Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Moult   Listen
verb
Moult  v., n.  See Molt.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Moult" Quotes from Famous Books



... well cared for and will live to a great age. Some of these birds have been known to attain an age of seventy years, and one seen by Vaillant had reached the patriarchal age of ninety three. At sixty its memory began to fail, at sixty-five the moult became very irregular and the tail changed to yellow. At ninety it was a very decrepit creature, almost blind and quite silent, having forgotten its former ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph, Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1897 • anonymous

... "If they want any of my feathers, they can wait until I moult. Then you will see how much they think of me, for whenever they find one of my train feathers (not tail, if you please; every bird has a tail, but I have a train) they carry it carefully into the house to be made into a duster for the parlor. I never give ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson

... I think we had gone from San Francisco to make a railway, or something. On the morning of the 'quake, Sam and I had gone down to the beach to bathe. We had shed our boots and begun to moult, when there was a slight tremor of the earth, as if the elephant who supports it were pushing upwards, or lying down and getting up again. Next, the surges, which were flattening themselves upon the sand and dragging away ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... who don't figger to have no truck with Scotch machine bosses. I guess a sight of his flea-bitten features 'ud set 'em seein' things so they wouldn't rec'nise their harps from frypans, and they'd moult feathers till you wouldn't know it from a snowfall on Labrador. But when he mixes his notions of my ma with 'lazy'! Lazy! Lazy! Gee! Why, if I signed in a half hour late from that bum suttler's canteen, I guess it was only the time it took me digestin' two quarts ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... old Parliamentary hand Familiar with the ropes, Those perils you will understand With which a Premier copes Whose big battalions run to seed, Having indulged a taste for slacking, And let their muscles moult for need Of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various

... here a passage which I am unable to understand. After the words "300 lbs. and more," it goes on: "Et la veoit l'en voler moult loing, desquelles pierres il en y avoit plus de lx routes qui tant montoit l'une comme l'autre" The Bern has the same. [Perhaps we might read lx en ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... trees. These eggs hatch in less than a week, and the colonies of young caterpillars at first feed upon the undersides of the leaves. They cast their skins four times, each time increasing in size and changing their color somewhat. The last moult, and sometimes the last two, take place on the trunk of the tree, and the clusters of discarded skins frequently remain for several months afterwards. After the last moult they ascend the trees, remain feeding for a short while, then go ...
— The Pecan and its Culture • H. Harold Hume

... moults, of changes of skin; but these moults, which are intended to favour the development of the larva by ridding it of covering that has become too tight for it, in no way alter its external shape. After any moult that it may have undergone, the larva retains the same characteristics. If it begin by being tough, it will not become tender; if it be equipped with legs, it will not be deprived of them later; if it be provided with ocelli, it will not become blind. It is true that the ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... the wilderness with his murdering crew! May the Lord protect and aid all women from such birds o' passage and of prey! And I thought I had seen the pin-feathers of some such plumage on this man Boyd. But he may moult to a prettier colour. I hope so—but in my heart I dare not believe it. For he is of that tribe of men who would have their will of every pretty petticoat they notice. Some are less unscrupulous than others, that is the only difference. And he ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... they all fasten at once upon the young buds of their native bush, where they pass a sluggish and uneventful existence in sucking up the juice from the veins on the one hand, and secreting honey-dew upon the other. Four times they moult their skins, these moults being in some respects analogous to the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into chrysalis and butterfly. After the fourth moult, the young aphides attain maturity; and then they give origin, parthenogenetically, to a second brood, also ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... which in any case I have broken before? Oh, Isoult la Desirous, if I desired you before when you went torn and shamefaced through the mire, what shall I say to you going in silk, in a litter, with a crown, Isoult la Desiree!" He called her name over and over, Isoult la Desiree, la Moult-Desiree, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... tineo. Mother patrino. Motion movo. Motionless senmova. Motive kauxzo. Motive moviga. Motor movilo, motoro. Motto devizo. Mould modelilo. Mould (soil) tero. Mouldy sxima. Mouldy, to get sximigxi. Moult sxangxi plumojn. Moult (birds) sxangxi plumojn. Mound remparo, digo. Mount supreniri. Mount monteto. Mountain monto. Mountaineer montano. Mountainous monta. Mountain-range montaro. Mountebank jxonglisto. Mourn malgxoji, ploregi. Mournful funebra. Mourning (dress) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... knowe for trouthe 32 Que es lignes de cest aucteur That in the lynes of this auctour Sount plus de parolles et de raysons Ben moo wordes and reasons Comprinses, et de responses, Comprised, and of ansuers, Que[2] en moult daultres liures. Than in ...
— Dialogues in French and English • William Caxton

