Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Ermine   Listen
verb
Ermine  v. t.  To clothe with, or as with, ermine. "The snows that have ermined it in the winter."






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





"Ermine" Quotes from Famous Books



... blind," said Graham. "Why should a judge be ashamed to follow the example of his own goddess?" And so at last the owner of the ermine submitted, and the stern magistrate of the bench was led round with the due incantation of the spirits, and dismissed into chaos to seek ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... women cried out, and called upon God and Holy Mary to have mercy upon them; but the more they cried, the more cruelly did those Infantes beat and kick them, till they were covered with blood, and swooned away. Then the Infantes took their mantles and their cloaks, and their furs of ermine and other garments, and left them for dead, saying, Lie there, daughters of the Cid of Bivar, for it is not fitting that ye should be our wives, nor that ye should have your dower in the lands of Carrion! We shall see how your father ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... blended Muskrat Natural River Mink Natural Muskrat[6] River Mink Natural Jersey Muskrat River Sable Plucked and Seal-dyed Muskrat Hudson Seal Plucked and Seal-dyed Muskrat Aleutian Seal Skunk Black Marten Striped Skunk Civet Cat N.Y. Weasel in winter pelage Ermine ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... numerous in these hedges, and it was quite possible for a white one to be among them. The white stoat may be said to exactly resemble the ermine. The interest of the circumstance arises not from its rarity, but from its occurring ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... Virginia entrusted her safety and her honor to his sword; and when the returning light of peace shone upon her hills and valleys and over the green savannahs of the East, and he had withdrawn from the arena of his splendid fame, she invested him with her ermine, which he wore with becoming grace to his dying hour; and she stood in tears at ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... saw a few days after this when by invitation we witnessed the procession at the opening of the high courts. Considered from the stand-points of picturesqueness and impressiveness it made one's pulses tingle when those thirty or forty men of the wig and ermine marched in single and double file down the loftily vaulted hall, with the Lord Chancellor in wig and robes of state leading, and Sir Rufus Isaacs, knee-breeched and sword-belted, a pace or two behind him; and then, in turn, the justices; ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... starting as if from a dream, threw off the rough coat and hat and stepped forth into the beam of sunlight, resplendent in gold and ermine. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... groan, when the south wind blows, louder than the lowing buffaloes, along the shores of the great salt lake, where the big canoes come and go with them in droves. Some He made with faces paler than the ermine of the forests; and these He ordered to be traders; dogs to their women, and wolves to their slaves. He gave this people the nature of the pigeon; wings that never tire; young, more plentiful than the leaves on the trees, and appetites ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... 'remember my parting words. I leave you all alone, without father or mother, brother or sister—without any one to love or love you. Last night I had a dream, and you know God's will was made known in dreams, to holy men of old. There came, in my dream, an aged man, with a beard as white as ermine, that hung down like a mantle over his breast, with a wand in his right hand, and ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... military suit, was a decided addition to the courtly-looking assemblage. These five ladies filled the front row of chairs on one side, as did the gentlemen accompanying them on the other side. Eight other ladies, all in full dress,—one wearing an ermine cape,—followed, each with a gentleman; and these were seated ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... three parts: the top part (called ikkurina) is red with a green diagonal cross extending to the corners overlaid by a white cross dividing the rectangle into four sections; the middle part has a white background with an ermine pattern; the third part has a red background with two stylized yellow lions outlined in black, one above the other; these three heraldic arms represent settlement by colonists from the Basque Country (top), Brittany, and ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... ermine is not quite as grand as he sounds; As a rule he is shot if he comes in the grounds; You have seen him about by the mulberry-tree, Though I very much doubt if you knew ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various

... Jane Seymour died in child-bed. In one chamber were several excessively rich tapestries, which are hung up when the Queen gives audience to foreign ambassadors; there were numbers of cushions ornamented with gold and silver; many counterpanes and coverlids of beds lined with ermine: in short, all the walls of the palace shine with gold and silver. Here is besides a certain cabinet called Paradise, where besides that everything glitters so with silver, gold, and jewels, as to dazzle one's eyes, there is a musical instrument made all of glass, ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... where North America and Eurasia stretch out arms to one another around the polar sea do Eastern and Western Hemisphere show a community of mammalian forms. These are all strictly Arctic animals, such as the reindeer, elk, Arctic fox, glutton and ermine.[750] This is the Boreal sub-region of the Holoarctic zoological realm, characterized by a very homogeneous and very limited fauna.[751] In contrast, the portion of the hemispheres lying south of the Tropic of Cancer is divided into four distinct zoological ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... began to arrive thicker and thicker. A whole covey of Conseillers-d'Etat came in, in blue coats, embroidered with blue silk, then came a crowd of lawyers in toques and caps, among whom were sundry venerable Judges in scarlet, purple velvet, and ermine—a kind of Bajazet costume. Look there! there is the Turkish Ambassador in his red cap, turning his solemn brown face about and looking preternaturally wise. The Deputies walk in in a body. Guizot is not there: he passed by just now in full ministerial costume. Presently little Thiers saunters ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")

