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Muck   Listen
adjective
muck  adj.  Like muck; mucky; also, used in collecting or distributing muck; as, a muck fork.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Muck" Quotes from Famous Books



... mate, for me; that means money, and rules, sportsman form, and sech muck. I likes to pick out my own pals, go permiskus, and trust to pot-luck. A rush twelve-a-breast is a gammock, twelve squeakers a going like one; But "rules o' the road" dump you down, chill yer sperrits, and spile all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various

... he declared, combats by sea and by land; stockade was opposed to stockade, and the fighting was constant and severe; but he never lost a man killed during the two months, and only boasted of killing five of the enemy! The principal danger in Malay warfare is the 'Mengamuk' (Anglice, running a-muck), which is the last resource of ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... take it. None of your druggist's muck for me. I'm particular about what I put into ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse

... convict, released from prison, was followed everywhere by the jeers and branding of a society which gloated over his downfall and which forever reminded him of his infamy. But the men who waded on to wealth through the muck of base practices and by means of crimes a millionfold more insidious and dangerous than the offense of the convict, were not only honored as leading citizens, but they became the extolled and unquestioned dictators of that supreme trading society ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... pool that lies in the autumn forest, Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing twilight, Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that decay in the muck, Toss to the moaning ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... to natural melancholy (not this artificial) which is cold and dry: for which cause [1525]Mercurius Britannicus belike puts melancholy men to inhabit just under the Pole. The worst of the three is a [1526]thick, cloudy, misty, foggy air, or such as come from fens, moorish grounds, lakes, muck-hills, draughts, sinks, where any carcasses, or carrion lies, or from whence any stinking fulsome smell comes: Galen, Avicenna, Mercurialis, new and old physicians, hold that such air is unwholesome, and engenders melancholy, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... cindhers av hell put thim out! May the ragin' dry thirst in my own ould bones go to you that you shall niver pass bottle full nor glass empty. God preserve the light av your onderstandin' to you, my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may niver forget what you mint to be an' do, whin you're wallowin' in the muck! May ye see the betther and follow the worse as long as there's breath in your body; an' may ye die quick in a strange land, watchin' your death before ut takes you, an' enable ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... eloquence reached the highest pitch. "Mrs Greenow," said he, "look at that," and he pointed to heaps of manure raised like the streets of a little city. "Look at that!" "There's a great deal," said my aunt. "I believe you," said he. "I've more muck upon this place here than any farmer in Norfolk, gentle or simple; I don't care who the other is." Only fancy, Alice; it may all be mine; the blankets, the wine, the muck, and the rest of it. So my aunt assured me when we got home that evening. When I remarked that the wealth had been ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... do not pick one too propitious, otherwise you will plant your roses in muck, when what they demand for exercise is a little difficulty in way of a few rocks to afford an anchor for roots. Genius grows only in an environment that does not fully satisfy, and the effort to better the environment and bring ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... new activities. Every thought is a thread to be woven into a golden net. He lifts his life to strike as miners lift their picks. He swings his body as harvesters their scythes. He will make himself an augur for boring, a chisel for drilling, a muck-rake for scratching, if only he may get gain. He will sweat and swelter and burn in the tropics until malaria has made his face as yellow as gold, if thereby he can fill his purse, and for a like end he will shiver and ache in the arctics. He will deny his ear ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... bit of grass, sir," was the growling objection; and still worse was the suggestion, which gradually rose into a command, that the "muck-heap" should be removed to the said home-field, and never allowed to accumulate in such ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to Ludlow fair And left my necktie God knows where, And carried half-way home, or near, Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: Then the world seemed none so bad, And I myself a sterling lad; And down in lovely muck I've lain, Happy till I woke again. Then I saw the morning sky: Heigho, the tale was all a lie; The world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet, And nothing now remained to do ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman

... him with the most famous of the Dutch masters, and he rises into glory; coarseness and vulgarity in them had no point out of which could come instruction. If they picture the issues of their own minds, they must have been gross and sensual; they ransacked the muck of life, and the grovelling in character, for themes that one should see only by compulsion. But Hogarth's subjects were never without a lesson, and, inasmuch as he resorted for them to the open volume of humanity, like those of the most immortal of our writers, his works ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... tumult of howls, and sharp, piercing barks—much the sound that a pack of wolves raises when in full cry. Involuntarily I glanced backward to discover the origin of this new and menacing note with the result that I missed my footing and went sprawling once more upon my face in the deep muck. ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... a hurry did they twain fare, The gent, and the son of the stout porter, Who fled like an arrow, nor turned a hair, Through all the mire and muck: "A ticket, a ticket, sir clerk, I pray: For by two of the clock must I needs away." "That may hardly be," the clerk did say, "For indeed—the ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.

