Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Asp   Listen
noun
Asp  n.  (Zool.) A small, hooded, poisonous serpent of Egypt and adjacent countries, whose bite is often fatal. It is the Naja haje. The name is also applied to other poisonous serpents, esp. to Vipera aspis of southern Europe. See Haje.






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 |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Asp" Quotes from Famous Books



... (May God sweep your road!), All Akbar had exclaimed as I mounted at the door, and as we pass through the city gate the old sentinel, when told that I am at last starting on the promised journey to Meshed on the asp-i-awhan, supplements this with "Padaram daromad!" (My father has come out!), a Persian metaphorical exclamation, signifying that such wonderful news has had the effect of calling his father ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... of peace. He will burn away all that defileth, in order that He may create a profound and permanent fellowship. When His work is done, there will be a mingling of apparent opposites, and antagonisms will melt into a gracious union. "The sucking child will play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... in the streets of the mountains gives such a sense of pageantry as the conifers; other trees, if they are any, are home dwellers, like the tender fluttered, sisterhood of quaking asp. They grow in clumps by spring borders, and all their stems have a permanent curve toward the down slope, as you may also see in hillside pines, where they have borne the weight of ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... efficacious on the human body than on the bodies of serpents and other animals. Now certain incantations are efficacious in checking serpents, or in healing certain other animals: wherefore it is written (Ps. 57:5): "Their madness is according to the likeness of a serpent, like the deaf asp that stoppeth her ears, which will not hear the voice of the charmers, nor of the wizard that charmeth wisely." Therefore it is lawful to wear sacred words as ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... splendid work (the Iconographie) we have several references to ancient representations of our blessed Lord treading the dragon under foot; and sometimes the lion, the asp, and the basilisk are added. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various

... in supporting such an argument; also Benedict XI. was pope but eight months. One day a veiled woman, a pretended lay-sister of Sainte-Petronille at Perugia, came to him while he was at table, offering him a basket of figs. Did it conceal an asp like Cleopatra's? The fact is that on the morrow the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... may be as you will, but the deadly reality of the thing is with us, and warring against us, and on our true war with it depends whatever life we can win. Deadly reality, I say. The puff-adder or horned asp is not more real. Unbelievable,—those,—unless you had seen them; no fable could have been coined out of any human brain so dreadful, within its own poor material sphere, as that blue-lipped serpent—working ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... When that sweet asp, death, fastens on our vein of earthly life, we all feel, like the dying queen of Egypt, that we have "immortal longings" in us. Since the soul thus holds by a pertinacious instinct to the eternity of her own existence, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... sits on HATSHEPSU'S chair, And with a solemn and ironic eye He sees TAHUTMES strap the balsamed hair Unto his royal chin and wonders why; He sees the stewards and chamberlains bow down, Plays with the asp upon HATSHEPSU'S crown, And thinks, "A goodly land, this land ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various

... lay in the word "stout." But Iris was not accustomed to cross-examination. During a three months' residence on the island she had learnt how to avoid Lady Tozer. Here it was impossible, and the older woman fastened upon her asp-like. Miss Iris Deane was a toothsome morsel for gossip. Not yet twenty-one, the only daughter of a wealthy baronet who owned a fleet of stately ships—the Sirdar amongst them—a girl who had been mistress of her father's house since her return from Dresden ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... with magic power detain Those dimpled cheeks, those temples violet-tinged, Those lips of nectar and those eyes of heaven! Charoba, though indeed she never drank The liquid pearl, or twined the nodding crown, Or when she wanted cool and calm repose Dreamed of the crawling asp and grated tomb, Was wretched up to royalty: the jibe Struck her, most piercing where love pierced before, From those whose freedom centres in their tongue, Handmaidens, pages, courtiers, priests, buffoons. Congratulations here, there prophecies, Here children, not repining ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor

... irrational men" (Tenure of Kings), and he rates them to their face as "owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and dogs" (Sonnet xii.); not because they will not listen to him, but "because they "hate learning more than toad or asp" ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... out of sight. When nothing more of it could be seen than the cloud of dust stirred up by its rolling wheels, I turned to look at my companion. His face was stern, and his brows were drawn together in a frown. Stung already! I thought. Already the little asp of jealousy commenced its bitter work! The trifling favor HIS light-o'-love and MY wife had extended to me in choosing MY arm instead of HIS as a momentary support had evidently been sufficient to pique ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... tracking back that wavering scent of coffee, which rose fresh and sudden now, and trailed away the next moment to the mere color of a smell. Now she had it, now she lost it, as she wound over rugged ridges and through groves of quaking-asp and balm of Gilead trees, always mounting among the hills, her eager horse taking the way without guidance, as keen on the scent ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... unceiled roof, prepared the bird-lover for an all-day ramble. The matutinal concert was early in full swing, the hermit thrushes, western robins, and Audubon's warblers being the chief choralists. One gaudy Audubon's warbler visited the quaking asp grove surrounding the cottage, and trilled the choicest selections of his repertory. Farther up the valley several Wilson's warblers were seen and heard. A shy little bird flitting about in the tangle of grass and bushes in the swampy ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... bottom we mounted again and followed MacRae in a cautious file around clumps of willow and rustling quaking-asp to the place where the blaze should have shown. But no glint of fire appeared in any direction; the coulee-bottom lay more dark and silent, if that were possible, than the gloomy hills above. Perplexed, MacRae halted, and we bunched together, whispering, each of us ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... her. On the following day she was found lying dead on a golden couch in royal attire, with her two women lifeless at her feet. The manner of her death was unknown. It was generally believed that she had died by the bite of an asp, which a peasant had brought to her in a basket full of figs. She was 39 years of age at the time of her death. Egypt was made a Roman province. Octavian did not return to Rome till B.C. 29, when he celebrated a threefold ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... borrowed by them from Egypt, where for many ages the sun and the moon had been studied in connection with their movements in the zodiac. In that country these serpentine movements were symbolized by the uroeus, or asp, worn upon the crown above the head of every Pharaoh. So closely was the Jewish religion connected with worship of the planetary bodies that Moses is said to have disappeared upon Mount Nebo, a word which shows the mountain ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... some far country where a palace rose, In which I reigned with Cleopatra's pride: "Come, Charmian! bring the asp for my repose." And queenly, men shall say, ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard

... Octavius with her charms; but, failing in this, and becoming convinced that he proposed to take her to Rome that she might there grace his triumph, she took her own life, being in the thirty-eighth year of her age. Tradition says that she effected her purpose by applying an asp to her arm. But it is really unknown in ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... after all and certainly a Christian! Better far had she said she was leaving him for ever, to abandon herself to the degrading service of the temples; better had she said she had taken hemlock, or had an asp in her bosom, than that she should choose to go out of the world with the tortures, the ignominy, the malediction of the religion ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... her to draw away from Chauvelin, as she would from a venomous asp, was certainly not fear. It was hate! She hated this man! Hated him for all that she had suffered because of him; for that terrible night on the cliffs of Calais! The peril to her husband who had become so infinitely dear! The humiliations and self-reproaches ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... merry stream that crossed their way, "you all ride down the road to where the bridge is—that's the main stream again, and she's pretty big—regular river, all right. Wait for me there at the bridge. I'll see if I can pick out a fish or so. I see a dry quaking asp lying here that some fellow has left, and I'll just try it myself. You know, get a quaking-asp pole that's dry and hasn't been dead too long, it's the lightest and springiest natural fishing rod that grows. The tip is strong enough, if it ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough

... no other but Amelie, while in revenge upon herself—a thing not rare in proud, sensitive natures—she appeared in society more gay, more radiant and full of mirth than ever before. Heloise hid the asp in her bosom, but so long as its bite was unseen she laughed cruelly at the pain of it, and deceived, as she thought, the eyes of the world as ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... the envelope was Quaking-Asp Grove, which was beyond White Lodge, on the main transcontinental highway. Slowly Bill took from the envelope a ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman

... has hindered millions from progressing, and never benefited a soul. It occupies the mind with that which is injurious and thus keeps out the things that might benefit and bless. It is an active and real manifestation of the fable of the man who placed the frozen asp in his bosom. As he warmed it back to life the reptile turned and fatally bit his benefactor. Worry is as a dangerous, injurious book, the reading of which not only takes up the time that might have been spent in reading a good, instructive, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... a cavern of rattlesnakes. You know what I mean. Low theatres, low music-halls, casinos, haunts of yet viler sorts—there the snakes are, hissing and writhing and ready to bite. Do not 'put your hand on the hole of the asp.' Take care of books, pictures, songs, companions that would lead you astray. Oh for a voice to stand at some doors that I know in Manchester, and peal this text into the ears of the fools, men and women, that go ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... are those of the amentaceous trees, and the earliest of these are the pussy willow, the quaking asp, and the hazel. All of them are quick to respond to the kindly influences of a vase of water and a sunny window and we may have all three of these first blossoms in a spring bouquet at home by the first of March. Towards ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... mortal's agony, With an immortal's patience blending:—vain The struggle; vain, against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench; the long envenom'd chain Rivets the living links,—the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... thou— Red Sard, and marble sphere, and agile prow Of pinnace light well wroughten were by thee And decked full fair. And, beauteous to see, Fine woven weft and web, and the tall screen O'errun with painted bloom, crystal, with gleam Of Lilith's face—thou madest these. Mayhap Beetle and asp likewise didst tint—didst wrap The green about my rose, and richly fringe My cocoa-tree, or peacock's train didst tinge With dazzling hues. Methought thou wert a prince, But now Lilith should ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... lizards flabby, Centipedes, and hydras scabby, Asp, and slug, and toad, whose gem Outlasts ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... and the fatling shall come together, and a little child shall lead them. And the heifer, and the she bear shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the suckling shall play upon the hole of the asp; and upon the den of the basilisk shall the new weaned child lay his hand. They shall not hurt, nor destroy in my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And it shall come to pass in that ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

... such avarice may well have heartened Demetrios when the well-armoured gaoler knelt in order to unlock the door of Perion's cell. As an asp leaps, the big and supple hands of the proconsul gripped Bracciolini's neck from ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... Leontius and Apsimar were cast prostrate in chains beneath the throne of the emperor; and Justinian, planting a foot on each of their necks, contemplated above an hour the chariot-race, while the inconstant people shouted, in the words of the Psalmist, "Thou shalt trample on the asp and basilisk, and on the lion and dragon shalt thou set thy foot!" The universal defection which he had once experienced might provoke him to repeat the wish of Caligula, that the Roman people had but one head. Yet I shall ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... cried the Admiral, "what stuff these young fellows talk! Never was a better sloop than the Asp in her day. For an old built sloop, you would not see her equal. Lucky fellow to get her! He knows there must have been twenty better men than himself applying for her at the same time. Lucky fellow to get anything so soon, with no ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... him especially to be loyal and offered him pardon in the king's name. God giving force to these words, Durrey changed his intention, and refused to kill the father of his spirit. But the Indian who accompanied him, shutting his ears, like an asp, to the voices of health, seeing that his chief would not do the deed, unsheathed a weapon called igua in those parts, and approached quickly in order to strike the father. But since the chiefs of the village who had come to speak with the prior on a matter ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various

