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Bat   Listen
noun
Bat  n.  (Zool.) One of the Chiroptera, an order of flying mammals, in which the wings are formed by a membrane stretched between the elongated fingers, legs, and tail. The common bats are small and insectivorous. See Chiroptera and Vampire. "Silent bats in drowsy clusters cling."
Bat tick (Zool.), a wingless, dipterous insect of the genus Nycteribia, parasitic on bats.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bat" Quotes from Famous Books



... got to do something that will sell right off the bat—payment on acceptance! Short ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair

... Fauna, however, is quite that of the Upper. The Older Eocene pre-nummulitic mammalian Fauna contains Bats, two genera of Carivora, three genera of Ungulata (probably all perissodactyle), and a didelphid Marsupial; all these forms, except perhaps the Bat and the Opossum, belong to genera which are not known to occur out of the Lower Eocene formation. The Coryphodon appears to have been allied to the Miocene and later Tapirs, while Pliolophus, in its skull and dentition, curiously partakes of both artiodactyle ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... to the combats of Achilles and Hector. These are no mere trifles below the dignity of history; they help to explain the extraordinary hold Henry obtained over popular imagination. Suppose there ascended the throne to-day a young prince, the hero of the athletic world, the finest oar, the best bat, the crack marksman of his day, it is easy to imagine the enthusiastic support he would receive from thousands of his people who care much for sport, and nothing at all for politics. Suppose also that that prince were endowed with the iron will, the ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... future life, seeing his garret room more clearly than he had ever seen it—his bed, his washhand-stand, and the little table on which he did his writing. No doubt most of it would be done in the office, but some of it would be done at home; and at nightfall he would descend from his garret like a bat ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... pride beneath the ancestral fir, The cheering rustics and the sweet old Rector Welcoming back "our brave parishioner;" And since the lad was shy We made him get some simple phrases pat To thank them for the Presentation Bat, While Maud stood near (the Adjutant did that), So overcome that she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 8, 1917 • Various

... "If you want to know where that bat is, I should say you'd find it somewhere between the baths and the statue. At the foot of the statue, for choice. It seems to me—correct me if I am wrong—that you have been and gone and done it, me ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse

... 'just-break-the-news-to mother' expression of yours, and paying no more heed to my cheerful brand of conversation than if I had been a measly four-flusher. You don't eat more than a sick sparrow, and often you don't bat an eye all night. You're looking worse than the devil in a gale of wind. You've lost your grip, my boy. You don't care whether school keeps or not. In fact, if it wasn't for your folks, you'd as lief take a short ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... kneeling to England on the necks of the Irish poor. In this perversion, which under autonomy would have been impossible, we find the explanation of the extreme savagery of Union land policy in Ireland. Its extreme, its bat-eyed obtuseness is to be explained in another way. Souchon in his introduction to the French edition of Philippovich, the great Austrian economist, observes with great truth that England has not even yet developed any ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... a sly bat listens to the merry whistling of an innocent bird, and watches the propitious moment to spring upon her prey. It was an adagio which the king played upon his flute, and he was indeed a master in the art. Slightly trembling, as if in eternal melancholy, sobbing and pleading, soon bursting out ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... internal sense, confine me to the fragmentary, incoherent touch-world, and lo, I become as a bat which wanders about on the wing. Suppose I omitted all words of seeing, hearing, colour, light, landscape, the thousand phenomena, instruments and beauties connected with them. I should suffer a great diminution of ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... your ma or pa, or whichever one done the namin' didn't have no expurgated dictionary handy mebbe they ain't to blame—but from now on, between you an' me, you're Bat. That's name enough, an' the John Jack Judas Iscariot an' General Jackson part goes in the discards. An' bein' as this here is only a two-handed game, the discards ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... in the shape of a baseball bat and ball, the two volcanic islands are separated by a 3-km-wide channel called The Narrows; on the southern tip of long, baseball bat-shaped Saint Kitts lies the Great Salt Pond; Nevis Peak sits in the center of its almost circular ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... pull the wool over one's eyes; jeter de la poudre aux yeux[Fr]; screen from sight &c. (hide) 528. Adj. blind; eyeless, sightless, visionless; dark; stone-blind, sand- blind, stark-blind; undiscerning[obs3]; dimsighted &c. 443. blind as a bat, blind as a buzzard, blind as a beetle, blind as a mole, blind as an owl; wall-eyed. blinded &c. v. Adv. blindly, blindfold, blindfolded; darkly. Phr. "O dark, dark, dark, amid ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... score crept up, the tensity grew. As each ball was delivered, a chill, rigid silence held the onlookers in its grip. When Trigson, with the field collected round him, almost to be covered with a sheet, stonewalled the most tempting lob, the click of the ball on his bat was an intrusion on the stillness. And always it was followed by a deep breath of relief that sighed round the ring like a faint wind through a plantation of larches. When Bobby scored, the tumult broke out like a crash of thunder; but it subsided ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford

... fast with our nose to the grindstone, in orfice or fact'ry, or shop, The sun bustiges forth a rare bat, till a feller feels fair on the 'op; But when Easter or Whitsuntide's 'andy, and outings all round is in train, It is forty to one on a blizzard, or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various

... spectacles about an inch thick, and a large collection of decorations. His staff was also brilliant in decorations and silver helmets, etc. I met them at the foot of the stairs, and escorted them up. The Marshal is apparently blind as a bat, for he never turned on the landings and would have walked straight into the walls if I had not steered him ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... moths making such a noise on the second shelf. It is Tom, who calls out to us, from his room, to come, and help him catch a bat. ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... came to the bat it was easy to be seen that both nines were on their mettle. It was a Colby Hall player who had the stick, and the left-handed twirler for Longley Academy struck him out ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer

... not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? Or would he spread bat's wings and flee away, looking so much the uglier the higher ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... her tower, at the midnight hour, The lady Lilian sat; Like a spirit pale, In her silken veil, She watches the white clouds above her sail, And the flight of the drowsy bat. ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... typewriters!' he exclaimed, 'how rude he'll think me!' And he rubbed something out of his eyes. He gave one long, yearning glance at the spangled sky where an inquisitive bat darted zigzag several times between himself and the Pleiades, that bunch of star-babies as yet unborn, as the blue-eyed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... Fair and Foul! Thy mate, the Ghoul, Beats, bat-like, at thy golden gate! Around the graves the night-winds howl: "Arise!" they cry, "thy feast doth wait!" Dainty fingers thine, and nice, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... in silence along the narrow path. Soon they reached the edge of the river. A few steps further on was a seat, of which they took possession. In the distance the gondola, on fire now with lamps, was playing a waltz. A bat flew for a moment about their heads. Somewhere in the woods a long way down the river a ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... was idleness, their only feasts the thick dusty silence that lies heavy in all belfries where the bells never ring. They hardly ever spoke even to each other, and in the whispers that good Bell-people talk in among themselves, and that no one can hear but the bat whose ear for music is very fine and who has himself a particularly high voice, and when ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit

... assented to this. "Why it was but last year a surjin came to me with one Jackson, a tailor, and said, 'Just sign a certificate for this man: his wife's mad.' 'Let me see her,' sid I. 'What for,' sis he, 'when her own husband applies.' 'Excuse me,' sis I, 'I'm not a bat, I'm Saampson.' I went to see her; she was nairvous and excited. 'Oh, I know what you come about,' said she. 'But you are mistaken.' I questioned her kindly, and she told me her husband was a great trile t' her nairves. I refused to sign. On that ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... fear—ridiculous, puerile fear, I forcibly withdrew my gaze and concentrated it abstractedly on the ground at my feet. I then listened, and in the rustling of a leaf, the humming of some night insect, the whizzing of a bat, the whispering of the wind as it moaned softly past me, I fancied—nay, I felt sure I detected something that was not ordinary. I blew my nose, and had barely ceased marvelling at the loudness of its reverberations, before the piercing, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... money as much as the next man, but when he found out who he was supposed to lay for, he gave his job the frozen face. Said you were a friend of his and none of his fellows were going to put a finger on you. I don't know what you've been doing to Bat, but he's certainly Willie the Long-Lost Brother ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... Church of Sainte-Valere, after a very gay evening. I confess that my fears give me a martyr-like and modest air to which I have no right, but which will be admired—why, I cannot conceive. I am delighted to see that poor Felipe is every whit as timorous as I am; society grates on him, he is like a bat ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... hero fell, a column falls! Here, where the mimic eagle glared in gold, A midnight vigil holds the swarthy bat! Here, where the dames of Rome their gilded hair Waved to the wind, now wave the reed and thistle! Here, where on golden throne the monarch lolled, Glides, spectre-like, unto his marble home, Lit by the wan ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... puts any of them comments on the record, or works 'em in as repartee. Nothing like that. I may look foolish, but there are times when I know enough not to rock the boat. Besides, this was Myra's turn at the bat; and, believe ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... cornered men, then came a flash, a sharp report, a piercing scream as the lithe Mexican girl sprang forth from behind the blanket and hurled herself on Blake, a panther-like leap of the accused man under cover of the flash and smoke, a thwack like the sound of the bat when it meets a new baseball full in the middle, and Loring's fist had landed full on Higgins' jowl and sent him like a ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... bee sucks, there suck I: In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily. Merrily, merrily shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... of greenstone sticking in the masonry, and sold it to a man from Tor (Khwjeh Kostantin?) for a large sum—two napoleons, a new shirt, and a quantity of coffee. A similar story is found in the Bdiyat el-Th, the Desert north of the Sinaitic Peninsula. At the ruined cairns of Khara'bat Lussn (the ancient Lysa), an Arab saw a glimmer of light proceeding from a bit of curiously cut stone. "This he carried away with him and sold to a Christian ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... remembered with a shudder that I should have to pass through the whole vast length of the building in order to gain an exit. It was an all but hopeless task in the profound darkness to thread my way through the labyrinth of halls and corridors, of tumble-down stairs, of bat-haunted vaults, of purposeless angles and involutions; but I proceeded with something of a blind obstinacy, groping my way with arms held out before me. In this manner I had wandered on for perhaps a quarter of an hour, when my fingers ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel

... recent revolution bat one newspaper existed in Japan, but at present the list numbers several hundred. Freedom of the press is unknown, and fines and imprisonment for violation of the stringent laws ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... already. He could hear the silly, piping screech of the French locomotives. His mind was half numbed, but he hoped that all this would encourage those French people and remind them that before Uncle Sam rolled down his sleeves again, he intended to bat out a home run. ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... "That old bat always makes me shudder," said Bianchon in a low voice, indicating Mlle. Michonneau to Vautrin. "I have studied Gall's system, and I am sure she ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac

... who swiped at everything and had luck enough for two whole teams. The house team followed with seventy-eight, of which Psmith, by his usual golf methods, claimed thirty. Mike, who had gone in first as the star bat of the side, had been run out with great promptitude off the first ball of the innings, which his partner had hit in the immediate neighbourhood of point. At close of play the regiment had made five without loss. This, on the Saturday ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse

... and when he saw this mighty great dust, he let call a runner and said to him, "Go find me out the cause of this dust-cloud." The scout went and returned, saying, "O my lord, Gharib and his braves are upon you;" whereupon they unloaded their bat-beasts and drew out in line of battle. When Gharib came up and saw the Persians ranged in row, he cried out to his men, saying, "Charge with the blessing of Allah!" So they waved the flags, and the Arabs and the Ajamis crave one at other and folk were heaped upon folk. Blood ran like water and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... wonderful in its way than the homing and migratory instincts of birds; the tropic quality of the male butterfly which leads it to the female though she is imprisoned in a cigar-box in a dark room; or the peculiar sensitivity of the bat which enables it, though blinded, to thread its way through a maze of obstructions hung ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... arranged in heaps obstructed the way. Out of the silence rose strange, troubling sounds: an owl whirled through the air, lean dogs, raising their long, pointed noses, followed with plaintive bay the erratic flight of a bat; scorpions and frightened reptiles scurrying by, made the ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... you—locked. I crawled up on the roof, though; huntin' a way in, and I looked through the skylight. There he was. On the floor. His eyes weren't open much, but they was watchin' me—sort of sneerin'. I come down off that roof like a bat outa hell, and scuttled over to Vandeman's where his chink was on the porch, I bellerin' at him. I telephoned from there. For the bulls; and the cor'ner; and everybody. Gawd! ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... known some unfeeling husbands, who have treated their luckless wives with unvaried and unremitting unkindness, till perhaps the arrival of their last illness, and who then became all assiduity and attention. Bat when that period approaches, their remorse, like the remorse of a murderer, is felt too late; the die is cast; and kindness or unkindness can be of little consequence to the poor victim, who only waits to have her eyes closed in ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... unreasonableness of it—seeing that the well-trained servants invariably had everything in readiness for him—rather appealed to her. He was like a big, overgrown school-boy returning to school and greatly concerned as to whether his cricket-bat and tuck-box were safely included amongst ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... was and always had been a graceful idler. He was one of those unfortunate men who possess influential relatives, than which there are few heavier handicaps in that game of life, where if there be any real scoring to be done, it must be compassed off one's own bat. To follow out the same inexpensive simile, influential relatives may get a man into a crack club, but they cannot elect him to the first eleven. So Tony Cornish, who had never done anything, but had waited vaguely for something to turn up that might be worth his while to seize, ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... and the moment its light flashed on him he was as—as blind as a bat. His hands moved about your bandage fumbling and uncertain. Yes, he was blind enough then. I believe he would have attacked me, only I threatened him with the lamp, and with calling ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... now at the bat. Two balls and two strikes were counted against him and then came a foul, high up in the air, ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield

... the lee of the islands and headed southward on her voyage, with cheers and good wishes to set her forth. The last message we had from shore came from Dalfin the Prince, and that was an Irish brogue of untanned deerskin, laced with gold, which flew through the dusk like a bat to Gerda's feet from the deck of one of Hakon's ships as we passed her. Words in the Erse came also from the dim figure who cast it, whereat Phelim and I laughed. Gerda asked what they were, and ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler

... The skins necessary to cover it have already been prepared; they amount to twenty-eight elk-skins and four buffalo-skins. Among our game were two beaver, which we have had occasion to observe are found wherever there is timber. We also killed a large bull-bat or goatsucker, of which there are many in this neighborhood, resembling in every respect those of the same species in the United States. We have not seen the leather-winged bat for some time, nor ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... in Athen, Der minder, weil man ihn bezhalte, Als weil er Ehre suchte, malte, Liess einen Kenner einst den Mars im Bilde sehn, Und bat sich seine Meinung aus. Der Kenner sagt ihm fiei heraus, Dass ihm das Bild nicht ganz gefallen wollte, Und dass es, um recht schon zu sein, Weit minder Kunst verrathen sollte. Der Maler wandte vieles ein; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... so many, and never a wife till a widow—fame, the fair daughter of fuss and caprice, may yet take the phantom of bold Robin Lyth by the right hand, and lead it to a pedestal almost as lofty as Robin Hood's, or she may let it vanish like a bat across Lethe—a thing not bad ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... you didn't treat your wife so. There's something here that tells me"—and she laid her hand on her bosom—"tells me more'n I dare tell ye. I warn ye now ag'in. Send him to sea—anywhere, before it is too late. She ain't got no mother; she won't mind a word I say; Miss Jane is blind as a bat; out ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... to the bat-holes. The three men relieved each other in the operations of wielding the hammers and guiding the jumpers, so that the work never flagged for a moment, and it was found that when the tools were of a very good temper, these holes could be sunk at the rate ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... There would have been no time to turn after—no life! Still, the king's son may not have known that. Maybe he turned, as a man attacked by a dog does, because he felt, in a cold, nervy sort of spasm all up his spine, the terrible defenselessness of his hind-limbs. And as he turned, he struck—bat-bat!—struck with all his talons unsheathed; struck with every ounce and grain of power, and force of brain to back that power, in his system; struck as only a cornered cat ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... rumbling through Boston streets up top of our big car, all in my best toggery. Hot as pepper, but good fun looking in at the upper windows and hearing the women scream when the old thing waggled round and I made believe I was going to tumble off," said Ben, leaning on his bat with the air of a man who had seen the world and felt some natural regret at descending from ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... and others of muleteers and handsome Mamelukes, the like of the least of whom is not found with any of the Kings; and others of you be transmewed to muleteers, and the rest to menials." So seven hundred of them changed themselves into bat-mules and other hundred took the shape of slaves. Then Abu al-Sa'adat called upon his Marids, who presented themselves between his hands and he commanded some of them to assume the aspect of horses saddled with saddles of gold crusted with jewels. And when Ma'aruf saw them do as he bade ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... loving, I was loved, etc. did love, etc. ama:bam ama:ba:mus ama:bar ama:ba:mur ama:ba:s ama:ba:tis ama:ba:ris, -re ama:ba:mini: ama:bat ama:bant ama:ba:tur ama:bantur ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge

... was a grievance that he would not play regularly, and there was a sort of general idea that if he chose he could do most things well. After that fight he changed altogether. He took to cricket in downright earnest, and was soon acknowledged to be the best bat and best bowler in the school. Before that it had been regarded as certain that when the captain left I should be elected, but when the time came he got a majority of votes. I should not have minded that, for I recognised that he was a better ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty

... it was at the sign of the Stuffed Owl, down in a basement bat cave of a place and in the dusk of the evening, that they found their man. To Ginsburg's curious eyes he revealed himself as a short, swart person with enormously broad shoulders and with a chimpanzee's arm reach. Look at those arms of his ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... brink of the river, was a beautiful terrace, called the Maiden's Walk, where the lady of the castle and her damsels, after their labours at the loom, were wont to take air and exercise on a summer evening, ere the vesper bell rang, and the bat began to hunt the moth. Within the precincts of the building was the tiltyard, a broad space enclosed with rails, and covered with sawdust, where young men of gentle blood, in the capacity of pages and squires, acquired the chivalrous accomplishments ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... ignorance of the rules of any game or capacity to appreciate any number greater than three—so do the children make believe to play cricket with a ball worlds away from a sphere (for it is none other than a pandanus drupe), and a bat ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... Bob! Been on another bat?" cried Pope, at sight of his caller. Wharton took a fleeting glance at himself in a mirror and nodded, noting for the first time the sacks beneath his eyes, the haggard ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... question with the sun and the blue sky shut away from him. It only proved again what Monte had always maintained—that excesses of any kind, whether of rum or ambition or—or love—drove men stark mad. Blind as a bat from overwork, Noyes still ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... out of beans; pins they had from Columbus; straw hats they braided quite well with their own fair hands; snuff we could get better than you could in "the old concern." But we had no hoop-skirts,—skeletons, we used to call them. No ingenuity had made them. No bounties had forced them. The Bat, the Greyhound, the Deer, the Flora, the J. C. Cobb, the Varuna, and the Fore-and-Aft all took in cargoes of them for us in England. But the Bat and the Deer and the Flora were seized by the blockaders, the J. C. Cobb sunk at sea, the Fore-and-Aft and the ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... which we had no sooner groped our way into than I nearly fell down suffocated by the horrible and most pestilential atmosphere. It appears that it is the sleeping-place of all the bats in the island; and heaven forbid that I should ever again enter a bat's bedchamber! I groped my way out again as fast as possible, heedless of idols and all other antiquities, seized a cigarito from the hand of the astonished prefect, who was wisely smoking at the entrance, lighted it, and inhaled the smoke, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... being desirous of directly reinstating the old Southern tyranny, while the mass simply hope to keep their record clear of accusation as Abolitionists, in case Secession should succeed. 'I was a K.G.C. during the war,' would in such case be a most valuable evidence of fidelity for these bat-like birds-among-birds and beasts-among-beasts. Deluded by the hope of being all right, no matter which side may conquer, thousands have sought to pay the initiation fee, and we need not state have been most ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... "'A bat has been twittering round the hut of the Opener-of-Roads, and to his ears it squeaked the name of a certain Lousta and the name of a woman called Monazi. Also it twittered another greater name that may ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... judges was a rude picture in bright colours of the condemnation of Christ by Pilate. Pilate, I remember, was represented with a black face, to signify his wickedness I suppose, and in the air above him hung a red-eyed imp shaped like a bat who gripped his robe with one claw and ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... education between both. He is an antediluvian with regard to the British dominion in Bengal. He was coexistent with all the acts and monuments of that revolution, and had no small share in all the abuses of that abusive period which preceded his actual government. Bat as it was during that transit from Eastern to Western power that most of the abuses had their origin, it will not be perfectly easy for your Lordships thoroughly to enter into the nature and circumstances of them without an explanation of the principal events that ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... now a little better— From finishing this present letter. Just when he'd got to "Dam'me, we'll"— His Honor, full of martial zeal, Graspt at his crutch, but not being able To keep his balance or his hold, Tumbled, both self and crutch, and rolled, Like ball and bat, beneath ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... valued and exemplary clerical friend, who, with a cool head and steady nerves, found himself standing in safety at the top of the spire, with his hand upon the vane, which nothing terrestrial had ever looked down upon in its lofty position, except a bird, a bat, a sky-rocket, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... inquired, in a manner as though the decision rested largely with us, whether he "could see" the head of the firm. The lady who was his escort swept past him. "Oh, I am sure he will see him," she declared; "this" (with impressive awe) "is Mr. James." Had we said, No, right off the bat, so to say, like that, we believe (unchampioned) Mr. James would ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... chew, for among the Sea Dayaks this chewing takes the place of the smoking of cigarettes which is common to all the others; and they are then fed and entertained individually, or by twos and threes, in various rooms. No pig is killed or rice-spirit offered, though possibly a toasted bat or bit of salted wild pig will be ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... an eidoies ge moi] [Greek: Ton plouton auton k- to Bat-ou silphion]. Aristoph. in ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn

... the one whom he had feared had come, not with purposes of cruelty, but with yearnings of affection. Why this should be he knew not; he was content to know that it was so; and in this knowledge all fear died out. Bat even now he felt somewhat embarrassed, for the old woman was evidently only giving way to her emotion because she believed him to be asleep; and thus he was an unwilling witness of feelings which she supposed to be seen by none. In this there ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... "batting" for "bowling" here, caused "the Nottingham Giant" to be credited with a novel cricketing performance, to which even he would hardly be equal. The proverbial Irish gun that could "shoot round a corner," would not be "in it" with a GUNN who could "bat against batting!" As a Correspondent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various

... through the wheat, With resolute heart and purpose grim: Though the dew was on his hurrying feet, And the blind bat's flitting startled him. ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... conquerors. Turning his steed up a narrow path of the forest, he sought this sanctuary, in hopes of finding a hospitable shelter for the night. As he advanced, the trees threw a deep gloom around him, and the bat flitted across his path. The bell ceased to toll, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... Marjorie Butler awoke half the school one night by loud and repeated screams, and when Miss Frazer rushed into their room, imagining fire or burglars, she found them cowering behind the bed curtains, in mortal terror of a large bat that had made its way through the open casement. Earwigs were a constant nuisance, and everyone grew almost accustomed to catching green caterpillars, which crept in from the roses that surrounded the windows, and would turn up in ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... the village during the holidays had plenty of sport, outdoor and indoor, which kept out the cold by wholesome exercise and recreative games. Many a hard battle was fought with snowballs, or with bat-and-ball on the ice; the barns were the scenes of many a wrestling match or exciting game at skittles; and in the evenings they played such romping games as blind-man's-buff, hunt the slipper, and others of a similar character. ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... Responsum to his daughter. As Zunz was the first to show, this story about Rashi's secretary is based upon the faulty reading of a text. Another legend proved false! Science is remorseless. See Sefer ha- Pardes, ed. Constantinople, 33d, where one must read, uleven bat (Vav Lamed Bet FinalNun, Bet Tav) not velajen biti (Vav Lamed Kaf FinalNun, Bet Tav Yod) - See Zunz, Zur Geschichte, p.567, and Berliner, Hebraische ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... is not gloomy; Black bat is not sad. It is only that each has forgotten Something he used to remember: Black bat goes searching . . . searching . . . White owl says over and over ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling

... maintained that fights of submarines with each other might take place, each, like the Kilkenny cats, devouring the other. But the fact is that when submerged the submarine is as blind as the traditional bat. Its crew cannot see any object under water, and is compelled to resort to the use of the periscope, which emerges unostentatiously above the water, in order to see its ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... think me like the vampire-bat, who fans his victim to sleep with its wings, whilst ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... College in 1650, one of his scores, cut on the chapel-cloister wall, being still extant; and the same writer reproduces as a frontispiece to his "opusculum" an old engraving bearing date 1743, in which the wicket appears as a skeleton hurdle about two feet wide by one foot high, while the bat is the Saxon crec or crooked stick, with which the game was originally played, and from which the name cricket ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... strata according to time, but, as Sandberger says, in quite a varied mixture, yet in all imaginable modifications. But even among the higher and the highest classes of animals, we can trace the transitions. The flying sauria, if not in their organs of flying, which remind us more of the bat, at least in head, neck, and toes, are closely connected with the {83} birds—the oldest birds of the Jura and chalk formations, with their tail-spines similar to the reptilia and their teeth in the beak to the sauria. The tertiary formations especially show the primitive history ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... adventure. He inhabited the dark corners and sombre, subterranean places with enemies that wanted to catch him; he most potently believed that hidden treasures awaited him under the hollow-echoing floors. Once he had a rare fright, for a bat hanging asleep in its folded wings, was wakened by him and suddenly flew into his face. He climbed and crawled and crept about, stole a lump of putty and rejoiced at the discovery of some paint pots and a brush. The 'Red Hand' no longer existed; but the opportunity once more to set up its ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... the boy who is "it" calls out "pigeon flies," or "bat flies," and the others raise their fingers; but if he should call "fox flies," and one of his mates should raise his hand, that boy would have to ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... republics (avtomnoy respubliki, singular - avtom respublika); Abkhazia (Sokhumi), Ajaria (Bat'umi) note: the administrative centers of the autonomous republics are included in parentheses; there are no oblasts - the rayons around T'bilisi are under ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... required handling by the wicket-keeper; but, by a mixture of skill with luck, it came right at the wicket. Seeing which, the wicket-keeper very judiciously let it alone, and it carried off the bails just half a second before Mr. Wright grounded his bat. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... elongated chap whose specialty, besides capturing balloon fliers out in right field with wonderful celerity, consisted in great throwing to the home plate, and also some slugging when at bat. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson

... preswaded that we shall not reach Fort Mandan again this season if we even return from the ocean to the Snake Indians. wherever we find timber there is also beaver; Drewyer killed two today. There are a number of large bat or goatsucker here I killed one of them and found that there was no difference between them and those common to the U States; I have not seen the leather winged bat for some time nor is there any of the small goatsuckers in this quarter of the country. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... sonny. We'll get together some day when your mother don't want you, and we'll start off on a regular bat. How would ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... Miller interposed. "Each to his or her own opinions. We're here in pursuit of facts, not fancies. Rick, you're first at bat." ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... (Madrid, 1794,) p. 285.—Oviedo makes the marquis much older, seventy-five years of age, when he died. He left, besides daughters, six sons, who all became the founders of noble and powerful houses. See the whole genealogy, in Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS., bat. ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... existed before the close of the fifteenth century. Life they knew, not only in all its varied forms, but as the soul. Sin they knew, and carved not merely in the full shame of the act but in the person of the father of sin, the devil, bat-winged and taloned, hovering over his prey on earth, or driving his victims after death into gaping Hellmouth where his torturers awaited them. But it was only when printing excited men's imaginations, when the first discovery ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... a bat flew into the apartment where the Court was; the King immediately cried out, "Where is General Crillon?" (He had just left the room.) "He is the General to command against the bats." This set everybody calling out, "Ou etais-tu, Crillon?" M. de Crillon soon after came ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... proportionately miserable. Everyone else had gone out but Meg, who was still in bed after her fainting fit, and he had been having a lonely game of cricket down in the paddock by himself. But even with a brand-new cricket ball this game palls after a time when one has to bowl and bat and backstop in solitary state. So presently he put his bat over into the garden, and began to throw the ball about in an aimless fashion, while he cogitated on what he should do next. His father's hack was standing away at the farther end of ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... laughter again. "You dear little innocent!" she exclaimed. "You're so blind—blind as a bat! You never see the boys at all. You look on Tom to-day just as though he were the same Tom that you helped find the time he fell off his bicycle and was hurt by the roadside. You remember? Ages ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson

... The bat, apparently an imperfectly-formed creature, was for a long time a puzzle to naturalists. Fontaine makes ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... without hair, of a dark colour, and looking as though it was covered with the well-known substance shagreen. It was about a foot in length, several inches broad and thick, and not at all unlike a cricket bat—except that it appeared heavier and more oval-shaped at the end. The animals were somewhat larger than otters, not so long, but much thicker and heavier in ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... me credit for being such a bat—such a mole. Now I must be away. We'll meet pretty soon, I expect. Just forget this afternoon as though it had never been, even though it's such a jolly sunny one. And remember me as a friend—a friend still for all my foolishness. Good-by ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... notion was that they were a kind of bird with wings of skin, while the German name for the creature, Fledermaus, or fluttering mouse, points to another opinion that they were neither bird nor beast, but a mixture of both. Other delusions remained in force up to a recent period. "Blind as a bat," is an old saying so much the reverse of fact, that it is not easy to explain how it ever obtained currency among people who had seen the animal. So far from being afflicted with blindness, they are, says Mr. Dallas, "furnished with ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... moving stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below; The winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And nought is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katy-did; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and wo, Till morning spreads ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... tell you, that every year, when I came here a few days before you, to repair the nest and attend to various matters, I spent a whole night in flying to and fro over the lake, as if I had been an owl or a bat, but every time in vain. The two suits of swan feathers which I and the young ones dragged up here out of the land of the Nile have consequently not been used: we had trouble enough with them to bring them hither in three journeys; and now they lie down here in the nest, and if ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... louse of Europe (Fig. 33 b, Braula caeca), which is a singular wingless spider-like fly, allied to the wingless Sheep tick (Melophagus), the wingless Bat tick (Nycteribia) and the winged Horse fly (Hippobosca). The head is very large, without eyes or ocelli (simple eyes), while the ovate hind-body consists of five segments, and is covered with stiff hairs. ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... spread upon the stones and the rock of that place; and surely it did be as that it were leathern, and made somewise as a bat doth be of this age, in that it did ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... to run a fox as to kill him in obedience to certain rules of the game. Ever so many hinderances have been created to bar the killing a fox,—as for instance that you shouldn't knock him on the head with a brick-bat,—all of which had to Mr. Harkaway the force of a religion. The laws of hunting are so many that most men who hunt cannot know them all. But no law had ever been written, or had become a law by the strength of tradition, which he ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... popular prejudice and it has doubtless saved many a reputation. The bat is known to Moslems as the Bird of Jesus, a legend derived by the Koran from the Gospel of Infancy (1 chapt. xv. Hone's Apocryphal New Testament), in which the boy Jesus amuses herself with making birds of clay and commanding them to fly when (according ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... one another, and presently some who had hurried to change came out to play fives; others straggled out in twos and threes and went out of the gateway, Philip knew they were going up to the cricket ground; others again went into the precincts to bat at the nets. Philip stood among them a stranger; one or two gave him an indifferent glance; but visitors, attracted by the Norman staircase, were not rare and excited little attention. Philip looked at them curiously. He thought with melancholy of the distance that separated him from ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... tracts, messengers of blessing, under the front-doors of wretched friends, who are dying without homes in the gilded miseries of their bowling-alley parlors. Where they have introduced the patent weather-strip, I place the tract on the upper door-step, with a brick-bat, which keeps it from blowing away. But I observe that it is no part of the plan of those charming papers, more than it was of the "Novum Organon" or of the "Principia," to descend into the details ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... me. She might have left me there doing little things like making speeches before the United States Senate and running for Governor of Tennessee, after I had, single-handed, remade the archaic constitution of that proud and bat-blind old State of my birth; but such ease ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess

... species of large fruit-eating bat, or flying-fox (Pteropus conspicillatus) making the third Australian member of the genus, was discovered here. On the wooded slope of a hill I one day fell in with this bat in prodigious numbers, presenting the appearance, ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... aspects—one on which its love is poured forth in light; the other in darkness? Here a woman of light, there a woman of the sewer. Angels are necessary. Is it possible that demons are also essential? Has the soul the wings of the bat? Does twilight fall fatally for all? Is sin an integral and inevitable part of our destiny? Must we accept evil as part and portion of our whole? Do we inherit sin as a debt? What awful ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... out quietly it 'ud be better," said George in a calm, as we climbed like a bat above them all. "But some skippers will navigate without enough lift. What does that Tad-boat think she ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling

... her pity for Heriot at the moment she was admiring him, but she checked us, and as she was surrounded by ladies and gentlemen of the town, and particular friends of hers, we could not speak out. Heriot brought his bat to the booth for eighty-nine runs. His sleeve happened to be unbuttoned, and there, on his arm, was a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith



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