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Boot   Listen
verb
Boot  v. t.  (past & past part. booted; pres. part. booting)  
1.
To profit; to advantage; to avail; generally followed by it; as, what boots it? "What booteth it to others that we wish them well, and do nothing for them?" "What subdued To change like this a mind so far imbued With scorn of man, it little boots to know." "What boots to us your victories?"
2.
To enrich; to benefit; to give in addition. (Obs.) "And I will boot thee with what gift beside Thy modesty can beg."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Boot" Quotes from Famous Books



... scrambling down the side of the amphitheatre. The marble benches were broken in parts, and where they were perfect were covered with a fine layer of moss as smooth and soft as green velvet, so that Carlton, when he was not laboriously feeling for his next foothold with the toe of his boot, was engaged in picking spring flowers from the beds of moss and sticking them, for safe-keeping, in his button-hole. He was several minutes in making the descent, and so busily occupied in doing it that he did not look up until he had reached the level of the ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis

... Tristram all the time, instead of bein' pleasant to Tommy Hove. Fact is, she hates Tommy, and she'd be glad if the Chief would give him the boot. But the Chief doesn't want to, because Tommy's well in at ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... silence, his red eyes on the dusty activities of his late comrades at the cattle pens. He shifted his dusty feet as if dancing to his slow thoughts, scraping his boot ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... child," said he. "Get a golden heart made of them. It will be an emblem of the true heart you have to give him, and a pledge to boot." Then, falling into one of his reveries, in which his mind seemed occupied by some strong feeling—"I am thus reminded," he continued, "of the old song you used to sing. There is a verse which I hope ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... tapping a little boot impatiently on the floor; after a pause, "I have to leave for Paris. . . ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... sometimes she sighs, sometimes groans, sometimes utters inarticulate sounds, for which language has no name. If, in walking up the schoolroom, I pass near her, she puts out her foot that it may touch mine; if I do not happen to observe the manoeuvre, and my boot comes in contact with her brodequin, she affects to fall into convulsions of suppressed laughter; if I notice the snare and avoid it, she expresses her mortification in sullen muttering, where I hear ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... order was restored by the Provost, who was a sensible old man, and an old soldier to boot, but too infirm to take as active a part in such an emergency as he would have done had he been a dozen years younger. He, with several of the principal men of the town, went down to the beach to receive the bearers of ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne

... declared, gazing in wonderment at the very good-looking boy who tried in vain to escape from the stirrup in which his boot had stuck. Seeing her opportunity, Dorothy dropped the bridle and crop, and, with both hands, grasped the boy very much in the same manner as he had seized her the ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose

... rather well," he said, "considering that it has been in the boot cupboard all the time. We ought to have put some camphor in with it, or—I know there's SOMETHING you do to bats in the winter. Anyhow, the splice ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... the gallant grey circumnavigate the barge, while Robert de Winchelsey, the chancellor and archbishop to boot, was making out, albeit with great reluctance, the royal pardon. The interval was sufficiently long to enable his Majesty, who, gracious as he was, had always an eye to business, just to hint that the gratitude he felt towards the Baron was not unmixed with a lively sense of services ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various

... shod in this manner they tie up with a sinew that portion which extends beyond the end of the foot, and cut off the surplus. Then they raise and pull up the remainder of the skin halfway up their legs, where they fasten it with a leather strap. In drying, this species of boot assumes the shape of the foot, remaining perfectly soft, supple, and wearing a long time, it being impervious, and proof ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... follow one of these three ways. Nay, what say I? there are but two ways and not three; for if ye flee they shall follow you to the confines of the earth. Either these Welsh shall take all, and our lives to boot, or we shall hold to all that is ours, and live merrily. The sword doometh; and in three days it may be the courts shall be hallowed: small is the space ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... and the boot-jack broke the looking-glass. I could have waited to see what became of the other missiles if I had wanted to, but I took no interest ...
— Quotations from the Works of Mark Twain • David Widger

