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Wasp   /wɑsp/   Listen
Wasp

noun
1.
A white person of Anglo-Saxon ancestry who belongs to a Protestant denomination.  Synonym: white Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
2.
Social or solitary hymenopterans typically having a slender body with the abdomen attached by a narrow stalk and having a formidable sting.



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"Wasp" Quotes from Famous Books



... our sorrows rightly. The effect of sorrow devoutly borne, in bringing God closer to us, belongs to it, whether it be great or small; whether it be, according to the metaphor of an earlier portion of this psalm, 'a lion or an adder'; or whether it be a buzzing wasp or a mosquito. As long as anything troubles me, I may make it a means of bringing God ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... night, to you, Thane of Aescendune," said he to Elfwyn; "we have had a fair night's work, and destroyed a big wasp's nest; have you come for your ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... purple fire, the Atlas leaped like a wasp-stung heifer from the launching pads and thundered into space. The fuel orifices continued to expand to maximum pre-set opening. In ten seconds the nose cone turned from cherry-red to white heat and began sloughing its outer ceramic ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael

... the wings made of the blackish mail of the drake. The ninth is the t-fly-fly, good until the middle of June: the body made of tawny wool; the wings made contrary one against the other, made of the whitish mail of the wild drake. The tenth is the wasp-fly in July; the body made of black wool, lapt about with yellow silk; the wings made of the feathers of the drake, or of the buzzard. The eleventh is the shell-fly, good in mid-July: the body made of greenish wool, lapt about with the herle of a peacock's tail: and the wings ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, to receive Mr. Washburn and his family and remove them from a situation which was represented to be endangered by faction and foreign war. The Brazilian commander of the allied invading forces refused permission to the Wasp to pass through the blockading forces, and that vessel returned to its accustomed anchorage. Remonstrance having been made against this refusal, it was promptly overruled, and the Wasp therefore resumed her errand, received Mr. Washburn and his family, and conveyed them to a safe and convenient ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson

... you to go, silly child." Aline tried to withdraw sharpness from her voice, but it was there, like the sting of a wasp in a wound. "Even if I didn't think it wise for some reasons, it isn't my car, you know, but Mr. Somerled's, and he has a perfect right to invite any guests he likes. Don't imagine that I'm going to talk to him about you. It's something quite different I have ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... pain; and the reason of this seems to be nothing else, but the corrosive penetrant liquor contain'd in the small baggs or bladders, upon which grow out those sharp Syringe-pipes, as I before noted; and very consonant to this, is the reason of the pain created by the sting of a Bee, Wasp, &c. as I elsewhere shew: For by the Dart, which is likewise a pipe, is made a deep passage into the skin, and then by the anger of the Fly, is his gally poisonous liquor injected; which being admitted among the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... left Mr. Coffin's hand, and the next instant formed the contents of Nathaniel's open mouth, leaving, however, a liberal surplusage to ornament his cheeks, chin, and nose. The recipient of this bulletin choked, spluttered, and pawed at his face after the manner of a cat who has tried to eat a wasp. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... had started as if stung by a wasp. Billy saw Isobel's whitened face. The meaning of Buck's words had gone home to her as swiftly as a lightning flash, and for an instant her eyes had turned to him! Bucky got no further than those last words. Before he could add another syllable ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... him, and his father chides him as "a wasp-stung and impatient fool," who will only talk and not listen. But again Hotspur breaks forth, and again his anger paints him to ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... of account, and began to piece figures together on backs of envelopes, using a shorthand of accounts such as a principal will use when he is impatient and not particular to a few pounds. A little wasp of curiosity was teasing Edwin, and to quicken it a comparison was necessary between the result of the first six months of that year and the first six months of the previous year. True, June had not quite expired, but most of the quarterly accounts were ready, and he could ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... along the tips of the wheat—burr-rr—as he passed; then a scarlet fly, and next a bright yellow wasp who was telling a friend flying behind him that he knew where there was such a capital piece of wood to bite up into tiny pieces and make into paper for the nest in the thatch, but his friend wanted ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... masses of the plant are already showing a greenish cream-colour of the opening blossoms, which will be at their perfection in October. Then, when the sun shines, there will be no lingering red admiral, nor blue fly or fly of any colour, nor yellow wasp, nor any honey-eating or late honey-gathering insect that will not be here to feed on the ivy's sweetness. And behind the blossoming curtain, alive with the minute, multitudinous, swift-moving, glittering forms, some nobler form will be hidden ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... nevertheless, I was astonished to find them using a private scandal against me. They did. I think Handitch had filled up the measure of their bitterness, for I had not only abandoned them, but I was succeeding beyond even their power of misrepresentation. Always I had been a wasp in their spider's web, difficult to claim as a tool, uncritical, antagonistic. I admired their work and devotion enormously, but I had never concealed my contempt for a certain childish vanity they displayed, and for the frequent puerility of their political intrigues. I suppose contempt galls ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... eat, Would take the bitter and leave me the sweet; But once, when I made her jealous for fun, At something I'd whispered, or looked, or done, One Sunday in San Antonio, To a glorious girl on the Alamo, She drew from her belt a dear little dagger, And—sting of a wasp!—it made me stagger! An inch to the left, or an inch to the right, And I shouldn't be maundering here to-night; But she sobbed, and, sobbing, so swiftly bound Her torn rebosa about the wound, That I quite forgave her. Scratches ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... King and Queen sat, the four yeomen bent their knees and doffed their caps unto her. King Henry leaned far forward and stared at them closely, but the Bishop of Hereford, when he saw their faces, started as though stung by a wasp. He opened his mouth as though about to speak, but, looking up, he saw the Queen gazing at him with a smile upon her lips, so he said nothing, but bit his nether lip, while his face was ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... instinctively ashamed of his family, and when the weary-looking wife, the thin, shy girl, or the corpulent, stupid-faced son were with him and he heard steps outside, he would come out like a little wasp, and, unmistakably resenting the intrusion, would ask ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore

... to tell you that these ants are much larger than any we have here. Some of the tropical ants are an inch long, and as large as a large wasp; so you may imagine that a whole army of them is not to ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... seneco, manko; mizerego. ward : zorgato. wardrobe : vestotenejo; vestaro. warehouse : tenejo, provizejo. wares : komercajxo. war : milito. warm : varma, fervora. warn : averti, admoni. wart : veruko. wasp : vespo. waste : malsxpari. watch : observi; spioni; posxhorlogxo. water : akvo; surversxi. waterproof : nepenetrebla. wave : ondo; flirt'i, -igi. wax : vakso. way : vojo, maniero, kutimo. wean ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... and watched the long grass swirled By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge, For though the summer oozed into their veins Like the injected drug for their bones' pains, Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass, Fearfully flashed ...
— Poems • Wilfred Owen

... himself. Warnings came from all quarters that mischief was in the wind. Still it was impossible to believe the peril to be a real one. Cicero, to whom Rome owed its existence, to be struck at by a Clodius! It could not be. As little could a wasp hurt an elephant. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... and contained dried ferns and even flattened-out butterflies between two sheets of shiny tissue-paper. The salon had dark walls on which hung a collection of family portraits. Ladies with puckered mouths and wasp-like waists had necks adorned with gorgeous pearls, which had apparently gone to an early grave with their wearers. I saw no similar ones on the necks of the present generation. After the coffee was served and a certain time allowed for breathing, the daughter of the house sat down, without being ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... not fashion but form! Whether coat skirts are long or short, full or plain, and waists wasp-like or square, the above admonitions have held for many decades, and are likely ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... said his mother reproachfully; "thou know'st thou wast set on it last fall, like a wasp on sugar. Why scarce a day past but thou wast up to the Rectory, to see the Doctor about it; and now thou'rt like to get th'lotment thou'lt not ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... animals stuck down on a Mappin terrace, with this difference in our disfavour, that the animals are there to be looked at, while nobody wants to look at us. As a matter of fact there would be nothing to look at. We get colds in winter and hay fever in summer, and if a wasp happens to sting one of us, well, that is the wasp's initiative, not ours; all we do is to wait for the swelling to go down. Whenever we do climb into local fame and notice, it is by indirect methods; if it happens to be a good flowering year for magnolias the neighbourhood observes: ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... hand and uncovered a caterpillar. It was dark except for a row of yellow spots along the central line of some of its segments. As soon as it was exposed, it began slowly shimmying away. Before it had gone two feet, it was crossed by a moving shadow. Guiding the shadow was a black wasp with an orange ring around the abdomen. It closed the gap between itself and the worm with a swift, smooth movement and straddled ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer

... intrusion of reasoned act." No doubt; but in the case of the terns—sea-frequenting and sea-loving—which had not the wit to lay their eggs beyond the reach of spring tides, the reasoning is the merest intrusion. Yet an instance of what seems to be the reasoned act of a wasp may be cited. The insect had selected a dead log of soft wood as a site for its egg-shaft. It was at a spot to which the occupations of the season took me daily, so that the boring operations were watched from beginning to end. The work ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... these passages is there any wonder that it is hard to persuade women that men do not admire "wasp" waists? How are they to know that the "jimp middle" of the ballads was in its jimpness in proportion to the shoulders? The trouble is, that the early rhymesters have used up the only side of the question capable of poetical treatment. One ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength, Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves, Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length, She seems a sea wasp flying on ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... uprising, Hiawatha aimed an arrow; Scarce a twig moved with his motion, Scarce a leaf was stirred or rustled, But the wary roebuck started, Stamped with all his hoofs together, Listened with one foot uplifted, Leaped as if to meet the arrow; Ah! the singing, fatal arrow, Like a wasp it buzzed and stung him! Dead he lay there in the forest, By the ford across the river; Beat his timid heart no longer, But the heart of Hiawatha Throbbed and shouted and exulted, As he bore the red deer homeward, And Iagoo and Nokomis Hailed his coming with applauses. From the red deer's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... or inflammation, foment the part with hot water, and then apply hot bread poultice, and renew it frequently. In eating apricots, or peaches, or other fruit, they ought beforehand to be carefully examined, in order to ascertain that no wasp is lurking in them; otherwise, it may sting the throat, and ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... knowing adepts in guilt than to transfer to his charge any deed of violence one of their own gang had committed—heap damning circumstances round him—privily apprise justice—falsely swear away his life. In short, the man was in their way as a wasp that has blundered into an ants' nest; and, while frightened at the size of the intruder, these honest ants were resolved to get him out of their citadel alive or dead. Probable it was that Jasper Losely would meet with his deserts at last for an offence of which ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the back door," he cried, and pushed Dan before him. "Will ye wait till that wasp's bink is buzzin' aboot ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... say truly, and I like your remark, 'Such fellows ought not to claim a moment's attention from me. I should brush them away, like flies from my forehead, when they presume to tease or settle themselves upon me.' I have taken your advice, and fly-slapped the wasp that was more willing ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... though there were at one time insidious suggestions to the contrary, it has appeared that he conformed to his instructions, promoted the public interest, and gave entire satisfaction to the government. In 1811, he was transferred to the command of the sloop-of-war Wasp, mounting eighteen twenty-four pound carronades, and dispatched, in the spring of 1812, with communications to the courts of St. Cloud and St. James. Before he returned, war had been declared against Great Britain. He refitted his ship with all possible dispatch, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... well to point out that as the flesh rots, so do the ligaments which hold the bones, and consequently the skeleton falls to pieces. When, therefore, you have made your skeleton by the means recommended by various authors, such as exposing it in an ant-hill, a wasp's nest, or to the attacks of the "blow-flies" or "mealworm" (the larvae of a beetle), to "tadpoles," or —as is the usual way with the bone preservers—by maceration in water for a lengthened period (after removal of a great deal of the flesh, the skin, and entrails), you will, ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... oh, STANLEY! mark its nest of paper.—(it is said, on wasp's paper you are wont to write your thoughts on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various

... perspective and crude colour, they have indeed the sentiment of style, and they reveal, with surer delicacy than does any other record, the spirit of Mr. Brummell's day. Grego guides me, as Virgil Dante, through all the mysteries of that other world. He shows me those stiff-necked, over-hatted, wasp-waisted gentlemen, drinking Burgundy in the Cafe des Milles Colonnes or riding through the village of Newmarket upon their fat cobs or gambling at Crockford's. Grego's Green Room of the Opera House ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... cast-iron beak in the side of the Cumberland. Like the wasp, we could sting but once, leaving ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.

... drily; for the great moaning hum of the thresher filled the air, went on and on as it would all day except at food-times, sounding like some vast wasp held captive and booming unceasingly—some great dragon of a wasp, as ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... their men, and stuff them into the corridor, Hilda and the doctor and Woffington sped back down the line, and up to the thronged dressing-stations. Wounded men were not their only charge, nor their gravest. They took in a soldier sobbing from the shock of the ceaseless shell fire. The moaning and wasp-like buzz of the flying metal, then the earth-shaking thud of its impact, and the roar of its high explosive, had played upon nerves not elastic enough to absorb the strain, till the man became a whimpering child. And they carried in a man shaking from ague, a big, fine ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason

... Obvious to vagrant flies: she secret stands Within her woven cell; the humming prey, Regardless of their fate, rush on the toils Inextricable, nor will aught avail Their arts, or arms, or shapes of lovely hue; The wasp insidious, and the buzzing drone, And butterfly, proud of expanded wings Distinct with gold, entangled in her snares, Useless resistance make: with eager strides, She towering flies to her expected spoils; Then, with envenomed jaws, the vital blood Drinks of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... of one lone woman defying and blackguarding what was almost an established church, is much like Jack the Giantkiller—with a different result. It was deemed necessary to crush this wasp that stung so sharply; and in 1829, in the capitol city of the United States of America, a court of men tried—and convicted—this solitary woman of sixty as a Common Scold. They raked up obsolete laws, studied and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... the center in the form of a star, and place a bit of herring or cheese on the center tips of star to entice the mouse. Let the paper reach to the floor, not too upright, for the mouse to climb up. Try putting broken camphor into their holes; they dislike the smell. Fly and wasp traps are made by tying paper over a tumbler half-filled with water and beer or treacle. Break a hole in the paper, and fit in a tube of rolled paper about one inch long and one ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... purple bed, Outside, the wall is red, Thereby the apple hangs, And the wasp, caught ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris

... same committee was ordered to go ahead and prepare the vessels for sea, which was accordingly done, and the following vessels were made ready for service: Alfred, Dorea, Columbus, Lexington, Fly, Hornet, Wasp, Cabot, Randolph, Franklin, Providence, Dolphin ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow

... Nearly all the prominent members of the House erelong became participants, and the situation became critical. Hard words were freely bandied about, amid the greatest confusion and disorder. An eye-witness compares the scene to a wasp's nest disturbed.[267] The Speaker finally put a stop to the ebullitions of temper, and brought the scene to a close by announcing that the time had arrived for waiting on the Lieutenant-Governor with certain addresses. There ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... particular, that circumscribing of everything by the personal, every rose a token, the moon something to kiss by, flowers prostituted into bouquets. She thought how happy she was this morning, feeling a little tiny speck of the miracle of life instead of trying to catch it like a wasp under the wine glass of some ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... had ceased to suffer, she had ceased even to think; and when, a little later, she followed the station porter down the long platform, she was able to brush aside the memory of her parting from Oliver as lightly as though it were the trivial sting of a wasp. When she remembered the agony of the last year, of yesterday, of the morning through which she had just lived, it appeared almost ridiculous. That death which she had lacked the courage to die seemed creeping over her soul before it reached the outer shell ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... story the hero Joro gets the better of his enemy the lama Tschoridong in the following way. The lama, who is an enchanter, sends out his soul in the form of a wasp to sting Joro's eyes. But Joro catches the wasp in his hand, and by alternately shutting and opening his hand he causes the lama alternately to lose and recover consciousness. In a Tartar poem two youths cut open the body of an old witch and tear out her bowels, but all to no purpose, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... fly or a wasp.—Its body was of a dirty hue; its flat, hard wings were of the same colour; it had extended, shaggy claws and a big, angular head, like that of a dragon-fly; and that head and the claws were ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... blackguard to boot. Hartinger, the tenor, is very good and full of his task; but it was just he who told me that he did not see how X., even with the best intentions, could execute such music. You of course I cannot expect to venture into this wasp's nest of Philistines. ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... first landed on Monhegan, a small island in sight of which in the war of 1812 occurred the lively little seafight of the American Wasp and the British Frolic, in which the Wasp was the victor, but directly after, with her prize, fell into the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... each pair, and not near the end, and it is not so active as the other species. It is also rather scarce; but when it does occur, it occupies the whole tree, to the exclusion of the other. The glands on the acacia are also frequented by a small species of wasp. I sowed the seeds of the acacia in my garden, and reared some young plants. Ants of many kinds were numerous; but none of them took to the thorns for shelter, nor the glands and fruit-like bodies for food; for, as I have already mentioned, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... favorites is the "wasp dance," allied to the Tarantella. Although less pleasing in motive than that described, the wasp dance gives opportunity for movements of even superior significance—or, as one may say, suggestures. The girl stands in a pensive posture, her hands ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... a Vegan girl, blue-skinned and fantastically wasp-waisted like all her kind, drifted over to Ramsey. He'd seen her around. He thought he recognized her. Maybe he'd even danced with her in the unit-a-dance halls reserved for ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance

... perfectly understand what you mean. Mr. Brierly is nothing—simply nothing. He is a moth singed, that is all—the trifler with women thought he was a wasp. I have no pity for him, not the least. You may tell him not to make a fool of himself, and to keep away. I say this on your account, not his. You are not like him. It is enough for me that you want it so. Mr. Sterling," she continued, looking up; and there were tears in her eyes that ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... this fear had haunted him. Like a wasp, it had buzzed constantly about his ears, threatening to sting him at any moment. It had become a veritable obsession, a mean, haunting, appetite-destroying, ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge

... reason leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in Nature, this same reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect by ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... nature of his feelings, and how his instinct and selfishness were combating together. He firmly believed that everything he did was right, that he ought on all occasions to have his own way—and like the sting of a wasp or serpent his hatred rushed out armed and poisonous against anything like opposition. He was proud of his hatred as of everything else. Always to be right, always to trample forward, and never to doubt, are not these the great qualities with ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... A WASP seated himself upon the head of a Snake and, striking him unceasingly with his stings, wounded him to death. The Snake, being in great torment and not knowing how to rid himself of his enemy, saw a wagon heavily laden with wood, and went and purposely placed his head under ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... attacked the former for eternal invectives. Oh! since the last philippic of Billingsgate memory you never heard such an invective as Pitt returned-Hume Campbell was annihilated! Pitt, like an angry wasp, seems to have left his sting in the wound, and has since assumed a style of delicate ridicule and repartee. But think how charming a ridicule must that be that lasts and rises, flash after flash, for an hour and a half! Some day or other, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... cultivation for three thousand years the animal and vegetable fibers were lengthened and strengthened and cheapened. But at last man has risen to the level of the worm and can spin threads to suit himself. He can now rival the wasp in the making of paper. He is no longer dependent upon the flax and the cotton plant, but grinds up trees to get his cellulose. A New York newspaper uses up nearly 2000 acres of forest a year. The United States grinds up about five ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... malignity, and a passage in your letter, call to my mind the wicked wasp of Twickenham; his lies affect me now no more; they will be all as much despised as the story of the seraglio and the handkerchief, of which I am persuaded he was the only inventor. That man has a malignant and ungenerous heart; and he is ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... do with a Wasp" is a headline in a contemporary. We have not read the article, but our own plan with wasps is to try ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various

