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Claw   Listen
verb
Claw  v. t.  (past & past part. clawed; pres. part. clawing)  
1.
To pull, tear, or scratch with, or as with, claws or nails.
2.
To relieve from some uneasy sensation, as by scratching; to tickle; hence, to flatter; to court. (Obs.) "Rich men they claw, soothe up, and flatter; the poor they contemn and despise."
3.
To rail at; to scold. (Obs.) "In the aforesaid preamble, the king fairly claweth the great monasteries, wherein, saith he, religion, thanks be to God, is right well kept and observed; though he claweth them soon after in another acceptation."
Claw me,
Claw thee
, stand by me and I will stand by you; an old proverb.
To claw away, to scold or revile. "The jade Fortune is to be clawed away for it, if you should lose it."
To claw (one) on the back, to tickle; to express approbation. (Obs.)
To claw (one) on the gall, to find fault with; to vex. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Claw" Quotes from Famous Books



... from the loom; ears of Indian corn, and strings of dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor, where the claw-footed chairs and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors; and irons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops; mock-oranges and conch-shells decorated the mantelpiece; strings of various colored birds' eggs were suspended ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... pieces as large as the end of your finger, and heat it in the sauce till it steams. Put in a small half-teaspoonful of salt, a pinch of cayenne, and a squeeze of lemon. Do not put this in a large dish, but in small ones, buttered well, and serve at once. Stand a little claw up ...
— A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl • Caroline French Benton

... formal dinner: their concealed harness hampers them, they are laced tightly, and they are in the presence of women whose eyes and whose tongues are equally to be dreaded. They prefer fancy eating to good eating, then: they will suck a lobster's claw, swallow a quail or two, punish a woodcock's wing, beginning with a bit of fresh fish, flavored by one of those sauces which are the glory of French cooking. France is everywhere sovereign in matters of taste: in painting, ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... Tooth and claw and deadly grip—the old Cat raged and tore, the black fur flew in every direction, and the Skunk for once lost her head and fired random shots of choking spray that drenched herself as well as the Cat. The Skunk's head and neck were terribly torn. The air was suffocating with the poisonous ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... throw them landwards far from the water's edge. The poor beast is very often followed, unperceived, by the smaller carnivorous animals, and sometimes by bands of fishermen. I have seen large fishes with the claw-marks of the tiger on them exposed for sale ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... lay on the floor sucking his little claw-like fingers, and stirring feebly in the sun. Mrs. Nevill Tyson continued to gaze abstractedly at nothing. When Swinny came back after a judicious interval, he was still lying there, and she still ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... waits thee, Queen Atossa waits to see Dire fulfilment of her troublous, vision-haunted sleep in thee. She hath dreamt, and she shall see it, how an eagle, cowed with awe, Gave his kingly crest to pluck before a puny falcon's claw. Haste thee! where the mighty shade of great Darius through the gloom Rises dread, to teach thee wisdom, couldst thou learn it, from the tomb. There begin the sad rehearsal, and, while streaming tears are shed, To the thousand tongues ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... I show you what he gave me?" And Amos pulled out a stout deerskin thong from inside his flannel blouse. The claw of a bird was fastened to the thong. "See! It's a hawk's claw," exclaimed Amos; "and as long as I wear it no enemy can touch me. I gave Shining Fish my jack-knife," continued Amos. "You'd like him, Jimmie; he knew stories about chiefs and warriors, and he had killed ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis

... close-knit fellowship;—yet, when I see its people betrayed, and their jawbone broken by a stroke from the hand of gold; when I see freedom passing from us, and the whole land being grasped by the golden claw, so that the generation after us shall be born without freedom, to labour for the men who have grasped all, shall I hold my peace? The Boer and the Englishman who have been in this land, have not always loved mercy, nor have they always sought after justice; ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner

... The Lambs! Such a herd, timid, innocent, feeble, as much out of place in La Salle Street as a puppy in a cage of panthers; the Lambs, whom Bull and Bear did not so much as condescend to notice, but who, in their mutual struggle of horn and claw, they crushed to death by the mere rolling ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... carried far enough, he would rise in his wrath, chase the cat out into the kitchen, around the back-yard, into the kitchen again, and then, perhaps, have it out with the cat under the sink—without the loss of a hair, the use of a claw, or an angry spit or snarl. Punch and the cat slept together, and dined together, in utter harmony; and the master has often gone up to his own bed, after a solitary cigar, and left them purring and snoring in each other's arms. They assisted at each other's toilets, washed each other's ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton

... lifted his head And speech knew, and the company of speech, And from his alien presence wild beasts fled And birds flew wary from his arrow's reach, And cattle trampling the long meadow weed Did sentry in the wind's path set; when each Horn, hoof, claw, sting and sinew against man Was turned, and ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... eight legs, each of them provided with a very sharp tallon, or claw at the end, which this little Animal, in its going, fastned into the pores of the body over which it went. Each of these legs were bestuck in every joynt of them with multitudes of small hairs, or (if we respect the proportion they bore to the bigness of the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... belonging to a coal merchant close to Tate Hill Pier, was found dead in the roadway opposite its master's yard. It had been fighting, and manifestly had had a savage opponent, for its throat was torn away, and its belly was slit open as if with a savage claw. ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... incantations over it; and then they all grasped at it, exclaiming, "Thus we pull Buckra to pieces!" He gave them parched corn and ground-nuts to be eaten as internal safeguards on the day before the outbreak, and a consecrated cullah, or crab's claw, to be carried in the mouth by each, as an amulet. These rather questionable means secured him a power which was very unquestionable; the witnesses examined in his presence all showed dread of his conjurations, and referred ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... joosy red tomatoes at him, the ferst whized by his head and he looked around jest in time to get 2th rite in the eye. well it squashed all over his face and he began to sware and to lam round with his cane and claw the tomatoe out of his eyes. then he come rite back to our house and i squat down behine the tomatoe plants. i was in a corner and coodent get out and he made for me with his old cain. i hollered for mother and she come out and stoped him after he had given ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute

... falaise, or spider of the cliffs, of two varieties, red or almost black when adult, and bluish silvery tint when young,—less in size than the tarantula, but equally hairy and venomous; and the crabe-c'est-ma-faute (the "Through-my-fault Crab"), having one very small and one very large claw, which latter it carries folded up against its body, so as to have suggested the idea of a penitent striking his bosom, and uttering the sacramental words of the Catholic confession, "Through my fault, through my fault, ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... mentally put it, a "sashay." There was way enough on her to hold her into the wind, but the waves and the tides lugged her slowly sideways and backward. And yet, with their present sea-room Cap'n Sproul hoped that he might claw ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... Different was the second companion, who stalked behind; so thin, so sexless that none could say if the shape were that of man or woman. Dry, streaming locks of iron-grey, an ashen countenance, deep-set, hollow eyes, a beetling, parchment-covered brow; lean shanks half hidden with a rotting rag, claw-like hands which clutched miserably at the air. Such was its awful fashion, that of new death ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... sword had dropped ere he could draw it, And they continued battling hand to hand, For Juan very luckily ne'er saw it; His temper not being under great command, If at that moment he had chanced to claw it, Alfonso's days had not been in the land Much longer.—Think of husbands', lovers' lives! And how ye may ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... even in the midst of the fire, which he probably might have an eye to in changing the crest of his coat-of-arms, which now was a salamander living in the midst of a flame; whereas before it was an eagle holding a writing-pen flaming in his dexter claw.' When Elizabeth came to the throne, Smith returned to court, and was engaged in several embassies to France. In 1572 the Queen conferred on him the Chancellorship of the Order of the Garter; and shortly afterwards, on Lord Burghley's preferment to the office ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... and large, open, rounded ears. His back and head were of a reddish-brown colour, his cheeks red, his feet white, and he had three odd white spots on each side of his chest. But the funniest thing which I noticed about him, (I was always an observant rat,) was that he had a claw on his forefeet in addition to four toes, which I had never before seen in the ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.

... message up to his eyes with one many-jointed claw, while his other three forelimbs gestured uncertainly. Finally he seized the note-pad and wrote, "Do not understand monstrous, please forgive. They do for more change, so not to make ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight

... formed against these powerful neighbors. In the interior, the country was divided into factions,—the partisans and enemies of France. Prominent were the Clauwaerts and the Leliarts, from the lion's claw and the fleur-de-lis which they respectively wore on their badges. The country, which has ever been one of the battle-fields of Europe, was abandoned to all the horrors of civil war. The Duke ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... this swete strife, forgetting where I stood. I trod so hard in straining of my voice That with my claw I rent her tender skin; Which as she felt and saw vermillion follow Stayning the cullor of Adonis bleeding In Venus lap, with indignation She cast ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... unperceived the horse equipped came round, with even pace; a gallant steed, with all his jewelled trappings for a rider; high-maned, with flowing tail, broad-backed, short-haired and eared, with belly like the deer's, head like the king of parrots, wide forehead, round and claw-shaped nostrils, breath like the dragon's, with breast and shoulders square, true and sufficient marks of his high breed. The royal prince, stroking the horse's neck, and rubbing down his body, said, "My royal father ever rode on thee, and found thee brave in fight and fearless of the foe; now I ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... richly earned money, checked the rising fears of the guests by repeated proclamations that there was plenty of time, and that he would give them due warning before the train started. Those who had flocked out of the cars, to prey with beak and claw, as the vulture-like fashion is, upon everything in reach, remained to eat like Christians; and even a poor, scantily-Englished Frenchman, who wasted half his time in trying to ask how long the cars stopped and in looking ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... of the Pterocera is that the mantle in the adult expands into a series of long finger-like processes each of which secretes a calcareous process or "claw". There are seven[306] of these claws as well as the long columella (Fig. 5). Hence, when the shell-cults were diffused from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean (where the Pterocera is not found), it is quite likely that the people of the Levant may have confused with the octopus some ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... What's that?" Theodora gasped, as the little creature shook himself with a vehemence which fairly hoisted him off his hind legs, then flew at the nearest claw of the tiger skin ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... but second in point of size, of five phalanges. Such is the law now, and such was equally the law, as shown by the American footprints, in the times of the Lias. Some of the impressions are of singular distinctness. Every claw and phalange has left its mark in the stone; while the trifid termination of the tarso-metatarsal bone leaves three marks more,—fifteen in all,—the true ornithic number. In some of the specimens even the pressure of a metatarsal brush, still possessed by some birds, is distinctly ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... a terrible shaking—three of them are passing blood and have more or less serious internal injuries. Many were held up by a thin thong round the stomach, writhing madly to get free. One dog better placed in its harness stretched its legs full before and behind and just managed to claw either side of the gap—it had continued attempts to climb throughout, giving vent to terrified howls. Two of the animals hanging together had been fighting at intervals when they swung into any ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... nails, which men unpolitely call claws; they are admirably constructed, and well jointed in a membrane, which is extended or drawn up like the fingers of a glove; and at pleasure it becomes a terrific claw, or a paw ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various

