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

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




Sable   Listen
noun
Sable  n.  
1.
(Zool.) A carnivorous animal of the Weasel family (Mustela zibellina) native of the northern latitudes of Europe, Asia, and America, noted for its fine, soft, and valuable fur. Note: The sable resembles the marten, but has a longer head and ears. Its fur consists of a soft under wool, with a dense coat of hair, overtopped by another still longer. It varies greatly in color and quality according to the locality and the season of the year. The darkest and most valuable furs are taken in autumn and winter in the colder parts of Siberia, Russia, and British North America. Note: The American sable, or marten, was formerly considered a distinct species (Mustela Americana), but it differs very little from the Asiatic sable, and is now considered only a geographical variety.
2.
The fur of the sable.
3.
A mourning garment; a funeral robe; generally in the plural. "Sables wove by destiny."
4.
(Her.) The tincture black; represented by vertical and horizontal lines crossing each other.






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 |





"Sable" Quotes from Famous Books



... desperately addicted to book-hunting. Because his own house was not large enough, he hired London House, in Aldersgate Street, for the reception of his library; and here he used to regale himself with the sight and the scent of innumerable black letter volumes, arranged in "sable garb," and stowed perhaps "three deep," from the bottom to the top of his house. He died in 1725; and Catalogues of his books for sale continued, for nine succeeding years, to meet the public eye. The following is a list of all the parts which I have ever met ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... old-fashioned as any of its inmates. There is no great toilette kept at Osbaldistone Hall, you must know; but I must take off these things, they are so unpleasantly warm,—and the hat hurts my forehead, too," continued the lively girl, taking it off, and shaking down a profusion of sable ringlets, which, half laughing, half blushing, she separated with her white slender fingers, in order to clear them away from her beautiful face and piercing hazel eyes. If there was any coquetry in the action, it was well disguised by the careless indifference of her manner. I could not help saying, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... cousin Madame Sable, whose husband is colonel of the 76th Chasseurs at Limoges. There were two young women there, one of whom had married a medical man, Dr. Parent, who devotes himself a great deal to nervous diseases and the extraordinary manifestations to which at this ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... sketch doesn't give any definite idea of this charmer's charms, but some time I'll fill it in,—hair, sweet little hat, gown, and eyes, all in golden brown, a cape of tawny sable slipping off her arm, a knot of yellow primroses in her girdle, carved-oak background, and the afternoon sun coming through a stained-glass window. Great Jove! She had a most curious effect on me, that girl! I can't explain it,—very curious, altogether ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... for that, envied her good manners, her grace, the way she slipped on her dressing-wrap in the living picture, The Bath. She turned green with jealousy at the sight of Poland's motor-car, her thousand-pound ear-rings, her sable furs. It was not that Lily lacked admirers or sympathizers. She even had a little triumph at the Bijou Theater, one day when she passed round the hat for old Martello, who was ill in bed and penniless. Lily topped the bill in her own fashion, by putting her name at the head of the list, and ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... wall his bronzed figures of distinguished men,—Shakspeare, Napoleon, Wellington, Nelson, &c. It was between twelve and one in the day; but there was no crowd, not even a single boy or girl looking on,—so common and every-day was the character of the scene. As we moved along in front of this sable row, one of the white attendants (though my wife had hold of my arm) said to me, with all the nonchalance of a Smithfield cattle-drover, "Looking out for a few niggers this morning?" Never did I feel my manhood so insulted. My indignation burned for expression. ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... wrote about anything and everything. His brain must needs be a gigantic storehouse of information, thought the respectful reader. He skipped from Pericles to Cromwell, from Cleopatra to Mary Stuart, from Sappho to Madame de Sable; and he wrote of these departed spirits with such a charming impertinence, with such a delicious affectation of intimacy, that one would have thought he had sat by Cleopatra as she melted her pearls, and stood amongst the audience ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... 'link-man', a lank, dark-faced, black-haired man, in a sable suit, with a link or torch in his hand. It usually only smoulders, with a deep red glow, as he visits his beat. The library is one of the rooms he sees to. Unlike 'Lady Rachel,' as the maids called her, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... for once," the man from the Ghetto said to the young woman in a low voice, "and allow me to lay this sable skin at your feet." ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... scene profits by the general law that renders decadence and ruin in Venice more brilliant than any prosperity. Decay is in this extraordinary place golden in tint and misery couleur de rose. The gondolas of the correct people are unmitigated sable, but the poor market-boats from the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... seven when they finished talking about Rosamund and Dion, when Mr. Darlington at length tore himself delicately away from their delightful company, and, warmly wrapped in an overcoat lined with unostentatious sable, set out on the short walk to Canon Wilton's house. To reach the Canon's house he had to pass through the Dark Entry and skirt the ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... was when I made a note of it about three years since, a silver seal with a crystal handle, which is said to have belonged to Killigrew, King Charles's celebrated Master of the Revels. The arms are, argent, an eagle displayed with two heads within a bordure sable bezanty. Crest. A demi-lion ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various

