Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'



Kitten   Listen
verb
Kitten  v. t. & v. i.  (past & past part. kittened; pres. part. kittening)  To bring forth young, as a cat; to bring forth, as kittens.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Kitten" Quotes from Famous Books



... to live and to grow rich. I want to drive my carriage and to dice in hells and see the ring, I do. Is this a life that I lived? I want to be a rake, d'ye understand? I want to know what things are like. I don't want to die like a blind kitten, and me seventy-six." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Alf rushed in, announcing with breathless haste that "Kitten had a calf." Kitten was a fawn-colored Alderney, the favorite of the barnyard, and so gentle that even Johnnie did not fear to rub her rough nose, scratch her between her horns, or bring her wisps of grass when she was tied ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... horse for you. Gentle as a kitten and as knowin' as a fox. Drive him with one hand—left hand." The old man laughed till his long, faded beard flapped up and down and quivered with the stress of his enjoyment of his joke. He ended by hitching a vicious-looking sorrel to a gay, duck-bellied cutter, saying, ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... little observations are illogical. In the first place, self control is not a proof of dependability; in the second place, Dale has no more self control than a kitten in a fit; and in the third place, people are not born with self control. Is there anything else you'd like ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... want him for: you want him to hurt some way. You wrung my black kitten's neck, and now you want to kill my squirrel. You are a bad, wicked boy, and I ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... come home with mamma, little Hans?" she asked, tearfully. "The kitten misses you very much; it has been mewing for ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... little 3-room house, approachable only on foot, was situated on top of a hill. Around the clean-swept yard, petunias, verbena, and other flowers were supplemented by a large patch of old-fashioned ribbon grass. A little black and white kitten was frisking about and a big red hen lazily scratched under a big shade tree in search of food for her brood. Julia's daughter, who was washing "white people's clothes" around the side of the house, invited us into the living room where ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... was born on June 18, 1803. Southey's little girl was Edith, born in September of the preceding year. It was Southey who made the charming remark that no house was complete unless it had in it a child rising six years, and a kitten rising ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... the T Down boys yearnin' to bust into this ruckus," Harlan said as he stood near Linton's horse as Linton grinned down at him; "but there'll be some. Put it right up to them that it ain't goin' to be no pussy-kitten job, an' that it's likely some of them won't ever see the T Down again. But to offset that, you can tell 'em that if we make good, the Rancho Seco will owe them a heap—an' they'll get ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... question mark, or their own names, if their names were such as could be pictured. There can be no objection to one's appropriation of such an emblem if one fancies it. But Lilly, Belle, Dolly and Kitten are Lillian, Isabel, Dorothy and Katherine in these days, and appropriate ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... kitten," said the story-teller decidedly. "A little white kitten. She was standing right near a big puddle of water. Now, what else do you think ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... Now there is only one thing left for us to do in order to get them here quickly. You and I must start around the island in opposite directions, because if we went together we might follow them round and round like a kitten chasing its tail. If you meet them, bring them back here, and I will do the same. If you don't meet them, keep on until you are half-way down the other side of the island, or exactly opposite this point; then strike directly into the timber, and so make a short-cut ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe

... Owen County boys are as brave as a warrior; single-handed and alone, they are as cowardly as a sick kitten. ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... both young themselves, and always took part in their children's joys and sorrows, for there were sorrows sometimes. Think of poor little Freddie getting shut up all alone in a big store with only a little black kitten, "Snoop," to keep him from being scared to death; that was told of in the first book, for Freddie went shopping one day with his mamma, and wandered off a little bit. Presently he found himself in the basement of the ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope

... harrowed by nightmare, and next morning I gladly left the house; and, piloted by my landlord across the billowy white ocean of the moor, I reached the Grange benumbed with cold and as feeble as a kitten from fatigue. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... old woman to help me, for he doesn't like me to dirty my hands with cooking. For the past month, too, he has been making a little money, and he gives me three francs every evening that I put into a money-box. Only he will never let me out except to come here—and he calls me his little kitten! Mamma never called me anything but ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... turnip solemnly points to 10-1/2, G.F.F.F.S. puts her number eights on the mantel, looks reflectively at a sore-eyed kitten, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various

... kitten, my kitten, And hey my kitten, my deary, Such a sweet pet as this Was neither ...
— Traditional Nursery Songs of England - With Pictures by Eminent Modern Artists • Various

