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noun
Nettle  n.  (Bot.) A plant of the genus Urtica, covered with minute sharp hairs containing a poison that produces a stinging sensation. Urtica gracilis is common in the Northern, and Urtica chamaedryoides in the Southern, United States. The common European species, Urtica urens and Urtica dioica, are also found in the Eastern united States. Urtica pilulifera is the Roman nettle of England. Note: The term nettle has been given to many plants related to, or to some way resembling, the true nettle; as: Australian nettle, a stinging tree or shrub of the genus Laportea (as Laportea gigas and Laportea moroides); also called nettle tree. Bee nettle, Hemp nettle, a species of Galeopsis. See under Hemp. Blind nettle, Dead nettle, a harmless species of Lamium. False nettle (Baehmeria cylindrica), a plant common in the United States, and related to the true nettles. Hedge nettle, a species of Stachys. See under Hedge. Horse nettle (Solanum Carolinense). See under Horse. nettle tree.
(a)
Same as Hackberry.
(b)
See Australian nettle (above). Spurge nettle, a stinging American herb of the Spurge family (Jatropha urens). Wood nettle, a plant (Laportea Canadensis) which stings severely, and is related to the true nettles.
Nettle cloth, a kind of thick cotton stuff, japanned, and used as a substitute for leather for various purposes.
Nettle rash (Med.), an eruptive disease resembling the effects of whipping with nettles.
Sea nettle (Zool.), a medusa.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nettle" Quotes from Famous Books



... grows underneath the nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighboured by fruits of baser quality, And so the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... another general who has shrunk from the nettle danger, he sought refuge in half-measures, the most damning course of all. Of twenty-four regiments present on the field of battle, five only, of Blenker's Germans, were sent forward to the attack. Their onslaught was directed ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... low deep growl; but when provoked too much, he would quietly lift the dog off the ground by the strength of his jaws (his teeth were gone), stand with her in his mouth at the doors until they were opened, and then deposit her, half strangled as she was, in a nettle-bed some distance from the house. The dog's discrimination was curious. If Vixen was thrown upon him, or if we forced her to insult him, he never punished her; but if she of her own accord teazed him more than his patience could bear, the ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... firm fair sand, When all is calm at sea, all still at land; And there the ocean's produce to explore, As floating by, or rolling on the shore: Those living jellies which the flesh inflame, Fierce as a nettle, and from that its name; Some in huge masses, some that you may bring In the small compass of a lady's ring; Figured by hand divine—there's not a gem Wrought by man's art to be compared to them; Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave they glow, And make the moonbeam brighter where ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... in being comfortable, we should all collapse into a hideous uniformity.... In all things, a man must beware of so conforming himself as to crush his nature, and forego the purpose of his being." And Emerson might have added to that thought, "Better be a nettle in the side of your ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... amid dispiritment, stupidity, and contradiction proclaims to us, Euge! Nothing ever was more ungenial than the soil this poor Teufelsdrockhish seed-corn has been thrown on here; none cries, Good speed to it; the sorriest nettle or hemlock seed, one would think, had been more welcome. For indeed our British periodical critics, and especially the public of Fraser's Magazine (which I believe I have now done with), exceed all speech; require not even contempt, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... revolutionary fires against that conservation. In one way or another, in one age or another, he will silence that war with all its pomp and circumstance, with all the din of its fifes, and drums, and trumpets. He will make over to the ignominy of ignorant and barbaric ages,—'for we call a nettle but a nettle,' he will turn into a forgotten pageant of the rude, early, instinctive ages, the yet brutal ages of an undeveloped humanity, that triumphant reception at home, of the Conqueror of Foreign States. He will undermine, in all the states, the ethics and religion of brute force, till men ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... skin, of a common character, often arise from very trifling causes, among which indigestion, suppressed perspiration, irritation, and the like, are the most frequent. Nettle rash or urticaria, so called from the appearance and tingling sensations resembling those caused by the sting of nettles, in some people, is very apt to follow the use of indigestible and unwholesome food. It is usually of short duration and recurrent. ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... by Aberdeen to Lord John Russell. Lord John had the peculiar temperament that is hard to agitate, but easy to nettle. So polemical a reading of former whig pranks nettled him considerably. Why, he asked, should he not say just as reasonably that Mr. Gladstone held up the whigs to odium in 1841 for stripping the farmer of adequate protection; worked ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... brother's death; and their destroyer shall not dandle a bairn upon his knee, or kiss its cheek, while mine are all, all dead, and in a strange grave, and even wi' no one near to pull up the noxious nettle that may be waving ower their once bonny ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... see that, great as may be the power of circumstances, they do not determine character; for it is always open to us either to determine whether we yield to them or resist them. The prevailing idolatry influenced the boy, but it influenced him to hate it with all his heart. So out of the nettle danger we may pluck the flower safety. The men who have smitten down some evil institution have generally been brought up so as to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... to raging woe, Alone, by other's presence unreprest, From his full eyes the tears descending flow, In a wide stream, and flood his troubled breast. 'Mid sob and groan, he tosses to and fro About his weary bed, in search of rest; And vainly shifting, harder than a rock And sharper than a nettle found ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... whipped the sea till the ship lurched and men felt driven spindrift stinging their faces. Beyond the rail there was winter night, a moving blackness where the waves rushed and clamored; straining into the great dark, men sensed only the bitter salt of sea-scud, the nettle of sleet and the ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson

... Nor will she tempt the barren waste; Nor deigns the lurking strength to taste Of any noxious thing; But leaves with scorn to Envy's use The insipid nightshade's baneful juice, The nettle's sordid sting. ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... only with the eye of the outer man, but the eye of law and order, the eye of a country gentleman and a justice of the peace, the spectacle was scandalously disreputable. It was moss-grown; it was worm-eaten; it was broken right in the middle; through its four socketless eyes, neighbored by the nettle, peered the thistle:—the thistle!—a forest of thistles!—and, to complete the degradation of the whole, those thistles had attracted the donkey of an itinerant tinker; and the irreverent animal was in the very act of taking his luncheon out of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... was too cunning, cautious, and selfish, to contemplate a mode of revenge which could not be accomplished without risk to himself. In any case, however, she was clearly convinced that the best plan was to go boldly upon him at once. It was like taking the sting out of a nettle, by grasping it suddenly. She thought he would shrink from publicity; and that if we refused to give him a struggle in the dark, we should effectually ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... good-naturedly mocking smiles, as a mere boy, a disdain to her mature womanhood. Of this was he thinking as he tossed on the couch in the library; he had thought of it too much since leaving Heliodora yesterday afternoon. It began to nettle him that his grief should be for her merely an amusement. Never having seen the Gothic maiden, whose beauty outshone hers as sunrise outdoes the lighting of a candle, this wanton Greek was capable of despising him in good earnest, and Basil had ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... to silence people who have had the hardihood to throw odium on their superstitions. Believers in amulets and charms remind us that it is a well-ascertained fact in nature, that for every bane there is an antidote. Wherever the stinging nettle grows, the slimy stem of the dock is near; whenever the wasp stings, honey gathered by the industrious bee may be had, without going far, to put on the injured part; when the cold is most intense without, the fire burns brightest within; and if there be evil spirits seeking man's hurt, there are ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, 'out of this nettle danger, we pluck this ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... had a bit o' luck in getting that up! Never had less trouble! Shows we can do better without those Foundry chaps than with 'em! James, ye can have a quart brought in, if ye'n a mind, but I won't have them apprentices drinking! No, I won't! Mrs Nixon'll give 'em some nettle-beer if they fancy it." ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... an' so will "Forgive-an'-forgit." Times mus' be pooty thoroughly out o' all jint, Ef we can't make a good constitootional pint; An' the good time 'll come to be grindin' our exes, When the war goes to seed in the nettle o' texes: Ef Jon'than don't squirm, with sech helps to assist him, I give up my faith in the free-suffrage system; Democ'cy wun't be nut a mite interestin', Nor p'litikle capital much wuth investin'; An' my notion is, to keep dark an' lay low Till we see the right ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... a coward who leaves the near duty that is as cruel to grasp as a nettle, and flies to gather the far-off duty that will flaunt in men's sight like ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... insignia of Sauve should be a trident, those of Quissac should be surmounted by an old shoe! In the former place the forked branches of the Celtis australis or nettle tree, Ulmaceae, afford a most profitable occupation. From its tripartite boughs are made yearly thousands upon thousands of the three-pronged forks used in agriculture. The wood, whilst very durable, is yielding, and lends ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... Kilkenny include much picturesque ground, especially along the courses of the rivers Nore and Barrow; and as picturesque ground implies the existence of hill and valley, wood and rock, the naturalist will find himself at home here. The flora is rich, though without any very marked features; the Nettle-leaved Bell-flower (Campanula Trachelium) being the most characteristic species. Regarding the fauna much has still to be learned. In Tipperary, Queen's County, and King's County we are in typical central plain country—great tracts of slightly undulating drift-covered Carboniferous limestone, ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... gentleness. She tried to fill the little man's soul with jealousy and alarms, but it was stockaded with insolent confidence. He left Dinah, when he went to Paris, with all the conviction of Medor in Angelique's fidelity. When she affected cold disdain, to nettle this changeling by the scorn a courtesan sometimes shows to her "protector," and which acts on him with the certainty of the screw of a winepress, Monsieur de la Baudraye gazed at his wife with fixed eyes, like those of a cat which, in the midst ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... proposed recreation! Eleanor would not have watched the most brilliant performance at His Majesty's Theatre for a single evening under such uncomfortable circumstances, and to be asked to watch lesser whitethroats creeping up and down a nettle "almost every evening" during the height of the season struck her as an imputation on her intelligence that was positively offensive. Impatiently she transferred her attention to the dinner menu, which the boy had thoughtfully brought in as an alternative to the more solid literary ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... from the two boys, who had fallen—quite safely, but rather unpleasantly—into a large nettle-bed; whence they crawled out, rubbing their arms and legs, and looking too much ashamed to complain. But they were rather frightened and a little cross, for Jess took a skittish fit, and refused to be caught and ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock

... not to be supposed that Mrs. Follingsbee, though she had assumed the gushing style with her young friend, wanted spirit or perception on her part. Her darling Lillie had left a nettle in ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... whitish, pinkish or reddish elevations, of an evanescent character; as, for example, the lesions of urticaria, the lesions produced by the bite of a mosquito or by the sting of a nettle. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... been a good thing, and even that bad thing is spoiled." This was in the same vein of asperity, and I believe with something like the same provocation, that he observed of a Scotch lady, "that she resembled a dead nettle; were she alive," said he, "she ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... liked so much to loiter behind with her when returning in the evening from our labors; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an AEolian harp; and particularly, why my pulse beat such a furious rattan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Thus with me began love and poetry, which at times have been my only, and till within the last twelve months, have been ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... him to her arm. The bite showed no more than the sting of a nettle, but around it was the deep impress of his teeth. Certainly he had done his ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... topics, disposed in so many orders, and exhibited in so many lights, that it reminds us of those arithmetical problems about permutations, which so much astonish the unlearned. The French cook, who boasted that he could make fifteen different dishes out of a nettle-top, was not a greater master of his art. The mind of Petrarch was a kaleidoscope. At every turn it presents us with new forms, always fantastic, occasionally beautiful; and we can scarcely believe that all these varieties have been produced ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 'tis your wish To nettle me, to break my breeding down, And see what natural passions I have hidden Behind the outworks of my etiquette. I neither own nor feel the want of heart With which you charge me. You are more than cruel; You rouse my nerves ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... are also subject to attacks of urticaria or "hives" (nettle-rash), from these and ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... they show no wit Who foolishly hug and foster it. If love is a weed, how simple they Who gather and gather it, day by day! If love is a nettle that makes you smart, Why do you wear it next your heart? And if it be neither of these, say I, Why do you ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... now, Martin!" Alix said, cheerfully, wishing that Martin didn't always and infallibly nettle her. ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris

... endurance and danger altogether. But we must not. We must rather say to ourselves, Now and here, if not in the past, I must play the man, and, by God's help, the wise man. I must pluck safety henceforth out of the heart of the nettle danger. Yes, I made a mistake. I did what I would not do now, and I must not be too proud to say so. I acted, I see now, precipitately, inconsiderately, imprudently. And I must not gloom and rebel ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... thought my father hurried us towards the tall belfry. It rose cold and white against the moon, at the end of a nettle-grown lane. A garth of ilex-oaks surrounded it; and beside it, more than half-hidden by the untrimmed trees, stood a ridiculously squat church. By instinct, or, rather, from association of ideas learnt in England, I glanced around this churchyard for its gravestones. There were none. Yet for ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... knot is a name to me, and no more. That, perhaps, is why the hooks crack off so merrily. Then, if I do spot a rising trout, and if he does not spot me as I crawl like the serpent towards him, my fly always fixes in a nettle, a haycock, a rose-bush, or whatnot, behind me. I undo it, or break it, and put up another, make a cast, and, "plop," all the line falls in with a splash that would frighten a crocodile. The fish's big black fin goes cutting the stream above, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... flower, those varieties that approached nearest to the familiar species of the country were visited by insects and cross-fertilised, and thus a closer resemblance would at length be brought about. Another case of close general resemblance, is that of our common white dead-nettle (Lamium album) to the stinging-nettle (Urtica dioica); and Sir John Lubbock thinks that this is a case of true mimicry, the dead-nettle being benefited by being mistaken by grazing animals for ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... was gathering berries from a hedge when his hand was stung by a Nettle. Smarting with the pain, he ran to tell his mother, and said to her between his sobs, "I only touched it ever so lightly, mother." "That's just why you got stung, my son," she said; "if you had grasped it firmly, it wouldn't have hurt ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... showing the tactics resorted to by the Terrys during this litigation, and the methods by which they sought to control decisions. It is entirely probable that they had hopes of intimidating the federal judges, as many believed some state judges had been, and that thus they might "from the nettle danger, pluck ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... sky, in a great powdery plain without roads, without grass, without a thistle, without a nettle, I met several men who were walking with heads ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... was stung by a Nettle. He ran home and told his mother, saying: "Although it pains me so much, I did but touch it ever so gently." "That was just it," said his mother, "which caused it to sting you. The next time you touch a Nettle, grasp it boldly, ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop

... process, and at once it stands out legible. You are writing your biography upon the fleshly tables of your heart, my brother; and one day it will all be spread out before you, and you will be bid to read it, and to say what you think of it. The stings of a nettle will burn for days, if they are touched with water. The sting and inflammation of your evil deeds, though it has died down, is capable of being resuscitated, and it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... and the diseases of infants, such as may, in the absence of the doctor, be treated by a parent, are the following:—Chafings, Convulsions, Costivenesa, Flatulence, Gripings, Hiccup, Looseness of the Bowels (Diarrhoea), Dysentery, Nettle-rash, Red-gum, Stuffing of the Nose, Sickness, Thrush. In all these complaints I will tell you—What to do, and—What NOT ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... other hand, welcomed me back to Falmouth with a carelessness which disappointed if it did not nettle me. He fetched out the tea and guava-jelly, to be sure, but appeared to take no interest in my doings during the holidays, and was uncommunicative on his own. This seemed the stranger because he had important news to tell me. During my absence ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... from his own witness all that was necessary—and out of the nettle danger plucking the flower safety, won the verdict. Every one, however, who has had opportunities of observing, can give many instances of Sir William Follett's extraordinary tact and readiness in encountering unexpected difficulty, and defeating ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... why she could not be all evil or all good. She spoke and acted against Ruth Devlin, and yet she pitied her. She had the nettle to sting Roscoe to death, and yet she hesitated to use it. She had said to herself that she would wait till the happiest moment of his life, and then do so. Well, his happiest moment had come. Ruth Devlin's heart was all out, all blossomed—beside Mrs. Falchion's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... bite, the sensation was sharp enough to deserve the name of pain; and this continued for five or six minutes more, but not so forcibly. I might compare it with the sensation produced by the stinging-nettle. A whitish tumefaction almost immediately surrounded the two pricks; and the circumference, within a radius of about an inch, was coloured an erysipelas red, accompanied by a very slight swelling. In an hour and a half, it had all disappeared, except ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... the terms of confidence so evident between him and Felix seemed to place them in the same hateful category. Worse than all, Lance had laughed at him, and Bernard was far too proud and self-important not to feel every joke like so many nettle-stings. He had expected an easy careless helper; he had found what he could not comprehend, whether boy or man, but at any rate a thing with that intolerable possession, a conscience, and a strong purpose of keeping ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... all the shops he passed were closed, except the beer-shops and the chemists'. "The nettle ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... sittest at the fireside; Teach one year, in words of kindness, Teach with eyes of love a second, In the third year teach with firmness. If she should not heed thy teaching, Should not hear thy kindly counsel, After three long years of effort, Cut a reed upon the lowlands, Cut a nettle from the border, Teach thy wife with harder measures. In the fourth year, if she heed not, Threaten her with sterner treatment, With the stalks of rougher edges, Use not yet the thongs of leather, Do not ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... and given it for Roper, by a divition of fifty-three against twenty-three torrys, who were resolute enough to appear in a good cause, being forsaken by their brethren, who were afraid to be caled favourers of Poperie. I long to hear what my uncle will say to this news. If he be well, it will nettle him in spite of resignation. Gibson writes word they are at Doway; but he does not know when my uncle will sett forwards. I do not know where to wish him: for I really don't know how he is. For in one letter Gibson writes, he tells me my uncle is ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson

... table; when he read A poisonous speech might strike one dead, All gall and venom, to refute One Attius in a certain suit. Since when, a cold cough and catarrh Against my battered frame made war; Until I came in thee to settle, And cured it with repose and nettle. So, now I'm well, I thank thee, farm! And that I got so little harm, From such great fault. I may be pardon'd If to this pitch my heart is harden'd: To pray, when Sextius reads again Things so abhorr'd of gods and men, That that my cough and cold catarrh Not mine but Sextius' health ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... she comes to one that is dead, that she is confident will not grow, up she pulls that, and makes to the heap of rubbish with it, where she despisingly casts it down, and valueth it no more than a nettle, or a weed, or than the dust she hath swept out of her walks. Yea, if any that see her should say, Why do you so? the answer is ready. It is dead, it is dead at root; if I had let it stand it would but have cumbered the ground. The strange slips, and also the dead ones, they must be 'a heap in the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of a man's life. The truest friendship is not too easy- going; it stimulates and checks as well as comforts. Emerson happily phrases this aspect of the matter: "I hate, when I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. Better be a nettle in the side of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... pioneer long remained a curious cross between that of the Indians and that of the white people of the older sections. In earlier times the hunting-shirt—made of linsey, coarse nettle-bark linen, buffalo-hair, or even dressed deerskins—was universally worn by the men, together with breeches, leggings, and moccasins. The women and children were dressed in simple garments of linsey. In warm weather they ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... stranger feared to find a house empty and hesitated before setting foot on the threshold. From where she stood she could not see him, though his breath was to be heard, short and panting. The square of the open door was filled with green and purple—the green of the rank nettle, the purple of the bell-heather she had been always careful to spare as she ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... my kisses—I shower them not, Allah the All-seeing is my witness! and they be given daintily as 'twere to the leaf of a nettle, or over-hot pilau. Yet haply kisses repeated might restore her to a bloom, and it is certain youth is somehow stolen from her, if the Vizier Feshnavat went before her, and his blood be her blood; and he is powerful, she wise. I'll decide to act the part of a rejoicer, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... whan they cam to yon nettle bush, The nettles they war spread: 'O an my mither war but here,' she says, 'These ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick

... of perennial bell-flowers are in fine condition, as the carpathian, peach-leaved (second crop), nettle-leaved, common harebell, and vase harebell. In the case of many of the tall-growing kinds, better results are obtained by treating them as biennials than perennials. No garden should be without the double white feverfew; the more you cut ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... attacks are evidently aimed at Nero, but his principal object is to denounce the vices of the times. Hence, indolence and prurient literature are stigmatised. He ridicules the extremes of extravagance, and of that parsimony by which it is usually accompanied. "Am I on a festive day to have a nettle dressed for me, and a smoked pig's cheek with a hole in its ear, in order that that grandson of yours may be surfeited with goose liver, and indulge in patrician amours. Am I to be a living anatomy that his pope's stomach may shake with fat."[23] Alluding ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... likewise some of the prickly pear bushes, which gave us only a few pears about the size of our small button pear; the outside has thorns, which if applied to the fingers or lips, will remain there, and cause a severe smarting similar to the nettle; the inside a spungy substance, full of juice and seeds, which are red and a little tartish—had they been there in abundance, we should not have suffered so much for water—but alas! even this substitute was not for ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... a stunted or middle-sized tree, which grew in great abundance on the ranges. We passed a fine large but dry Casuarina creek, coming from the westward, with a broad sandy bed. A large tree, with dark green broad lanceolate stinging leaves, grew on its banks; it resembled the nettle tree, but belonged to neither of the two species growing in the ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... was signalized by a storm of extreme violence, and the thunder burst several times over the island. Large trees were struck by the electric fluid and shattered, and among others one of those gigantic nettle-trees which had shaded the poultry-yard at the southern extremity of the lake. Had this meteor any relation to the phenomena going on in the bowels of the earth? Was there any connection between the commotion ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... buy kindliness. I hear you say that kindliness of heart can be "cultivated." Well, I hate to have even the appearance of contradicting you, but it can only be cultivated in the botanical sense. You can't cultivate violets on a nettle. A philosopher has enjoined us to suffer fools gladly. He had more usefully enjoined us to suffer ill-natured persons gladly.... I see that in a fit of absentmindedness I have strayed into ...
— Mental Efficiency - And Other Hints to Men and Women • Arnold Bennett