... wings held in place by a strip of thin paper. They must all be mounted—the insects quivering upon brass wire, the humming-birds with their feathers ruffled; they must be cleansed and polished, the beak in a bright red, claw repaired with a silk thread, dead eyes replaced with sparkling pearls, and the insect or the bird restored to an appearance of life and grace. The mother prepared the work under her daughter's direction; for Desiree, though she was still a mere girl, was endowed ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... effect. Grant himself confirms this in a letter asking to go home, as from the "little knowledge I have of surveying, ... where I may be enabled to be more serviceable to my country." His faith in sliding keels had been somewhat shaken by this time, and he complained that he could not claw his vessel off a lee shore, and so Flinders found, when Grant with the Lady Nelson kept him company along the Barrier Reef when the Investigator was surveying that part of the coast. The Nelson had been ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... thrust his face forward and shook his open hand, bent like a claw, under Mr. Polly's nose. "Not your blooming business," he said. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... eagle feathers of distinction, but his greatest longing is to become a Medicine Man and know the Great Mystery. All medicine people of the tribes carry on their necks, or in a pouch at the belt, some sacred thing used in their magic practices—the claw of a bear, the rattle of a snake, a bird's wing, the tooth of an elk, a bit of tobacco. Every Indian carries his individual medicine, and his medicine is good or bad according to his success. If he ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... his sons, and they pay their father's debt, And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set: ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley

... Almar, the two beautiful American Society dames whose duel for the affections of the eligible hero form the plot, the whole plot and nothing but the plot of Miss ALICE DUER MILLER's latest book. Nature red in tooth and claw has not mothered them—they are too well-bred for that; they simply bite with their tongues. Mrs. Almar, who is married and purely piratical, comes off worst in the encounter, and the more artful Christine, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various

... brown: Kellaart); beneath a paler shade; a white triangular spot on forehead, extending down the nose; fur short, dense, and soft; ears thin, rounded (Jerdon). A hooped claw on inner toes; nails of other toes flat; posterior third of ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... shock it must be to the colonial ghosts when they stumble in the dark over great claw feet, cold even as their own; the feet of monstrous hollow things, white and awesome as themselves—the things ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... grasshopper-lark; over each eye is a milk-white stroke; the chin and throat are white; and the under parts of a yellowish white; the rump is tawny, and the feathers of the tail sharp-pointed; the bill is dusky and sharp, and the legs are dusky; the hinder claw long and crooked." The person that shot it says that it sung so like a reed sparrow that he took it for one; and that it sings all night: but this account merits farther inquiry. For my part I suspect it is a second sort of locustela, hinted at by Dr. Derham in Ray's Letters: see p. 108. He ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... "You needn't scramble and claw about! I've got you down and I'm going to pay you for beating me at wrestling, for tickling my nose, for stealing my clothes when ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... marble, which, once of pure white, had now caught the time-worn hue of the edifice itself. At each corner of the front and wings, the balls were surmounted by the family device—the eagle with extended wing. One claw closed over the stone, and the bird rode it proudly an' it had been the globe. The portico, of a pointed Gothic, would have seemed heavy, had it not been lightened by glass doors, the vivid colours of which were not of modern date. These admitted to a capacious ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... thou art gone; For nature red in tooth and claw Subsumes under an equal law Viscount ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... very necessary on these wild, rough trips. Dogs' feet are tender, and are liable to injury from various causes. On the smooth glare ice the pads of the feet would sometimes wear so thin that they bled a good deal. Then on the rough roads there was always the danger of their breaking off a claw or running a sliver through the webbing between the toes. Many of the wise old dogs that had become accustomed to these shoes, and thus knew their value, would suddenly stop the whole train, and by holding up an injured foot very eloquently, ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young

... waited for some time. Then he got up stiffly and shuffled out on his tottering legs, scraping his feet for purchase on the floor, like some old claw-footed animal. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... life symbolizes or reflects the ideal of unity, albeit the tooth and claw and growl of the animal in Man may be seen and felt and heard in the vain effort to postpone the inevitable dethronement of the animal force, which would dominate the weaker and appropriate for the personal self, the ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... shoved their hats on and off uneasily, struggling between their disgust far the living and their respect for the dead. The hat had a conical crown and a brim sloping down all round like a sunshade, and the publican held it with his great red claw spread over the crown. To do the priest justice, perhaps he didn't notice the incident. A stage priest or parson in the same position might have said, "Put the hat down, my friend; is not the memory of our departed ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... face suddenly reddened with passion. She raised her claw-like hand and struck the bold girl ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... striding up and down the wide hall anathematizing all the schools in creation and launching side shots at the boys because they were laughing at him. His roar was far worse than his attack as the lads well knew, as sitting—no, sprawling—upon the big claw-foot sofa they did not hesitate to let fly a projectile or two in return, only to howl at the result, for well both knew his weakness for his grandniece. "She could wind him around her little finger," ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... Freddie laugh. There was running water in the kitchen, and Snoop loved to sit on the edge of the sink and play with the drops as they fell from the bottom of the faucet. He would watch until a drop was just falling, then reach out with his paw and give it a claw just as if he was ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope

... to his fellow spectator that a little motion in the figures would add much to the reality of the show. After much reflection I concluded to go in among the figures dressed like the Evil One, in a dark robe, with a death's-head and cross-bones wrought upon it, and with a lobster's claw for a nose. I had bought and fixed up an old electrical machine, and connected it with a wire, so that, from a wand in my hand, I could discharge quite a serious shock upon any body venturing too near the grating. The plan worked admirably, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... boys and men to kiss and fondle them (as one woman has said, "to paw and claw them") and in turn they exert themselves to live up to what they imagine is expected of them, believing it to be a fair ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... his legs, purring loudly, Sindbad was offering an unusually fervent welcome of his own. The Ranger went down on one knee, his hand out for Sindbad's inquiring sniff. Then the cat butted that dark palm, batted at it playfully with claw-sheathed paw. ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North