... once declared that this necklace could purchase a kingdom. A white robe worked with silver and a dark-red velvet shawl trimmed with ermine fell in graceful folds around the noble and graceful figure of the queen, whose bowed head, and quiet, modest bearing contrasted strangely with the luxury and splendor ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... hooked the highest hook and eye, Elisabeth thought how nice it was to be petted and taken care of; and as she walked homeward by Christopher's side, she felt like a good little girl again. Even reigning monarchs now and then like to have their ermine tucked round them, and to be patted on their ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... crown of yron on his hede a spere i{n} his ho{n}d aboeut It semed by his che{re} as he wold haue fought. instead of And next vnto hym as I perceyue mought. about Sat {the} goddesse Dyana in a mantell fyne. Of black sylke purfyled {with} poudred ermine ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous

... knows better than thou. Tressilian's conscience is of other mould—the world thou speakest of has not that which could bribe him from the way of truth and honour; and for living in it with a soiled fame, the ermine would as soon seek to lodge in the den of the foul polecat. For this my father loved him; for this I would have loved him—if I could. And yet in this case he had what seemed to him, unknowing alike of my marriage and to whom I was united, such powerful ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... skins, one before, one behind, sewed together at their edges. They were embroidered with porcupine quills brightly dyed, and fringed with the black scalp-locks of the enemies whom he had slain in combat, and tasseled with ermine tails. They were pictured with his deeds, painted ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... journalist who knew everybody and everything in the world was brought in to luncheon by Lord Dauntrey one day, and recognized the favourite of the household as a famous Parisian furrier. He had supplied enough sable coat linings for kings and ermine cloaks for queens to give him food for a lifetime of authentic anecdotes. His acquaintance with royalties was genuine of its kind, but it was not of a kind that appealed to the paying guests at Lady Dauntrey's. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... habit of her order, a cross of gold in her hand; mounted on a white horse she rode at the head of the procession that marched to meet him. Young girls of noble birth, clad in long white gowns trimmed with ermine, and mounted on palfreys, followed their abbess, and behind them the town authorities, feudal lords and ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various

... fastening. All the magnificence of knightly apparel was concentrated in the surcoat, a splendid embroidered or gem-decked tunic to the knees, which was worn over the coat of mail. These surcoats were often trimmed with costly furs, ermine or vair, the latter being similar to what we now call squirrel, being part gray and part white. Cinderella's famous slipper was made of "vair," which, through a misapprehension in being translated "verre," has become known as a ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... conscientious service, offered young Lynde the opportunity he had desired. These three weeks, as already hinted, fell in the month of June, when Nature in New Hampshire is in her most ravishing toilet; she has put away her winter ermine, which sometimes serves her quite into spring; she has thrown a green mantle over her brown shoulders, and is not above the coquetry of wearing a great variety of wild flowers on her bosom. With her sassafras and her sweet- brier she is in ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... the fate of the unfortunate monarch Henry IV. History relates that Henry was entirely unfit to wear the ermine, but weak as he was, and ignominious as was his reign, it was a bitter blow that his own son was foremost among his enemies. At first the younger Henry conspired against his father in secret; outwardly he was a model of filial affection, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... of course," drawled Isa. "In England without a doubt, occupyin' that thar comfortable seat of his in the House of Lords, wearin' a gold coronet an' a gold watch an' chain, an' a robe trimmed round with ermine skins; livin' in the grand style with all them high an' mighty aristocratic friends of his; never givin' a thought ter this yer camp here in the wilds of Wyoming, or to Laramie Peak, or to you, or ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... with herself because of her indecision, really fascinated by Lynde as a rival for her affections, and remembering his jesting, coaxing voice of the morning, decided to go down. She was lonely, and, clad in a lavender housegown with an ermine collar and sleeve cuffs, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... beautiful knit fringe, made by my own hands, and rested on me lovin'ly as I combed my hair in front of the lookin'-glass. There had been a fall of snow the night before, as if nater had done her best for the occasion and spread her white ermine down for the feet ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... then the Duke of Gloucester was always grumbling and setting the people to grumble, because the king chose to have peace with France. Duke Thomas used to lament over the glories of the battles of Edward III., and tell the people they had taxes to pay to keep the king in ermine robes, and rings, and jewels, and to let him give feasts and tilting matches—when the knights, in beautiful, gorgeous armor, rode against one another in sham fight, and the king and ladies looked on and ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

... brightly than before. The snow at her feet was strewn with stars, while their sisters overhead twinkled in the deep gloom of the sky, and she soon looked away from them, back to the gleaming earth in its radiant mantle of ermine. ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... his mistress turned to the doorway, and I saw a well-shaped head, couped at the throat by the white of an ermine stole. Dark hair swept low over her forehead, an attractive smile sat on her pretty mouth, and there was a fine colour springing in ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... the words been spoken when Ingeborg entered, attired in bridal robes and mantle of ermine. She walked among her maids as the moon glides in the heavenly azure attended by the radiant stars. With tears in her lovely eyes she turned to her brother; but Halfdan clasped her hand in Frithiof's, and thus gave his sister, the fair ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook

... rushes, spread upon the ground. Over this road the little infant was borne by one of her godmothers. She was wrapped in a mantle of purple velvet, with a long train appended to it, which was trimmed with ermine, a very costly kind of fur, used in England as a badge of authority. This train was borne by lords and ladies of high rank, who were appointed for the purpose by the king, and who deemed their office a very distinguished honor. Besides these train-bearers, there ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... all her motions, noticing all properly, from "my dear uncle"—words I distinctly heard as she passed the Duke of Cambridge—to the last expectant fair one at the doorway. The Queen vanished: buzz, noise, the clatter rose, and all were in commotion, and the tide of scarlet and ermine flowed and ebbed; and after an immense time the throngs of people bonneted and shawled, came forth from all the side niches and windows, and down from the upper galleries, and then places unknown gave up ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... old white mare, plodded slowly along the snowy country road by the picket fence, and turned in at the snow-capped posts. Ahead, roofed with the ragged ermine of a newly-fallen snow, the Doctor's old-fashioned house loomed gray-white through the snow-fringed branches of the trees, a quaint iron lantern, which was picturesque by day and luminous and cheerful by night, hanging within the square, white-pillared portico at the side. ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple

... those who had. This is a favourite pursuit of man, all over the world, in monarchies as well as in democracies; for, after all that institutions can effect, there is little change in men by putting on, or in taking off ermine and robes, or in wearing 'republican simplicity,' in office or out of office; but the demagogue is nothing but the courtier, pouring out his homage in the gutters, instead ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... fearless reason, the sweet and faultless instinct of the child whose childhood had become a memory. Then, once more spiritually equal, they smiled at one another; and Lissa, pausing to gather up her ermine stole, passed noiselessly out to the aisle, where she stood, perfectly self-possessed, while her sister joined her, smiling vaguely down at the firing-line and their lifted ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers

... was held aside and one went by crowned with the majesty of years, wearing the ermine of an unstained rule, the purple of her people's loyalty. Nations stood with bated breath to see her pass in the starlit mist of her children's tears; a monarch—greatest of her time; an empress—conquered men called mother; a woman—Englishmen cried queen; still ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... wigwam Hiawatha Bore the wealth of Megissogwon, All his wealth of skins and wampum, Furs of bison and of beaver, Furs of sable and of ermine, Wampum belts and strings and pouches, Quivers wrought with beads of ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow

... North Urals are of small value, while those of the Upper Lena, fifteen degrees farther south, are worth a king's ransom. Many species assume a white coat in winter, whereby they are difficult to be distinguished from the surrounding snows. Amongst these are the polar hare and fox, the ermine, the campagnol, often even the wolf and reindeer, besides the owl, yellow-hammer, and some other birds. Those which retain their brown or black colour are mostly such as do not show themselves in winter. The fur of the squirrels also varies with the surrounding foliage, those of ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... waves, it reached the spot where the admiral's vessel was anchored, and from the side of which two boats had already been dispatched towards their aid. Upon the quarter-deck of the flagship, sheltered by a canopy of velvet and ermine, which was suspended by stout supports, Henriette, the queen dowager, and the young princess—with the admiral, the Duke of Norfolk, standing beside them—watched with alarm this slender bark, at one moment tossed to the heavens, and the next buried beneath the waves, and against whose dark sail ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... extensively used in making hats, caps and muffs, and for lining garments of various kinds, such as circulars, overcoats and the like. They are dressed in the usual manner, the fur being dyed to imitate many of the higher grades procured from the ermine, beaver and other animals. 2. An article on electro-plating was given space in No. 23 ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... holy night; and surging shame flooded neck and face with crimson. For it had been thus and there, amid the sanctities of the night, and by their trysting-place, that the soul's great wound was made, the blood oozing ever since, oozing still. Memory, ermine-robed, half enchantress and half avenger, turned her face full on his as he sat by the spring; but he turned his own away and ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... passes on. "She is prodigiously rich," replies the friend, to whom you put the question—for seven virgins, with nosegays of choicest flowers, held up her bridal train; and the like number of youths, with silver-hilted swords, and robes of ermine and satin, graced the same bridal ceremony. Her father thinks he can never do enough for her; and her husband, that he can never ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... made. Talk of the wrappings of your princesses, of the shallow-ermine-girded trappings of your queens—they were but yearning things, but imitations, as compared with this great cloak of the ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... four or five inches wide, cut from the back of the otter skin, the nose and eyes forming one extremity, and the tail another. This being dressed with the fur on, they attach to one edge of it, from one hundred to two hundred and fifty little rolls of ermine skin, beginning at the ear, and proceeding towards the tail. These ermine skins are the same kind of narrow strips from the back of that animal, which are sewed round a small cord of twisted silkgrass thick enough to make the skin taper towards the tail which hangs from the end, and are generally ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

