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Riot   Listen
noun
Riot  n.  
1.
Wanton or unrestrained behavior; uproar; tumult. "His headstrong riot hath no curb."
2.
Excessive and exxpensive feasting; wild and loose festivity; revelry. "Venus loveth riot and dispense." "The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day."
3.
(Law) The tumultuous disturbance of the public peace by an unlawful assembly of three or more persons in the execution of some private object.
To run riot, to act wantonly or without restraint.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Riot" Quotes from Famous Books



... when the pioneer's axe first rang through the stillness of the forest was nearly over; Nature saw her chance, took courage, and began that regeneration which is exclusively her own. The weeds ran riot; tall grasses shot up into the sunlight, concealing the once well-trimmed banks; and great tangles of underbrush and alders made lusty efforts to hide the traces of man's unceasing cruelty. Lastly came this little group of poor people from the Seine and the Marne ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... a racial migration; it was something much more intellectual and dignified; a riot. In order to understand this religious war we must class it, not so much with the wars of history as with the revolutions of history. As I shall try to show briefly on a later page, it not only had all the peculiar good and the ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... the deed over again in fancy—that he is the same person who told that lie, felt that hatred, many a year ago; and who would do the same again, if God's grace left him to that weak and sinful nature, which is his master in sleep, and runs riot in his dreams. Whether God sends to men in these days dreams which enable them to look forward, and to foretell things to come, I cannot say. But this I can say, that God sends dreams to men which enable them to look back, and recollect things past, which they had forgotten ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... running such a race in company with the chief of the establishment, it may be conjectured that but little prudence or economy was displayed by the domestics. Extravagance of every kind ran riot amongst them as wildly as with their master, and they scrupled not at all sorts of petty pilfering, where there were none to censure or restrain. Fox, it is true, had the right, and possessed the influence requisite to do so; but, for some ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes

... his fame. The government finally forced the Opera to mount Le Siege de Corinthe. Its success was so striking that the evening of the first representation (October 9, 1826), the public made almost a riot for half an hour, because Rossini, called loudly by an enthusiastic crowd, refused to ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... thrust forward, his hands behind his back. There was that in the visitor's manner which puzzled him. The evident agitation and discomfort, the anxious moving of the thick arms, the constant shifting of the feet, all pointed to something that struck deeper than the possibility of a riot. And Manson, he had reason to know, ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... to top, filled with music and laughter, experienced a riot of happiness such as it had not known in years. The war clouds had lifted, the sunshine of contentment was breaking through the darkness, and there was rejoicing in the hearts of all. Bright and glorious were the colors that made up the harmony of peace. Men and ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... Where'er he went, the grunting friend Ne'er failed his pleasure to attend. 10 As on a time, the loving pair Walked forth to tend the garden's care, The master thus address'd the swine: 'My house, my garden, all is thine. On turnips feast whene'er you please, And riot in my beans and peas; If the potato's taste delights, Or the red carrot's sweet invites, Indulge thy morn and evening hours, But let due care regard my flowers: 20 My tulips are my garden's pride, What vast expense those beds supplied!' The hog ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... activity on the part of Philip Augustus the constant interest he testified in letters, science, study, the University of Paris, and its masters and pupils. It was to him that in 1200, after a violent riot, in which they considered they had reason to complain of the provost of Paris, the students owed a decree, which, by regarding them as clerics, exempted them from the ordinary criminal jurisdiction, so as to render them subject only to ecclesiastical authority. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... exhaustion left them to lapse into ruin, is picturesque and dramatic. Many tales are told of poor farmers who struck oil on their lands, and sold them for sums greater than they had ever dreamed of, and then went out into the world to waste their wealth in a few years of wild riot, or sank down and led idle and useless lives in sight of the fields they had once tilled. Similar stories are told of the regions where natural gas has been found, and some day, when the chronicles of Findlay, in Hancock County are fully written we shall know all these romantic episodes ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... waited for the first sign of smoke from the chimneys, but none came. No one was lighting the furnaces; there was nothing but silence inside the shops. There was no possible excuse as yet for deeds of violence, though many of the more turbulent element urged riot at once. What was the use of waiting? In the afternoon there appeared some fifty more strange men. These carried tool-bags. They were challenged. They ignored the challenge and pushed on resolutely. For the first time blows were struck. The ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... the clanging reel and the swing of the Strathspey. It is doubtless not high art, but there is probably no music in the world that fires the blood like this and turns the sober dance to rhythmic riot. Perhaps, too, it gains something that gives it a closer compelling grip ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss

... and proved how much evil can be done in a short space by an imbecile autocrat. Flaccus, the governor of Egypt, who had hitherto ruled fairly, hoping to ingratiate himself by misrule, allowed himself to be led by worthless minions, who, from motives of private greed, desired a riot at Alexandria; he was won over by the anti-Semites and gave the mob a free hand in their attacks upon the "alien Jews."[76] The arrival of Agrippa, the grandson of Herod, who was on his way to his kingdom of Palestine, which the capricious emperor had just conferred upon ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... right and wrong expression. If a man permits his life to run riot and only the animal side of his nature is allowed to express itself, he is repressing his highest and best, and the qualities not ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... priests and philosophers ventured into the chaos in the hope of quelling the riot, but a tipsy flute-player placed himself in front of them and throwing back his head blew a furious blast to heaven on his double pipe, shrill enough to wake the dead, while a girl seconded him by flinging her tambourine in the face of the intruding pacificators. It bounced ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... At strategic points parking overlooks have been constructed, from which are seen tumbling waterfalls, deep and narrow canyons, cool shady forests, open meadows, and wild flowers of every shade and hue throughout the summer. Autumn presents a boundless riot of color and winter a snowy, sparkling blanket ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... youthful hero in the prow, A copper helmet on his yellow locks, With eyes of blue, a manly, heaving breast, His sword held firmly in his mighty hand. I follow him upon his rapid course, And all my dreams run riot round his bark, And frolic sportively like merry dolphins In fancy's deep ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen

... might have cared for a sick child. She allowed no hired servant to enter his room, and for several weeks she and Sir William were his only attendants. Gradually health returned, and Nelson had an opportunity to repay in part his friends, by helping them quell a riot that threatened ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... but it is true that one of you in a few years may be placed in command of a district and have 1,000,000 human beings committed to his charge. He may have to deal with a famine; he may have to deal with a riot; he may take a decision on which the lives of thousands of people may depend. Well, I think that early call to responsibility, to a display of energy, to the exercise of individual decision and judgment is what makes the Indian Civil Service a grand ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)