... conditions and address ourselves with wonder, with awe, with love, as we well may, to that being in whom we move. I abate no jot of those vaster hopes, yet I would pursue that ardent aspiration, content as to here and today. I do not believe in a nature red with tooth and claw. If indeed she appears so terrible to any it is because they themselves have armed her. Again, behind the anger of the Gods there is a love. Are the rocks barren? Lay thy brow against them and learn what memories they keep. Is the brown earth unbeautiful? ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell

... Went out kangarooing. Killed an immense fellow: when standing on his hind legs fighting with me and the dogs, he was a foot higher than myself. He ran at me, and nearly gave me a desperate dig with his claw, which tore my only good hunting-shirt miserably. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... wall of the college—one bearing the legs of Man, and the other the eagle's claw of the House of Stanley—are not ancient, and were merely put up to heraldically mark the ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... can always depend on a certain number of sore-heads to make fools of themselves here—you could depend on it in the old days; it's worse in these times when everybody is ready to pitch into a row and clapper-claw right and left simply because they're aching ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... say Paley and Bell, certainly prove a designing maker as much as the palace or the watch proves an architect or a watchmaker. Let this mind, in this state, cross Darwin's work, and find that, after a sensitive nerve or a rudimentary hoof or claw, no design is to be found. From this point upward the development is the mere necessary result of natural selection; and let him receive this law of natural selection as true, and where does he find himself? Before, he could refer the existence of the eye, for ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... kingdom." So, when one is tempted to write a clever but harsh thing, though it may be difficult to restrain it, it is always better to leave it in the inkstand. "A goose's quill," says the Spanish proverb, "often hurts more than a lion's claw." ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... give way to certain morbid and sentimental exaggerations of sympathy, which do some injustice to the great Artificer whom we are for the moment assuming to be responsible for sentient life. Many of us are much concerned about "nature, red in tooth and claw." It is a sort of nightmare to us to think of the tremendous fecundity of swamp and jungle, warren and pond, and of the ruthless struggle for existence which has made earth, air, and sea one mighty battle-ground. In this we are again letting the fallacy ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... said the first; "a great misfortune it must be! No, let every one keep his own! say I every day to my children. After the sweet claw comes the bitter smart. One had much better work till the blood ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... rose at the same time, and they all stood near the cage of the parrot, as he tore at a claw-full of biscuit and spat it out, seemed to mock them with a pompous dance of his body without moving his feet, and suddenly turned himself upside down and trailed himself all over the outside of his golden cage, with the aid of his cruel ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... in the air luxuriously. Inside him, the wild-cat gave him a sudden claw, but it was a half-hearted effort, the effort of one who knows that he is beaten. Mr Meggs was so absorbed in his thoughts that he ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... nice too, to skate into an air-hole into water about up to your neck, and have the whole mob around you whooping and "hollering" and slapping their legs with glee, because they know it isn't deep enough to drown you, and you look so comical trying to claw out. And when you do get out, it takes such along time to get your skates of, and you feel so kind of chilly like, and when you get home your clothes are frozen stiff on you—Oh, who ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... the brooch up without unfastening the pin. The bird could pass through the opening as it was, and would have to tear the pin-cushion to pull the brooch off, probably holding the cushion down with its claw ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... is—it's plain common sense to get as much out of him as you can. Make the place you live in the best thing he's got; and just so long as you can, keep yourself a little bit out of his reach—tantalize him. There ain't nothing so diverting to a man as to claw after a woman, when he's got the belief in himself that when he wants ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... volumes of Gould's magnificent folios were drawn for him by Lear. A few years back there were eagles alive in the Zooelogical Gardens in Regent's Park to which Lear could point as old familiar friends that he had drawn laboriously from claw to beak fifty years before. He united with this kind of work the more unpleasant occupation of drawing the curiosities of disease or deformity in hospitals. One day, as he was busily intent on the portrait of a bird in the Zooelogical Gardens, an old ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... roared Sir Pertinax. "A stable? Straw? This to me, thou filthy clapper-claw, Thou fly-blown cod's-head, thou pestiferous thing!" And, roaring, on the brawny host ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol

... brave man,' sings out O'Toole, comin' up. 'Go it, owld gal, give it to him. 'Tis a leddy-killer he is fer sure, 'pon me whurd, fer a fact. Claw him, bite him, even though he's as tough as nails. Yell him deaf, owld leddy. Do it fer his mether's sake, th' scand'lous owld rake he is. Get his year in yer teeth an' hold on, fer 'tis a leddy-killer ye have in yer hands at last. Whang his hide off! Whang him! Whang him!' An' I thought ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... one without a claw-wound in leg or back or shoulder, but none were serious, and we were all feeling fairly cheerful when someone demanded, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... tree-pipit (Anthus arboreus), the meadow-pipit (Anthus pratensis), and the rock-pipit or sea-lark (Anthus obscurus) have each occupied a distinct place in nature to which they have become specially adapted, as indicated by the different form and size of the hind toe and claw in each species. So, the stone-chat (Saxicola rubicola), the whin-chat (S. rubetra), and the wheat-ear (S. oenanthe) are more or less divergent forms of one type, with modifications in the shape of the wing, feet, and bill adapting them to ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... its summit touched the sky. To the east, outlined against the AEgean's blue, I could see the peninsula of Chalkis, with its three gaunt capes, Cassandra, Longos, and Athos, reaching toward Thrace, the Hellespont and Asia Minor, like the claw of a vulture stretched out to snatch the quarry which ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... I whyles claw the elbow o' troublesome thought; But man is a soger, and life is a faught; My mirth and gude humour are coin in my pouch, And my Freedom's my lairdship ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... delightful sense of humor, something that you can always count upon. She wrung her little claw-like hands together, twisted them with emotion; yet her sense of humor prevailed. She flashed a brilliant ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... very well where I was. The skipper started swearing, as hoarse as a crow. He wasn't going to talk at the top of his voice for my accommodation. 'Are you afraid they will hear you on shore?' I asked. He glared as if he would have liked to claw me to pieces. The chief engineer advised him to humour me. He said I wasn't right in my head yet. The other rose astern, like a thick pillar of flesh—and ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... began to claw at the limb to which it had been clinging. It was manifest that its hold was broken or breaking. The long claws were driven savagely into the bark, but in spite of all its efforts the creature plainly was slipping. There were two or three snarls, and once it turned and snapped ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson

... This person wore a black gown; a pair of huge, broad-rimmed glasses rested on the bridge of a thin, long nose, and in his claw-like fingers he held a vial, the contents of which he stirred slowly. His aspect was that of living sorrow ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... round us in a circle, with their eyes turning towards us—as if they were waiting for us to die to come and eat us. One big fellow left his place in the circle and waddled up to my feet and examined my boots. First with one claw and then with the other he took a taste of my boot. He went away obviously disgusted: one could almost ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... consist in a bit of old wood hung around their necks, or a stone, or a bone, or a beak or claw of a bird, or else a leather strap tied round their ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... has tried to pull nails with the claw of a hammer will appreciate this little device which ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 55, November 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... Arion, appears in devices as the friend of the distressed; the salamander, living in fire, typifies the strong passions, natural, yet destructive to their victim; the young stork, carrying the old one, illustrates filial piety; the crane, which, according to Pliny, holds a stone in its claw to avert sleep, is a fit emblem of watchfulness; the pomegranate, king of fruits, wears a regal crown; the crocodile, symbol of hypocrisy, sheds deceitful tears. In short, almost everything that was in the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various

... by Grandmagnificolowsky. The ladies were muffled up in their fur cloaks, and the maid of honor seemed to be carrying a basket. Poor famished Glumdalkin! so great was her astonishment, that she positively paused, with her claw suspended over the leg of the partridge, to see what her royal highness could possibly ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin

... man dining alone in a restaurant ordered broiled live lobster. When the waiter put it on the table it was obviously minus one claw. The pessimistic young man promptly kicked. The waiter said it was unavoidable—there had been a fight in the kitchen between two lobsters. The other one had torn off one of the claws of this lobster and had eaten it. The young man pushed the lobster over toward ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... gravely, sitting down on a large flower-pot nearby, "I think, as we have been wanting to fight this out for some time,—indeed, I may say, almost since time began,—we had better allow every one to have a tooth and a claw in it. Then, perhaps, this matter will ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various

... mere wick projecting out of a three-cornered vessel of copper which was full of oil and was hung from the vault with blackened wires. Seven rabbis sat at the board, and at the head sat Lazarus. Their crooked hands and claw-like nails moved uneasily and there was a lurid fire in their vulture's eyes. They bent forward, speaking to each other in low tones, and from beneath their greasy caps their anointed side curls dangled and swung as they moved their heads. But Levi ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... sexes within a given range, and through these the broken links may be restored. Audubon or Wilson, I forget which, tells of a pair of fish hawks, or ospreys, that built their nest in an ancient oak. The male was so zealous in the defense of the young that he actually attacked with beak and claw a person who attempted to climb into his nest, putting his face and eyes in great jeopardy. Arming himself with a heavy club, the climber felled the gallant bird to the ground and killed him. In the course of a few days the female had procured another mate. But naturally ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... his eye fell on a package lying on an empty box, and he sprang towards it, tearing it open with claw-like fingers. ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce

... I was just a Kitten small, They gave to me a Rubber Ball To roll upon the floor. One day I tapped it with my paw And pierced the rubber with my claw; Now it will roll ...
— The Kitten's Garden of Verses • Oliver Herford

... you, Jack, it's hard to make a start in a new country with no money, no food, and no live stock, except Scott's old horse and that lame deerhound. Poor Ossian was a good dog, and used to run down an old man kangaroo for us, until one of them gave him a terrible rip with his claw, and he has been lame ever since. For eight weeks we were living on roast flat-head, and I grew tired of it, so on the 17th of last month I started down the inlet in my whaleboat, and went to Lady ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... water's edge, they moved in a solid mass, arms pinned down, shoulder to shoulder and chest to back. At times a man got an arm out of the press and began to claw the up-turned, tear-stained faces of his neighbors in wild endeavors to lift his whole body. But soon his madness subsided, the writhing arm sank back, and the man vanished out of sight. The mass once more moved stolidly, solidly onward. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various

... of the moving marine garden blend with the fringes and fur of the animal's rugged and misshapen figure and deformed limbs. As an artistic finish to a marvellous piece of mummery, in one of the crude green claws is carried a fragment of coral, green with the mould of the sea. It and the claw are indistinguishable until, in the faintest spasm of fright, the crab abandons the coral, and shrinking within itself becomes inanimate—as steadfast a patch of weeds as any other of the reef. Recovering slowly from its ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... jurors, several of whom were skilled machinists. The wound was an inch and three quarters in length and very deep at the extremities; in the middle in scarcely penetrated to the cranium. So peculiar a cut could not have been produced with the claw part of a hammer, because the claw is always curved, and the incision was straight. A flat claw, such as is used in opening packing-cases, was suggested. A collection of the several sizes manufactured ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... attention to him. She went close to the hole and pushed gently against the little door that closed it. It didn't move. Then she noticed that at one edge there was a tiny crack. She tried to push her nose through, but the crack was too narrow. Then she tried a paw. A claw caught on the edge of the door, and it moved ever so little. Then Granny knew that the little door wasn't fastened. Granny stretched herself flat on the ground and went to work, first with one paw, then with the other. By and by she caught her claws in it just right again, ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess

... one pair small scissors, two or three assorted flat files, one hollow handle tool holder with tools and little saw, one good hand-saw, one hack-saw, one upholsterer's regulator, one pair fine tweezers (such as jewelers use), one claw hammer, an assortment of round and furriers' needles, one or two darning needles, a sack needle, and an assortment of artists' small bristle and sable brushes (both round ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray

... of "devil's claws" (Martynia). These are used by the Mexicans of to-day for mending pottery. They drill holes through the fragments to be joined and pass into them one of these claws, just as we would a rivet. The claw is elastic and strong, and answers the purpose very well. My Mexicans understood at once to what use ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... there's no need to claw 'old of the bloody doors every time you goes in and out,' snarled Crass, 'and you could 'ave put yer tools on the floor instead of makin' ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... were emblazoned on the panel were peculiar; I remember especially one device—it was the figure of a stork, painted in carmine, upon what the heralds call a "field or." The bird was standing upon one leg, and in the other claw held a stone. This is, I believe, the emblem of vigilance. Its oddity struck me, and remained impressed upon my memory. There were supporters besides, but I forget what they were. The courtly manners of these people, the style of their servants, the elegance ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... hand. Even in the deepening twilight, I could see on the back of it a long, white scar that might have been made by a claw or a knife or ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry

... living room, and contained a cedar piggin and gourd on a shelf; a bread tray, dishpan, a pot and two skillets on another shelf near the fireplace, two split-bottom chairs, a table, and a cat. The cat was a large, gray agnostic. He never admitted William's presence by so much as a purr or a claw, and I have noticed that the agnostic is the only creature living who can treat a preacher with so much contempt. We found him curled up on the window sill next to the ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... ones. When the paroxysm is coming on the face assumes an anxious expression, and the child runs to the nearest person or to some article of furniture and grasps him or it with both hands. It is so severe sometimes that the child will fall or claw the air, convulsively. In the severest and most dangerous types, a convulsion may come on in a moderate degree, the face is red or livid, the eyes bulge and when the paroxysm ends a quantity of sticky ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... passages, causing asphyxiation. At the autopsy the foreign body was found at the superior portion of the left bronchus. There are other cases in which, while sucking oranges or lemons, seeds have been aspirated; and there is a case in which, in a like manner, the claw of a crab was drawn into the air-passages. There are two cases mentioned in which children playing with toy balloons, which they inflated with their breath, have, by inspiration, reversed them and drawn the rubber of the balloon into ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... hurried back up to her city, just in time to help out of its cell the first of her children—and citizens at last—the first limp, clambering, damp, newly painted, freshly bedecked young worker-wasp, perfect from feeler to sting, from wing to claw. ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... which is harder than clunch and so more suitable for bearing a weight. The Norman stonework was cut with an axe, the Transition with a chisel. The Early English is bolster-tooled; the Decorated ashlar (including the bays on the south side of the nave) is claw-tooled, the mouldings being scraped; the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... scarce conscious hold he clung To the white cat, that closely hung Seeking her refuge in his arm, Her shelter in the wild alarm— And who can tell how oft his moan Was soothed by her soft purring tone? Time keeping with retracted claw, Or patting with her velvet paw; Although of home and friends bereft, Still this one comforter was left, So lithe, so swift, so soft, so white, She might have seemed his guardian sprite. The rude Danes deemed her such; And whispered tales of 'disir' bound To human lords, as bird or ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... allow it to cool. Add one beaten egg and the lobster meat. Season with the salt and pepper. Shape into croquettes, roll in beaten egg, then in crumbs, and fry in deep fat until an even brown. Drain, stick a lobster claw into the end of each, and arrange on a platter with the claws around the outside. Pour a medium white sauce over the opposite ends and the centers of the croquettes and over this sprinkle the lobster coral ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... down to Leslie's and tell him to send me a good claw hammer and three pounds of eightpenny nails. And ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... anatomy, with hooked nose and brown skin. Tousled grey hair, like that of a Skye terrier, hung over her forehead, half concealing a pair of coal-black eyes. She rose up, barred the entrance with one claw-like hand, and ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... winder at 'em. 'She'll murder me! Where shall I get—where shall I—? Don't tell her where I be!' And with that he scrambled into the churn through the trap-door, and shut himself inside, just as the young woman's mother busted into the milk-house. 'The villain—where is he?' says she. 