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Hawk   Listen
noun
Hawk  n.  (Zool.) One of numerous species and genera of rapacious birds of the family Falconidae. They differ from the true falcons in lacking the prominent tooth and notch of the bill, and in having shorter and less pointed wings. Many are of large size and grade into the eagles. Some, as the goshawk, were formerly trained like falcons. In a more general sense the word is not infrequently applied, also, to true falcons, as the sparrow hawk, pigeon hawk, duck hawk, and prairie hawk. Note: Among the common American species are the red-tailed hawk (Buteo borealis); the red-shouldered (Buteo lineatus); the broad-winged (Buteo Pennsylvanicus); the rough-legged (Archibuteo lagopus); the sharp-shinned (Accipiter fuscus). See Fishhawk, Goshawk, Marsh hawk, under Marsh, Night hawk, under Night.
Bee hawk (Zool.), the honey buzzard.
Eagle hawk. See under Eagle.
Hawk eagle (Zool.), an Asiatic bird of the genus Spizaetus, or Limnaetus, intermediate between the hawks and eagles. There are several species.
Hawk fly (Zool.), a voracious fly of the family Asilidae. See Hornet fly, under Hornet.
Hawk moth. (Zool.) See Hawk moth, in the Vocabulary.
Hawk owl. (Zool.)
(a)
A northern owl (Surnia ulula) of Europe and America. It flies by day, and in some respects resembles the hawks.
(b)
An owl of India (Ninox scutellatus).
Hawk's bill (Horology), the pawl for the rack, in the striking mechanism of a clock.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hawk" Quotes from Famous Books



