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Muck   Listen
verb
muck  v. i. & v. t.  To excavate and remove muck (5). Often used with out, as, to muck out a round. "... Inco is still much more advanced than other mining companies. He says that the LKAB mine in Sweden is the closest rival. He predicts that, by 2008, Inco can reach a new productivity plateau, doubling the current mining productivity from 3,350 tonnes to 6,350 tonnes per person per year. Another aim is to triple the mine cycle rate (the time to drill, blast and muck a round) from one cycle to three complete cycles per 24 hours."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Muck" Quotes from Famous Books



... you first about these barnacles that clog the wheels of society by poisoning the springs of rectitude with their upas-like eye," said Jeff, with the pure gleam of the muck-raker in his own. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... 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 of his designs and efforts, gradually ceased to regard him with the favour with ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... lead me back to the main band. The signs were few and barely sufficient to allow me to keep up the pursuit. It was not until I came to a spring, the overflow of which had made muck of the ground, that I was afforded an opportunity to inspect the two sets of tracks. One set was made by moccasins almost as small as those I had ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... prevented the men from giving the old chief as much liquor as they were ready to bestow on him, lest he might get drunk, and take it into his head to run a-muck or jump overboard. He had taken enough, however, to send him fast asleep in the bottom of the boat, where he lay, as Jerry observed, "like a porpus ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... gracious I 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 ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... If they remembered the poets, or their first love, or the spring, or the stars, it were well enough: but no! they remember but what the poets ate and wore, the last divorce case, the state of the crops, the last trivial detail about Mars. The man with the muck-rake would have made a great reputation as a talker had he lived to-day: for, as our modern speech has it, a Great Man simply means a Great Memory, and a Great Memory ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... ask? That one, whom ye see strutting awkwardly, stagily, and stiffly, and with a laugh on her mouth like a Gallic whelp. Throng round her, and claim them back. "O putrid punk, hand back our writing tablets; hand back, O putrid punk, our writing tablets." Not a jot dost heed? O Muck, Brothel-Spawn, or e'en loathsomer if it is possible so to be! Yet think not yet that this is enough. For if naught else we can extort a blush on thy brazened bitch's face. We'll yell again in heightened tones, "O putrid punk, hand back our writing tablets, hand back, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... fellow more concerned for his bath than his religion. Say, where did you raise all that junk? From old man Hardy's slop-chest? Hellbeam makes you work for your money when you're driven to wallowing in a muck-hole like the Lizzie. It isn't worth it. You see, you've run into the worst failure you've made in years. But I only wish you could see the sorry sort ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... it be barren? But if you determine to manure the whole site, this is your way: digge a trench halfe a yard deepe, all along the lower (if there be a lower) side of your Orchard plot, casting vp all the earth on the inner side, and fill the same with good short, hot, & tender muck, and make such another Trench, and fill the same as the first, and so the third, and so through out your ground. And by this meanes your plot shall be fertile for your life. But be sure you set your trees, neither ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson

... practice of the Malays, when infuriated to madness with bang (a preparation from a species of hemp), of sallying into the streets, or decks, to murder any whom they may chance to meet, until they are either slain or fall from exhaustion.—To run a-muck. To run madly and attack all we meet (Pope, Dryden). As in the case of mad dogs, certain death awaited them, for if not killed in being ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... fowk mun put u'p wi'! What insults an' snubs they've to tak! What bowin an' scrapin's expected, If a chap's a black coit on his back. As if clooas made a chap ony better, Or riches improved a man's heart, As if muck in a carriage smell'd sweeter Nor th' same muck wod smell in ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley

... how the Malay man could fight; the creese was worth twenty swords, and the Dutchmen went down like sheep. We fired to cover our countrymen, who, as soon as their work was done, jumped overboard and swam to us; but the brave Datoo, with many more died as brave Malays should do, running a-muck against a host ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... 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 ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay

... signal for division. The few women who had children took them home with them; the other women, young and old, following like a holiday flotilla in the wake of Mere Jeanne, tacked through the muck of the road to the warehouse; many of the younger and some few of the older men followed them; and in the house of Pere Marquette, in the yellow light of a half dozen kerosene lamps and many tall candles, the real affair of ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... repeated with a sigh of satisfaction. "Always; and hyiu muck-a-muck when big salmon run. No more ever come that bad year when not ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... 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 ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... certainly is the most marvelous phenomenon of innocence that can be imagined. She lives in that atmosphere of infamy with a calm and triumphing ease which is either wonderfully profligate or entirely artless. Strange scion of an adventuress, cast upon the muck-heap of that set, like a magnificent plant nurtured upon corruption, or rather like the daughter of some noble race, of some great artist, or of some grand lord, of some prince or dethroned king, tossed some evening into her mother's arms, nobody can make out what she is nor what ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

... 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

... no human being could say this under any circumstances. At last I happened to be reading a religious writer—as he thought himself—who threw aspersions on his opponents thick and threefold. Heyday! came into my head, this fellow flings muck beds; he must be a quartz pyx. And then I remembered that a pyx is a sacred vessel, and quartz is a hard stone, as hard as the heart of a religious foe-curser. So that the line is the motto of the ferocious sectarian, who turns his religious vessels into mudholders, for the benefit of those ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... 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

... mainsail we were forced to run off before the gale under the single reefed jib. By the time we had finished the wind had forced up such a tremendous sea that it was impossible to heave her to. Away we flew on the wings of the storm through the muck and flying spray. A wind sheer to starboard, then another to port as the enormous seas struck the schooner astern and nearly broached her to. As day broke we took in the jib, leaving not a sail unfurled. Since we had begun scudding she had ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... chirr of the cicadas, that little brown lizard among the pebbles, almost within reach, seeming to listen to the beating of summer's heart so motionless it lay; unconscious, as though in verity he were again deep in some stifling trench, with German shells whining over him, and the smell of muck and blood making foetid the air. He was in the mood which curses God and dies; for he was devout—a Catholic, and still went to Mass. And God had betrayed the earth, and Jean Liotard. All the enormities he had seen ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... lust. All the poets were beggars; all alchemists and all philosophers are beggars. Omnia mea mecum porto, quoth Bias, when he had nothing but bread and cheese in a leathern bag, and two or three books in his bosom. Saint Francis, a holy saint, and never had any money. It is madness to doat upon muck. That young man of Athens, Aelianus makes mention of, may be an example to us, who doated so extremely on the image of Fortune, that when he might not enjoy it, he died for sorrow. The earth yields all her fruits together, and why should we not spend them together? I thank heavens on my knees, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... operation of a bird as an idle tradition, saying that the sap which produces the plant is such as "the tree doth excerne and cannot assimilate," and Browne ("Vulgar Errors") was of the same opinion. But the opposite opinion was perpetuated in the very name ("Mistel: fimus, muck," Cockayne),[163:1] and was held without any doubt by most of the writers ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... A soft glutinous muck, worse than the outer swamp, tugged at his ankles. Corrupt fungi-growth and giant spiked ferns reached far above him in the ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse

... move to-morrow," said the Jersey youth, repeating the orders read out in the early part of the day, and removing a clot of farmyard muck from the foresight guard of his rifle as he spoke. It was seven o'clock in the evening, the hour when candles were stuck in their cheese sconces and lighted. Cakes of soap and lumps of cheese are easily scooped out with clasp-knives and make excellent sconces; ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... to eight knots. We'll jog down to forty-nine, forty-five, or four about, and three east. That puts us say forty miles from Torbay by nine o'clock to-morrow morning. We'll have to muck about till dusk before we run in and try our ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... be that in which all hits are allowed, which might be given by a rough in a street row, or a Soudanese running a-muck. The old trial for teachers of fencing was not a bad test of real excellence in the mastery of their weapon—a fight with three skilled masters of fence (one at a time, of course), then three bouts with valiant unskilled ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn

... of the steps outside, a horse in the shafts of a dung-cart was gnawing at a bunch of oleanders. The wheels, in grazing the flower borders, had bruised the box trees, broken a rhododendron, knocked down the dahlias; and clods of black muck, like molehills, embossed the green sward. Gouy was ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him, worse than himself, that ran "a-muck" {18} at me, and led me into a world of troubles. But to quit this episode, and to return to my intercalary year of happiness. I have said already, that on a subject so important to us all as happiness, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... going down so deep like, that it seemed to them how their own talk wouldn't be good enough to say it. And they knew no other, and didn't know what to do. I reckon they'd been reading magazines and thought that writing had to be like that muck. Anyway, they didn't know what to do. I reckon their talk would be good enough for Daleswood when they loved Daleswood like that. But they ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany

... in the eighties, before the dominance of business in American society had been questioned, efficiency, as the term was then understood, had a place among the elect; it was the intimate associate of business success. Then came the muck-raker, and with him came also anti-trust cases and insurance investigations. We turned our attention to labor outbreaks, to graft prosecutions, and to land steals. We talked about "malefactors of great wealth." We even became interested in Schedule K. And so, during the first decade of the ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss

... man ruined by the run of luck May shed the slime—they've done it, Times and again they've done it. That turn to aspiration out of muck Is quick if heart's begun it, If heart's desire's begun it. But 'ware revenge if greater craft it is That jockeyed him to recognize defeat, Or greater force that overmastered his— Efficiency more potent than deceit That craved his crown and won it! Safer the she-bear with her suckling young, ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... a mile or two after starting, when he came to a stream. Into this he had waded, and had washed the muck stains from ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... general names of humus 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 on the fact that it enters into the composition ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring

... ride a special thoroughbred, and no doubt a cheery dog at home; but, poor devil, he hadn't much chance of good cheer there! Miles and miles on his poor feet before breakfast; mud-poultices all the morning; and not the semblance of a drink all day, except some aerated muck called Gieshuebler. He was allowed to lap that up an hour after meals, when his tongue would be hanging out of his mouth. We went to the same weighing machine at cock-crow, and though he looked quite good-natured once when I caught him asleep in his chair, I have ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... prosperous. It will add its quota to the habitable surfaces; and it's a good quota—a land that some future generation will love, and swear by, and fight for, if need be. And to think that for one man's narrow-mindedness and another's greed we've got to christen it in blood and muck and filth and dishonesty—it makes me ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... kinds of facts. There are, for instance, big facts and little facts,—clean facts and dirty facts. Imagination raises you and gives you a high and comprehensive view of them all; your mere reason keeps you down in some noisome corner, like the man with the muck-rake." ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban

... the stuff that comes out of Garstaing's rotten 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 ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... ordering from his path the loiterers at the inn door. They whose company he had quitted were silent for a moment; then said Sir Mortimer, slowly: "I remember now—there was a Thomas Baldry, master of the Speedwell. Well, it was a sorry business that day! If from that muck of blood ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... emotion that made me shudder icily in the glare of the day. For beyond the pageantry of the cavalcade I saw the fields of war, with many of those men and horses lying mangled under the hot sun of August. I smelt the stench of blood, for I had been in the muck and misery of war before and had seen the death carts coming back from the battlefield and the convoys of wounded crawling down the rutty roads—from Adrianople—with men, who had been strong and fine, now shattered, twisted ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... 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 ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... about 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, and lost ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... much at home in the mud as they were in the dank, humid air above. They could distinguish one type of mud from another deep beneath the surface, and could carry a dredge-tube down to a lode of the blue-gray muck with the unfailing accuracy of a ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse

... the great prize may be drawn. And then, "Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?" The Beachcomber may be perverted into—well, the next best on the list. Yet they say in pitiful tones, those who rake among the muck of the streets, "What a dull life! What a hopeless existence! He is out of it all!" Yes, with a gladsome mind, and all its sounds, if not forgotten, at least muffled by music, soft as dawn, profound ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... be obliged in all weathers to go out to the well and wind up the bucket. She abominated also the dust-bin, for it was a pleasure to be compelled—so at least she thought it now—to walk down to the muck- heap and throw on it what the pig could not eat. Nay, she even missed that corner of the garden against the elder-tree, where the pig-stye was, for 'you could smell the elder-flowers there in the spring-time, ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... "Oh for a bit more money! Then we could give stew to the cat's-meat man and bread to old Thompson's chickens. And then we could have nice things to eat. Nice birds and pastry ... and trifle, and ices, and wine.... Not all this muck!" ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... 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; ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... issue have only served to make it larger and clearer in the public estimation. The conservation movement cannot be checked by the baseless charge that it will prevent development, or that every man who tells the plain truth is either a muck-raker or a demagogue. It has taken firm hold on our national moral sense, and when an issue does that it ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot

... interest and stir his readers to action by either one of two methods: by exposing existing evils, or by showing what has been done to improve bad conditions. The exposure of evils in politics, business, and society constituted the "muck-raking" to which several of the popular monthly magazines owe their rise. This crusading, "searchlight" type of journalism has been largely superseded by the constructive, "sunlight" type. To explain how reforms have ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... a considerable quantity of both the black and white alkalies, the upper two feet being a rather heavy, sticky clay, the next three feet below being fine sand, containing more or less alkali, while immediately underneath this sand is a dense black muck in which, summer and winter, is found the ground-water. Do you think the following method of setting trees would be advantageous. Excavate for each tree a hole three feet in diameter and three feet deep. Fill in a layer of three or four inches of coarse hay, forming a lining for the excavation. ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... it figgered out I was in a quest fur some high-mucky-muck fur a dad, I didn't tell her no different. I didn't take much stock in them earls and nights myself. So fur as I could see they was all furriners of one kind or another. But that thing of being into a quest kind of interested ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... 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

... to pick my fat friend up. Boggsie's getting out of the whole thing without spending a bean knocked him cold. But he got his wind later. You ought to have heard his speech down there at the house, with a plate of melted strawberry muck in one hand and a glass of sour in the other, replying to Boggsie's vote of thanks to us two, and skinning his face at the Brown girl. Oh, it ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... most unclean beasts are rife, Some Junius—am I right?—shall tuck His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife! Some Chatterton shall have the luck Of calling Rowley into life! Some one shall somehow run a muck With this old world for want of strife Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive? 200 Our men scarce seem in earnest now. Distinguished names!—but 'tis, somehow, As if they ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... for?" he boomed. "They'll only spend it on all kinds of muck they don't want; what the missionaries leave them, that ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... furst, for shoo wor varry waspish, an' tha knows awr Joa's as queer as Dick's hatband, when he's put aght a bit. One morning, abaght a wick after they wor wed, Joa woran't varry weel, an' had to ligg i' bed a bit,—shoo gate up to muck th' beeas,—(for shoo can do a job like that, tha knows, when shoo's ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... are necessary, as well as uniformity of texture, the iron is rolled a third time. 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 and twelfth part of the thrice-rolled bar. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... had set, and presently a fog rolled down the river, blotting out landscape and stars and making even these willows dim and unreal. Ideal conditions! Now if their guest of honor, with or without his friend, would but stop at this pool to wash the Stock-Landing muck from his horse's shins—but ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... oil, and never boil it: boiling it melts that vegetable dross into its heart which it is our business to clear away; for impure oil is death to colour. No; take your oil and pour it into a bottle with water. In a day or two the water will turn muddy: that is muck from the oil. Pour the dirty water carefully away and add fresh. When that is poured away, you will fancy the oil is clear. You're mistaken. Reicht, fetch me that!" Reicht brought a glass trough with a glass lid fitting tight. "When your oil has been washed ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... 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, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various

... the Isle 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 following information. "This ballad was made by the old mountain bard, Duncan Fraser of Cheviot, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... 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 ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... a girl come up here, from a place where a girl is guarded like a pearl of great price, into the muck and excitement of the getting together of a Broadway production in which she is directly interested. I don't know what to do. If I spend my time hovering over her, her show will go cold and break her. She's poor. ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... prevent offences than the cholera, or an earthquake like that of Lisbon, would have. The energy for which the Jacobin administration is praised was merely the energy of the Malay who maddens himself with opium, draws his knife, and runs a-muck through the streets, slashing right and left at friends and foes. Such has never been the energy of truly great rulers; of Elizabeth, for example, of Oliver, or of Frederic. They were not, indeed, scrupulous. But, had ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 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 at which the gods might stand appal'd, The shriek of the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... "Well, it's a muck of a world," he declared cheerfully, taking off his coarse harvest hat and running his hand through his clustering fair hair. In the mellow light the almost brutal strength of his jaw was softened, and his sunburned face paled to the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... wet swamp a brush drain endures much longer than in sandy land, which is dry a part of the year, because the brush decays in dry land, but will prove nearly imperishable in land constantly wet. In a peat or muck swamp, we should expect that such drains, if carefully constructed, might last twenty years, but that in a sandy loam they would be quite unreliable for a ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... the land and the quest entered into their blood, the spell of it gripped hold of them and would not let them go. Man after man of them, after the most terrible privation and suffering, shook the muck of the country from his moccasins and departed for good. But the following spring always found him drifting down the Yukon on the tail of the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... 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)