... miserable village, in which, I was told, he had entered but an hour before. The day was declining, the light in the room imperfect. I saw in a corner what seemed to me the form of the Dervish,—stooped to seize it, and my hand closed on an asp. The artful Dervish had so piled his rags that they took the shape of the form they had clothed, and he had left, as a substitute for the giver of life, the venomous ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... you could, and leave it something in your Will. But how much? And, as if he could not make that calculation looking out into the mild freedom of the country night, he turned back and went up to the chimney-piece. There were his pet bronzes—a Cleopatra with the asp at her breast; a Socrates; a greyhound playing with her puppy; a strong man reining in some horses. 'They last!' he thought, and a pang went through his heart. They had a thousand years ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the sunny down; Lo! lily-hooded asp; Blooms, blooms no more Verbena; White-withered ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... a feverish entreaty in his voice. That hunted helplessness with which a question so slight yet so momentous was received, was forcing in on him a thought that he flung away like an asp. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... this rare difference, outlaw—for whereas her tongue (honoured relict!) is tipped with gall, wormwood, henbane, hemlock, bitter-aloes and verjuice, and stingeth like the adder, the asp, the toad, the newt, the wasp, and ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... lean Hunger and green Thirst Like asp with adder fight, We have little care of prison fare, For what chills and kills outright Is that every stone one lifts by day Becomes one's ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde

... empresses, was marked to be stricken down by the red hand of anarchy, to whose crime, and poison, and danger we open our national ports with an unwisdom which is criminal stupidity, and of which we shall inevitably reap the benefit. America cannot warm the asp of anarchy in her bosom without expecting it to ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... double horns (by mistake of the Greeks attributed to Ammon), and his worship was universal in Ethiopia. The sheep are sacred to him, of which there were large flocks in the Thebaid, kept for their wool. And the serpent or asp, a sign of kingly dominion,—hence called basilisk,—is sacred to Kneph. As Creator, he appears under the figure of a potter with a wheel. In Philae he is so represented, forming on his wheel a figure ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... Kit; "no doubt they will go to the quaking-asp grove, and we can git 'em to-morrow." So we returned to camp without any elk. But the next morning we went to the quaking-asp thicket, and there, sure enough, we found the same band of elk, and succeeded in killing five of them. Thus we had ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan

... by the sound of her voice—deep, groaning, but yet steady—as she uttered her last words—words poured forth like the wild dirges, the fierce death-songs of the old Goths when they died deserted on the bloody battle-field, or were cast bound into deep dungeons, a prey to the viper and the asp. Thus she spoke:— 'I swore to be avenged! while I went forth from Aquileia with the child that was killed and the child that was wounded; while I climbed the high wall in the night-time, and heard ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... crackled still, And still their crashing volleys rolled and roared. Our rifles blazed upon the blaze below; The blaze below upon the blaze above, And in the blaze the buzz of myriad bees Whose stings were deadlier than the Libyan asp. Five times our colors fell—five times arose Defiant, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... cunning with which it makes its arrangements to leap upon the back and fasten its teeth in the head of the cobra. It is this display of instinctive ingenuity that Lucan[2] celebrates where he paints the ichneumon diverting the attention of the asp, by the motion of his bushy tale, and then seizing it in the midst ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... called by Lefever to conclude in secret the final arrangements. The ground about the quaking asp grove, and nearest El Capitan, afforded the best concealment close to the Gap. And to this point Scott was directed to bring what men he could before ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... her detractors thought of this mode of annoyance. Yet there was no want of low minds and bad hearts in the generation which witnessed her first appearance. There was the envious Kenrick and the savage Wolcot, the asp George Steevens, and the polecat John Williams. It did not, however, occur to them to search the parish register of Lynn, in order that they might be able to twit a lady with having concealed her age. That truly chivalrous ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... When his messengers returned, at the hour fixed, to conduct her away, they found only the dead body of Cleopatra stretched upon her couch, and by her side her two faithful attendants, Iris and Charmion. It is said that she died from the bite of an asp, a venomous Egyptian serpent, which had been secretly conveyed to her concealed in a basket of fruit; but this ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... a melancholy man. He only made one remark to me during that long forty-mile drive through the wilderness. About dinner time he drove the horse under a quaking asp tree, tied a nose bag of oats over its head and took a wad of bread and bacon from his greasy pocket. The bacon and bread had little flakes of smoking tobacco all over it, because he carried his grub and tobacco in the same pocket. For a moment he introduced one corner ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... Macdonnell, or Galasp? Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek, That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp. Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheke, Hated not learning worse than toad or asp, When thou taught'st Cambridge and King ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... company of men and of people, and busieth to slay him, and passeth all difficulties and spaces of ways, and with wreak of the said death of his mate. And is not let, ne put off, but it be by swift flight, or by waters or rivers. Marcianus saith that the asp grieveth not men of Africa or Moors; for they take their children that they have suspect, and put them to these adders: and if the children be of their kind, this adder grieveth them not, and if they be of other kind, anon they die by venom of ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... (Fairy Legends of Ireland, vol. iii. p. 165) points out several places where the legend seems to have been localised in place-names—two places, called "Gwal y Vilast" ("Greyhound's Couch"), in Carmarthen and Glamorganshire; "Llech y Asp" ("Dog's Stone"), in Cardigan, and another place named in Welsh "Spring of the Greyhound's Stone." Mr. Baring-Gould mentions that the legend is told of an ordinary tombstone, with a knight and a greyhound, in Abergavenny Church; while the Fable of Cattwg is told of a man in Abergarwan. So ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... and snake-bite, though hidden in blossoms, are hatred's old arms. And what is your May Queen at heart, oh, true hearts, that succumb to her charms? Dropped and deep in the blossoms, with eyes that flicker like fir The asp of Murder lies hid, which with poison shall feed your desire. More than these things will she give, who looks fairer than all these things? Not while her sceptre's a snake, and her orb the red horror that rings Devilish, foul, round the world; while the hiss and the roar are the voice Of this ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various