... enlivened by Manse's declamations. Scott displays the abominable horrors of the torture as forcibly as literature may dare to do. But Dr. McCrie is not satisfied, because Macbriar, the tortured man, had been taken in arms. Some innocent person should have been put in the Boot, to please Dr. McCrie. He never remarks that Macbriar conquers our sympathy by his fortitude. He complains of what the Covenanters themselves called "the language of Canaan," which is put into their mouths, "a strange, ridiculous, and incoherent jargon compounded of Scripture phrases, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Tours, born both of them just about a century later than Sidonius, in the 530s. For a moment when you look at Fortunatus you think the world of the sixth century is the same world as that in which Sidonius entertained his friends with epigrams and tennis. Fortunatus, that versatile, gentle, genial, boot-licking gourmet, who somehow managed to write two of the most magnificent hymns of the Christian church, came from Italy on a visit to Gaul in 565 and never left it again. He travelled all over the ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... to the south-west, we have another arm, which stretches some eighteen miles southward, and is from six to twelve miles in breadth. These arms give the southern end a forked appearance, and with the help of a little imagination it may be likened to the "boot-shape" of Italy. The narrowest part is about the ankle, eighteen or twenty miles. From this it widens to the north, and in the upper third or fourth it is fifty or sixty miles broad. The length is over 200 miles. The direction in which it lies is ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... you've got it! and the genuine article, too, as sure as my name is Jeremiah Growther!" he exclaimed; "I'd give the whole airth, and anything else to boot, that was asked, if I could only git religion. But it's no use for me to think about it; I'm done, and cooled off, and would break inter ten thousand pieces if I tried to change myself. I couldn't feel what you feel ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... it! Alack that my sorry need of medicines compels me to give quarter! Would I might swing this fat Secretary from a topsail yard! And a rogue of a lawyer to boot! He tempts me——" ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... my dear sir," said Madame von Lutzow, while Korner nodded to the tailor with a pleasant smile. "And he has written many other beautiful plays, and magnificent songs to boot. This is the reason why, though he is only twenty-one years old, he is famous throughout Germany, and at Vienna occupied a brilliant position. He is affianced to a dear, sweet young woman, whom he loves with all his heart, and to whom he was to be married within ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... kingdom to another upon her black stick, and conferring her fairy favours upon this Prince or that. She had scores of royal godchildren; turned numberless wicked people into beasts, birds, millstones, clocks, pumps, boot jacks, umbrellas, or other absurd shapes; and, in a word, was one of the most active and officious of the whole ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... motion this brisk old gentleman with the ruddy check and hale, clear eye, whom we next pass. A most stanch and royal turkey lurks behind that portly front—a sound and fresh animal, with plenty of cranberries to boot.—What are these soldiers? Carpet-knights who have united their thanks over a grand regimental banquet. What frisky gobblers they have shared in, to be sure! They prance and amble over the pavements as if they had absorbed the very soul ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various

... illimitable wealth, and during the twenty-five years that Hingeston had been working at his ideal, he and Maximilian Henchell, who was a descendant of one of the oldest Dutch families in America, and one of its shrewdest business men to boot, had built up an industrial organisation that was perhaps the most perfect of its kind even in the United States. It was run on lines of absolute despotism, but the despotism was at once intellectual and benevolent. To be a capable and faithful servant of Parmenter and Henchell, even in the humblest ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... into a dress-boot full of cold water. It was a good water-tight boot; and it had faithfully retained all of the water its lining had not soaked up. The gallant officer said a good deal about its retentive properties ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... to take all those five together, they would not be so powerful as he is.[NOTE 2] Nay, I will say yet more; for if you were to put together all the Christians in the world, with their Emperors and their Kings, the whole of these Christians,—aye, and throw in the Saracens to boot,—would not have such power, or be able to do so much as this Cublay, who is the Lord of all the Tartars in the world, those of the Levant and of the Ponent included; for these are all his liegemen and subjects. I mean to show you all about this great power ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... to his mother, says he: 'Mother, I guess I'm goin' to die, and I'd ruther do that than take any more of that medicine, and I wish you'd call Johnny and we'll trade names back agen, and if he don't want to come and do it, you kin tell him he kin keep the old minkskin I gave him to boot, on account of his name havin' a Wesley in it.' 'Trade names,' says his mother, 'what do you mean by that?' And then he told her what he and Johnny had done. 'And did you ever tell anybody about this?' says she. 'Nobody but ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton

... end of that period he found himself minus his heavy winnings at chemin-de-fer and ten thousand francs of his reserve fund to boot. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... down and watched him, and looked off between whiles to the wonderful green walls of the glen. The summer blue was very clear overhead; the stillness of the place very deep; insects, birds, a flutter of leaves, and the grating of Dr. Sandford's boot upon a stone, all the sounds ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... possessed a delicious bouquet. The Colonel emptied three bottles, with no more effect than if the wine had been water. Maurice did not appreciate this feat until he had himself emptied a bottle. It was then he saw that the boot was likely to be on ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... making an eloquent discourse, or even in describing the most ordinary facts in a plain and intelligible manner; and in this instance, as his feelings interfered with the relation of facts, a tolerably large stock of patience, and some cleverness to boot, were needed to ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes

... must by this time have perceived the drift of our investigation, as well as the extent of this science which begins at the analysis of glances and ends in the direction of such movements as contempt may inspire in a great toe hidden under the satin of a lady's slipper or the leather of a man's boot. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... "At 7.30 'boot and saddle' sounds, and in half an hour your horses have to be ready-harnessed and yourself dressed in 'marching order,' that is to say, wearing helmet, gaiters, belt, revolver, haversack, water-bottle, ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... and planted one foot upon my chest. Then catching the pocket-knife thrown to him by one of the men at the door, he opened it with a great deal of show and menace, bending down to stare savagely in my eyes as he whetted the blade upon the boot resting on my chest. ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... Dundee To study the spinning of jute! Hurrah for a restaurant tea, And a sight of the Tay Bridge to boot! ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray

... but his answers were not satisfactory. They tortured him, but could extract nothing further. They thrust one of his legs into an iron boot, and crushed it with a wedge, driven between the flesh and the iron; yet nothing but groans were extorted from him. Filled with wrath, because a confession involving others could not be elicited, they passed the death sentence on him. ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... lathered my face for ten terrible minutes and finished by plastering a mass of suds into my mouth. I expelled the nasty stuff with a strong English expletive and said, "Foreigner, beware!" Then this outlaw strapped his razor on his boot, hovered over me ominously for six fearful seconds, and then swooped down upon me like the genius of destruction. The first rake of his razor loosened the very hide from my face and lifted me out of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... prayer—"forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." While he went around after that, making ready for rest and sleep, the "peace of God which passeth understanding" came down and settled in his heart. Presently he seemed to come to another difficulty, for he sat down with one boot in his hand and one still on his foot. This question, however, was settled promptly: he pulled the boot on again in a hurry, then picked up his jacket and put that on, seized ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)

... home from Dr. Strongitharm's, and at the first sound of his boots in the hall Maurice in the cat's body fled with silent haste to hide in the boot-cupboard. ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit

... which so entirely depends on the means of those who give a ball or evening party, that very little can be said upon it in a treatise of this description. Where money is no object, it is of course always preferable to have the whole supper, "with all appliances and means to boot," sent in from some first-rate house. It spares all trouble whether to the entertainers or their servants, and relieves the hostess of every anxiety. Where circumstances render such a course imprudent, we would only observe ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... another will take without swallowing, can still be studied whenever a young lieutenant of the line sits down to breakfast in a tavern, and the waiter slaves for his penny fee. Yet, depend upon it, the cringer has balanced to a nicety the sweets and sours of boot-blacking against the buona mano; the rest is pure commerce. So now, the deliberate insolence of the flushed Borgia towards his host was a thing to be dumb at; ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... in chariots through the air, over hills and dales, rocks and precipices, till at last they have been found lying in some meadow or mountain, bereaved of their senses and commonly one of their members to boot. ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... and bit his finger, and the toe of his boot tap-tapped on the ground. It was evident he was undecided. Presently ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe

... officers—very fine-looking officers—dead upon the field; while the Japanese infantry, with dreadfully determined faces, were coming up at a double. The propriety and the wisdom of thus pictorially predicting victory, and easy victory to boot, may be questioned. But I am told that the custom of so doing is an old one; and it is thought that to realize the common hope thus imaginatively is lucky. At all events, there is no attempt at deception in these pictorial undertakings;—they help to keep up the public ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... make children's dresses, and instruct them in reading and spelling;" a school-assistant "to fill the second desk," &c. Next come a few characteristics of a scientific age—as patent trouser-straps, to "prevent the dirt getting between the strap and the boot, &c.;" and patent springs for waistcoat backs—to cause the clothes to fit well to the shape, &c.—and, above all, a legitimate, scientific ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 368, May 2, 1829 • Various

