Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Digs   Listen
noun
digs  n.  Same as diggings. (Coll.)
Synonyms: diggings, domiciliation, lodgings, pad.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Digs" Quotes from Famous Books



... broad and deep, and the salmon at length had become somewhat exhausted; he still kept in the strength of the stream, however, with his nose seawards, and hung, heavily. At last he comes near the surface of the water. See how he shakes his tail and digs downwards, seeking the deep profound that he will never gain. His motions become more short and feeble: he is evidently doomed, and his race wellnigh finished. Drawn into the bare water, and not approving of the extended cleek, he makes another swift rush, and repeats this effort each time ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... not a fact that will strike us dumb in the judgment, that it is the love of money, and not zeal for God, that digs canals, lays railroads, runs steamboats and packets, and, in short, is the main spring of every great undertaking? The love of money has explored the land and the seas, traced rivers in all their windings, found ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble

... do not always realize the amount of evil around us, of bad, I mean, that can be made good by efforts, some of which we are bound to make. If we knew how big the mountain is we might despair of digging it down by spadefuls, though the faith that digs is the one that can say with best hopes for obedience, "Be thou removed and cast into the sea." Few children would have courage to begin the alphabet as a step to learning if they knew what a long and heavy road is ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... Lady de Bathe digs and climbs and clips and gathers, therefore she wears easily laundered garments; a white linen or cotton skirt and blouse, a Chinese coat to the knees, of pink cotton crepe and an Isle-of-Jersey sun-bonnet, a poke with curtain, to protect the neck ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank

... afternoon the jaw sensations was still on the job. I'm feeling about as cheerful and chatty as a Zoo tiger with ingrowin' toenails. So, after I've done the polite handshake, and had a word with Sadie on the fly, I digs out my exercise uniform and makes a sneak down into their dinky little gym., where there's a first class punchin' bag that I picked out for ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... pleasant tale of some ancient ardent romancer, with an eye for dramatic effect. And often it is the bit choicest and most intimate of detail, binding the chronicle into a dramatic whole, which the iron pick of Research digs from the heap of bones, and wise men say: "That brilliant hero never lived; this great battle was but a skirmish; some old monk wrote that—it never happened." Many a glowing jewel, cherished tenderly and shining bravely through the dust of ages, has turned, in ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... given him, therewith to serve Christ, as well as his fellows, yea, and was commanded too, as well as the rest, to occupy till his master came. But what does he? Why, he takes his talent, the gift that he was to lay out for his master's profit, and puts it in a napkin, digs a hole in the earth, and hides his lord's money, and lies in a lazy manner at to-elbow all his days, not out of, but in his lord's vineyard;[9] for he came among the servants also at last. By which it is manifest that he had not cast off his profession, but was slothful ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the polar bear the ice and snow of the Far North means warmth and protection. The mother bear digs herself into a snowbank, where she lives quite comfortably throughout ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... whoever ye are!" and Teig was away to the corner, digging fast at the loose clay, as a terrier digs at a bone. He filled his hands full of the shining gold, then hurried to the door, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... though of course the Rake has a longer handle. But it is a very thin handle, and if Jake struck as hard a blow with the Rake as he strikes with me, the Rake's handle would break. And no matter how hard he digs the Shovel into the hard ground, no earth can be turned over until I first loosen it. So ...
— The Story of a Stuffed Elephant • Laura Lee Hope

... indolence. The sportsman and the man of dress have their heads filled with a fox or a horse-race, a feather or a ball; and live in ignorance of every thing beside, with as much content as he that heaps up gold, or solicits preferment, digs the field, or beats the anvil; and some yet lower in the ranks of intellect, dream out their days without pleasure or business, without joy or sorrow, nor ever rouse from their lethargy ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... nearest shop, but as yet everything has worked to a charm. The cow is milked into my pitcher in the morning, and the fowl lays her egg almost literally in my egg-cup. One of the little Bobbies pulls a kidney bean or a tomato or digs a potato for my dinner, about half an hour before it is served. There is a sheep in the garden, but I hardly think it supplies the chops; those, at least, are not raised on ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Work digs to the very foundations of life, and all human associations, and reveals the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, in the building of character, and the adornment of the Temple of the ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... water-serpents. The Author's removing to another part of New Holland: dolphins, whales, and more sea-serpents: and of a passage or strait suspected here: of the vegetables, birds, and fish. He anchors on a third part of New Holland, and digs wells, but brackish. Of the inhabitants there, and great tides, the vegetables and ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... to cover his nakedness—to shelter himself from the inclemencies of the weather, first with artlessly constructed huts, and the skins of the beasts of the forest; by degrees he mends their appearance, renders them more convenient: he establishes manufactories to supply his immediate wants; he digs clay, gold, and other fossils from the bowels of the earth; converts them into bricks for his house, into vessels for his use, gradually improves their shape, and augments their beauty. To a being exalted above our terrestrial globe, man would ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... 'The Babes in the Wood' is interesting in the extreme. We would say, en passant, however, that Artemus Ward is a perfect steam factory of puns and a museum of American humour. Humanity seems to him to be a vast mine, out of which he digs tons of fun; and life a huge forest, in which he can cut down 'cords' of comicality. Language with him is like the brass balls with which the juggler amuses us at the circus—ever being tossed up, ever glittering, ever thrown about at ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... God be unlimited creation, the special joy of man is limited creation, the combination of creation with limits. Man's pleasure, therefore, is to possess conditions, but also to be partly possessed by them; to be half-controlled by the flute he plays or by the field he digs. The excitement is to get the utmost out of given conditions; the conditions will stretch, but not indefinitely. A man can write an immortal sonnet on an old envelope, or hack a hero out of a lump of rock. But hacking a sonnet out of a rock would be a laborious business, and making a hero out ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton

... strike so high as at Lorenzo and Balthazar. In his despair Hieronimo contemplates suicide, until he remembers that the act would leave the murderers unpunished. He cries aloud before the king for justice, digs frantically into the earth with his dagger in mad excess of misery, then hurries away without telling his wrong. He haunts his garden at night-time; and in the silence of that darkness at last hits upon a scheme: under the appearance of quietness and ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... Tom's real attitude toward church and school. While Mark Twain is determined to present life faithfully as he sees it, he dislikes as much as any Puritan to see evil triumph. In his stories, wrongdoing usually digs its own grave. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... bright young men digs up a half-wit who's willing to try anything once. Otherwise, of course, we would not continue to manufacture it. Fortunately, Bill, we have very little of it, but whenever our woods boss runs across a good tree he hasn't the heart to leave it standing, and as a result, we always have enough skunk ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne

... savvy? Caramba! Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up near the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. Same here. Look slippery. If you fall don't wait to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Lyon that in the first of the winter the pregnant bears are always fat and solitary. When a heavy fall of snow sets in the animal seeks some hollow place in which she can lie down, and remains quiet while the snow covers her. Sometimes she will wait until a quantity of snow has fallen and then digs herself a cave; at all events it seems necessary that she should be covered up by the snow. She now goes to sleep and does not wake until the spring sun is pretty high, when she brings forth two cubs. The cave ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... she fainted in de fiel' at de plow. De driver said dat she wuz puttin' on, an' dat she ort ter be beat. De master said dat she can be beat but don't ter hurt de baby. De driver says dat he won't, den he digs a hole in de sand an' he puts de 'oman in de hole, which am nigh 'bout ter her arm pits, den he kivers her up an' straps her han's over ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... sees,—the Ideas of Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand,—it is toward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements of humanity, he has to do; and he digs where he stands,—preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak. Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and tempestuous tossings of ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... thrilling in its intense excitement. With one swift, dexterous sweep of the strong, ready paw, the tiger fetched the boar a terrific slap right across the jaw, which made the strong beast reel; but with a hoarse grunt of resolute defiance, with two or three sharp digs of the strong head and neck, and swift, cutting blows of the cruel, gashing tusks, he seemed to make a hole or two in the tiger's coat, marking it with more stripes than Nature had ever painted there; and presently both combatants were streaming with gore. The tremendous ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie

... way. ("Chafing and raging, he swalloweth the ground, neither doth he make account when the noise of the trumpet soundeth."—Job 39, 23 (Douai version).—Translator's Note.) With its carpenter's gouge, a strong black mandible, short, devoid of notches, scooped into a sharp-edged spoon, it digs the opening of its tunnel. The piece cut out is a mouthful which, as it enters the stomach, yields its scanty juices and accumulates behind the worker in heaps of wormed wood. The refuse leaves room in front ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... 'Bijah," said Grandison, his eyes sparkling with righteous indignation, "dat's too much 'to 'spec' ob a man who's got ter work all day to s'port his wife an' chillun. I digs, an' I plows, an' I plants, an' I hoes. But all dem things ain't 'nuf ter make apple-trees grow in my gyardin like as ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton

... as all the springs pour into streamlets, and the streamlets into rivers, and the rivers into the ocean—so, automatically and inevitably, all the wealth of society comes to them. The farmer tills the soil, the miner digs in the earth, the weaver tends the loom, the mason carves the stone; the clever man invents, the shrewd man directs, the wise man studies, the inspired man sings—and all the results, the products of the labor of brain and muscle, are gathered ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... them again at the next station, where they have stopped at the little garden belonging to the gatekeeper; both are already in deep conversation with him while he digs his garden-borders, and marks out the places for flower-seeds. He informs them that it is the time for hoeing out weeds, for making grafts and layers, for sowing annuals, and for destroying the insects on the rose-trees. Madeleine has on the sill of her window two wooden boxes, in which, for want ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... sparkles from his eyes. So fares the bull in his lov'd female's sight: Proudly he bellows, and preludes the fight; He tries his goring horns against a tree, And meditates his absent enemy; He pushes at the winds; he digs the strand With his black hoofs, and spurns ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... your knees, and pat again those glossy ears, and cry; but you cannot bring him to life. And Bella comes, and cries with you. You can hardly bear to have him put in the ground; but uncle says he must be buried. So one of the workmen digs a grave under the cherry tree, where he died—a deep grave, and they round it over with earth, and smooth the sods upon it—even now ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... weak neglect, no labour'd eloquence; Goodness and wisdom are in all his ways, The rude revere him and the wicked praise. Upon humility his virtues grow, And tower so high because so fix'd below; As wider spreads the oak his boughs around, When deeper with his roots he digs the solid ground. By him, from ward to ward, is every aid The sufferer needs, with every care convey'd: Like the good tree he brings his treasure forth, And, like the tree, unconscious of his worth: Meek as the poorest ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... whispered reply, while she digs a hole in the gravel path with the heel of her white satin shoe. 'I boxed him on the ear, I hardly knew what I was doing at the moment, and now I can't think how I could do it—you see he'd ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton

... piously denies: But the good bishop, with a meeker air, Admits, and leaves them—Providence's care. Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf, Each does but hate his neighbour as himself: Damned to the mines, an equal fate betides The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides. B. Who suffer thus, mere charity should own, Must act on motives powerful, though unknown. P. Some war, some plague, or famine they foresee, Some revelation hid from you and me. Why Shylock wants a meal, the cause is found— He thinks ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... do best in the trenches,—digs well and is a very fair shot. Anyway I want him to see all the fighting that's going. If the Germans want give and take in this business they can have it. They'll soon see who can stand it best. I told William when he left. ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... Pinckney reached around and discovers what it is, he digs down for his roll like a true sport, never battin' ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... digs in her garden With a shovel and a spoon, She weeds her lazy lettuce By the light of ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... then it would apply even to space, for when a man digs the ground he thinks that he has made new space in the ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta

... partially upon activities, occur in every rank and order of the whole social body. The waiter one tips probably has a hundred or so in some remote company, the will of the eminent labour reformer reveals an admirably distributed series of investments, the bishop sells tea and digs coal, or at any rate gets a profit from some unknown persons tea-selling or coal-digging, to eke out the direct recompense of his own modest corn-treading. Indeed, above the labouring class, the number of individuals in ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... the secret of her meaning. She was rejoicing that this little one should some time become one of the mothers of her race. We chatted over it a little longer and she gave me several playful "digs" about my own tribe thinking so much less of motherhood than hers, and so much more of battle and bloodshed. Then we drifted into talk of the sockeye run and of the hyiu chickimin the Indians ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... eater of insects, roots, nuts, and berries. Its dangerous fore-claws are normally used to overturn stones and knock rotten logs to pieces, that it may lap up the small tribes of darkness which swarm under the one and in the other. It digs up the camas roots, wild onions, and an occasional luckless woodchuck or gopher. If food is very plenty bears are lazy, but commonly they are obliged to be very industrious, it being no light task to gather enough ants, beetles, crickets, tumble-bugs, ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... background of all sectarian and intellectual strife and labour, finds as in a placid stream a calm reflection and picture of itself. The seventeenth century gave birth to many things that only came to maturity in the nineteenth; if you care for that kind of literary study which searches out origins and digs for hints and models of accented styles, you will find in Browne that which influenced more than any other single thing the early work of Keats. Browne has another claim to immortality; if it be true as is now thought that he ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... the breast; and the rest is roasted in the shell.[171] The turtle lays its eggs (generally between midnight and dawn) on the central and highest part of the plaias, or about a hundred feet from the shore. The Indians say it will lay only where itself was hatched out. With its hind flippers it digs a hole two or three feet deep, and deposits from eighty to one hundred and sixty eggs (Gibbon says from one hundred and fifty to two hundred). These are covered with sand, and the next comer makes another deposit ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... the Jacks have got to laugh and laugh about I'm sure the worms don't see the joke when Jacky digs them out. ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis

... laughing day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools, Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild flower's time and place, Flight of fowl and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell, And the ground mole sinks his well How the robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the groundnut trails its vine, Where the wood grape's clusters ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... give me such nasty little digs?" she asked. "You need not have stopped smoking just because ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... comprehend these new-fashioned distinctions; for it seems to me absurd to split into the two portions of reason and understanding one and the same spiritual power, according as the object on which it acts is higher or lower; just as if we adopted two names for the same hand that digs up the earth and directs the telescope to heaven, or maintained that the latter was quite a different hand from the former. No. There is but one understanding for man and beasts, as but one common substance for their material forms. ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... they had a bag of oatmeal, some Bovril cubes, one bag of chocolate, and eighteen biscuits, so they are much better off than we are. After we had our meal we started to dig out our sledge, which we found right under. It took us two hours, and one would hardly credit how weak we were. Two digs of the shovel and we were out of breath. This was caused through our lying up on practically no food. After getting sledge out we took it around to the Skipper's tent on account of the heavy sastrugi, which was very high. Got under way about 2.20. Had to stop very often on account of sail, ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... man who went again, alone, Into thy forest dark—Lord, he was brave! That man a fly has killed, whose bones are left Unburied till an earthquake digs his grave. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... Rae had gained the street Dunn was planning his campaign; for no matter what business he had in hand, Dunn always worked by plan. By the time he himself had reached the street his plan was formed. "No use trying his digs. Shouldn't be surprised if that beast Potts has got him. Rotten bounder, Potts, and worse! Better go round his way." And oscillating in his emotions between disgust and rage at Cameron for his weakness and his ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... finds, if more shrewd and adventurous, that the "beck" running down the mountain-side, or the minerals beneath his feet, can be turned into a new source of wealth; and leaving the old plodding life of a landowner with small capital, he turns manufacturer, or digs for ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... as the cicada killer. The cicada, it will be remembered, is what is commonly called a locust. The cicada killer is a magnificent big wasp, whose body is nearly an inch long, banded with black and yellow, while the wings are colored a smoky brown. This muscular wasp digs a long tunnel eight or ten inches deep, which ends in a slightly larger room. Having provided the location, he now sallies forth in search of the cicada. The heavy song of the male probably serves as a guide ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... therefore asked Jesus of His disciples, and of His teaching'! If they did not know about either, why had they arrested Him? Cunning outwits itself, and falls into the pit it digs for the innocent. Jesus passed by the question as to His disciples unnoticed, and by His calm answer as to His teaching showed that He saw the snare. He reduced Caiaphas and Annas to perpetrating plain injustice, or to letting Him go free. Elementary fair play to a prisoner ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... a liberal education will therefore be a great hodge-pod only. He who narrows his field and digs deep will be viewed as an alien. If more than one man in a hundred should thus dare to concentrate, the ruinous effects of being a specialist will be sadly discussed. It may make a man exceptionally useful, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... mutters and digs and buries it deep— The little green leaves are wild on the trees— And nearer and nearer the noises creep, That gibber and maunder and whine and weep ... Or is it the wave and the weariless breeze, Or That ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... morn lights one edge of the sky; The light streams up, the shadows fall down; 30 There's a clatter of tools deep down. Wakea, in passion, demands, What god this who digs 'neath the ground? It is dame Pele who answers; Hers the toil to dig down to fire, 35 To dig Molokai ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... modern crown, his stern, destructive law prevails; he's tearing all our idols down, disproving all our fav'rite tales. Is there a legend you hold dear, some legend of the long ago? King Skeptic hears it with a sneer, and digs up history to show that things of that sort never chanced, and never could, and never will. "We have," he says, "so much advanced, that fairy tales don't fill the bill. No faked-up tales of knightly acts, no Robin Hood romance for me; the only things worth while are Facts, Statistics, ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... upon me again! She digs her fingers into my throat! Hold her hands! Hold her hands! She will be ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... swamps, and a shy hornbill (Scythrops) was seen and heard several times. The nests of the white ant were rarely seen; but the soldier ant, and the whole host of the others, were every where. The funnel ant digs a perpendicular hole in the ground, and surrounds the opening with an elevated wall, sloping outwards like a funnel; the presence of this insect generally indicates a rotten soil, into which horses and cattle ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... write an anti-Darwinian article; you would do it so confoundedly well. I have sometimes amused myself with thinking how I could best pitch into myself, and I believe I could give two or three good digs; but I will see you — first before I will try. I shall be very impatient to see the Review. (The first number of the new series of the 'Nat. Hist. Review' appeared in 1861.) If it succeeds it may really do ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... toad some time. He will get to be quite at home in a garden and pay well, for he will eat all kinds of destructive insects. Some gardeners buy toads, paying as high as a quarter apiece, for they know how much good they can do. A toad digs his hole backwards. Watch him and see the fun. In the spring if there is water near he may be induced to sing to you. If you think he is slow and clumsy you have only to see how quick he ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... But all these being supposed common, there still remains something which serves as a line of demarcation—namely, the ideal. To have an ideal or to have none, to have this ideal or that—this is what digs gulfs between men, even between those who live in the same family circle, under the same roof or in the same room. You must love with the same love, think with the same thought as some one else, if you ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... properly an incarnation of the fiend of destruction. Every part of its legitimate work is to destroy. If it constructs bridges and builds roads, erects forts and digs trenches, these are all that it may destroy, or prevent some other incarnation from destroying it. Armies lay waste and destroy. Cornfields, orchards, lawns, life, and treasure are all ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... some of the mounds, the investigator finds they are made of the fallen walls of great adobe buildings, and as he digs deeper he finds rooms of various dimensions, and which, in many instances, have cemented walls and floors. In one instance there were found the impressions of a baby's feet and hands, made, presumably, as the child had crawled over the newly laid soft ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... him how easy it is for a feller to get to the top in this here prize rube burg, provided he has now gumption and his methods is new. I'll see you to-morrow night and let you know how I made out; I know you won't have no peace till you hear about it!" He digs into his pockets feverishly and grabs out a handful of letters. "Here's what they thought of me up in Vermont!" he goes on, never takin' his eyes off the girl's face. The wife is starin' at him with her mouth and eyes as open as a crap tourney, like she figured ...
— Alex the Great • H. C. Witwer