'I'll claw his face for'n, let me only catch him!' Well, she hunted about everywhere, ballyragging Jack by side and by seam, Jack lying a'most stifled inside the churn, and the poor maid—or young woman rather—standing at the door crying ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... encombred with his hold, In feare to lose his weapon in his paw, Ne wist yet, how his talaunts to unfold; For harder was from Cerberus greedy jaw To plucke a bone, then from his cruell claw 365 To reave by strength the griped gage[*] away: Thrise he assayd it from his foot to draw, And thrise in vaine to draw it did assay, It booted nought to thinke to ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... their claws drew blood abundantly. "Gritty little devils!" growled the man good-naturedly, snatching back his hand and wiping the blood on his trouser-leg. Then he took off his coat, threw it over the troublesome youngsters, rolled them in it securely, so that not one protesting claw could get out, and started back to the camp with the grumbling and uneasy bundle in ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... long pipes, Might turn a caravansery's, wherein You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk, And that fair Persian, bathed in tears, You'd not have given away For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous You had that dark and disleaved afternoon Escaped on a roc's claw, Disguised like Sindbad—but in Christmas beef! And all the blissful while The schoolboy satchel at your hip Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn From over Caspian: yea, the Chief Jewellers Of Tartary ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... who declare that there can be no such thing as a beautiful life unless it will accept superstition, I am against, tooth, claw, club, tongue and pen. Down with the Infamy! I prophesy a day when business and education will be synonymous—when commerce and college will join hands—when the preparation for life will be to ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... birds approach him, making for the palace, and they lighted down on the brink of the basin which is in the pavilion-terrace. He watched these birds and saw, amongst them, one goodlier than the rest, which pecked the others and flouted them, whilst none of them dared put out a claw to it. Presently, they set their nails to their neck-collars and, rending their feather-suits, came forth therefrom and became damsels, each and every, like the moon on fullest night. Then they doffed their dress and plunging into the water, fell to playing with one another, whilst the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... pierce the stars and shudder out to the remotest confines of the desert, and in the cold white radiance of the moon a savage vision of grief had been presented to her eyes: naked arms gesticulating as if they strove to summon vengeance from heaven, claw-like hands casting earth upon the heads from which dangled Fatma hands, chains of tarnished silver and lumps of coral that reminded her of congealed blood, bodies that swayed and writhed as if stricken with convulsions or rent ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... continued Wabigoon, "that this old stub has for a good many years been used! by something as a sort of stairway in and out of this chasm! Now if it were a bear, there would be claw marks. If it were a lynx, the surface of the stub would be cut into shreds. Any kind of animal would have left his mark behind, and no animal would have put this ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... monotony of his voice, decided at last to come out of her shell. First she showed the point of her little horny nose, then her black eyes, her flat-pointed tail, and finally her strong little claw-tipped feet. Seeing the melon, she made a gesture of assent, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... exultation and anxiety fighting for a grip on her heart. Anthony had told his love, raved of her, called her by name. (Anxiety's claw-like fingers began to yield.) The very intensity of his utterance declared his conviction that he must give her up. The exceeding bitterness of his tone rang too true to be ill-founded. (Exultation's clutch weakened, and Anxiety took a fresh hold.) Of a sudden Valerie felt persuaded that Time ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... wing as they ast him to sing an' he tried fer t' clear out his throat; He hemmed an' he hawed an' be hawked an' he cawed But he couldn't deliver a note. The swallow was there an' he ushered each pair with his linsey an' claw hammer coat. ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... wedged himself into the little recess where Polly's cup used to stand, and there he sat eating one of his relations in the coolest way. All the claws of the poor victim were pulled off, and he was turned upside down, his upper shell held in one claw close under the mouth of the big crab like a dish, while he leisurely ate out of it with the other claw, pausing now and then to turn his queer bulging eyes from side to side, and to put out a slender tongue and lick them in a way that made the children scream with laughter. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... his heels, rubbing dirt from gold and debating in just what manner he should rise up. He might rise up with a rush and claw his way out of the hole to meet whatever threatened on the even footing above ground. Or he might rise up slowly and carelessly, and feign casually to discover the thing that breathed at his back. His instinct and every fighting fibre ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... side feathers be split apart they will come back into place so exactly that the split cannot be detected. Nothing else in nature repairs itself with such precision. Many things, for instance the claw leg of the crawfish, will replace itself exactly when destroyed, but the feather alone repairs its own breaks precisely ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner

... the luncheon had arrived, but were not in the least prepared for use. A large basket showed a quantity of live crabs, which lay quietly enough, but a twitching claw here and there betrayed ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... forward with the fierceness of a tiger's claw: there had been a movement in the saloon entrance. Only by the fraction of a second was the ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... in the claw Of a limb of the law You trust, or your health to a quack, O! 'Tis fifty to one They're both as soon gone As you'd puff out a pipe ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... ribbons, so were her little twinkling eyes, and so was her nose—at least at the point. But there was no help for it. I made up my mind to the worst, and allowed her to help me to a bit of fowl. The landlord, and the two other guests supped on fried codlings. She herself fastened upon a lobster's claw. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various

... streams being still open behind him; and to hold out a little. It will be better if he do,—especially for poor Karl Albert and his poor Bavaria! Khevenhuller has also detached through the Tyrol a General von Barenklau (BEAR'S-CLAW, much heard of henceforth in these Wars), who has 12,000 regulars; and much Hussar-folk under bloody Mentzel:-across the Tyrol, we say; to fall in upon Bavaria and Munchen itself; which they are too like doing with effect. Ought not Karl Albert to be upon the road again? ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... has got to be learned; there isn't any getting around it. A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows that, if you didn't know the shape of a shore perfectly, you would claw away from every bunch of timber, because you would take the black shadow of it for a solid cape; and, you see, you would be getting scared to death every fifteen minutes by the watch. You would be fifty yards from shore all the time when you ought to be within fifty feet of it. You can't ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... on the right has the lion's claw-feet, and pilasters are topped by women's heads in bronze. This piece was bought in France. It has the original marble top, dark pink veined with white. The knobs on drawers are bronze lions' heads, holding rings in their mouths. Chairs are Italian ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... before our eyes. None of us has understood. I'll hire the finest detective in Chicago, and we'll go to work together. This is nothing compared with things people do find out. We'll go at it, beak and claw, and we'll show you a thing ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... for trade rang shrill in the space of Our Square. Trouble developed at once. Small boys booed at him, called him "yellow," and advised him to go carefully, there was a German behind the next tree. Henri Dumain, our little old French David who fought the tragic duel of tooth and claw with his German Jonathan in Thornsen's Elite Restaurant, stung him with that most insulting word in any known tongue—"Lache!"—and threatened him with uplifted cane; and poor Plooie slunk away. But I think it was the fact that he who stayed at home when others ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... peut-etre?" And Marianne and Lizette would slink away to the waiting beds. Nothing escaped this eye. If the poule sultane was gone lame, limping in the inner quadrangle, madame's eye saw the trouble—a thorn in the left claw, before the feathered cripple had had time to reach her objective point, her mistress's capacious lap, and the healing touch of her skilful surgeon's fingers. Neither were the cockatoes nor the white parrots given license to make all the noise in the court-yard. When madame had an unusually ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... forehead to signify that the log in question was a metaphorical one, the log of memory. Eve had him again directly. She freed a claw. "So this is your log, is it?" cried she, tapping it as hard as she could; "well, it does sound like wood of some sort. Well, then, David, dear—you wretch, I mean—promise me not ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... sorry for the cats if they had got a claw into you," Jimmie observed. "Just one claw in the flesh and it would have been ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... of old Irish. He says, "Cats were serpents, and they were made into cats at the time of some great change in the world. That is why they are hard to kill, and why it is dangerous to meddle with them. If you annoy a cat it might claw or bite you in a way that would put poison in you, and that would be the serpent's tooth." Sometimes he thinks they change into wild cats, and then a nail grows on the end of their tails; but these wild cats are not the same as the ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats

... the fatigue of dictating two to-morrow. In the first and best place, I am very near recovered; that is, though still a mummy, I have no pain left, nor scarce any sensation of gout except in my right hand, which is still in complexion and shape a lobster's claw. Now, unless any body can prove to me that three weeks are longer than five months and a half, they will hardly convince me that the bootikins are not a cure for fits of the gout and a Very short ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... reedy jheel, A tigress, comeliest of the forest, set The males at war; her hide was lit with gold, Black-broidered like the veil Yasodhara Wore for me; hot the strife waged in that wood With tooth and claw, while underneath a neem The fair beast watched us bleed, thus fiercely wooed. And I remember, at the end she came Snarling past this and that torn forest-lord Which I had conquered, and with fawning jaws Licked my quick-heaving flank, and with me went Into ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold

... were lying on the smoking dung-hill; some of them were scratching with one claw in search of worms, while the cock stood up proudly among them. Every moment he selected one of them, and walked round her with a slight cluck of amorous invitation. The hen got up in a careless way as she received his attentions, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... I knew if ever I slipped I was a goner, but I hit only the high places till you couldn't a-seen my trail for smoke. And the old devil snortin' along hot after me. Midway across, he reached for me, jest strikin' the heel of my moccasin with his claw. Tell you I was doin' some tall thinkin' jest then. I knew he had the wind of me and I could never make the brush, so I pulled my little lunch out of my pocket and ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... and the last brace of shafts did their work to admiration. They did not kill the grisly nor even loosen the gripe of that great forearm and claw upon the rock, but the next struggle of the bear brought him upon smooth stone, gently rounding. He reached out over it with his wounded limb, and the black hooks at the end of it did not work well. His game was within a length of him, but it was game that held a long Mexican ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... of woman's wakeness in ye. Oh, my cat-o'-cats! let any man throw her from him, which way he will, she's on her legs and at him again, tooth and claw. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... and by Mysticism in general. This objection has been urged both from the scientific and from the religious side. It is held by many students of Nature that her laws affirm a Pessimism and not an Optimism. "Red in tooth and claw with ravine," she shrieks against the creed that her Maker is a God of love. The only morality which she inculcates is that of a tiger in the jungle, or at best that of a wolf-pack. "It is not strange (says Lotze) that no nature-religions ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... tense thread of human resolution snapped; wills and nerves broke down, and a hundred women suspended their irons or dropped them. It was Mary who had screamed so terribly, and Saxon saw a strange black animal flapping great claw-like wings and nestling on Mary's shoulder. With the scream, Mary crouched down, and the strange creature, darting into the air, fluttered full into the startled face of a woman at the next board. This woman promptly screamed and fainted. Into the ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... mortifying mischief. I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause, and smile at no man's jests; eat when I have stomach, and wait for no man's leisure; sleep when I am drowsy, and tend on no man's business; laugh when I am merry, and claw no man ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]

... This claw of the beast was rapped, this hair of the devil was pulled by Nathan with extreme cleverness. The marquise began to ask herself seriously if, up to the present time, she had not been the dupe of her head, and whether her education was complete. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... less mind there is manifested in matter the better. When the unthinking lobster loses its claw, the claw grows 489:3 again. If the Science of Life were understood, it would be found that the senses of Mind are never lost and that matter has no sensation. Then the 489:6 human limb would be replaced as readily as the lobster's claw, - not with an artificial limb, but with the genuine one. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... Nymph with wonder saw; A whisker first, and then a claw With many an ardent wish She stretch'd, in vain, to reach the prize— What female heart can gold despise? What ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various



Words linked to "Claw" :   mechanical device, pothook, seize, member, common devil's claw, assault, hook, bird's foot, work, clutch, claw-shaped, prehend, claw hammer, nipper, appendage, talon, devil's claw, scratch up, round, clapperclaw, grapnel, tenterhook, chela, scrape, assail, scratch, cat's-claw



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