... place in which all the conditions of life to which they were adapted occurred: the humming-birds at the same time as the flowers; the trichina at the same time as the pig; the bark-coloured moth at the same time as the oak, and the wasp-like moth at the same time as the wasp which protects it. Without processes of selection we should be obliged to assume a "pre-established harmony" after the famous Leibnitzian model, by means of which the clock of the evolution ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... was a South Carolinian, and won renown by a remarkable cruise in the Wasp. The Wasp was a stout and speedy sloop, carrying twenty-two guns and a crew of one hundred and seventy men, and in 1814 she sailed from the United States, and headed for the English Channel, to carry the war into the enemy's country, after the fashion of Paul Jones. The Channel, of course, was ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... gone. In her place we have strong, capable, broad-minded women. Seldom do we hear of a woman fainting today, yet look back sixty years and recall the Lydia Languish females with long ringlets and wasp waists, who invariably carried smelling salts. I'm proud to belong to the women of today—healthy, strong, athletic, and brave—women who do and are not ashamed of it. Look at Aunt Susan. There's a woman who is an example. I hope I may ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson

... cheer broke out on board the Chilian launch and the Blanco Encalada, and their men now turned all their attention to destroy the wasp which had just been deprived of its sting. The moment that her towed torpedo had exploded she was practically powerless for injury, and she turned her nose seaward at once, hoping, by a desperate rush, to get clear away. And so she doubtless ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood

... nor haul ought was odd raw for fault bought watch cot want corn cause sought wasp got walk cord pause caw wash hop salt short caught saw drop dog hall storm naught paw spot fog draw horse naughty draw ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams

... the Hebrew, the Arab, and the Hindoo, what pleases the men in women is not their beauty, but their voluptuous rotundity; they care only for those sensual aspects which emphasize the difference between the sexes. The object of the modern wasp waist (in the minds of the class of females who, strange to say, are allowed by respectable women to set the fashion for them) is to grossly exaggerate the bust and the hips, and it is for the same reason that barbarian and Oriental girls are fattened for the marriage market. ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... she would lose him for ever. The moments seemed long while she and Death stood gazing up into the air, waiting to know whose prize the prince would be. Suddenly they both caught sight of a tiny speck no bigger than a wasp, right up in the blue. Was he coming straight? No! Yes! But as he was nearing the city, a light wind sprang up, and swayed him in the direction of the wall. Another second and he would have fallen half over it, when the queen sprang forward, seized him ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... him have never had enough to eat in their lives. The old Romans knew better; to keep people quiet they filled their bellies. Those fools—" he jerked his head backwards with disgust; I thought, of the shawls and the high combs and the hair gleaming black under lace and the wasp-waists of the young men and the insolence of black eyes above the flashing wheels of the carriages, "—those fools give only circuses. Do you people in the outside world realize that we in Andalusia starve, that we have starved ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... dining rooms reverberated, not uncheerfully, to the ironstone clatter of the canary-bird bathtub of succotash, the three stewed prunes, or the redolent boiled potato, and on Saturday mornings, almost to the thirty-odd of them, wasp-waisted, oiled-haired young negro girls in white-cotton stockings and cut-down high shoes enormously and rather horribly run down of heel, tilted pints of water over steep stone stoops and scratched at the trickle ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... open fire a large turn out of F.O.O.'s collected in the O.P.'s to watch the enemy get a surprise. They did considerable damage, but, at the same time, were largely responsible for stirring up a veritable wasp's nest of hostile heavies which had been lying dormant for ages, and consequently our front again ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose

... thine honour lay in me, From me by strong assault it is bereft. My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee, Have no perfection of my summer left, But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft: In thy weak hive a wandering wasp hath crept, And suck'd the honey which thy ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... crumbs. And, seeing what looked like a party, down flew, with a whir and rustle, a flock of doves, saying, "Coo-oo! how do-oo-do!" and prinking themselves in our very faces. Yes, we really had too many of these surprise-parties; for, another time, it was a wasp that came to tea, and flew from me to Katy, and from Katy to me, till we flew, too, to hide our heads in grandma's lap. Then she gave us the apron, which was very grand, though the blue stripes were walking into the red ones, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... Two further cases of mimicry; flies resembling a wasp in the one and a bee in the ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... their work and wrapped themselves round Umbelazi's army as the nippers of a wasp close about a fly (why did not Umbelazi cut off those horns, I wondered), the Usutu bull began his charge. Twenty or thirty thousand strong, regiment after regiment, Cetewayo's men rushed up the slope, and there, near the crest of it, were met by Umbelazi's regiments springing ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... deceived, betrayed, fooled. That was why he was shut up. He had believed in a woman, had believed that the cobra's bite was only a wasp's sting. Good Lord, what an imbecile! He was insane of course, raving mad. And he had been here eighteen months and only saw the ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... bird lives in colonies, and the clay-colored nests beneath the eaves of barns are often so close together that a group of them resembles nothing so much as a gigantic wasp's nest. It is said that when swallows pair they are mated for life; but, then, more is said about swallows than the most tireless bird-lover could substantiate. The tradition that swallows fly low ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... characterize this as a very foolish proceeding; but country people skilled in simples and herb remedies might tell some of these ultra scientific surgeons that the application of a quid of tobacco or of a leaf of tobacco to the sting of a wasp or the bite of a spider, or even the sting of a scorpion, is nearly always attended by beneficial results. In fact, when Jones was stung there was a surgeon, a medical officer, who turned up even before Jones ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... [1665-1742] ... seemed to be proud to wear the poet's double name, and was particularly great in all that author's plays that were usually performed, viz "Wasp," in Bartholomew Fair; "Corbaccio;" "Morose," in The Silent Woman; and "Ananias," in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... listening. And the noises and her thoughts became tangled in her exhausted brain—one great web of weariness, a feeling that it was all senseless and unnecessary, the emanation of cross-purposes and cross-grainedness, the negation of that gentle moderation, her own most sacred instinct. And an early wasp, attracted by the sweet perfumes of her dressing-table, roused himself from the corner where he had spent the night, and began to hum and hover over the bed. Mrs. Pendyce was a little afraid of wasps, so, taking a moment when he was otherwise engaged, she stole out, and fanned him with her nightdress-case ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... and the other factors in Syria, there would have been no trouble. As to whether Burton was right or wrong in these disputes, the Government seems not to have cared a straw or to have given a moment's thought. Here, they said, is a man who somehow has managed to stir up a wasp's nest, and who may embroil us with Turkey. This condition of affairs must cease. Presently came the crash. On August 16th just as Burton and Tyrwhitt Drake were setting out for a ride at B'ludan, ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... of black ants, and take it after a sanguinary resistance. All that must have been planned beforehand, you know, and carried out to the letter. Once I found a colony busy on some hard ground, preparing an abode. I happened to have been microscoping a wasp, so I threw him down among the ants. They were disgusted. They ran about collecting opinions. Presently half of them burrowed into the earth below and undermined him, till he lay on a crust of earth as thin as a wafer, and a deep grave below. Then they all got on him except ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... the coal-black Trigona (Trigona carbonaria), from eastern Australia, Mr. F. Smith, of the British Museum, found from four hundred to five hundred dead workers, but no females. The combs were arranged precisely similar to those of the common wasp. The number of honey-pots which were placed at the foot of the nest was two hundred and fifty. Mr. Smith inclines to the opinion that the hive of Trigona contains several prolific females, as the great number of workers can only be thus explained, and M. Guerin found six females in ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... a wasp called Zengi-mizi. Zengi-mizi was not an ordinary wasp, for the spirit of the father of Gopani-Kufa had entered it, so that it was exceedingly wise. In times of doubt Gopani-Kufa always consulted the wasp as to what had better be done, so on this occasion ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... British frigates, like other frigates, could safely fight only their inferiors in force. What applied to the Guerriere and Macedonian against the Constitution and United States, where the British force was inferior, applied equally to the Frolic against the Wasp, where no inferiority could be shown. The British newspapers thenceforward admitted what America wished to prove, that, ship for ship, British were no more than the equals ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... years of his generosity rolled on, he avoided reading it at all—"like most optimists," remarked the cure, "he did not wish to know the truth." At forty-six he married the niece of an impoverished old wasp, a gentleman still in excellent health, owing to de Savignac's generosity. It was his good wife now, who read the ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... the fair washerwoman of Portillon and often would cry out "I will eat her flesh! I will cook one of her breasts, and swallow it without sauce!" It was a tremendous hate of good constitution—a cardinal hate—a hate of a wasp or an old maid. It was all known hates moulded into one single hate, which boiled itself, concocted itself, and resolved self into an elixir of wicked and diabolical sentiments, warmed at the fire of the most flaming furnaces of hell—it was, in ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... the Baths of Lucca, only to see them. We were to proceed afterwards to San Marcello, or some safer wilderness. We had both of us, but he chiefly, the strongest prejudice against the Baths of Lucca; taking them for a sort of wasp's nest of scandal and gaming, and expecting to find everything trodden flat by the continental English—yet, I wanted to see the place, because it is a place to see, after all. So we came, and ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans! For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... the freshness, the perfume of the garden seemed to lie upon it—and coming in one afternoon in September, along the red gravel walk, to look for a basket of yellow crab-apples left in the cool, old parlour, he remembered it the more, and how the colours struck upon him, because a wasp on one bitten apple stung him, and he felt the passion of [189] sudden, severe pain. For this too brought its curious reflexions; and, in relief from it, he would wonder over it—how it had then been with him—puzzled ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... committed such ravages upon me in so short a time. I did not doubt of success, and I confess that there was a certain amount of vanity in this assurance; but at the same time I was modest, for I knew that at the slightest slip the enterprise would miscarry. Thus I regarded the abbe as a wasp to be crushed as speedily as possible. I was also a victim to that most horrible of passions, jealousy; it seemed to me that if Clementine was not in love with this man-monkey, she was extremely indulgent to him; and with this idea I conceived ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... Champlain. They further reveal the fact that on the 27th of September of this same year he was granted a furlough to make a European voyage. This project for some reason was given up, as on the 13th of November, 1809, he was ordered to the Wasp, then under the command of Lawrence, who afterwards fell in the engagement between the Shannon and the Chesapeake. To this officer, like himself a native of Burlington, he was very warmly attached. The next notice of him contained in the official records is to the effect that ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... supplementary reader in nature study for the intermediate grades. A book containing a vast amount of information relating to insect life—the life story of the spider, the fly, the bee, the wasp, and other insects—told by one who was at once a lover of nature, a great scientist, and a most entertaining writer. Maeterlinck calls Fabre the "insects' Homer," and declares that his work is as much a classic as the famous Greek epic, and deserves to be known ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... "Oh, that. Yes, a wasp was flying near us. I thought it was going to settle on Priscilla Coupland's neck and I brushed it ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... one of its fly-blown window-panes. Here the consumption of tough macaroni or of an ambiguous frittura sufficed to transport me to the Cappello d'Oro in Venice, while my cup of coffee and a wasp-waisted cigar with a straw in it turned my greasy table-cloth into the marble top of one of the little round tables under the arcade of the Caffe Pedrotti at Padua. This feat of the imagination was materially aided by Agostino, the hollow-eyed and low-collared waiter, whose slimy napkin ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... josher! You'll be round chuckin' me under the chin before the lights come on. Gee! There goes the bell again! I'll bet my switch it's that scraggy old hen in forty-four, wantin' me to run out and buy her some hair pins, or to hook her up so she'll look like a prize winner at a wasp show. She makes me sick, she does! But I'll—Yes Ma'am! Coming right away," she answered in a honeyed voice, as the lady guest was heard calling her name through a transom somewhere ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... mechanically. The young lady did not wait to give further orders. She rushed out of the room and shut the door. Brown was alone with the wasps, and they were lively company. When, at last, the battle was over, the last wasp was dead, the nest was a crumpled gray heap over in the corner, and the assistant's brow was ornamented with four red and smarting punctures, which promised to shortly become picturesque and painful lumps. Rubbing these absently with one ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... yard seem possessed of such a variety of expression and so copious a language as common poultry. Take a chicken of four or five days old, and hold it up to a window where there are flies, and it will immediately seize its prey, with little twitterings of complacency; but if you tender it a wasp or a bee, at once its note becomes harsh, and expressive of disapprobation and a sense of danger. When a pullet is ready to lay she intimates the event by a joyous and easy soft note. Of all the occurrences of their life, that of laying seems to be the most important; for ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White