... on the left-hand pew, where his mother, who had entered the church on Mr. Henry van der Luyden's arm, sat weeping softly under her Chantilly veil, her hands in her grandmother's ermine muff. ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... ermine bad as they can be," said Henry, shaking his head. "They kill all things not so strong ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson

... as in its result—in the sanctities of abstinence, in the holy forbearance to use any one of many decent advantages, in the reverence for the sublime equities of law. Oh, mightiest of spectacles which human grandeur can unfold to the gaze of less civilized nations, when the ermine of the judge and the judgment-seat, belted by no swords, bristling with no bayonets—when the shadowy power of conscience, citing, as it were, into the immediate presence of God twelve upright men, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... possible without the constant accompanying process of excision and crucifixion of the old. If you want to grow purer and liker Christ, you must slay yourselves. You cannot gird on 'righteousness' above the old self, as some beggar might buckle to himself royal velvet with its ermine over his filthy tatters. There must be a putting off in order to and accompanying the putting on. Strip yourselves of yourselves, and then you 'shall not be found naked,' but clothed with the garments ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... dreaded the water as Gray Wolf dreaded it: a big fat porcupine, a sleek little marten, a fisher-cat that sniffed the air and wailed like a child. Those things that could not or would not swim outnumbered the others three to one. Hundreds of little ermine scurried along the shore like rats, their squeaking little voices sounding incessantly; foxes ran swiftly along the banks, seeking a tree or a windfall that might bridge the water for them; the lynx snarled and ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... heaven returned, became a true ermine, a white flecked with black, in its turn, by the specks of darkness dispersed among ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... in which every one was pleased with the part given him. Allison and Rob swept up and down in their gilt crowns and ermine-trimmed robes of royal purple, feeling that as king and queen they had the most important parts of all. Keith looked every inch the charming Prince Hero he personated, and Malcolm made such a dashing knight that there was a burst of applause every ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Courtland's coming, attired in a most startling costume of blue velvet and ermine, with high laced white kid boots, and a hat that resembled a fresh, white setting-hen, tied down to her pert little face with a veil whose large-meshed surface was broken by a single design, a large black butterfly anchored just across her dainty little nose. A most astonishing costume in ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... toward the Biltmore, he saw a man standing directly under the overhead glow of the porte-cochere lamps beside a woman in an ermine coat. As Anthony watched, the couple moved forward and signalled to a taxi. Anthony perceived by the infallible identification that lurks in the walk of a friend that it ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... platform had been erected at Saint-Lazare, on which was a throne (du Tillet calls it a chair de parement). Catherine took her seat upon it, wearing a surcoat, or species of ermine short-cloak covered with precious stones, a bodice beneath it with the royal mantle, and on her head a crown enriched with pearls and diamonds, and held in place by the Marechale de la Mark, her lady of honor. Around her stood the princes of the blood, and other princes and ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... evening dress and two young men in the illuminated chariot. It flashed by like a Leonid, but left a gay impression of flower-tinted velvet cloaks and ermine and waved hair with a glitter of diamonds and oval white shirtfronts and black coats. Also a pair of eyes seemed to look for the twentieth part of ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... gown made with tight sleeves, and fastened with full gathers just below the throat, where it is confined by a rich collar of gems. Over this is an elegant outer robe bordered with fur. The sleeves of the outer robe are very full and loose, and are lined with ermine. They open so as to show the close sleeves beneath. Over all is a long and ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... gold trappings represented his mother, whom he had seen too seldom for any distinct image to interfere with the illusion; a knight in damascened armour and scarlet cloak was the valiant captain, his father, who held a commission in the ducal army; and a proud young man in diadem and ermine, attended by a retinue of pages, stood for his cousin, the reigning Duke ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... Mrs. Garfield was dressed with great taste. She wore a dress of light heliotrope satin, elaborately trimmed with point lace, a cluster of pansies at her neck, and no jewelry. Mrs. Hayes, who was escorted by Hon. John Alley, wore a cream-colored satin dress trimmed with ermine. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... library, and the box-office, whenever the announce bills came out for her annual night. There was Mrs Lenville, in a very limp bonnet and veil, decidedly in that way in which she would wish to be if she truly loved Mr Lenville; there was Miss Gazingi, with an imitation ermine boa tied in a loose knot round her neck, flogging Mr Crummles, junior, with both ends, in fun. Lastly, there was Mrs Grudden in a brown cloth pelisse and a beaver bonnet, who assisted Mrs Crummles in her domestic ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... ladies' dresses in the piece, of sundry expensive materials; silks and satins, poplins and velvets, all of colours which from Bathsheba's style of dress might have been judged to be her favourites. There were two muffs, sable and ermine. Above all there was a case of jewellery, containing four heavy gold bracelets and several lockets and rings, all of fine quality and manufacture. These things had been bought in Bath and other towns from time to time, and brought home by stealth. They ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... marvels of these shining weeds. From the kingdom of Morocco and from Libya, too, they had great store of the fairest silks which the kith of any king did ever win. Kriemhild made it well appear what love she bore the twain. Sith upon the proud journey they had set their minds, they deemed ermine to be well fit. (4) Upon this lay fine silk as black as coal. This would still beseem all doughty knights at high festal tides. From out a setting of Arabian gold there shone forth many a stone. The ladies' zeal, it was not small, ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown

... have endured toward a man even if she loved him; still less was it sufferable with one whom she had always regarded with an indefinable disdain, when she had not ignored him. The very possibility that he might purchase a hold on her inspired a frantic feeling, like that of the ermine at pollution. ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... assist him in perpetrating the violence which he meditated. Without a moment's pause, or the shadow of process instituted, sentence was pronounced; and thus at the same time, when the sword of government was converted into an assassin's dagger, the pure ermine of justice was stained and soiled with the basest contamination. It was clear to demonstration that the Begums were not concerned in the insurrection of Benares. No: their treasures were their treason. If the mind of Mr. Hastings ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... mission to perform it was somehow arranged so that he was left behind. Only Jan and one or two others knew why his traps made the best catch of fur, for more than once he had slipped a mink of an ermine or a fox into one of Cummins' traps, knowing that it would mean a luxury or two for the woman and the baby. And when Cummins left the post, sometimes for a day and sometimes longer, the mother and her child fell as a brief heritage to those who ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... Lord Great Chamberlain. It was the last Coronation at which the procession was formed in Westminster Hall and moved across to the Abbey. Young Russell, by mischievousness or carelessness, contrived to tear his master's train from the ermine cape which surmounted it; and the procession was delayed till a seamstress could be found to repair the damage. "I contrived to keep that old rascal George IV. off the throne for half an hour," was Lord Charles-Russell's boast in ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... of ancestors shows the native lustre with advantage; but if he any way degenerate from his line, the least spot is visible on ermine.—Dryden. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... horseback only at the entrance of Machynleth, Miss Walladmor did not wear a riding-habit; but had gratified her uncle by assuming the plain white morning dress, white ribbons, and cap, which ancient custom had consecrated to the occasion; adding only, in consideration of the frosty day, an ermine tippet. The horse she rode was a white palfrey of the beautiful breed so much valued by Charles I.; and in fact traced its pedigre from the famous White Rose which had been presented by the sister of that prince [the Electress Palatine] to an ancestor of Sir ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... in which her form was enveloped; she spread it out before Haydn and wrapped it carefully round his feet. Her example was followed immediately by the Princesses Lichtenstein and Kinsky, and the Countesses Kaunitz and Spielmann. They doffed their beautiful ermine furs and their Turkish and Persian shawls, and wrapped them around the old composer, and transformed them into cushions which they placed under his head and his arms, and blankets with which they covered him. [Footnote: See "Zeitgenossen," ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... gray old Abbey was one of the most brilliant gatherings the world has ever seen. Princes and princesses from other lands were there, in their robes of state; peers and peeresses, in velvet, and ermine, and glittering diamonds; grave statesmen; and soldiers in their ...
— True Stories of Wonderful Deeds - Pictures and Stories for Little Folk • Anonymous

... the trouble to consult Perrault's Cendrillon in the original French, he or she will find that Cinderella went to the ball with her feet encased in "des pantoufles de vair." Now, vair means grey or white fur, ermine or miniver. The word is now obsolete, though it still survives in heraldry. The translator, misled by the similarity of sound between "vair" and "verre," rendered it "glass" instead of "ermine," and Cinderella's glass slippers have become a British ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... morrow of his arrival, he was taken to church, where the wedding ceremony was performed (March 10, 1451), but his seat was in such a remote place that he could barely catch a glimpse of the bridal procession, though he saw that Louis was clad in crimson velvet trimmed with ermine. Two days later the envoy carried a pleasant letter to the king, expressing regrets on the part of the Duke of Savoy that the alliance was made ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... wedding was on the following Thursday. The Earl of Kent's costume baffles description. Suffice it to say that it cost two thousand pounds. The royal bride doffed her widow's weeds, and appeared in a crimson silk deeply edged with ermine, low in the neck, but with long sleeves to the wrist. She wore the dovecote, and over it an open circlet of gold and gems, to mark ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... a pilgrim's habit clothed the knight, Such as from door to door our alms entreat: Into a dog she changed herself to sight; The smallest ever seen, of aspect sweet, Long hair, than ermine's fur more snowy white; And skilled withal in many a wondrous feat. Towards Agria's villa, so transmewed, The fairy and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... in whitest of ermine, And robe her as grand as a queen; Weave her laces of ice and of frost-work, A mantle of ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... loved too well Our work among the people to hide ourselves In little corners of delight. But oh, those times! How he would catch me as I ran and say His little wild-girl with her flower crown Was dearer than his princess ermine-gowned. And so I'll wreathe these buds into my hair, And meet him as he ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan

... VII. and Queen Eleanor got into that dreadful mess. Armine found it in Sismondi, but nobody knew who Sir Gilbert was except ourselves; and we are quite sure he was Sir Gilbert of the Ermine, the son of the brother who thought it his ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... everything to attract and charm. There stands the powerful defender of the Catholic Church, master of French style, and most renowned pulpit orator of France, in episcopal robes, with abundant lace, which is the perpetual envy of the fair who look at this transcendent effort. The ermine of Dubois is exquisite, but the general effect of this portrait does not compare with the Bossuet, next to which, in fascination, I put the Adrienne. At her death the actress could not be buried in consecrated ground; but through art ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner

... thy will be done, Holy and righteous One! Though the reluctant years May never crown my throbbing brows with white, Nor round my shoulders turn the golden light Of my thick locks to wisdom's royal ermine: Yet by the solitary tears, Deeper than joy or sorrow,—by the thrill, Higher than hope or terror, whose quick germen, In those hot tears to sudden vigor sprung, Sheds, even now, the fruits of graver age,— By the long wrestle in which inward ill Fell like a trampled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... a woman in an ermine wrap, with Titian hair under a jewelled net; and Virginia's eyes were suffused with pleasure as she gazed at her. "I never saw any one so beautiful!" she exclaimed to Oliver, as they stepped out into the hall; ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... tossed there to be thrown on to a waste heap. Upon the ground were bars of gold, the thickness of a brick, ranged carefully in rows. At one end of the room was a small smelting furnace, not now alight, and above it an iron brazier. Upon the walls hung sets of furs, many seal-skin and ermine, while at one side of the room, upon the ground, lay piled up some thousands of silver spoons and forks, also silver drinking cups and candlesticks, many silver salvers, and an endless assortment of silver ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux

... the statue, but not the laurel wreathing the Elector's head, and meeting in a neat point over his forehead. The laurel wreath is stone, like the rest of the Elector, who stands there smirking in marble ermine and armor, and resting his baton on the nose of a very small lion, who, in the exigencies of foreshortening, obligingly goes to nothing but a tail under the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... unwrinkled with any care, and lips formed to speak soft and gentle sentences. In her apparel she was less gay than her ladies, but nevertheless she was more queenly. Her dress and mantle were of the richest purple Genoese unadorned with embroidery, and round her neck she wore a ruff of fine ermine and a string of princely pearls. A small golden cross of curious graven gold dangled to her waist from a loup in the ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... off her cloak. This enabled them to notice that she wore underneath a half-new garment with three different coloured borders on the collar and cuffs, consisting of a short pelisse of russet material lined with ermine and ornamented with dragons embroidered in variegated silks whose coils were worked with golden threads. The lapel was narrow. The sleeves were short. The folds buttoned on the side. Under this, she had a very short light-red brocaded satin bodkin, lined with fur from foxes' ribs. Round her ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... talk with the young man. Was this the only reason? she was asked; and replied: "Yes, by the Cross over your Lordships' heads." "But why at midnight?" the court asked. "Because I could see him in no other way." I can see the exchange of glances across the ermine collars ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... Unsatisfying as these accounts must be, a tourist's frightened rush and scramble through the woods yields far less than the hunter's wildest stories, while in writing we can do but little more than to give a few names, as they come to mind,—beaver, squirrel, coon, fox, marten, fisher, otter, ermine, wildcat,—only this instead of full descriptions of the bright-eyed furry throng, their snug home nests, their fears and fights and loves, how they get their food, rear their young, escape their enemies, and keep themselves warm and well ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir

... the intimate private lives of any of our lesser wild creatures. It was news to me that any of the weasels lived in dens in this way, and that they stored up provision against a day of need. This species was probably the little ermine, eight or nine inches long, with tail about five inches. It was still in its summer dress of dark ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... only plebeian envy, and I dare say, if I were a lovely duchess of the realm, I would ride in a coach-and-six, with a coronet on the top of my bonnet and a robe of velvet and ermine ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray

... coat, as we called it at Gibraltar. He was never known to wear it except when asking some poor fellow's 'intentions.' He would no more think of sporting it as an every-day affair, than the chief-justice would go cook-shooting in his black cap and ermine. Come, he is bound for your quarters, and as it will not answer our plans to let him see you now, you had better hasten down-stairs, and get round by the back way into George's Street, and you'll be at his house before he ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... glistening scene. The line of foam from the breakers along the remote shore, yet lashing with curbing crests the inlets, promontories, and islands, was readily seen; the northern Alps shone in their ermine robes, greatly lengthened and deepened by the season's snows, the washed country side below us was a patch work of rocks and fields and denuded forestland. Christ Church like a vision of whiteness sprang out to the west upon our vision, and immediately ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... ladies fair Who costly robes and ermine wear, Kings, queens, and countesses and lords Come down to hell in endless hordes; While up to heaven go the lamed, The dwarfs, the humpbacks, and the maimed; To heaven goes the whole riff-raff; We get the ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... king came down from his throne and towards us. He had on gilded armour beneath his long, ermine-trimmed blue cloak, and that pleased me. He had sword and seax, but no helm, though that was on a table by the ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler

... his wife approaching the bank, laughing. She was dressed in a sealskin cloak which reached to the ground. Its great rolling collar of ermine covered her full breast and stretched upward almost to her hat, rearing its snowy background about her heavy auburn hair, which seemed about to fall and envelop her form. She wore an enormous hat of white ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... shoulders. On his head was a gold helmet with a dragon standing up from it. He carried a round shield on his left arm. The king had made that shield himself. It was of brass. The rivets were of silver, with strangely shaped heads. On the back of Harald's horse was a red cloth trimmed with the fur of ermine. ...
— Viking Tales • Jennie Hall

... Moreover, with our impulsive temperaments, a special object will always operate as a strong allurement. A confectioner's shop, for instance. A camp somewhere in the suburbs, with dress-parades, and available lieutenants. A new article of dress: a real ermine cape may be counted as good for three miles a day, for the season. A dearest friend within pedestrian distance: so that it would seem well to plant a circle of delightful families just in the outskirts of every town, merely to serve as magnets. Indeed, so desperate has the emergency become, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... restful around me; it's quiet clean to the core. The mountains pose in their ermine, in golden the hills are clad; The big, blue, silt-freighted Yukon seethes by my cabin door, And I think it's only the river that keeps me ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... descending, discharged into the lobby half a dozen mirthful maskers. Of these, a Scheherazade of bewitching prettiness (in a cloak of ermine!) singled out the silent, cynical little gentleman in scarlet mask and smalls, and menaced him merrily with a ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... written by Scott of his own works. A man who, in Scott's own words, died "a victim to a hellishly false story, or rather, I should say, to the sensibility of his own nature, which could not endure even the shadow of reproach,—like the ermine, which is said to pine if its fur is soiled," was not the man to father a puff, even by his dearest friend, on that friend's own creations. Erskine was indeed almost feminine in his love of Scott; but he was feminine with all the irritable and scrupulous delicacy of a man who ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... saw it in cars with aluminum hoods and gold fittings, diamonds big as birds' eggs, ermine coats in the ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown

... the eighth of December, 1897, and then after a severe snowstorm had swept over the region from the western prairies. It seemed odd to find these dainty featherland blossoms when the whole country was covered with an ermine of snow. ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... this period the lives of Englishmen at home were as the dust in the balance. It witnessed the very heyday of the infamous Star Chamber. It was of Strafford, the bloody instrument (though wearing judicial ermine) of Charles the First, that Macaulay said: 'If justice, in the whole range of its wide armory, contained one weapon which could pierce him, that weapon his pursuers were bound, before ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... to.'—Well said, Jack—'And would be an ornament to the first dignity.' But what praise is that, unless the first dignity were adorned with the first merit?—Dignity! gew-gaw!— First dignity! thou idiot!—Art thou, who knowest me, so taken with ermine and tinsel?—I, who have won the gold, am only fit to wear it. For the future therefore correct thy style, and proclaim her the ornament of the happiest man, and (respecting herself and sex) the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... Sixth for a recognition of his right to Naples, by a formal act of investiture. [3] He determined, however, to go through the ceremony of a coronation; and, on the 12th of May, he made his public entrance into the city, arrayed in splendid robes of scarlet and ermine, with the imperial diadem on his head, a sceptre in one hand, and a globe, the symbol of universal sovereignty, in the other; while the adulatory populace saluted his royal ear with the august title of Emperor. After the conclusion of this farce, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... On unicorn was seated either fair, A beast than spotless ermine yet more white; So lovely were the damsels, and so rare Their garb, and with such graceful fashion dight, That he who closely viewed the youthful pair, Would need a surer sense than mortal sight, To judge between the two. With such a mien Embodied Grace ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... shield of cinquefoil ermine over the quarter of the Thomas. Lord Thomas Percy, a cadet of Alnwick, famous already for the high spirit of that house which for ages was the bar upon the landward gate of England, showed his blue lion rampant ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... vesture, and a grave! Grant me a cell within thy convent-shrine— Half of this world, and more, was mine; The head that to the tonsure now stoops down Was circled once by many a crown; The shoulders fretted now with shirt of hair Did once the imperial ermine wear. Now am I as the dead, e'er death is come, And sink in ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... should have thought him decidedly prepossessing looking. He wore a black satin hat, a rich, blue brocade robe, almost concealing his blue brocade trousers, and over this a sleeved cloak of dark blue satin, lined with ermine fur. A look of singular coldness and hauteur sat permanently on his face, over which a flush of indescribable impatience sometimes passed. He is not of the people, this lordly magistrate. He is one of the privileged literati. His literary degrees are high and ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... stark midwinter how the war is smitten awake, And the blue-clad Niblung warriors the spears from the wall-nook take, And gird the dusky hauberk, and the ruddy fur-coat don, And draw the yellowing ermine o'er the steel from Welshland won. Then they show their tokened war-shields to the moon-dog and the stars, For the hurrying wind of the mountains has borne them tale of wars. Lo now, in the court of the warriors they gather for the fray, ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... apparently questionable mode in which the Hospitallers obtained the protection of the courts (and probably they were not singular in their proceedings); annual pensions to judges, besides other largesses, and much of this "pro favore habendo," contrasts painfully with the "spotless purity of the ermine" which dignifies our ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various