... personal affairs, of hunger and fatigue, of the difficulties of travel through the uncleared forests. The clothing of some became torn with briers and sharp rocks, their shoes were damaged with stones, fallen limbs, muck and mire. Their hands were pierced by many thorns, as they pushed their way through ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick

... on her ex-husband. She, for instance, was undoubtedly the blameworthy one in their marital failure, but she had managed to extract a ruinous alimony from him. Twice married and twice divorced, he was traveled through the Orient to write a series of muck raking articles and, incidentally if possible, to forget ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... struggling under the pole. The other, saved only from drowning by the fact that its collar had held its head against the bank, had evidently kicked and splashed until the water was thick with the black muck stirred up from ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... co-operation of the master's son and daughter, matters went on despite the strike. Mr. Law is, of course, as a good Scotch bailiff should be, greatly distressed at the state of his cow-houses, feeding-stalls, and stockyard, now ankle-deep in "muck"; but the fine shorthorned bull seems none the worse, and the pigs have taken kindly to the new and disorderly condition of affairs. But things are not brought to a deadlock yet. Of the animals "Boycotted" in Dublin the sheep have since been shipped, and it is thought here that at the moment ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... the people were, they were still fearful savages. Messengers arrived from the neighbouring town to announce the death of their chief, Matiamvo. That individual had been addicted to running a-muck through his capital and beheading any one he met, till he had a large heap of human heads in front of his hut. Men were also slaughtered occasionally, whenever the chief wanted part of a body to perform ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened afterward upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him, worse than himself, that ran "a-muck" [Footnote: See the common accounts, in any Eastern traveller or voyager, of the frantic excesses committed by Malays who have taken opium or are reduced to desperation by ill luck at gambling.] at me, and led me into a ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... the new-comers, who cannot yet bear to be ordered about, least of all to be maltreated by negroes like themselves, while, on the contrary, they submit willingly and with affection to the orders of a white." This Manual, which reads like a treatise on muck or the breeding of cattle, proceeds to say, that, if the planter would preserve his negroes' usefulness, he must be careful to keep ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... chivalry they burned 'em at the stake or locked 'em up in convents or castles. But don't you worry, Jim, Charity has you for a champion and she's mighty lucky. Go on and fight the muckers and the muck-rakers, and don't let the reporters or the preachers scare you away from ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... him there! This is the man I told you of when you Were talking small of sin. You made it out, Did you, a fool's mere nasty game, like dogs That snuggle in muck, and grin and roll themselves With snorting pleasure? Ah, but you are wrong. 'Tis something that goes thrusting dreadfully Its wilful bravery of evil against The worth and right of goodness in the world: Ay, do you see how his face still ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)

... 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 ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... dies quick an' all de slime runs out. Den yo' buries him in san' 'til his insides all decay. Den you puts him in a pon' an' takes him out, an' beats him wif a stick, lots o' times oveh, maybe, 'til all de jelly an' all de san' an' all de muck am out ob him. Den yo' wash him in fresh wateh 'til he's clean an' lets him dry an' ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... the huntsman leps his harse up on the double beside us; he was phlastered with muck from his hair to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various

... morning, noon and night. Johnny had a sixty dollar saddle, a five dollar bridle, a two and a half quirt and the best cayuse in Spence's Bridge, and worth seventy-five dollars. Peter had nothing but the wage he earned working on the C.P.R. section, which had been just enough to supply him with his daily muck-a-muck (food) before marriage. How he calculated to feed two with the one basket of o-lil-ies (berries) which had been only large enough for one, did not seem to worry the community, as such things were taking ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... The mischief is that 'twill not last. Oh I have been 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