... Muck Book. The American Muck Book; treating of the Nature, Properties, Sources, History, and Operations of all the principal Fertilizers and Manures in Common Use, with Specific Directions for their Preservation, and Application to the Soil and to Crops; drawn from Authentic Sources, Actual Experience, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... and him. After two days' fasting, the poor animals were so tame that they ate out of Pablo's hand, and submitted to be stroked and caressed; and before they were a fortnight in the stable, Alice and Edith could go up to them without danger. They were soon broken in; for the yard being full of muck, Pablo took them into it and mounted them. They plunged and kicked at first, and tried all they could to get rid of him, but they sunk so deep into the muck that they were soon tired out; and after a month, they were all three tolerably ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... It was desirable to have the house raised or appear higher owing to the slight depression of the ground at the site, and for this reason the border was all made above the surface two feet and a half in height, composed largely of decayed sods, with an addition of muck, coal and wood ashes and a small quantity of stable manure. It has been found to work admirably, and preserve an even moisture throughout. Elevated borders are highly recommended by some exotic grape growers, and our experience with them is much in their ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward

... and 'bashers' now surround the Ring, You'd better stop it as a shameful thing. In JACKSON'S time, and even in my day, It did want courage, and did mean fair play— Most times, at least. But don't mix up this muck With tales of rough-and-tumble British pluck. I'd like to shake ENTELLUS by the hand, And give that DARES—wot he'd understand Better, you bet, than being fair or "game," Or trying to keep up the Old Country's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various

... northern slope might have been a noble terrace and commanded an extensive and beautiful view. But the space has been too closely built; many of the houses front the wrong way, intent, like the Man with the Muck-Rake, on what is not worth observation, and standing discourteously back-foremost in the ranks; and in a word, it is too often only from attic windows, or here and there at a crossing, that you can get a look beyond the city upon its diversified surroundings. But perhaps it is all the more surprising, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and sin bravely, but believe more bravely still"—this is the chef d'oeuvre of the muck-rakers in Luther's life. The reader has the entire passage which contains the outrageous statement of Luther before him, and will be able to judge the connection in which the words occur. What caused Luther to write those words? Did Melanchthon contemplate some crime which he ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... nose went up in the air and quested to windward along the wind that brought the message, and he read the air with his nose as a man might read a newspaper—the salt smells of the seashore and of the dank muck of mangrove swamps at low tide, the spicy fragrances of tropic vegetation, and the faint, most faint, acrid tingle ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... Weatherbee's dogs in a small ravine," he said. "They had broken through thin ice in an overflow, and the sled had mired in muck. The cold wave set them tight; their legs were planted like posts, and I had to cut them out. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... would look well in print, though I am not sensitive as to what newspapers say about me or I should have been in my grave years ago; but Sergeant Smith and his knowledge touches me at a raw place. You are always messing about with narcotics and muck of all kinds, and you will understand when I tell you that the money I give Sergeant Smith every week serves a double purpose. It is an opiate ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace

... at dawn by Billy Muck, who had taken no part in the intimidation scheme, a wholesome awe crept into the old men's admiration; for a black fellow is fairly logical ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... of the charge brought against Jefferson and himself? Not that he might not devoutly hope for an antidote to the poisonous doctrines of monarchy and aristocracy, though in very truth the existence of any such poison was only one of the maggots which, bred in the muck of party strife, had found a lodgment in his brain; not that it was not a commendable public spirit to wish for a good newspaper to circulate where it was most needed; not that it was not a most excellent thing in him to hold out a helping hand to the friend who had been less fortunate ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... of Muck, did ye ever listen to such a strain? Now let us take a look at the works of the ancients. The first in point of order is the "Laidley Worm of Spindleston Heugh," touching which Mr Sheldon gives us the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... thinks the stars have set him all a-fire. An' it'll take great thumpin' jumps sometimes, an' run along the tops of the trees, carrying its partner with it, an' then droppin' him jest as a fish hawk'll drop a pickerel to kill it before eatin'. An' its food, of all the muck in the whole Bush is—moss!" And he laughed a short, unnatural laugh. "It's a moss-eater, is the Wendigo," he added, looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions. "Moss-eater," he repeated, with a string of the most outlandish oaths he ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood

... was determined to make that fence if it was the last thing he ever did. He'd like to see any man stop him. He took the deadly fence as with the wings of a bird. But he found that the man was still on his back. He couldn't understand it. He grew worried. And then he struck the red-brown muck bordering the stream. The muck flew, but at every bound Pirate sank deeper, and the knees of his rider were beginning to tell. Warburton, full of rage, yet not unreasonable rage, quickly saw his chance. Once more he threw back his ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... and humic acid, which may, in a slight degree, affect the growth of plants, but their practical importance is of too doubtful a character to justify us in considering them. The application of manures, containing organic matter, such as peat, muck, animal manure, etc., supplies the soil with carbon on the same principle, and the decomposing matters also generate[Q] carbonic acid gas while being decomposed. The agricultural value of carbon in the soil depends (as we have stated), not ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring

... description, John Sprott, and write that at the words 'Our sovereign Lord' he shied a lump of muck." ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... twining out a thread with little din, And beeking my cauld limbs afore the sun. What brings my bairn this gate sae air at morn? Is there nae muck to lead? to thresh ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... the moon was awful clear, And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could HEAR; With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold, A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold; While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars? — Then you've a haunch what the music meant... hunger ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service

... awful lies about how I had treated her, and invent things that never took place. Even on a dot of a coral island there is gossip and slander and a Kanaka Mrs. Grundy, and Rosie was doing her best to ruin me, so that I was avoided, and the King and the other high muck-a-mucks went to Tyson's, the opposition trader, and tabooed my store till I didn't know ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... law? WINSER, the cabman, who gave his false evidence so gaily in the Thirkettle Case, has been had up, and sentenced. Having dealt with WINSER, it is only a short step from WINSER to SLOUGH—but perhaps such a slough of muck, that it wants the pluck of a Hercules in the Augaean stable to commence operations, and a deus ex-machina—that is, the Public Prosecutor from the Treasury—to see that the proceedings are not abortive. Oh, where, and Oh, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various

... unlooked-for development, Seaton brought the Skylark to a stop and stabbed into the ground with the attractor. The first attempt brought up nothing but a pillar of muck, the second brought to light a couple of wings and one writhing arm, the third brought the whole animal, still struggling as strongly as it had in the first contest. Seaton again lifted the animal high ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... be glad if you had seen all I saw yesterday. You must have lent me your eyes, for when you spoke before of the evils, I thought you had picked up a Utopian notion, and were running a- muck with it, like an enthusiastic young clergyman. For my own part I can't say I ever came across anything offensive. Of course I know where to find it, as one does wherever one goes, but there was no call to run ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that, fellows?" he exclaimed, in dismay when he had rammed the seven foot pole down until three fourths of its length had vanished in the unfathomable depths of soft muck. ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster

... a man who had come up in the draft with me on the 4th, rolling around in the death agony, tossing his head loosely about in the wild pain of it, his pallid face a white mark in the muck underfoot. A burly German reached the spot and without hesitation plunged his ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... our task difficult to have to deal so muck with eccentricities and extremes. "How CAN religion on the whole be the most important of all human functions," you may ask, "if every several manifestation of it in turn have to be corrected and ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... come this way, Miss Gordon," said Mr. Huntley solicitously, as he guided her across the black muck of the crossing, to which the snow had already been converted. "I hope you do not come ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... medicines had not been the target at which disturbed physicians and "muck-raking" journalists had taken aim, these ancient remedies were governed by provisions of the new law. In November 1906 the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture, in charge of administering ...
— Old English Patent Medicines in America • George B. Griffenhagen