... drop of thy heavenly dew to quaff, Her flowers bend low their heads; And with them, satiate with vision, droops My overcharged soul.... O starry goddess with the crown of gold, Upon whose wide-spread sable mantle gleam A thousand worlds ... Silence divine, that filleth all the world, Flowing so softly to the eternal shores ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... of highland rivers Careering, full and cool, From sable on to golden, From rapid on to pool— The hue of heather-honey, The hue of honey-bees, Shall tinge her golden shoulder, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... set the fashion, which soon spread into England and long remained popular. cf. Shadwell's Bury Fair (1689), II, ii: 'Milliner. What d'ye lack, Ladies? fine Mazarine hoods, fontanges, girdles, sable tippets?' ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... cloudless vermilion and gold over the divide was dying down like receding music. The mountains were purple-black. From the canon rose the night mist, pale blue, while above it stood the smoke from the mill, a motionless plume of sable, shot through by the last ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris

... see her again. And the Reverend Mother—oh! she is a very good, holy woman—a Jerningham, and thus, you know, a connection of mine. She was an heiress but chose the cloister. And I saw the buckles sable on a memorial window in the chapel erected to another sister—also a nun—they are a terribly pious family. I knew them at once, for they are charges I also am entitled to bear, as you know, or, rather, don't know, I presume; for you have all the haziest notion of what ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... why have you honored it With such a sable coverture? A traytor, Deserves no cloth of sorrow: set it downe, And let our other offspring be brought foorth. My beauteous, lovely, and admired love, Come, sit by us in an imperiall chayre, And grace this state throne ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... you understand: furs, such as sable, marten, and squirrel; they send old ship's stores ashore to trade with vagrant Indians, and then sew up the skins in their clothes, between the lining and the stuff, so as to pass the Custom-house officers at home. Bob! I'm longing to be ashore for good. You don't know what it is to feel firm ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... the phosphorescent glimmer that hangs upon decay: what are these gauds to me, who count you to be far above the worth of monumental effigy, or marble mask, my living love; whom I will set,—not in the tomb of cold, pale porphyry, nor in a sable, slabbed sarcophagus, but breathing, and enshrined in fortune's framing gold. Fastidious girl, and prouder than the proud Montignys, listen to me, listen. We are two stranger vessels that have met upon the ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... adversary as he would have done an intimate acquaintance, made room beside him on the same seat with himself, offered him refreshments, and spread over his knees the sable cloak that had been thrown on the front seat. They then conversed of the court, without alluding to Madame; of Monsieur, without speaking of domestic affairs; of the king, without speaking of his brother's wife; of the queen-mother, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... them lay the hard trails which separately each had travelled; before them now had the two trails merged, running pleasantly into one; behind them, far back in the lonely solitudes of the mountains, was the old Chateau Bellaire wrapped about in its own history as in a cloak of sable; in front of them, dozing upon the river banks, was ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... the winds, he is arrived Here where his daughter dwells; and on this coast Suppose him now at anchor. The city strived God Neptune's annual feast to keep: from whence Lysimachus our Tyrian ship espies, His banners sable, trimm'd with rich expense; And to him in his barge with fervour hies. In your supposing once more put your sight Of heavy Pericles; think this his bark: Where what is done in action, more, if might, Shall be discover'd; ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... gloss on the hair, and a light in the eye. But it does not improve their colour, and I am assured that it has an awful effect on their tempers, so I think I will remain, for the present, the faithful admirer of my sable Ingramina, the Igalwa, with the little red blossoms stuck in her night-black hair, and a sweet soft look and word for every one, but particularly for her ugly husband Isaac ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... gallant King's 76th, with whom they had fought side by side, was cantoned, invited the soldiers to a grand entertainment provided for them by the sepoys. They consented to go on one condition—that the sepoys should see them all back safe before morning. Confiding in their sable friends, they all got gloriously drunk, but found themselves lying every man upon his proper cot in his own barracks in the morning. The sepoys had carried them all home upon their shoulders. Another native regiment, passing within a few miles of a ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... John, Earl of Cornwall and Poictou, was elected King of the Romans at Frankfort on St. Hilary's Day (Jan. 13th) 1256. His earldom of Cornwall was represented by—Argent, a lion rampant gules crowned or; his earldom of Poictou by a bordure sable, bezantee, or rather of peas (poix) in reference to the name Poictou; and as king of the Romans he is said to have borne these arms upon the breast of the German double-headed eagle displayed sable, which represented ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... rule, been slaves, and are not even generally of servile extraction. In Philadelphia they are much more numerous. Many of the mulatto waiters employed in the hotels are strikingly handsome men, and on the whole the sable sons of Pennsylvania struck me as being industrious, well dressed, prosperous, and a trifle haughty in their intercourse with ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... the water pale and thin Still shine the unoffending feet And there above the painter set The Father and the Paraclete. . . . . . The sable presbyters approach The avenue of penitence; The young are red and ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot

... moon. She was no longer paddling, but was looking straight ahead. To Cardigan her figure was exquisitely girlish as he saw it now. She was bareheaded, as he had seen tier first, and her hair hung down her back like a shimmering mass of velvety sable in the star-and-moon glow. Something told Carrigan she was going to turn her face in his direction, and he dropped his hand over his eyes again, leaving a space between the fingers. He was right in his guess. She fronted the moon, looking at him ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... herself, she went on: "Molly thought Mrs. Dorset the best-dressed woman at the wedding. I've no doubt her dress DID cost more than any one else's, but I can't quite like the idea—a combination of sable and POINT DE MILAN. It seems she goes to a new man in Paris, who won't take an order till his client has spent a day with him at his villa at Neuilly. He says he must study his subject's home life—a ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... parchment window the Moose looked at all those wonderful things, and at the red flannel shirts, and at the four flint guns and the spotted cotton handerchiefs, each worth a sable skin at one end of the fur trade, half a six-pence at the other. There was tea, too—tea, that magic medicine before which life's cares vanished ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... the money which I have accumulated. Without a teacher, but love and hope, I have educated myself to be fit to talk to you. It is all crude now, like a crow that I have taught to speak, but encouragement will make me confident and saucy, and you will forget my sable ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... drainage, elevation, water-supply, wharves, quays, bridges, and worked up to libraries, museums, public and private collections of pictures, and what not. He ordered three pictures of Boston artists,—two autumnal scenes, and an interior, a negro cabin, with an hilarious sable group variously employed, called "Christmas in the Quarters." Then the questions of fisheries, maritime traffic, coast and harbor defences, light-houses, the ship-building interests, life-saving associations, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... glittering spot upon it like a tiny eye. How the black beauties melted on my tongue in their dead-ripe richness. One bush in particular was heavy with the clusters. After despoiling the edges I opened the heart, and there, hidden snugly away, as if for the wood-fairies, were quantities of the sable clusters, larger and more splendid than any I had seen. I immediately made my way into the defences of that fortress. There was a merciless sacking there, reader, allow me to tell you. But that is neither "here nor there" ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... Grand Marais. This is a striking inlet in the coast, which has much enlarged itself within late years, owing to the force of the north-west storms. It exhibits a striking proof of lake action. The next day we passed the naked and high dunes called Grand Sable, and the storm-beaten and impressive horizontal coat of the Pictured Rocks, and encamped at Grand Island, a distance of about 130 miles. I found masses of gypsum and small veins of calcareous spar imbedded ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... enraptured and at the same time filled with a strange fear by the cold coquetry with which this magnificent woman draped her charms in her furs of dark sable; by the severity and hardness which lay in this cold marble-like face. Again I took my pen in hand, and wrote ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

... pavilion in his garden, clad in a white vestment, according to the Indian code, over which he had a cloak of gold "brocade," the ground color being carnation lined with white satin, and above it was a collar of sable, whereof the skins were sewed together so that the tails ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... gorgeous. There were mute oysters with wands, drunken oysters with scarves and hat-bands, a sable hearse with hearth-dusters on it, a swindling undertaker's bill, and all the accessories of a first-rate churchyard circus—everything necessary but the corpse. That had been disposed of by the monkey, and the undertaker meanly withheld the use of ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... horseman, as appeared from the hoof-tracks, in his precipitate haste, had not attended to keep on the firm sands on the foot of the rock, but had taken the shortest and most dangerous course. One only vestige of his fate appeared. A large sable feather had been detached from his hat, and the rippling waves of the rising tide wafted it to Caleb's feet. The old man took it up, dried it, and placed it ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... in some rural, calm, sequestered spot, Where healing Nature her benignant look Ne'er changes, save at that lorn season, when, With tresses drooping o'er her sable stole, She yearly mourns the mortal doom of man, Her noblest work, (so Israel's virgins erst, With annual moan upon the mountains wept Their fairest gone,) there in that rural scene, So placid, so congenial to the wish The Christian ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls! I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various