... I know!" said the clerk with a chuckle; "because I've been caught before. That means that he'll be sure to look in before very long to see whether we are busy. You'd better read hard, sir, and don't look up when he comes. Pst! 'ware hawk!" ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... such to their lot to know that thousands of the liveliest and merriest of God's creatures can not see an inch before them. Small birds and insects, which feed on very minute insects, need eyes like microscopes to find them; while the eagle and the fish hawk, which soar up till they are almost out of sight, can distinctly see the hare or the herring a mile below them, and so must have eyes like telescopes. We, too, need to observe minute objects very closely, as when we read fine print, or when a lady threads a fine ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... with a sea-hawk scream, and a gibe, and a song, Cries: "So; I will spare ye the child if, in sight of ye all, Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall fall, And ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... hab to keep us in de house 'cause de bald eagle pick up chillen jus' like de hawk pick up chicken. Dey was lots of catamoun' and bears and deer in de woods. Us never 'llowed play 'lone in ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... fruitless effort, drew back, but before she could think what he was about he had leaned forward again, flashed out his cane, and with three quick, cutting slashes the lilies were mown. It was deftly, delicately, astonishingly done, but it gave her a singular shock, as if she had seen a hawk strike its prey. He drew them cleverly toward him in the crook of his cane, took them up daintily in his fingers, and returned to her across the shallow valley. She ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... trade who served the food administration during the period of the World War were George E. Lichty, president of the Black Hawk Coffee & Spice Co., Waterloo, Iowa; and Theodore F. Whitmarsh, vice-president and treasurer of Francis H. Leggett & ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... the necessity of haggling for its price in the market-place. The physician must sell his healing and the apostle his preaching like the rest. The prophet, who had guessed the meaning of God, must dicker for the price of the revelation, and the poet hawk his visions in printers' row. If I were asked to name the most distinguishing felicity of this age, as compared to that in which I first saw the light, I should say that to me it seems to consist in the dignity you ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... distinguished among them a lady of graceful mien, on a pure white palfrey or hackney caparisoned with green trappings and a silver-mounted side-saddle. The lady was also in green, and so richly and splendidly dressed that splendour itself seemed personified in her. On her left hand she bore a hawk, a proof to Don Quixote's mind that she must be some great lady and the mistress of the whole hunting party, which was the fact; so he said to Sancho, "Run Sancho, my son, and say to that lady on the palfrey with the hawk that ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... "always peopled with a great multitude of"—no, not "vanities," certainly not! but loitering hansoms, and cabby's sharp eye is quick to spot a person hesitating where to go (and able to pay for a ride), as the trained rapacious eye of the hawk is to spy out a wounded or sickly bird. Then the swift wheels would be drawn up in tempting proximity to the kerb, and after a moment's hesitation Fan would say "Dawson Place," and step inside, and in less than twenty minutes she would ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... you did on the seventh of December, three days ago. I was speaking to you of the flight of the hawk, and of the knowledge of hunting, in which you are deficient. I said to you, on the authority of La Chasse Royale, a work of King Charles IX, that after the hunter has accustomed his dog to follow a beast, he must consider him as of himself desirous of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... sounded near the Exit Dome. Sarka raced to give the "Enter" Signal—and Dalis, he of the hawk-eyes, the sharp nose and sharper tongue, entered the presence of the man who, in a twinkling, had made himself master ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... was seated, deep in study of a huge leather-bound volume. He was strangely gaunt, and apparently very tall. His clean-shaven face resembled that of Anubis, the hawk-headed god of Ancient Egypt, and his hair, which was growing white, he wore long and brushed back from his bony brow. His skin was of a dull, even yellow color, and his long thin brown hands betrayed to me the fact that ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... had taken an active part in the revolutionary movement of 1848. Heavily compromised, he managed to make his escape, and at first found a refuge with a poor republican watchmaker in Trieste. From there he made his way to Tripoli with a stock of cheap watches to hawk about,—not a very great opening truly, but it turned out lucky enough, because it was there he came upon a Dutch traveller—a rather famous man, I believe, but I don't remember his name. It was that naturalist who, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... are as nasty as they come. There is a fire on board, and the people are rescued by the MARY, Captain Dean, who is a very different kind of man than the despicable Captain Swales. At Quebec Peter joins the FOAM, Captain Hawk. There then follows a series of events, some good, and ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... had not been scared; Ali Baba and his automatic pistol were only part of this unreality; his appearance on the scene had been fantastically classical; he entered when his cue was given by Scheherazade—this oily, hawk-nosed Eurasian with his pale eyes set too closely and his moustache hiding under his nose a la Enver Pasha—a faultless make-up, an entry properly timed and prepared. And then, always well-timed for dramatic effect, Golden ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... we quickly had a fire kindled, and the fish we had so unexpectedly obtained roasting before it. It was none the worse for having been in the claws of the hawk. ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... back in the saddle—his horse made a wild career before he could recover, gather up the reins, and return to the conflict. They now encountered each other with swords. The Moor circled round his opponent as hawk circles whereabout to make a swoop; his Arabian steed obeyed his rider with matchless quickness; at every attack of the infidel it seemed as if the Christian knight must sink beneath his flashing cimeter. But if Garcilasso were inferior ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... Bible is distinctly a simian's devil. The snake, it is known, is the animal monkeys most dread. Hence when men give their devil a definite form they make him a snake. A race of super-chickens would have pictured their devil a hawk. ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... a hawk attacking a heron, the Heathen renewed the charge, and a second time was fain to retreat without coming to a close struggle. A third time he approached in the same manner, when the Christian knight, desirous to terminate this illusory warfare, in which he might at length ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... was a bat, for I've always been fond of bats, they are such soft, grey, velvet things; and I should have liked to tell him that he was much more like a chicken hawk, only that would have been vulgar; and, besides, I didn't intend to pose as chicken to his hawk. By way of not letting myself be gobbled up, I remained silent; but I couldn't help starting when a voice behind me exclaimed: "Ah, there, my chappie. You're welcome to the milk. I've skimmed off ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... pole-axe won't strike ox, ox won't drink water, water won't quench fire, fire won't burn Tartars, Tartars won't slay people, people won't kill wolf, wolf won't eat goat, goat won't nibble bush, bush won't give little sparrow a swing."—"I won't!" said the hen, "but go to the sparrow-hawk, he ought to give the first push, or why is he called the Pusher!"[14]—So the sparrow went to the sparrow-hawk and said, "Come, pusher, seize hen, hen won't peck worms, worms won't gnaw pole-axe, pole-axe won't strike ox, ox won't drink water, water won't quench fire, fire won't ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... herself up to rest; she was so secure now, with the affable Mr. Schwirtz to guard her against outsiders—more secure and satisfied, she reflected, than she could ever have been with Walter Babson.... A hawk soared above her, a perfect thing of sun-brightened grace, the grasses smelled warm and pleasant, and under her beat the happy heart ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... business house to another, or talked in groups, under the tamarind trees, of the great interests which brought them to the Indies. Upon the inherent characteristics which their faces expressed were superimposed the different seals of those acquired,—shrewdness, suspicion, a hawk-like alertness, the greed of acquisition. Alexander, with something like terror of the future, reflected that there was not one of these men he cared to know. He knew there were far greater cities than the busy little entrepot of the West ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... never had any trouble with Deveny or Rogers, or any of the rest of them, because I've always tended to my own business. I've seen the thing gettin' worse an' worse, though; an' I ought to have got out of there when I had a chance. Lately there ain't been no chance. They watch me like a hawk. I can't trust my men. The Rancho Seco is a mighty big place, an' I've got thirty men workin' for me. But I can't trust a damned ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... soon after we left land. [Footnote: This circumstance actually occurred to the passengers on board the Argyle steam-boat, in the autumn of the year 1814.]—A poor little lark was pursued, at no great distance from our vessel, by a merciless hawk; the little creature continued, for some time, with surprising dexterity, to elude the grasp of its intended destroyer. At length, quite exhausted by its efforts, it alighted on our boat. I incautiously ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux

... of hares, looking somewhat ashamed of themselves, sprang into upright positions, and with frightened whisks of their tails disappeared into a clump of ferns. With a startled hiss a big snake drew back under cover of a boulder, and a hawk, balked of its prey by the sudden brilliant metamorphosis, uttered an indignant croak. But none of these protests against the moon's innocent behaviour were heeded by Paul Nicholas, whose whole attention was riveted on a large sombre building standing close by the side of the road. At ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... and went after him to the side of a river. Gwion on this jumped into the river and transformed himself into a fish. She also transformed herself into an otter-bitch, and chased him under the water until he was fain to turn himself into a bird of the air; she, as a hawk, followed him, and gave him no rest in the sky. And just as she was about to swoop upon him, and he was in fear of death, he espied a heap of winnowed wheat on the floor of a barn, and he dropped ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... Mr W——, who had an eye like a hawk, when he cast his eyes aloft, observed that the bunt of the maintopsail was not exactly so well stowed as it ought to be on board of a man-of-war; which is not to be wondered at, when it is recollected that the midshipmen had been very ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... of Carabineers, a man with shrunken cheeks and the eyes of a hawk, dressed in his little brief authority, strode with a lofty look through the spectators to telegraph ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... many. But it is hard to fight the hawk. One by one they blew up our ships. Then, carrying Maya and a few other prisoners with them, they flew out to sea like a flight of evil birds—no, not birds, for not even the hawk is evil. What was the word that you used for the leather-winged, toothy things that ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... identity, to render him among his own kindred and people perhaps tabooed, ostracised, despised—perhaps an object of pity. If he should succeed? Surely he had not come thus near success to suffer his splendid Yankee captain to be brained there before his eyes. Like a hawk he had watched every incident of the fight, and was on the alert to act the part of surgeon toward any who might be either wounded in the battery or taken prisoner. He had even resolved, in case of the capture of the place, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... like a circular shield.... The river gleams like a snake.... The friend is awake, the enemy sleeps— The hawk seizes the ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... difficulty lies in judicious choice, for the wires soon begin to diverge up numerous byways. Some go to the fire-trench, others to the machine-guns, others again to observation posts—or O.P.'s—whence a hawk-eyed Forward Observing Officer, peering all day through a chink in a tumble-down chimney or sandbagged loophole, is sometimes enabled to flash back the intelligence that he can discern transport upon such a road in rear of the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... Into the bosom of the angel Death. And there are some whose tender feet are pierced Evermore deeper by the rugged path, Whose softness and whose beauty nigh invite The cruel spoiler to his unarmed prey, As the swift hawk high poized in the sky, Swoops when the dove floats past on ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... instinct of self-preservation," said the eminent counsel, "which bids the dove to fly from the hawk, and the rabbit to evade the pursuing hounds, could have induced that delicate, shrinking lady to lay bare the horrors of her prison house to the world, and to ask, in the name of common humanity, a release from the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... lived on a neighboring plantation. We went to see her every Saturday. Ma would always take us to see her, and if we didn't git to go, she come to see us. We liked to go, and Marse always give us a pass. De patrollers watch us like a hawk, but we had our passes and we told dem if dey bothered us our marster would handle 'em. He would, too, 'cause dat was 'de law'. Granny Fender was good looking. She wore purty beads, earrings and bracelets, and wrapped her head up in a red cloth. Her eyes and teeth ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... of the time comically corrupted—handsaw for hernshaw—a heron, the quarry of the hawk. He denies his madness as madmen do—and in terms themselves not unbefitting madness—so making it seem the more genuine. Yet every now and then, urged by the commotion of his being, he treads perilously on the border ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald

... rushing along toward her consort, Jim blew his steam- whistle three times to attract her attention, and he was only just in the nick of time, for the Peruvian would have been in front of the Cochrane's launch in another half-minute. But like a hawk upon its prey the Cochrane's boat dashed forward, her commander determining to hazard all in one stroke, instead of using his guns. He aimed straight for a point which the torpedo-boat must pass in a few seconds, and went ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood

... some sort of spirits—probably spirits of wine; for what they call brandy, rum, &c. &c. here is nothing but spirits of wine, coloured accordingly. Did not eat two apples, which were placed by way of dessert. Fed the two cats, the hawk, and the tame (but not tamed) crow. Read Mitford's History of Greece—Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Up to this present moment writing, 6 minutes before eight o' the clock—French ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... sleeping dragons all around, At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears— Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.— In all the house was heard no human sound. A chain-droop'd lamp was flickering by each door; The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound, Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar; And the long carpets rose ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... his hawk, and his dogs are enjoying the great wood fire. His saddle is thrown on the floor; his hat and his pipes lie near it; his sword and his cross-bows are stood up, or thrown down, anywhere at all, and standing by his great chair is something which looks ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... roof, Te Deum spired between the rifts; an Archbishop intoned the Mass of the Holy Ghost. Cesare, in white satin, golden-headed, red-gold in the beard, cloaked and collared with the Golden Fleece, knelt in the middle of the dome; beside him the hawk-faced Amilcare, splendid in silver armour, knelt also—but stiffly; whereas the Borgia (graceful in all that he did) drooped easily forward on his prie-dieu, like the Archangel Gabriel who brought the great tidings to Madonna Maria. Amilcare, at that rate, was like Michael, his more ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... valley he came to a hermit's cell, and the hermit welcomed him gladly, and there he spent the night. And in the morning he arose, and when he went forth, behold a shower of snow had fallen the night before, and a hawk had killed a wild fowl in front of the cell. And the noise of the horse scared the hawk away, and a raven alighted upon the bird. And Peredur stood, and compared the blackness of the raven, and whiteness of the snow, and the redness of the blood, to the hair of the ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards

... poised hawk, quivering ere he smote, With plume-like gems on breast and back; The asps and water-worms afloat Between the rush-flowers moist and slack; The cat's warm ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Lester Hawk & Son of Beach City, concurred in Mr. Cranz's opinion on this matter, and cited as an example the 2 Hobson Chinese chestnuts which they planted on their property in 1917. These two trees have been bearing crops of well-formed tasty nuts for a period of 20 years. Mr. Hawk reports that ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various

... and curio shops and pagodas and all, the constant stream of umbrella-bearing passers-by and the fact that nearly all the old men held birds in their hands tied on to sticks, looking just like those wooden monkeys which pedlars hawk about at home for the delectation ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson

... 'I was looking for something bright, when I came upon this poor little white dove. A cruel hawk had wounded it, and I caught it quickly, and ran here. Oh! I ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... verse of this Rudolph. He is described as meeting a priest carrying the Host, on the bank of a foaming mountain torrent somewhere among the Alps where the ruins of the Habsburg still show against the sky like an abandoned hawk's nest; the name probably derives from Habichts Burg, Hawk's Castle. Rudolph dismounted, placed the priest on his horse and humbly, cap in hand, led it across the stream. Years after this picturesque event the priest, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... Majesty—"What's this? what's this? Something on the other side, in a different man's handwriting, and mighty difficult to read, in my opinion. Stubbard, did you ever see such a scrawl? Make it out for me. You have good eyes, like a hawk, or the man who saw through a milestone. Scudamore, what was ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... to death in my presence," I replied; for the words awoke memories of one of Dr. Fu-Manchu's most ghastly crimes, always associated in my mind with the cry of a night-hawk. ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... Sir John Hawkins, and distinguished himself with signal success by his valour and daring against the pride of Spain, towards which, as the great Catholic persecuting power, he had been taught to cherish an invincible hatred; came swoop down like a hawk on its ports across seas, and bore himself out of them laden with spoil; in 1577 sailed for America with five ships, passed through the Strait of Magellan, the first Englishman to do it; plundered the W. coast as far as Peru; lost all his ships save one; crossed the Pacific, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... from the number of hawks which were seen on these islands when first discovered, Acor signifying a hawk in the Portuguese language; hence Acores or Acoras, pronounced Azores, signifies the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... not a parrot, it is a white cockatoo, that the chief of (something unutterable) brought down on his wrist like a hawk to the mission-ship; and that mamma sent as a present ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... breeds outward talk, The Hound some praise, and some the Hawk, Some better pleas'd with private sport, Use Tenis, some a Mistris court: But these delights I neither wish, Nor envy, ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton

... do so. The panther will not feed the young of the deer, nor will the hawk sit upon the eggs of the dove. It is life, it is order, it is nature. Each has his own to provide for and no more. Indian corn is good; tobacco is good, it gladdens the heart of the old men when they ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... dark hair which added to the distinction of his finely cut, rather ascetic face. The short, well-trimmed beard was very becoming, Halcyone thought, and gave him a look of great masculinity and strength. His hawk's eyes were shadowed, as though he sat up very late at night; which indeed he did. For John Derringham, at this period of his life, burnt the candle at both ends and in the middle, too, if it could add to the pleasure ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... hawk, the aeroplane, its propeller flashing in the sunlight, hung over Lost Island. For fully six seconds it remained there, not moving an inch. Suddenly it lurched, dropped half the distance to the trees, the yellow ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart

... There came a knock at the door, and she got up, not a little wondering, for the nearest neighbours were in the dun of the High- King a mile away; and the night was now late. 'Who is knocking?' she cried, and a thin voice answered, 'Open! for I am a crone of the grey hawk, and I come from the darkness of the great wood.' In terror she drew back the bolt, and a grey-clad woman, of a great age, and of a height more than human, came in and stood by the head of the cradle. The nurse shrank back against the wall, unable to take her ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats

... ingredients enter into its composition, in most places where the dragon occurs the substratum of its anatomy consists of a serpent or a crocodile, usually with the scales of a fish for covering, and the feet and wings, and sometimes also the head, of an eagle, falcon, or hawk, and the forelimbs and sometimes the head of a lion. An association of anatomical features of so unnatural and arbitrary a nature can only mean that all dragons are the progeny of the same ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... father's estate and who had also made some alterations at the Little Place in the Country for Edestone himself. He was a tall, lank young man of about twenty-seven, with little rat-like eyes, placed so close to his hawk-like nose that one felt Nature would have been kinder to him had she given him only one eye and frankly placed it in the middle of his receding forehead. His small blonde moustache did not cover his rabbit mouth, which was so filled with teeth that he ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... the hawk squats center stage with a short twig in his hand. The largest girl lines up the ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes

... mad for rations! There's no feigning there, Poppins. The world is doing that. But, Poppins, Hamlet feigned; and so do I. Let the wind blow as it may, I know a hawk from a handsaw. Therefore you ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... small shrill voice distinctly: "Note now, sweethearts, how high we pass over the wind-vexed heath, where the gallows' burden creaks and groans swaying to and fro in the night! Now the rain breaks loose as a hawk from the fowler, and grave Queen Holda draws her tresses over the moon's bright shield. Now the bed is made, and the water drawn, and we the bride's maids seek for the lass who will be ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... called, I think, "Maccoulough's Course of Reading," contained a few natural-history sketches that excited me very much and left a deep impression, especially a fine description of the fish hawk and the bald eagle by the Scotch ornithologist Wilson, who had the good fortune to wander for years in the American woods while the country was yet mostly wild. I read his description over and over again, till I got the vivid picture ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... A hawk, looking down, saw the mouse and swooped down upon it. Since the frog was fastened to the mouse, he too was carried off, and both ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry

... had an opportunity of being useful to his fellow-men, though in a way very different from the one he was seeking. About four weeks after he had published his letter "To the People of Sangamon County," news came that Black Hawk, the veteran war-chief of the Sac Indians, was heading an expedition to cross the Mississippi River and occupy once more the lands that had been the home of his people. There was great excitement among the settlers in Northern Illinois, and the ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay

... saw the sun go down behind a yellow gullied hill. From afar up and down the valley came the lonesome "pig-oo-ee!" of the farmers, calling their hogs for the evening's feed. We heard the flutter of the chickens, flying to roost, and the night hawk heard them, too, for his eager, hungry scream pierced the still air. On a smooth old rock at the verge of the ravine the girl's brother stood, arms folded, looking out over the darkening low land, and from within the ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... large woman close on sixty, with an eagle eye and a hawk's nose. As Monica leaves her she continues her gossip with the half dozen young men round her, who are all laughing at some joke. Presently she herself is laughing louder than any of them (being partial to boys and their "fun," as she calls it). Bestowing now a smart blow ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... it rewardeth her with boldness of heart. And two kinds there be of such fowls, for some are tame and some are wild. And she that is tame taketh wild fowls and taketh them to her own lord, and she that is wild taketh tame fowls. And this hawk is of a disdainful kind. For if she fail by any hap of the prey that she reseth to, that day unneth she cometh unto her lord's hand. And she must have ordinate diet, nother too scarce, ne too full. For by too much meat she waxeth ramaious or slow, and disdaineth to come to ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... communication told her the lines in the web were once more free, Eliza would sally forth again with a smiling face—oh yes, I assure you, we could tell by her look when she was smiling—and would repair afresh with cheerful alacrity the damage done to her snare by the unwelcome visitor. Hummingbird hawk-moths, on the other hand, though so big and quick, she would kill immediately. As for Lucy, craven soul, she had so little sense of proper pride and arachnid honour, that she shrank even from the wasps which Eliza so bravely ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... towering sport of falconry. When not engaged in warfare, his delight was to beat up the neighboring forests; and scarcely ever did he ride forth, without hound and horn, a boar-spear in his hand, or a hawk upon his fist, and ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... still in the sunshine. Nothing stirred save gold leaves drifting down, and a hawk high in the deep blue sky ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... tremendous slaughter of the innocents going on all around us. In severe winters a few birds are found dead, and a few feathers or mangled remains show us where a wood-pigeon or some other bird has been destroyed by a hawk, but no one would imagine that five times as many birds as the total number in the country in early spring die every year. No doubt a considerable proportion of these do not die here but during or after migration to other countries, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... past silently to the tent entrance where the Tuareg guard noticed she paused for a long moment before entering. He grinned into his teguelmoust. Aiii, the little bird was timid before the hawk. ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... the inventor vouchsafed even a smile. The Billionaire drew near, adjusted a pair of pince-nez on his hawk-like nose, and peered curiously at the apparatus. Herzog, with a quick gesture, turned a ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... this the easiest way of getting rid of them. Bonnet took these men on board with the avowed intention of taking them to St. Thomas, and then he set sail upon the high seas as free and untrammelled as a fish-hawk sweeping over the surface of a harbour with clearance ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... The hawk whoops on high, and keen, keen from yon' cliff, Lo! the eagle on watch eyes the stag cold and stiff; The deer-hound, majestic, looks lofty around, While he lists with delight to the harp's distant sound; ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... garden tends so faithfully. All the grasses of the meadow were my pets, I loved them all; and perhaps that was why I never had a 'pet,' never cultivated a flower, never kept a caged bird, or any creature. Why keep pets when every wild free hawk that passed overhead in the air was mine? I joyed in his swift, careless flight, in the throw of his pinions, in his rush over the elms and miles of woodland; it was happiness to see his unchecked life. What more beautiful than the sweep and curve of his going through ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... French, "Faucon cresserelle."—The Kestrel is by far the commonest hawk in the Islands, and is resident throughout the year. I do not think that its numbers are at all increased during the migratory season. It breeds in the rocky parts of all the Islands. The Kestrel does not, however, show itself so frequently in the low parts—even ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith

... should go stark, staring mad if he kept me shut up in a house doing nothing. He said knitting was a very good preventive to madness, and he'd send his wife along. She was a great missionary worker, and she pounced on me like a hawk, and started me off knitting socks for little gutta-percha babies somewhere in the Antipodes, almost before I knew where I was. Such insanity!... as if white babies wanted to be bothered with socks, much less black ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... has got neither blood nor position. People of standing should consume their independent nonsense at home, not hawk it about. And you! who are going to marry your niece, as good as your daughter, to one of our best men. Sir James would be cruelly annoyed: it will be too hard on him if you turn round now and make yourself ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... matter with my pretty birds?" asked Trueey of herself. "Something wrong surely! I see no hawk. Perhaps they are fighting among themselves. I shall go round and see. I shall soon ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... felicitas[Lat], qualification, habilitation. proficient &c. 700. masterpiece, coup de maitre[Fr], chef d'euvre[Fr], tour de force; good stroke &c. (plan) 626. V. be skillful &c. adj.; excel in, be master of; have a turn for &c. n. know what's what, know a hawk from a handsaw, know what one is about, know on which side one's bread is buttered, know what's o'clock; have cut one's eye teeth, have cut one's wisdom teeth. see one's way, see where the wind lies, see which way the wind blows; have all one's wits about one, have one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... wonder that my moral digestion rebels outright. I shall not dispute the fact that in justice to your precepts and example I ought to be a Christian; but, since I am not, I may as well tell you at once and save future trouble, that I can neither be baited into the church like a hawk into a steel-trap, nor scared and driven into it like bees into a hive by the rattling of tin pans and the screaking of horns. Don't look at me so dolefully, dear Miss Jane, as if you had already seen my passport to perdition signed and sealed. You, at least, have done your ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... was a wonderful sight to see this sentimental blackleg, with a pack of cards in his pocket and a revolver at his back, sending his voice before him through the dim woods with a plaint about his "Nelly's grave," in a way that overflowed the eyes of the listener. A sparrow-hawk, fresh from his sixth victim, possibly recognizing in Mr. Hamlin a kindred spirit, stared at him in surprise, and was fain to confess the superiority of man. With a superior ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... room without replying. The strain of poetry underlying the character of this strange, inscrutable man, his amazing love of Nature, his moments of almost womanish weakness and sentiment, astonished and mystified him. It was as if a hawk had acquired the utterly useless trick of fluting like a nightingale, and being himself wholly without imagination, he could not comprehend it in the ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... to the amateur what the hawk is to the dove, let us go further, and in a spirit of love, like Mr. Chadband, inquire what is the effect of specialism on the mind of the specialist. I have had the opportunity of meeting many specialists, and I say unhesitatingly that the effect largely depends upon the natural temperament ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... bantling on the rocks, Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat, Wintered with the hawk and fox. Power and speed ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... eldest son of Cetanwakuwa (Charging Hawk). It was on account of his father's name, mistranslated Crow, that he was called by the whites "Little Crow." His real name was Taoyateduta, ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... man who was as loyal to Bruce as Toy would have told him immediately of Smaltz's mysterious midnight visit to the storehouse, but that was not the yellow man's way. Instead he watched Smaltz like a hawk, eying him furtively, appearing unexpectedly at his elbow while he worked. From that night on, instead of one shadow ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... the knees, some up to the girdle, and others as high as the chin, according as they were more or less affected. An inmate of this establishment, who happened, for the time to be pretty well recovered, was standing at the door of the house, and seeing a gallant cavalier ride past with a hawk on his fist, and his spaniels after him, asked, "What all these preparations meant?" The cavalier answered, "To kill game." "What may the game be worth which you kill in the course of a year?" rejoined the patient. "About five or ten crowns." "And what may your horse, dogs, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... place to thee in royal court, High place in battled line, Good hawk and hound for sylvan sport! Where beauty sees the brave resort, The honored meed be thine! True be thy sword, thy friend sincere, Thy lady constant, kind, and dear, And lost in love's and friendship's smile Be memory of ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... see him safe home,' for the mob was highly excited and brutal. Bishop Stanley marched along ten yards, then turned sharp round and fixed his eagle eyes on the mob, and then marched ten yards more and turned round again rapidly and gave the same hawk-like look." ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... be voluminous, like the tail of the peacock, long, reaching to her knees, and terminating in graceful curls; her eyebrows should resemble the rainbow, her eyes, the blue sapphire and the petals of the blue manilla-flower. Her nose should be like the bill of the hawk; her lips should be bright and red, like coral or the young leaf of the iron-tree. Her teeth should be small, regular, and closely set, and like jessamine buds. Her neck should be large and round, resembling the berrigodea. Her chest should be capacious; her breasts, firm and conical, like the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... from the admixture of superstition and vanity, but the element of expediency predominates in them. It is reported of the natives of New South Wales that a man will lie on a rock with a piece of fish in his hand, feigning sleep. A hawk or crow darts at the fish, but is caught by the man. It is also reported of Australians that a man swims under water, breathing through a reed, approaches ducks, pulls one under water by the legs, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... hurt the husbandman, That use to till the ground, Nor spill their blood that range the wood To follow hawk and hound, ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... and danced a waltz with Miss Ross, and they made a handsome couple. The "hired man" was as well dressed as any gentleman in the room, and I have never seen a more graceful dancer than that tall, young Scotchman. LaHume watched him like a hawk. When Wallace claimed Miss Lawrence for a schottische the glum LaHume stood by the door and looked as if he would rather fight than dance. Chilvers told him he was making an ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... the hawk, having soared with a lofty flight to a height which the eye could not reach, he was wont to swoop upon his quarry with wonderful rapidity. BOSWELL. These two quotations are part of the same paragraph, and are not even separated by a word. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... always taken Mrs. Carlyle's part. "Think of a handsome, brilliant little creature like Jane Welsh," she would say indignantly, "thrown away on a learned, heavy peasant, as rugged and ungainly as that 'Hill of the Hawk,' that Craigen-puttoch, where he buried her alive. Oh, no wonder she became a neurotic invalid, shut up from week's end to week's end with a dyspeptic, irritable scholar in an old dressing-gown." Indeed, it must be owned, in spite ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... intermittently of course, he had been interested in hawks. As a boy he had dreamed of training hawks, and remembered one taken by him from the nest, or maybe a gamekeeper had brought it to him, it was long ago; but the bird itself was remembered very well, a large, grey hawk—a goshawk he believed it to be, though the bird is rare in England. As he lay, seeking sleep, he could see himself a boy again, going into a certain room to feed his hawk. It was getting very tame, ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... and yellow arrows, he told the boy, were to be used only whenever there was any extra good shooting to be done, so the boy never used these three until he became a master of the art. Then he would practice on eagles and hawks, and never an eagle or hawk continued his flight when the boy shot one of ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin

... of laws, Yet stirring blood in Freedom's cause— A spirit to his rocks akin, 15 The eye of the hawk, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Bigot, with his candle, book and bell, Tongue-tied, unlunged and paralyzed as well? The Critic righteously to justice haled, His own ear to the post securely nailed— What most he dreads unable to inflict, And powerless to hawk the faults he's picked? The liar choked upon his choicest lie, And impotent alike to villify Or flatter for the gold of thrifty men Who hate his person but employ his pen— Who love and loathe, respectively, the dirt Belonging ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... your arms tingled as far as the broad blades of your oars,—oars of spruce, balanced, leathered, and ringed under your own special direction. This, in sober earnest, is the nearest approach to flying that man has ever made or perhaps ever will make. As the hawk sails without flapping his pinions, so you drift with the tide when you will, in the most luxurious form of locomotion indulged to an embodied spirit. But if your blood wants rousing, turn round that stake in the river, which you see a mile from here; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... monastic system of Europe arose—that system which presents us with learning in the place of ferocious ignorance, with overflowing charity to mankind in the place of malignant hatred of society. The portly abbot on his easy going palfrey, his hawk upon his fist, scarce looks like the lineal descendant of the hermit starved into insanity. How wide the interval between the monk of the third and the monk of the thirteenth century—between the caverns of Thebais and majestic monasteries cherishing the ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... developed, the mother shows her young what things are good for it, and teaches it the terror necessary. The little bird or beast must squat and be still, must stay in the cave or lie hid in the grass; lest the fox, hawk, lion, or whatever enemy is to be dreaded should pounce upon it. And this pre-human method of culture has come down to its through long lines of savages with their real and fancied bugaboos to terrorize the young; through ancient and modern races; through the warrior ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... seized his bridle, drove both spurs into his horse, and plunged ahead, dropping pipe and flask in the road unheeded. At the same time a hoarse shout came quavering across the fields, a shout as harsh and sinister as the menacing cry of a hawk; but he dashed on, raising a whirlwind of red dust. Now he could see them plainly enough, their slim boots, their yellow facings and reverses, the shiny little helmets with the square tops like inverted goblets, ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers



Words linked to "Hawk" :   Buteo lineatus, hawk's-beards, deal, hen hawk, harrier, buzzard, cough, swallow-tailed hawk, warmonger, clear the throat, Buteo buteo, eyas, tercel, ball hawk, war hawk, Pernis apivorus, track down, harrier eagle, sell, skeeter hawk, hawking, dove, Accipiter gentilis, hunt down, tiercel, roughleg, red-shouldered hawk, militarist, pitch, raptorial bird, hawker, short-toed eagle, mosquito hawk, blue darter, red-tailed hawk, Accipitridae, fish hawk, run, hawk owl, osprey, sparrow hawk, trade, Cooper's hawk, Pandion haliaetus, mortarboard, peddle, board, chicken hawk, Accipiter cooperii, vend, Buteo lagopus, redtail, buteonine, monger



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