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Mongrel   Listen
noun
Mongrel  n.  The progeny resulting from a cross between two breeds, as of domestic animals; anything of mixed breed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mongrel" Quotes from Famous Books



... had occurred, he wondered, to produce this mongrel creature with the brain of a human and the body of a beast? Mike held forth his hand. "You were a vicious little devil," he said. ...
— Before Egypt • E. K. Jarvis

... mine," said Jocelyn, with a surly shrug. But she was content with his answer and his rough kiss, and when he had gone out into the gray morning, calling his mongrel setter from its kennel, she went back up the stairs and threw herself on her icy bed. But her little face was hot with tearless shame, and misery numbed her limbs, and she cried out in her heart for God to punish old Gordon's sin from generation to generation—meaning that young Gordon should ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... one constant element of luck Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck. Stick to your aim; the mongrel's hold will slip, But only crowbars loose the bulldog's grip; Small though he looks, the jaw that never yields Drags down the bellowing monarch ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... a strange, mongrel, merry place, this town of Boulogne; the little French fishermen's children are beautiful, and the little French soldiers, four feet high, red-breeched, with huge pompons on their caps, and brown faces, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... abroad this mornin'," said Sennacherib, still bending over his music, "when I see that petted hound of the vicar's mek a fly at a mongrel dog as had a bone. The mongrel run for it and took the bone along with him. It comes into my mind now as if the hound had known a month or two aforehand as he'd want that bone, he'd ha' made friends wi' ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... in the mongrel tongue of the Sauk, for Deerfoot, after a careful inspection of the painted warrior, was quite sure he belonged to that restless and warlike tribe. He had encountered the people before, though at rare intervals, and he had hunted with a pioneer who was familiar with the tongue. The youth detected ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... what I've come to!" he muttered as he buried the poor brute, while the tears fell from his eyes and the other dog whined dolorously beside him—"broken hearted over—a mongrel!" But he got ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... person, came to the door, having, on either side of her, two youths evidently her sons, for their features bore a strong resemblance to her own; and between the lad on her right hand, and the dame's black gown, a large dog, mongrel in his breed, thrust his inquisitive nose. Out of the four windows, which I attributed to the bed-rooms, the heads of four girls popped. Three half-naked savages, or the Graces, could not have caused more excitement in the streets of London, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... in his usual direct and electric manner. Happening to walk down the Rue Saint Honore, he had come upon tragedy. Madame Bidoux, fat, red of face, tearful of eye and strident of voice, held in her arms a little mongrel dog—her own precious possession—which had just been run over in the street, and the two of them filled the air with wailings and vociferation. Aristide uncovered his head, as though he were about to address a duchess, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... market with bundles of jute on their heads. Two men are chopping away at a log of wood with regular, ringing blows. The village carpenter is repairing an upturned dinghy under a big aswatha tree. A mongrel dog is prowling aimlessly along the canal bank. Some cows are lying there chewing the cud, after a huge meal off the luxuriant grass, lazily moving their ears backwards and forwards, flicking off flies with their tails, and occasionally ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore

... seven, yet it oftenest felt the weight of its father's fingers. Three of his children did directly follow his steps, and began to be as vile as, in his youth, he was himself. The other that remained became a kind of mongrel[38] professors, not so bad as their father, nor so good as their mother, but were betwixt them both. They had their mother's notions, and their father's actions, and were much like those that you read of in the book of Nehemiah; these children were half of Ashdod, 'and could not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... age, in a black silk dress still faintly bearing the creases of five days in a trunk, and accompanied by a mongrel dog, both being taken upstairs by Grayson, Mademoiselle, Pink, and Howard Cardew. ("He said Jinx was to come," she explained breathlessly to her bodyguard. "I never ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... though not for sobriety or chastity, virtues wholly unknown at Wawa; but they are merry, good natured, and hospitable. They profess to be descended from the people of Nyffee and Houssa, but their language is a dialect of the Youribanee; their religion is a mongrel mahommedism grafted upon paganism. Their women are much better looking than those of Youriba, and the men are well made, but have a debauched look; in fact, Lander says, he never was in a place where drunkenness was so general. They appeared to have plenty ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... polthogue, And the toe of my brogue, I'd like to kick both of 'em divil knows where! Sure I broke 'em meself, And, so long "on the shelf" They ought to be docile, the dogs of my care. O'BRIEN mongrel villin, And as for cur DILLON Just look at him ranging afar at his will! I thought, true as steel, They would both come to heel, Making up for the pack Whistled off by false MAC, As though he'd ever shoot with my patience and skill! To me ye'll not stick, Sirs? What divil's elixirs Tempt ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various