... we are, we need the energy that slumbers in the black man's arm to make us stronger. We want no longer any heavy-footed, melancholy service from the negro. We want the cheerful activity of the quickened manhood of these sable millions. Nor can we afford to endure the moral blight which the existence of a degraded and hated class must necessarily inflict upon any people among whom such a class may exist. Exclude the negroes as a class from political rights,—teach them that the high and manly privilege of suffrage ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... his camp, which is composed of 10,000 tents. His own audience tent is so large that it can easily hold 1000 persons, and he has another for private interviews, and a third for sleeping. They are supported by three tent-poles, are covered outside with tiger skins, and inside with ermine and sable. Marco Polo says that the tents are so fine and costly that it is not every king who could pay ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... accomplished among the negroes within your limits. New missions are needed, and increased attention to the work in this department generally demanded. Heaven devolves an immense responsibility upon us with reference to these sable sons of Ham. Providence has thrown them in our midst, not merely to be our household and agricultural servants, but to be served by us with the blessed gospel of the Son of God. Let us then, in the name of Him who made it a special sign of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... Arrival at Madeira. Remarks on Funchal. Political state of the island. Latitude and longitude. Departure from Madeira. The island St. Antonio. Foul winds; and remarks upon them. The ship leaky. Search made for Isle Sable. Trinidad. Saxemberg sought for. Variation of the compass. State of the ship's company, on arriving at the Cape of Good Hope. Refitment at Simon's Bay. Observatory set Up. The astronomer quits the expedition. Rates Of the time keepers. Some ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... soon. . . . What would you say of a doctor who couldn't tell the difference between a wound made by a man bumping his head when he fell and by a smashing blow with a gun-barrel? Patten doesn't guess yet that it was the blow Moraga gave me the other night which came so close to ringing down the sable curtains for me." ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory

... Grey from the background of the mist, I saw three vague forms drawing near. My sense recoiled acute with fear; I could not stir. As from a cage I watched that spectral dim cortege Moving inexorable and slow Against the ashen afterglow. Now caught the moon their robes in white, Now strode they sable through the night, Across the grass they came and grew Whiter, statelier, as they drew Beneath the shadow of the wall; Then one by one the three stepped through The garden door, and stood a while Beside the pool, their image ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer

... asylum for the persecuted of all nations; and yet as loudly proclaiming that they are determined to deprive millions of their own countrymen of every political and social right, and to send them to a barbarous continent, because the Creator has given them a sable complexion. Where exists a more rigorous despotism? What conspiracy was ever more cruel? What hypocrisy and tergiversation so enormous? The story is proclaimed in our pulpits, in our state and national assemblies, in courts of law, in religious and secular periodicals,—among all parties, and ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... Bachelors' Row, where were installed hunters and hounds from the Southland, rich cotton and sugar planters, sporting men and their sable attendants. Here the candles burned all night, and there were loud whispers of games in vogue not as innocent as those listed on the tempting advertising circulars of the Springs. This sunny, summer life was of the dolce far niente sort, given up to ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... sweeps the somber plain, In dizzy slant descends the sheeted rain; Sharp lightnings rend in twain the sable gloom, While, cannon-like, the unchained thunders boom! On this wild tumult of the angry skies No ear discerns a woman's thrilling cries; Yet, ere its sullen echoes die away In caverns where the mocking spirits play, Faint, but rejoicing, on ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... closely, as if endeavoring to learn the precise fashion of his father's knot; and when at last Bill was swung up a-tiptoe to a limb, and the whipping commenced, Simon's eye followed every movement of his father's arm; and as each blow descended upon the bare shoulders of his sable friend, his own body writhed and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... entrusted him with his ring, and finally requested the Breton knight to take with him two sails, one white and the other black, the first to be hoisted upon his return should Ysonde accompany him back to Brittany, the sable sail to be raised should his embassy fail of success. Now Ysonde of Brittany overheard all that was said, her jealous fears were confirmed, and she resolved to be ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... corroborated Scotch, "and once in his room at the hospital he showed me a sable helmet. Scarlet cloth and gold braid, and the hussar fur all over it. It's a beauty. I wish he'd give it ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason

... began to practise Meditation, utterly forgetful of his bride and nuptial ceremony. The sun began to cast his slanting rays on the wall of the temple, and they sat motionless; twilight came over them, and night wrapped them with her sable shroud, and they sat as still as two marble statues; midnight, dawn, at last the morning sun rose to find them still in their reverie. The father of the bride, who had started a search during the night, found to his surprise the bridegroom absorbed in Meditation ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya

... very pleasing ruminations, one hand buried in the folds of his long dark hair, and the other holding the piece of charcoal which had so ill executed its office, and which he now rubbed, without much regard to the sable streaks which it produced, with irritable pressure upon his ample ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... Grand Bank westward and southwestward over about 600 miles of length. Thence, other grounds continue the chain, passing along through the Green Bank, St. Peters Bank, Western Bank (made up of several more or less connected grounds, such as Misaine Bank, Banquereau, The Gully, and Sable Island Bank); thence southwest through Emerald Bank, Sambro, Roseway, La Have, Seal Island Ground, Browns Bank, and Georges Bank with its southwestern ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich

... Gainsb'rough ne'er painted: no—nor he of Spain, Glorious Murillo!—and by contrast shown More beautiful. The younger little one, With large blue eyes, and silken ringlets fair, By nut-brown Lizzy, with smooth parted hair, Sable and glossy as the raven's wing, And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... poetry. There are no such epitaphs as Ben Jonson's, witness the charming ones on his own children, on Salathiel Pavy, the child-actor, and many more; and this even though the rigid law of mine and thine must now restore to William Browne of Tavistock the famous lines beginning: "Underneath this sable hearse." Jonson is unsurpassed, too, in the difficult poetry of compliment, seldom falling into fulsome praise and disproportionate similitude, yet showing again and again a generous appreciation of worth in others, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... was exceedingly handsome, of the most luscious Spanish type of beauty, flushed under the American girl's intent gaze, drew up a sable cape which had partly fallen from the shoulders of her white cloth dress, and ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson

... it difficult to account for an attack which once came to my knowledge. I was at Sand point, on Pend'Oreille Lake, and met some French and Meti trappers, then in town with their bales of beaver, otter, and sable. One of them, who gave his name as Baptiste Lamoche, had his head twisted over to one side, the result of the bite of a bear. When the accident occurred he was out on a trapping trip with two companions. ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... that would be a very good way to put it, and they finished their beer just as the landlord intimated that it was closing time. The cart was standing where they left it, the black cloth saturated with the rain, which dripped mournfully from its sable folds. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... better to get a professional worker to cut it for you if you need the shape or size altered; then, too, if you want an oval shape you will be pretty sure to get a true oval, which very possibly you could not manage yourself. Red sable brushes are used, and you should select those that will come to a good point. You will not require more than three or four, a medium size for washes, a smaller for stippling, and a very fine one for finishing-touches. An oval china palette is ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... chemical action on the skin, or by a reflex action through vision (as in the chameleon); secondly, that a white skin checks radiation and keeps the animals warm. But there are some exceptions to the rule of white colouring in arctic animals which refute these hypotheses, and confirm the author's. The sable remains brown throughout the winter; but it frequents trees, with whose bark its colour assimilates. The musk-sheep is brown and conspicuous; but it is gregarious, and its safety depends upon its ability to recognise its kind and keep with the ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... of the natives when their lands can no longer furnish the means of subsistence? This is indeed a serious question, and well worthy of the earnest attention of the philanthropist. While Britain makes such strenuous exertions in favour of the sable bondsmen of Africa, and lavishes her millions to free them from the yoke, can nothing be done for the once noble, but now degraded, aborigines of America? Are they to be left to the tender mercies of the trader until famine and disease sweep them from the earth? People of Britain! ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... softener-down a badger-hair tool is used. For mahogany shades and tints a mottler will be found of service, as will also a soft piece of Turkey sponge. For oak, the usual steel graining-comb is employed for the streaking, and for veining badger sash-tools and sable pencils. ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead

... sea. It apparently owes its sanguine name to the fact that hereabouts the earliest discoveries of gold in the Transvaal were made. But it is also popularly called "The Devil's Kantoor," just as in the Valley of Rocks at Lynton we have "The Devil's Cheesering," and other possessions of the same sable owner. This African marvel is, however, much more than a mere valley of rocks, and it bids absolute defiance to my ripest descriptive powers. It is a vast area covered with rocks so grotesquely shaped and utterly fantastic as would have satisfied ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... Wiswall," alluded to by Dr. Whitaker, one of whom, "John, Abbot of Whalley" was executed for the part he took in the "Pilgrimage of Grace." when it is stated that the Paslews of Wiswall bore "Argent a fess between three mullets Sable pierced of the field, a crescent for difference," probably some of your readers will be able to give some particulars respecting "Robert Passelew," and also identify the families ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various

... sylvan deities, with moss o'ergrown, And fountains palpitating in the heat, And all Val d'Arno stretched beneath its feet. Here in seclusion, as a widow may, The lovely lady whiled the hours away, Pacing in sable robes the statued hall, Herself the stateliest statue among all, And seeing more and more, with secret joy, Her husband risen and living in her boy, Till the lost sense of life returned again, Not as delight, but as ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... McShane preferring to ride outside on the box with Joey, that he might not be in the way, as a third person invariably is, with a newly married couple. The snow was many feet deep on the ground; but the air was dry, and the sun shone bright. The bride was handed in, enveloped in a rich mantle of sable; O'Donahue followed, equally protected against the cold; while McShane and Joey fixed themselves on the box, so covered up in robes of wolf-skins, and wrappers of bear-skins for their feet, that you could see but the tips of their noses. On the front of the sleigh, below the box of the carriage, ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat

... hall where chiefs were late convened![4.B.] Oh! dome displeasing unto British eye! With diadem hight Foolscap, lo! a Fiend, A little Fiend that scoffs incessantly, There sits in parchment robe arrayed, and by[bf] His side is hung a seal and sable scroll, Where blazoned glare names known to chivalry,[bg] And sundry signatures adorn the roll,[bh] Whereat the Urchin points and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... woman! Will you bar our meeting? We're sweethearts. Will you interfere with our tryst? You pert whippersnapper, my sable-skinned sweeting My masculine wooing's too wise to resist. Shall RHODES be cut out by a small Portuguese, With a gun ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various

... the sable steward, "runnin' like a mad kangaroo arter a smallish brute like a mouse. Nebber sawd nuffin' like Massa Alf ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... also a young man, and a negro, short, thickset, square, tough as india-rubber, and black as the Emperor of Zahara. Good-humour wrinkled the corners of his eyes, the milk of human kindness played on his thick lips and rippled his sable brow, and intense sincerity, like a sunbeam, suffused ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... thou dost avert thy face: So did the sun his radiant visage hide, And swerve his chariot from the eternal path. These, monarch, are thy priestess' ancestors, And many a dreadful fate of mortal doom, And many a deed of the bewilder'd brain, Dark night doth cover with her sable wing, Or shroud ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... whereas Mars doth reign, That all debate and discord must be rife; Some think Bellona goddess of that life. Among the rest that painter had some skill, Which thus in arms did once set out the same:— A field of gules, and on a golden hill, A stately town consumed all with flame On chief of sable taken from the dame, A sucking babe, oh! born to bide mischance Begored with blood and pierced with a lance On high the Helm, I bear it well in mind, The wreath was silver, powdered all with shot, About the which, goutte du sang, did twine A roll of sable black, and foul ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various

... surrounding lasted to the neighborhood of Madeira, for which the course was next shaped. After passing that island on June 21 return was made toward the United States by way of the Azores, which were sighted, and thence again to the Banks of Newfoundland and Cape Sable, reaching Boston August 31, after an ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... now in velvet and sable; nothing could be richer than her attire; nothing more mocking ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... winter, the fur is closer and finer, and is of a snowy white color; the tip of the tail is black throughout the year. In Europe the fur is much used for ornamenting the state robes of sovereigns and nobles. The sable is another animal much prized for its rich fur; it is a native of Northern Europe and America. The skins of the marten, found in North America, as well as in Northern Asia and the mountains of Kamtschatka; and also of the bear, fox, raccoon, badger, lynx, ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... the foregatherings round the camp-fire, when Night had spread her sable mantle over the sleeping earth, and only the wakeful wood-hen and the hoarsely-hooting owl stirred the silence of the leafy solitude, that Moonlight was "swapping" yarns with the Prospector. As ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... took with him a learned Hungarian from Buda, named Parmenius, who went for the express purpose of singing the praise of Norumbega in Latin verse, but was drowned in Sir Humphrey's great flag-ship, the Delight. This wreck took place near Sable Island, and as most of the supplies for the expedition went down in the flag-ship, the men in the remaining vessels grew so impatient as to compel a return. There were two vessels, the Golden Hind of forty tons, and the Squirrel of ten tons, this last being a mere boat then called ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... Cornwallis, whom the king had appointed their governor, and towards the latter end of June arrived at the place of their destination, which was the harbour of Chebucton, on the sea-coast of the peninsula, about midway between Cape Canceau and Cape Sable. It is one of the most secure and commodious havens in the whole world, and well situated for the fishery; yet the climate is cold, the soil barren, and the whole country covered with woods of birch, fir, pine, and some oak, unfit for the purposes of timber; but at the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... the fire; Want, colder than Charity, shivering at the street corners; church-towers humming with the faint vibration of their own tongues, but newly resting from the ghostly preachment 'One!' The earth covered with a sable pall as for the burial of yesterday; the clumps of dark trees, its giant plumes of funeral feathers, waving sadly to and fro: all hushed, all noiseless, and in deep repose, save the swift clouds that skim across the moon, and the cautious ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... bellowed. "Where the blankety blank in blank did you come from? Byes," he shouted to the men, "it's me ould boss on th' Au Sable six year back—that time, ye mind, whin we had th' ice jam! Glory be! but I'm glad to ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... napkins, long unknown; above all, a lovely woman in crisp gown, with more and handsomer roses on her cheek than in her garden. 'Twas an idyl in the midst of the stern realities of war! The table groaned beneath its viands. Sable servitors brought in, hot and hot from the kitchen, cakes of wondrous forms, inventions of the tropical imagination of Africa, inflamed by Virginian hospitality. I was rather a moderate trencherman, but the performance of Hamilton was Gargantuan, alarming. Duty dragged us from this Eden; yet in ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... him a signal. He told her his hard case, and told her also a resolution he had come to. She informed the tribe. The tribe consulted. A keen saw was flung up to him; in two nights he was through the bars; the third he was free, and joined his sable friends. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... "bridal tour," Or visit each season at "watering places," Where fashion at people well known to be poor, In money or station, will make ugly faces; Where women, though married, with roues will flirt; Where widows, though widows in fresh sable weeds, Spread nets that entangle like old Nessus' shirt And finish with Burdell and Cunningham deeds; Where daughters when fading are taken to spend A month at the springs, or a week in salt water; Where bachelors ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]