... of his. W. Joyce will go with me to Brampton. After dinner I out to Mr. Bridges, the linnen draper, and evened with (him) for 100 pieces of callico, and did give him L208 18s., which I now trust the King for, but hope both to save the King money and to get a little by it to boot. Thence by water up and down all the timber yards to look out some Dram timber, but can find none for our turne at the price I would have; and so I home, and there at my office late doing business against my journey to clear ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... Wowow, though it stands on his dominions, nor had that monarch a single subject here, or a single canoe, so that they were as far as ever they were from getting one, and with the loss of their horses to boot. They now found to their cost that they had been cajoled and out-manoeuvred by those fellows of Boossa and its adjoining state, whom they falsely conceived to be their dearest and best black friends. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... region of fens and enterprize, of fat land and jolly yeomen. The mail is just ready to start; we pay our fare, and, after seeing our luggage carefully deposited in the recesses of the boot, we mount beside the red-faced, much-becoated individual who is flickering his whip in idle listlessness on the box; the guard gives a triumphal shout on his short tin horn, the flickering of the whip ceases, the horses snort and paw, and finally, in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... itself in the press as well as in congressional debates. Writers contrasted the probable happiness of an imaginary "Anglo-American province," located on the Atlantic coast-plain, dependent upon the Old World for its straw hats, boot, shoes, cotton, linen, and cloth, with an "Economic Republic," located as far inland as the banks of the Ohio, and depending entirely on home industries. A rumour that the rebuilt Executive Mansion was to be furnished with articles from Europe brought ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... barefooted hermit—very holy, no doubt, but who does not know a Greek from a Saracen, or a horse's head from his tail—and will go to some pestilential hole like that foul Egyptian swamp, where we stayed till our skin was the colour of an old boot, in hopes of converting the Sultan of Babylon, or the Old Man of the Mountain, or what not, and there he will stay till the flower of his forces ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... me, and far off to boot, Without stretching a finger, or stirring a foot; I take them all in too, to add to your wonder, Though many and various, and large and asunder, Without jostling or crowding they pass side by side, Through a wonderful wicket, not half an inch ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... see me first and say, "Here's the Kid, Jerry, come to take you home. Get a move on you," and the Master will stumble out and follow me. It's lucky for us I'm so white, for no matter how dark the night, he can always see me ahead, just out of reach of his boot. At night the Master certainly does see most amazing. Sometimes he sees two or four of me, and walks in a circle, so that I have to take him by the leg of his trousers and lead him into the right road. One night, when he was very nasty- tempered and I was coaxing him along, ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... smart looking as mine and did not cost as much money, but when I went with him for the boots, and heard the old gentleman say that he had fastened a piece of leather on his last so as to provide a corresponding hole inside the boot to receive the ball of the foot, I knew that my brother would have more room for his feet to expand in his boots than I had in mine. We were often asked afterwards, by people who did not walk much, how many pairs of boots we had worn out during our long journey, and when we replied only ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... sported a military frock-coat, ornamented with frogs, knobs, black buttons, and meandering embroidery. He had affected a military appearance and habits of late; and he walked with his two friends, who were of that profession, clinking his boot-spurs, swaggering prodigiously, and shooting death-glances at all the servant girls who were worthy ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... stalwart burghers, over the plain and down into the hollow in dead silence. The force of their leader's character seemed to have infused military discipline into them. Most of them kept boot to boot like dragoons. Even Dally and Scholtz kept well in line, and none lagged or shot ahead. As they passed close to the camp without drawing rein, the Dutchmen gave them an enthusiastic cheer, but no ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... a little of a philosopher, and a bachelor to boot; and who, by dint of some experience in the follies of life, begins to look with a learned eye upon the ways of man, and eke of woman; to such a man, I say, there is something very entertaining in noticing the conduct of a pair of young lovers. It may not be as grave and scientific ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... light surfaces made him look very pale, with his long brown hair, all untrimmed, hanging loose about him. His indifference to fire was sufficiently remarkable to elicit a word of remonstrance from Mr. Lorry; his boot was still upon the hot embers of the flaming log, when it had broken under the ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... with a link, when cheered on by some gentlemen standing at the windows of houses near the spot, the mob rushed upon him, and rescued the fragments, carrying them in triumph to Temple Bar, where a fire was kindled and a large jack-boot was committed to the flames, in derision of the Earl of Bute. The city was restored to its usual tranquillity in about an hour and a half, the mob dispersing of their own accord; but the affair occupied the attention of parliament four ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... bonhomie—delivered, the guest executed a sort of shuffle with a half-boot of patent leather studded with buttons of mother-of-pearl, and followed that up by (in spite of his pronounced rotundity of figure) stepping backwards with all the elan of an ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... in her veins, as she bent her mind to the attitude she was about to take up, regardless of mockery or censure. Scraps of the window conversation fell on her ears—"I won forty pounds last Wednesday,— it just paid my boot-bill!" said one ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... company, is not more than half its size. The frame this skull belonged to could scarcely have been less than nine feet high. Such is the lamentable progress of degeneracy and decay. In the course of ages, a boot of the present generation would form an ample chateau for a large family of our remote posterity. The mind, too, participates in the contraction of the body. Poets and philosophers of all ages and nations have lamented this too visible process of physical and moral deterioration. ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... minute. On removing the dressings, the foot presented a very favourable appearance, the treatment therefore varied only in the application of a linseed-meal poultice over the former dressings of tinctures of opium and myrrh, confining the whole in a soft leather boot. Diet as before, in addition to which give a few oats. Should the bowels become constipated, repeat the castor oil without ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... an ancient shoe and boot, from the collection of the Royal Irish Academy. It would appear as if the Celt was rather in advance of the Saxon in the art of shoemaking; for Mr. Fairholt has been obliged to give an illustration selected from Irish remains, in his history, although it is exclusively devoted to British ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... somewhat into the night in the hope of catching a fox; he wasn't too tired for that. But he had given up all that sort of thing. It brought only vexation and trouble. Besides, he had told everybody that he did not think it worth his while to waste his time on such things and perhaps catch his death to boot. The Lord knew that was mere pretence. Eighty crowns for a beautiful, dark brown fox skin was a tidy sum! But a man had to think up something to say for himself, the way they all harped on fox-hunting: Bjarni of Fell caught a white vixen night before last, ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... and began to unlace the other boot. The slurring of the lace through the holes and the snacking of the tag seemed unnecessarily loud. It annoyed his wife. She took a breath to speak, then refrained, feeling suddenly her daughter's ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... with a tremendous oath. 'If he was left alive till I came, I'd grind his skull under the iron heel of my boot into as many grains as there are ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... of his life he once hurt his hand with an ax while chopping wood. This immediately led to his relations with his younger brother, whom he used to maltreat and knock down. In particular, he recalled an occasion when he struck his brother on the head with his boot until he bled, whereupon his mother remarked: "I fear he will kill him some day." While he was seemingly thinking of the subject of violence, a reminiscence from his ninth year suddenly occurred to him. His parents came home late and went to bed while ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... and nodded his head. Yes, he was in need of a herdsman and would be glad to take the lad into his service, and the wages were just as the youth thought, with a chance of winning the Princess to boot. But there was one part of the bargain that had been left out. If the lad failed to keep the herd together and lost so much as even one small leveret, he was to receive such a beating as would turn him black ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle

... necessary he should repair to Valladolid, where the university was. To make the journey, his father now provided him with an old she-mule of a most unamiable disposition, which he had obtained in exchange for the young horse—the gift of Don Mariano—with a goodly number of dollars in "boot." ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... is a marvel; believe me, I have refused a hundred pistoles for him, with one of the horses destined for the King to boot. I then mounted, and was in high spirits to see some of the hounds coursing over the plain to get the better of the deer. I pressed on, and found myself in a by-thicket at the heels of the dogs, with none ...
— The Bores • Moliere

... of ormolu, and precious porcelains—all were knocked down relentlessly at farcical prices. Lady Blessington reserved nothing for herself. She knew that the hour had struck, and very soon she was on her way to Paris, whither Count d'Orsay had already gone, having been threatened with arrest by a boot-maker to whom ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... poltroons were afraid of displeasing me?"[1] Is it the Senate which drew from Tiberius almost the same exclamation: "The base wretches! greater slaves than we require them to be!" Is it the Senate which caused Charles XII to say: "Send my boot to Stockholm."—"For what purpose, Sire?" demanded his minister.—"To preside over the ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... exchange his own yarns with those of the guard. No greater offence was then known to mail-coaches; it was treason, it was laesa majestas, it was by tendency arson; and the ashes of Jack's pipe, falling amongst the straw of the hinder boot, containing the mail-bags, raised a flame which (aided by the wind of our motion) threatened a revolution in the republic of letters. Yet even this left the sanctity of the box unviolated. In dignified repose, the coachman and myself sat on, resting with benign composure upon our ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... about slowly, apparently undressing, for we heard first one boot and then another drop to the floor. And we could sense vague emanations, too faint to be intelligible, and unmistakably ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright

... into the next field, looking with dying hope towards a small pond which was now reduced to its summer shallowness, so as to leave a wide margin of good adhesive mud. Here, however, sat Eppie, discoursing cheerfully to her own small boot, which she was using as a bucket to convey the water into a deep hoof-mark, while her little naked foot was planted comfortably on a cushion of olive-green mud. A red-headed calf was observing her with alarmed doubt through the ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... sudden trembling. The officer's experienced eye detected his agitation, and as he paused in his reading to give him a questioning look, my comrade conceived the unlucky idea of slipping the watch into his boot; but before it had reached its destination, the official slapped his hand against the other's hip, and said jeeringly: "Something seems to trouble you here." To everybody's amazement, Wilfred was seized with a fainting spell and dropped upon a bench pale as death. Without ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian

... morning, through having had a fright in the night, and being woke up by old Shoutnight the owl, who had been out mousing and lost his wife, and sat at last in the ivy-tod halloaing and hoo-hooing, till the gardener's wife threw her husband's old boot out of the window at him, when he went flop into the laurel bush, and banged and bounced about, hissing and snapping with his great bill, while his goggle eyes glowed so angrily that the blackbird's good lady popped off her nest in a hurry and broke one of her eggs, and, ...
— Featherland - How the Birds lived at Greenlawn • George Manville Fenn

... after what seemed a long, long time of jarring and jolting, to find the cage once more swinging from his hand and to hear the click of his boot heels on the pavements as we went through the streets of ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson

... delicate lifting of thy bosom, the dear gaiety of thy step, and, at that moment, I mourned for thy sake that thou wert not the dullest wench in the land, for then thou hadst been spared thy miseries, thou hadst been saved the torture-boot of a lost love and a disacknowledged wifedom. Yet I could not hide from me that thou wert happy at that great moment, when he swore to love and cherish thee, till ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Arvernian patriots Vercingetorix, one of those nobles whom we meet with among the Celts, of almost regal repute in and beyond his canton, and a stately, brave, sagacious man to boot, left the capital and summoned the country people, who were as hostile to the ruling oligarchy as to the Romans, at once to re-establish the Arvernian monarchy and to go to war with Rome. The multitude quickly joined him; the restoration of the throne ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... enter the hut at any time of the night or day. While Philip was musing after tea on the "Pons Asinorum" by the light of a tallow candle, Pussy was out poaching for quail, and as soon as she caught one she brought it home, dropped it on the floor, rubbed her side against Philip's boot, and said, "I have brought a little game for breakfast." Then Philip stroked her along the back, after which she lay down before the fire, tucked in her paws and fell asleep, ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... my wife: love equally prevails; He changed; let us, good neighbour do the same; With all my heart, said t'other, that's my aim; But well thou know'st that mine's the fairest face, And, Mister Oudinet, since that's the case, Should he not add, at least, his mule to boot? My mule? rejoined the first, that will not suit; In this world ev'ry thing has got its price: Mine I will change for thine and that 's concise. Wives are not viewed so near; naught will I add; Why, neighbour ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... and Dresser hurried on after his friends. Sommers retraced his steps toward the station. Dresser's vulgar and silly phrase, "boot-licker to the rich," turned up oddly in his memory. It annoyed him. Every man who sought to change his place, to get out of the ranks, was in a way a "boot-licker to the rich." He recalled that he was on his way to the rich now, with a subconscious purpose in his mind of joining ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... for a moment, stirring the dead leaves with her shabby boot; then she turned and laid her hand ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... sez I. The three boys left in a body to get the board. I lined up the bones as well as I could, 'cause the leg was some swelled. Then I bandaged it purty tight, next took an old boot-leg an' bandaged that in, an' finally split a joint of stovepipe an' packed cotton to fit the leg, tyin' the whole business to the board when it arrived, an' proppin' the board up on pillers with one at each side of the foot. Then ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... declare that all the crimes attributed to the Sinn Feiners had been due "to misguided attempts to enforce special legislation against a misunderstood and a gallant people." Lord BIRKENHEAD replied that there was at least a plausible case for the contention that the boot ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various

