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Hoot   Listen
noun
Hoot  n.  
1.
A derisive cry or shout.
2.
The cry of an owl.
3.
A very funny event, person, or experience; as, watching Jack try to catch that greased pig was a hoot.
Hoot owl (Zool.), the barred owl (Syrnium nebulosum). See Barred owl.
not give a hoot not care at all.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hoot" Quotes from Famous Books



... music. I've been practising it on the piano, and it is different to have to work the pedals of this thing and keep time with singers, half of whom want to go it alone because they have been practising in the woods with the hoot-owls." ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... town. By the manner with which the whole population boiled out, like crazy persons, to hoot and yell and shake fists and clubs, he had a hard row to hoe, yet. Beyond doubt, he would be burned alive. ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... Presently the hoot of the whistle came ringing up the pass, wheels screamed discordantly, and the pines below flitted towards them a trifle more slowly. Then, as they swung rocking round the face of a crag and a cluster of wooden buildings rose to view, Deringham ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... with a hey, with a hey. With not guilties good plenty, with a ho, And hoot them hence away To Cologn or Breda, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... was safe from invasion by man or beast, and enjoyed the well-earned repose with a full feeling of security. The owl softly winnowed the air with his feathery pinions as he searched for his prey along the beach, sending forth an occasional to-hoot! as he rested for a moment on the leafless branches of an old tree, reminding me to take a peep at the night, and to inquire "what ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... hymn, the same invisible orchestra, played on——"Hoo-ooh-hoo!" At times the wind bellowed out in its deep noise, with a tremolo of rage; and again repeated its threats, as if with refined cruelty, in low sustained tones, flute-like as the hoot ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... was a silence in which one could hear a pin drop, split once by the single hoot of a distant steamer on the Thames. Then Dr. Bull rose slowly, still smiling, and took off ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... and the bright moonlight flooding a field of young cotton on the other. Now they heard the distant baying of house-dogs, now the doleful call of the chuck-will's-widow, and once Mary's blood turned, for an instant, almost to ice at the unearthly shriek of the hoot owl just above her head. At length they found themselves in a dim, narrow road, and ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... thyme and balm, lavender and myrtle, were always in that parlour. You know the sheep-fold and the paddock, the old tree over the west gable where the owl made his nest—the owl that used to come and sit on our school-room windowsill and hoot at night. You know, the sun-dial where the screaming peacock used to perch and spread his tail; the dove-cote, where the silver-necks and fan-tails used to coo and ruffle their feathers. You know, too, all the quaint plannings and accidents ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland

... Charity seated herself near it, her idle hands on her knee. The evening was cool and still. Beyond the black hills an amber west passed into pale green, and then to a deep blue in which a great star hung. The soft hoot of a little owl came through the dusk, and between its calls the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... trunkful of photographer's supplies, with a suit-case and a leather bag at his back. It was the evening of June twenty-seventh, 1896. All about the lonely station the trees crowded down to the right of way, and rustled in a gentle evening breeze. Somewhere off in the wood, his ear discerned the faint hoot of an owl. Across the track in a pool under the shadow of the semaphore, he heard the full orchestra of the frogs, and saw reflected in the water the last exquisite glories of expiring day lamped by one bright ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... to fall, sent on one of his followers at full speed toward the island. Harold wondered at the time what his object could be as the Indian darted off across the ice, but now he understood. Every minute or two the low hoot of an owl was heard, and toward this sound the party directed their way through ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty

... season, and the "large few stars" beamed mildly down. We floated out into that spectral shadow-land and moved slowly on as before. The silence was most impressive. Now and then the faint yeap of some traveling bird would come from the air overhead, or the wings of a bat whisp quickly by, or an owl hoot off in the mountains, giving to the silence and loneliness a tongue. At short intervals some noise in-shore would startle me, and cause me to turn inquiringly to the silent figure ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... with a hoot of derision, and his sister, who sat close by, sketching an old gate, looked up to ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... hoot what you've found out!" declared Ben Wade. "You can sit there and talk till this time to-morrow night, but you'll never convince me that the Honorable Milt isn't as straight as the best man who ever ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... "Hoot, chiel!" cried the King at length, spluttering wrathfully in the broadest of his native Scotch, as was his habit when angered or surprised. "Ye reckless fou, wha hae put ye to sic a jackanape trick? Dinna ye ken that sic a boon is nae for ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... I got in here to-day and found how she stood. If it hadn't been for War Eagle Ivus and his buck sheep breakin' out, they'd have ambuscaded ye, surer'n palm-leaf fans can't cool the kitchen o' hell. But even as it is—hoot and holler now, and tag-gool-I-see-ye, they say they've got you licked, and licked in the open—that's what they say!" The man's tone was that of one announcing the blotting-out ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... time, Ruby had stirred uneasily in her sleep, and at last when the owl who lived in the tall elm-tree close by, gave a long, mournful hoot, she awakened, and sat up, wondering, as she rubbed her eyes open, where ...
— Ruby at School • Minnie E. Paull