... rapiers, and russet boots; and fierce banditti with crimson tights, doublets profusely illustrated with large brass buttons, and the dumpy basket-hilted claymores known to be the favourite weapon with which these whiskered ruffians do battle; wasp-waisted peasant girls, and young countesses with oh, such large eyes and the lips!—all these splendid forms of war and beauty crowd to the young draughtsman's pencil, and cover letter-backs, copybooks, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... criticism. They have excited the pious horror of some modern Pharisees because they contain a table of sins for the use of those preparing for confession. The same flower that furnishes honey to the bee supplies poison to the wasp; and, in like manner, the same book that gives only the honey of consolation to the devout reader has nothing but moral poison for those that search ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... that such vessels came in unexpectedly, after indefinite years of absence,—suddenly as falling stones; and that the great guns roared in their astonishment and delight at the sight of the old war-ship splitting the bay with her cutwater. Now, the sloop-of- war the Wasp, Captain Blakely, after gloriously capturing the Reindeer and the Avon, had disappeared from the face of the ocean, and was supposed to be lost. But there was no proof of it, and, of course, for a time, hopes were entertained that she might be heard from. Long after ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... fifth sons of rectors and earls and dukes had crossed the ocean in the same ship and had been scattered abroad over Manitoba and the Northwest Territories to be instructed in agricultural pursuits by the honest granger, and incidentally to furnish nutriment for the ever-ready mosquito or wasp, who regarded all Old Country men ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung

... between the horse's legs, the animal apparently much puzzled to know what to make of the strange machine, but evidently not intending any such nonsense as running away. The men rushed at the animal, righted the saddle, and hauled away at the girths until the horse became quite wasp-like in form. He was then led back to the platform, and the lady's ponderous form was once more placed on the side-saddle, only to repeat the turning operation, gravity asserting itself with all the ease ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... wasp-like uniform of black and yellow appeared down the passage, and one hastened to throw up a sliding shutter that had seemed a door to Graham, and led the way through it. Graham found himself in a gallery overhanging the end of a great chamber. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... told of the craft of the fox to compass his prey, of which Ol. Magnus hath many: such as feigning the bark of a dog to catch prey near the houses; feigning himself dead to catch such animals as come to feed upon him; laying his tail upon a wasp's nest and then rubbing it hard against a tree, thus catching the wasps so killed; ridding himself of fleas by gradually going into the water with a lock of wool in his mouth, and so driving the fleas up into it and then leaving it in the water; by catching crab ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... reduced Moose Island, and two others, in the bay of Passamaquoddy; and the English frigate "Phobe" captured the United States' frigate "Essex," off Valparaiso, on the western coast of South America. On the other hand, a British sloop of war was captured by the American sloop "Wasp;" and an expedition, under Admiral Cochrane and Sir E. Pakenham, against New Orleans failed, after a severe rencontre with the American troops who defended the city. The final event of the war was the capture of Fort Bowyer, by the British, in the Gulf of Mexico. But before ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... from head to foot, she observed that her costume consisted of a half-new, grey thin silk jacket, and a bluish satin waistcoat with scollops; that below this came a water-green jupe; that her waist was slim as that of a wasp; that her shoulders sloped as if pared; that her face resembled a duck's egg; that her hair was black and shiny; that her nose was very high, and that on both her cheeks were slightly ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... piece of paper as she spoke, and passed it on to her friend behind the cover of her open desk. It was a fragment of one of Maysie's zoological drawing-sheets, evidently picked up out of the waste-paper basket—a wasp with wings outspread, showing the three divisions of an insect's body. The head was roughly altered so as to form a caricature of a human face, and above was printed, in letters that might have done credit to Maysie herself: "Miss E. in a tantrum," and below: "How doth ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... wasp was a sight to behold. I have no great sympathy with wasps—they have done me so many bad turns in my time that I don't pretend to regard them as deserving of exceptional pity—but I must say Eliza's way of going at them was unduly barbaric. She treated them ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... sufficient to destroy several nests, but it is a deadly poison, and must be kept in a place of safety. Soak a piece of rag in the fluid, and lay it over the entrance to the nest. There is no occasion to run away; not a Wasp will venture out, and those which return from foraging will not lose their tempers and find yours, but at each successive attempt to enter their home they will become feebler, until they fall near or beneath the drugged rag. After an hour or two the nest may ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... of a wasp at the finger-end announces itself to the brain as pain. The impression made by the sting travels, in the first place, with comparative slowness along the nerves affected; and only when it reaches the brain have we the fact ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... orange-coloured linen, kept in place by bands of brownish linen, and is further covered by a mask of wood and cartonnage, painted to match the exterior of the coffin. Long garlands of faded flowers deck the mummy from head to foot. A wasp, attracted by their scent, must have settled upon them at the moment of burial, and become imprisoned by the lid; the insect has been completely preserved from corruption by the balsams of the embalmer, and its gauzy wings have passed ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... production of the famous Diatribe of Doctor Akakia, Physician to the Pope (1752), by a malicious attack on Maupertuis's successor, Le Franc de Pompignan, and by his caricature of the critic Elie Catharine Freron, as Frelon ("Wasp"), in L'Ecossaise, which was played at Paris in 1760.—Life of Voltaire, by F. Espinasse, 1892, pp. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... their favourite autumn food. Others that have fallen and been knocked out of the cup are a light yellow at the base and green towards the middle and the point; the yellow part is that which has been covered by the cup. In the sward there is a small hole from out of which creeps a wasp at intervals; it is a nest, and some few of them are still at work. But their motions are slow and lack vivacity; before long, numbers must die, and already many have succumbed after crawling miserably on the ground which they spurned a short while ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... because it was not alone, being accompanied by a green caterpillar bigger than herself, which she held beneath her body as she travelled along on the window-sill so near my face. "So, so! my little wren-wasp, you have found a satisfactory cranny at last, and have made yourself at home. I have seen you prying about here for a week and wondered where you would take up ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... Wasp and Scorpion-stings.—the Oil scraped out of a tobacco-pipe is a good application; should the scorpion be large, his sting must be treated like ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... if stung by a wasp. The dance ceased for her, and she hastened to a seat. "De Pean," said she, "you promised to bring Le Gardeur forthwith back to the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby



Words linked to "Wasp" :   protestant, cynipid wasp, Caucasian, velvet ant, hymenopter, mason wasp, hymenopterous insect, hymenopteron, hymenopteran, sphecoid, White person, gallfly, white, vespid



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