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Garter   Listen
verb
Garter  v. t.  (past & past part. gartered; pres. part. gartering)  
1.
To bind with a garter. "He... could not see to garter his hose."
2.
To invest with the Order of the Garter.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Garter" Quotes from Famous Books



... as the "devil's poker," and the ground ivy has been nicknamed the "devil's candlestick," the mandrake supplying his candle. The puff-balls of the lycoperdon form the devil's snuff-box, and in Ireland the nettle is his apron, and the convolvulus his garter; while at Iserlohn, in Germany,[7] "the mothers, to deter their children eating the mulberries, sing to them that the devil requires them for the purpose of blacking his boots." The Arum maculatum is "devil's ladies ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... the year 1763 he was made Master of the Staghounds; and in 1765, he was sent to the Tower, and tried before the House of Peers, for killing his relation and neighbour, Mr Chaworth, in a duel fought at the Star and Garter Tavern, in Pall-mall. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... laugh—quod erat demonstrandum. We also know that he has a strong objection to cold mutton for dinner, and much prefers a whitebait banquet at Greenwich, or a nice well-ordered repast at the Star and Garter. ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier

... for that," Olive told her. "When I see a man I want I'm going to get him. It's easy if you know how and make opportunities. I always have one garter ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... enjoy life. He says, there is no breathing beyond St. James's; and he affirms, that the air of that delicious spot is celestial. He says, there is no wit except at the Bedford; no military genius but at George's; no wine but at the Star and Garter; no turbot except at the Tilt-Yard. He asserts, that there are no clothes made beyond the liberties of Westminster; and he firmly holds Cheapside to be the sole mart of stockings. It would fill up two-thirds of a quarto volume to enumerate the various extravagant exclamations ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... 591. In 1791, on his return from Russia, his brother says to him, speaking of the Revolution: "Everybody, at first, wanted it.. From the king down to the most insignificant man in the kingdom, everybody did something to help it along; one let it come on up to his shoe-buckle, another up to his garter, another to his waist, another to his breast, and some will not be content until their ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... badge of the Knights of the Garter, an order founded by Edward III, to which only noble princes and noblemen of the highest rank were admitted. "Stars" are the jeweled decorations worn by members of other noble orders. "Coronets" are the inferior crowns worn by princes and nobles, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... not be endured, He approach'd it to eat, but his nose was not proof Against the sharp thorns, so he struck with his hoof, When they pierced his bare foot, and so now he limp'd in With his fetlock bound up in a garter-snake's skin: The vampire-bat, surgeon, now offered to bleed it, In case as he thought his poor patient would need it; And added, at least it could do him no harm To try his specific, the juice ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.

... does n't wear a dagger in her garter—has never heard of such a practice," Peter explained. "And now," he whispered to his soul, "we 'll see whether our landlady ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... passed down the marble steps, turned sharply to the left, and began to ascend a narrow path that wound like a garter about the diamond mountain. Kismine knew a heavily wooded spot half-way up where they could lie concealed and yet be able to observe the wild night in the valley—finally to make an escape, when it should be necessary, along a secret path laid in a ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... not at all of the family ophidia. Snakes were his specialty simply because he did not approve of them. All dated back to the affair of three years before. Snakes were abundant in the wood, but were not of many kinds. There were garter-snakes, dreaded of the little frogs, but timid of most things; there was a small snake of wonderful swiftness and as green as the grass into which it darted; there were the water pilots, sunning themselves in coils upon the driftwood in the water, swart of color, ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... prevalent in these parts as they were when we first came: then it was not uncommon to find a nice little "garter" quietly ensconced in one's pocket, or in your pantaloon leg, or taking a nap in ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... hopes of the Irish royalists, and taught men to doubt the abilities of Ormond. At court, his enemies ventured to hint suspicions of treason; but Charles, to silence their murmurs and assure him of the royal favour, sent him the order of the garter.[1][c] ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... that it began to think of marriage; and it happened that it came to be washed in company with a garter. ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen

... moccasins, water snakes, and esteemed very deadly. It is said that when an Indian is bitten by one of these he lies down to die without making any effort to save his life, whereas if a rattlesnake has harmed him he usually cures himself. Besides these there were the omnipresent garter snakes, and the grey or silver coach-whip, both harmless. The bull snake is said to grow to an enormous size, and is a kind of North American python or boa. About five miles from our camp was an old hut, which was occupied by a sheep-herder whom I knew. One night he heard a noise, and ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... Richmond in the Battle of Bosworth Field; and a banner, supposed to be the same that he carried, now droops over his effigy. It is just such a colorless silk rag as the one already described. The knight has the order of the Garter on his knee, and the lady wears it on her left arm, an odd place enough for a garter; but, if worn in its proper locality, it could not be decorously visible. The complete preservation and good condition of these statues, even to the minutest adornment of the sculpture, and their ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... tall and dishevelled, partially clad in blue velvet, with stockings which had once been white, but were now covered from garter to toe with mud. One shoe clung to his left foot, the other was fixed by the heel in a grating over a cellar-window in Tottenham Court Road. Without hat or coat, with his shirt-sleeves torn by those unfortunates into whose ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... dear friend, for whose life they would have given their own, if they had been in their proper mind at the time." Seeing Mr. Howell's face all besmeared with blood from his wounded hand, they both threw down their swords and embraced him, and bound up his hand with a garter, to close the veins, which were cut, and bled profusely. They then conveyed him home, and sent for a surgeon. King James, who was much attached to Mr. Howell, afterwards sent his own surgeon to attend ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... Pitt diamond—the Queen's own star of the garter—a sample of otto-of-roses at a guinea a drop, would not be handled more curiously, or more respectfully, than this porcelain card of the Baroness. Trembling he put it into his little Russia-leather pocket-book: and when ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... devices. One is the first to hit on a rosette in her hair with a diamond in the centre, and she attracts every eye for a whole evening; another revives the hair-net, or sticks a dagger through the twist to suggest a garter; this one wears velvet bands round her wrists, that one appears in lace lippets. These valiant efforts, an Austerlitz of vanity or of love, then set the fashion for lower spheres by the time the inventive creatress has originated something new. This evening, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... play at Hopscotch, marbles, dumps. And Fly the garter; oh! what jumps! From Tipcat quick away I fly For fear they'll ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... discovered a goat and her kid lying on the ground. The animal was evidently in great pain, and feeling her body and limbs, he ascertained that one of her legs had been fractured. He bound it up with his garter, and offered her some of his bread; but she refused to eat, and stretched out her tongue, as if intimating that her mouth was parched with thirst. He gave her water, which she drank greedily, and then she ate the bread. At midnight he ventured ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... indeed, remote from the eyes of all that ever had seen me, and as much out of the way of being ever seen or heard of by any of the gang that used to follow me as if I had been among the mountains in Lancashire; for when did a blue garter or a coach-and-six come into a little narrow passage in the Minories or Goodman's Fields? And as there was no fear of them, so really I had no desire to see them, or so much as to hear from them any more as ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... for a bucket of water. During his absence, John Officer was noticed slipping something into Barney's coat pocket, and after breakfast when our cook went to his coat for his tobacco, he unearthed a lady's cambric handkerchief, nicely embroidered, and a silver mounted garter. He looked at the articles a moment, and, grasping the situation at a glance, ran his eye over the outfit for the culprit. But there was not a word or a smile. He walked over and threw the articles into the fire, remarking, "Good whiskey and ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams

... Called up by John Goods to see the Garter and Heralds coate, which lay in the coach, brought by Sir Edward Walker, King at Armes, this morning, for my Lord. My Lord had summoned all the Commanders on board him, to see the ceremony, which was thus: ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... was honoured by persons of the highest distinction abroad, and Don John of Austria and several princes of Germany visited him[7]. But what comforted him most, was the company frequently of his young King, who in the midst of his sufferings bestowed upon him the most noble Order of the Garter. The gloomy period at last came to an end, and the marquis returned to his country with his sovereign; and by letters patent dated the 16th of March 1664, he was advanced to the dignity of earl of Ogle, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... the King, "hast caught a dumb man, good Master Doubleday? or hath the decoration of the garter so overcome his senses that he ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... the skeletons of two children, some thousand shells (NASSA NERITEA) artificially pierced, which had been used to deck their garments: Near an adult were other shells forming a necklace, a bracelet, an amulet, and a garter worn on the left leg; whilst on the head was a regular RESILLE or net, not unlike that of the Spanish national costume, which net was made of small nerita shells and kept in place ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... visits with Sandy, I kept an engagement with Hugh Pitcairn at the Star and Garter, just around the corner from the Tron Church, at four o'clock of the same day. It was a few minutes past the hour as I neared the place, to find him standing by the doorway, his back to the passers by, a French cap pulled low over his eyes, reading ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... consequent transporting of freight to and fro, Anderson started a public draying business of one horse and a wagon, which lasted thirty eight years and was given up by him to his son-in-law, Arthur Cable who now, in 1937, has an auto-truck and hauls large paper boxes from the Gem Dandy Suspender and Garter Company located across Franklin Street from Anderson's house boy home, that of James Cardwell, to the post office. From the freight train depot, Arthur hauls merchandise also in paper cartons to the ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... letters going which contained a little narrative of our work to date. We had most imposing note-paper which was used for these occasions: the crest consisted of a penguin standing on the South Pole with the southern hemisphere underfoot, a garter surrounding this little picture inscribed with "British Antarctic Expedition—'Terra Nova' R.Y.S." Alas, some of the letters were never delivered, for death not only laid his hand upon certain members of the Expedition, ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans

... on flat-soled sandals instead. Over her head she had a black lace scarf, on her hands leather gauntlets. Lastly, she took from a press a long, double-edged knife, felt its temper, and stuck it inside her stocking, under the garter. She made a final hasty sweep of the room with her unquiet eyes as ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... she was about four years old, was one pleasant day sitting in her chair by the window, knitting a little white garter—that is, she was learning ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... week in Paris reduced me to the limpness and lack of appetite peculiar to a kid glove, and gave Fanny a jumping sore throat. It's my belief there is death in the kettle there; a pestilence or the like. We came out here, pitched on the STAR and GARTER (they call it Somebody's pavilion), found the place a bed of lilacs and nightingales (first time I ever heard one), and also of a bird called the PIASSEUR, cheerfulest of sylvan creatures, an ideal comic opera ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... foolish, my dear. I heard yesterday, on very good authority, that my son, Lord Chandos, will be offered the vacant Garter. I believe it is true, I feel sure of it. I would not for the world anything should happen now, any disgrace of any kind; and these matrimonial quarrels are disgraceful, Marion. You should ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay

... a man, whose head is bound up with a garter, in token and commemoration of his having been at a fair the preceding night—"Plase your honour, it's what I am striving since six o'clock and before, this morning, becaase I'd sooner trouble your honour's honour than any man in all ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... anthem or madrigal, say in four parts. We will suppose the Hostess of the 'Garter' is taking the Cantus, a tapster the Altus, mine Host the Tenor, and Nym the Bassus. The three former are all hard at work on their respective 'parts,' one in the kitchen, another in the taproom, the third in familiar converse outside the front door. But Nym has 'a minim rest,' and during ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor

... Golconda. I have a passion for those resplendent titles which are not conferred by a sovereign and would not be the open sesame to the courts of royalty, yet which are as opulent in impressive adjectives as any Knight of the Garter's list of dignities. When I have recognized in the every-day name of His Very Worthy High Eminence of some cabalistic association, the inconspicuous individual whose trifling indebtedness to me for value received remains in a quiescent state and is likely long to continue so, I confess ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of plunder'd Italy, Piled on the mules of king At-tila, Is worth one glove (I'll not tell a bit a lie) Or garter, snatch'd from Domitilla. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... he coldly foorsook James II., his benefactor, and carried over his formidable sword to the House of Orange. The Revolution augmented his fortune. Created Earl and General by William III.; Duke, Knight of the Garter and Commander of the British Armies by Queen Anne. Marlborough was one of those men whom conviction astonishes, devotedness confounds; who acknowledge no other law than that of their own interest, no other deity than success, and which the ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... Protector," and "Grand Dictator," and so on. Nothing less than "Grand" and "Supreme" is good enough for the dignitaries of our associations of citizens. Where does all this ambition for names without realities come from? Because a Knight of the Garter wears a golden star, why does the worthy cordwainer, who mends the shoes of his fellow-citizens, want to wear a tin star, and take a name that had a meaning as used by the representatives of ancient families, or the men who had ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Mrs. Fitzherbert? How proud and handsome he was, with his chestnut curls and insolent pose! What passions had he bequeathed? The world had looked upon him as infamous. He had led the orgies at Carlton House. The star of the Garter glittered upon his breast. Beside him hung the portrait of his wife, a pallid, thin-lipped woman in black. Her blood, also, stirred within him. How curious it all seemed! And his mother with her Lady Hamilton face, and her moist wine-dashed lips—he knew what ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... derrenieres choses, notable from the method of working the red ink, a method found in no other book of Colard Mansion; and Propositio Johannis Russell, a tract of four leaves, containing Russell's speech at the investiture of the Duke of Burgundy with the order of the Garter in 1470. ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer

... left on Easter Island were rescued sooner than they had expected. A British tramp, the Knight of the Garter, put into Easter Island for emergency repairs, having broken down. The castaways left with her for Sydney, Australia, and from there reached San Francisco by the steamship Ventura, ten months after they had sailed away on the El Dorado. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... move, and Sam Tuk who sat huddled in his chair where his feet almost touched the fallen man, stirred never a muscle. But Mrs. Sin, who still moved in a semi-phantasmagoric world, swiftly raised the hem of her kimona, affording a glimpse of a shapely silk-clad limb. From a sheath attached to her garter she drew a thin stilletto. Curiously feline, she crouched, as if ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... savage task-master. Exposed to the derision of all around, even her own servant, who is well acquainted with the rules of the place, appears little disposed to show any return of gratitude for recent obligations, though even her shoes, which she displays while tying up her garter, seem by their gaudy outside to have been a present from her mistress. The civil discipline of the stern keeper has all the severity of the old school. With the true spirit of tyranny, he sentences those who will not labour to the whipping-post, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... the month it became suddenly known in London that Lord Grex had died at Brighton. There was a Garter to be given away, and everybody was filled with regret that such an ornament to the Peerage should have departed from them. The Conservative papers remembered how excellent a politician he had been in his younger days, and the world was informed that the ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... presently he became uneasy of the evil that might befall him were Dai and Rachel to lay their hands on him; he led his horse into the unfamiliar and hard and steep road which goes up to the Star and Garter, and which therefrom falls into Richmond town. At what time he was at the top he heard the sound of Dai and Rachel running to him, each screaming upon him to stop. Rachel seized the bridle of the horse, and Dai tried to climb over ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans

... delineations of character is simply statuesque or pictorial. He has done for us what the historians have left undone. They present processions of automata moving to the sound of trumpet and drum, ushered by Black Rod or Garter King-at-arms; but in Addison we find that Promethean heat which relumes their life; the galvanic motion becomes a living stride; the puppet eyes emit fire; the automata are men. Thus it is, that, although ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... my father, my brother Patrick, and myself, to accompany him in his beautiful small steam yacht, the Endeavour, from Westminster to Richmond Bridge, and afterwards to dine with him at the Star and Garter. I must first, however, say something of the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... fair virgin's life, and then did something better than either—married her; medieval men, with a knightly turn of mind, transmuted him into the patron of chivalry; Edward III made him the patron of the Order of the Garter; the Eastern and Western churches venerate him yet; Britains have turned him into their country's tutelary saint; and many places of worship have been dedicated to this curiously mythologic individual. We have a church in Preston in this category; and it is of such church—St. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... Fitz-Aquitaine wanted Ireland and Lord de Mowbray wanted the Garter. Lord Marney, who wanted the Buckhounds, was convinced that neither of his friends had the slightest chance of obtaining their respective objects, but believed that he had a very good one of securing his own if he used them for his purpose, and persuaded them ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... Hammersmith and Turnham Green and Kew, and so through Richmond Hill till he had climbed the hill and stopped for a brief moment of desperate debate before the door of the saloon bar of the "Star and Garter." The better impulse conquered the worse, and he entered the park, and, seating himself on one of the chairs under the trees, he made an effort to calmly survey the question in ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith

... distributed the tickets with every appearance of honesty and good faith. But I had reason to remark, by what happened to myself, that the tickets had been registered beforehand. The young Queen, who felt her garter slipping off, came to me in order to tighten it. She handed me her ticket to hold for a moment, and when she had fastened her garter, I gave her back my ticket instead of her own. When the Cardinal from his dais read out the ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... the frock-coated stranger was the knight. That a knight! Without armour, or plumes, or lance, or charger! To console me for my disappointment I was allowed to see my father in his full robes as a Knight of the Garter before he left for some ceremony of the Order. This was the first intimation I had received that we could include a knight in our own family circle. My father's blue velvet mantle was imposing, and he ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung, The floors of plaister and the walls of dung, On once a flock-bed but repair'd with straw, With tape-ty'd curtains never meant to draw, The George and Garter dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies! alas, how changed from him, That life of pleasure and that soul of whim! Gallant and gay in Cliveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love; ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... occurrence of this expression in the following passage in Dryden, and its application to the Order of the Garter, seem to have escaped the notice of the several correspondents who have addressed you on the subject. I quote from The Flower and the Leaf, Dryden's version ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various