... she knelt, she wept, she prayed. The waters of Fundy were heaped into angry billows, and dashed their spray over the mother and children assembled round the altar on the shore. Darkness began to throw its sable mantle over land, rocks and bay. Margaret was suddenly started, she thought she heard the sound of a voice coming through the gloom. She turned her head in the direction of the sound, and at that moment a flash of ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith

... ladder, argent. 2. Argent; a scourge, sable. 3. Azure; (una piazza bianca con nicchi vermigli). 4. Gules; a ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... no wise dismayed by this proposition. They saw a wide grin expand across his sable face as he immediately thrust a hand into the pocket of the ragged jacket he wore over his faded ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... her homely attempts to comfort her mistress, who dragged herself about like a sable ghost, "if ye'd only smile once in a while ye'd be surprised at the comfort ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... dignity as the representative of a Foreign, powerful monarch; he seized the stool and carried it up to near where the King sat, and placed it by his side, saying, "Though in your hands I may be a prisoner, I am a man as much as you are, and can only meet you as an equal." His sable Majesty was greatly annoyed at Gordon's audacious conduct, and remarking said, "Gordon Pasha don't you know I am the King, and could kill you if I wished." "I am perfectly aware of that," said Gordon, "Do so at once if ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle

... his plumage. His dark brown head fairly shone, his sable breast and back grew glossy, and his wings took on faint, changing tints of purple and blue. His jet rudder, daily dressed to its iridescent tip by his ebony beak, was flicked jauntily as he strode around on his long black legs. And all this alert, engaging beauty ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... that thou shalt. Look at him, Meg, is he not in fit livery for a lawyer's house? Mark his trim legs, sable doublet and hose, and grey hood—and see, he hath the very eye of a councillor seeking for suits, as he looketh at the chestnuts John holdeth to him. I warrant he hath a tongue likewise. Canst plead for ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... finale. The magazines exploded, shooting up a huge column of firebrands hundreds of feet in the air, and then the burning hulk burst asunder and melted into the waters, while the calm night spread her sable mantle ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.

... Heav'ns with sable Veil Are cover'd close, and all Mankind repose, Prince, let us go, where Honour us invites; Let us abandon this enchanted Place, Which too averse already hath prov'd Both to my Glory, and ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym

... Unknown. And the Unknown said unto Life, "Give me an alley-tor." But Life replied, "Nay, for the commoneys are lying well, and the thumb of him that aimeth is seasoned unto the stroke." And the Unknown beat his sable wings together, and one black feather flitted far into the breast of the day and fell to earth. And there came a fair-haired Child plucking flowers in the desert with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various

... accustomed to the use of colors. A little white with a dash of blue or a little silver, will improve white linen, lace, etc. The jewelry may be touched with gold or silver from the shells, moistened with distilled water, and laid on with a fine-pointed sable-hair brush. ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... STILL:—I take the liberty to inform you, that I had the pleasure of seeing a man of sable brand at my house in St. C. yesterday, by name of James Connor, lately from New Orleans, more recently from the city of Brotherly love, where he took French leave of his French master. He desired me to inform ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... unconsciously noted these exceptions, looking with a vague curiosity from one to the other. Then, all at once, his tall frame shivered from head to foot, and his fingers convulsively grasped the yielding sable on ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... officers who were leading their horses towards the Kremlin. The streets were full of soldiers carrying burdens, and staggering beneath the weight of their spoil. Many were wearing priceless fur cloaks, and others walked in women's wraps of sable and ermine. Some wore jewellery, such as necklaces, on their rough uniforms, and bracelets round their sunburnt wrists. No one laughed at them, but only glanced enviously at the pillage. All were in deadly ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... wolverene, observing what he is about, follows at a distance, carefully pulling the traps to pieces as he leaves them behind, and eating off the heads of the partridges or other birds which have been used as bait, declining all the time to run his nose into danger. When a sable or marten is entrapped, he tears out the dead animal and carries it away. It is even supposed that he will attack a hibernating bear in his den, and manage to kill him before Bruin has aroused himself sufficiently for ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... parting of rift scarce discerning, that modesty seemed to retire downward, and seek shelter between two plump fleshy thighs: the curling hair that overspread its delightful front, clothed it with the richest sable fur in the universe: in short, she was evidently a subject for the painters to court her, sitting to them for a pattern female beauty, in all the true pride ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... lonely path is heard The sigh of sable trees, With deadly moan of suff'ring strife Borne on the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various

