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Lather   Listen
verb
Lather  v. t.  To beat severely with a thong, strap, or the like; to flog. (Low)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lather" Quotes from Famous Books



... always wash or clean without injury; but the cheap and inferior worsteds will not do so. Ordinary crewel work on linen may be washed at home, by plunging it into a lather made by water in which bran has been boiled, or even with simple soap-suds, so long as no soda or washing-powder is used. It should be carefully rinsed without wringing, and hung up to dry. When almost ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin

... was me," he went on, beating lather into me as he spoke, "I wouldn't let one of them things near my face: No, sir: There ain't no safety in them. They tear the hide clean off you—just rake the hair right out by the follicles," as he said this he was illustrating his meaning with ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... midst of the confusion, Wilson stood giving last orders to the interne at his elbow. As he talked he scoured his hands and arms with a small brush; bits of lather flew off on to the tiled floor. His speech was incisive, vigorous. At the hospital they said his nerves were iron; there was no let-down after the day's work. The internes worshiped and feared ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... as the scarf at his throat; And he rolls on the bridge of his broad-beamed whaler, In yellow sou'wester and oil-skin coat. In trawler and drifter, in dinghy and dory, Wherever he signals, they leap to his call; They batter the seas to a lather of glory, With old ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... from the railroad, and as we left the barracks we ran afoul of four outfits, three span to the wagon, with the loads piled on till the teams was all lather and the wheels complainin' to the gods, trying to pass the corner of the barracks where there was a narrow ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... feasted in impromptu fashion. Marcus Schouler assumed the office of master of ceremonies; he was in a lather of excitement, rushing about here and there, opening beer bottles, serving the tamales, slapping McTeague upon the back, laughing and joking continually. He made McTeague sit at the head of the table, with Trina at his right and the agent at his left; he—when ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... weeks of rain, during which the horses' legs had been thickening for want of exercise, we got out into a very muddy menage with what we called the "young horse ride." I was mounted on a most unmanageable, untrained beast, and before the work was over he was in a lather from nose to tail, and I was encased in mud from the spur to the chrome-yellowed button on the top of my forage cap. It was the custom, after having unsaddled one's mount, to pass a hasty oil-rag over bit ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... word, went to the sink. It was a greasy, filthy sink. A smell came up from the outlet. He took no notice of it. That a sink should smell was to him part of the natural order, just as it was a part of the natural order that the soap should be grimy with dish-water and hard to lather. Nor did he try very hard to make it lather. Several splashes of the cold water from the running faucet completed the function. He did not wash his teeth. For that matter he had never seen a toothbrush, nor did he know that there existed beings in the world who were ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... and smoked. My bedroom was close by, and I generally got up early, and shaved and finished my toilet at about 11 o'clock. I had just gone into my bedroom to shave, my face was half covered with lather, when my landlady rushed in and told me the Dean had called, and my dogs were pulling him about. The fact was I had a Scotch terrier with a litter of puppies in a basket, and when the Dean entered in full academical dress, the dogs flew at him, pulling ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... in words than in anything else, but this summer formed an exception. The force of suggestion brought to bear on him was too overwhelming, and he strove boldly to vie with the rest in foulness of tongue and thought. As soon as he was back in the city, this habit dropped off him as the soap lather is washed off a bather when he dives into the clear waters of a lake. But the game he had learned to play back of the big rock could not be unlearned in ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... widely known evidence of the presence in water of scale-forming matter, is that quality, the variation of which makes it more difficult to obtain a lather or suds from soap in one water than in another. This action is made use of in the soap test for hardness described later. Hardness is ordinarily classed as either temporary or permanent. Temporarily hard waters are ...
— Steam, Its Generation and Use • Babcock & Wilcox Co.

... breakfast, although Honora clung with desperation to the hour they had originally fixed: sometimes Mr. Manning waited for him until nearly ten o'clock, only to receive curt dismissal. He went off for long rides, alone, and to the despair of the groom brought back the horses in a lather, with drooping heads and heaving sides; one of them he ruined. He declared there wasn't a horse in the stable ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... we have that pudding oftener—with lather on top of it?" was his first outbreak. And at last he felt obliged to declare bitterly, "We don't have a ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... Lined with red rags, to look like blood, Did well his threefold trade explain, Who shaved, drew teeth, and breathed a vein. The goat he welcomes with an air, And seats him in his wooden chair: 30 Mouth, nose, and cheek the lather hides: Light, smooth, and swift the razor glides. 'I hope your custom, sir,' says pug. 'Sure never face was half so smug.' The goat, impatient for applause, Swift to the neighbouring hill withdraws: The shaggy people grinned and stared. 'Heyday! what's here? without a beard! Say, brother, whence ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... 130 feet span over the Chimbo in Quito, of which the main ropes (4 inches in diameter) were made of this fiber. It is also used for making paper. The juice, when the watery part is evaporated, forms a good soap (as detergent as castile), and will mix and form a lather with salt water as well as with fresh. The sap from the heart leaves is formed into pulque. This sap is sour, but has sufficient sugar and mucilage for fermentation. This vinous beverage has a filthy odor, but those who can overcome the aversion to this fetid smell indulge largely in the ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders

... went off atter an hour er two, an' I lay dar jes in a puffick lather o' sweat. I was dat dar skeered, I couldn't sleep no mo' dat ar night, an' I darsn't walk on afore day kase I wuz afeared o' meetin' some on 'em. So I lay, an' t'ought dis ting all ober, an' I tell ye, fellers, 'tain't no use. 'Spose all de white ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... there once, a sunny day in May, the hedges white with flowers and the air full of bock-bier. Ah, thronging memories of youth! I was slowly walking through a sun-smitten lane when a man on horse dashed by me, his face red with excitement, his beast covered with lather. He kept shouting "Make room for the master! make way for the master!" and presently a venerable man with a purple nose—a Cyrano de Cognac nose—came towards me. He wore a monkish habit and on his head ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... kid glove, if it be passed over any portion of the leather. Beeswax may be used to give the saddle a polish; but it should be sparingly applied and should be well rubbed in, for it is apt to make the leather very sticky. Nothing but specially prepared or good white soap (made into a thick lather) should be employed to clean the leather work, except a little lime-juice or lemon-juice to remove stains. The use of soft soap permanently darkens leather. A small amount of saddle dressing may be put on once a month, in order to keep the leather soft and pliable. The steel work should, of ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... plate well to remove all grease, in a strong lather of common yellow soap and boiling water, and wipe it quite dry; then mix as much hartshorn powder as will be required, into a thick paste, with cold water or spirits of wine; smear this lightly over the plate with a piece of soft rag, and leave it ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... passed the Test Act, 1673, by which all Catholics were shut out from holding any government office or position (S477). This act broke up the "Cabal," by compelling a Catholic nobleman, who was one of its leading members, to resign. Lather, Parliament further showed its power by compelling the King to sign the Act of Habeas Corpus, 1679 (S482), which put an end to his arbitrarily throwing men into prison, and keeping them there, in order to stop their free discussion of ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... shaven, and a razor-case holds but two razors. For only two razors does a man-of-war barber have, and, like the marine sentries at the gangway in port, these razors go off and on duty in rotation. One brush, too, brushes every chin, and one lather lathers them all. No private brushes and boxes; no ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... hot water and shaved the right side with singular dexterity. "Is it done, Noverraz?"—"Yes, Sire."—"Well, then, face about. Come, villain, quick, stand still." The light fell on the left side, which, after applying the lather, he shaved in the same manner and with the same dexterity. He drew his hand over his chin. "Raise the glass. Am I quite right?"— "Quite so."—"Not a hair has escaped me: what say you?"—"No, Sire," replied the valet de chambre. "No! I think I perceive one. Lift up the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... stores where the Poor Boy had credit she had credit, just as his own mother would have had. She was a rich woman in her own right. And the young architect knew that, and in his heart was amazed at always finding her on the floor in a lake of lather, crooning ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris

... went upstairs to the flat above to tell Madame Guerard. She was just soaping her children's white frocks and pinafores. She took my face in her hands and kissed me affectionately. Her two hands were covered with a soapy lather, and left a snowy patch on each side of my head. I rushed down-stairs again like this, and went noisily into the drawing-room. My godfather, M. Meydieu, my aunt, and my mother were just beginning a game of whist. I kissed each of them, leaving a patch of soap-suds on their faces, at which ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... mountain, and grin there fanged with gigantic icicles. You may listen in vain when the train stops for the least sign of breath or power among the hills. The snow has smothered the rivers, and the great looping trestles run over what might be a lather of suds in a huge wash-tub. The old snow near by is blackened and smirched with the smoke of locomotives, and its dulness is grateful to aching eyes. But the men who live upon the line have no consideration for these things. At a halting-place in ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... up was filled with water to serve as a bath. The barber carried a piece of rusty hoop instead of a razor, and a pot of grease for lather, while the doctor, with a huge pill box and a knife, which he called his lancet, stood by to prescribe the treatment each patient was to receive. When Neptune and Amphitrite had taken their places, ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... stuff they put in—fuller's earth and soap; they pile the soft soap in by the dishful, and it makes a great lather. I s'pose the fuller's earth is what does the most of the work. After the cloth comes out of the fulling mills it's 'bout twice as thick as when it goes in, and feels all stiff and heavy. It's no more like what it is now ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey

... Kathe making the meal at home... Luther was fat and German. Perhaps his face perspired... Eine feste Burg; a firm fortress... a round tower made of old brown bricks and no windows.... No need for Kathe to smile.... She had been a nun... and then making a lamplit meal for Lather in a wooden German house... and Rome ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson

... consideration for steed and cattle that was wanting in the vaqueros. They changed mounts oftener than the Mexican riders, and the horses they unsaddled for fresh ones were not so spent, so wet, so covered with lather. It was only after an hour or more of observation that Madeline began to realize the exceedingly toilsome and dangerous work cowboys had to perform. There was little or no rest for them. They were continually among wild and vicious and wide-horned steers. In many instances they ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... was likely to hear whatever gossip was going. Who shall have perfect self-control with a giant bib under the chin, tipped back on a chair that cannot be regulated, with a face covered by lather, and two plantation fingers holding the nose? In these circumstances, with much diplomacy, Berry corkscrewed his way into confidence, and when he dipped a white cloth in bay-rum and eau-de-cologne, and laid it over the face of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... been tempted to give himself a gash in the neck, so as to make the marks of the teeth of the drowned man disappear. When, standing before the mirror, he raised his chin and perceived the red spot beneath the white lather, he at once flew into a rage, and rapidly brought the razor to his neck, to cut right into the flesh. But the sensations of the cold steel against his skin always brought him to his senses, and caused him ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... sweat, his hind-legs outstretched, fretting under the ministrations of the groom, the Ambler stayed the whisking of his head to look at his owner, and once more George met that long, proud, soft glance. He laid his gloved hand on the horse's lather-flecked neck. The Ambler tossed his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... moon had been up an hour the officer of their escort appeared, and led them to their horses, which were waiting, and they rode away to the castle bridge. As they approached it they saw Lozelle departing on his great black stallion, which was in a lather of foam. It seemed that he also had made trial of that perilous path, for the people, of whom there were many gathered there, clapped their hands and shouted, "Well ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... slavey or factotum, and he came to Dogtrap for the mail, but after I started to ride for it Harold came regularly for his mail himself. Our homeward way lay together for two miles, but he always came with me till nearly in sight of home. Some days we raced till our horses were white with lather; and once or twice mine was in such a state that we dismounted, and Harold unsaddled him and wiped the sweat off with his towel saddle-cloth, to remove the evidence of hard riding, so that I would not get into a scrape with uncle Jay-Jay. Other times we dawdled, so that when we parted ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... women having beards, a fable, I determined to visit them before I left these mountains, and the old Negrito chief, who also told me that the women really did have beards, offered to lend me some of his people to carry my things. But one day Vic heard that his lather was dying, and when I tried to cheer him up he sobbed in a mixture of broken Spanish and English, "One thousand senoritas can get, one thousand children can get, but lose one father more cannot get." On this account I had to return to Florida Blanca, and besides we were all very bad with ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker

... next to impossible to hold the pony. I got them to keep back, and after that he went fairly steadily, but it was anxious work. The noise and excitement had told on him a lot, he had a tendency to break during all that six miles out, and he was in a lather before we got to Sufter Jung's tomb. There were a lot of people waiting for me out there, some ladies on horseback, too, and there was a coffee-shop going, with drinks of all kinds. As I got near they began to call out, "You're done, Paddy, thirty-four minutes gone already, ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... green and brown and silver-white before, but no riders, no thing that moved in the shape of men came within the scope of my eyes. But I wasn't done yet. I turned away from the bank and raced up a long slope to a saw-backed ridge that promised largely of unobstructed view. Dirty gray lather stood out in spumy rolls around the edge of the saddle-blanket, and the wet flanks of my horse heaved like the shoulders of a sobbing woman when I checked him on top of a bald sandstone peak—and though as much of the Northwest as one man's eye may hope to cover lay bared on every hand, ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... the rein, and left him to gallop alone. Accordingly, he made the round of the hill and came back, his horse covered with lather and its tail trembling. "There," said he to Lucy, with an air of radiant self-satisfaction, "he clapped on sail without orders from quarter-deck, so I made him carry it till his bows ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... which the markings also pointed. He was lithe and agile as a cat and moved with something of the sinuous gliding of that animal, rather than the bounding motions of his eastern-bred mates. The two horses running neck and neck behind him were evidently blooded animals, and all three were a-lather from the pace set by their leader, all mud-bespattered to the point of being wholly disreputable, for a shower the previous night had left many a wide puddle in ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... In an excess of caution I had refused to relinquish my alligator bag, and had turned over my other traps to the porter. It was clear enough then. I was simply a victim of the usual sleeping-car robbery. I was in a lather of perspiration by that time: the lady down the car was still dangling and talking about it: still nearer a feminine voice was giving quick orders in French, presumably to a maid. The porter was on his knees, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... were at work upon the job two German overseers, about a hundred Black Boys, and from twelve to twenty-four draught-oxen. It rained about half the time, and the road was like lather for shaving. The Black Boys seemed to have had a new rig-out. They had almost all shirts of scarlet flannel, and lavalavas, the Samoan kilt, either of scarlet or light blue. As the day got warm they took off ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... take out the grease and perspiration, and not to harden the material at the same time. By Jaeger's method this is done with lump ammonia and soap. The soap is cut into small pieces and boiled into a lather with water, and the lump ammonia is then added. This lather is used at about 100 deg. Fahrenheit, and the clothes must not be rubbed, but allowed to soak for about an hour in the water, and must then be drawn backwards and forwards repeatedly in the bath till clean. Three waters ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various