... a voluminous grey taffeta gown, from under which peeped little crimson shoes; covered with a huge loose ermine wrap, with the black poke-bonnet on top of the outrageous golden perruque and the grey parrot bobbing up and down excitedly upon her shoulder, she stood silently taking ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... which forms the ornament of many a royal robe is the skin of the ermine—a graceful and saucy member of the weasel tribe. The ermine is found in all Northern countries. In the summer it is a reddish-brown creature, but no sooner does the reign of winter begin than it attires itself in purest white, with the exception ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... from the Abbey. In front of the chair was a table, covered with pink-coloured Geneva velvet fringed with gold; and on the table lay a large Bible, a sword, the sceptre, and a robe of purple velvet, lined with ermine. His Highness, having entered, attended by his Council, the great state officers, his son Richard, the French Ambassador, the Dutch Ambassador, and "divers of the nobility and other persons of great ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... arrange with some farmer's wife, perhaps Mrs. Macruadh herself, for the haunches of a doe; but they never killed from pleasure in killing. Of creatures destructive to game they killed enough to do far more than make up for all the game they took; and for the skins of ermine and stoat and fox and otter they could always get money's worth; money itself they never sought or had. If the little birds be regarded as earning the fruit and seed they devour by the grubs and slugs they destroy, then Hector of the Stags and Rob of the Angels also thoroughly earned ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... dim-sighted, and very wise, retained their reason sufficiently to say that nothing could be told about a woman from her looks—especially an American woman. She put on the magnificent cloak, white silk, ermine lined, which he had seen at Paquin's and had insisted on buying. And they were off for the opera in the aristocratic looking auto he was taking ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... not know her," answered Maitre Bilot, "or I should not need to declare, as I do, that she is as spotless as the ermine. She would rather die than suffer a stain upon her purity. It is impossible to see much of her without perceiving that; it shines out in everything ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... on Sir Galahad (for it was he) a crimson robe trimmed with fine ermine, and took him by the hand and led him to the Perilous Seat, and lifting up the silken cloth which hung upon it, read these words written in gold letters, "This is the seat of Sir Galahad, ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles

... which to you may seem many; my modest origin; my trade, which, not altogether without reason, you despise and dislike. Well, the first two cannot be changed except for the worse; the second can be, and already is, buried beneath the gold and ermine of wealth and titles. What does it matter if I am the son of a City clerk who never earned more than L2 a week and was born in a tenement at Battersea, when I am one of the rich men of this rich land and shall die a peer in a palace, leaving millions and honours ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... his periodical pamphlet, "Politics for the People: or Hogs-wash," a little parable with which that witty lecturer, Thelwall, had delighted a debating society. He told how a gamecock, resplendent with ermine-spotted breast, and crown or cockscomb, lorded it greedily over all the fowls of the farmyard.[314] The parallel to George III was sufficiently close to agitate the official mind; but the jury gave ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... and their helpers. These janitors are the most dignified and haughtiest of men. Even I would have trouble in holding them. Nothin' less than a judge on the bench is good enough for them. Dan does the dignity act with the janitors, and when he is with the boys he hangs up the ermine in the closet and becomes ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt

... personages. I have heard him give a most amusing account of that experience, but it is too soon to repeat it. Then, as always, he could tell a bore at sight, and the bore could not deceive him by any disguise of ermine cloak or Imperial title. The German Kaiser seems to have taken pains to pose as the preferred intimate of "Friend Roosevelt," but the "Friend" remained unwaveringly Democratic. One day William telephoned to ask Roosevelt to lunch with him, but the Colonel diplomatically pleaded a sore throat, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... harness, indeed, They had *in suit of* them that 'fore them yede.* *corresponding with* *went Next after them in came, in armour bright, All save their heades, seemly knightes nine, And ev'ry clasp and nail, as to my sight, Of their harness was of red golde fine; With cloth of gold, and furred with ermine, Were the trappures* of their steedes strong, *trappings Both wide and large, that ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... wear the ermine-robe of Power, Who would not have the majesty of kings When tremble thrones and courts and nations cower, And strange alarms await all royal things— When armed horsemen guard their wanderings And palaces are silenced with affright, ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... Throne, each one depositing an urn of pure gold at the feet of the Monarch. The urns were filled with the ashes of those who had fallen in battle, heroes killed in holy causes, patriots and martyrs from different parts of the world. The Grand Duke entered last in the train, he was clad in the ermine only worn by Princes, and as he bowed his head, he placed the last urn on the floor. The young man started—the name of the murdered Mother was deeply graven on the sculptured swells. Then all grew dark before him, he saw neither the Throne of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various



Words linked to "Ermine" :   shorttail weasel, fur, pelt, Mustela erminea, weasel, stoat



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com