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Dirt   Listen
noun
Dirt  n.  
1.
Any foul of filthy substance, as excrement, mud, dust, etc.; whatever, adhering to anything, renders it foul or unclean; earth; as, a wagonload of dirt. "Whose waters cast up mire and dirt."
2.
Meanness; sordidness. "Honors... thrown away upon dirt and infamy."
3.
In placer mining, earth, gravel, etc., before washing.
Dirt bed (Geom.), a layer of clayey earth forming a stratum in a geological formation. Dirt beds are common among the coal measures.
Dirt eating.
(a)
The use of certain kinds of clay for food, existing among some tribes of Indians; geophagism.
(b)
(Med.) Same as Chthonophagia.
Dirt pie, clay or mud molded by children in imitation of pastry.
To eat dirt, to submit in a meanly humble manner to insults; to eat humble pie.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dirt" Quotes from Famous Books



... down on the ground cross-legged and swabbed his gun-barrel while the bullets pattered on the ground about him and thudded into the trees and ploughed up the dirt at his feet. Nick bent his rifle on the sheriff and sent a bullet through his hat brim and another through his horse's ear, and bit his bridle with one and tore his trouser leg with another. One dropped and ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... catlike dislike of wet or dirt; on the other hand, she was one of those people who are generally willing to put aside their own wishes in favour of what those about them wish to do; and she saw that for some reason or other Lionel Varick wanted this suggestion of his to be ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... showed the effects of their experience. Their hair was hanging down their backs, their uniforms were covered with dust and their faces were grimy from the alkali dirt of ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower

... Bab was always the father, and went hunting or fishing with great energy and success, bringing home all sorts of game, from elephants and crocodiles to humming-birds and minnows. Betty was the mother, and a most notable little housewife, always mixing up imaginary delicacies with sand and dirt in old pans and broken china, which she baked in an oven of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various

... promulgators of beneficial inventions, to warn them that they will have to contend with everything that selfishness and conceited ignorance can devise or say; and if we cannot clear their way before them, we would at least give them notice to prepare a panoply against its dirt ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... ye villains, and earn King George's shillin's, But ye'll waste a ton of powder afore a 'rebel' falls; You may bang the dirt and welcome, they're as safe as Dan'l Malcolm Ten foot beneath the gravestone that ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... wha'f! De Baptist peeple would gather at de wha'f on de fust Sunday in May. Dey would kum fum all de Baptist Chuches. Would leave de chuch singin' en shoutin' en keep dat up 'til dey got ter de river. Hab seen dem wid new clothes on git down on de groun en roll en git covered wid dirt. Sum ob dem would almos' luze dere clothes, en dey'd fall ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... now. "With her huddle of clothes, she looked for all the world like a German Play-actress; her dress, you would have said, had been bought at a second-hand shop; all was out of fashion, all was loaded with silver and greasy dirt. The front of her bodice she had ornamented with jewels in a very singular pattern: A double-eagle in embroidery, and the plumes of it set with poor little diamonds, of the smallest possible carat, and very ill mounted. All along the facing of her gown were Orders and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... hard she had worked herself until the good God had seen fit to take her brother from his packing plant. "If you're the janitor's niece you can come in and clean up the mess the plumber made on my floor. It isn't the place of the girl I pay wages to, to clean up the dirt the ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... cart, is not known, and even the necessity for Mr. E.H. Bayley's roadway moveable tanks for mud sweepings,—so much wanted in London and other towns similarly built,—does not exist. The accumulation of mud and dirt in the streets is washed away every day through side openings into the subways, and is conveyed, with the sewage, to a destination apart from the city. Thus the streets everywhere are dry and clean, free alike of holes and open drains. ...
— Hygeia, a City of Health • Benjamin Ward Richardson

... of her nuns were too careful in this matter she would gravely reprove them, saying that "the purity of the body and its garments means the impurity of the soul."[21] Or, as the modern monk of Mount Athos still declares: "A man should live in dirt as in a coat of mail, so that his soul may sojourn ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... all the miseries of that life. A ray of light falling from heaven as if by special favor on those puny flowers and the vigorous wheat-ear brought out in full relief the dust, the grease, and that nameless color, peculiar to Parisian squalor, made of dirt, which crusted and spotted the damp walls, the worm-eaten balusters, the disjointed window-casings, and the door originally red. Presently the cough of an old woman, and a heavy female step, shuffling painfully in list slippers, announced the coming of the mother of Ida Gruget. The creature ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... the chair she had left by the fire on the Eve of All Souls for the visit of her dead son. It had bothered Adam Craig and made him shudder. It bothered Kenny now. He wished he hadn't remembered it last night or to-day. But the sound of Nellie's hoofs plodding along the soft dirt road was no more recurrent than his own foreboding. It filled him with sadness and guilt. Adam perhaps had dragged himself to the sitting room fire in a drunken fit of superstition. Seeking what? Someone he had wronged? The sinister spark inflamed his fancy. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... coarse manure spread out well over their roots is the best mulch of all, as every rain washes nutrition from it down to the roots below. Chip dirt, pine needles, or grass clippings will do, or anything else that is light, yet will let the rains or waterings leach through. No one who has not actually tried it can know of the help a mulch really is to Asters. I doubt whether first-class ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various