... to place the piece of earthenware or tile on the ground and after gazing intently at the Swastika to crush it to powder with the heel of his boot. These instructions are accordingly carried out. The man of magic now asks his assistant to look at the palm of his hand and see that there is no mark upon it. There is no mark. The hand is then held out palm upwards ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... "Ain't he good?" she whispered. But as for Jerome, he stood trembling and quivering and looking down at a print the Squire's great boot had made in the soft mould. When Elmira had gone, he went down on his knees ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... grievances, the small janitor composed himself to a nap. I may add, parenthetically, that his hopeful Peter, a precocious youth of seventeen, scout's boy on No. 3 staircase of St. Ambrose's College, was represented in the boot cleaning and errand line by a substitute for some days; and when he returned to duty ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... the War Ministry with offers of new material. 'We don't want any' was the astonishing reply. Equal amazement was caused by the faultless boots and shoes of the new troops, especially in view of the recent famous 'boot speech' ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various

... to the money-box, And take my shilling out again; I'll go to the Bull, or Fortune, and there see A play for two-pence, and a jig to boot.[504] ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... at Psyche plunging in the sun; Uncrowned three lilies with a backward swinge; And standing somewhat widely, like to one More used to "Boot and ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... up a small laboratory with a chance-medley apparatus for experiments, and one day a bottle of phosphorus was upset, and the car taking fire was only saved by the energy of the conductor, who promptly pitched the whole apparatus, with the printing-press to boot, out at the door, and then gave the young Fresenius-Franklin a thrashing. Later we hear of him, in the course of his wanderings, set to watch a telegraph-machine in the absence of the operator, and to prove that he was on guard he was to send the word six over the line every half-hour. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... grip. So, however, thought one friend in the assembly—Bill's wife. For Bill was a man after her own heart; and she often said that "with fair play she sentimentally allowed her Bill could lick ary a man in the 'varsal world, and his weight in wild cats to boot." Hence, the kind-hearted creature, hearing that Bill was actually fighting with the evil one, had pressed in from the outskirts to see fair play; but now hearing Bill was in reality down, and apparently undermost, and above all, the words of the Superintendent, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... coupes, turned up the collars of their overcoats, and set off toward the Madeleine. Suddenly an object rolled before the duke which he had struck with the toe of his boot; it was a large piece of bread spattered ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... sermon gratis to boot," replied Meredith. "It would have done you good, Trevannion, to have heard what shocking things you have done in being ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May

