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noun
Louse  n.  (pl. lice)  (Zool.)
1.
Any one of numerous species of small, wingless, suctorial, parasitic insects belonging to a tribe (Pediculina), now usually regarded as degraded Hemiptera. To this group belong of the lice of man and other mammals; as, the head louse of man (Pediculus capitis), the body louse (Pediculus vestimenti), and the crab louse (Phthirius pubis), and many others. See Crab louse, Dog louse, Cattle louse, etc., under Crab, Dog, etc.
2.
Any one of numerous small mandibulate insects, mostly parasitic on birds, and feeding on the feathers. They are known as Mallophaga, or bird lice, though some occur on the hair of mammals. They are usually regarded as degraded Pseudoneuroptera. See Mallophaga.
3.
Any one of the numerous species of aphids, or plant lice. See Aphid.
4.
Any small crustacean parasitic on fishes. See Branchiura, and Ichthvophthira. Note: The term is also applied to various other parasites; as, the whale louse, beelouse, horse louse.
Louse fly (Zool.), a parasitic dipterous insect of the group Pupipara. Some of them are wingless, as the bee louse.
Louse mite (Zool.), any one of numerous species of mites which infest mammals and birds, clinging to the hair and feathers like lice. They belong to Myobia, Dermaleichus, Mycoptes, and several other genera.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Louse" Quotes from Famous Books



... little balls, and in this condition he removed them to the stone, and placed them like marbles in a row, Monsieur Crapaud watching the proceeding with rapt attention. After awhile the balls would slowly open and begin to crawl away; but he was a very active wood-louse indeed who escaped the suction of Monsieur Crapaud's tongue, as, his eyes glowing with eager enjoyment, he bolted one after another, and Monsieur the Viscount clapped his ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... terebinth louse; it is just a little yellow mite; but is it nothing else? Its genealogical history teaches us "by what amazing essays of passion and variety the universal law which rules the transmission of life is evolved. Here is neither father nor eggs; all these mites are mothers; and ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... with them, but I hadn't been exactly trusted. There'd been a picked group of men set to watch over me at all times, and I managed to get a little friendly with them, but not very. In case I turned out to be a louse, nobody wanted to have to shed ...
— The Man Who Played to Lose • Laurence Mark Janifer

... for use, are suffered, or rather invited, to multiply without limitation. But luxury cuts off the beast, the pig, the sheep, and the fowl, and ill treatment the horse: vermin of every kind, from the lion to the louse, are hunted to death; a perpetual contest seems to exist between them and us; they for their preservation, and we for their extinction. The kitten and the puppy are cast into the water, to end their lives; out of which ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... Lord Wilton, who "rather liked it;" he portrayed the effect of these tyrants of the street upon the sick and on the worker; and he never spared the offenders themselves. Once, indeed, he was goaded into showing one of these dirty persons leading a louse, like a monkey, by a string; but after a few copies had been struck off (and included in the parcel for Scotland), the printing-press was stopped, and the "realism" was cut from the block. From the first contribution, in which an old lady was supposed to advertise for a professor of mesmerism—a ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... concluded to go and try to find a better place. The next day was Sunday and all lay in bed late. Before I rose I felt something crawling on my breast, and when I looked I found it to be an insect, slow in motion, resembling a louse, but larger. He was a new emigrant to me and I wondered what he was. I now took off my pants and found many of his kind in the seams. I murdered all I could find, and when I got up I told Williams what I had found. He said they hurt nobody and were called piojos, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... v. there are Ahgahmahye-ee, prep. across Ahneeshnah, adv. why Ahdick, n. a rein-deer Ahjedahmoo, n. a red squirrel Ahsahnahgoo, n. a black squirrel Ahgwegoos, n. a chip-monk Ahkuckoojeesh, n. a ground-hog Ahdoomahkoomasheeh, n. a monkey, which signifies louse catcher or hunter Ahnemoosh, n. a dog Aasebun, n. a raccoon Aayabegoo, n. an ant Aayanee, n. opossum Ahzhahwahmaig, n. a salmon Ahshegun, n. rock-bass Ahgwahdahsheh, n. sun-fish Ahwahsesee, n. cat-fish Ahmahkahkee, n. a toad Ahgoonaqua, n. tree-toad Ahndaig, ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield

... of drouth, and frequently by reason of the ravages of insects, great difficulty has been experienced in growing plants in spring and early summer, which seldom occurs in the fall—at which time, however, the same precautions may be used. Time was when we could circumvent the flea and louse on young plants by the use of lime, tobacco, ashes, soot, etc., but of late years they seem to have been so very abundant, and so materially aided in their work of destruction by the black grub below and the green grub above ground, that many ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier

... the winter-locked plain. In the aching circle of its immensity they were like little black ants. One, the leader, was of great bulk and of a vast strength; while the other was small and wiry, of the breed that clings like a louse to life while better ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... in the Park a fair Fancy was seen, Betwixt an old Baud and a lusty young Quean; Their parting of Money began the uproar, I'll have half says the Baud, but you shan't says the Whore: Why 'tis my own House, I care not a Louse, I'll ha' three parts in four, or you get ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... a term applied to that condition of local or general cutaneous irritation due to the presence of the animal parasite, the pediculus, or louse. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... but yet he feared treason, wherfore he wild one of his minions to take vpon him his person, and he would stand by as a priuate man whilest hee was examined. Why should I vse anie idle delayes? In was Captaine Gogges wounds brought, after he was throughly searched, not a louse in his doublet was let passe, but was askt Queuela, and chargd to stand in the kings name, the mouldes of his buttons they turnd out, to see if they were not bullettes couered ouer with thread, the codpeece in his deuills breeches (for they were ...
— 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

... no watch. There was nothing to give the least notion of how much time had passed. I even counted the boy's snores for a while, and watched one lonely louse moving along the wall—so many snores to the minute—so many snores to an inch of crawling; but the louse changed what little mind he had and did not walk straight, and I gave up trying to calculate the distance he traveled in zigzags and curves, although it would have been ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... degrees R. above the outside air without any artificial contrivance, and simply through the natural qualities of the glass-house. In order to protect the vines from that dangerous and destructive foe, the vine louse, should it show itself, it is enough to close the drain and open all the water pipes. The inundation of the vines, thus achieved, the enemy can not withstand. The glass roof and walls protect the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... Or like a louse, of mettle full, Nurs'd in some giant's skull— Because Goliath scratch'd him as he fed, Employs with vehemence his angry claws, And gaping, grinning, formidable jaws, To CARRY OFF ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... a soul above that of a pig-louse, could help loathing the system, the instant he saw it in its native meanness. Then, in order to keep his own self-respect,—to gratify the love of the good and true in his own soul, he must ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... attacked. One opponent of its doctrines was Dr. Henry Ferne, afterward Bishop of Chester. Another was Matthew Wren, eldest son to the Bishop of Ely. He was one of those who met for scientific research at the house of Dr. Wilkins, and had, said Harrington, "an excellent faculty of magnifying a louse and ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... Hebrew word in the Old Testament: it is my own opinion that the insects thus inflicted upon the population were not lice, but ticks. Exod. viii. 16, "The dust became lice throughout all Egypt;" again, Exod. viii. 17, "Smote dust . . . it became lice in man and beast." Now the louse that infects the human body and hair has no connexion whatever with "dust," and if subject to a few hours' exposure to the dry heat of the burning sand, it would shrivel and die; but the tick is an inhabitant of the dust, a dry horny insect without any apparent moisture ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... 'modus operandi interior' of Justification into a shew of practical substance; as if it were no less solid than a cannon ball! Why, drive it with all the vehemence that five toes can exert, it would not kill a louse on the head of Methodism. Repentance, godly sorrow, abhorrence of sin as sin, and not merely dread from forecast of the consequences, these the Arminian would call means of obtaining salvation, while the Methodist (more philosophically perhaps) names them signs ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... no one could wipe his hands on her bosom; a thousand dinars it cost me, too. I was chosen priest of Augustus without paying the fee, and I hope that I won't need to blush in my grave after I'm dead. But you're so busy that you can't look behind you; you can spot a louse on someone else, all right, but you can't see the tick on yourself. You're the only one that thinks we're so funny; look at your professor, he's older than you are, and we're good enough for him, but you're only a brat with the ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... thousand feasts, yet nobody praises the onion. Of course you know the author is right here. You may have read some great poetry in your time, poems on daffodils, violets, roses, daisies. Even you have known a great poet who could write about a louse and a field mouse, but where do you find a poem about an onion? What orator waxes eloquent in its praise? What bride ever carries a bouquet of onions ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... body and hanging the human being, after roaming the world on the back of an army, becomes writing-paper; and those who write or who read are familiar with the habits and morals of an insect called the "paper-louse," an insect of really marvellous celerity and behavior; it undergoes its mysterious transformations in a ream of white paper which you have carefully put away; you see it gliding and frisking along in its shining robe, that looks like isinglass or mica,—truly ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... bark-louse attacks weak, feeble-growing trees, and can usually be removed by scrubbing the bark ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... and tried to give out his literature there, and got into a controversy with some of the cracker-box loungers, one of whom jumped up and shook his fist in Jimmie's face, shouting, "Get out of here, you dirty little louse! If you don't stop talking your treason round here, we'll come down some night and ride you out of ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... the cure, looked at the monk, who was a stranger to her. A word or two explained matters, and she took her husband's arm, declining to answer any questions until she reached the louse, and ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... green plant louse is the most commonly encountered of all the insect pests. It used to be dreaded, but with modern methods it may be readily and effectively exterminated. There are several forms and colors of these pests. If you ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell

... soars on the other side, arming martyrs with independence; but in all, in their degrees, it is a bosom thought:—Not in man alone, for we trace it in dogs and cats whom we know fairly well, and doubtless some similar point of honour sways the elephant, the oyster, and the louse, of whom we know so little:—But in man, at least, it sways with so complete an empire that merely selfish things come second, even with the selfish: that appetites are starved, fears are conquered, pains supported; that almost the dullest shrinks from ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cheeseparings; sweepings &c (useless refuse) 645; offscourings^, outscourings^; off scum; caput mortuum [Lat.], residuum, sprue, fecula [Lat.], clinker, draff^; scurf, scurfiness^; exuviae [Lat.], morphea; fur, furfur^; dandruff, tartar. riffraff; vermin, louse, flea, bug, chinch^. mud, mire, quagmire, alluvium, silt, sludge, slime, slush, slosh, sposh [U.S.]. spawn, offal, gurry [U.S.]; lientery^; garbage, carrion; excreta &c 299; slough, peccant humor, pus, matter, suppuration, lienteria^; faeces, feces, excrement, ordure, dung, crap [Vulg.], shit [Vulg.]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... And at me: "What yu goin' to do? She's promised to me. I'm takin' keer of her; she's rode on my wagon; an' naow yu think to toll her off? Yu meet her ag'in right under my nose arter I've warned yu? Git, yoreself, or I'll stomp on yu like on a louse." ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... old goat of a prince and I finally told her to go roll her hoop—to get a divorce and marry the foul old beast herself. And to consolidate two empires, he's been wanting me to marry a multi-billionaire—who is also a louse and a crumb and a heel. Last week he insisted on it and I blew up like an atomic bomb. I told him if I got married a thousand times I'd pick every one of my husbands myself, without the least bit of help from either him or her. I'd ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith

... body louse was revealed under Atkinson's microscope after capture from 'Snatcher's' coat. A dilute solution of carbolic is expected to rid the poor beasts of their pests, but meanwhile one or two of them have rubbed off patches of hair ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... he stuffs you all morning with Greek, and Latin, and Logic, and all that. Egad I have a dry-nurse too, but I never looked into a book with him in my life; I have not so much as seen the face of him this week, and don't care a louse if I ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... walked along the streets of China Town. When the sidewalk was narrow, the count took to the gutter. And so we came to the old wall and the place where there is a perennial market, which bears various names,—the Pushing Market, the Louse Market, and so on, —and which is said to be the resort of thieves and receivers of stolen goods. Strangers always hit upon it the first thing. We had ventured into its borders alone, had chatted with a cobbler, inspected the complete workshop on the sidewalk, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... she began abruptly; "'pears like they ain't got the sense of a grayback louse, leastways some of 'em. Now, there's dad, filled up on stuff they call whisky out yer, and consequence is he can't eat any grub for two days or more. Doggone it, it makes me huffy, it plum does. Mam has put up with it fer twenty years, which is just twenty more ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... is a resolution of ease. His travail is most in the highways, and his rendezvous is commonly in an ale-house. His study is to counterfeit impotency, and his practice to cozen simplicity of charity. The juice of the malt is the liquor of his life, and at bed and at board a louse is his companion. He fears no such enemy as a constable, and being acquainted with the stocks, must visit them as he goes by them. He is a drone that feeds upon the labours of the bee, and unhappily begotten that is born for ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... Rheims is of a white, chalky character, and very poor, but having been terraced and enriched with fertilizers, it produces the champagne grape in such abundance that the region, once considered valueless, and named by the peasantry the "land of the louse," now supports a dense population. We remained in Rheims eight days, and through the politeness of the American Consul—Mr. Adolph Gill—had the pleasure of seeing all the famous wine cellars, and inspecting the processes followed in champagne making, from the ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan

... are teeth from tooth, lice from louse, mice from mouse, geese from goose, feet from foot, dice from die, pence from penny, brethren from brother, children ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... length he had recourse to this device. 'Pray, Sir, (said he,) whether do you reckon Derrick or Smart the best poet?' Johnson at once felt himself roused; and answered, 'Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... "You louse-bitten, egg-sucking, bloated faggot-porter! How stupid do you think we are? As stupid as your Essjay bosses? By heaven, we're staying! Then see if you have the nerve to ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson

... you your dinner as well." So the poor widow agreed and spent the day picking out the lice and at evening the rich woman brought out a measure of rice to give her as her wages and, as she was measuring it, she felt her head itch and she put up her hand and scratched and pulled out a large louse. ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... friends or comrades, of course part of their duty, in taking care of him, was to "louse" his clothing. One of the most effectual ways of doing this was to turn the garments wrong side out and hold the seams as close to the fire as possible, without burning the cloth. In a short time the lice would swell up and burst ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... "to a Haggis," "to a Louse," "to the Toothache," &c.—and occasionally to his brother bards and lady or gentleman patrons, often with strokes of tenderest sensibility, idiopathic humor, and genuine poetic imagination—still oftener with shrewd, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... S. E. Murder!—murder a louse! Who's hurting you, old gentleman? Don't make such a noise. We'll try and make some use of you when we have time, but we must bustle now. Come on, Jack. Stop a bit, though; where's the Clerk of the Court? Oh, there! Clerk, ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris

... and me? The difference between a mortal and an immortal? between a cloud and a spirit?" He picked up a wood-louse that was creeping along a piece of bark: "What is the difference between Caesar ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... thunder-gods, sons of the chief thunder-god, fell violently in love with the same Aino woman. Said one of them to the other, in a joking way: "I will become a flea, so as to be able to hop into her bosom." Said the other: "I will become a louse, so as to be able to stay always in ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain

... you the life history of a lumber-jack you'd feel like throwing up your kind heart, and any other old thing you hadn't use for in your stummick. But I guess I can say right here, a lumber-jack's a most disgustin' sort of vermin who hasn't more right than a louse to figger in your reckonin'. I guess he was born wrong, and he'll mostly die as he was born. And meanwhile he's lived a life that's mostly dirt, and no account anyway. There's a few things we ask of a lumber-jack, and if he fulfils 'em right he can go right on living. When he can't ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... to headquarters and present him to the colonel he said at once: "Who? Me? The colonel! Say, you'd better get this and get it right: I'm nothing here. I'm less than nothing. Why, the colonel could walk right over me on the parade ground and never even know he'd stepped on anything. If I was a louse and he was a can of ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... he entered the Cat and Fiddle with Dandy Mick, "there is not the spirit of a louse ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... The louse, Callaphis castaneae, appeared on July 5, 1947, at least the leaves became so much curled that its presence was then noticed. Two spraying on successive days with nicotine sulphate ("Black Leaf ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... of you can do," he said. He tried to cover the plaintive note by adding, "And if you louse up your own messages ..." But he had threatened them so often that there ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... our natural science, our political science, our history, our philosophy, and even our religion. Science declared that 'the survival of the fittest' was a law of nature, though nature has condemned to extinction the majestic animals of the saurian era, and has carefully preserved the bug, the louse, and the ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... doubt, from being so well fed; for Mr. Fletcher of Lindertes,[*] who was proprietor of the mansion, was the greatest epicurean and glossogaster that ever lived since Leontine times. Then a woman called Jenny McPherson, who had in early life, like "a good Scotch louse," who "aye travels south," found her way from Lochaber to London, where she had got into George's kitchen, and learned something better than to make sour kraut, was the individual who administered to her master's epicureanism, if not gulosity. Nay, it was said she had a hand in the tragedy ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... the Burgh and Parish of Stanrawer, and the Parishes of Anwith and Borgh, to the several Presbyteries, for applying to the Meetings in Ireland, to louse the Irish Ministers now serving in these Parishes to the end they may continue their setled Ministers. ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... "I smell thee by some passive divination, I am satisfied with insight of the measure of thine house; What had happened I conjecture, in a blank and rhythmic passion, Had the aeons thought of making thee a man, and me a louse. ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... hand resting across the thunder-instrument. He could not seize the weapon, for he would have roused the sleeper by touching his hand. The Thunderer's son now crept from the Devil's shoulder along the clouds as stealthily as a cat, and taking a louse from behind his own ear, he set it on his father's nose. The old man raised his hand to scratch his nose, when his son grasped the thunder-weapon, and jumped from the clouds on to the back of the Devil, who ran down the mountain as if fire was burning behind him, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... of euphorbium, very finely pulverized. In that powder did he lay a fair handkerchief curiously wrought, which he had stolen from a pretty seamstress of the palace, in taking away a louse from off her bosom which he had put there himself, and, when he came into the company of some good ladies, he would trifle them into a discourse of some fine workmanship of bone-lace, then immediately put his hand into their bosom, asking ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... tobacco-stinking, sweat-stinking rooms, like those of the little cafes behind the lines, sit in groups of five, shuffling, dealing, taking tricks, always with the same slam of the cards on the table, pausing now and then to scratch their louse-eaten flesh. ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos

... us from colonising. All the defects of centralisation, its oppressions, its faults, its absurdities, its endless documents, which are dimly perceived in France, become one hundred times bigger in Africa. It is like a louse in a microscope.' ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... A louse crept out of my lady's shift— Ahumm, Ahumm, Ahee— Crying "Oi! Oi! We are turned adrift; The lady's bosom is cold and stiffed, And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)

... grief: (Now, you must know, of all things in the world I hate a thief:) However, I was resolved to bring the discourse slily about: "Mrs. Duke," said I, "here's an ugly accident has happened out: 'Tis not that I value the money three skips of a louse:[10] But the thing I stand upon is the credit of the house. 'Tis true, seven pounds, four shillings, and sixpence makes a great hole in my wages: Besides, as they say, service is no inheritance in these ages. Now, Mrs. Duke, you know, and everybody understands, That though 'tis hard to ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... the Eggs of Silk-worms; the Blue Fly; a water Insect; the Tufted Gnat; a White Moth; the Shepheards-spider; the Hunting Spider, the Ant; the wandring Mite; the Crab-like insect, the Book-worm, the Flea, the Louse, Mites, Vine mites. He concludeth with taking occasion to discourse of two or three very considerable subjects, viz. The inflexion of the Rays of Lights in the Air; the Fixt ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... reptile in Grubstreet who will either flatter him in private, or mount the public rostrum as his panegyrist, he damns all the other writers of the age, with the utmost insolence and rancour — One is a blunderbuss, as being a native of Ireland; another, a half-starved louse of literature, from the banks of the Tweed; a third, an ass, because he enjoys a pension from the government; a fourth, the very angel of dulness, because he succeeded in a species of writing in which this Aristarchus had failed; a fifth, who presumed to make strictures ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... principal occupation at this place was playing poker, chuck-a-luck and cracking graybacks (lice). Every soldier had a brigade of lice on him, and I have seen fellows so busily engaged in cracking them that it reminded me of an old woman knitting. At first the boys would go off in the woods and hide to louse themselves, but that was unnecessary, the ground fairly crawled with lice. Pharaoh's people, when they were resisting old Moses, never enjoyed the curse of lice more than we did. The boys would frequently have a louse race. There was ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... Sucker is a jumping plant-louse which early in the season sucks the juices of the tree about the axils of the leaves. They are covered with the exudations of the sap, which often drops on the ground. The visits of the ants should call attention to this pest. Syringe well with soft soap and water, 1/2 lb. to 4 gallons, and ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum

... round with her, and overcome by the frenzy of his passion, he said with a trembling voice, sighing deeply, and gazing at his lady with eyes full of tenderness: "S'amor non e, che dunque e quel ch' io sento?"[9] Hearing this, the lady, who had a shrewd wit, answered, in order to show him his error: "A louse, perhaps." Which answer was heard by many, so that the saying ran through all Bologna, and he was held to scorn ever afterwards. Truly, if Alfonso had given his attention not to the vanities of the world, but to the labours of art, without a doubt he would ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... tattling zephyrs brought it here; As Mab was indolently laid Under a poppy's spreading shade. The jealous queen started in rage; She kick'd her crown, and beat her page: "Bring me my magic wand," she cries; "Under that primrose, there it lies; I'll change the silly, saucy chit, Into a flea, a louse, a nit, A worm, a grasshopper, a rat, An owl, a monkey, hedgehog, bat. But hold, why not by fairy art Transform the wretch into— Ixion once a cloud embraced, By Jove and jealousy well placed; What sport to see proud Oberon stare, And flirt it ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... with regard to the same or similar matters are even more humorous and diverse. At the Inner Temple "it was ordered in 36 Elizabeth (16 Junii), that if any fellow in commons, or lying in the Louse, did wear either hat or cloak in the Temple Church, hall, buttry, kitchen, or at the buttry-barr, dresser, or in the garden, he should forfeit for every such offence vis viiid. And in 42 Eliz. (8 Febr.) ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... I began to itch, and found I had made the acquaintance of that gay and festive little soldier's enemy, the "cootie." The cootie, or the "chat" as he is called by the officers, is the common body louse. Common is right. I never got rid of mine until I left the service. Sometimes when I get to thinking about it, I believe ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes

... at the Irish bar, a louse unluckily peeped from under his wig. Curran, who sat next to him, whispered what he saw. "You joke," said the barrister. "If," replied Mr. Curran, "you have many such jokes in your head, the sooner you crack them ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... all up to Marlboro! (All the slaves) Ten days or two weeks going. PeeDee bridge, stop! Go in gentlemen barn! Turn duh bridge! Been dere a week. Had to go and look the louse on we. Three hundred head o' people been dere. Couldn't pull we clothes off. (On flat.) Boat name Riprey. Woman confine on boat. Name the baby 'RIPREY!' ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... villages, things came back to her; the companies of dusty Union infantry that used to stop to drink at her mother's cold mountain spring. She had seen them take off their boots and wash their bleeding feet in the run. Her mother had given one louse-bitten boy a clean shirt, and she had never forgotten the sight of his back, "as raw as beef where he'd scratched it." Five of her brothers were in the Confederate army. When one was wounded in the second battle of Bull Run, her mother had borrowed ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... shrimp! A sea-louse!" And he made to squash me between huge forefinger and thumb, either of which, Lingaard avers, was thicker than my leg ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... his bacon his beard was bidrauled, With a hood on his head, and a lousy hat above. And in a tawny tabard,[1] of twelve winter age, Alle torn and baudy, and full of lice creeping; But that if a louse could have leapen the better, She had not walked on the welt, so was it threadbare. 'I have been Covetise,' quoth this caitiff, 'For sometime I served Symme at style, And was his prentice plight, his profit to wait. First I learned ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... added the invader, "if I'd known 'ow it really was, I never would lave listened to such a thing, never. And there isn't another 'ole in the louse to lay me 'ead," ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... North End itself"— here he spoke solemnly, of heroes—"Preston North End itself in its great days didn't win every match—it lost to Accrington. But did the Preston public desert it? No! You—you haven't got the pluck of a louse, nor the faithfulness of a cat. You've starved your football club to death, and now you call a meeting to weep and grumble. And you have the insolence to write letters to the Signal about bad management, forsooth! If anybody in the hall thinks he can manage ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... the operations of the Trinity louse might be shown by many interesting instances. Here is one specimen; it ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... gathered, however, that they had their internal difficulties. On one board I read an old inscription, 'He is a Boche, but he is the inseparable companion of a French soldier.' Above was a rude drawing of a louse. ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle

... welcome; I don't wear them till the farce; Banquo's one of my flesh parts; nothing like the naked truth; I'm h—l for nature. By-the-by, you'll often have to wear black smalls and stockings; I'll put you up to something; save your buying silks, darning, stitch-dropping, louse-ladders, and all that; grease your legs and burnt-cork 'em; it looks d——d well 'from the front.'' Mr. COWELL, it appears, was an artist of no mean pretensions; and while engaged on one occasion in sketching a picturesque view of Stoke Church, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... puceron, aphidian, plant louse; pl. aphides, aphidae. Associated Words: aphidian, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... on some of the lower members of the animal kingdom, for the purpose of broadening the interests of the pupils. The following are suggested as types: snail, spider, freshwater mussel (clam), crayfish (crab), centiped, milliped, salamander, and wood-louse. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... formerly a source of thermal water, of which his great great grandfather had drunk. In short, in less time than it takes a fly to embrace its sweetheart, there had been a pocketful of etymologies, in which the truth of the matter had been less easily found than a louse in the filthy beard of a Capuchin friar. But a man well learned and well informed, through having left his footprint in many monasteries, consumed much midnight oil, and manured his brain with many a volume —himself more encumbered with pieces, dyptic fragments, boxes, charters, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... tobacco at unlawful hours, and having disorderly people in their house to the great disturbance of all the inhabitants and neighbours near adjoining." The Ram Alley, Fleet Street, mentioned above, was notorious in sundry ways. Mr. Bell mentions that in 1618 the wardmote laid complaint against Timothy Louse and John Barker, of Ram Alley, "for keeping their tobacco-shoppes open all night and fyers in the same without any chimney and suffering hot waters [spirits] and selling also without licence, to the great disquietness and annoyance of that neighbourhood." There ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... commendation: but if so be that I were minded to stand my own trumpeter, some of those little fellows that hold their heads so high would be taken all aback, as the saying is: they would be ashamed to show their colours, d— my eyes! I once lay eight glasses alongside of the Flour de Louse, a French man-of-war, though her mettle was heavier, and her complement larger by a hundred hands than mine. You, Jack Hatchway, d— ye, what d'ye grin at! D'ye think I tell a story, because ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... locks could hold Ten thousand lice, and every louse was gold; Him on my lap you never more shall see; Or may I ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... for the sake of the pun, he inscribed to Sir Thomas More. The subject of Michael Psellus is a Gnat; Antonius Majoragius took for his theme Clay; Julius Scaliger wrote concerning a Goose; Janus Dousa on a Shadow; and Heinsius (horresco referens) eulogized a Louse. This last animal elicited some fine moral verses from Burns; Libanus thought the Ox worthy of his pen; and Sextus Empiricus selected the faithful Dog. Addison composed the Battle of the Pigmies and Cranes; Rochester versified about Nothing; and Johannes Passeratius made a Latin poem on ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... cereal crops, wheat suffers most from insects. Of the large number of insects that attack wheat, the three important species are the Hessian fly, the chinch-bug and the grain plant-louse or green-bug. ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... (vergoettert); yea, they are themselves God and cannot sin. God has not given you His Word that you should be saved thereby (dass du dadurch sollst selig werden); and whoever seeks no more from God than salvation (Seligkeit) seeks just as much as a louse in a scab. Such Christians are the devil's own, together with all their good works." (2, ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... or brotherhood; a word much used in Scotland. The head of the clan; the chief: an allusion to a story of a Scotchman, who, when a very large louse crept down his arm, put him back again, saying he was the head of the clan, and that, if injured, all ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... "Now ye could haste my coal to waste, and sit ye down to fry: Did ye think of that theft for yourself?" said he; and Tomlinson said, "Ay!" The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from care:— "Ye have scarce the soul of a louse," he said, "but the roots of sin are there, And for that sin should ye come in were I the lord alone. But sinful pride has rule ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... the live brands of the fire smouldered all day in a bank of ashes; there was never any flame in his grate. He went through his day, from his uprising to his evening coughing-fit, with the regularity of a pendulum, and in some sort was a clockwork man, wound up by a night's slumber. Touch a wood-louse on an excursion across your sheet of paper, and the creature shams death; and in something the same way my acquaintance would stop short in the middle of a sentence, while a cart went by, to save the strain to his voice. Following the example of Fontenelle, he was thrifty of pulse-strokes, ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac

... and Religion.—I should be much obliged to any of your correspondents who will inform me where I can find The Bear, the Louse, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various

... an ox, were nothing: he is both ox and ass. To be a dog, a mule, a cat, a fitchew, a toad, a lizard, an owl, a put-tock, or a herring without a roe, I would not care; but to be Menelaus, I would conspire against destiny. Ask me not what I would be, if I were not Thersites; for I care not to be the louse of a lazar, so I were not ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... pool. One small species, abundant on the algae, combines the colour changes of a chameleon with the form and manner of travel of a measuring-worm, looping along the fronds of seaweed or swimming with the same motion. Another variety of shrimp resembles the common wood-louse found under pieces of bark, but is most beautifully iridescent, glowing like an opal at the bottom of the pool. The curious little sea-spiders keep me guessing for a long time where their internal organs ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... religion in its ethics is the absolute reverse of the Christian. The Buddhist prays and tortures, and stupefies himself for purely selfish reasons, so as to escape reincarnation in the form of a bug, a louse, or a worm, by the destruction within himself of all human passions and inclinations. His self-torture is undertaken for the object of absorption into Nirvana, only to be reached by reducing the mind and heart to absolute ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... right dere, I say. Yes, mam, I cooks right here in de fireplace all de time. I got dat pot on dere wid some turnips a boilin now en it gettin on bout time I be mixin up dat bread, too, fore dat child be comin home from school hungry as a louse. I say, I got dis here old black iron spider en dis here iron griddle, too, what I does my bakin on cause you see, I come from way back yonder. Dem what de olden people used to cook on fore stoves ever been ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various

... lies Greer Harrison, a well cracked louse— So small a tenant of so big a house! He joyed in fighting with his eyes (his fist Prudently pendent from a peaceful wrist) And loved to loll on the Parnassian mount, His pen to suck and all his thumbs to count,— What poetry he'd written but for lack ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... insect part of the question. The Phylloxera vastatrix, or grape-vine louse, is already at work on Long Island. It is found very difficult to raise many of our fine, new grapes with us in consequence of the depredations of this very minute insect, it being almost too small to be seen by the naked ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various

... discovered the most contemptible of all God's creatures in Kansas City. Some may suppose that the first discovery excludes the last; but such forget that there is the same difference between cussedness and contemptibility that exists between the leopard and the louse, between a Cuban hurricane and the crapulous eructations of a chronic hoodlum. I want the world to take an attentive look at one Walter S. Halliwell, to make a labored perscrutation of this priorient social pewee, this arbiter eligantarium ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... came to yonge men, namely, Ientlemen: we taulked of their to moch libertie, to liue as they lust: of their letting louse to sone, to ouer moch experience of ill, contrarie to the good order of many good olde common welthes of the Persians and Grekes: of witte gathered, and good fortune gotten, by some, onely by experience, without learning. ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham

... all the week ensuing. Therefore, as there are no great towns without one weekly market at least, so there are very few of them that have not one or two fairs or more within the compass of the year, assigned unto them by the prince And albeit that some of them are not much better than Louse fair,[5] or the common kirkemesses,[6] beyond the sea, yet there are divers not inferior to the greatest marts in Europe, as Stourbridge fair near to Cambridge, Bristow fair, Bartholomew fair at London, Lynn mart, Cold fair at Newport pond for cattle, and divers other, all which, ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... understood what the good-looking old man was saying, because his attention was riveted to a large, dark-grey, many-legged louse that was creeping along the ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... meet with fossils in the shale, with trilobites, such as the Asaphus Canadensis, a crustacean, closely allied to the wood-louse, and occasionally found rolled up, like it, into a defensive ball, together with other ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... I'll come nearer to you, and yet I am no scab, nor no louse. Can you make proof wherever I sold away my conscience, or pawned it? Do you know who would buy it, or lend any money upon it? I think I have given you the pose. Blow your nose, Master Constable. But to say that I impoverish the earth, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... dropped his voice, 'I tried to save you; but you had seen rather too much to be safe. What devil prompted you to steal a horse and go to the cave? I don't blame you for overhearing us; but if you had had the sense of a louse you would have gone off to the Berg with your news. By the way, how did you manage it? A cellar, I suppose. Our friend Laputa was a fool not to take better precautions; but I must say you acted the ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... then an Horse or Man. And thirdly, if we consider that Nature does always appropriate the instruments, so as they are the most fit and convenient to perform their offices, and the most simple and plain that possibly can be; this we may see further verify'd also in the foot of a Louse which is very much differing from those I have been describing, but more convenient and necessary for the place of its habitation, each of his leggs being footed with a couple of small claws which he can open or shut at pleasure, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... whatever as to genera and species, nor of the large number of distinct forms related to each and grouped into natural orders. My delight, therefore, was great when I was ... able to identify the charming little eyebright, the strange-looking cow-wheat and louse-wort, the handsome mullein and the pretty creeping toad-flax, and to find that all of them, as well as the lordly foxglove, formed parts of one great natural order, and that under all their superficial diversity of form was a similarity of structure which, when once clearly understood, ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... himself up between two bales of goods to wait the event, but was discovered by a Turcoman of great size, and of a most ferocious aspect, who, taking him at first for part of the baggage, turned him over on his back, when (as we see a wood-louse do) he opened out at full length, and expressed all his fears by the most abject entreaties. He tried to soften the Turcoman by invoking Omar, and cursing Ali; but nothing would do; the barbarian was inexorable: he only left him in possession of his turban, out of consideration to its ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... believed that after their sheep fed on the foliage of this group of plants a skin disease, produced by a certain tiny louse (pediculus), would attack them—hence our innocent betony's ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... aphis, or plant-louse," said Uncle Ben. "They suck the juices of the leaves. These juices become in their bodies a sort of honey, which they yield from certain pores. The ants are very fond of this honey-dew, and lap it up eagerly. And if you watch close you may see them patting or stroking ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... tongue, delicate as it is, would crush a fragile plant louse. I picked another burr, squeezing it gently, when there issued from the hole at the base a drop of crystal-clear liquid, held in the thinnest of envelopes, which I tasted and found sweet. In burr after burr I found these sacks or cysts of sweets secreted by the aphides for the bees to puncture ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... this insect appears, usually in a very dry season, I hold that it is rather the product than the cause of disease, as with the bark louse on our apple-trees; as a remedy I advocate sprinkling the plants with air-slaked lime, watering, if possible, and a frequent and thorough stirring of the soil with the cultivator and hoe. The better the opportunities the cabbage have to develop themselves through high manuring, sufficient ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory

... Department of the Board of Trade. Are Shackleton, Bell, and Barnes honester men than Gompers, Mitchell, and Tobin? As Dr. Johnson very coarsely expressed it: 'It is difficult to settle the question of precedence between a bug and a louse.'"[394] ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker



Words linked to "Louse" :   sea louse, whale louse, sucking louse, jumping plant louse, head louse, bird louse, worm, louse fly, louse up, biting louse, oak blight, psyllid, cootie, Anoplura, common louse, unpleasant person, woolly plant louse, pubic louse, grape louse, Menopon gallinae, bark-louse, homopteran, Mallophaga, Pediculus capitis, fish louse, Phylloxera vitifoleae, book louse, adelgid, dirt ball, order Mallophaga, psylla, Pediculus corporis, shaft louse, onion louse, insect, homopterous insect, Phthirius pubis, Menopon palladum, body louse, chicken louse, disagreeable person



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