... that the financier runs the slightest risk. It may be that a purchaser would find it so difficult to prove the falsity of any of the statements upon which he had relied in purchasing the stock that the vendor would practically be immune, but in these days of muck- raking and of an hysterical public conscience prosecutors sometimes go to the most absurd lengths and spend ridiculous sums of money out of the county treasuries to ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... remember having done anything extra 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 ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... 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. ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... ''Pon my soul, Charley, you're an ingenious devil! Fancy you living here all so snug and I knowing nothing about it! Like Noah in his Ark, 'pon my soul.' When he began to lather he kept up a running fire of remarks, mostly insulting. 'And what are you here, old man? Admiral? Lord High Muck-a-Muck? They put you up a jolly sight better than they did me in the second cabin of that infernal liner I came over in. Heavens! Old Uncle Christopher wanted me to go to New Zealand. He was cracked about New Zealand; dippy, 'pon my soul. When I asked to see the manager ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... 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

... gallantly. They were poised on the brink of death for a moment, two—three—and then the mare began to move slowly forward, neck curved, ears cocked to her master's urging, while the bay sloshed through the treacherous muck, found foothold, lost it, made a frantic leap, another, and landed trembling on the ledge. Sandy leaped from his saddle and caught Molly, sliding from her seat in sheer exhaustion and the revulsion of terror, clinging ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... I had finished my inspection. 'I am sure the old boy simply filled it up with this rubbish to give me the trouble of examining it. Higgins tells me that up to within a month before he died the room was reasonably clear of all this muck. Of course it had to be, or the place would have caught fire from the sparks of the forge. The old man made Higgins gather all the papers he could find anywhere about the place, ancient accounts, newspapers, and what ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... the set off and then looked down at it. His dour face broke into a rare grin. "Now there's an ambition I've had for donkey's years," he said aloud. "To hang up on a really big mucky-muck." ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... he rose early, to muck out the rock and clear the tunnel for a new round of holes; and each time as he came out with a wheel-barrow full of waste he cocked his eye to the west. Bible-Back Murray would be coming over soon, if he was still at his camp around the hill. Yet the second day ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... letter he begs the Society to be cautious and offer no encouragement to any disposed "'to run the muck' (sic) (it is Sir George's expression) against the religious and political INSTITUTIONS of Spain"; but "the delicacy of the situation does not appear to have been thoroughly understood at the time even by the Committee at home." {224b} They ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... encamped; and the palings were broken, the water in the trenches was disappearing, while fragments of glass and the bones of apes were to be seen amid the miry puddles. A scrap of cloth hung here and there from the bushes, and the rotten flowers formed a yellow muck-heap beneath the citron trees. In fact, the servants had neglected everything, thinking that the master ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... 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

... little while to become accustomed to the darkness, but soon they were able to make out that they had run on the muddy bank of the ocean beach. The tide was low and the Porpoise had rammed her nose well into the soft muck, which accounted for the lack ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... Peter Skirmish, an old Soldier. Captain Idle, a Highway-man. Corporal Oath, a vain-glorious Fellow. Nichols St. Antlings, Simon St. Mary Overies, Frailty, Serving-men to the Lady Plus. Sir Oliver Muck-hill, a Suitor to the Lady Plus. Sir John Penny-Dub, a Suitor to Moll. Sir Andrew Tipstaff, a Suitor to Frances. The Sheriff of London. Puttock, Ravenshaw, Two of the Sheriffs Sergeants. Dogson, a Yeoman. A Noble-man. A ...
— The Puritain Widow • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... it won't be difficult for our lobsters to lick 'em on land. P'r'aps there'll be an exchange of prisoners, an' we may have a chance of another brush with them one o' these days. If the wust comes to the wust, we can try to break out o' jail and run a muck for our lives. Never say die is ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne

... a creaking 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 he knocked again. Nothing broke ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... 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 ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford



Words linked to "Muck" :   faeces, gook, high-muck-a-muck, goop, scatter, cow pie, soil, goo, muck around, grime, faecal matter, spread out, ordure, droppings, pigeon droppings, stool, cow dung, slime, guck, muck up, begrime, sapropel, take, manure, ooze, remove, bm, spread



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