... Liliha, 15 This atom, this parcel, this flame, In the line Kuhi-hewa of Lola— Ka-lola, who mothered a babe prodigious, For glory and splendor renowned, A scion most comely from heaven, 20 The finest down of the new-grown plume, From bird whose moult floats to heaven, Prime of the soaring birds of Pokahi, The prince, heaven-flower of the island, Ancestral sire of Ke-oua, ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... paaige me quistrent; Ge fui trop poures, si nel poi baillier mie. Il me lessrent por mes enfanz qu'il virent. —Di moi, vilain, des estres de la vile. Et cil respont:—Ce vos sai-ge bien dire Por un denier .ii. granz pains i vismes; La denere vaut .iii. en autre vile: Moult par est bone, se puis n'est empirie. —Fox, dist Guillaume, ce ne demant-je mie, Ms des paiens chevaliers de la vile, Del rei Otrant ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... spirits be sides his room-mate Dan Slote—among them the ship's surgeon, Dr. A. Reeve Jackson (the guide-destroying "Doctor" of The Innocents); Jack Van Nostrand, of New Jersey ("Jack"); Julius Moulton, of St. Louis ("Moult"), and other care-free fellows, the smoking-room crowd which is likely to make comradeship its chief watchword. There were companionable people in the cabin crowd also—fine, intelligent men and women, especially one of the latter, a middle-aged, intellectual, motherly soul—Mrs. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... for I believe that there are breeds which always come brown and mottled. Lastly, in the "prize-canaries," which have black wing- and tail-feathers during their first (?) plumage, what colours are the wings and tails after the first (?) moult or when adult? I should be particularly glad to learn this. Heaven have mercy on you, for it is clear that I have none. I am going to investigate this same point with all the breeds of fowls, as Mr. Tegetmeier will procure for me young birds, about two ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... accumulating piles of society litter, such as is comprised in the various formal notifications of dinners, dances, balls, soirees, "at homes," and all the divers sorts of entertainment with which the English "s'amusent moult tristement." Some of these invitations, less ceremonious, were in form of pretty little notes from great ladies, who entreated their "DEAR Mr. Villiers" to give them the "EXTREME honor and pleasure" of his company at certain select and extra brilliant receptions where Royalty itself would ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... Ric. II. cap. 15; 13 Ric. II. stat. 2. The first of these acts contains a paragraph which shifts the blame from the popes themselves to the officials of the Roman courts. The statute is said to have been enacted en eide et confort du pape qui moult sovent a estee trublez par tieles et semblables clamours et impetracions, et qui y meist voluntiers covenable remedie, si sa seyntetee estoit sur ces choses enfournee. I had regarded this passage as a fiction of courtesy like that of the Long Parliament who levied ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... haughtily,—and will yield their best values to him who can best do without them. Keep the town for occasions, but the habits should be formed to retirement. Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter, where moult the wings which will bear it farther ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of his habits, but not in migrating, being about as much of a continental as any other biped American. Nor is he like his cousins in changes of dress. Out of a dozen of the latter that may be brought down at a shot, you will scarcely find three exactly alike. They moult at the South, and the young pass gradually into adult plumage. The male redwing, up to his first autumn, is hardly distinguishable in dress from his mother. Here he dons his epaulettes, beginning with the threadbare worsted ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... doesn't grow on blackberry bushes in this climate, and I brought over everything Grandma Carleton left me: that desk, and cabinet and mirror, and those three near-Chippendale chairs. Wouldn't the poor darling make discords on her golden harp, or moult important feathers out of her wings, if she could see her parlour furniture in a room at ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... little bird, "I'll moult all my feathers," so he moulted all his pretty feathers. Now there was a little girl walking below, carrying a jug of milk for her brothers' and sisters' supper, and when she saw the poor little bird moult all its ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another, itself but temporary. Truly, the imago state of man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is a step gained, and of such there have ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... B.P. Brent 1859 page 41.) Neumeister describes a breed of a black colour with white bars on the wing and a white crescent-shaped mark on the breast; these marks are generally rusty-red before the first moult, but after the third or fourth moult they undergo a change; the wing- feathers and the crown of the head likewise then become white or grey. (5/30. 'Die staarhalsige Taube. Das Ganze, etc.' s. 21 ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... others the ear cavity contains certain minute solid bodies, known as otoliths, which in the same way play upon the nerve fibres. Sometimes these are secreted by the walls of the cavity itself, but certain Crustacea have acquired the remarkable habit of selecting after each moult suitable particles of sand, which they pick up with their pincers and ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... lastly, when by chymic jolt And sheer corrosion of the thatch, What time the withering woodlands moult My love shall moult ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various

... the French tongue," said Alleyne, "and in a right clerkly hand. This is how it runs: 'A le moult puissant et moult honorable chevalier, Sir Nigel Loring de Christchurch, de son tres fidele ami Sir Claude Latour, capitaine de la Compagnie blanche, chatelain de Biscar, grand seigneur de Montchateau, vavaseur de le renomme Gaston, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle



Words linked to "Moult" :   desquamate, peel off, throw, moulter, exuviate, molt, cast, shake off, cast off, throw off, shedding, shed, molting, slough



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com