuttling like a crab over the grass—sometimes upright like a man and sometimes on all fours like a beast. At last it stood up and ran from tree to tree in a swaying, moving zigzag. I could see then that it was a man, but for the life of me I could not remember ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... comed oonto it Id kit indo his vay, Und tossed him mit his mädchen Right indo Laufer's shleigh; Hans crab de reins like blitze', Und go ahet like sin: "Adjé, mein lieber Fritze![89] Dis ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland

... some eight or ten miles by the log, it came on a dead calm, and there we lay, rolling and tumbling about, as the master said, like a crab in a saucepan, without being able to help ourselves. At length it cleared up a little in the north-west, and a line of whitish sky was seen under the copper. The line increased in size and blueness, till our topsails ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... pastures and the woods bore exactly the same aspect, presented the same play of light and shade as on that afternoon of the preceding year, when he had met Reine in the Ronces woods, a few days before the arrival of Julien. The same bright yet tender tint reddened the crab-apple and the wild-cherry; the tomtits and the robins chirped as before, among the bushes, and, as in the previous year, one heard the sound of the beechnuts and acorns dropping on the rocky paths. Autumn went through her tranquil rites and familiar operations, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... they have finished," said the younger man; and Joseph having shouldered the ladder and gone off with it in his own crab-like way, the two stood together until the musicians in the garden had finished the theme upon ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... time was so close to the Lackawanna that he called her Phoebe Snow. The St. Paul asked for him three times in one afternoon, and the Rock Island, chancing to ring up while he was busy, threatened to hang crepe on the round-house if he were not summoned immediately to enter an order for a manhole crab. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... dissuadeth thee from a new-found novelty—the wanton misuse, or rather the misuseful wantonness, of the Indian herb. It is a blind goose that knoweth not a fox from a fern-bush, and a strange temerity that mistaketh smoke for provender. The sow, when she is sick, eateth the sea-crab and is immediately recovered: why, then, should man, being whole and sound, haste to that which maketh many sick? The lobster flieth not in the air, nor doth the salamander wanton in the water; wherefore, then, will man betake him for nourishment or solace to the fire? Vesuvius bringeth not forth ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang

... them were below size, gnarled, cracked or undeveloped and abnormal. Most all of them had rough blotches or rings about the calix or around the body. Malformed apples were picked not larger than a crab, with rough, cracked, leather-like skin, which looked more like a black ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... said the man, "we did but stop at the sign of the 'Crab' the drinking of a pottle, and to bathe Jack's foot near there, and we have never been able to catch them up again! How far off ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... near his pursuers were, he threw a glance over his shoulder. This proved fatal to his hopes, for his foot caught in a tangle of crab-grass and down he came headlong. Over and over he rolled; and then for some seconds he lay still, a little dazed by his fall, unable to move. The next minute he found himself in the ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler

... Betchel's Crab, which grows to be of medium size, is one of the loveliest things imaginable when in bloom. Its flowers, which are double, are of a delicate pink, with a most ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... America. The fruit grows not on the branches singly like those in America, but in strings and clusters, 40 or 50 in a cluster, about the body and great branches of the tree, from the very root up to the top. These figs are about the bigness of a crab-apple, of a greenish colour, and full of small white seeds; they smell pretty well, but have no juice or taste; ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... I offered him the needle, and as he pierced the insect before fixing it on the cork, Sir Thomas, until then impassive, got up, and, drawing near a bandbox, he began to examine the spider crab of Guiana with a feeling of horror which was strikingly portrayed on his fat ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... fish with a crab in equal parts of hot water and cider, seasoning with minced garlic, parsley, and thyme, a bay-leaf, and a clove. Cook for half an hour and thicken with a tablespoonful each of butter and flour cooked together. Add the yolks of two eggs beaten with a little cold water, and salt, pepper, and ...
— How to Cook Fish • Olive Green

... crab bled chip shot bump grab fled ship blot lump drab sled whip spot pump slab sped slip plot jump stab then drip trot hump brag bent spit clog bulk cram best crib frog just clan hemp gift plod drug clad vest king stop shut dash ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... of the stuff brushed ship side. One of the boys cried, "Ho, there is a crab!" It sat indeed on a criss-cross of broken reeds, and it seemed to stare at us solemnly. "Do not all see that it came from land, and land ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... (in plenty of water), and drain 2 lbs. of crab-shells without bruising them. Pare and core some well shaped apples. When these are well heated, add the spinach. Cut into neat slices a dish of lamb's fry, and fry it a nice brown in the bacon liquor. Boil all together till the syrup is reduced to half the quantity, then lay the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various

... the illustrations that have been adduced of the insensibility of the lower organisms, none perhaps is more extraordinary than this: "A crab will continue to eat, and apparently relish, a smaller crab while being itself slowly devoured by a larger one!"—(Transactions of Victoria ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson

... the direct gift of God to man in fully-developed state. Other fruits of the earth are given to man in a wild state, and he must improve them by care and cultivation, till the wild vine is turned into the rich wine-producing plant of the vineyard, and the sour crab into the delicious apple. It is not the case with corn. No one, says a writer, whose thoughts I am following, has ever discovered wild corn. Ages ago, when the Pharaohs reigned in Egypt, and the Pyramids were a'building, men sowed just the same corn that you sow to-day. Corns of wheat ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... costly meal. That first bite must have been a big one. Its taste is still in the mouth of the race. If that fruit were an apple it must have been a crab. There has been a bad case of indigestion ever since. If you think there were no crab-apples in Eden, then the touch of those thickening lips must have soured it in the eating—man's teeth are still on edge. The fruit became tough in the chewing. It's not digested yet. ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... of mussel, winkle, and shore-crab shells, and the backbone of what had been a stranded fish, close to the mouth of the hole, showed the rat's account-book to date; but there was a line to be drawn even in this trade. That dawn—if you could call the gray dark of a snowstorm ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... the common good of mankind, why am not I of right the alpha, or first, of all the gods? who being but one, yet bestow all things on all men. For first, what is more sweet or more precious than life? And yet from whom can it more properly be said to come than from me? For neither the crab-favoured Pallas' spear nor the cloud-gathering Jupiter's shield either beget or propagate mankind; but even he himself, the father of gods and king of men at whose very beck the heavens shake, must lay by his forked thunder and those ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus



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