... garter the bowl of a strong tobacco-pipe, his legs being bent, he broke it to pieces by the tendons of his hams, without altering the bending ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... to the races a mile away, and Mollie, the babe, and I followed. There was no business of closing up house when we left. She just put the bright wool out of the reach of pack rats and we were ready. I admired her forethought, for only the night before I had lost a cake of soap, one garter, and most of my hairpins. Of course the rat was honest, for he had left a dried cactus leaf, a pine cone, and various assorted sticks and straws in place of what he took. That's why this particularly vexing rodent is called a "trade rat." I used to hear that it takes two ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... is, that's thy master. Why dooest thou garter vp thy armes a this fashion? Dost make hose of thy sleeues? Do other seruants so? Thou wert best set thy lower part where thy nose stands. By mine Honor, if I were but two houres yonger, I'de beate thee: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... enough in the entire metropolis to re-supply a Virginia "knight" with "chivalry," in case he happened to run out of it. Let the reader calmly and dispassionately picture to himself "lists" in Brooklyn; heralds, pursuivants, pages, garter king-at-arms—in Brooklyn; the marshalling of the fantastic hosts of "chivalry" in slashed doublets, velvet trunks, ruffles, and plumes—in Brooklyn; mounted on omnibus and livery-stable patriarchs, promoted, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Lenormand, who had been the Seraskiers' house-maid. I suddenly remembered all this, and that Mimsey and Gogo were of the party—the latter, indeed, being premier garcon d'honneur, on whom would soon devolve the duty of stealing the bride's garter, and cutting it up into little bits to adorn the button-holes of the male guests ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... fain be full of admiration for the Britannic Majesty. Confesses he is below the middle size, in fact a tiny little creature, but then his shape is perfect; leg much to be commended,—which his Majesty knows, standing always with one leg slightly advanced, and the Order of the Garter on it, that mankind may take notice. Here is Bielfeld's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... order; and going up to the shining altar, whose furniture that day was embroidered with diamonds, pearls, and stones of great value, they bowed and retired to their places, into little gilded stalls, like our Knights of the Garter at Windsor: after them, fifty boys that sang approached in order to the altar, bowed, and divided on each side; they were dressed in white cloth of silver, with golden wings and rosy chaplets: after these the Bishop, in his pontific ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... your bodily self, to light suddenly on a Maypole, with all the blithe morris-dancers prancing around it to the merry pipe and tabor, with bells jingling, ribands fluttering, lads frisking and laughing, lasses leaping till you might see where the scarlet garter fastened the light blue hose, I think some feeling, resembling either natural sociality, or old use and wont, would get the better, friend, even of thy gravity, and thou wouldst fling thy cuckoldy steeple-hat one way, and that blood-thirsty long sword another, and trip, like the noodles ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... office came down. After three hours, I was advanced from this stinking place up the stairs, where there was on one side a company of rude swearing persons; on the other side many Quakers, who lovingly entertained me. As soon as I was fixed, I wrote to my old friend Sir Edward Walker, Garter King at Arms, who presently went to Mr. Secretary Nicholas, and acquainted him with my condition. He ordered Sir Edward to write to Everard to release me, unless he had any particular information against me, which he ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... to think what Vidal would have done if Dodd's favourite house of call had been the Star and Garter instead ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George

... it. It reduces man into the diminutive of man in things which are great, and the counterfeit of women in things which are little. It talks about its fine blue ribbon like a girl, and shows its new garter like a child. A certain writer, of some antiquity, says: "When I was a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... wife cannot give evidence against her husband, and often does not want to. I made none of the usual slips, but no man can guard against a girl's nightmare after a day up the river and a supper at the Star and Garter. I might have told the judge he was an ass, but then I should have had penal servitude for bank robbery, and that is worse than death. The only thing that puzzles me, though, is whether the law has committed murder ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... it, heraldically speaking, wrong to inscribe the motto upon a circle (not a garter) or ribbon round the shield? So says the Glossary, p. 227. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various

... upon the states-general, and having promised soon to appear before her Majesty in person, tarried accordingly but a brief season in Germany, and then repaired to England. Here he was feasted, flattered, caressed, and invested with the order of the Garter. Pleased with royal blandishments, and highly enjoying the splendid hospitalities of England he quite forgot the "thirty thousand devils" whom he had left running loose in the Netherlands, while these wild soldiers, on their part, being absolutely in a starving ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... friends, an air of mystery and reserve which seemed to indicate that he knew some momentous secret, and that his mind was labouring with some vast design. In this way he got and long kept a high reputation for wisdom. It was not till that reputation had made him an Earl, a Knight of the Garter, Lord High Treasurer of England, and master of the fate of Europe, that his admirers began to find out that he was really a ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... imposthume in his breast, that he hath been fain to be cut into the body. To White Hall, were we attended the Duke of York in his closet upon our usual business. And thence out, and did see many of the Knights of the Garter with the King and Duke of York going into the Privy-chamber to elect the Elector of Saxony in that Order; who, I did hear the Duke of York say, was a good drinker: I know not upon what score this compliment ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... me to explain the uses of these things. The union, it seemed, was a kind of garter to attach the hose to the tap, and the drum was where the snake wound itself to sleep at night. "And the little pepper-castor, of course," I said, "is what one puts at the end to make it sneeze. I understand completely. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... speaking, upon the abacus of the column, has a domed roof, upon which will be placed the colossal statue, executed in bronze, by Mr. Westmacott. The Duke is represented in a flowing robe, with a sword in his right hand, and in the left, one of the insignia of the Order of the Garter. The height of the figure is 13 feet 6 inches. The total height of the column, exclusive of the statue, is 124 feet. The masonry, (executed by Mr. Nowell, of Pimlico,) deserves especial notice. Its neatness and finish are truly astonishing, and the solidity and massiveness of the material ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various