... two pale ladies, his head upon the shoulder of the taller; while beside the driver, a young man whose coat and hands were bloody, worked over the hurts of an injured dog. Sam Warden's whip sang across the horses; lather gathered on their flanks, and Ariel's voice steadily urged on the pace: "Quicker, Sam, if you can." For there was little breath left in the body of ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... Evangelical Magazine, or else repooarts o'th' Liberation Society, an' it worn't long befoor sombdy tell'd him in a saycret 'at he wor baan to be propoased for a deacon. He tried to luk as if he cared nowt abaat it, but as sooin as the chap went aght, he flang his lather brush under th' table, threw his razor an' white appron into a corner, upset his lather box on to th' Evangelical, an' ran up stairs two steps at a time, an' seized a bottle off th' shelf, an' sayin, 'Here's to th' deacon!' swallowed hauf a pint o' neat, an' what else he might ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... down the trick basin which hung beneath the mirror and, collecting his shaving materials, began to lather his face. ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... carried him several times past a woman, who was standing unaccompanied at the rail astern. Her face and glance were turned outward where the propellers were churning up a lather of white spume and where little eddies of jade and ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... lightning and it seemed like no more than two minutes that he had the job done. It was the fastest hair cutting I ever witnessed and a good job, too. He then proceeded to shave me, and for speed he exceeded his already phenomenal record as a hair cutter. He put a thin lather on my face and then with a thin razor—the thinnest I ever saw—he slashed off a four days' growth with six strokes—one down the right cheek, one down the left cheek, one across the entire upper lip, one—a fancy curved ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood

... Everything froze hard during the night, one's boots, one's clothing, if damp when taken off, the ink in one's fountain pen. In the morning water poured into a basin froze hard in a couple of minutes and the lather froze on one's face before one had time to shave. The Major, breaking through one of the most fundamental traditions of the British Army, announced that no one need shave more than once in three days. The morning after our arrival we had ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton

... happened that, on this same return journey, he occupied the seat on the right, immediately behind that of the driver. The sky was covered, the atmosphere close. The horses, grey ones, showed a thick yellowish lather where the collar rubbed their necks and the traces their flanks. They were slack and heavy, and the omnibus hugged the curb. Within it was empty, and on the top boasted but three passengers besides Iglesias himself. ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... Desire—couldn't call him Pretty Gellatly, for there was Pretty Pierre who had right of possession to that title—would like to ask him what soap he used for his complexion—'twasn't this yellow bar- soap of the barracks, which wouldn't lather, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... glorious sands stretching for miles along the coast. (It was hardly safe to call at the Convoy on your favourite charger. When you came out from tea it was more than probable you found him in a most unaccountable lather!) Bathing during the daytime was also a rare event, so we went down in an ambulance after dark, macks covering our bathing dresses, and scampered over the sands in the moonlight to the warm waves shining and ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... trunk the means of bespangling his bride with diamonds. But the worst of it was that he must wait, and fight, and perhaps get killed, before he could settle in life and make his fortune. As an officer of a marching regiment, ordered to rejoin immediately, he must flesh his sword in lather first—for he had found no razor strong enough—and postpone the day of riches till the golden ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... and read, made Staines a little uneasy, and he went to his friend Fitzroy, and said, "Now, look here: I am at the service of you experienced and humorous mariners. I plead guilty at once to the crime of never having passed the line; so, make ready your swabs, and lather me; your ship's scraper, and shave me; and let us get it over. But Lord Tadcaster is nervous, sensitive, prouder than he seems, and I'm not going to have him driven into a fit for all the Neptunes and Amphitrites ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... schedules dated in Villa Franca, June 2d, 1506, and Almazan, Aug. 28, 1507, it had been ordered that he, Don Diego, should receive the tenths, so equally ought the other privileges to be accorded to him. As to the allegation that his lather had been deprived of his viceroyalty for his demerits, it was contrary to all truth. It had been audacity on the part of Bobadilla to send him a prisoner to Spain in 1500, and contrary to the will and command of the sovereigns, as was proved by their letter, dated from ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... laughing with the excitement of the moment. "Heave all!"—she began the chant of sailors hauling at the ropes. Together, and bracing their feet against the schooner's rail, they fought out the fight with the great fish. In a swirl of lather the head and shoulders came above the surface, the flukes churning the water till it boiled like the wake of a screw steamship. But as soon as these great fins were clear of the surface the shark fell quiet ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... t'other end o' my cloud," commanded Mrs. Wadleigh. "I'm glad I've got on stockin'-feet. Where's t'other mittin? Oh! there 'tis, down by the sto'-leg. Cyrus, if you knew how you looked with your face plastered over o' lather, you'd wipe it off, an' hand me down that key. Can't you move? Well, I guess I can reach ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... blackheads should next be removed, not with the finger-nail, but with an inexpensive little instrument known as the "comedo expressor.'' When the more noticeable of the blackheads have been expressed, the face should be firmly rubbed for three or four minutes with a lather made from a special soap composed of sulphur, camphor and balsam of Peru. Any lather remaining on the face at the end of this time should be wiped off with a soft handkerchief. As this treatment might give rise to some irritation of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... age. It is the happy transition period, when long legs, and loose joints, and verdant awkwardness, first stumble on the vestibule of manhood. Did you never observe him shaving and scraping his pimpled face till it resembled a featherless goose, reaping nothing but lather, and dirt, and a little intangible fuzz? That is the first symptom of love. Did you never observe him wrestling with a pair of boots two numbers too small, as Jacob wrestled with the angel? That is another symptom of love. His callous heel slowly and painfully yields to the pressure ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... a bad sort," said Reginald carelessly. "Lots of the needful, you know, and free with it. Not very fond of the grind, but always up to date when there are any good times going. What do you suppose put Sultan in such a lather, John? I was so afraid father would catch me that I came across the fields, and it was just as much as he could do to take the last fence. I made sure he was ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... time, she had allowed no part of her burdens to touch their thoughtless young lives. It was only lately that Alec had been aroused to the fact that she had any burdens. He was rehearsing them all now, as he rubbed the lather over his chin, so busily that he did not hear Philippa's light step on the back stairs. Philippa could step very lightly when she chose, despite the fact that she was long and awkward, with that temporary awkwardness of a growing girl who finds it hard to adjust herself and her ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston

... stolen razor he feared some impending calamity. He knew enough Greek to be aware that Ajax committed suicide with the very sword that hero got from the enemy. Whenever the student disfigured his chin and reddened the lather with a new-made gash, he felt in his inmost soul that a Nemesis was being wrought out. By this simple tale, my friends, one may see the sovereign power of conscience, which, though dormant for a time, invariably asserts itself and ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... divided into anteroom, dressing-room, and the bath proper. When we were ready, Alexandra, a famous bath-woman, took boiling water from the tank in the corner oven, which had been heating for hours, made a strong lather, and scrubbed us soundly with a wad of linden bast shredded into fibres. Her wad was of the choicest sort; not that which is sold in the popular markets, but that which is procured by stripping into rather coarse filaments the strands of an old mat-sack, such as is used for everything in Russia, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... the black mare all in a lather, just after dinner, and he hasn't spoke to a soul since. That's all I know, missus. I think something has put him out, and he isn't soon put out, you know, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... second bullet hole in the ceiling? Added to the key on the nail, a careless custom and surely not common, we would have conclusive proof that our medium had been correct. There was another point, too. Miss Jeremy had said, "Get the lather ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... put the fear of the Lord into you, haven't I, Buck?" Ward observed maliciously, wiping a blob of hairy lather upon a page torn from an old Sears-Roebuck catalogue. "I was kinda hoping you had more nerve. I wanted to get a whack at you, just to ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... in his chair, his face white with lather, a towel under his chin. At first I thought he was angry. Sweeping the barber away he leaned forward, and, placing one hand on my ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... across the tawny plains. They rode abreast. Their horses were a-lather; their lean sides tuckered, but their gait remained unslackening. It was a gait they would keep as ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... If a beggar can't march, why, we kills 'im an' rattles 'im into 'is grave. You've got to stand up to our business an' spring without snatchin' or fuss. D'you say that you sweat with the field-guns? By God, you must lather with us—'Tss! 'Tss! For ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... special soap should be procured. It is not well to use any ordinary soap, for this may contain alkali, which would injure the colours in the work. Dissolve the soap in boiling water, and add cold to make it just warm and of the required strength. Immerse the embroidery in the lather thus made, and work it about gently, avoiding any friction. When clean, rinse first in warm water, afterwards in cold, to which a little salt may be added. The water must be squeezed out carefully and the material quickly dried. If ironing is necessary ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... He was a most respectable-looking man, as well as a most respectful servant; and it was impossible to see him busying himself about the General at his morning toilet, and watch his delicate handling of the lather-brush and razor, without feeling, that, however true the old proverb may have been in other cases, Bastien's master was a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... wiry and tough, and although I press forward quite energetically, the whip is applied without stint, and when the passport office is reached we pull up alongside it together, but their ponies' sides are white with lather. The passport officer is so delighted at the story of the race, as narrated to him by the others, that he fetches me out.a piece of lump sugar and a glass of water, a common refreshment partaken of in this country. Yet a third ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... hanging out, the foam that issued from his mouth flecked with blood; his sides in a lather; his flanks moist and torn from the cruel spur-points: seemed to be losing his cunning and to be trusting entirely to his strength and yielding to his rage. She could hear his breath coming shrilly as he tore past her; the whites of his eyes white no ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... white with lather and crimsoned with blood, the wagon as full of holes as a sieve, they pulled in to the commanding officer's tent. They ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... Bernice took her seat on high. A man in the chair next to her turned on his side and gave her a glance, half lather, half amazement. One barber started and spoiled little Willy Schuneman's monthly haircut. Mr. O'Reilly in the last chair grunted and swore musically in ancient Gaelic as a razor bit into his cheek. Two bootblacks became wide-eyed and rushed for ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... climbing the moor now, at a lopping gallop that set the packet of dolls bob-bobbing on my back to a sort of tune. The horses behind were nearly spent, and the sweat had worked their soaped hides into a complete lather. But the mare generalled them all the while; and striking on a cart-track beyond the second rise of the moor, slowed down to a walk, wheeled round and scanned the troop. As they struggled up she whinnied loudly. A whistle answered her far down the lane, and at the sound of ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... considered that the proper use of a brush was to lather chins. But the boy thought differently, and once surreptitiously took one of his father's brushes to paint a picture; the brush on being returned to its cup was used the next day upon a worthy haberdasher, whose cheeks were shortly colored a vermilion that matched ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... them, or faith in their liquid benevolence. For spouts of wild fury dashed up into the clouds; and the shore, wherever any sight of it was left, weltered in a sadly frothsome state, like the chin of a Titan with a lather-brush at work. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... rode in yesterday afternoon, as I told you, on his way to town—he said. But I rather suspected the truth of his statement. He had come in a desperate hurry, for his horse was in a lather, and if he was in such haste to get to town, why did he waste time talking to me, as he did for twenty minutes? But when, just as he was starting off again, he turned back and asked me if I wanted to sell my share in the drill and claim, I knew that that was what ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp

... and his staff then rode over to see my performance. He reassured me with the remark, "Stick to him and make him obey you, or kill him." Well, it took just about one hour to conquer him, at the end of which time I had ploughed up several acres of ground, my horse was in a white lather, and I was in the same condition. When he quit, he did so at once, and went on as cleverly as though nothing had happened. The cause of this freak I never understood, he never having done so before, and never ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... many occasions when he authorizes a startling story of some well-known statesman with the words: "My dear old chap, I know it for a fact. I heard it at the club to-day from a friend of his," then we know that once again the barber's assistant has been gossiping over the lather. ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne

... she has traveled over nearly our entire area. Underground runners and abundant seed soon form thrifty colonies. This plant, to which our grandmothers ascribed healing virtues, makes a cleansing, soap-like lather when its bruised leaves are agitated ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... Bud ran toward him, with Stratton close behind. The strange cayuse, a sorrel of medium size, was covered with foam and lather, and as Jessup came close to him he rolled his eyes in ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... hung far out over the water, and from my perch on the crosstrees I had nothing below me but the surface of the bay. Hands, who was not so far up, was, in consequence, nearer to the ship, and fell between me and the bulwarks. He rose once to the surface in a lather of foam and blood, and then sank again for good. As the water settled, I could see him lying huddled together on the clean, bright sand in the shadow of the vessel's sides. A fish or two whipped past his body. Sometimes, by the quivering of the water, he ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... things simultaneously; that owing probably to the lather on his face he had not been recognized, and that the face of the man inside the door was haggard ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... thimble-berries will be ripe, and the pink salmon-berry in the redwoods. Perhaps you will look for and dig up the soaproot, that onion-like bulb of one of the lily family with which the Indians make a soapy lather to wash their clothes. Let us hope you will know and keep away from the "poison-oak," the low bush with pretty red leaves, for its leaves are apt to make your skin swell up and ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... conversation, possibly because he took as little real interest as he professed in the case which was being thrust upon him, but more obviously owing to the necessary care in shaving the corners of a delightfuly long and mobile mouth. Indeed, the whole face emerging from the lather, as a cast from its clay, would have delighted any eye but its own. It was fat and flabby as the rest of Eugene Thrush; there was quite a collection of chins to shave; and yet anybody but himself must have recognised the invincible freshness ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... Aye, as for nonsense, Joe, your head Do hold it all so tight's a blather, But if 'tis any good, do shed It all so leaeky as a lather. Could you vill pails 'ithout a bottom, Yourself that be ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... to slacken away on the breeching and trot gently. He could tell, merely by glancing at a rise in the roadway, whether a slow, steady pull was needed, or if the time had come to stick in his toe-calks and throw all of his two thousand pounds on the collar. He had learned not to fret himself into a lather about strange noises, and not to be over-particular as to the kind of company in which he found himself working. Even though hitched up with a vicious Missouri Modoc on one side and a raw, half collar-broken Kanuck on the other, he would do his best to steady them down ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford

... shall use them," she said, stirring the soap into a lather, and noting the indecision in his face. "I ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... his personal appearance, George shaved regularly once a week, borrowing a mirror to assist in the operation. He was wont to apply the lather from pungent kerosene soap with a discarded tooth-brush which he had picked up. Long use had thinned the bristles woefully, but the brush was used faithfully and with grave deliberation. One morning he came and said—"Boss, you got any more brush belonga shaving? This fella close ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... condemned to be hanged; but "before he turned of the lather," he desired to speak privately with the President, and thereupon accused Mr. Kendall—who had been released from the pinnace when Wingfield was sent aboard—of mutiny. Read escaped. Kendall was convicted of mutiny and shot to death. In arrest of judgment he objected that the President ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the TV-phone came right in the middle of my shaving. They have orders not to call me before breakfast for anything less than a national calamity. I pressed "Accept," too startled to take the lather ...
— Tinker's Dam • Joseph Tinker

... soap to the fur, over the area selected for inoculation, with a wad of cotton-wool, and lather freely by the aid of warm water; shave carefully and thoroughly; or apply ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... Think of the lather of the modern novel, and the fashion-plate men and women that figure in it! What noble person has Dickens sketched, or has any novelist since Scott? The utter poverty of almost every current novelist, in any grand universal human traits in his own character, is shown in nothing more clearly than ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... window was violently opened, and Tartarin appeared in shirt-sleeves and nightcap, smothered in lather, flourishing his razor and shaving-brush, and roaring with ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... encounter, through two lines of people who had been watching her—and some of them found themselves following after her, even to the Park gate—almost awed as they looked at her, sitting erect and splendid on the fretted, anguished beast, whose shining skin was covered with lather, whose mouth tossed blood-flecked foam, and whose great eye was so strangely like her own, but that hers glowed with the light of triumph, and his burned with the agonised protest of the vanquished. At such times there was somewhat of fear ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... treated in this way; then the lather was scraped off with a piece of old hoop-iron, and, after being thus shaved, buckets of cold ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne

... not to retire from the service, at any rate to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but after his after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely vicious gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and when he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka (Denisov's servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was going home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he would go away without having heard from the staff—and ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... at these intervals Miki would hold his breath and close his eyes while Neewa dug his toes in still deeper. Once the log grazed a rock. Six inches more and they would have been without a ship. Their trip was not half over before both cub and pup looked like two round balls of lather out of ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... and led her instantly to the King. But no sooner did she open her lips than toads dropped on the ground; and when the King looked at her more closely he saw, that as she breathed hard from the fatigue of the journey, she made a lather at her mouth, which looked just like a washtub; then looking down on the ground, he saw a meadow of stinking plants, the sight of which made him quite ill. Upon this he drove Puccia and her mother away, and sent Ciommo in disgrace to keep the ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... dreamed the whole of her marriage. Her father with his face distorted by lather before his shaving mirror. The Leffingwell Rock Church. Little Evelyn Kemble placing the white-satin cushion. Herself and Albert finally locking the door of their new ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... "Dod lather you to a fritter, you little freckle-faced, snub-nosed son of seco!" he yelped, shrilly. "I've been a mild and peaceable man all my life, but I'm a good mind to—I'm a good mind to—" He searched his meek soul for enormities of retribution, and declared: "I'm a good ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... it—common bar soap, or better, the old-fashioned soft soap. Hold several brushes together in one hand so that the tips are all of a length, dip them together into or rub them onto the soap, and then rub them briskly in the palm of the other hand. When the paint is well worked into the lather, do the same with the other brushes, letting the first ones soak in the soap, but not in the water. Then rinse them, and carefully work them clean one by one, with the fingers. When you lay them aside to dry, see that the bristles are all straight and smooth, ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... the feet from blistering, it is a good plan to soap the inside of the stocking before setting out, making a thick lather all over it. A raw egg broken into a boot, before putting it on, greatly softens the leather: of course the boots should be well greased when hard walking is anticipated. After some hours on the road, when the feet are beginning to be chafed, take off the shoes, and change the stockings; Putting ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... round, strong-looking right arms reached out of the water, bowed forward, clutched at the wave, and pulled them on. Simultaneously, the left arms reached back, pushed against the wave, and shot them forward. Their feet beat the water to a lather. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... it now, and you see two natives putting up two lamps; and the governor, you can imagine—he is training his pair of carriage ponies to stand this unusual display. They go up and down the mile of high road on the bundar in such a lather, one nearly out of its skin with excitement. What would be better than an arch, and would please every one, would be to collect all the Burmese residents in the district in their best dresses, and allow them to group themselves as their artistic minds would suggest; ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... examination of the horses in the corral resulted in the discovery of one which had evidently been ridden hard and unsaddled but a few minutes before, for its flanks were in a lather and steam rose from ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer

... nobly together upon two fat sparrows, and again we had a blackbird for dinner. He had killed it that morning from his window, while shaving, for I saw the lather dried on the stock ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith

... however, is held in high esteem among the Indians. It is thinner than that of the moose, but makes a much better article of leather. When dressed in the Indian fashion—that is to say, soaked in a lather composed of the brains and fat of the animal itself, and then washed, dried, scraped, and smoked—it becomes as soft and pliable as a kid-glove, and will wash and dry without stiffening like chamois leather. That is a great advantage which it has, in the eyes of the Indians, over the skins ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... may fling his brush and strop into the fire, and bury his razor certain fathoms in the earth. No! One crop of cares will always succeed another—not very oppressive, nor in any wise grand, perhaps—worries, simply, no more; but needing a modicum of lather, the looking glass, the strop, the diligent razor, delicate manipulation, and stealing a portion of our precious time every day we live; and this must go on so long as the state of man is imperfect, and plenty of ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... 195th carried him home with shouts and rejoicings; and Coppy, who had ridden a horse into a lather, met him, and, to his intense disgust, kissed him openly in the presence of ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... not fight the good fight, under the banners of a riglar church, in this world, will be mustered among the chosen in heaven, as my husband, the captain there, as ye call him, saysthough there is but one captain that I know, who desarves the name. I hopes, Lather-Stocking, yell no be foolish, and putting the boy up to try the law in the matter; for twill be an evil day to ye both, when ye first turn the skin of so paceable an animal as a sheep into a bone of contention, The lad is wilcome to his drink for ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... came the Goths. My face was in a lather, the time of the first invasion, and I suspended my razor in mid-air to gaze out on my beloved field. At the far end I saw a little girl and a little boy, their arms filled with yellow spoil. Ah, thought I, an unwonted benevolence burgeoning, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... needs a bath. Have a pailful of warm water, a pitcher to dip it up with, a piece of mild yellow soap, and a pail of cold water. Pour a little warm water over the dog, beginning with his back, shoulders, and sides, and finish with his head, rubbing the soap into a lather all over him at the same time. Be careful not to let any water into his ears, or soap into his eyes. Next rinse the soap well out of his coat with the warm water, beginning with the head. Then pour the cold water all over him and let him shake himself well. Rub ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... barber's hand, which indeed was at first very terrible to behold; for the razor was almost twice as long as an ordinary scythe. His majesty, according to the custom of the country, was only shaved twice a week. I once prevailed on the barber to give me some of the suds or lather, out of which I picked forty or fifty of the strongest stumps of hair, I then took a piece of fine wood and cut it like the back of a comb, making several holes in it at equal distance with as small a needle as I ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... when he reached Heronsmere glanced covertly at his arrogant face and opined to one of his fellows in the stables that "Mr. Forrester had precious little care for his horseflesh. Brought his horse here in a fair lather, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... further. Up the walk, from the road, came running an apoplectically red and puffing man of late middle age;—a man whose face bore traces of lather; and who was swathed in a purple bathrobe. Flapping ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... tightly buttoned, his soft hat set jauntily on the side of his head, his plumes sweeping over its side, and his sword clattering at his spurred heel, he presented a very different appearance from that which he had made a little before, with his head in a tin basin, and his face covered with lather. In fact, Colonel Marshall was already a noted officer, and before the end of the war he attained still higher ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page

... glass, and as steep as a house-wall. But all were eager to have the Princess and half the kingdom. So they rode and slipped, and slipped and rode, and still it was the same story over again. At last all their horses were so weary that they could scarce lift a leg, and in such a sweat that the lather dripped from them, and so the knights had to give up trying any more. So the king was just thinking that he would proclaim a new trial for the next day, to see if they would have better luck, when all at once a knight came riding up on so brave a ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen

... other hand, they could not leave him alone. They could not go away. They watched. They saw the damp, lather-soaked beard of that victimized stranger falling away, stroke by stroke of the flashing, heavy razor. The dead denuded ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various



Words linked to "Lather" :   birch, work over, welt, soap, whip, sparkle, fizz, lathery, clean, stew, slash, lave, cat, leather, horsewhip, soapsuds, workman, swither, beat, froth, cowhide, foam, shaving soap



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