... gate and went up a flight of bricked steps to the door. He had guessed right; above a brass knocker filmed with the floating muck of the air he saw the numeral, Two, painted beneath the fanlight. The windows on the left were blank, curtained. The house rose silent and without a mark of life above the obscene clamor of the city. He knocked sharply and waited; then ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... stones to the clear and wonderful skies, have held, still hold, their secrets; but they do not seek for yours. The terrific temples, the hot, mysterious tombs, odorous of the dead desires of men, crouching in and under the immeasurable sands, will muck you with their brooding silence, with their dim and sombre repose. The brown children of the Nile, the toilers who sing their antique songs by the shadoof and the sakieh, the dragomans, the smiling goblin merchants, the Bedouins who lead your ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... tops, and you know that underneath is a little cottage about the size of the Grand Central station. That's the style you live in when you've hit the stock-market right, or in case you've got to be a top-notch grafter that the muck-rakers ain't jungled yet. ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... persuaded that a prince is not bound to observe an edict extorted by his subjects." To all these warnings Coligny replied at one time by affirming the king's good faith, and at another by saying, "I would rather be dragged dead through the muck-heaps of Paris than go back to civil war." This great soul had his seasons, not of doubt as to his faith or discouragement as to his cause, but of profound sorrow at the atrocious or shameful spectacles and the public or private woes which ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... spot a Home Rule town far off as I can see it. Mud huts, whitewashed cabins with no upstairs, muck-heaps, and bad fences. Can spot a Home Ruler as far as I can see him. Darned if I couldn't track him by scent, like a foxhound. That's the rank and file—very rank, I should say, most of them. And old J. Bull concludes ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... One of us, indeed! That's a notion! Look at my hands. D'ye see how dirty they are? And they smell of muck, and of pitch—but yours, see, are white. And ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... necessary expenditures. But in one respect the worker today is much better off. At the time we are speaking of, the facts of the wrong conditions, the low wages, the long hours, and the many irritating tyrannies the workers had to bear, only rarely reached the public ear. Let us thank God for our muck-rakers. Their stories and their pictures are all the while making people realize that there is such a thing as a common responsibility for ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... German nurse, comes to take her to bed. The cows merely stand there, and do nothing; yet the mere sight of them is all-sufficient for Jean. She requires nothing more. The other evening, after contemplating them a long time, as they stood in the muddy muck chewing the cud, she said, with deep and reverent appreciation, "Ain't this ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... upon ourselves. This is the tragedy of life, that we hold ourselves so cheap. We are sprung of heaven's first blood, have titles manifold, and yet, when the crown is offered us, we choose rather, like the man with the muck-rake, in Bunyan's great allegory, to grub among the dust and sticks and straws of the floor. In the times of the French Revolution, French soldiers, it is said, stabled their horses in some of the magnificent cathedrals ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... don't it?" the other went on, in his sneering way. "You're the Great Muck-a-muck, and will carry off the prize for the long distance run, I suppose you mean? Well, with the great luck you have, perhaps you will—if you're there when the pistol cracks for the start. Now, go on and tell me what ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... the game fairly begins: Whish! sound the brooms as they are whisked here, there, every where, in attempts to strike the hog; one man giving a strong blow, strikes another one who was stooping down to arrange his garters, where he dislikes to be struck, and instantly the one struck runs a muck, hitting wildly left and right. Two or three men charge on one another and brooms fly in splinters all round. One champion got a head-blow and had his wind knocked out by another blow simultaneously; round they go, and at it they go, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... tilting at the industrial structures we had so painfully wrought, and in frequent blasts of presidential messages enunciated new and heretical doctrines; who attacked the railroads, encouraged the brazen treason of labour unions, inspired an army of "muck-rakers" to fill the magazines with the wildest and most violent of language. State legislatures were emboldened to pass mischievous and restrictive laws, and much of my time began to be occupied in inducing, by various means, our ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... you're wounded and get bumped down in a bullock wagon thirty miles to the base hospital. But the best thing you can do then is to pop off. For if you get better they make you hospital orderly. And the hospital orderly has to clean up all the muck of the butcher's shop from morning to night. When you're so sick you can't stand you get your supper, dry bread and bully beef. The bully beef reminds you of things, and the bread—well, the bread's all nice and white on the top. But when you turn it over on the other side—it's ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... 'as been twenty years in cask, and which was mostly horse to begin with. No wonder as they grumbles and growls. A convict is a man, you see, though he be a convict; and it ain't in human nature to eat such muck ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... "Notables" of France, While under them an hundred AEtnas hissed And spluttered sulphur, gathering for the shock? Be ye our Hercules—and Lynceus-eyed: Still ye the storm or ere the storm begin— Ere "Liberty" take Justice by the throat, And run moon-mad a Malay murder-muck, Throttle the "Trusts", and crush the coils combined That crack our bones and fatten on our fields. Strike down the hissing heads of Anarchy: Strike swift and hard, nor parley with the fiend Mothered of hell and father of all fiends— Fell monster with an hundred bloody mouths, And ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... "old timers" came upon them in the early winter they found them in bomb-proof hovels, sunk into the muck, banked with log walls, and thatched over with ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... is likely to have a definite purpose, even though it be nothing more than opposition to some other magazine. If a magazine attacks Mrs. Eddy, another gallantly rushes to her defense. If one gets to seeing things at night, the other becomes anti-spirituous. If the first acquires the muck-raking habit, the complementary organ publishes an 'Uplift Number' that oozes optimism from every paragraph. The modern editor does not sit in his easy-chair, writing essays and sorting over the manuscripts that are sent in by his ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt

... child was passionately fond of animals. Again, on that same day, Molly fell into a very particularly dirty little pond near the cowshed at the farm. Mary, the nurse, no doubt was the sufferer, and she said that she did not suppose that black nurses minded being covered with muck—how should they?—and she supposed she must be treated as if she were a negro herself, but time would show whether she were a black slave or an Englishwoman with a house of her own which she could have now if she liked for the asking. While Mary spoke she pushed and pulled, and, in general ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... planks have been laid over the tops of desks, on which the remains are placed. A corpse is dug from the bank. It is covered with mud. It is taken to the anteroom of the school, where it is placed under a hydrant and the muck and slime washed off. With the slash of a knife the clothes are ripped open and an attendant searches the pockets for valuables or papers that would lead to identification. Four men lift the corpse ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... evening Farrabesche was chased by gendarmes; well, he escaped them by staying twenty minutes under water in the pond of a farm-yard. He breathed air through a straw which he kept above the surface of the pool, which was half muck. But, goodness! what was that little disagreeableness to a man who spends his nights in the tree-tops, where the sparrows can hardly hold themselves, watching the soldiers going to and fro in search of him below? Farrabesche was one of the ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... his, I'll lend him a safety-pin from my shirtwaist," drawled Rupert, lounging up, hooking his own mask. "I ain't muck-raking, but he broke his rear axle at Indianapolis, last month, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... either, and yet that mare, although, as you say, Miss Catharine, she was never healthy, has the most wonderful pluck, as you know. I remember once I had two ton o' muck in the waggon, and we were stuck. Jack and Blossom couldn't stir it, and, after a bit, chucked up. I put in Maggie—you should have seen her! She moved it, a'most all herself, aye, as far as from here to the gate, and then of course the others took it up. ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... gaunt, savage old hogs that were in the pen were hungry and fierce. Even a grown person would have been in danger from the beasts. The pen, too, was knee-deep in soft muck and was as dark as a dungeon. In his efforts to escape the hogs, the boy had wallowed round in the muck. The hole was out of his reach, and the sty was strongly planked up to the barn floor on ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... mighty glad you mention dat,' says Brer Tarrypin, sezee. 'Mr. Mud-Turkle is setch clos't kin ter me dat I calls 'im Unk Muck, en I lay ef you sen' dar atter dat sane you won't fine Unk Muck ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... off for a drink. Arm in arm. Lenehan's yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney. Wonder is that young Dedalus the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him today. Last time I saw him he had his heels on view. Been walking in muck somewhere. Careless chap. What ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... these years—waited, believing. It is a loyalty of which I can not speak without—you understand. She knows why I went away—why I stayed away. She is still ready to marry me. I shall go again into the Suburban office and try to lift the road from the muck into which it has fallen. Yes, it is not too much for me to hope—and for you in your kindness—that a great happiness ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... of all kinds from every available source. Remember that anything which will rot will add to the value of your manure pile. Muck, lime, old plastering, sods, weeds (earth and all), street, stable and yard sweepings—all these and numerous others will increase your garden successes of ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... couple of spoonfuls of muck and then sits down. 'I can feel me damned ol' malaria creepin' over me again, Jim,' says 'e. 'Noticed a Red Cross outfit in the valley; think I'll be totterin' along there,' says 'e. 'So long.' And that was the last the regiment saw of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various

... In the corner of the room, Nema looked up for a moment, and there was fear and worry in her eyes before she looked back to her weaving of endless knots. Sather Karf sighed in weariness. "If I knew what was happening to the sky, would I be dredging the muck of Duality for the ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey

... them even then, although they were not put forth from printing presses, but displayed on board fences in scare-head letters six or eight feet high—one of the yellow journals of the day, I say, issued a muck-raking Extra, exposing what it termed The International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company, and most unfortunately there was just enough truth in the story in so far as its details went, to lend color to its sensational accusations. It could not be denied, as was stated in The Enochsville ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... to be there as a soldier, to lie in its vile sand, to swallow its conglomerated stinks, to rub the filth off the seats in the third-class train-carriages, to have under your eyes continually the animated lump of muck that the "Gyppo" is, to have your ears filled continually with the vile expressions that the Egyptian conceives as wit, is an experience that makes one so disgusted that few Australians that were there will ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... of Rowlandson than that of Hogarth. The Bedford Court House on the sweltering Midsummer Day, the Puritan recusants, reeking of piety and the cow-house conventicle, the Judges at high jinks upon the bench—to whom, all in a muck-sweat and ablaze with the fervour of conversion, enter Black Ned, the stout publican, and big Tab, his slut of a wife,—these are drawn after the broad British style of humorous illustration, which combines ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... are anxious to run a muck Can't do better than join with Puck. They'll find him bon diable—spite of his phiz— And, in fact, his great ambition is, While playing old Puck in first-rate style, To be thought ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... your son-in-law, but she will have him at her feet out of revenge. I have just spoken to the wretched woman as she deserves. She is a shameless courtesan; I have told her that I am leaving her house, that I would not have my honor smirched in that muck-heap.—I owe myself to my ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... that word, whether I would or no; and in so strong a measure was this temptation upon me, that often I have been ready to clap my hand under my chin, to hold my mouth from opening; and to that end also I have had thoughts at other times, to leap with my head downward, into some muck hill hole or other, to keep ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... chickimin," she repeated with a sigh of satisfaction. "Always; and hyiu muck-a-muck when big salmon run. No more ever come that bad year when ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... this contemner of 'reformers' made reform respectable in the United States, and this rebuker of 'muck-rakers' has been the chief agent in making the history of 'muck-raking' in the United States a National one, conceded to be useful. He has preached from the White House many doctrines; but among them he has left impressed on the American mind ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... wandering fool, out of whose lips it would seem that praise was ordained. He looked back to divers hours when he had given himself wholly to the love of God, and to the long reaches of time between them, in which he had not cast away the muck-rake, but had trailed it after him with one hand as he walked forward, looking to the angel and the crown. He seemed to see St. Peter pointing to the life all which he had professed to devote while he had kept back part; and St. Peter said, "Whiles ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... bear. It was the hardest kind of work, turning and twisting between the trees, dodging snags, and brushing aside branches, and guiding a horse among fallen logs. The forest was thick, and the ground was a rich brown and black muck, soft to the horses' feet. Many times the hounds got caught on snags, and had to be released. Once Sampson picked up a scent of some kind, and went off baying. Old Jim ran across that trail and returned, thus making it clear that there was no bear trail. We penetrated deep between the two ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... rakings of the refuse-heap, things that human society once needed and then rejected. He collects them again, and now the poor can buy them. And he buys the soldiers' bread too, when they want to go on the spree, and throws it on his muck-heap; he calls it fodder for horses, but the poor buy it of him and eat it. The refuse-heap is the poor man's larder —that is, when the pigs have taken what they want. The Amager farmers fatten their swine there, and the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... run a muck," said old Judge Girvin, "and while I am far from denying that In many—perhaps in most—cases his facts are correct, still his methods make for lawlessness among the masses. It might be well to meet ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... devoted to the searching and contemplative study of Nature. It is in the realm of thought here explored, that Natural Science, whose figure we are wont to look down upon, crouching to her task, like him of the muck-rake, as he painfully gathers together his sticks and straws, rises erect, and lifts her forehead into the upper atmosphere of philosophy, where the clouds are indeed thickest, but the stars are nearest. The second and third parts belong more exclusively to the professed students of Natural History ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... virtue of a classic, or of the deliberate and stately billows going with the wind when the world has sweep and is fair, or of a child with a flower, or of the little smile on the face of the dead boy in the muck when the guns were filling us with fear and horror of mankind? I don't know; but something in us appears to save us from the punishing ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... being also mother of slaves; You might have borne deeper slaves— Doughfaces, crawlers, lice of humanity— Terrific screamers of freedom, Who roar and bawl, and get hot i' the face, But were they not incapable of august crime, Would quench the hopes of ages for a drink— Muck-worms, creeping flat to the ground, A dollar dearer to them than Christ's blessing; All loves, all hopes, less than the thought of gain, In life walking in that as in a shroud; Men whom the throes of heroes, Great deeds ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... In spite of occasional muck rakings, society's esteem for the capitalist has been unbounded. He is in general the only man with a national reputation. Society bestows upon him unstinted praise and the most generous rewards for his toil. His rewards are so extravagant that the game seems ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... to start for the show—and carry on like a madman. Scared stiff, I was. Tried to make me swear I'd marry him and start for Timbuctoo to-morrow, and when I wouldn't, wanted to shoot himself and me too—as though I'd made a muck of things. Well, I'd done my best, and when it came to that sort of sob-stuff I'd had enough. What's he take me for? Get me into trouble with my ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... is the Heath Society's youngest child. The heath is full of peat-bogs that only need the sand, so plentiful on the uplands, to make their soil as good as the best, the muck of the bog being all plant food, and they have a surplus of water to give in exchange. With hope the keynote of it all, the State has taken up the herculean task of keeping down the moving sands of the North Sea coast. All along ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... modification of His original plan. It was just about then that I found him. He was floundering in a perfect mire, composed of the dust of conflict mingled with penitential tears. Really, he was knee-deep in the muck; and I put in a good share of my vacation in trying to haul him back to ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... are strangers we do not get any great pleasure out of them, as a rule. Now the trouble with an American paper is that it has no discrimination; it rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage, and the result is that you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit. By habit you stow this muck every day, but you come by and by to take no vital interest in it—indeed, you almost get tired of it. As a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns strangers only —people away off yonder, a thousand ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... hundred pairs of eyes swung toward the door and silence fell upon the place. Stepping heedlessly into the ankle-deep muck, Solange walked forward. Her flat-brimmed hat was pulled low over her face and the silk bandanna hid her hair. Behind her Sucatash walked uncertainly, glaring from side to ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... purchasing, working, and maintaining such a stupendous machine; but no man was ever more sarcastic in his remarks upon this piece of mechanism than the naturalist, who next appealed to the patron's approbation for a curious disposition he had made touching the procreation of muck-flies, in which he had laid down a curious method of collecting, preserving, and hatching the eggs of these insects, even in the winter, by certain modifications of artificial heat. The nature of this discovery was no sooner communicated, than Peregrine, unable to contain himself, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... to exist in some parts of the east, in which a man is said to run a muck; and these furious maniacs are believed to have induced their calamity by unlucky gaming, and afterwards by taking large quantities of opium; whence the pain of despair is joined with the energy of drunkenness; they are then said to sally forth into the most populous streets, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... were millionaires, though they did not look it. There seemed nothing unusual about them, while they would have passed muster as fair specimens of lumbermen in any Michigan camp. But outside, in the darkness, where holes yawned in the ground, were many men engaged in windlassing muck and gravel and gold from the bottoms of the holes where other men received fifteen dollars per day for scraping it from off the bedrock. Each day thousands of dollars' worth of gold were scraped from bedrock and windlassed to the surface, and it all belonged to Pentfield and Hutchinson, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London