... party is the Arab Socialist Resurrectionist (Bath) Party; the Progressive National Front is dominated by Bathists but includes independents and members of the Syrian Arab Socialist Party (ASP), Arab Socialist Union (ASU), Socialist Unionist Movement, and Syrian Communist ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... arrows, or sword and buckler, and play at dice and draughts, and give no alms except to their dogs. 'Our places are taken by hawks and hounds, or by that strange creature, woman, from whom we taught our pupils to flee as from an asp or basilisk. This creature, ever jealous and implacable, spies us out in a corner hiding behind some ancient cabinet, and she wrinkles her forehead and laughs us to scorn, and points to us as the only rubbish in the house; and she complains that we are totally useless, ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... sing, if marrd husb can shro 1st flr suite, beaut furn, pri bth rm, sth asp, telephne, mo 'bus psses dr, ex cellar kept. Mrs. Bland, "Nil Desperandum," Muswell ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various

... cray'on asp'en tal'on glu'ten de'mon cab'in wag'on cit'ron ci'on drag'on sud'den kitch'en si'phon flag'on fel'on mit'ten co'lon lin'den lem'on pis'ton o'men grav'el mel'on her'on bar'rel bev'el chan'nel flan'nel par'cel plat'en ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... becoming known, made everyone very miserable. Directly she went out, Imperia told the ladies of Rome that she should die it if she were deserted by this gentleman, and would cause herself, like Queen Cleopatra, to be bitten by an asp. She declared openly that she had bidden an eternal adieu her to her former gay life, and would show the whole world what virtue was by abandoning her empire for this Villiers de l'Ile Adam, whose servant she would rather be than reign of Christendom. The English cardinal remonstrated ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... shade of the forest that edged the mesa, and just back of Fernando's camp, a Ranger trail cuts through a patch of quaking-asp and meanders through the heavy-timbered land toward the Blue range, a spruce-clad ridge of southern hills. Close to the trail two ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs



Words linked to "Asp" :   cobra, asp viper, Naja, horned asp, genus Naja, Egyptian cobra, Vipera aspis, Naja haje, Vipera



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com