... matter, until the boy was sixteen months old. Then he disappeared. He was stolen from the garden. A clue was left, evidently that I might know from whom the blow came. The gipsy had been convicted partly on the evidence of the feathers; but principally from the fact that the boot, which he had on, had half the iron on the heel broken off, and this tallied exactly with some marks in my fowl house. An hour after the child was gone we found, in the center of the drive, in the park, a boot, conspicuously placed there to catch the eye; and this boot ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... You had better help them a bit to begin with, daughter," he continued, turning to Olive, who went as gladly as if she were only ten years old like Nat, instead of being seventeen, and nearly as tall as her father, with skirts that covered her boot tops. ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... exclaimed Bob, jamming his right foot into his left boot in his hurry and wasting a minute or more in wriggling it out again. "I thought I was ever so early, and ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... antiquated architecture. The street was blocked with equipages; carriages one after the other drew up in front of the brilliantly illuminated doorway. At one moment there stepped out onto the pavement the well-shaped little foot of some young beauty, at another the heavy boot of a cavalry officer, and then the silk stockings and shoes of a member of the diplomatic world. Fur and cloaks passed in rapid succession before the gigantic porter at the entrance. Hermann stopped. "Whose house is this?" he asked of the watchman ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... aggressor must be punished on the spot. In the second case, the man who drew his weapon was instantly shot down. There was now a demand for the soldier to be tried by the local civil court; but I said that the boot was on the other foot. The charge against the soldier was for an act performed in the line of his military duty, and of this our military courts had cognizance. The case was investigated by a military tribunal and the man justified. The result was every way satisfactory. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... Peter was always ready to boot it, and all through his school and college days he led his willing mates wherever he listed. He stalked forth and they followed; and, as he stopped not for brake and stayed not for stone, the boys who eagerly trailed ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... he saw that the man's eyes were upon him, then he deliberately raised the piece of paper to his mouth, spit on it, and, bending down, placed it under the heel of his boot, ground it to pieces in the ground, and, defiantly turning his back on the man, gave his attention to ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... how it is," he began, as he seated himself on the log in front of the tents, with one leg hanging down, and the other drawn up with the heel of his boot caught on a projection in the bark, his knee almost even with his nose, and his fingers locked across his shin, "I don't know exactly why, but the catching of that trout makes me think of an adventer I had on this very lake, five ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... fact of there being Tailors and Tailored. The Horse I ride has his own whole fell: strip him of the girths and flaps and extraneous tags I have fastened round him, and the noble creature is his own sempster and weaver and spinner; nay his own boot-maker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rain-proof court-suit on his body; wherein warmth and easiness of fit have reached perfection; nay, the graces also have been considered, and frills and fringes, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... disentangle the shreds from the jagged edge of the spur, but she bent down, and, seizing the skirt in both hands, tore it away, leaving a large fragment trailing from the boot-heel. ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... costume denoted a character of the class of artists. He wore a pair of green trousers, braided with a black stripe down their sides, puckered towards the waist, yet fitting with considerable precision to the boot of French leather that enclosed a well-formed foot. His waistcoat was of maroon velvet, displaying a steel watch-chain of refined manufacture, and a black satin cravat, with a coral brooch. His bright blue frockcoat was frogged and braided like his trousers. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... visitors came. He was offered and accepted four hundred dollars for one of his cabinet pictures. In a word, orders flowed in upon him; he could hardly paint fast enough to supply the demand. He became rather fastidious in his dress—patronized the first tailors and boot makers, cultivated the graces, and took lessons in the waltz and polka. At Mr. Greville's, and some of the other houses he visited, he was remarked as being somewhat of a dandy. And this was Montfort the misanthrope—Montfort the socialist—Montfort ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... because it comes out in early spring, as soon as the frost is over, and crawls on the fences and sidewalks as though they belonged to it. It does not seem to be afraid of any one or anything. It will march across the road in front of a motor car, or crawl up the leg of your boot. Sometimes when you brush it off with your hand, little hairs are left sticking in your fingers, because it is really like a small porcupine, protected by short spears sticking out of its skin in all directions. Here at the ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... Madame Arnoux, with her back turned to the light of the lamp, stooped towards him. He felt the caress of her breath on his forehead, and the undefined touch of her entire body through the garments that kept them apart. Their hands were clasped; the tip of her boot peeped out from beneath her gown, and he said to her, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... fish out of the pool. I sold them to a teamster for ten cents. With this I bought shoe blacking and a shoe brush and spent my Saturdays blacking boots for travelers at the depot and the hotel. I had established a boot-blacking business which I pushed in my spare time for several years. My brush and blacking represented my capital. The shining of the travelers' shoes was labor. I was a capitalist but not an employer; I was a laborer ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... a calf-topped boot, And a ticket (punched) for the Highgate Tube, He had painted there, with some crimson fruit And a couple of uptorn elms, each ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various

... and the ill-luck that befell others. For instance, was it not shameful that art should be dishonoured by all those medals, all those crosses, all those rewards, which were so badly distributed to boot? Were artists always to remain like little boys at school? All the universal platitude came from the docility and cowardice which were shown, as in the presence of ushers, so as to obtain ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... Mr. Johnson says he did produce it; but that, on being surprised, he had thrust a paper containing a plan of the route in his boot, which, having been perceived, was demanded, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall



Words linked to "Boot" :   U.K., instrument of torture, Britain, top boot, punt, punting, collar, jackboot, Hessian boot, kick, cowboy boot, boot out, United Kingdom, gum boot, kicking, footwear, automobile trunk, chukka boot, insole, bring up, blow, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, bootlace, boot sale, desert boot, rubber boot, hessian, outsole, trunk, place kick, bootleg, resuscitate, eyehole, heel, shoe collar, to boot, buskin, dropkick, revive, heel counter, jodhpur boot, instep, bang, counter, upper



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