... saddle and blanket over, when you feel like turnin' in," said Cheyenne. "And you might throw some dirt on that fire. I ain't lookin' for visitors down this ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... ask ye to merry me, for that I ken ye dinna care aboot; but gien I micht be luikit upon as a freen', if no to you, yet to yours—alloot onyw'y to help i' yer trible, I mean, I'm ready to lay me i' the dirt afore ye. I hae nae care for mysel' ony mair, an' maun do something for somebody—an' wha sae soon as ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... of this great country are almost boundless. There is said to be coal enough in China to furnish the whole world fuel for a thousand years. While in China I was told of one mountain that has five veins of coal that can be seen without throwing a shovelful of dirt. Some years ago the German government investigated the iron resources of China and published the fact that they are the finest in the world. This no doubt explains one reason why Germany was trying to get ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... all stamped out, ground into your dirt. [Tenderly] Look up, little Vera! You saw how papasha loves you—how he was ready to hold out his hand—and how this cur tried to bite it. Be calm—tell him a daughter of Russia ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... is said is—that he is a deplorable wretch—that everybody expected it—and that it serves him right. Klaus led a horrid life. He was shunned by universal consent. The youngest urchins of the parish threw dirt at him, made faces, called him Lying Klaus, and trotted after him, imitating the gait and gestures of an ill-conditioned dwarf. If Klaus entered the tavern—so lately his own property—the boors shrunk from him as though ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... east-south-east of Petra; and he confirmed the accounts of Mabrk, the guide, who was never tired of expatiating upon its merits. The fountains flow in winter, in summer the wells are never dry; the people, especially the Huwaytt, are kind and hospitable; sheep are cheap as dirt. At Jebel Saur a Maghrabi magician raised a Kidr Dahab ("golden pot"); but, his incense failing at the critical moment, it sank ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... work, the Southern planter does; and there begins and ends the difference. Industry, man's crown of honour elsewhere, is here his badge of utter degradation; and so comes all by which I am here surrounded—pride, profligacy, idleness, cruelty, cowardice, ignorance, squalor, dirt, and ineffable abasement. ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... wasn't at the feast—remember? And he didn't eat anything from outside, he swore that to Tau. In fact he didn't go dirt ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... gentleman had, by the mystery of environment, been changed into the outward semblance of a river roustabout. Nor was this all. The new character was emphasized by the clothes I wore—far too large to fit, also the texture and color, not to mention the dirt and grease, speaking loudly of a rough life, and the vicissitudes of poverty. The metamorphosis was complete; so complete that I laughed aloud, assured by that one glance that the gambler, confident that I was dead, would never by any possibility ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... over these things one evening when a horseman came at walking pace into the courtyard of the chateau. The animal appeared tired out, and the man himself was covered with dust and dirt. ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... was only by being kept warm and quiet that it would remain in health for many months together. Now it had been empty for some weeks and the cats had got in by night, while the boys had broken the windows by day. The parlour floor was covered with stones and dirt, and in the area was a dead dog which had been killed in the street and been thrown down into the first unprotected place that could be found. There was a strong smell throughout the house, but whether it was bugs, or rats, or cats, or drains, or a compound of all four, I could not determine. ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... pitifully meager world-experience cannot be—our finite minds cannot grasp that which may not exist in accordance with the conditions which obtain about us upon the outside of the insignificant grain of dust which wends its tiny way among the bowlders of the universe—the speck of moist dirt we so proudly call ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... carts near the water-side, for she came up the river in the vessel, not having reason to hasten on shore, she saw vulgarity, dirt, and vice—her soul sickened; this was the first time such complicated misery obtruded itself on her sight.—Forgetting her own griefs, she gave the world a much indebted tear; mourned for a world in ruins. She then perceived, that great part of her comfort must ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft

... requiring that miners, whose compensation was fixed on the basis of weight, be paid according to coal in the mine car rather than at a certain price per ton for coal screened after it has been brought to the surface, and conditioning such payment on the presence of no greater percentage of dirt or impurities than that ascertained as unavoidable by the ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... once I was thoroughly done up, as you would say. I was reciting, at a particular house, the "Remorse;" and was in the midst of Alhadra's description of the death of her husband, [1] when a scrubby boy, with a shining face set in dirt, burst open the door and cried out,—"Please, ma'am, master says, Will you ha'; or will you ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... immersion in salt-water, they could not endure our climate. Almost every year, one or two land-birds are blown across the whole Atlantic Ocean, from North America to the western shores of Ireland and England; but seeds could be transported by these wanderers only by one means, namely, in dirt sticking to their feet, which is in itself a rare accident. Even in this case, how small would the chance be of a seed falling on favourable soil, and coming to maturity! But it would be a great error to argue that because a well-stocked island, like Great Britain, has ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... out of his coat collar he felt along the cut, and then squeezed it hard. I see it now, he remarked, and fetching from his pouch a pair of pincers he pulled from the cut a sliver of glass. Wrapping the cloth round it he tied it with a bit of black tape, and told me if I kept dirt out it would heal in a day or two. Asking me where I was going, we had some talk. He told me the parish of Dundonald was a long way off and he did not know anybody in it by the name of Askew. I was on the right road and could find out when I got there. He lit his pipe and left me. I walked ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar

... one over in his mind, cautiously. A good deal of his attention was needed for the task of nursing his old car along the ruts of the dirt road, but the murmured exclamation impelled him to steal a glance at the boy sitting beside him. This was the spring of Timmy's tenth year—the sixth year of his friendship with "Uncle" Phil—and those ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan

... blame, And like them merit censure and much shame. How wisely Israel's poet songster said, That cleanliness to godliness is wed, For filthiness of body must conduct, Impurities which mental life obstruct. How well are engineers on the alert, To keep their engines free from dust and dirt, Knowing that without such great care from them, They could not do the work required by men; So neither can we hope our bodies will Their heaven directed work aright fulfil, If their machinery is not kept free, From foul obstruction and impurity. Science ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... eh Joe!" said Mr. Wood, as he came out of the stall and passed me to get a bottle from a shelf. "When this stable was built, I said no dirt holes for careless men here. I want the sun to shine in the corners, and I don't want my horses to smell bad smells, for they hate them, and I don't want them starting when they go into the light of day, just because they've been kept in a black hole of a ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... been all over it myself—up through the gray-peaked rhododendron-bordered Gap with the swirling water below them and the gray rock high above where another such foolish lover lost his life, climbing to get a flower for his sweetheart, or down the winding dirt road into Lee, or up through the beech woods behind Imboden Hill, or climbing the spur of Morris's Farm to watch the sunset over the majestic Big Black Mountains, where the Wild Dog lived, and back through the fragrant, cool, moonlit woods. He was doing ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.

... "Dirt cheap!" cried poor Mrs. Wragge, falling headlong into the snare, and darting at the parcel as eagerly as if nothing ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... might screw up their moral courage to utter some such pointed rebuke as Dr. Jowett's to a lot of young men in a smoking-room, "I don't want to make myself out better than you are, but is there not more dirt than wit in that story?" or that other still more public rebuke which he administered at his own dinner-table when, the gentlemen having been left to their wine, a well-known diplomat began telling some very unsavory ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... you will do no such thing," said Mrs. Brown. "Of course we shall stay in the studio for six months, as we have rented it for that time. As for the dirt we are sure to find: you see Mrs. Bent is not an artist and she has the cleanest rooms ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... smeared up with mud and partly worn by the feet of travellers in the trampling of the road, the long line that had been drawn became blurred. Hence it is plain that crevices, even in the solid rock, if long drenched with wet, become choked either by the solid washings of dirt or the moistening ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... Neal's got a yellow streak, too, for that matter, but he's young an' ain't got no sense. I reckon I'm goin' somewhere now, an' so I can say what I like. Taggart ain't no friend of mine—neither of them. They've played me dirt—more than once. My name's Al Sharp. You know that Tom Taggart was as deep in that idol business as your dad was. He told me. But he's got Telza soft-soaped into thinkin' that Betty Clayton's folks snaked it from Telza's people. Taggart's ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... themselves have furnished a pretty strong clue to the extent of the debauch of the previous night, even if there had not been other indications of the amusements in which it had been passed. A couple of billiard balls, all mud and dirt, two battered hats, a champagne bottle with a soiled glove twisted round the neck, to allow of its being grasped more surely in its capacity of an offensive weapon; a broken cane; a card-case without the top; an empty purse; a watch-guard snapped asunder; a handful of silver, mingled with ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... is not commonly practiced, but this is the easiest means of preventing dampness in the house and is necessary in heavy soils. The ground-level may be raised with a plow and scraper, or the foundation of the house may be built and filled with dirt. ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... rickety sign-board no learning could spell The merchant who sold, or the goods he'd to sell; But for house and for man a new title took growth, Like a fungus,—the Dirt gave its name ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... and eyes are deep down in the fur, so that, in crawling through a hole, no dirt or dust ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot

... her thin, long little legs dangling, her cheeks scarlet with excitement and the warmth of a hot September morning. The cottage was a mile from the old home. They drove along the maple shaded street for the first half of the distance, then turned into a dirt road that led toward the lake shore. The dirt road emerged on the shore a half mile above the Willows and wound along a high embankment, ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... large to warrant working. At the place, however, which they subsequently named Chihuahua (pronounced in the vernacular Chee-waw-waw) the perspicacious Jones had given it as his opinion, formed after mature deliberation and a sapient examination of some two or three shovelsful of dirt, that there was a satisfactory "color in that ar bank." Some hard work of about a week demonstrated that there were excellent diggings there, and then work was commenced upon it in good earnest. The cabin was built, Gentleman Dick's choice of location being unanimously approved; two ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... expostulation forming. But his eyes were bright, his look triumphant. He had already dismounted and was poking about here and there, examining everything at hand from a sand-storm stratum at the cliff's foot to loose dirt in the drifts and the hardy, wiry grass growing where it could. Helen turned away with ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... loved or hated Dorothy; he was only conscious of a fire-fed passion that consumed him. He must possess her; or, if not that, then he must grind her into the earth. He would torture her as he was tortured; he would blacken her by blackening Mr. Harley; with her pride in the dirt, with disgrace upon her, where then was that man who would wed her? The daughter of a forger—she would stain the name of wife! Richard might have her then; Storri would give her to him for a revenge! These were the mutterings of Storri as he went preyed upon by ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... more buoyantly enjoy its element, than I this clean and peaceful house, with this lovely view of the town, groves, and lake of Ratzeburg, from the window at which I am writing. My spirits certainly, and my health I fancied, were beginning to sink under the noise, dirt, and unwholesome air of our Hamburg hotel. I left it on Sunday, Sept. 23rd. with a letter of introduction from the poet Klopstock, to the Amtmann of Ratzeburg. The Amtmann received me with kindness, and introduced me ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... stepping clear of that main-sheet?" the captain might begin, with truculent courtesy. "Thank you. And perhaps you'll be so kind as to tell me what the hell you're doing on my quarter-deck? I want no dirt of your sort here. Is there nothing for you to do? Where's the mate? Don't you set me to find work for you, or I'll find you some that will keep you on your back a fortnight." Such allocutions, conceived with a perfect knowledge ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... nasty corners in them to hold the dirt. Mr. Anderson—he's below-has crinkly noctagons, and one wouldn't believe the difference. It was I bought these for Mr. Elliot. His one thought is to save one trouble. I never seed such a thoughtful gentleman. The world, I say, will be the better for him." ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... in American cities; a national epidemic of street paving and cleaning; the quadrupling of electric lighting service and the national appropriation of display lighting; a successful crusade against dirt of all kinds—smoke, flies, germs,—and the diffusion of constructive provisions for health like baths, laundries, comfort stations, milk stations, school nurses and open air schools; fire prevention; the humanizing of the police and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... Sestri. The second evening when near Sarzana, it being very dark, I somehow or other got out of the road and my mule fell with me into a very deep ditch; but I was only slightly bruised by the fall; my clothes however were covered with dirt and wet. The road from Genoa to Sarzana might with very little expense be made fit for carriages by widening it. At present it is only a bridle road, and on some parts of it, on the sides of ravines, it is I think a little ticklish to trust entirely to the discretion of one's monture; ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... dirt and blood, I'd say he's Tolto, Princess Sira's special pet. No other man of Mars could be that big! Seven or eight years ago—she was just a kid, you know—she picked him up in some rural province. Kids just naturally do run to pets, don't ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl

... of having filth inside a house besides having dirt in heaps. Old papered walls of years' standing, dirty carpets, uncleansed furniture, are just as ready sources of impurity to the air as if there were a dung-heap in the basement. People are so unaccustomed from education and habits to consider how to ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale

... cut off even, so as to form a brush of considerable extent. To this is fitted a long staff, together with two ropes, the former of which is used to thrust the hog under the ship's bottom, and the latter to guide and pull it up again close to the planks, so as to rub off all the dirt. This work is usually performed in ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... pay of any dirty little wiper in the yard. Cut me along with—listen to this—cut me along with men that they had BLACK-LISTED; strikers that they took back because they were short of hands." He drew fiercely on his pipe. "I went to them, yes, I did; I went to the General Office, and ate dirt. I told them I was a family man, and that I didn't see how I was going to get along on the new scale, and I reminded them of my service during the strike. The swine told me that it wouldn't be fair to discriminate ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... you know the 'Pantagruel?' 'Pantagruel' is like a beautiful and noble city, full of palaces, in the resplendent dawn, before the street-sweepers of Paris have come. The sweepers have not taken out the dirt, and the maids have not washed the marble steps. And I have seen that French women do not read the 'Pantagruel.' You do not know it? Well, it is not necessary. In the 'Pantagruel,' Panurge asks whether he must marry, and he covers himself ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... was just the place in which they would have expected a "bonanza." Then they all added that without water to wash the sand and gravel with, there would be little use in doing anything more than to hunt for "pockets." There might be "pay dirt" in all directions, but a man might scratch and sift until he starved and not get more than enough to buy him a new hat. They had been through all that sort of experience, and their heads were not to be turned by it. Still, it was decided to try that level again some day, and the whole canon, ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... man. Gien ye dee fechtin' like a man, ye'll flee up wi' a quaiet face an' wide open een; an' there's a great Ane 'at 'll say to ye, 'Weel dune, laddie!' But gien ye gie in to the enemy, he'll turn ye intill a creepin' thing 'at eats dirt; an' there 'll no be a hole in a' the crystal wa' o' the New Jerusalem near eneuch to the grun' to ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... buttons and flat, cauliflower-like warts from which millions of the germs can be squeezed. Sometimes they are mistaken for hemorrhoids or "piles." With all the opportunities that these sores offer for infection, it is surprising that the disease is not universal. Irritation from friction, dirt, and discharges, and in the mouth the use of tobacco, are the principal influences acting to encourage ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... the front and side of the edifice, which impressed him with a sense of its vulgarity. The door creaked as Covington opened it and passed on into the dingy offices—even dingier than the nature of the business done in them required, because of the dirt-trodden floors and their unwashed windows. He pushed his way through the bunch of process-servers, messengers, and clerks who littered up the outer office, almost tripping over a torn law-book on the floor, and finally found his way to the waiting-room of Mr. Levy's private ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... "Peace! dirt and dunghill! I will not lose mine anger on a rascal; Provoke me more,—I will beat thy blown body Till thou ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... gained his own room. He was scarcely a moment taking off his muddy boots and hiding them in the bottom of his play-box; then he put on his slippers, dabbed over the front of his head with a wet hair brush, smeared a little water over his face and hands, wiped the dirt off on the towel, and crept downstairs again in a few moments, as softly as he ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... Captain Hunter's last night— Mother can now rest her soul in peace as I have done with scoutings and have replaced the free and easy belt and revolver for the black silk suspenders and the fire badge of civilization. I am still covered with 11 days dirt but will get lots of good things to eat and drink and smoke at Corpus Christi to night, where I will stay for two days. I am writing this on the car and a ranger is shooting splinters out of the telegraph poles from the window in front and has a New York drummer in a state of absolute nervous ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... she explained. "The Chinese are the dirtiest race on earth, anyway," she added, dipping a clump of cotton into an antiseptic wash and rinsing the patient's eyes. "Where there is too much dirt, there is blindness. One-fourth of the population in this section of China are blind. They go to 'fortune tellers,' and they remain blind. In nine cases out of ten the simplest of operations followed by care will cure this type ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... of intruding than you would have if you forced your way upstairs. It's a wretched world, where we can't express an honest affection honestly without half appearing indelicate to ourselves; nothing proves more how the dirt of the world is up to our chins, and I think I had my headache yesterday really and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... that there is an idea of the good, but not of such things as hair and mud and dirt, Parmenides advises him "not to despise even the meanest things," and this advice shows the genuine scientific temper. It is with this impartial temper that the mystic's apparent insight into a higher reality and a hidden good has to be combined if philosophy is to realise its ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... call a spade a spade, but regard it as a spade and not as a speculation. By some true conversion the urban and modern man must be not only on the soil, but of the soil, and free from our urban trick of inventing the word dirt for the dust to which we shall return. He must be washed in mud, that he ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... the barren terrain. The geiger kept up a fairly steady click-pattern, but never broke into that sudden explosive tumult that meant we had found pay-dirt. I started to feel tired myself, terribly tired. I longed to lie down on the soft, spongy Martian sand and ...
— The Hunted Heroes • Robert Silverberg