... "Thet 'peared to nettle Pat beyond bounds, an' he stamped around an' swore. Then he had an idea. It jest stuck out all over him, an' he shook his ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... the heraldic insignia of Sauve should be a trident, those of Quissac should be surmounted by an old shoe! In the former place the forked branches of the Celtis australis or nettle tree, Ulmace, afford a most profitable occupation. From its tripartite boughs are made yearly thousands upon thousands of the three-pronged forks used in agriculture. The wood, whilst very durable, is yielding, and lends itself ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... garden rose, Let it bloom and wither if no man knows: But if one knows when the sweet thing blows, Knows, and lets it open and drop, If but a nettle his garden grows ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti

... are treated with splints and bandages, as in Europe. Venereal ulcers are sprinkled with alkaline wood ashes, the astringent liquid of the nettle bark, or a macerated preparation from a particular kind of broad-leaved grass. Superficial wounds are left to themselves, and usually heal without much trouble. Malformations of the body are attributed ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... mistakes might have been avoided if my teachers had given me some lessons in the art of living, for it is an art and must be learned. These rules would have helped, could I have known them. I am glad to know that my pupils have faith in me. When I pointed out a nettle to them one day, they avoided it; when I showed them a mushroom that is edible, they accepted the statement without question. So I'll see what I can do for them to-morrow with these four rules. Then, if we have time, we shall learn the lines ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... pleasure." For this, according to the code of Mr. Thomas Miller (third edition, 1841, with elegantly coloured plates) you would have to get a sweet-pea blossom for Pleasure, wormwood for Absence, and indicate Sorrow by the yew, and Cruelty by the stinging-nettle. There is always a little risk of mixing your predicates in this kind of communication, and he might, for instance, read that his Absence caused you Sorrow, but he could scarcely miss the point of the stinging-nettle. That and the gorse carefully concealed were about ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... apologetic and merciful toward those who, while they have great faults, have also great virtues. Some people are barren of virtues. No weeds verily, but no flowers. I must not be too much enraged at a nettle along the fence if it be in a field containing forty acres of ripe Michigan wheat. At the present time, naturalists tell us, there is on the sun a spot twenty thousand miles long, but from the brightness and warmth I conclude it is a good deal of ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... at him with eyes in which contentment struggled with some obscure reluctant protest, and at last turned them slowly to the black nettle pagodas ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... cones standing stiff up in the heat. The mill-foot water tumbled white and lit With tossing crystals, happier than any crowd Of children pouring out of school aloud. And in the little thickets where a sleeper For ever might lie lost, the nettle-creeper And garden warbler sang unceasingly; While over them shrill shrieked in his fierce glee The swift with wings and tail as sharp and narrow As if the bow had flown off with the arrow. Only the scent of woodbine and hay new-mown Travelled the road. In the field sloping ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas

... for lang kail, Cowe the nettle, stoo the nettle: Gin ye be for lang kail, Cowe the ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... bears the weedes wick' *that same Bears eke the wholesome herbes, and full oft Next to the foule nettle, rough and thick, The lily waxeth,* white, and smooth, and soft; *grows And next the valley is the hill aloft, And next the darke night is the glad morrow, And also joy is next the fine* of sorrow." ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... undertake is dangerous." "Why that is certain: it is dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my Lord fool, out of this nettle danger, we pluck ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... life in observing and setting down for the instruction of others the habits of these insects. He found that ants of the species Atta barbara store up grains. They utilise plants of various kinds, but usually fumitory, oats, nettle, various species of Veronica, etc. They procure these grains towards the end of autumn, collecting them on the soil, or even, when they do not fall in sufficient quantities, climbing up the plants and gathering them in position. An ant will, for instance, ascend the stem ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... this again was another, less obvious line, similar in plan, and also covered with unchecked growth: within that the uneven surface of the ground was thickly encumbered with rank weeds, beds of thistle, beds of nettle, and a plenitude of bramble and gorse; in one place towards the eastern mass of overgrown wall, a great clump of gorse had grown to such a height and thickness as to form an impenetrable screen. And, peering and prying about, suddenly we came, between this screen and ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... had husbanded the supply of cotton most carefully, so that, after an unexpectedly long war, a little was still left over. The mills which were running, displayed great assiduity in procuring and utilizing substitutes for cotton. Paper, wood, cellulose, reed and nettle fibres, and other materials were tried, some were manufactured quite extensively. During the war they did good service, but in normal times, they cannot usurp the place of cotton. After surmounting many difficulties, the German ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer

... themselves as good for diseases of the hair, and bear's grease, being taken from an animal thickly covered with hair, was recommended for the prevention of baldness. Nettle-tea is still a country remedy for nettle rash; prickly plants like thistles and holly were prescribed for pleurisy and stitch in the side, and the scales of the pine were used in toothache, because they resemble front teeth. "Kidney-beans," says Berdoe, "ought to have been useful for kidney ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... Orange Raspberry and Currant Leek Lemon Cordial Curd Sauce Short Cake Lentil and Leek Pie Paste Rissoles Soup Lentils, Stewed Lime Juice Cordial Macaroni Cheese Soup and Tomato Macaroons Manhu Health Cake Marmalade Meat Substitutes Menus Milk Pudding Mincemeat Mushroom and Tomato Nettle Nut Cookery and Lentil Roast Roast, Royal Paste Pastry Rissoles Roast Nuttolene, Stewed Oatcake Oatmeal Biscuits Gruel Omelet, Plain Savoury Sweet souffle Onions, Baked—Fried—Steamed Orange Cordial Jelly Parkin Parsley Sauce Parsnips Pastry, to make Pastry, Nut Puff Short Pea Soup Pine ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel

... he was very wroth. At first he thought of way-laying young Ferret in the wood and killing him; but then he recollected that the Ferrets were a powerful family, who would never rest till they had been revenged. His next thought was to go to his attorney, Sharp Weasel, Esq., of Nettle Cottage, and consult with him as to the best means of thwarting young Ferret's projects. So the old man took down his pipe and his account-book, and set off ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown

... glossy, heart-shaped leaves and its pretty greenish lily flowers—I have stung myself rather badly against the nettles that grow rank and tall from the rich mud in the ditch below. Nothing soothes a nettle sting like philosophy and dock-leaf; so I shall rub a little of the leaf on my hand and then sit awhile on the Hole Farm gate here to philosophize about nettles and things generally, as is my humble wont. There is a great deal more in nettles, I believe, than ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... by public men, such as Mr. Roosevelt and our own Prime Minister, might be cited in the same sense; but Professor Murray's has been chosen because he has had the courage to grasp the nettle. In his words the true position is quite clearly set forth. If Inter-State Law is to become a reality we must "be sure to go far enough." There is no half-way house between Law and no Law, between Government and no Government, between Responsibility and no Responsibility. ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... in a tone of indignant inquiry: God-Almighty would presumably take on just such a tone, finding the core of an apple flung away among the dead-nettle of paradise: "Stout! Have you been drinking stout?" This as he gazed down on the wan mother in ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... impression of a physique in perfect because unconscious harmony with its environment. If, on the contrary, you watched but so much as the nervous, uncertain hand of the other woman, you would know here was one who had spent her years in alternately grasping the nettle and letting it go—reaping only stings in life's fair fields. Easy for any one seeing her in these days (though she wasn't thirty-six) to share Mrs. Freddy's incredulous astonishment at hearing from Haycroft the night before that Janet Levering had ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... Knightly Tale of Galogras, The Temple of Glas, Lodge's Nettle for Nice Noses, or the Book of Fayts of Armes, by Christene of Pisa, or Caxton's Pylgremage of the Sowle, or his Myrrour of the Worlde, will be long inquired after before they come to the market, thoroughly contradicting that fundamental principle of political ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... arrows, which can not pierce two thicknesses of leather; and as their heads are also covered with a sort of helmet, the neck is almost the only part in which they can be wounded. They have another kind of corslet, made like the corsets of our ladies, of splinters of hard wood interlaced with nettle twine. The warrior who wears this cuirass does not use the tunic of elk-skin; he is consequently less protected, but a great deal more free; the said tunic being very heavy and ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... instantly struck back and rebounds like an elastic ball falling upon a rock, or it is absorbed like a diamond thrown into a bog. A man not reformed as to the Spirit, is like a panther or an owl, and may be compared to a bramble and a nettle; but a man regenerated is like a sheep or a dove, and may be compared to an olive and a vine. Consider, I pray, if you are so disposed, how can a man-panther be changed into a man-sheep, or an owl into a dove, or a bramble into an olive, or a nettle into a vine, by any imputation, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... commerce is the bast or inner bark of a plant, Cannabis sativa, belonging to the nettle order. It is an annual plant having a very wide range; it occurs in pretty nearly every country of North America, Europe, and Asia. In Europe the chief countries producing it for commercial uses are Russia, France, Italy, and Hungary; ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... the acorns, yellow where they were fixed in their cups; two of these cups seem almost as large as the great acorns from abroad. A red dead-nettle, a mauve thistle, white and pink bramble flowers, a white strawberry, a little yellow tormentil, a broad yellow dandelion, narrow hawkweeds, and blue scabious, are all in flower in the lane. Others are scattered on the mounds and in the meads adjoining, where may be collected some heath still ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... created the Paladins, wist not how to make them in such numbers as to form an army of them alone. It must needs be that in the multitude of things there be found diversities of quality. No field was ever so well tilled but that here and there nettle, or thistle, or brier would be found in it amid the goodlier growths. Whereto I may add that, having to address me to young and unlearned ladies, as you for the most part are, I should have done foolishly, had I ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... her talk with Mrs. Trelyon that she did not notice how far away they were getting from Eglosilyan; but Mabyn and her companion knew. They were now on the high uplands by the coast, driving between the beautiful banks, which were starred with primroses and stitchwort and red dead-nettle and a dozen other bright and tender-hued firstlings of the year. The sun was warm on the hedges and the fields, but a cool breeze blew about these lofty heights, and stirred Mabyn's splendid masses of hair as they drove rapidly along. Far over on their right, beyond the majestic wall ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... from his worst intoxicant lhiamba (Cannabis sativa), a plant which grows wild on the South-West Coast and on the West for all I know, as well as the African or bowstring hemp (Sanseviera guiniensis). The plant that produces the lhiamba is a nettle-like plant growing six to ten feet high, and the natives collect the tops of the stems, with the seed on, in little bundles and dry them. It is evidently the seeds which are regarded by them as ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... students scarcely out of school like St. Just, Monet of Strasbourg, Rousseline of St. Albin, and Julien of the Drome—in short, the poorly sown and badly cultivated minds, and on which the theory had only to fall to smother the good grain and thrive like a nettle. Add to these charlatans and others who live by their wits, the visionary and morbid of all sorts, from Fanchet and Klootz to Chalier or Marat, the whole of that needy, chattering, irresponsible crowd, ever swarming ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... with looking at the facts, but contents himself with taking them also at second-hand. A most amusing example of this fashion of dealing with scientific statements is furnished by Dr. Stirling's remarks upon my account of the protoplasm of the nettle hair. That account was drawn up from careful and often- repeated observation of the facts. Dr. Stirling thinks he is offering a valid criticism, when he says that my valued friend Professor Stricker gives a somewhat different statement about protoplasm. But why in the world did not ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... flowers, pollen, and honey. Wood, bark, resin, and honey might have been supplied; but how could green leaves, sap, flowers and pollen, be furnished to those insects absolutely requiring them for existence? Thirty species of insects feed on the nettle, but not one of them could live on dried nettles. Roesel calculates that two hundred species subsist on the oak; but the oak must be in a growing condition to supply them with food. In no other way, then, could the insects have been preserved ...
— The Deluge in the Light of Modern Science - A Discourse • William Denton



Words linked to "Nettle" :   wood nettle, hedge nettle, nettle-leaved goosefoot, richweed, get at, silver-leaved nettle, rag, false nettle, chivvy, nettle tree, displease, burn, hassle, ruffle, devil nettle, chevvy, friendship plant, get under one's skin, molest, flame nettle, rankle, eat into, plague, devil, painted nettle, Laportea canadensis, Pilea involucrata, Pilea pumilla, white dead nettle, irritate, chivy, grate, nettle family, sting, artillery plant, bull nettle, chevy, hemp nettle, nark, gravel, nettle rash, Australian nettle tree, antagonize



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