... joyfully down that foul alley to the Rhine with other boys; and they easily found a leaf-strewn stretch of the sluggish Dussel, in the Public Garden, where his playmate, the little Wilhelm, lost his life and saved the kitten's. They were not so sure of the avenue through which the poet saw the Emperor Napoleon come riding on his small white horse when he took possession of the Elector's dominions. But if it was that where the statue of the Kaiser Wilhelm I. comes riding on a horse led by two Victories, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... testifying to the peaceful state of the district. He could see a cheerful sitting-room, gay with flowers and chintzes, the light of a shaded lamp falling on Louise Eden's fair head, bent over a heavy volume on the table, an intrusive white kitten disputing her attention with it. He drew back, with a sudden sense of shame at having ventured so far, and hurried homewards to dream of the fair vision ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various

... very young thirteen—pretty and mindless as a Persian kitten—but developing rapidly a coquettish instinct for the value of a red ribbon in her dark curls, and the set of a bracelet on her plump arm. Beside her curves and curls and pretty frilled frocks, Dorothea, in her straight, blue ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... takes to tell the story the carrier returned, bringing a receipt for the mail that had been sent, and a pretty little kitten which arrived breathless from its ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 51, October 28, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... interfering. 'You just do as you are told, or I'll whistle for a policeman and give you into custody, and then everything about you will come out—or, by Jove, I'll take you up and drop you into that pond as if you were a blind kitten! Answer the lady at once, ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... area-bell for a dog that was waiting at another man's gate (an office which the charitable are often called upon to perform in the streets of London for dogs and cats alike), and then to pick up a bony black kitten and take it on his arm to his own door, where he delivered it to a servant, with injunctions to feed and comfort the starveling. From which facts it may be seen that Mr. Caspar Brooke, in spite of all his faults, was a lover of dumb animals, and of children, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... suburbs, the little house that had vines climbing about the doors and windows, and in front, between street and house, a yard-wide garden. Summer-houses of straw, arbors fit for a mouse, paths for a kitten. Everything in the best of order! Peas and beans, roses and lavender, a mouthful of grass, three ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... his conversation, a few weeks before, with Eltje Vanderveer, the railroad president's only daughter. She was a few months younger than Rod, and ever since he had jumped into the river to save her pet kitten from drowning, they had ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... all around her anchor among the silver-tipped waves. Backing with a start of affected surprise at the sight of the strained cable, she pounced on it like a kitten, while the spray of her descent burst through the hawse-holes with the report of a gun. Shaking her head, she would say: "Well, I'm sorry I can't stay any longer with you. I'm going North," and would sidle off, halting suddenly ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... long and rather high- pitched discussion with the waitress concerning alleged defects in an altogether blameless muffin, she made loud and plaintive inquiries about the tube service to some impossibly remote suburb, she talked with brilliant insincerity to the tea-shop kitten, and as a last resort she upset a milk-jug and swore at it daintily. Altogether she attracted a good deal of attention, but never for a moment did she attract the attention of the boy with the beautifully-brushed hair, who was some thousands of miles away in the ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... there was a large dog-faced ape (chacma) named "Joe," whose friend and companion was a little white and black kitten. "Joe" called no living thing, except the cat, his friend; he had many acquaintances, but only one friend. He would tolerate me, and even invented a name for me, so the keeper declared, yet his friendship never got beyond tolerance. But he loved the cat, and the cat seemed to love him—that ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... George,' the other calls across the water, 'and the best joke I've enjoyed since I saw Black Diamond brand you with the hot iron you'd just branded the lugger's kitten with.' ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... present sad addiction to mob-intoxication. And, provided your mind is not in as bad condition as your body, this physical overplus will transmute some of itself into mental exuberance. This will enable you to have more fun with your mind than an enthusiastic kitten has with its tail. It will enable you to look before and after, and purr over what is, as well as to discern, with pleasurable longing, what is not, and set ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler

... going to execution, evidently supposing the procession to be a party detached in pursuit of something to kill or eat? It was very affecting. And also of his bolting a blue-eyed kitten, and making me acquainted with the circumstance by his agonies of remorse ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... it is our head that is not set on just as it ought to be. Let us settle that where it should be, and then we shall certainly be in good trim again. So he pulls his head about as an old lady adjusts her cap, and passes his fore-paw over it like a kitten washing herself. Poor fellow! It is not a fancy, but a fact, that he has to deal with. If he could read the letters at the head of the sheet, he would see they were Fly-Paper.—So with us, when, in our waking misery, we try to think we dream! Perhaps very young persons may not understand ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... I did once; but I never did it again. I caught one, a kitten, and set off with a number of boys to kill it; but as we went along it began to play with my necktie, and to purr. Our hearts were softened, so we let it go. Ah, Corrie, my boy, never go hunting cats!" said ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... disadvantage of Maggie though a connoisseur might have seen "points" in her which had a higher promise for maturity than Lucy's natty completeness. It was like the contrast between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten. Lucy put up the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed; everything about her was neat,—her little round neck, with the row of coral beads; her little straight nose, not at all snubby; her little clear eyebrows, rather darker than her curls, to match hazel eyes, which looked up with ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... its great turbines purring like a sleeping kitten, and its twin screws turning lazily, almost imperceptibly in the dark waters, moved through the frosty night like a cloud brooding over the deep. Yet it was a cloud of tremendous potentiality, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... made of that country silk, was very thick and strong), and dragged me out. He took me up in his right forefoot, and held me as a nurse does a child, just as I have seen the same sort of creature do with a kitten in Europe; and when I offered to struggle, he squeezed me so hard that I thought it more prudent to submit. I have good reason to believe that he took me for a young one of his own species, by his often stroking my face very gently with his other paw. In these diversions he was ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... as I saw Kitty I thought of the Jook. Would he or wouldn't he? On the whole, I was rather afraid he wouldn't, for Kitty's laugh sometimes rang out a little too loud, and Kitty's spirits sometimes got the better of her and set her frisking like a kitten, and I was afraid the modest sense of propriety which was one of the Jook's strong points would not survive it. However, I concluded to risk it, but just here a sudden and unforeseen obstacle checked my ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... Christina's pet kitten, a tiny black blot on the pink and green, came daintily down the path to meet her, mindful of her two pails of warm milk. Sport, who had succeeded in putting the cows into their places, came bounding up in a fit of boisterous ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... did not wait for a second injunction, but scuttled away, his long coat catching in the brambles, while Juanita darted like a kitten into the bushes. Her search was fruitless, however, and she was returning impatiently, when her quick eye fell upon a letter lying amid the dried grass where she and Francisco had been seated the moment before. ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... have been harassing, but it did serve to pass away the time. Civilization has brought into being a section of the community with little else to do but to amuse itself. For youth to play is natural; the young barbarian plays, the kitten plays, the colt gambols, the lamb skips. But man is the only animal that gambols and jumps and skips after it has reached maturity. Were we to meet an elderly bearded goat, springing about in the air and behaving, generally speaking, like a kid, we should say it had gone ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... own provisional opinion is that, like a good many instincts of very early evolutionary origin, it can be satisfied by an avowed pretence; just as a kitten which is fed regularly on milk can be kept in good health if it is allowed to indulge its hunting instinct by playing with a bobbin, and a peaceful civil servant satisfies his instinct of combat and adventure at golf. If this is ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... dejection, Were quietly chewing the cud of reflection. The cavies and ermines were running a race, Armadillo was off to a grasshopper chace. The cat was surprised to see animals roam, And she purr'd when she thought of her kitten at home. ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.

... leave Radiator and rubber-plant? Do people stand at attention to mourn a hero When they behold A frozen kitten In a gutter? ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Marjorie Allen Seiffert