... boxing match between Sam Mac Vea and Joe Jeannette that will remain famous in the history of the sport. Mac Vea was a heavy weight, strong, all muscle: a veritable black giant. Joe Jeannette, light, well proportioned, all nerve: a mongrel of the best sort. The match was epic. It went on for forty-two rounds and lasted three hours. At the third round, and again in the seventh, Sam Mac Vea threw Joe Jeannette, and his victory seemed assured. But little by little Joe Jeannette ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... them and was swimming towards me. At a glance I knew that dog on which my eyes had not fallen for decades. It was a mongrel, half spaniel and half bull-terrier, which for years had been the dear friend of my youth and died at last on the horns of a wounded wildebeeste that attacked me when I had fallen from my horse upon the veld. Boldly it tackled ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... acceptable to those you buy from. Bring any other, and you can call the fifty cents it contains one hundred, but your laws are for the United States only, and you must accept the fifty cents or take back the mongrel that in your own barnyard crows so loud, for the United States has induced a swindle that she is powerless to ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood

... or by the way is which its consequences may confirm it]. But if there is no reason extant in the universe why they should be doubted, the beliefs are true in the only sense in which anything can be true anyhow: they are practically and concretely true, namely. True in the mystical mongrel sense of an Identitatsphilosophie they need not be; nor is there any intelligible reason why they ever need be true otherwise than verifiably and practically. It is reality's part to possess its own existence; it is thought's ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... of scissors cut the thread, and Cagnotte, freed of a sort of overcoat made of curled lambskin, in which he had been tricked out by the Pont-Neuf dealers to make him look like a poodle, appeared in all the wretched guise and ugliness of a street cur, a worthless mongrel. He had grown fat, and his scant garment was choking him. Once he was rid of his carapace, he wagged his ears, stretched his limbs, and started romping joyously round the room, caring nothing about being ugly so long as he was comfortable. His appetite returned, ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier

... a coward, you dirty, ear-ringed Levantine thief!" and Barradas sprang to his feet. "Take it back, you mongrel-bred swine, or I'll ram my fist down ...
— Edward Barry - South Sea Pearler • Louis Becke

... as a fly that goes to bed Rests with its tail above its head, So in this mongrel state of ours The rabble are the supreme powers. That horsed us on their backs to show us A jadish trick at last, and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... the road he waited behind a small thicket until the wagon came nearer, when he saw that it was being driven by the man who had been with Monkey when they had taken the boat, and that, following the wagon was a big, ugly-looking, mongrel dog, that was dashing from one side of the road to the other, interspersed with little ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor

... country presents strong attractions for the ornithologist. But what is wanting in variety is made up in numbers. The bays and indentations on the coast, as well as the rivers and lakes interior, swarm with myriads of wild geese, ducks, swans, and other water birds. The geese and ducks are a mongrel race, their plumage being variegated, the same as our barn-yard fowls. Some of the islands in the harbour, near San Francisco, are white with the guano deposited by these birds; and boat-loads of eggs ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant

... remark of the elder, Schieffelin, that the brethren there 'deserve censure.' We do not censure them, nor do we propose to do so; but that they deserve it is undeniable. But the point is, how can our disapproval of the mongrel Classis mar the peace of the Amoy brethren?" This language was used by the President of Synod, after asking whether the Synod was ready for the question, "the question being about to be put," when an attempt to answer it seemed altogether out of place. In all the circumstances it seemed almost ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage

... I have described, fully recruited, were hanging around, growling and snarling, sneaking into the kitchen and being kicked out by Aunt Betty and her corps of varicolored assistants, largely augmented at the approach of Christmas with its cheer. The yelping of the mongrel pack, the shouts and whoops of the boys, and the laughter of the maids or men about the kitchen and back-yard, all in their best clothes and in high spirits, were exhilarating, and with many whoops and much "hollering," ...
— The Long Hillside - A Christmas Hare-Hunt In Old Virginia - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page