... not do so; and the elder one, who had been many years in the family, was born and bred in London, and detested the country and everything connected with it, gave her opinion in the most decided manner, that there was quite enough "muck" in the house already, without making more work with butter-making, which she said confidently, would only be fit for the pig when it was made. Here was a pretty state of things! What were we to do? must we give up all hope ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton

... gentleman sought to discover whether the offer of an honour-able love would be displeasing to his master's sister, a lady of the most illustrious lineage in Flanders, who had been twice widowed, and was a woman of muck spirit. Meeting with a reply contrary to his desires, he attempted to possess her by force; but she resisted him successfully, and by the advice of her lady of honour, without seeming to take notice ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... "My liege, I'll never lin, But I will thorough thick and thin, Until at length I bring her in; My dearest lord, ne'er doubt it." Thorough brake, thorough briar, Thorough muck, thorough mire, Thorough water, thorough fire; And thus goes Puck ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... the bat under her arm and wiping her forehead with a loose end of her yellow bandana. "I'm feelin' like the lady in 'The Vicar of Wakefield'; by which I don't mean the one that stooped to folly, but the one that was all of a muck of sweat." ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... his house in this hospitable manner, Mr. Peggotty went out to wash himself in a kettleful of hot water, remarking that 'cold would never get his muck off'. He soon returned, greatly improved in appearance; but so rubicund, that I couldn't help thinking his face had this in common with the lobsters, crabs, and crawfish,—that it went into the hot water very black, and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... for things to cool down. As soon as the muck-rakers wear out their rakes, and the great American public finds some other kind of hysterics to keep it worked up to a proper temperature, I shall mosey back and resume business at the old stand. But why tell you the story of my life? ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... the Bishop's son approvingly. "This is the stuff. Conventionality be tabooed. They're going to the other extreme, and that's the way to do. If you don't want an altar and candles, and a high-mucky-muck at the organ, have a hay-wagon. Gee!—Let me get up here next to Ben ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond

... animals followed in an instant, for they had wanted only a leader. Above the roar of the flames Bert could hear the thud as the horses landed in the soft muck of the cow-yard, ten feet below. Then came a shout as the men ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster

... trade, and he never taught me anything but to be a Hand. It's the way they do with draper's apprentices. If every swindler was locked up—well, you'd have nowhere to buy tape and cotton. It's all very well to bring up Burns and those chaps, but I'm not that make. Yet I'm not such muck that I might not have been better—with teaching. I wonder what the chaps who sneer and laugh at such as me would be if they'd been fooled about as I've been. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... head. I'd bet my soul on it. She says her marriage with you was a mistake. She didn't know. She had no experience when she married you. She needs the things the world can show her. The North is driving her crazy. All that muck. It's the sort of stuff that hasn't a gasp of truth in it. If there was you need to thank God you're quit of her. No. That hound of hell told her what to say. Poor little fool. He's got her where he wants her, ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... Book. The American Muck Book; treating of the Nature, Properties, Sources, History, and Operations of all the principal Fertilizers and Manures in Common Use, with Specific Directions for their Preservation, and Application to the Soil and to Crops; drawn from Authentic Sources. Actual ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... wrong, but it is so frightfully easy to displease a cook. 'It's them children: there's that there new carpet in their room, covered thick with mud, both sides, beastly yellow mud, and sakes alive knows where they got it. And all that muck to clean up on a Sunday! It's not my place, and it's not my intentions, so I don't deceive you, ma'am, and but for them limbs, which they is if ever there was, it's not a bad place, though I says it, and I wouldn't wish to ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... executed decrees of vigilance committees. Self-appointed popular leaders, crafty politicians, scheming preachers, aspiring editors, and ambitious demagogues crop up. They are the mushroom growth of the muck-heap of the new civilization. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... sitting at breakfast, Mr. Carter's servant informed us that there was an "Amok" in the village—in other words, that a man was "running a muck." Orders were immediately given to shut and fasten the gates of our enclosure; but hearing nothing for some time, we went out, and found there had been a false alarm, owing to a slave having run away, declaring he would "amok," because his ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... laughing answer. "It seems to me that a few months since I was like the old man with the muck-rake in 'Pilgrim's Progress,' seeking to gather only money, facts, and knowledge—things of use. I now am finding so much that is useful which I scarcely looked at before that I am revising my philosophy, and like it much better. The simple truth ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... an alcohol stove. Zerkow was a Polish Jew—curiously enough his hair was fiery red. He was a dry, shrivelled old man of sixty odd. He had the thin, eager, cat-like lips of the covetous; eyes that had grown keen as those of a lynx from long searching amidst muck and debris; and claw-like, prehensile fingers—the fingers of a man who accumulates, but never disburses. It was impossible to look at Zerkow and not know instantly that greed—inordinate, insatiable greed—was the dominant passion of the man. He was the Man with the Rake, groping hourly in ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... found his wires down, and he was compelled to plunge knee deep into the black swamp-muck to restring them, he became so ill from fear and nervousness that he scarcely could control his shaking hand to do the work. With every step, he felt that he would miss secure footing and be swallowed in that clinging sea of blackness. In dumb agony he plunged forward, ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... They'll get a back-cast o' his hand yet, that think sae muckle o' the creature and sae little o' the Creator—sae muckle o' warld's gear and sae little o' a broken covenant—sae muckle about thae wheen pieces o' yellow muck, and sae little about the pure gold o' the Scripture—sae muckle about their ain friend and kinsman, and sae little about the elect, that are tried wi' hornings, harassings, huntings, searchings, chasings, catchings, imprisonments, torturings, banishments, headings, hangings, dismemberings, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... cold, Gulab, the night-wind that comes up from the black muck of the cotton fields and across the river is raw. Hang on for a minute," he added, as he slipped his arm from about her shoulders and fumbled at the back of his saddle. A couple of buckles were unclasped, and he swung loose a warm military cloak and wrapped ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... perspiration of their faces. But sweat is a word of connotation too vigorous (though honest withal) for us to use the term in the drawing room. A questionable woman in The Vicar of Wakefield betrays her lack of breeding by the remark that she is in a muck of sweat. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... be discouraging to the driver for pleasure to find in rainy weather almost bottomless muck and mud on portions of the main travelled highway between New York and Buffalo, but that, for the present, is normal. The manufacturer may regret the condition and wish for better, but he cannot be heard to complain, and if the machine, with reasonably careful ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... The bars are therefore cut again into pieces, piled, re-heated and rolled again. A bar of iron which has been rolled twice is formed from a pile of fourteen separate pieces of iron that have been rolled only once, or "muck bar," as it is called; while the thrice-rolled bar is made from a pile of eight separate pieces of double-rolled iron. If, therefore, one of the original pieces of iron has any flaw or defect, it will form only a hundred ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various



Words linked to "Muck" :   dejection, dung, sludge, sapropel, muck about, muck around, ooze, take, fecal matter, gook, faeces, faecal matter, chip, goop, matter, remove, mire, muck up, scatter, bm, guck, pigeon droppings, feces, soil, ordure, coprolite, spread, colly, cow pie, mucky



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