... sign. For all that he had heard of search being made for him, he might have been a runaway kitten. Sometimes he wondered what steps the Buttons had taken in order to find him. If they had communicated with the police, surely, at some stage of their journey, Barney Bill would have been held up and questioned. But had they even troubled to call in the police? Barney ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... She's like a mother puss with her kitten. One minute she pets him to foolishness, the next she gives him a mental slap that reduces him to the humblest, most timid mood. Well, I'm glad the burro business is settled, though it's odd how Fayette covets that animal; and the exercise of going up and down ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... him and went to her room, where she sat down and tried to think hard. A Pink Kitten was curled up on the window-sill and Dorothy ...
— The Magic of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... patiently sitting on it for days, while the father bird feeds her, till the little chick is strong enough to break the walls of its tiny house, and come forth and peck and fend for itself. You can explain how the little kitten the child plays with has in the same way a safe place provided for it in the mother's body, where it grows and grows till all its organs are formed, and it can breathe and suck, when, like the seed from the pod, and the chick from the egg it leaves the mother's body, and is born, a blind and ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... snap'd their Canons with a why-not; 530 (Grave Synod Men, that were rever'd For solid face and depth of beard;) Their classic model prov'd a maggot, Their direct'ry an Indian Pagod; And drown'd their discipline like a kitten, 535 On which they'd been so long a sitting; Decry'd it as a holy cheat, Grown out of date, and obsolete; And all the Saints of the first grass As casting ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... the Dog, they called the Cat, And little Kitten too, And down they put the Cod and sauce, To see what ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... playfellows, the caserne oaths her lullaby, the guidons her sole guiding-stars, the razzia her sole fete-day: it was little marvel that the bright, bold, insolent little friend of the flag had nothing left of her sex save a kitten's mischief and coquette's archness. It said much rather for the straight, fair, sunlit instincts of the untaught nature, that Cigarette had gleaned, even out of such a life, two virtues that she would have ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... We're just trying to get acquainted, you and I. We understand each other beautifully, and after while we'll see whether we have any advice for each other. At your age I hadn't the sense of a kitten. You're most astonishingly wise; I marvel at you! And you've grown up a nice, sensible girl in spite of your aunts—none of their cattishness—not a hint of it. I can't tell you how relieved I am to find you just as you are. The way they have cuddled up to ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... have a kitten at once. Gilbert, we've got an old cat in the house, warranted safe. If John thinks it more prudent, we'll saddle her for you. A kitten might be too wild ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger

... we were going down in earnest. The sea shone again, but it was on the Oomoa side. We passed under trees hung with marvelous orchids, the puaauetaha, Orivie said, parasitic vines related to the vanilla as the lion is related to the kitten, cousins, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... "there must be some good in the woman—she cannot be altogether so hard as she looks, else how should that child dare to take the liberties of a kitten with her? She doesn't look to ME like one to make game of! However, I shall know a little more about her when I return her call, and I will do my best to keep on good terms ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... watch is a dandy. It is exactly the one I would have picked out could I have had my choice. You see, I've never owned a line watch. I guess it was just as well, too, for I never appreciated watchmaking until Mr. McPhearson told me what a really good watch meant. Now I'd as soon starve a kitten as not take care ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... anything like this before, and my wonder at it almost drove the pain away. Mother and I always chased rats and birds, and once we killed a kitten. While I was puzzling over it, one of the boys ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... Well, I should never see her again, once she was safe among her kin in the Canadas. And she was doubtless the fairest woman I had ever looked upon—but light—not in an evil sense, God wot! but prone to impulse and caprice—a kitten, soft as silk, now staring at the world out of two limpid eyes, now frisking after breeze-blown rose-leaves. A man may admire such a child, nay, learn to love her dearly, in a way most innocent. But love! She did not know its meaning, and how could ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... morning at Mrs. Lake's apron-string, his arms clasped lovingly, but somewhat too tightly, round the waist of a sandy kitten, who submitted with wonderful good-humor to the well- meant strangulation, his black eyes intently fixed upon the dumplings which his foster-mother was dexterously rolling together, when a strange ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... very pleasant for me to bring back before me your brother as I remember him at the commencement of our college life. He was, as you know, a boy of twelve years, dressed in a boy's jacket with a ruffled shirt, collar coming down over his shoulders, such as boys wore in those days—playful as a kitten, and as innocent as the purest-minded girl. He was probably the best fitted (as the phrase is) for college, of any member of the class. He had, I believe, gone over all the studies of the Sophomore year. Without any apparent effort he maintained his pre-eminence ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... turn it over and make it go the other way. They turned up their heads sidewise and blinked at the sky, all blue and calm and infinite, with white clouds sailing over it like swans on a limpid lake; and one stood up on his hind legs and reached up both paws, like a kitten, to pull down a cloud to play with. Then the wind stirred a feather near them, the white feather of a ptarmigan which they had eaten yesterday, and forgetting the big world and the sail and the cloud, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... a sandboy, he is happier than a king, And his trawler is the darling of his heart (With her cuddy like a cupboard where a kitten couldn't swing, And a smell of fish that simply won't depart); He has found upon occasion sundry targets for his guns; He could tell you tales of mine and submarine; Oh, the holes he's in and out of and the glorious risks he runs Turn his son—who's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various