... to drive it home. Lastly he tried to hang himself; and on this occasion he seems to have been saved not by the love of life, or by want of resolution, but by mere accident. He had become insensible, when the garter by which he was suspended broke, and his fall brought in the laundress, who supposed him to be in a fit. He sent her to a friend, to whom he related all that had passed, and despatched him to his kinsman. His kinsman arrived, listened with horror to ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... declined. At eleven, the Emperor attended divine service at the chapel of the Russian embassy in Welbeck Street. At half-past one, Prince Albert arrived to conduct him to the palace. He wore a scarlet uniform, with the riband and badge of the Garter. The Queen received the Emperor in the grand hall. A dejeuner was soon afterwards served. The remainder of the day was spent in visits to the Queen-Dowager and the Royal Family. One visit of peculiar interest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... knees, so that when she walked one caught a glimpse of other slim serpents painted just above her bare ankles. Wound about her neck was a huge, glittering, cotton-stuffed cobra, and her bracelets were in the form of tiny garter snakes. Altogether a very charming and beautiful costume—one that made the more nervous among the older women shrink away from her when she passed, and the more troublesome ones to make great talk about "shouldn't ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... a brick? and only to think how she used to milk the cows, and I once chased her with a garter snake," Tim said, reading the article aloud to Andy, who, while assenting that she was a brick, and according all due credit to her for what she was, and what she did, never for a moment ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... no doubt get used to the new conditions by and by; and in regard to your latest exploit, there's a motto on your insignia of the Garter which might meet the case. But hadn't we better heave her ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... Marlborough was promoted to the Garter, and to be captain-general of her Majesty's forces at home and abroad. This appointment only inflamed the dowager's rage, or, as she thought it, her fidelity to her rightful sovereign. "The princess is but a puppet in the hands of that fury of a woman, who comes into my drawing-room ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... great an impression upon the world in his lifetime that genealogists at once undertook for him the construction of a suitable pedigree. The excellent Sir Isaac Heard, garter king-at-arms, worked out a genealogy which seemed reasonable enough, and then wrote to the president in relation to it. Washington in reply thanked him for his politeness, sent him the Virginian genealogy of his own branch, and after expressing a courteous interest said, in his ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge

... them out of his own way. Poor himself, he was surrounded by friends on whom he had bestowed three thousand, six thousand, ten thousand a year. Plain Mister himself, he had made more lords than any three ministers that had preceded him. The garter, for which the first dukes in the kingdom were contending, was repeatedly offered to him, and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... and I will circle. We have him, this time. By the King's garter, what a fool he is to come into New York ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... excitement and alarm by the flight at Patay, and the whole city was in commotion fearing an immediate advance and attack. But in Loches, or wherever Charles may have been, it was all taken very easily. Fastolfe, the fugitive, had his Garter taken from him as the greatest disgrace that could be inflicted, for his shameful flight, about the time when Richemont, one of the victors, was being sent off and disgraced on the other side for the crime of having helped to inflict, without the consent of the King, the greatest ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... uneasy suspicions which had been floating in his mind in a state of solution were suddenly crystallized by this untoward event. The absurdity of a man's having tramped twenty miles through an almost unbroken wilderness to preach the gospel to a garter snake, burst upon him with a crushing force. This grotesque denouement of an undertaking planned and executed in the loftiest frame of religious enthusiasm, shook the very foundation of ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... be no wiser. Most people look at past times, as princes look at foreign countries. More than one illustrious stranger has landed on our island amidst the shouts of a mob, has dined with the king, has hunted with the master of the stag-hounds, has seen the guards reviewed, and a Knight of the Garter installed; has cantered along Regent-street; has visited St. Paul's, and noted down its dimensions, and has then departed, thinking that he has seen England. He has, in fact, seen a few public buildings, public men, and public ceremonies. But of the vast and complex system of society, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various

... Cosway removed to the south side of Pall Mall, occupying part of the large mansion originally erected by the Duke of Schomberg—that 'citizen of the world,' as Macaulay calls him, who was made a Duke, a Knight of the Garter, and Master of the Ordnance by William the Third, and falling by his master's side at the battle of the Boyne, was, according to Lord Macaulay, buried in Westminster Abbey; but, in truth, it would seem that his remains were deposited in the Cathedral of St. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... of mechanical pressure on other parts of the body are not uncommon. The leg is sometimes so indented by a tight garter that the returning flow of blood through the veins is prevented, and a varicose condition of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... old imperial dames were taught, Such for Ascanius fair Elisa wrought. The soft recesses of your hours improve The three fair pledges of your happy love: All other parts of pious duty done, You owe your Ormond nothing but a son, To fill in future times his father's place, And wear the garter ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden

... cross-lanes by the green, a coach was stuck—a coach of splendour. It was a huge thing as big as a room, half glass, half gold and garter blue, and it swayed luxuriously on its great springs. Six horses heaved at it in vain with great splashing and squelching, and a whole company of servants, some mounted, ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... garter?" Oeyvind cried after her. She turned around, and looked first at the garter and then at him. At last she came to a great resolution, and ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... to dream that she loses her garter, signifies that her lover will be jealous and suspicious of a ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... Earl of Sutton, Viscount of Ipswich, Baron of Sudbury, Knight of the most Noble Order of the Garter, and Colonel of his Majesties Regiment of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... ploughshare in her hand, and all her train of little people, swept clattering and chattering close past him. The least was the last, and it wore a long shirt which got in the way of its little bare feet, and kept tripping it up. The peasant had sense enough left to feel compassion, so he took his garter off and bound it for a girdle round the infant, and then set it again on its way. When the Berchtl saw what he had done, she turned back and thanked him, and told him that in return for his compassion his children should ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... up with a garter, Elise, and get the old uncle back to Ville Bambord. Trouble's coming. The game'll soon ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Prince of, calls Brother Jonathan consanguineus noster, but had not, apparently, consulted the Garter King at Arms. Walpole, Horace, classed, his letters praised. Waltham Plain, Cornwallis at. Walton, punctilious in his intercourse with fishes. War, abstract, horrid, its hoppers, grist of, what. Warren, Fort. Warton, Thomas, a story of. Washington, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... action between Viscount Peel, the sole surviving ex-Speaker of the House of Commons, and Lord Wrottesley, the head of the only family which can claim as of its name and blood one of the original Knights of the Garter. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... with less elaboration and display in their retinues, equipages, and mode of living. Dress lost its richness of ornament and its distinctive characteristics. Young men of fashion no longer bedizened themselves in velvet, brocade, and gold lace. Knights of the Garter no longer displayed the Blue Ribbon in Parliament. Officers no longer went into society with uniform and sword. Bishops laid aside their wigs; dignified clergy discarded the cassock. Coloured coats, silk stockings, lace ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... his ambition,—and taunted with his lack of ambition. "I once thought," said Mr. Turnbull,—"nay, not long ago I thought, that he and I would have fought this battle for the people, shoulder to shoulder, and knee to knee;—but he has preferred that the knee next to his own shall wear a garter, and that the shoulder which supports him shall be decked with a blue ribbon,—as shoulders, I presume, are decked in those closet ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... wheel, the wood rotted away, and there in the tangle an ancient cistern mouth of brick, the cistern filled to the brim with alluring rubbish. My sister sprang with a gurgle of delight to catch a garter snake, which eluded her; and a last year's brier, tough and humorously inclined, seized upon Mary by the skirts and legs, so that it was a matter of five minutes and piercing screams of merriment to cast her loose again. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... containing several fine country seats, to Richmond, a smart, showy village ten miles above London, and a popular resort for holiday pleasure-seekers from the great city, whether by steamboat, railway, omnibus or private conveyance. Here is a fleet of rowboats kept for hire, while "the Star and Garter" inn has a wide reputation for dinners, and the scene from its second-story bow window is pronounced one of the finest in the kingdom. It certainly does not compare with that from the Catskill Mountain House and many others in our State, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... Tancred (1847), and in 1848 he wrote a life of Lord G. Bentinck, his predecessor in the leadership of the Protectionist party. His last novels were Lothair (1870), and Endymion (1880). He was raised to the peerage as Earl of Beaconsfield in 1876, and was a Knight of the Garter. In his later years he was the intimate friend as well as the trusted minister of Queen Victoria. The career of D. is one of the most remarkable in English history. With no family or political influence, and with some personal characteristics, and the ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... of gold. He knew the secrets of bugs and had a sort of freemasonry with bees and beetles. Una never liked to sit near him because she never knew what uncanny creature might be secreted about him. Jerry refused to sleep with him because Carl had once taken a young garter snake to bed with him; so Carl slept in his old cot, which was so short that he could never stretch out, and had strange bed-fellows. Perhaps it was just as well that Aunt Martha was half blind when she made that bed. Altogether they were a jolly, lovable ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... is to be hoped that Germany will give him his just reward, for no punishment could be more fitting. The rest of the world already knows his vacuity, his utter uselessness, his criminal decadence. As his father was stripped of the Garter, so is he here shown stripped of the attributes to which, in earlier days, he made false claim. There remains a foolish knave posturing—and that is the real Crown ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... selvagee. And what could be better adapted to the purpose? It is a slender, tapering, unstranded piece of rope prepared with much solicitude; peculiarly flexible; and wreathes and serpentines round the cable and messenger like an elegantly-modeled garter-snake round the twisted stalks of a vine. Indeed, Selvagee is the exact type and symbol of a tall, genteel, limber, spiralising exquisite. So much for the derivation of the name which the ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... several of the menial servants of the court lacking bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the king's coming in. He tells me that now the Countess Castlemaine do carry all before her. He did tell me of the ridiculous humour of our king and knights of the Garter the other day, who, whereas heretofore their robes were only to be worn during their ceremonies, these, as proud of their coats, did wear them all day till night, and then rode in the park with them ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... merry-go-rounds: there were performing monkeys and dancing bears, a woman so fat that three men with arms outstretched could not get round her, and a man so thin that he could put a lady's bracelet round his neck and her garter around ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... little silver key with a tiny bow of red, white, and blue ribbon on his coat no Knight of the Garter was ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard

... outskirts of one of the southern suburbs of London. A large number of people had collected there under the coarse and flaring gas-jets when the King arrived, perspiring and genial. On taking off his great-coat, he was perceived to be in evening dress, wearing the Garter. His appearance at the small table, adorned only with a glass of water, was ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... sister, but don't you tell—it's a blue garter. And my handkerchief is old and borrowed from my mother. It was her wedding handkerchief—so you see it's all right. I'm glad you wished me ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... clasps and ribbons, stars and garters, were good and proper ornaments for himself, for the chief officers of his distinguished army, and for gentlemen of high birth, who might naturally claim to wear a band of garter blue across their waistcoats; but that for common people your plain coat, without stars and ribbons, was the most ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... William Bruges, Garter King at Arms in the reign of Henry V. had a country-house, at which he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 546, May 12, 1832 • Various

... fine bed, whilst we gathered farther on. Hearing her talking very lovingly to something in the grass, which she tried to clutch between her white hands, calling it "Pitty, pitty;" I ran to the spot, and found that it was a large garter-snake that she was so affectionately courting to her embrace. Not then aware that this formidable-looking reptile was perfectly harmless, I snatched the child up in my arms, and ran with her home; never stopping until I gained the house, and saw her safely ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... and the four adjacent western counties, as a Lord Deputy represented her in Ireland. The official residence of the Lord President was at Ludlow Castle, to which Philip Sidney went with his family when a child of six. In the same year his father was installed as a Knight of the Garter. When in his tenth year Philip Sidney was sent from Ludlow to Shrewsbury Grammar School, where he studied for three or four years, and had among his schoolfellows Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, who remained until the ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... Eagle of Monthermer; the crests on either side of him are those of Montagu and Nevile. Besides these two crests, both of which the Marquis Montagu may have used, he certainly did use the Gryphon, issuant out of a ducal coronet, as this appears alone for his crest, on his garter plate, as a crest for Montagu, he having given the arms of that family precedence over his paternal coat of Nevile; the king-maker, likewise, upon his seal, gives the precedence to Montagu and Monthermer, and they alone ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the other boys in their ordinary diversions: his only amusement was in winter, when he took a pleasure in being drawn upon the ice by a boy barefooted, who pulled him along by a garter fixed round him; no very easy operation, as his size was remarkably large. His defective sight, indeed, prevented him from enjoying the common sports; and he once pleasantly remarked to me, 'how wonderfully well he had contrived to be idle without them.' Lord Chesterfield, however, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... have been told, with taste; well, I love my Shakespeare also, and am persuaded I can read him well, though I own I never have been told so. He made embroidery, designing his own patterns; and in that kind of work I never made anything but a kettle-holder in Berlin wool, and an odd garter of knitting, which was as black as the chimney before I had done with it. He loved port, and nuts, and porter; and so do I, but they agreed better with my grandfather, which seems to me a breach of contract. He had chalk-stones in his fingers; and these, in good time, I may possibly ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fiery face, She strove against him in the race; He unabashed her garter saw, That now would touch ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the cause of Nature in the matter of the cat, she had decorated him, not with a button or a garter—though neither would have been inappropriate—but with a ring bearing his initials gorgeously entwined. Then proud and happy was Morris Mogilewsky, and wild was the emulation of other members of the First Reader ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly

... green velvet cap, encircled by a crown in embroidery; his robe was of scarlet silk, and over it was thrown a mantle of dark green samite, thickly powdered with tiny embroidered white antelopes; the Garter was on his knee, the George on his neck. It was a kingly garb, and well became the tall slight person and fair noble features. During these tedious months he had looked wan, haggard, and careworn; but the lines of anxiety were all effaced, his lustrous blue ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... medallion. Throughout the palace we notice emblems appropriate to the Houses of Montefeltro and Della Rovere: their arms, three golden bends upon a field of azure: the Imperial eagle, granted when Montefeltro was made a fief of the Empire: the Garter of England, worn by the Dukes Federigo and Guidobaldo: the ermine of Naples: the ventosa, or cupping-glass, adopted for a private badge by Frederick: the golden oak-tree on an azure field of Della Rovere: the palm-tree, bent beneath a block of stone, with its accompanying ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... The nobles sprang on Cromwell with a fierceness that told of their long-hoarded hate. Taunts and execrations burst from the Lords at the council table as the Duke of Norfolk, who had been intrusted with the minister's arrest, tore the ensign of the garter from his neck. At the charge of treason Cromwell flung his cap on the ground with a passionate cry of despair. "This, then," he exclaimed, "is my guerdon for the services I have done! On your consciences, I ask you, am I a traitor?" Then, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various



Words linked to "Garter" :   common garter snake, garter stitch, fasten, secure, garter belt, band, garter snake



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