... watch-fire of white man or red. The trapper listened intently, then he bethought him, for the first time, of giving the signal which, at setting out on their journey, they had agreed to use in all circumstances of danger. It was the low howl of a wolf followed immediately by the hoot of an owl. The reply to it was to be the hoot of the owl without the cry of the wolf when danger should be imminent and extreme caution necessary, or the howl of the wolf alone if ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... that's a little bit above my comprehension,—that is. Spiritual or something else. Lazy vermin! they'll paddle round in them boats, or lie about in the sun, and hoot all day and all night about 'de good Lord' and 'de day ob jubilee,'—and think God Almighty is going to interfere in their special behalf, and do big things ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... whose house I am now visiting, has tried all the owls that are his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe set at concert pitch, and finds they all hoot in B flat. He will examine ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... was repeated, and this time it did its work effectually, for Olive awoke. Awoke—was it waking?—to find herself all in the dark, stiff and cold, and her head aching with the bump she had given it against the old tree-trunk, while farther off now she heard the same shrill hoot or cry of some early astir night-bird, which had sounded ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... Knocks, and he also took several post-graduate courses. He received knocks all his life—and gave them. His parents had come from bonny Scotland, and it was a joke along the whole line of the Pennsylvania Railroad that a man with red hair and a hot-mush brogue could always get a job by shouting "Hoot, mon!" ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... "Hoot! be guided by me, man. Why, it was but an accident, after all! And we'll land at the Holy Island, at the Point of Llyn; there is an old cousin of mine, the parson, there—for the Pritchards have known ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell

... the battlements were now swept away by the freshness of a rising breeze. The two owls in the chamber beneath Donatello's uttered their soft melancholy cry,—which, with national avoidance of harsh sounds, Italian owls substitute for the hoot of their kindred in other countries,—and flew darkling forth among the shrubbery. A convent bell rang out near at hand, and was not only echoed among the hills, but answered by another bell, and still another, which doubtless had farther and farther responses, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... fashion, but have I not spent years in my soul (sometimes it seems hundreds of years) in being humble—in being abject before this kind of mind? It is only a day almost since I have found it out, broken away from it, got hold of the sky to hoot at it with. I am free now. I am not going to be humble longer, before it. I have spent years dully wondering before this mind; wondering what was the matter with me that I could not love it, that I could not go where it loved to go, and come when it said ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... when the port-fog holds us tied, And the sirens hoot their dread! When foot by foot we creep o'er the hueless viewless deep To the sob of the questing lead! It's down by the Lower Hope, dear lass, With the Gunfleet Sands in view, Till the Mouse swings ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... each outward thing Recalls my youth, and is instinct with thee; Brown wood-owls in the dusk, with noiseless wing, Float from yon hanger to their haunted tree, And hoot full softly. Listening, I regain A flashing thought of ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... the opposition encountered by Ingersoll, his arguments were never met with physical violence. Halls were locked against him, newspapers denounced him, preachers thundered, but no mobs gathered to hoot him down. Neither did he ever have to excuse himself in the midst of a discourse, and go outside ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... largely composed of men, stared at them and grew suddenly silent. They recognized their wives and mothers in those serene faces, and manhood forbids that you should hoot at your own blood-and-bone kin womenfolk. So they changed the subject. They began to talk, a perfect hurricane of inconsequential comments on every imaginable subject except the subject ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... croak of ravens, the hoot of owls, anything that has the touch, the charm, and infinite suggestion of Nature and life, will be more than welcome; and in good time we have reached ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... night a great silence reigned in the Mission valley, broken only by the hoot of the owl, the singing of birds, the flight of horses across the plain. Even the low huddle of Mission buildings and the few homes beyond looked an anomaly in that vast quiet valley asleep and unknown for so many centuries in the wide embrace of the hills. Its jewel oasis alone made it acceptable ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton

... pushed aside the pan of water and rubbed her hand across her eyes. She took up her bundle of herbs. "Hoot, Glenfernie! do ye ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... "Hoot!" shouted the scout, who did not spare his open laughter, though instantly checking the dangerous sounds he indulged his merriment at less risk of being overheard by any lurking enemies. "You are as much off the scent as a hound would be, with Horican atwixt him and the deer! ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... was ended: and the audience applauded. It applauded coldly, politely, and was then silent. Christophe would rather have had them hoot.... A hiss! One hiss! Anything to give a sign of life, or at least of reaction against his work!... Nothing.—He looked at the audience. The people were looking at each other, each trying to find ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... to me unendingly all that she had learned from the governess with regard to Mme. Swann. "It seems, she puts great faith in medals. She would never think of starting on a journey if she had heard an owl hoot, or the death-watch in the wall, or if she had seen a cat at midnight, or if the furniture had creaked. Oh yes! she's a most religious lady, she is!" I was so madly in love with Gilberte that if, on our way, I caught sight of their old butler taking ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... in the ruins of an ancient chimney, and the tired travellers gathered about it for their evening meal. From the tower came the surprised hoot of a solitary owl, and bats, disturbed by the light, swooped in great circles about the little group as they silently ate their polenta. Even the monkey seemed to feel the weird spell of the place, for she cowered in a corner by the fire, chattering to herself, while from the banqueting-hall ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... with fear, And sheep crept to the knees of cows, And conies to their burrows slid, And rooks were still in rigid boughs, And all things else were still or hid. From all the wood Came but the owl's hoot, ghostly, clear. ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... under Hugh's foot and the boys stopped short, their breath coming fast. The hoot of an owl directly overhead startled them violently and unconsciously they clutched each other's arm. The giant trees loomed black and forbidding in the darkness, and it was easy to imagine all kinds of things lurking behind to spring out ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene

... irregularities of the ground as they came along below, made the ride rhythmically bumpy, you see. I remembered how lonely and strange that old sleeping car had seemed to me as a kid. This felt the same. I kept waiting for a hoot or a whistle. It was the sort of loneliness that settles in your bones ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... your eyes, man! This is an age of development. An era of movement. We're on the threshold of the big tomorrow, and we can't let it pass us by! We can't let the honor and the glory go to others while we sit on our hands and hoot from the gallery! Come alive, Lee! ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman

... "Hoot, laird! nae offence!" returned Mrs Catanach. "It was yer ain wyte (blame). What gart ye stan' glowerin' at a body that gait, ohn telled (without telling) ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... it a cuttin'; but the proper name's a silly-hoot, I b'leeve. I've got a harnsome big degarrytype tew hum, but the heft on't makes it bad tew kerry raound, so I took this. I don't tote it abaout inside my shirt, as some dew,—it ain't my way; but I keep it in ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... pours the owls upon us. They hoot with horrid noise And eat the naughty mousie-girls ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... of clods and turf, with a brick chimney for cooking. Here they observed the nightly progress of the moon and stars, grew familiar with the heaving of moles, the dancing of rabbits on the hillocks, the distant hoot of owls, the bark of foxes from woods further inland; but saw not a sign of the enemy. As, night after night, they walked round the two ricks which it was their duty to fire at a signal—one being of furze ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... that, lass. D'ye hear the hoot-owl? I like to hear them of nights. I found one's nest once an' I took the three eggs out an' slipped them under a hen that Mother McFarlane had settin'. It was at Long Lake post, Mother McFarlane was the factor's wife, an' I was his clerk. The eggs had been sat on a long time an' they hatched ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx

... right out in the night, like a hoot owl only fiercer!" insisted one of her followers. "And she ain't safe to be loose with a ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft

... threshold of the hut was watching Poeri go away, thought she heard a faint sigh. She listened; some dogs were baying to the moon, an owl uttered its doleful hoot, and the crocodiles moaned between the reeds of the river, imitating the cry of a child in distress. The young Israelite was about to re-enter the hut when a more distinct moan, which could not be attributed ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... A hoot of laughter interrupted him. It reminded me of Jock, except that Mr. O'Brien's laugh had such a flavour of ill-nature. The man might or might not be what I suspected, ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston

... be provided for. A friend of mine heard the following (part) dialogue between two strong Scotch Calvinists: "Noo! hoo manny d'ye thank there are of the alact on the arth at this moment?—Eh! mabbee a doozen—Hoot! mon! nae ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... surprise another bird call some hundreds of yards ahead of them was heard, and after a time it was repeated. Then the blackbird's notes rang out from behind, and then another note came from the front. Ere the voice behind could again reply a solemn "Hoot-a-hoot-a-hoo" came from ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... noisy thing breathing is. Some one groans, "Sestra, I cannot sleep." This man has not been ordered morphia. Silence once more broken only by the sound of the breathing, distant howling of dogs from the darkness or the hoot of an owl. The old frostbite man coughs; he coughs again insistently. Both say "Yes" to hot milk. So down to the big kitchen, some mice scatter by, the puppy wakes up and thinks it is time for a game. A woman's voice calls loudly, "Sestra." Taking the milk off, Sestra hurries across ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... sounds to be heard all around them, but "familiarity breeds contempt," and from Max down they were all accustomed to hearing similar noises whenever they spent nights in the open. The owl would whinny or hoot according to his species; the loon send forth his agonizing and weird shriek from some distant lake; a fox might bark sharply and fretfully, or two quarrelsome 'coons dispute over a bit of food they had discovered—all this went ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie

... "Hoot awa', we a' ha'e our bees in our bonnets, Miss Cary," said the old woman, a trifle testily. "The minister's no pairfect, I daur say. But he's as gran' at praying as John Knox himself and he gars ye feel the loue ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... croak, the chirping of the Sparrow, The scream of Jays, the creaking of Wheelbarrow, And hoot of Owls,—all join the soul to harrow, And grate the ear. We listen to thy quaint soliloquizing, As if all creatures thou wert catechizing, Tuning their voices, and their notes revising, From ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... you that mock at Passion with a worldly whine, Would you change the face of Nature—would you limit God's design? Hide for shame from well-raised clamour, moderate fools who would be wise; Hide for shame—the World will hoot you! Love is Love, and never dies" And another asketh, doubting that my brother speaks the truth, "Can we love in age as fondly as we did in days of youth? Will dead faces always haunt us, in the time of faltering breath? Shall we yearn, and we so feeble?" Ay, for Love is Love ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... thing is envy; A foolish thing to boot. Why should a Fox who has a bark Want like an Owl to hoot? ...
— Whitefoot the Wood Mouse • Thornton W. Burgess

... or yell through the thick night for an engine to help push up the bank. The snort, the snap and whine of the air-brakes have a meaning for him, and he learns to distinguish between noises—between the rattle of a loose lamp and the ugly rattle of small stones on a scarped embankment—between the 'Hoot! toot!' that scares wandering cows from the line, and the dry roar of the engine at the distance-signal. In England the railway came late into a settled country fenced round with the terrors of the law, and it has remained ever ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... to sleep in the midst of such strange surroundings, and more than once Lloyd started up, aroused by the hoot of an owl, or the thud of a bat against the side of the tent. Not until she reached out and laid her hand on the great St. Bernard stretched out beside her cot, did she settle herself comfortably to sleep. With the touch ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston

... drawn thro dark cadaverous with the sound of gabbling dead. Where we heard them hoot palaverous Drivel learned beneath unsavorous Moulds, and saw a glutton's head Grin to a hissing bat, That scraped ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice

... seconds in springing to our feet. I suggest you and I stay close together, and a few seconds before you are going to explode the shell, give me two taps on the shoulder. Then I can give the cry of a hoot owl, and each man can jump to his feet to be ready when the shell lights ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle

... daybreak was near, a great mopoke flits close over our heads without any rustling or noise, like the ghost of a bird, and begins to hoot in a big, bare, hollow tree just ahead of us. Hoo-hoo! hoo-hoo! The last time I heard it, it made me shiver a bit. Now I didn't care. I was a desperate man that had done bad things, and was likely to do worse. But I was free of the forest again, ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... to the hour of their death. It was part of their literature and it made them build small but perfect temples. It found expression in the clothes which the men wore and in the rings and the bracelets of their wives. It followed the crowds that went to the theatre and made them hoot down any playwright who dared to sin against the iron law of good taste or ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... without their seeing or hearing any more of Werner and Glutts, nor did anyone come to disturb them through the night. Once Andy awoke to hear a noise at a distance, but he soon figured out that this was nothing more than a hoot owl. ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... vessel was moving. The purring turbines scarcely thrilled the deck; and presently Mary ate sandwiches and drank a decoction of coffee, brought by her new friend. He laughed when she started at a mournful hoot of the siren, and was enormously interested to hear that she had never set eyes upon the sea until to-day. Mademoiselle, for such an ingenue, was very courageous, he thought, and looked at Mary closely; but her eyes wandered from him ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... if Mr. So-and-so is at home, and to meet the invariable rejoinder, "No, he isn't," not seldom running on with—"And, if he was, he wouldn't see you;" to find oneself (being Blue) in a Red quarter, where the very children hoot at you, and inebriate matrons shout personalities from upper windows—all this is detestable enough. But to find the voter at home and unfriendly is an experience which plunges the candidate lower still. A curious tradition of privileged insolence, which ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... air was raw and damp, doubly unpleasant after the recent unseasonable warmth. An apathetically persistent rain sogged the seedling-dotted old fields on either side, and the pine-woods beyond, and a high ceiling of unbroken dirty gray gave no promise of clearing. The mournful hoot of a distant locomotive whistle was the only sound to pierce the silence. For a moment, Rand stood with his back to the car, looking at the gallows-like sign that proclaimed this to be the business-place of Arnold Rivers, ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... him," quo' she; "Fee him, faither, fee him; A' the wark about the house Gaes wi' me when I see him: A' the wark about the house I gang sae lightly through it; And though ye pay some merks o' gear, Hoot! ye winna rue it," quo' she; ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... nineteen years—gave orders to the little Tommy. He was to go to the house, to enter the garden, to squeeze his tiny person into the boat-house, and watch. When the spy and his associates went towards the boat, Tommy was to warn us with a hoot—like an owl—and we were to take charge. At least so I understood the orders given in a strange sea language. Tommy saluted, and vanished. If he had ten years, I should be astonished; but he was a man, every inch of him. Wait till ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... the ivy has grown over them to hide their nakedness. Forlorn and lonely the ruined castle stands. Where once loud clarion rang, the night owls hoot; vulgar crowds picnic where once knights fought in all the pride and pomp of chivalry. Kine feed in the grass-grown bailey court; its glory is departed. We need no castles now to protect us from the foes of our own nation. Civil wars have passed away, we trust, ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... Bernard d'Elbene had celebrated mass, just as the regular preacher was about to begin his sermon, some children who were playing in the close began to hoot the 'beguinier' [a name of contempt for friars]. Some of the faithful being disturbed in their meditations, came out of the church and chastised the little Huguenots, whose parents considered themselves in consequence to have been insulted in the persons of their children. A great commotion ensued, ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Cumberland, and damaged and frightened the Union fleet into fits, just the way Merriman has been going down to Wall Street every morning and frightening us into fits? Well, instead of finishing the work then and there, she suddenly quit and steamed off up the river in the same insolent, don't-give-a-hoot way that Merriman comes up from Wall Street every afternoon. Of course, when the Merrimac came down to finish destroying the fleet the next day, the Monitor had arrived during the night and gave her fits, and they called the whole thing off. Anyhow, it's that going-home-to-sleep-on-it ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... broke the stillness of those hours or interrupted the sighing of the winds were not pleasant. A great owl ensconced in a tree not far away began and maintained for a long time its monotonous "hoot-a-hoot a-hoo," while away in the distant forest gloom, rising at times shrill and distinct above the fitful wind, he heard the wail of the catamount or panther, the saddest and most mournful sound that ever ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... could have heard a pin drop till the Prince put his foot upon the threshold, when the whole assembly rose with a tremendous shout of applause. The Prince was supremely gratified, and said to the Emperor of Russia, "You heard the London mob hoot me, but you see how I am received by the young gentlemen ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... shore willows, hoot owls pierced the inky night with their sonorous cries—while in throaty discord, a million marsh frogs bellowed farewell to summer. The lake shores caught the unceasing waves in eternal laps, the rhythm ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... was broken by many a shout of exultation or banter, many a merry sound of jest or fun, as the back of the night's task was fairly broken. One husker mimicked the hoot of an owl in the thickets below; another sang a melody popular at the time, the ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... "we will stay there long enough to get well rested and enjoy ourselves; but when the sun goes down and it grows dark, then we will go. Then all the little birds are silent in the trees and the old night-owl begins to hoot." ...
— What Sami Sings with the Birds • Johanna Spyri