... more elaborate, and I rejoice that you have not let yourself be frightened away from this good work by the threats of the Heidelberg Cyclops[29] and his crew. At the present moment they menace our friend Wolf, who certainly is no kitten, with ignominious execution, because he also dared to land on the translation island which they have received from Father Neptune in private fief, and to bring with him a readable Aristophanes. It is written, "Blessed are the dead which die in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... practical bull that is not only indisputably English, but was made by one of the greatest men that England ever produced, Sir Isaac Newton, who, after he had made a large hole in his study-door for his cat to creep through, made a small hole beside it for the kitten. You will acknowledge, sir, that this ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... fat, black kitten, played a part in the story also. The Bobbsey twins were very fond of Snoop, and had kept him so many years that I suppose he ought to be called cat, instead of ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope

... give kitten dinner to a poor little duck that all the hens peck?" asked the Byrd, anxiously, as he came and squatted beside me with two of the new kittens and the duck orphan in question in ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... changed to a short-skirted, low-necked cocktail dress; relaxed with her eyes closed in my halluscene chair she looked lovely. She looked as vulnerable as a soft kitten. Remembering that it's the soft vulnerable ones that claw you ...
— The Big Fix • George Oliver Smith

... the imaginary demands of this Journal, which continued to the end of his life. The very last pages of his Journal, a year previous to his death, are filled with minute accounts of the ordinary behavior of kittens, not one item novel or unusual, or throwing any light on the kitten. But it kept his mind busy, and added a page or two ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... his hands at this reminder, "I remember him, Jean! A hero like St. Denis! It was he who walked into the Chateau of the Intendant and brought off young De Repentigny as a cat does her kitten." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... the Red House there was a great bustle. The big waggon was at the front door, and the little one at the back, into which the cook was stowing all sorts of eatables. Minnie Keane, in a state of great excitement, was flying about with a tiny kitten in each arm, the mother following at her heels mewing piteously for her children to be left in safety. Minnie dropped the kittens when she saw the party from the parsonage coming round the avenue, and ran to meet them. Miss Goldthwaite made the introductions, and then ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan

... every word, if she did not quite understand. The wide stone chimney gave out its glowing fire of great logs, sometimes hemlock branches that diffused a grateful fragrance around the room. On a sort of settle, soft with folds of furs, Rose would stretch out gracefully, or curl up like a kitten, and with wide-open eyes turn her glance from the fascinating fire to the reader's face, repeating in her brain the sentences she could catch. Sometimes it was poetry, and then she fairly revelled ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas

... play the world over, but to one the Hermit's eyes turned in admiration again and again. He was larger than the others, with a snowy white spot on breast and tail. His movements were quick and sure and, though he still possessed some of the awkwardness of the kitten, he showed every indication of making a ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... was Jane's nicest kitten. Jane was half-Persian, white with untidy tabby patterns on her. Jerry was black all over. Whatever attitude he took, his tight, short fur kept the outlines of his figure firm and clear, whether he arched his back and jumped sideways, or rolled ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... "The best of women," ran a saying of Batty Langton's, "if you watch 'em, are always practising; even the youngest, as a kitten plays ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... quietly: "As the Lord of Baddeby says, King Edmund, it was I who stayed the boy's hand, and it was I also who fetched him into camp. I found him after the battle, bleeding his life out in the bushes, and I brought him in my arms, like a kitten, and dropped him down by my fire. Waking in the night and missing him, I traced him hither. As I have had all to do with him in the past, so, if you will grant that I may keep him, will I take his future upon me. With your consent, I will attend to it that ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... wee white kitten," Phil explained, while putting a saucer of milk before the feline tough. "One that would wear a ribbon, you know. You remember, Cousin Roger, how Mother always forbade pets because she believed animals carry germs? I meant ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... You can't deny that," he said with the playful manner in which he might have prodded a kitten in order ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... warning of any kind, a cougar stood in the trail before me. The unlooked-for and unheralded approach of the beast was fairly ghost-like. With its head lower than its shoulders, and its long tail twitching, it slouched down the path, treading as softly as a kitten. I waited until it had passed and then fired into the short ribs, the bullet ranging forward. Throwing its tail up in the air, and giving a bound, the cougar galloped off over a slight ridge. But it did not go far; within ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... George; "but it was a very pretty story for all that. How I should have laughed to see Ben making a paint-brush out of the black cat's tail! I intend to try the experiment with Emily's kitten." ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that the Fogie is always an amiable and almost always a happy person. "Happiness," says the judicious Paley, "is found with the purring cat no less than with the playful kitten; in the arm-chair of dozing age, as well as in either the sprightliness of the dance, or the animation of the chase." The Fogie is generally attached in moderation to the pleasures of the table, and is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... correctly employed. In Sussex, a correspondent writes, they would as soon think of saying 'oxens' as 'chickens'. ['Chicken' is properly a singular, old English cicen, the -en being a diminutival, not a plural, suffix (as in 'kitten', 'maiden'). Thus 'chicken' was originally 'a little chuck' (or cock), out of which 'chick' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... am going into business with some common rat,' the young fellow said with a sneer. 'I'm not going to choose my friends from among such people. I intend to take a kitten as a partner, and in such way get into the ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice

... audience laughed at him, and then it began to laugh at Nance. She threw herself into the frolic with the same mad abandonment with which she used to dance to the hand-organ in front of Slap Jack's saloon. She cut as many fantastic capers as a frisky kitten playing in the twilight; she leapt and rolled and romped, and the spectators, quick to feel the contagion of something new and young and joyful, woke up for the first time during the evening, and followed her pranks with round ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... deliverance; but these were changed to cries of joy on the arrival of any person with whom he was familiar. All the household were on terms of acquaintance with him; and there never was a bird who seemed to have won such general admiration. He was as playful as a kitten, and, literally, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various

... indescribably hideous in shape, leprous-looking, slimy, and darting a greenish poison through the spines on its back. Treading on one of these, the poor naked fisherman is apt to die of lockjaw; and Mr. Pike's kitten, having its paw touched with a single spine, perished of convulsions in an hour. Some of the sea-carnivora, however, are so beautiful that one is ready to forgive their more or less Clytemnestra-like tempers. Of some gymnobranchiata ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... A TABBY KITTEN will be glad if any reader could tell her of a good, inexpensive varnish for a picture-screen, as the one she is now using colours the pictures, and makes the printing on the backs ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... not call me Squaretoes, Larkyns," said I, peevishly, for he hurt me, squeezing my neck in his tight grip, holding me out of the port as if I were a kitten, so that I could not turn my head round. "I hate nicknames. ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... and never failed on Sundays to appear in the large courtyard of the tavern when, in the afternoon, the whirling and stamping began. Her beauty would doubtless have made her the most popular partner among the girls, had not the lads felt a certain fear of her. A purring kitten among her girl companions, ready to give and take practical jokes, she was all claws and teeth against men, and many a bold youth who, after the dance, attempted to take the usual liberties, met with so severe a rebuff that he bore for a week a memento ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... mill. It revealed a girl, little, sturdy and of well-knit figure, though in whose childish face there was an underlying trace of shrewdness unusual in one so young; like a little wild creature, or a kitten that has found itself more ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... thing, and the difference between common law and nigger law; and the way to work the matter so the squire will have it all in his own fingers, and don't let the old judge get a pick. Squire makes it square, hands the nigger over to Bob, Bob puts fifty cuts on his hide, makes him as clever as a kitten, and ships him off down south afore he has time to wink. Then, ye sees, I goes back as independent as a senator from Arkansas, and sues Captain Smith for damages in detainin' the property, and I makes him pay a right round sum, what larns him ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... but little notice of them at first, but a loud hiss engaged me to attend more closely, when behold—a viper! the largest I remember to have seen, rearing itself, darting its forked tongue, and ejaculating the afore-mentioned hiss at the nose of a kitten, almost in contact with his lips. I ran into the hall for a hoe with a long handle, with which I intended to assail him, and returning in a few seconds missed him: he was gone, and I feared had escaped me. Still, however, the kitten sat watching ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... comfortable leather chair, before a little fire, for the last half of August is cold in San Francisco. The room was warm and snug, the fresh bread and apples were delicious, the good tobacco in his pipe purred like a sleeping kitten, and his novel was interesting and well written. He felt calm and soothed and perfectly content, and took in the pleasure of the occasion with the lazy complacency of ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris

... fear, and from all the tragic greatness of uncontrollable fate and we, we've got nothing to replace them. We are comic—comic! Ours is the stage of comedy in life's history, half lit and blinded,—and we fumble. As absurd as a kitten with its poor little head in a bag. There's your soul of man! Mewing. We're all at it, the poets, the teachers. How can anyone hope to escape? Why should I escape? What am I that I should expect to be anything but a thwarted lover, a man mocked by his own attempts at service? Why should I expect ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... rangers about the mice in my house, and the cook overheard the conversation. A little later a teamster appeared at my cabin with a tiny gray kitten hidden under his coat. ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... wrote them! They were very few, and were tied with black ribbon, and marked on the outside in girlish writing: "My dearest friend, Dolly McAllister, died September 3, 1809, aged eighteen." The ribbon had evidently been untied and the letters read many times. One began: "My dear, delightful Kitten: I am quite overjoyed to find my father has business which will force him to go to Deephaven next week, and he kindly says if there be no more rain I may ride with him to see you. I will surely come, for if there is danger of spattering my gown, ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... her pictures achieved great popularity, being reproduced in many art magazines. "The Little Doctor," especially, in which a boy is feeling, with a grave expression of knowledge, the pulse of his sister's pet kitten, has been widely copied in photographs, wood-engravings, and in colors. She repeated the picture in varying forms. She died in Munich, where she was favorably known through such works as "The Village Barber," "Contraband," "The Wonderful Story," "At the ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... If a fluffy little kitten, chasing a ball of yarn, had suddenly turned around and attacked Janice, tooth and nail, the girl would ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long