... fifteen miles distant with no water or feed for our horses in the intermediate space, we buried half our provisions, etc., in a hole beneath our temporary shelter, which was then fired in order to lull the suspicion of the natives; and our sable companions having secreted the pannier-baskets and packsaddles among the adjoining bushes in such a way as to defy discovery, we trusted to Providence for the result, and next morning resumed our northern route. Leaving the extensive shallow lakes of Garbanup, at this time quite dry, about ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... Without prior effort on his part he was fed even as the Prophet Elijah was fed by the ravens of old. This simile would acquire added strength if you'd ever seen Aunt Ca'line, her complexion being a crow's-wing sable. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... princely bridegroom had got it painted secretly, because of his haughty arrogant mother, by a painter in Wolgast; but she had revenged herself on the proud old woman at last. The golden chain was her own, but the gold hair-band and the sable collar had been a present from her young bridegroom, And now, what was left of all her pomp and magnificence! See what these accursed princes had brought her to with their envy, arrogance, and savage vengeance—she that was the richest lady in the land ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... bend with pensive mien, And throbbing bosom o'er that sable bier, To which yon melancholy group is seen In mute affliction slowly drawing near, Whilst weeping genius, pointing to the sky, In silent anguish heaves ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various

... the North. For a long time her whereabouts had been unknown, and then she was discovered by a Federal gunboat, which gave chase and fired upon her. Without returning fire, she raced in for shelter amongst the dangerous islands off Cape Sable, and was lost in the fog. Rumor had it that she ran on the rocks off that perilous coast, and sank with all on board. As time went by, and there was no more sign of the corsair, the rumor was accepted as proven. Men began to spin yarns in ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... hunched up on his cushions in the State Pavilion. 'On State occasions, among which it is evident that he included this Quaker audience, he delighted to deck his unpleasing person in a vest of cloth of gold, lined with sable of the richest contrasting blackness. Around him were ranged the servants of the Seraglio—the highest rank of lacqueys standing nearest the royal person, the "Paicks" in their embroidered coats and caps of beaten gold, and the "Solacks," adorned with feathers, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... fire that chapel proud Where Roslin's chiefs uncoffin'd lie, Each Baron, for a sable shroud, Sheathed in his ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... a tall bridegroom in tweeds tenderly help a little bride in mole-coloured taffeta and sable furs into the waiting car, the horn blew, the engines whirled, a big hand and a little one flourished handkerchiefs out of the window, a white satin shoe danced ridiculously after the wheels, and Aunt ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... he pored. As he rose to receive us I was almost disappointed to find that he held no wand, wore no robe, and had no volume of mystic lore by his side. The very cat that emerged from underneath his table, and rubbed itself against my legs was not of the orthodox sable hue, but ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... compter, dans leur ordre paisible, Les jours suivre les jours, sans faire plus de bruit Que ce sable lger dont la fuite insensible Nous marque ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... Wee hold it most vnmeet and vnconuenient, Being the Ioy and halfe heart of your mother. Therefore let mee intreat you stay in Court, All Denmarkes hope our coosin and dearest Sonne. Ham. My lord, ti's not the sable sute I weare: No nor the teares that still stand in my eyes, Nor the distracted hauiour in the visage, Nor all together mixt with outward semblance, Is equall to the sorrow of my heart, Him haue I lost I must of force forgoe, These but the ornaments and sutes of woe. King ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare

... panes of glass with the impetuous loudness of hail; and lightning and thunder flashing and pealing at brief intervals through the murky firmament. The noise of the elements was indeed frightful; and it was heightened by the voice of the sable steed, like that of a spirit of darkness; but the whole, as we have just hinted, was as nothing to the deep, solemn, mysterious treading ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various

... a lion rampant argent between six acorns or. Impaling argent 3 boars' heads sable ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... cloud. Touched by the chill of dawn, some leaves had fallen and lay in the dust, their ribs beaded with dark dew: others, yellow and shrivelling, where shaken down by the wind of the car and fluttered slowly in the eddying air. Laura drew her sable scarf close over ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... of considerable notoriety, stooped to filch the stores and gear from a fleet of fourteen poor fishermen of Cape Sable. He had a sense of dramatic values, however, and frequently brandished his pistols on deck, besides which, as set down by one of his prisoners, "he had a young child in Boston for whom he entertained such tenderness that on every lucid ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine

... rises before us with its great black dome and stately row of sable columns; the Tower, with its central citadel, flanked by the spear-like masts of the river shipping; the great world of roofs spreads below us as we launch upon our venturous voyage of discovery. From Boadicea leading ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury



Words linked to "Sable" :   sable brush, ebony, soot black, sable's hair pencil, Martes zibellina, Cape Sable, blackness, American sable, sable antelope, pitch black, rigger, marten, sable coat, marten cat, scarf, achromatic, brush, jet black, rigger brush



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com