... ridding him of vermin, which might otherwise consume the produce of his field; but in almost every age and country it has been regarded as a bird of ill omen, and sometimes even as the herald of death. In France, the cry or hoot is considered as a certain forerunner of misfortune to the hearer. In Tartary, the owl is looked upon in another light, though not valued as it ought to be for its useful destruction of moles, rats, and mice. The natives pay it great ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... thou drawn me from my pain below, To suffer worse above? to see the day, And Thebes, more hated? Hell is heaven to Thebes. For pity send me back, where I may hide, In willing night, this ignominious head: In hell I shun the public scorn; and then They hunt me for their sport, and hoot me as I fly: Behold even now they grin at my gored side, And chatter ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... "we do want a coach, for if we walk to church in this trim, the very children in the parish will hoot after us." ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... a dreadful idea of this bird. It was one of her legends that a little boy was once standing just outside of the teepee (tent), crying vigorously for his mother, when Hinakaga swooped down in the darkness and carried the poor little fellow up into the trees. It was well known that the hoot of the owl was commonly imitated by Indian scouts when on the war-path. There had been dreadful massacres immediately following this call. Therefore it was deemed wise to impress the sound early upon the mind ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... when the noisy crowd came to hoot and curse and hurl stones at his windows; and when Otto, his faithful valet de chambre, entreated him to assume a disguise and make his escape through the gardens, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... unendurable, she packed an outfit on a burro and started on the trail. From time to time she called his name, and "Miguel!" echoed sweetly from hills and groves, but there was no other answer, save when an owl would hoot. Rolled in a blanket she slept on lupin boughs, but was off at peep of day again, calling—calling—high ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... made another frantic attempt to rouse him from the deadly stupor, but it was useless. He walked away to the window: through the opened casement he could hear the tinkle of passing hansoms on the Embankment below, whistles of door-keepers, and the hoot of steam tugs on the river. The world went on as usual, it appeared. It was ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett

... here, leafless at this season, but still imparting a certain dark dreariness to the scene. The hoot of an owl occasionally broke the silence, and sent light shivers through Cuthbert's frame. He was not free from superstition, and the evil-omened bird was no friend of his. He would rather not have heard its harsh note just at this time; and he could have ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... ruin'd central tower, When buttress and buttress, alternately, Seem framed of ebon and ivory; When silver edges the imagery, And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die; When distant Tweed is heard to rave, And the owlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave; Then go—but go alone the while— Then view St. David's ruin'd pile; And home returning, soothly swear, Was never ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various

... hinted anything of that sort she wouldn't have stirred a step. But for a Mussulman to let his wife walk the streets unveiled, like a Roumia, or some woman of easy virtue, would be a horrible disgrace to them both. His relations and friends would cut him, and hoot her at sight. The more he loved his wife, the less likely he'd be to keep a promise, made in a different world. It wouldn't be human nature—Arab human nature—to keep it. Besides, they have the jealousy of the tiger, these Eastern fellows. It's ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... together in a dogged way an' settled down to a lonesome life, cheered a little by the prattle of little Hannah, an' kept from rustin' by the farm work. I was lonesome, very lonesome, when the evenin' shadows crept over the ground, an' the crickets began to sing, the katydids to scold, an' the hoot owl to give his mournful cry over in ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell

... beyond the circle of firelight. No second bullet followed him in his amazingly swift movements. He lay motionless, listening intently, but no sound broke the stillness of the evening except the distant wail of a coyote and the hoot of an owl. ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... henceforth come from a mind that does not in outlook transcend the region on which it is focused. That is not to imply that the processes of evolution have brought all parts of the world into such interrelationships that a writer cannot depict the manners and morals of a community up Owl Hoot Creek without enmeshing them with the complexities of the Atlantic Pact. Awareness of other times and other wheres, not insistence on that awareness, is the requisite. James M. Barrie said that he could not write a play until he got his people off on a kind of island, ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... boys!"—Boreland emphasized his remarks with the stem of his pipe—"I wouldn't have given a hoot in Hades for our chances when that wave broke! Thought it was all day with us then. Kayak, Harlan, a fellow never realized what small potatoes he is until he looks up from the hollow of a wave!" ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... The Retriever just came off dry-dock, didn't she? Well, it stands to reason she was dirty after that last cargo of creosoted piling; and it stands to reason, also, that the man Peasley slicked her up with white paint until she looked like an Easter bride. A Scandinavian doesn't give a hoot if his vessel is tight, well found and ready for sea; but a Yankee takes a tremendous pride in his ship and likes to keep her looking like a yacht. And just think, Skinner, how the man Peasley must have felt when he came off dry dock, all clean and nice, and then had to slop her up with ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... found out the thoughts of the chief. If the ear of the chief is open and his answer is favourable, let Moonlight sound the chirping of a bird, and Rushing River will enter the camp without weapons, and trust himself to the man who was once his foe. If the answer is unfavourable, let her hoot like the owl three times, and Rushing River will go back to the home of his fathers, and see the pleasant face of ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... chasm. While the others held the cord to keep the strain from coming on the bayonet, he gripped it with both hands, edged stern foremost over the precipice, and slipped rapidly to the bowlder, whence he sent up a hoot of exultation. The cord was drawn back; the boat was made up in two bundles, which were lowered in succession; then the provisions, paddles, arms, etc. Now came the question whether Thurstane or Glover should remain last on ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... you soon learn it from the public. In the lobbies outside stand scores of excited men and women begging, imploring, threatening—using every means to get admission into the galleries to witness a historic and immortal scene. Outside there is an even denser crowd—ready to hoot or cheer their favourites. The galleries are all crowded; peers stand on each other's toes, and patiently wait for hours. About ten o'clock a man rushes into the lobby, and there is a movement that looks most like a scare—as though the messenger ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... the wilderness enfolded lake and shore; yet presently it came to be a silence accentuated by near and distant sounds, faint, wild, lonely—the low hum of falling water, the splash of tiny waves on the shore, the song of insects, and the dismal hoot of owls. ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... in and out amongst the slower craft, while from one of the lake steamers, decks and rigging outlined in quivering points of light, came the inspiriting strains of a band. Snatches of song drifted across the water, and now and again the melancholy long-drawn hoot of a ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... warning hoot of the motor horn, this time a little more impatient, broke the silence. Philippa was ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... trees and boiling down the syrup into sugar. As before mentioned, they are friendly and inoffensive in their dealings with the white people, but their patience must be sorely tried sometimes. The town-boys hoot at them, throw stones at their ponies, and try in many ways to annoy them. I remember once seeing them pass through another town on their annual spring excursion to the sugar-camps. Two of the pack-ponies had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... was gross. Pausing a moment to accustom his eyes to the blackness, there came to him from without the hoot of an owl. It was the signal agreed upon between him and his companion, and he wheeled to face the ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... is—will Canada remain Canada when these new races come up to power? And Canada need not hoot that question; or gather her skirts self-righteously and exclusively about her and pass by on the other side. The United States did that, and to-day certain sections of the foreign vote are powerful enough to dictate ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... once impassioned will grow, until she has lost all her woman's nature. She kept the other four hours at her street-door, as if she were a public show. There was time to fetch a mob of Jesuits' followers, of honest Church artizans, to hoot and hiss, while children might help by throwing stones. For these four hours she was in the pillory. Some, however, of the more dispassionate passers-by asked if the Ursulines had gotten orders to let them kill the girl. ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... hands—saw himself as palpably as though he stood before himself, crawling through the public streets, an object for men's pity, scorn, and curses. Now men laughed at him, pointed to him with their fingers, and made their children mock and hoot the penniless insolvent. Labouring men, with whose small savings he had played the thief, prayed for maledictions on his head; and mothers taught their little ones to hate the very name he bore, and frightened them by making use of it. Miserable pictures, one upon the other, rose before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... to regale Pinkey and Wallie for the fourteenth time with the story of the hoot-owl which had frightened him while hunting in Florida, but since it was received without much enthusiasm and he was not encouraged to tell another, he, too, retired to crawl between his blankets and "sleep on Nature's bosom" with most of ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... "Hoot, whisht ye, my dame, for he comes o' gude kin, An' boasts o' a lang pedigree; This night he maun share o' our gude cheer within, At morning's gray dawn he maun dee. He's gallant Wat Scott, heir o' proud Harden Ha', Wha ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... "Hoot, mon, I'll na believe ony mair o' yure lies; I'm na sic an ould fule as ye tak' me for. The hale train on a boat, indeed!" and he indignantly placed himself at the other end of the car, his informant only rubbing his hands together in great ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... in his eyes and drumbeat in his bony little breast Tim sits on his pallet below a lantern hung to a beam, listening whilst the old building rolls and pitches to the passing trains and loose shingles hoot in the blast above. And 't is worthy of note that spiders swing down from cobwebbed rafters to glare at him with interest as a comrade weaving a web of his own; and the mice do not come out at present, but scurry all to set their nests in order and be ready for the part they ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... work dispelled the enchanted dream into which I had fallen. Instinctively I turned and very slowly began to retrace my steps amongst the yawning pitfalls. As I did so I heard a hoarse hoot from the steamer lying below, to tell me it was about to leave, another and another resounded dully from it, warning me ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... clusters of wondering citizens, shouting sympathizers, and silent cattle-men, until there was a hoot of derision, and, perhaps in the hope of provoking a conflict in which the rest would join, a knot of men pushed out into the street from the verandah of the wooden hotel. Grant realized that a rash blow might unloose a storm of passion ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... branches dreaming: Only the shadows creep: Only the glow-worm is gleaming: 135 Only the owls and the nightingales Wake in this dell when daylight fails, And gray shades gather in the woods: And the owls have all fled far away In a merrier glen to hoot and play, 140 For the moon is veiled and sleeping now. The accustomed nightingale still broods On her accustomed bough, But she is mute; for her false mate Has fled and left ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... always pitted against those of an adjoining neighborhood, or of one end of the town against those of the other end. A bridge, a river, a railroad track, are always boundaries of hostile or semi-hostile tribes. The boys that go up the road from the country school hoot derisively at those that go down the road, and not infrequently add the insult of stones; and the down-roaders return the hooting and ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... and foreboding that night, like a spatter of blood in the sky, and through the long silent hours there was not even the hoot of an owl to give a sign that life still existed where yesterday had been a paradise of wild things. Kazan knew that there was nothing to hunt, and they continued to travel all that night. With dawn they struck a narrow swamp along the edge of the stream. Here beavers had built ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... with no boundary other than that southern sky. The weird, ghostly shadows of cactus and Spanish bayonet were everywhere; strange, eerie noises were borne to them out of the void—the distant cries of prowling wolves, the mournful sough of the night wind, the lonely hoot of some far-off owl. Nothing greeted the roving eyes but desolation,—a desolation utter and complete, a mere waste of tumbled sand, by daylight whitened here and there by irregular patches of alkali, but under the brooding night shadows lying brown, dull, forlorn beyond all expression, ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... mind how he acted? It must be he's had a call. They's been a hoot owl outside three nights now. I do believe that's it! Asy's got ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine

... presently the same slow, solemn hoot of the bird just named rose more loud and distinct than before. And scarcely had the last sound died away in its peculiar melancholy cadence, when the solitary report of a musket sent its echoing peal over the valley from the forest in ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... through the black alley between the pines, to continue in soulful reiteration until the construction camp clearing loomed up ahead. And there, twice within a hundred yards, with the long bunk houses already visible, the weird hoot of an owl fluted through the darkness. At its third repetition Fat Joe's song hushed; he cocked his head on one side to listen, and shot a glance at Steve, but he knew that the latter had not heard. And when that night-bird's call rose again, clear and measured and louder than before, Fat Joe tightened ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... story and related in detail how a murder had been committed on the very site the house was built on and how a fierce bewhiskered spirit roamed the premises at night and demanded vengeance. I described in awful words the harrowing spectacle and all I got at the finish was the hoot ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh



Words linked to "Hoot" :   razz, shout, darn, yell, Bronx cheer, let loose, grunt-hoot, tinker's damn, boo, vociferation, damn, cry, shit, red cent, razzing, ineptitude, hoot owl, emit, bird, let out, utter, raspberry, give a hoot, tinker's dam, snort, outcry, hooter, worthlessness, shucks, pant-hoot, hiss, call



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