... 'I will that you tell the men you know what I have told you. You are a very little thing; it were no more to me to cut you short than to drown a kitten. But my own neck I prize. What I have told you I would have come to the ears of my lord of Winchester. I may not be seen to speak with him myself. If you will not tell him, another will; but I would ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... having been designated a little boy by this superior damsel, saw his opportunity to silence her. "Cat's fur for kitten breeches," he retorted—without any evidence of originality, we must confess. Whereat she stung him to the heart with a sweet smile and promptly sang for him ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... Adeline thinks you reproach her for leaving Colin. I told her you were too intelligent to do anything of the sort. You'll agree it's the best thing she could do for him. She's no more capable of looking after Colin than a kitten. She wants to be looked after herself, and you ought to be grateful to me for relieving you ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair

... found out that she cared. It was only at first that I didn't dare. I haven't told you, but she went out for her daily walk and brought me home a Christmas card, the prettiest one she could find, she said. I was propped up on pillows, as weak as a kitten. I looked at it and looked at it, and when I saw that it was this room, the old fireplace and mother's picture, and the Hessian soldier andirons, when I realized there was a face at the window and that the door was ajar,—everything ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset's house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... slipped nearer; seemed to contemplate us—quizzically, AMUSED; as a man would look down upon some curious and interesting insect, a puppy, a kitten. I sensed this amusement in the Disk's regard even as I had sensed its soul of awful tranquillity; as we had sensed the playful malice in the eye stars of the living corridor, the curiosity in the column that had dropped us into ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... curiously. It wandered past some Rabbits. They paid no heed. It came to a wide-barred cage in which was a Fox. The gentleman with the bushy tail was in a far corner. He crouched low; his eyes glowed. The Kitten wandered, sniffing, up to the bars, put its head in, sniffed again, then made toward the feed-pan, to be seized in a flash by the crouching Fox. It gave a frightened "mew," but a single shake cut that short and ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... the military order. They had all been brought up, so to speak, in the army, and their world did not extend beyond it. There were three of them—Laura, the eldest, beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished, with a strong leaning toward Ritualism; Juna, innocent, childish, and kitten-like; and Louie, the universal favorite, absurd, whimsical, fantastic, a desperate tease, and as pretty and graceful as it is possible for any girl to be. An aunt did the maternal for them, kept house, chaperoned, duennaed, and generally overlooked them. The colonel ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... that tone I know it is time to stop," said the girl, letting go the kitten she was patting, and putting her arm around Gertrude. "You dear, sensible Gertrude, don't mind one word I say; of course I did not mean it. Just as if we did not have enough Romeos in our own ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... a pretty black kitten, with a red ribbon round its neck, whilst Mervyn sat with his little hands clasped over his knees, looking out at the blue sparkling sea, with a well-pleased expression ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland

... a joy that was to me, you who have whole shelves of books. But if you had been shut up for a long while in a great castle where there was no person who would speak to you, no book which you could read, not so much as a kitten or a fly to play with, and nothing to do, day after day, but wander about and admire curtains and statues, and a lady like a statue,—would you not be glad to find a book you could read, even Mother Goose? At first I hardly dared to open ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... came about that "Kitten" Brown and I were seated, one midgeful morning in July, by the pellucid waters of Lake Susan W. Pillsbury, gnawing sections from a greasily fried trout, upon which I ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... knew. The striped hide was slightly wounded by the spears, but the shock of the brute's leap bore all who had resisted it to the floor. The tiger never stayed to use its jaws. It sat up, much in the attitude of a kitten which plays with something dangled before its eyes, and the soft pit-pat of its paws, as it struck out rapidly and with unerring aim, speedily disposed of all its enemies. Che' Seman, with his two sons, Awang and Ngah, were the first to fall. Then Iang, Che' Seman 's ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... have had the very best of teachers on the subject of slavery, learnedly theoretical, reasoning from the eternal principles of right, would incline to believe that your interest in the burial of this little slave-babe was merely that which your own child would feel on seeing her kitten carefully buried at the ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... called him by name after the light had fallen on the face of the lookout. It was possible that she might not know who Marie was. Although it was no more than just possible, he cuddled the potentiality to him as if it had been a purring kitten. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... him grimly. But she reached out and put a cautious finger tip to the less lively end of 113-A. After a moment she said, "Hey!" She moved the finger lightly along the thing's surface. It had a velvety, smooth, warm feeling, rather like a kitten. "You know," she said surprised, "it feels sort of ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... of us great fetchers and carriers. I played the madman, they listened to me, they laughed, they called out: How charming he is! Meanwhile Missy's book had been found under the sofa, where it had been pulled about, gnawed, torn by a puppy or a kitten. She sat down to the piano. At first she made a noise on it by herself; then I went towards her, after giving her mother a sign of approbation. The mother: "That is not bad; people have only to be in earnest, but they are ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... found. She hails from the province of the Marche and has no high opinion of this town, where she only lives on account of her husband, a retired something-or-other who owns the house. Although convulsed with grief, both of them, at the moment of my arrival—a favourite kitten had just been run over—they at once set about making me comfortable in a room with exposure due south. The flooring is of cement: the usual Viareggio custom. Bricks are cold, stone is cold, tiles ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... who gives his days and strength and brains to the service of his country. Then they packed the few articles that they felt most necessary to their comfort, gave away ten guinea pigs, eight white rats, four pigeons and a kitten, crated Bill's collie and the Major's Airdale, and started off for their first post, Fort Sill, where the Major was stationed at the School ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb

... small, she often used to hug the kitten so tightly as, no doubt, to cause the little creature pain; and then, in running around the room after it, the young miss used to catch it by the tail; but Fidelle never resisted, nor, if hurt, revenged ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie

... there anything more fragile than enjoyment? Is there anything more sensitive to injury than grace? Did you not know that? If you had not followed this poor girl, she would have cleared the barrier as gracefully as a kitten; now she is as much ashamed as though you had seen her in her petticoat." I looked once more in her direction; sure enough, she too was looking round, with a flushed face and stupid, anxious eyes. O ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... Heaven's assessors, come down to "doom" every acquaintance he met,—that I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, and gone home with a violent cold, dating from that instant. I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off, if he caught her playing with it. Please tell me, who taught her to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... in her most winning tones. "I wouldn't hurt you for the world. Do come, and let me take you down, and you shall be my own dear little pet, and I will love you very much indeed!" and she stretched out one arm toward the kitten, while the other clasped ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards

... up from the garage for her. It's a fine, up- to-date car, and now that sis has it she's as happy as a kitten ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose

... asleep? Faith, no; he had been ruminating on all sorts of subjects in the silence of the winter night; and while she was cramming the stove with coal he frolicked for a moment with Charlot, who rolled and tumbled on the bed like a young kitten. He knew Silvine's story, and had a very kindly feeling for the meek, courageous girl whom misfortune had tried so sorely, mourning the only man she had ever loved, her sole comfort that child of shame whose existence was a daily reproach to her. When she ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... other end of the room stood the tea-table, between the fire and an open window. Lord Lackington sat beside it, smiling to himself, and stroking a Persian kitten. Through the open window the twinkling buds on the lilacs in the Cureton House garden shone in the still lingering sun. A recent shower had left behind it odors of earth and grass. Even in this London air they spoke of the spring—the spring which ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... belief) satisfactorily off with the old love, I naturally became as playful as a kitten or gay as a grig. For the most superficial observer, and with the half of a naked optic, could easily discern the immeasurable superiority of Miss WEE-WEE to JESSIMINA in all the refinements and delicacies of a real English lady, and although, ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... surprising suddenness. "I hate it, Daddy. Such big, beautiful things, and to make them do silly tricks like these; just as you'd train a kitten!" ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... wasn't all that. You see, our Sally's been tied up by the nose for so many months in harbour yonder, that now she's running free she can't hold herself in. Ketch hold of the rail, sir. That's your sort! There she goes again, larking like a young kitten." ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn



Words linked to "Kitten" :   kitten-tails, young mammal, bear, birth, deliver, give birth



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com