... not be sought to be crossed which is really uncrossable. That should not be snatched from the foe which the foe would be able to recover. One should not seek to dig at all if by digging one would not succeed in getting at the root of the thing for which one digs. One should never strike him whose head one would not cut off. A king should not always act in this way. This course of conduct that I have laid down should be pursued only in seasons of distress. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... continue to make handsome drinking cups of the skulls of their parents, that they may call them to remembrance even in their mirth. I received this information from an eye-witness. In their country there is much gold, so that any one who is in want, digs till he finds enough for his necessities, and leaves the rest behind for another occasion; for they have an opinion, that God would conceal all other gold from them in the earth, if they were to hoard any in their houses. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... thirty lariats were quickly looped round guy ropes and snubbed to saddle horns, and then, incited by simultaneous spur digs and yells, thirty fractious broncos bounded away from the tent, fetching it down in sheets and ribbons, ropes popping like pistols, the rent canvas shrieking like a creature in pain, startled animals threshing about their cages and crying their alarm. Cowboys were never slow at anything they undertook. ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... sleep there to-night. But I'm not going to have my breakfast there to-morrow morning. No fear! I'll have it up town. Lucas'll be able to put me up to some new digs. He always knows about that sort of thing. Then I'll drive down and remove all my worldly ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... the railings with their naked prehensile feet. The captain, a Nubian, on a salary of eighty-five cents a day, selects a suitable spot on the bank where the boat may remain all night. Then the bow of the boat heads for the shore and digs her nose in the soft mud. The sailors pitch the stakes and mallets out on to the bank and spring ashore. Then with Arab songs which they always sing when rowing, hauling ropes, scrubbing the decks, or doing any sort of work, the stern is gradually hauled alongside the ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell

... down by nature. The urge of the average man is toward construction, domination, mastery. The urge of the average woman is toward mothering, protection, nurture. The masculine characteristics find ready sublimation in a career; the man builds bridges, digs canals, harnesses mountain streams, conquers pests, overcomes gravity, brings the ends of the earth together by "wireless" or by rail; he provides for the weak and the helpless—his own progeny—or, incarnated in the body of a Hoover, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... lofty thought the march of Time; Sudden he calls:—"'Tis now the hour!" he cries, Spreads his broad hand, and bids the nations rise. La Plata hears amidst her torrents' roar, Potosi hears it, as she digs the ore: Ardent, the Genius fans the noble strife, And pours through feeble souls a higher life, Shouts to the mingled tribes from sea to sea, And swears—Thy world, Columbus, ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld

... information about the habits of these turtles. They invariably lay their eggs during the night. In the evening they may be seen with their heads above water, eager for the moment of the sun's setting; then, directly it is dark, they land and commence operations. The animal first digs a hole, three feet in diameter and four in depth, with its hind feet, which are very long, and furnished with crooked claws. So anxious is it to lay its eggs that it often descends into a hole that has been dug by another, still ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... she liked. Rowden she tormented, and Carleton she endured. She captured Clifford by suffering him to play his banjo to her piano. Rowden liked her because she was pretty and witty, though he never got used to her quiet little digs at his own respected and dignified person. Clifford openly avowed his attachment and spent many golden hours away from work, listening to her singing. She had been taught by a good master and her voice was pure and pliant, although as yet only half developed. The little ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... Edward; "I never fell in with any of the forest ponies before; I must, therefore, have walked in a direction quite contrary to what I usually do. I do not know where I am—the scenery is new to me. What a fool I am! It's lucky that nobody except Humphrey digs pitfalls, or I should probably have been in one by this time; and I've brought out my gun and left the dog at home. Well, I suppose I can find my way back." Edward then surveyed the whole herd of ponies, which were at no great distance from him. There was a fine ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... it was little Jack who found the bedroom in question, While trotting about at the foot of the cliff, he discovered, behind a turn of the rock, one of those grottoes well polished, well hollowed out, which the sea herself digs, when the waves, enlarged by ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... life; and we don't delve for the real gold. We slip along in a don't-care way, neglecting the opportunities that come to us to better humanity; seeking the easiest tasks, satisfied with that kind of existence. The miner who digs in the bowels of the earth for his gold has to work and struggle and strive. So we, too, if we make the most of God's gifts to us, must work and ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown

... mountainous parts; but they have few peculiarities of character. The swift-footed roe of the Cordillera roams here and dwells in the thickets, avoiding the warm forest. The dark brown coati (Nasua montana, Tsch.) howls, and digs at the roots of trees in search of food; the shy opossum crawls fearfully under the foliage; the lazy armadillo creeps into his hole; but the ounce and the lion seldom stray hither to contest with the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... share of the compliment; but why say 'only digs'? That is a most important part of the work: I'm afraid you ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... ever giant's dungeon dug so deep, Was ever tyrant's fetter forged so strong, Was e'er such deadly poison in the draught The false wife mingles for the trusting fool, As he whose willing victim is himself, Digs, forges, mingles, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... alluvial field is where you can dig out gold with a pick and shovel and wash it out with a pannikin. You don't want any machines, and everybody digs for himself, or mates with other fellows, and if you want a man to do a job you've got to pay him as much as he could dig for himself in ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller

... called the Mound Making Megapode, from its big feet, is somewhat like the Brush Turkey, laying many eggs; it digs holes five or six feet deep and deposits the eggs at the bottom. The natives gets these eggs by scratching up the earth with their fingers—a very hard task, since the holes seldom run straight. Some of these mounds are enormously ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown

... have is the one, not who digs out the treasure for us, but who teaches and inspires us with our own hands to open the rocks and find the treasures for ourselves. The digging out of the iron will do us more good than even the iron itself when it ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... nay! Power I have 'joyed, in sooth, but not the name. Thou smilest, Thurlow. Ah, thou little know'st What hole it is Ambition digs i' th' heart What end, most seeming empty, is the mark For which we fret and toil and dare! How hard With an unrounded fortune to sit down! Then, what a lustre from most ancient times Heaven has flung o'er the sacred head of kings! King—Majesty—what ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... power given her by blind fortune, by eyeless chance; 'George Eliot' is arrayed in robes of glory, woven in the loom of her own genius." Thereupon I am charged with disparaging a woman. And this priest, in order to get even with me, digs open the grave of "George Eliot" and endeavors to stain her unresisting dust. He calls her an adulteress—the vilest word in the languages of men—and he does it because she hated the Presbyterian creed, because she, according to his definition, was an atheist, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... blazing domes may feed a tyrant's ire, Thy shrines; unwilling, burn with Danish fire; Thy latest king, like Constantine, in vain May join his slaughtered subjects on the plain!— Handmaid of Science, and by Science fed, Each vice already rears its blooming head: Already Treason digs his silent mine; } With, civil follies, foreign wars combine; } And raging Faction waits to give th' appointed sign. } Oh! in that hour, when growing dangers rise, When the weak trembles, and the faithless flies, Gustavus, fight ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... is this! The slave that digs for gold, receives his daily pittance, and sleeps contented; while those, for whom he labours, convert their good to mischief; making abundance the means of want. O shame! shame! Had fortune given me but a little, that little had been still my own. But plenty leads to waste; ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... his back, and began to flap his head with her wings as hard as she could, while she made digs at his ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various

... all so good about helping me and putting up with my antics (though they have their own, Danu digs!) that I sometimes think I must be related to one of them—a distant cousin or sister-in-law (or wife, my God!), because I've checked our faces side by side in the mirrors often enough and I can't find any striking family resemblances. Or maybe I was even ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... feelings. At length she suddenly bucked up her bottom, as a challenge to me go on. Thus spurred on, I slowly drew out to the very head of my Prick, then gently pushing in again, kept repeating the motion, each time gradually increasing the pace, till we arrived at the short digs, when clinging closely to her, my hands pressed up her bottom till we could scarcely move, as the spurts of our semen mingled in her womb, and I felt her receive it with the same peculiar and perceptible shudder ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous

... too bad she has shut herself away from everyone," Marjorie mused. "She is probably unhappy. Leila says she looks like a little old robin. Her hair isn't very gray and she is quite energetic. She has a rose garden and digs in it a lot. Just to think. She could tell us the most interesting things about Brooke Hamilton and we don't know her and ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... has not spun greatness into your destiny, be sure that it does not matter. The reward of Cecil Rhodes was in the thing he did, and not in the memory which men have of it. The man who digs a well has precisely the same reward. The point is that you must do the deed for the deed's sake. Do not do it because the crowd will clap their hands. When present applause or ultimate fame become your chief purpose in life, what are you, after all? You are a play-actor—that ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... account of Ireland, to be founded upon a practice really observed by the uncivilised natives of that country: "When any one gets a fall, says the informer of Camden, he starts up, and, turning three times to the right, digs a hole in the earth; for they imagine that there is a spirit in the ground, and if he falls sick in two or three days, they send one of their women that is skilled in that way to the place, where she says, I call ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... way," he declared with satisfaction. "Just closed for a cargo of zinc ore from Australia to San Francisco ex our schooner Mindoro. Matt Peasley's been hunting wild-eyed for a cargo for her—scouring the market, Gus—and nothing doing! And here the old master comes along and digs up a cargo while you'd be saying Jack Robinson. By the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet, if you can show me how the rising generation is going ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... because I know he is so fond of books; he has not had a new book for so long. Let him go to London and see people and things, and life, because I know he is full of ideas and thoughts though he works and digs, and that is what would do him good. Give him some money now at last, now he has worked all these years, forty years on this farm, and ever so much work before that; do give him some money at last. Do make my grandfather ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... we come to the Panurgi, which are cousins of the Dasypodae, a little ray of light suddenly reveals the birth of a new sentiment in this fortuitous crowd. They collect in the same way as the others, and each one digs its own subterranean chambers; but the entrance is common to all, as also the gallery which leads from the surface of the ground to the different cells. "And thus," M. Perez adds, "as far as the work of the cells is concerned, each bee acts as ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... is really a promise to me? He repeats that it is a promise, and resumes digging. My contribution to the labour is that of directing the light constantly upon the hole. When he has reached something more than a foot deep he digs more cautiously, saying that, be it much or little there, it will not lie far below the surface; such things never are deep. A few minutes later the point of the pickaxe clicks upon a stony substance. He draws the implement out as feelingly as ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... harmonious notes, forming the mourrlful melody of that famous song of the wandering soldier who travels through woods and through forests, ofttimes fainting with woe and with hunger: at last he falls at the feet of his faithful steed, and the steed with his foot digs a grave for him. A poor old song, yet very dear to the Polish troops! The soldiers recognized it, and the privates crowded about the master; they hearkened, and they remembered that dreadful season when over the grave of their country they had sung ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... its larger base on the side where the Bee is and its smaller base opposite. This conformation of the exit-door is a characteristic of the work. When the insect tries to attack the diaphragm, it first digs more or less at random; then, as the boring progresses, the action is concentrated upon an area which narrows until it presents no more than just the necessary passage. Nor is the cone-shaped aperture special to the Osmia: I have seen it made by the other ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... usually burrows on a sidehill. This enables him to guard against being drowned out, by making the termination of the hole higher than the entrance. He digs in slantingly for about two or three feet, then makes a sharp upward turn and keeps nearly parallel with the surface of the ground for a distance of eight or ten feet farther, according to the grade. Here he makes his nest and passes the winter, holing up in October or November ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... over fallers. He ant have to vork, yu see; But, yu bet, he ant no loafer, And he yust digs in, by yee! "Listen, Olaf," he skol tal me, "Making living ant no trick. And the hardest yob ban easy Ef yu only ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk

... of Discovery, p. 242) questions this statement, and asks, "Are we to say that a mole can not dig the ground, except he has an idea of the ground, and of the snout and paws with which he digs it?" I do not know what passes in a mole's mind, nor what amount of mental apprehension may or may not accompany his instinctive actions. But a human being does not use a spade by instinct; and he certainly could not use it unless ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... fish, and find fruit and keep ourselves alive. Say, Mas' Don, it's under them trees they digs up the big lumps of gum that they burn. Ah, there's a bit." Jem stooped and picked out from among the rotten pine needles a piece of pale yellowish-looking gum of ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... this country ever done for me. I have had no more voice in makin' the laws than your dog there. Your dog is as well agin off, for it don't have to obey the laws, that it has no part in makin'. If it digs up a good bone it don't have to give it to some dog politician to raise money to buy dog buttons to kill other dogs and mebby its own pups. Not one cent of taxes duz this hell-ridden govermunt git out of me agin—if I can ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... ever, now, to recall the remarks of cheerful, chaffing friends, who indulged in sly digs at the poor Yeomen previous to their departure. At that time, as now, "the end was in sight" only we had not got used to it. It was a common experience to be greeted with, "Ha, going out to South Africa! Why it'll ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... at fire in hope to quench it; For who digs hills because they do aspire Throws down one mountain to cast up a higher. O my distressed lord, even such our griefs are; Here they're but felt, and seen with mischief's eyes, But like to groves, being topp'd, they ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... old Vicar kept on feeding the semi-serious mood with what seemed almost intentional sly digs. Yet the digs were not intentional, really; it was merely that his listener, already prepared by his experience with the Starlight Express, read into them these searching meanings of his own. Something in ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... "If he digs round as fast on land as he does in the water there's goin' to be a circus when we get him out on the bank," said the ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... not there, you'll know I'm with Skinny anyway, and if anybody ever digs up our bones, they won't know who's who. Hurry up now. Beat it. ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... why he should pay more for living at home than he'd pay in digs—though, as a matter of fact I don't know anyone who'd take him for as little as that, even ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... dead man's bed, The sexton, hoary-headed chronicle! Of hard, unmeaning face, down which ne'er stole A gentle tear; with mattock in his hand, Digs thro' whole rows of kindred and acquaintance By far his juniors! Scarce a skull's cast up But well he knew its owner, and can tell Some passage of his life. 1651 BLAIR: The Grave, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... can be like that!" he mused in contempt of his old self. "If I were as rich as Eric of Falla or as strong as Boerje, who digs here beside me, it would be as nothing to having a throbbing heart in your breast. That's the only thing ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof

... pink-cheeked now, tells him of her home "down east," of how keen she was to come to the wild, wonderful west, of how she thinks that "one crowded hour of glorious life" is worth a whole leaden existence. That reminds her of her graduating essay, which she digs out of the trunk, tied with baby-blue ribbon. "One Crowded Hour" was her burning topic, but her hours and days and years have been crowded only with homely toil and poverty ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... me and may God make what thou eatest of my flesh to be a deadly poison in thy maw!" So when the hawk had eaten the partridge, his feathers fell off and his strength failed and he died on the spot. Know, then, O wolf, that he, who digs a pit for his brother, soon falls into it himself, and thou first dealtest perfidiously with me.' 'Spare me this talk and these moral instances,' said the wolf, 'and remind me not of my former ill deeds, for the sorry plight I am in suffices me, seeing that I am ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... de worl' craves to buy anti-kink juice. I's seed some remedies what took off de scalp an' some what removes de brain, but it don't make no diff'unce—niggahs keep on buyin', no matteh how deep de remedy digs in." ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley

... cried her brother, "stop asking Hilda and people who are a mine to Hilda! It's too perceptible, the way she digs in them." ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... sessions, as the loafer lodged, "in spots about"? I make no allusion to the present President when I say there are few stronger cases in this world of "burden to the many and benefit to the few," of "inequality," than the Presidency itself is by some thought to be. An honest laborer digs coal at about seventy cents a day, while the President digs abstractions at about seventy dollars a day. The coal is clearly worth more than the abstractions, and yet what a monstrous inequality in the prices! Does the President, for this reason, propose to abolish ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... cold blood, bears only one name: the red name of murder-a name which instantly and for ever drew between Riel and his followers, and the outside Canadian world, that impassable gulf which the murderer in all ages digs between himself and society, and which society attempts to bridge by the aid of the gallows. It is needless here to enter into details of this matter; of the second rising which preceded it; of the dead blank which followed it; of the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... in dark passion. "You've gone too far, Gulden. Here's where I call you!... You don't get a gram of that gold nugget. Jim's worked like a dog. If he digs up a million I'll see he gets it all. Maybe you loafers haven't a hunch what Jim's done for you. He's helped our big deal more than you or I. His honest work has made it easy for me to look honest. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... or earth road is usually only wide enough for a couple of coolies to pass, and in this province, as it is often necessary (especially in the Yuen-nan-fu district) for one cart to pass another, the farmer, to prevent trespass on his crops, digs around them deep ditches, resembling those which are dug for the reception of gas mains. In the rainy season the fields are drained into the roads, which at times are constantly under water, and beyond Yuen-nan-fu, on my way to Tali-fu, I often found it easier and more speedy to tramp ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... The animal digs up the ground in search of marmots, burrowing squirrels, and various esculent roots; and this habit accounts for the blunted condition of his claws. They are sharp enough, notwithstanding, to peel the hide from a ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... that sort of sand! You plunge rashly into it on low gear; you buzz bravely for possibly fifty feet; you slow down, slow down; your driving wheels begin to spin—that finishes you. Every revolution digs a deeper hole. It is useless to apply power. If you are wise you throw out your clutch the instant she stalls, and thus save digging yourself in unnecessarily. But if you are really wise you don't get in that fix at all. The next stage is that wherein you thrust beneath the hind ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... western vales of fertile Albion; Here dashes roughly on an aged rock, That his intended passage doth up-lock;... Here digs a cave at some high mountain's foot, There undermines an oak, tears up his root:... As (woo'd by May's delights) I have been borne To take the kind air of a wistful morn Near Tavy's voiceful stream (to whom I owe ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... MACAULAY, never nodding, Weary of the stodginess of STUBBS, Weary of the scientific plodding Of the school that only digs and grubs; I salute, with grateful admiration Foreign to the hireling eulogist, CHESTERTON'S red-hot self-revelation In the guise of ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various

... and dug, and when once he was over the wall we kept him at it, and we worked as well, of course, and the hole got deep. Pincher worked too—he is our dog and he is very good at digging. He digs for rats in the dustbin sometimes, and gets very dirty. But we love our dog, even when his ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... which produce the best quality of tortoise-shell. It is strange that the habits of these creatures down here in the Caribbean Sea should so closely resemble those of the tiny tortoises described by Thoreau as frequenting Walden Pond. The female turtle digs the hole in which to deposit her eggs on the sandy beach, just above the margin of high tide, generally choosing a moonlight night for the purpose. The hole is often so large that the turtle will require an hour of industrious labor to ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... some pretty hard digs. He said to him one time in the heat of a discussion on some technical point: "Chase, I am not arguing with ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz



Words linked to "Digs" :   pad, lodgings, quarters, excavation, plural form, domiciliation, diggings



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com