... back; and is said to have earnestly warned the generals not to engage with the enemy during his absence. Both the generals were indignant at this conduct, but particularly Hanno, who was before disturbed at his reputation. "Is it to be borne," said he, "that a mongrel African should impose restraints upon me, a Carthaginian general, commissioned by the senate and people?" Epicydes, who wished to wait, was prevailed upon by him to agree to their crossing the river and offering battle; for, said he, if they should wait for Mutines, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... contempt which were the common heritage of most English Jews seventy years ago. He had none of the oily cheerfulness observable in Mr. Cohen's aspect: his very features—broad and chubby—showed that tendency to look mongrel without due cause, which, in a miscellaneous London neighborhood, may perhaps be compared with the marvels of imitation in insects, and may have been nature's imperfect effort on behalf of the pure Caucasian to shield him ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... pile of low square buildings was barely visible in the haze. It was close to the Tiber, and the rush of the water against the piling of the bridge was distinctly audible. As the two drew near to a closed gateway, a number of mongrel dogs began to snap and bark around them. From within the building came the roar of coarse hilarity and coarser jests. As Pratinas approached the solidly barred doorway, a grating was pushed aside ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... is said to have descended from the rough greyhound and the shepherd's dog. It is now rare, but there are some of its sinister-looking mongrel progeny still to be seen. They always bear the reputation of being poachers' dogs, and are deeply attached to their owners. They have a fine scent; and a man confessed to Mr. Bewick, that he could, with his pair of lurchers, procure as many rabbits as he pleased. They never ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... trunks, all of the tholukh species. The sand of this desert is covered with the footsteps or marks of the gazelle and hare; but we saw only one gazelle and one hare. The gazelle was followed by a stupid mongrel-bred dog; it jumped high in the air, and was soon out of sight. The Kailouees are no huntsmen. I question whether they have ever caught a gazelle or any full-grown animal in their lives; they are a ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... echoes thundered to the chiding of two or three brace of foxhounds. Terriers, including the whole generation of Pepper and Mustard, were also in attendance, having been sent forward under the care of a shepherd. Mongrel, whelp, and cur of low degree filled up the burden of the chorus. The spectators on the brink of the ravine, or glen, held their greyhounds in leash in readiness to slip them at the fox as soon as the activity of the party below should force ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... poor Fleda had to run the gauntlet of questions, interspersed with gracious speeches which she could bear even less well. She was extremely glad to reach the cars and take refuge in seeming sleep from the mongrel attentions, which if for the most part prompted by admiration owned so large a share of curiosity. Her weary head and heart would fain have courted the reality of sleep, as a refuge from more painful thoughts and a feeling of exhaustion that could scarcely support itself; but ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... Dolores faced her mongrel subjects again and her dark eyes blazed with fire, her beautiful face was dark with surging blood, every line of her lithe figure quivered as ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... of mongrel zealot, sometimes very precise and peevish. But I have seen him pleasant enough in his way; much addicted to jealousy, but more to fondness; so that as he is often jealous without a cause, he's ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... without music" might be the title of all his prose theoretical works. Not having a tail, this fox, therefore, solemnly argued that tails were useless appanages. You remember your AEsop! Instead of melodic inspiration, themes were to be used. Instead of broad, flowing, but intelligible themes, a mongrel breed of recitative and parlando was to take ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... being, which a gentleman doubtless must have generated, might have been, is more than I, as I now am, can pretend to divine. As it is, however low it may sink me in the reader's opinion, truth obliges me to own, I am but of a mongrel breed. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... of an Airedale named Ruby; two setters called Wayward and Girlie; a heavy black mongrel, Nero; ditto brindle, Ben; and a smaller black and white ditto, Ranger. They were very nice friendly doggy dogs, but they did not look like lion hunters. Nevertheless, Hill assured us that they were of great use in the sport, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... "I'm a mean mongrel—am I?" cried the angry maid, repeating the cook's allusion to her birthplace in the Channel Islands. "The mistress shall know, this minute, that I'm the woman ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... good. Even his detractors—those who count in letters—have admitted that his nature and his methods were too high-handed for grovelling and deceit, that the mettle of his courage was unsurpassed. Jefferson and Madison had the spirit of the mongrel in comparison; Monroe was a fighter, but cowardly and spiteful. In point of mettle alone, Adams and Clinton were Hamilton's ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... value of which was considerably enhanced by the newly-acquired headpiece, which gave to the whole instrument an air of importance to which it could lay no claim till it carried on its shoulders a head belonging to the aristocracy of Fiddles. During a period of about twenty years this mongrel Fiddle became the property of as many owners, and ultimately fell into my hands. Leaving this instrument, we will follow the history of the Stradivari, date 1710. At the dispersion of Mr. Goding's collection by Messrs. Christie and Manson, in the year 1857, a well-known amateur purchased ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... with the chill of pride that was akin to awe and that tingled and bristled along my spinal column and in my brain. As for the rest—the weaklings and the rejected, and the dark-pigmented things, the half-castes, the mongrel-bloods, and the dregs of long-conquered races—how could they count? My heels were iron as I gazed on them in their peril and weakness. Lord! Lord! For ten thousand generations and centuries we had stamped upon their faces and enslaved them to the ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... gone we have encountered complete sterility in the selfing within the individuals and in the attempt to use pollen of the same variety brought from a distance. The unfortunate feature about all the hybridizing work with apples is the mongrel character of the plants on which we work. We know nothing of the parentage of any of our varieties, and it seems quite useless to speculate on what the segregation of characters may be in crosses between different varieties. A further discouraging ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... the tradition of self-respect, which spring up in America on the skirts of the rich summer colonies. But Bessy had never given Lynbrook a thought, and he realized the futility of hoping to interest her in its mongrel population of day-labourers and publicans so soon after his glaring failure at Westmore. The sight of the village irritated him whenever he passed through the Lynbrook gates, but having perforce accepted the situation ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... fellow by the banks of the Thames has hunted the mammoth among unbroken forest two hundred thousand years ago and more; with it he has faced the angry cave bear and the original and only genuine British lion (for everybody knows that the existing mongrel heraldic beast is nothing better than a bastard modification of the leopard of the Plantagenets). Nay, I have very little doubt in my own mind that with it some aesthetic ancestor has brained and cut up for his use his next-door ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... They are the puppets of successful soldiers, and are administered by generals who follow one another like the ghosts that walked in the vision of "Richard Third," and do not hold office long enough to be photographed. They are based on mongrel races, steeped in ignorance, cramped by superstition, and physically rotten before they ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... public in the Miscellancies of Pope and Swift, was the treatise of Martinus Scriblerus, Peri Bathous, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry. The exquisite wit and humour of this piece, which was almost wholly Pope's, enraged the Dunces to madness; and the mongrel pack opened in full cry, with barbarous dissonance, against their supposed whipper-in. Never was there such a senseless yell: for the philosophical treatise "On the Profund" overflows with amenity and good-nature. Pope is all the while at play—diverting himself in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... instances, will pass through acquaintance and friendship to love and marriage. Then springs a mixed and degenerate race; then the white race, with its proud tradition, its high ideals, its grand power, shades off into an inferior, mongrel breed. Our inheritance, our civilization, our honor, bid us shut out and forbid that degeneracy at the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... At the entrance to the tent, Hardyman noticed the dog at Isabel's heels, and vented his ill-temper, as usual with male humanity, on the nearest unoffending creature that he could find. "Be off, you mongrel brute!" he shouted. The tail of Tommie relaxed from its customary tight curve over the small of his back; and the legs of Tommie (with his tail between them) took him at full gallop to the friendly shelter of the cupboard in the smoking-room. It was ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins

... were three French officers en route to Brazzaville, the capital of the French Congo, and a dog, a sad mongrel, very dirty, very hungry. On each side of the tiny toy car were six revolving-chairs, so the four men, not to speak of the dog, quite filled it. And to our own bulk each added hand-bags, cases of ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis

... in his large brown eyes. But he made no sound, he came no nearer. Instead, as I advanced, he gradually fell back, and I noticed that another dog, a vague rough brindled thing, had limped up. "There'll be a hubbub now," I thought; for at the same moment a third dog, a long-haired white mongrel, slipped out of a doorway and joined the others. All three stood looking at me with grave eyes; but not a sound came from them. As I advanced they continued to fall back on muffled paws, still watching me. "At a given point, they'll ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... crisis, and that no adroitness of phrase or trick of diplomacy could get rid of Him. He showed that there could not be two kinds of Americans: one genuine, which believed wholly and singly in the United States, and the other cunning and mongrel, which swore allegiance to the United States—lip service—and kept its allegiance to Germany—heart service. He lost no opportunity to make his illustrations clear. On resigning as Secretary of State after the sinking ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... people they would have made a nation of themselves. There isn't any, and I'm not going to slave myself for them any longer. No doubt they'll be very well treated, and to tell the truth, I don't much care if they aren't. After all, they're a mongrel lot. ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope

... they took Ned with them. The name "Tlascala" had appealed to Ned at first. It was the brave Tlascalan mountaineers who had helped Cortez and who had made possible his conquest of the great Mexican empire. But these were not the Tlascalans of that day. They were a mongrel breed, short, dirty and barefooted. He ate of the food they gave him, said nothing, and lay down on his serape to seek sleep. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... spoken in the intercourse of Russians and Chinese at Kiachta is a mongrel tongue in which Russian predominates. It is a 'pigeon-Russian' exactly analagous to the 'pigeon English' of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. The Chinese at Maimaichin can reckon in Russian and understand the rudiments ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... hat! The brims still grew with every play they writ; And grew so large, they covered all the wit. Hat was the play; 'twas language, wit, and tale: Like them that find meat, drink, and cloth in ale. What dulness do these mongrel wits confess, When all their hope is acting of a dress! Thus, two the best comedians of the age Must be worn out, with being blocks o' the stage; Like a young girl, who better things has known, Beneath their poet's ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... is about two hours, but becomes narrower towards the north; it is watered by the Aaszy [Arabic], or Orontes, which flows near the foot of the western mountain, where it forms numerous marshes. The inhabitants of El Ghab are a mongrel race of Arabs and Fellahs, and are called Arab el Ghab. They live in winter time in a few villages dispersed over the valley, of which they cultivate only the land adjacent to their villages; on the approach of hot weather they retire ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt

... filled with ladies, and often gentlemen, who seemed to have nothing else to do than to watch the passers-by all day. The road for some way was not bad, being paved with stones set edgeways and tolerably even. Solon followed us with great gravity, looking up at the mongrel curs which ran along the tops of the quinta walls, barking and yelping in tones sufficiently loud to crack the drums of our ears. Never before had I seen views so varied and beautiful of mountains, ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... this strategy, these wild dogs capture the rabbits, though the latter are more fleet by far. It is believed that no other human being approaches the Seris in celerity of movement. A favorite sport of the boys is lassoing dogs. Mongrel curs are the only animals domesticated by these wild people. For amusement sake, the boys take their dogs to a clear place and drive them in all directions, then they capture the frightened animals by running and throwing the lassos, which are made of human hair. ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... still not his old self. It became matter of public remark that his easy, short jacket, a mongrel kind of garment to which he was deeply attached, was discarded, not merely for grand occasions, but even upon the ordinary Saturday night concert, yea, even for walking out at midday, and a superior frock-coat substituted for it—a frock-coat in which, we told him, he ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... Australia; the sky cloudless, the atmosphere breezeless, the temperature one hundred and seven degrees in the shade. With it came the aboriginals in great number, accompanied, as they always are, by crowds of repulsive-looking mongrel dogs. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... expert in avoiding the rattling broughams and hansoms as the veriest mongrel that ever led a vagrant life in London streets. Berekely Square?—here there was comparative quiet, with the gas lamps shining up on the thick foliage of the maples. In Grosvenor Square he had a bit of a scamper; but there was no rabbit to hunt. In Oxford Street his master took him into ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... King," she said, "my uncle the Marshal must perforce ride to Edinburgh to deliver his credentials. Would it not be a most mirthful jest to ride with equipage such as this to that mongrel poverty-stricken Court, and let the poor little King and his starved guardian see what ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... of the group and foreground. Suppose an eminence of about five or six feet already collected, in a circular form; on the heap is a man raking about, and a little child playing with a small brown shaggy mongrel of a dog, with a community of pigs battening on the acclivity; a youth below, with spade and axe, is supplying three women with stuff—if women they may be called, who, of all the progeny of old Mother Nox, seemed most the resemblances of age, misery, and want; I say seemed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various

... houses to tremble; the pavements were worn under the tread of hurrying multitudes. The old, leisurely, quizzical look of the faces was lost in something harder and warier; and a cockney type began to emerge discernibly—a cynical young mongrel barbaric of feature, muscular and cunning; dressed in good fabrics fashioned apparently in imitation of the sketches drawn by newspaper comedians. The female of his kind came with him—a pale girl, shoddy and a little rouged; and they ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... toward the spot where the pigs were lurking, making, however, a wide detour so as to approach it from the other side, as it was desired to drive them across the plain. At some distance behind the clump were stationed a number of natives, with a variety of mongrel village curs. When they saw the horsemen approach they came up and prepared to enter the jungle ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... the kindly dial; And I'm numbered once again With those noblest of their species Called emphatically "Men"; Loaf, as I have loafed aforetime, Through the streets, with tranquil mind, And a long-backed fancy-mongrel Trailing casually behind. ...
— English Satires • Various

... beginning by Cookie, with high tributes to my courage in sallying forth in pursuit of the phantom. Even those holding other views of the genesis of the white dog were amazed at his presence on the island. In spite of Cookie's aspersions, the creature was no mongrel, but a thoroughbred of points. Not by any means a dog which some little South American coaster might have abandoned here when it put in for water. The most reasonable hypothesis seemed to be that he had belonged to the copra gatherer, and was for some reason ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... tall, loose-jointed man at the left of the group, the editor of a conservative monthly, has for his vis-a-vis the artist who has had so much to do with the redemption of American architecture and decoration from the mongrel period of the middle century. Another night you may not see a single one of these faces, but another ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... won himself a name amongst us, before he was anonymous—Dash is a sort of a kind of a spaniel; at least there is in his mongrel composition some sign of that beautiful race. Besides his ugliness, which is of the worst sort—that is to say, the shabbiest—he has a limp on one leg that gives a peculiarly one-sided awkwardness to his gait; but, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various

... seen only two exceptions to this rule, namely, in a spaniel and terrier. Dogs of a light-brown colour often have a lighter, yellowish-brown spot over the eyes; sometimes the spot is white, and in a mongrel terrier the spot was black. Mr. Waring kindly examined for me a stud of fifteen greyhounds in Suffolk: eleven of them were black, or black and white, or brindled, and these had no eye-spots; but three were red ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... to put their muzzles through the bars of their cage. I liked the dogs best, and I wanted to see the one they called Bob, so I went up quite close to them. There were two little white dogs, something like Billy, two mongrel spaniels, an Irish terrier, and a brown dog asleep in the corner, that I knew must be Bob. He did look a little like me, but he was not quite so ugly for he had his ears and ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... all nationalities—Germans, Hollanders, Irish, and others—were made prisoners, and among them were General de Koch and Piet Joubert, nephew of General Joubert. General Viljoen was killed. The mongrel force, estimated at about 1200 strong, was commanded by Colonel Schiel, to whom it doubtless owed its excellent tactical disposition. This officer was wounded and taken prisoner. The Times gave somewhat interesting character sketches of prominent Boers ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... There was more than the wonted necessity upon her to establish sympathetic relations with this new man: she had never seen a finer presence: the beard and brow quite lifted his masculinity into aesthetic regions; she caught glimpses, too, of an unfamiliar mongrel species of intellect with which she would relish Platonic relations. Yet with this glow upon her she regarded the reformer's noble face and benignant blond beard doubtfully, thinking how she used to stick pins in brilliant bubbles when she was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... so mongrel in breed as the English, there is a fatal power of equivocation put into men's hands, almost whether they will or no, in being able to use Greek or Latin words for an idea when they want it to be awful; and Saxon or otherwise common words when they want ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... carrieth it, but thrust in clowns by head and shoulders, to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion. So as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained. I know Apuleius [Footnote: In his Latin Romance, the Metamorphoses, or the Golden Ass.] did somewhat so, but that is a thing recounted with space of time, not represented in one moment: and ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... Dog was found, As many dogs there be, Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound, And curs ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester

... tail-feathers, are sometimes found perfectly developed. When birds belonging to two distinct breeds are crossed one or more times, neither of the parents being blue, or having any of the above-named marks, the mongrel offspring are very apt to acquire some of these characters. Mr. Darwin gives instances which he observed himself. He crossed some white fantails with some black barbs, and the mongrels were black, brown, or mottled. He also crossed a barb with a spot, which is a white bird with ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... were discreet like Alice, and less like her brother Ted. If Mr. Clay, for instance, would like her better? She wondered if he disapproved of her riding on the engine with MacWilliams, and of her tearing through the mines on her pony, and spearing with a lance of sugar-cane at the mongrel curs that ran to snap at his flanks. She remembered his look of astonished amusement the day he had caught her in this impromptu pig-sticking, and she felt herself growing red at the recollection. She was sure ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... ornament of Hyde Park, the last appeal in dress, fashion, and equipage—was obliged to parade through the mob of a market-town in France, with four gens-d'armes for his companions, and he himself habited in a mongrel character—half postillion, half Delaware Indian. The incessant yells of laughter—the screams of the children, and the outpouring of every species of sarcasm and ridicule, at my expense, were not all—for, as I emerged from the porte-chochere I saw ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... if they were in the tropics; so that the spot, wild and fierce as it was, had great beauty. Many of the fugitive slaves had built themselves huts here: some lived in the caves. A few poor and vicious whites had joined them, intermarried with them, and from these had gradually grown up a band of as mongrel, miserable vagabonds as is often seen. They were the terror of the neighborhood. Except for their supreme laziness, they would have been as dangerous as brigands; for they were utter outlaws. No man cared for them; and they cared for no man. Parson Dorrance's heart yearned over these poor Ishmaelites; ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... expectation, indeed, of fighting, but only with the Pope's troops (and we all know what a 'soldato del papa' means), or with such mongrel defenders as can be got up by the convicts of Modena or Tuscany to give us an occasion of triumph presently. The expected outburst in Sicily and the Neapolitan States will simply extend the movement. That's our way of thinking and hoping. May ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... Among the mongrel forms of epic should be included the half descriptive, half lyric poems which were popular among the English, dealing chiefly with nature, the seasons of the year, etc. There belong also to this division numerous ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green

... Despite the miscellaneous and mongrel tribes that had forced their settlements in the City of the Caesars, the Roman population retained an inordinate notion of their own supremacy over the rest of the world; and, degenerated from the iron virtues of the Republic, possessed all the insolent ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... or sea, whatever tremble be at the heart he faces his danger as a gentleman should, though there be certain kinds of danger, as has been said, which are worse for some men than others. But I take it your gentleman volunteer, though he might be a good player with the sword, was, if you knew it, a mongrel." ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... now.[8] We had thought that the honour under which he went, even the honour of Fergus, was not the honour of a dastard!" "What hath crazed the virago and wench?" cried Fergus. "Good lack, [W.1935.] is it fitting for the mongrel to seek the Hound of battle whom [1]the warriors and champions[1] of four of the five grand provinces of Erin dare not approach nor withstand? What, I myself was glad to escape ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... surgeon, much as a butterfly-collector is pleased when he has murdered an unusually fine species of lepidoptera. Speaking myself as a vivisector of some experience, I can confidently affirm that a well- bred golden collie is far more interesting to operate upon than a mongrel sheep-dog. Nor can I comprehend Mr. Benson's blame of Denys l'Auxerrois as too extravagant and even unwholesome, when the last quality, so obvious in Uthwart, he ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... horse like that once broken is broken for life. They never forget their first lesson. A mongrel breed, stupid, resentful, and tricky, is different. Be ready to mount when I lead him around, I will send for your traveling-bag, and you will find it at the house where ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline

... pronounced it "clarsic")—"gives a distinction to an academy, which is denied to mongrel and mushroom imitations," he ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... your language," said Tarzan. "Possibly we may speak together in another tongue?" But she could not understand him, though he tried French, English, Arab, Waziri, and, as a last resort, the mongrel tongue of the ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... automobile had had its effect. Eager faces appeared at windows and doors. Children frankly curious and as frankly neglected climbed over each other, hanging on the ragged fences. Two mongrel dogs strained at their chains, yelping furiously. Genevieve crossed to the little square building bearing a gilt "office" sign. There was no response to her imperative knock, but a middle-aged man appeared on the porch of the adjoining ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... better, too, than the first; for he came on a family of mongrel gipsies, who fed him well out of their kettle, and, taken with his looks, thought to keep him for begging purposes. But now that Gibbie's confidence in human nature had been so rudely shaken, he had already ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... altogether of thirty-one sheep, nineteen goats, and six dogs. The dogs were as follows: one greyhound; one dog bred between a greyhound and a foxhound; one between a greyhound and a sheepdog; a bull-terrier; a Cape wolf-dog; and a useful nondescript mongrel. ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... of reverence can be woven the most beautiful pictures which the poet's brain can conceive; but Young America can no more excite poetic sentiment, or inspire poetic imaginations, than the sham Havana it smokes, or the mongrel horse it drives. There is no poetry in an irreverent character, or in an irreverent community. Irreverence in any form will not stand the ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... all are and shall be for ever accursed with their hundreds—nay thousands of devilish heresies, by which they degrade our God and Redeemer to the level of that idol on the stone pillar. Half a cow and half a man! Why, what rational being, I ask you, could pray to such a mongrel thing? We Jacobites or Monophysites or whatever they choose to call us will not yield a jot or tittle of the divine nature of our Lord and Saviour; and if the old faith must die out, I will turn Moslem and be converted to your One Omnipotent ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... those of the colder north. The admiration usually bestowed upon the attractions of its domestic architectural forms is, no doubt, fully merited; albeit that the cathedrals of these wealthy and powerful communities are, no one can possibly deny, if not of a mongrel type, at least of a degenerate one. It is perhaps hardly fair to note such an expression without qualification where it is applied to St. Gatien at Tours, which is really a delightfully picturesque structure; or to St. Maurice, ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... is he alive As keenest cattle king; A thoroughbred he deigns to drive, But not a mongrel thing; The very bees within his hive Are crossed—without ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... gives vent to a long, piercing, dismal whistle, which so upsets a gaunt mongrel prowling vainly for garbage in the gutters of Market Square that he puts up his nose and howls in answer. "Was that how you fell into the——" He is obviously going to say "trap," but with exceeding clumsiness substitutes "state." And wonders ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... fail to dispel. In the second act, Hernando Cortez appears, with soldiers. While the costumes of the indians were gay, and more or less attractive, those of these European warriors were ludicrously mongrel and unbecoming. The new-comers demanded that Montezuma acknowledge the authority of the King of Spain and the cross of Christ. Conversations, demands, replies, tableaus, sword-dances, etc., ensued. Finally, Montezuma and his warriors ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... their weary night march, and reported to General Morgan before daylight of the eighth, ready for duty, though they had not slept for twenty-four hours, nor eaten anything since noon of the previous day. Their arms, a mongrel lot, were many of them unfit for combat; old muskets and hunting-pieces, some without flints, and others too small-bored for ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith

... was still disheveled and dusty. Brier and milkweed clung to his frayed blouse and trousers. What could be seen of the skin of his face and hands under its stains and begriming was of a dull yellow. His light eyes had all the brightness without the restlessness of the mongrel race. They leisurely took in the whole cabin, the still open trunk before the major, and then rested deliberately ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... ocean-language. As new nations are received into the nautical brotherhood, and as new improvements are made, new terms come in. The whole whaling diction is the contribution of America, or rather of Nantucket, New Bedford, and New London, aided by the islands of the Pacific and the mongrel Spanish ports of the South Seas. Here and there an adventurous genius coins a phrase for the benefit of posterity,—as we once heard a mate order a couple of men to "go forrard and trim the ship's whiskers," to the utter bewilderment of his captain, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... very same blood tend to be sterile, and somewhat remoter unions diminish this tendency, and when they have diverged into two varieties the cross-breeds between the two are more fertile than either pure stock—yet when they have diverged only one degree more the whole tendency is reversed, and the mongrel is sterile, either absolutely or relatively. He who explains the genesis of species through purely natural agencies should assign a natural cause for this remarkable result; and this Mr. Darwin has not done. Whether original or derived, however, ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... chum might be left behind. Both the men seemed in tolerably good condition. They told us that they had had abundance of goat's flesh and vegetables, as well as fruit, but that they had got tired of the life, and had had a quarrel with four mongrel Spaniards, who lived on another part of the island, whom they thought might some day try to ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... once more to Ray, eyeing him with such a look of contempt and scorn that it smarted like a whiplash in spite of the protecting mantel of his new-found triumph. "Oh, you depraved dogs!" he told them quietly and distinctly. "You yellow, mongrel cowards!" ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... pictorial epicures on the strong, honest, ugly, patient shapes of necessary things: the brave old bones of life. There are aesthetic pottering prigs who can look on a saucepan without one tear of joy or sadness: mongrel decadents that can see no dignity in the honourable scars of a kettle. So they concentrate all their house decoration on coloured windows that nobody looks out of, and vases of lilies that everybody wishes out of the way. No: my idea (which ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... sodden and clinging, and little pools of water were widening slowly about her ragged shoes. These things he might have expected, for she had to cross the creek. But it was the look in her eyes that startled him, as she stood there with Peter, the mongrel pup, clasped tightly in ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... was himself. I suppose the blacks 'up country' are what Dutch slavery made them—mere animals—cunning and sulky. The real Hottentot is extinct, I believe, in the Colony; what one now sees are all 'Bastaards', the Dutch name for their own descendants by Hottentot women. These mongrel Hottentots, who do all the work, are an affliction to behold—debased and SHRIVELLED with drink, and drunk all day long; sullen wretched creatures—so unlike the bright Malays and cheery pleasant blacks and browns of Capetown, who never pass you ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon

... farmers replied that the stock they had was good enough. One of their favorite comments was, "When you eat an egg what difference does it make to you whether that egg was laid by a full-blooded fowl or a mongrel?" Instead of being discouraged or disgusted by this attitude on the part of the people he merely regarded it as what was to be expected and set about devising means to overcome it. As always he placed his chief reliance ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... dogs, learned to bark, as does sometimes the jackall," and it is well known that certain dogs, when reared by cats, imitate their habits, even to the licking of their feet and the washing of their faces. If a mongrel dog associates with a trained dog for any period of time it is remarkable the progress he will make. For this same reason young dogs are carried on hunting trips with trained dogs that they may learn by imitation the ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... the verge of the beautiful clear lake. Two long sharp boats, and a canoe scooped out of a whole tree, were drawn up on the sandy beach; a fishing net of many yards in length was drying on the rails; a brace of large, strong, black and tan foxhounds were lying on the step before the door; a dozen mongrel geese, with one wing-tipped wild one among them, were sauntering and gabbling about the narrow yard; and a glorious white-headed fishing eagle, with a clipped wing, but otherwise at large, was perched upon the roof ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... woods, and meadows. Its territory extends above twenty leagues in length, and grazes a great number of wild bulls and cows. In this village scarce dwell any others than hunters and butchers, who flay the beasts that are killed. These are for the most part a mongrel sort of people; some of which are born of white European people and negroes, and called mulattoes: others of Indians and white people, and termed mesticos: but others come of negroes and Indians, and are called alcatraces. From the said village are exported yearly ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin

... also hanging from the roof, but with a sigh he determined to reserve that delicacy for the morrow, remembering that two days would elapse before a fresh supply was due. His dog, Sibi—a starved looking mongrel greyhound—lay at his feet and gazed up with expectant eyes, waiting for the handful of tough mealies which would be flung to him when his master ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully

... dogs as a sort of atonement to poor old Juno and her mongrel pups," she said, soberly. "I feel as if Storm owed something to mongrels. As for this baby, it's a good experience for Jemima and Jacqueline. I want to teach them all I can, ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... of the ass in the economic arts began to decline, the mule or hybrid progeny of this creature and the horse has progressively increased. Although the value of this mongrel has been known, particularly in southern Europe, from very early days, its most extensive employment has been found in the old slave-holding States of the Federal union. The custom of using mules has been almost unknown in England, and ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... a royal dog-fight in the ravine at the back of the rifle-butts, between Learoyd's Jock and Ortheris's Blue Rot—both mongrel Rampur hounds, chiefly ribs and teeth. It lasted for twenty happy, howling minutes, and then Blue Rot collapsed and Ortheris paid Learoyd three rupees, and we were all very thirsty. A dog-fight is a most heating entertainment, quite apart from the shouting, because Rampurs fight ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... thicket drew the Cossack's attention. A pied mongrel half-setter, searching for a scent and violently wagging its scantily furred tail, came running to the cordon. Lukashka recognized the dog as one belonging to his neighbour, Uncle Eroshka, a hunter, and saw, following it through the thicket, the approaching ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... concur in the remark of the Elder Schieffelin, that the brethren there 'deserve censure.' We do not censure them, nor do we propose to do so, but that they deserve it is undeniable. But the point is, how can our disapproval of the mongrel Classis mar the peace of the Amoy brethren? There is already a division among their churches. Some are supported by our funds, others by the funds of the English Presbyterians. Would it alter matters much to say, and to make it a fact, ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... declare that Benham is well enough. But you would soon divine what I really think, and that would be the end of confidence between us. I like honesty and frankness, and I can see that you do. My opinion of Benham architecture is that it is slip-shod and mongrel. There! You see I put myself in your hands, but I do so because I feel sure you nearly agree with me already. You know it's so, but ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... Paris green. The shanty pertaining to the clearing was some little distance from the road, and, hoping to get a drink of water there, Coristine prepared to jump the rail fence and make his way towards it. The woman, seeing what he was about, called: 'Hi, Jack, Jack!' and immediately a big mongrel bull-dog came tearing towards the travellers, barking as ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell



Words linked to "Mongrel" :   bastard, mongrelize, dog, pye-dog, pariah dog, pie-dog, fice, feist



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