... the raisins, sultanas and currants in hot water. Don't imagine that this will deprive them of their goodness. The latter is all inside the skin. What comes off from the outside is dirt, and a mixture of syrup and water through which they have been passed to improve their appearance. Rub the currants in a cloth to get off the stalks, pick the stalks from the sultanas, and stone the raisins. Put the currants and sultanas in a basin, just barely cover ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel

... hour of the day. And the room seemed so large, the tables were so numerous, that Terry wondered how so small a town could support it. Then he remembered the mine and everything was explained. People who dug gold like dirt spent it in the same spirit. Half a dozen men were here and there, playing in what seemed a listless manner, save when ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... different from the life we are used to? The women sitting on the balconies above, the pariah dogs prowling for scraps below, the druggists and spice-sellers, the fruit and vegetable stalls? Over it all is that peculiar, scented, musty bazaar smell, made up of saffron and wood and dirt, with which we are ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... of the Dutch were effective in putting limits to the disorder and dirt which are so often the nuisance of seaports. This was still more obvious in the interiors of the dwelling-houses where the Dutch housewives exerted the supremacy of their cleaning and washing propensity, " cette propriete hollandaise qui commence par ...
— Rembrandt's Amsterdam • Frits Lugt

... was a regular cellar with sheets of steel over it, and earth over that. It was dark, and the dirt walls and floor gave out a damp and mouldy smell. The men had made crude provisions for comfort. Narrow benches were about the walls, a door from some wrecked building had been brought with much labor, and converted into a table, around which ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... Mark, I guess, though I ain't so sure of his intentions as you be. She's nobody's fool, Patty ain't, I allow that, though she did treat Cephas like the dirt in the road. I'm thankful he's come to his senses an' found out the ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and marvelled at Brazil. They were six days up the Amazon, some hundreds of miles from the ocean, and east and west of him there was a horizon like the sea, and to the south nothing but a sand-bank island with some tufts of scrub. The water was always running like a sluice, thick with dirt, animated with crocodiles and hovering birds, and fed by some inexhaustible source of tree trunks; and the waste of it, the headlong waste of it, filled his soul. The town of Alemquer, with its meagre church, its thatched sheds for houses, its discoloured ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... and the stripes and stars on t'other. It will wipe dust from the eyes so completely as to be death to demagogues, and make politics as bad a business as printing papers. Its great length, breadth and thickness, together with its dark colour, will enable it to hide dirt, and never need washing. Going at one dollar? seventy-five cents? fifty cents? twenty-five cents? one bit? Nobody wants it! Oh, thank you, sir! Next, gentlemen—for the ladies won't be permitted to bid on this article—is a real, simon ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... a wretched, neglected hovel of a place, in the very last stages of dirt, neglect, and decay, situated on the outskirts of the village, and to this delectable abode the old crone conducted her two "sons" and inducted them therein. But before she took them inside the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... belittled, or declared to be not worth investigation, was to have been expected. But the progress has been immense, and the light shines on many obscure and difficult problems, where before was the utter darkness of superstition and fear, dirt, degradation, and death. ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... The dirt is rendered with an unsparing realism which, in a few instances, is carried beyond the limits of good taste. Such is the case with El Piojoso of the Louvre, which represents a little beggar removing vermin from his body, and which Mr. Ruskin has severely denounced. Another picture in Munich, ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll

... And behold, the city had been rebuilt, and Moroni had stationed an army by the borders of the city, and they had cast up dirt around about to shield them from the arrows and the stones of the Lamanites; for behold, they fought with stones and ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... yesterday, Tim," said a red-nosed man who had just entered the saloon, in company with a friend of the same general appearance. Both wore silk hats, dented and soiled with stains of dirt, coats long since superannuated, and wore the ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger

... righteousness: for sin, where it is, pollutes, defiles, and makes vile the whole man; therefore thou canst not by after acts of obedience make thyself just in the sight of that God thou pretendest now to stand praying unto. Indeed thou mayst cover thy dirt, and paint thy sepulchre; for that acts of after obedience will do, though sin has gone before. But, Pharisee, God can see through the white of this wall, even to the dirt that is within: God can also see through the paint and garnish of thy beauteous sepulchre, ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan

... the landlord, with a wink. "I know what's wrong. Thou 'st got a skin o' dirt outside and all dry dust inside. Thou must moisten it, lad, with a good drink, and then thou 'lt have a real ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... for a Sunday morning in a boys' school. But boys will be boys, even in France; and the famous "esprit Gaulois" was somewhat precocious in the forties, I suppose. Perhaps it is now, if it still exists (which I doubt—the dirt remains, but all the fun ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... of besieging the place, if the advice of Lauzun and of Lauzun's countrymen had been followed. They laughed at the thought of defending such fortifications, and indeed would not admit that the name of fortifications could properly be given to heaps of dirt, which certainly bore little resemblance to the works of Valenciennes and Philipsburg. "It is unnecessary," said Lauzun, with an oath, "for the English to bring cannon against such a place as this. What you call your ramparts might be battered down with roasted apples." He therefore ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... for the stove. The canals are crowded in some places with these boats. A number of vessels, chiefly Dutch, were unloading at the quays close to the Winter Palace; but not a particle of mercantile dirt or litter was to be seen. Carts came and quickly transported the cargo to less polished regions. It took us just two minutes and a half to walk rapidly from one end of the Winter Palace to the other. ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... "Dirt is matter out of place," quoted Uncle Harry, in one of his erratic epistles which Jack and Jill always read with interest if not profit. "When you find anything that seems unclean or offensive in any part of your house, remember this: the fault is not in the thing itself, but in ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... are not meant for men like you and me," he said. "Lord, how I would appreciate one, though—anything with a bit of grass in the yard and a shovelful of dirt—enough to grow some damn flower, you know.... Did you smell the posies in the square to-night?... Something of that kind,... anything, Scarlett—anything that can be called a home!... ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... others trotted on together. The other grooms with their animals were on in advance, and were by this time employed in combing out forelocks, and rubbing stirrup leathers and horses' legs free from the dirt of the roads;—but Bat Smithers was like his master, and did not congregate much with other men, and Vavasor was sure to give orders to his servant different from the ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... was at that time in Soho-square. I immediately walked to the house, and knocked at the door; but the porter not liking my figure, which was half French half Spanish, with the addition of a large pair of boots covered with dirt, he was going to shut the door in my face, but I prevailed with him to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... him while he lay asleep by her side and sucked blood from the wounds—a modern "Succubus." Pare mentions the perverted appetites of pregnant women, and says that they have been known to eat plaster, ashes, dirt, charcoal, flour, salt, spices, to drink pure vinegar, and to indulge in all forms of debauchery. Plot gives the case of a woman who would gnaw and eat all the linen off her bed. Hufeland's Journal records the history of a case of a woman of ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... Scopas and Myrton, Coins, vases, mosaics, the antique, Old tiles with the secular dirt on, Old marbles with noses to seek. And her Cobet she quotes by the week, And she's written on [Greek text: kev] and on [Greek text: kai], And her service is swift and oblique, But her ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang

... ran down the bank to where the fire yet glowed dully in the hollow, emitting a faint spiral of blue smoke, dug dirt up with my hands, and covered the coals, until they were completely extinguished. Then I crept back to the bluff summit, ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... that Mr. Darwin, and his school,[25] had no conception of the real meaning of the word 'proper,' I meant that they conceived the qualities of things only as their 'properties,' but not as their becomingnesses;' and seeing that dirt is proper to a swine, malice to a monkey, poison to a nettle, and folly to a fool, they called a nettle but a nettle, and the faults of fools but folly; and never saw the difference between ugliness and beauty absolute, decency and indecency absolute, glory or shame ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... from Africa, such as the yaws which was similar to syphilis; from debilities and maladies acquired on the voyage; from the change of climate and food; from exposure incurred in running away; from morbid habits such as dirt-eating; and ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... baby mole got to feeling big, And wanted to show how he could dig; So he plowed along in the soft, warm dirt Till he hit something hard, and it surely hurt! A dozen stars flew out of his snout; He sat on his haunches, began to pout; Then rammed the thing again with his head— His grandpap picked him up half dead. "Young man," he said, "though your pate is bone. ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... might appear to him, that they possessed such curious powers of selection, combination, arrangement, and almost of creation, that upon being put into the ground, they would choose, amongst all the dirt and moisture that surrounded them, those parts which best suited their purpose, that they would collect and arrange these parts with wonderful taste, judgement, and execution, and would rise up into beautiful forms, scarcely in any respect analogous to the little bits of matter which ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus

... on in the manner of a scene-painter; and as during the whole morning the sun shines upon the one picture, and during the afternoon upon the other, hues, which were originally thin and imperfect, are now dried in many places into mere dirt upon the canvas. With all these drawbacks the pictures are of very high interest, for although, as I said, hastily and carelessly, they are not languidly painted; on the contrary, he has been in his hottest and grandest temper; and in this first one ("Magdalen") the laurel tree, with ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... men of that nation which boasted most of liberty. To what pitiful baseness did the noblest Romans submit themselves for the obtaining of a praetorship, or the consular dignity? They put on the habit of suppliants, and ran about, on foot and in dirt, through all the tribes to beg voices; they flattered the poorest artisans, and carried a nomenclator with them, to whisper in their ear every man's name, lest they should mistake it in their salutations; they ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... topics. Every person should undergo a thorough ablution once a day. Quotation from Mrs. Farrar. Two important objects gained by cold bathing. Its value as an exercise. Various forms of bathing. Philosophy of this subject. Vast amount of dirt accumulating on the surface. Statement of Mr. Buckingham Bathing necessary in all employments. Offices of the skin, and evil consequences of keeping it in ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... ourselves into a skirmish line. The shells come. The dirt flies: holes to bury an ox? One can see them coming: zzz—boom! There is time to get ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... But at the first payment, instead of paying a goose, he paid a gosling; for an old swine he paid a sucking pig; and for a mark of stamped gold only a half-mark, and for the other half-mark nothing but clay and dirt; and, moreover, threatened, in the most violent way, the people whom he forced to receive such goods in payment. Now, sire, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... in any quality then he that hath it at his fingers ends; & if he have more pollicy in his braines then dirt under his nayles Ile nere give 2 groates for a Calves head. But without all question he hath done some excellent piece of villany among the Diegoes, or else they take him for a fatter sheep to kill ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... an entrance; but at length, upon being told that I could get chicken and eggs there whenever I wanted them, I determined upon venturing. The door being opened to my knock, I very nearly abandoned my almost blunted purpose; I never beheld such a den of filth and misery: a woman, the very image of dirt and disease, held a squalid imp of a baby on her hip bone while she kneaded her dough with her right fist only A great lanky girl, of twelve years old, was sitting on a barrel, gnawing a corn cob; ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... to see how they could prevent the articles from coming in contact with the soil, and found that a chain of bricked cellars had been built a short time before, and the bushes and weeds carefully replaced on the dirt that covered the roofs. A door, opening into the first of the chain of cellars, was made in a steep bank of earth. It was merely a large hole in the ground covered with a flat stone that turned upon a pivot. About this spot the soil and grass ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... fearful alacrity, whereupon Sakr-el-Bahr released his hold and allowed the unfortunate fellow to rise at last, half-choked with dirt, livid of face, and quaking like a jelly, an object of ridicule and cruel mockery ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... SAUCINESS, presumption, insolence SAUCY, bold, impudent, wanton SAUNA (Lat.), a gesture of contempt SAVOUR, perceive; gratify, please; to partake of the nature SAY, sample SAY, assay, try SCALD, word of contempt, implying dirt and disease SCALLION, shalot, small onion SCANDERBAG, "name which the Turks (in allusion to Alexander the Great) gave to the brave Castriot, chief of Albania, with whom they had continual wars. His romantic life had just been translated" (Gifford) ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... pile, the besieged were able to perceive the dark figures cautiously advancing through the protecting brush; they spread out widely until their two flanks were close in against the wall of rock, and then the deadly rifles began to spit spitefully, the balls casting up the soft dirt in clouds or flattening against the stones. The two men crouched lower, hugging their pile of slag, unable to perceive even a stray assailant within range of their ready revolvers. Hampton remained cool, alert, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... include the substances contained in the fabric originally, but also such as are deposited in the preliminary treatment of the fabrics, as dirt from the hands of the operator, and gluten soluble in warm water; as also glue or gelatine, potash or soda, starch, albumen, and sugar, used by weavers, etc., and which are all soluble in water; further, such as greasy matters, calcareous soap, coppery soap, resinous ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... miles, that wind howled and raved and tore. It almost took the ponies off their feet. I have not exaggerated it one bit. It would be impossible to exaggerate. When we reached the house where we had taken dinner going up, we found the dirt blown from the roof, likewise the tar-paper, leaving great cracks through which the dirt rattled. Everything was an inch deep in dirt, but we were welcomed to the shelter of the four walls, and what was left of the roof. The dirt did not matter. We were already done in charcoal. ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 7, July, 1889 • Various

... a painless evil;" so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... had not occurred, for at ten minutes after one he came back, eutering by the window from a fire-escape, and much streaked with dirt. ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... offers good commentary. Roads, mansions, villages: Prossik, Kyge, Podschernitz, from the Heights of Chaber round to Nussel and beyond: from any knoll, all Friedrich's Villages, and many more, lie round you as on a map,—their dirt all hidden, nothing wanting to the landscape, were it better carpeted with green (green instead of russet), and shaded here and there with wood. A small wild pink, bright-red, and of the size of a star, grows extensively about; of which ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle



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