... have already spoken of the transition from the old prophecy to apocalypse. With the destruction of the nation and the cessation of historical life, hope was released from all obligation to conform to historical conditions; it no longer set up an aim to which even the present might aspire, but ran riot after an ideal, at the advent of which the historical development would be suddenly broken off. To be pious was all the Jews could do at the time; but it caused them bitter regret that they had no part in the government of the world, and in thought they anticipated the fulfilment ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... Finally I felt so sorry for the girl, that I made up my mind to give her a hint, so that she could slip quietly away. She greeted me warmly, and said that she supposed Mr. Jasperson was around 'somewheres,' and I said that he was. Then she spoke about the riot, and asked if I had seen a number of brutal cowboys abusing a poor Indian. She told me that her brothers and sisters inside the lodge were very distressed about it. And as she talked the yells grew louder, and I was convinced that the candidate ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... half-past two in the morning, the streets of Paris are almost, if not quite, deserted, and scarcely is any one to be seen but the hard-working artisan on his way to earn his daily bread or the roistering idlers of the streets, who are returning to their homes after a night of riot and debauchery; for the former the day was beginning, and for the latter it was just closing. La Valliere was afraid of both faces, in which her ignorance of Parisian types did not permit her to distinguish the type of probity from that of dishonesty. ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... seized at the instance of the countess, for rent alleged to be due to her, and an interdict had been obtained against her, prohibiting her from disposing of it. However, she defied the law, and in the midst of something very like a riot, the cattle were sold, flags were waved, speeches were made, and the moment was perhaps the proudest which the heiress of the Derwentwaters is likely to see ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... without debate, voted "No." He moved that it be reported unfavorably. Again the gang voted "No." Then he put the bill in his pocket and announced that he proposed to report it anyhow. There was almost a riot. He was warned that his conduct would be exposed on the floor of the Assembly. He replied that in that case he would explain publicly in the Assembly the reasons which made him believe that the rest of the committee were trying, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... we may leave this turbulent Captain and his companions to Vasilici's tender mercies, my lord," said the King. "All we have to guard against is a riot among the dissatisfied ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... Broadway was a riot of light, thronged as he had never seen it with a carnival crowd which swept its glittering way through scraps of paper, piled ankle-deep on the sidewalks. Here and there, elevated upon benches and boxes, soldiers addressed the heedless mass, each face in which was clear cut and distinct ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... and reasonable concessions which might have appeased the discontent in its incipiency are gladly tendered much too late in the contest, when the insurgents stung by injustice and conscious of their grievances, refuse all temperate compromise, and run riot. This woman's-rights and woman's-suffrage abomination is no suddenly concocted social bottle of yeast: it has been fermenting for ages, and, having finally blown out the cork, is rapidly leavening the mass of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... Mrs. Innitt, self-poised though she always is, and despite my remonstrances she excused herself from the table for a moment, and I judge from the flushed appearance of her cheeks when she returned five minutes later that somebody had had the riot act read to ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs

... "They show their affection in such foolish wise, that it would be nearer the mark to say they hate, rather than love, their offspring. They bring them up not to follow virtue, but to occupy themselves with all manner of hurtful things; not to learning, but to riot; not to the worship of God, but to foster in them the desire to drain the cup of lustful pleasure; not for the life eternal, but to ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... Barbara entered into Jane, and made her ungovernably gay. It passed into Kitty, and ran riot in her blood and nerves. Whenever Barbara laughed Kitty laughed, and when Kitty laughed Robert laughed too. Even Janet gave a little shriek now and then. The children thought it was all because they had had strawberries and cream for tea, and were going down to the sea to build castles ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... and mighty merry, this house being famous for good meat, and particularly pease-porridge and after dinner broke up, and they away; and I to the Council-Chamber, and there heard the great complaint of the City, tried against the gentlemen of the Temple, for the late riot, as they would have it, when my Lord Mayor was there. But, upon hearing the whole business, the City was certainly to blame to charge them in this manner as with a riot: but the King and Council did forbear to determine any ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... sorrow-bound father bowing down his gray locks with humility before the footstool of his God, and forbearing even to murmur under a dispensation so fearfully calamitous to him and his. Religion, however, at which the fool and knave may sneer in the moments of convivial riot, is after all the only stay on which the human heart can rest in those severe trials of life which almost every one sooner or later is destined to undergo. The sceptic may indeed triumph in the pride of his intellect ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... into operation? Return to his hotel and smoke himself headachy? Try to become interested in a novel? Go to bed, to turn and roll till dawn? A wild desire seized him to make a night of it,—Maxim's, the cabarets; riot and wine. Who cared? But the desire burnt itself out between two puffs of his cigar. Ten years ago, perhaps, this particular brand of amusement might have urged him successfully. But not now; he was done with tomfool nights. Indeed, his dissipations had been whimsical rather than banal; and ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... bowels of the earth, softening with their glow the sharp, concentrated, vicious snaps of light from shrapnel. Little flashes played among big flashes and flashes laid over flashes shingle fashion in a riot of lurid competition, while along the line of the German trenches at some places lay a haze of shimmering flame from the rapid fire of ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... care, and then allowed the communication to slip from his fingers. If his mind had been in a whirl before, it was more so now, and for the moment he could hardly think straight. If he was not Dave Porter, who was he? A thousand ideas ran riot through his brain. ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer

... that merciful blindness which alone prevents all our lives from becoming a horror of nerveless self-reproach, his parents were equally unaware of their share in the harm done him when they ascribed to a delicate organization the fact that, at an age when love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a Balmoral without his cheeks rivaling the most vivid stripe in it. They flattered themselves that he would outgrow his bashfulness; but Daniel had no such hope, and frequently confided in me that he thought he should ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... and projects of improvement they had formed, how they lived in each other, always together, so young and fresh and beautiful as she remembered them in that one early summer when they walked arm in arm through the wilderness of roses that ran riot in the garden,—she told of this as loath to leave it and come to the woe that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... shall soon reach Medora, which was my station." It was plain to see that that strange, forbidding-looking landscape, hills and valleys to Eastern eyes utterly demoralized and gone to the bad,—flayed, fantastic, treeless, a riot of naked clay slopes, chimney-like buttes, and dry coulees,—was in his eyes a land of almost pathetic interest. There were streaks of good pasturage here and there where his cattle used to graze, and where the deer and the pronghorn used ...
— Camping with President Roosevelt • John Burroughs

... on a Friday, the day as before stated, set apart by Mrs. Tyler for her weekly visit to the jail. The news of the riot reached her as she was about setting out upon this errand of mercy, and caused her to postpone her visit for several hours, as her way lay through some portion of ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... that's perfectly inexcusable! Did England then set loose on us a pack of black savages and politicians to help us rebuild? Why, this very day I cannot walk on the other side of the river, I dare not venture off the New Bridge; and you who first beat us and then unleashed the blacks to riot in a new 'equality' that they were no more fit for than so many apes, you sat back at ease in your victory and your progress, having handed the vote to the negro as you might have handed a kerosene lamp to a child of three, and let us crushed, breathless people cope with the chaos and destruction ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... Stephen. "The very evening of the day on which Ker left us there was a carousal in the English camp. We heard the sound of the song and of riot, and of many an insult cast upon our besieged selves. But about an hour after sunset the noise sunk by degrees-a no insufficient hint that the revelers, overcome by excess, had fallen asleep. At this very time, owing to the heat of the day, so great a vapor had been exhaled from the ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... mullet ponds, and in about four miles the track, then formed of rough hard lava, and not more than 24 inches wide, enters a forest of the densest description, a burst of true tropical jungle. I could not have imagined anything so perfectly beautiful, nature seemed to riot in the production of wonderful forms, as if the moist hot-house air encouraged her in lavish excesses. Such endless variety, such depths of green, such an impassable and altogether inextricable maze of forest trees, ferns, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... comfort. She passed, perforce, away from the deserted house and returned home; but all manner of frightened thoughts beset her. Where had he gone? Why had he gone? Why had he not let her know? Doubts—those hasty attendants on passion—came thronging, and scepticism ran riot. What did she know of his life, of his interests, of him, except that he said he loved her? Where had he gone? To Widrington, to some smart house-party, or even back to Scotland? The jealous feelings that had so besieged her at the bungalow when his letters ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the rarest thing of the kind that any of those interested in its formation had ever witnessed. The jostling, tumbling, scratching, pinching, pulling of hair, little ones crying and larger ones punching each other's heads and swearing most profanely, altogether formed a scene of confusion and riot that disheartened the teachers in the start, and made them begin to think they ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... the talk, I gorge myself with everything, in its turn. Even at the best, my overloaded stomach often joins with my conscience in reproaching me for what you would think a shameful excess at table. Yet, wicked as my riot is, my waste is worse, and I have to think, with contrition, not only of what I have eaten, but of what I have left uneaten, in a city where so many wake and ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells

... Don't fool away this treasure which Providence has laid at your feet, but take it up and use it. One can let his imagination run riot in portraying Orion, for there is nothing so extravagant as to be out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... the door of the chamber, and we followed him; for there was just inside a large oak screen, and from its shadow we could see the room and all therein. At the first glance I shrank back, for, apart from the noise and the clattering of tongues, such a riot of carousal I have never seen. I was shocked to note gentlemen whom I had met in society, with the show of decorum about them, loosed now from all restraint, and swaggering like woodsmen at a fair. I felt a sudden fear, and drew back ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... red clover we could see the fresh earth of numbers of their burrows, and almost every day a new one would be espied beside a rock or stone heap. June is the happy month for wood-chucks, in New England; they riot in the farmer's clover, and tunnel the soft hillsides with their holes. June is the month, too, when mother wood-chuck is leading out her four or five chubby little chucks, teaching them the fear of dogs and man, which constitutes the wisdom of a wood-chuck's life, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... an earnest of packed plenitude within. The room I was ushered into was a back-room, a dining-room, looking on to a good garden. It was, in form and 'fixtures,' an inalienably Mid-Victorian room, and held its stolid own in the riot of Rossettis. Its proportions, its window-sash bisecting the view of garden, its folding-doors (through which I heard the voice of Watts-Dunton booming mysteriously in the front room), its mantel-piece, its gas-brackets, all proclaimed that ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... arrest." He started off again with Constables Fane, Craig and Walters, while the other four constables with their Winchesters stood ready to guard the barracks, which were slated for attack by the mob. Johnston, a magistrate, was there to read the Riot Act if necessary. In a few minutes there was a shot. Steele got up and went to the window. Craig and Walters were dragging the prisoner across the bridge, the desperado fighting like a demon, and a scarlet woman following them with cries ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... and I'm a silly old fool for letting my imagination run riot in this way." Sir Richard sat upright and gazed out at the world of sun and sand through which they were passing. "As you say, they would not dare—and in any case as soon as Bruce can travel we will bring them ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... intermarried, and spread out over middle Georgia. Those who were not akin were bound to each other by ties of long acquaintanceship; but the homogeneousness of the people, complete and thorough as it was, was not marked by any monotony. On the contrary, character and individuality ran riot, appearing in such strange and attractive shapes as to puzzle and bewilder even those who were familiar with the queer manifestations. Every settlement had its peculiarities, and every neighborhood boasted of its humorist,—its clown, ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris

... reckless unthrift, rebellion, rancour, indignation against themselves and against all men. Is it a green, flowery world, with azure everlasting sky stretched over it, the work and government of a God; or a murky, simmering Tophet, of copperas fumes, cotton fuz, gin riot, wrath and toil, created by a Demon, governed by ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... creatures, until the beauty of the world is befouled and the glory of the Heavens bedimmed. To stem back that tide is the task now imposed on our heroism, to elevate and purify and refine the race, to introduce the ideal of quality in place of the ideal of quantity which has run riot so long, with the results we see. "As the Northern Saga tells that Odin must sacrifice his eye to attain the higher wisdom," concludes Fahlbeck, "so Man also, in order to win the treasures of culture and refinement, must give not only his eye but his life, if not his own life that of his ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... of her brother-in-law, whereat she wept somewhat; for where Whites were concerned she was not a hard-hearted woman. But she cheered up speedily, saying that Sam had come to as sorry an end, and that she supposed there was but one way with the Handsells, Rum and Riot being generally their Ruin. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... supper, then return to the office to sleep, and would have five cents remaining for the morning meal. That would do to buy buns with, and he would endure what stomach clamor might come until evening, when he would be a capitalist, and riot in all he could eat, even though he doubled ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... June roses ran riot in season. Later, more cultivated varieties, blooming regularly through the summer, took their part in providing fragrance. Sweet, old-fashioned garden plants and more valuable products, procured at much trouble and expense, helped ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... all these violations of our ideals, and the quenching of our hopes, in this riot of barbarism and unutterable sorrow, where are we? Where can we find a footing? Where can we stay our souls? Where can we set our feet as upon solid rock? Amid the many things which are shaking what things are there which ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... masculine-strong, so piercing, keen and clear, that it is not easy to find an expression for admiration which shall be at once adequate and sober. On the mere surface it is almost as good as the 'Arabian Nights,' and at the first flush of it you think that fancy is running riot. But when once the intention is grasped you find beneath that playful foam of seeming fun and frolic a very astonishing and deep philosophy, and the whole wild masquerade is filled with meaning. Read 'The Shaving of Shagpat,' earnest young men and maidens. ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... was a riot of color. On its hundred columns of polished marble, veined in green and rose, light played in sliding gleams from great lamps of wrought bronze hung by chains around the dome and between the pillars, each with many ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... into the poultry-yard. There was a terrible riot going on in there, for two families were quarreling about an eel's head, and the cat ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... Sparrow Hills ridge above the Moskva, about three miles outside the city and not far from where one morning in 1812 the Grand Army topped a rise and of a sudden beheld the goal which it had travelled so far to seek. From there we viewed the spectacle of a riot of gilded cupolas gleaming in the sun, a sight incomparably more striking in its majesty than that of the interiors and memorials of the past we had been reconnoitring at ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... privacy of their own apartments above and behind the saloon itself, while within the reeking establishment pandemonium had broken loose. Bottles, glasses, and raw liquor were liberally besprinkling the heads and shoulders of the surging throng. A brawny Irishman, mad with the joy of unlimited riot and whiskey, was on top of the counter impartially cracking the heads of all men within reach with the blows of a big wooden bung-starter. Four or five who had found the trapdoor leading presumably to the supplies in the ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... stormy weather. The rest of the time they lived out-of-doors, in winter coasting down the hills on sleds or on shingles, according to the state of the crust; and in summer running riot among the green things, like the very daisies which refused to be rooted out of the lawn. A neighborhood had grown up around them; but they cared little for other children. A wealth of imagination, and plenty of room to let it work itself out had developed plays of ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray

... The ill-assorted pair after some unhappy years resolved on separation; and falling into bad health and worse spirits, the "bright morning star of Annesley" passed under a cloud of mental darkness. She died, in 1832, of fright caused by a Nottingham riot. On the decease of Musters, in 1850, every relic of her ancient family was sold by auction and ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... Should it happen thus, the people of the city, as well on account of our trade, which appeareth to them most iniquitous and of which they missay all day, as of their itch to plunder us, seeing this, will rise up in riot and cry out, "These Lombard dogs, whom the church refuseth to receive, are to be suffered here no longer";—and they will run to our houses and despoil us not only of our good, but may be of our lives, to boot; wherefore in ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... who perpetuate their control by overriding local and national authority to the diminution of both public and private security. Law has been dethroned and the respectable and industrious portion of the people must witness the spectacle and endure the humiliation of riot, bloodshed, and assassination with impunity of innocent and unoffending citizens by the beneficiaries under ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love

... A riot at Rome shortly after caused the Holy Father to flee to Rieti, he then went to Spoleto, and from thence to Assisi. At Assisi he was greeted with the greatest enthusiasm by the people. His deep piety prompted him to visit the ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... not possible that the same circumstances which have preserved the vegetation in situ, should have preserved drifted plants? I know Calamites is found upright; but I fancied its affinities were very obscure, like Sigillaria. As for Lepidodendron, I forgot its existence, as happens when one goes riot, and now know neither what it is, or whether upright. If these plants, i.e. Calamites and Lepidodendron, have VERY CLEAR RELATIONS to terrestrial vegetables, like the ferns have, and are found upright in situ, of course I must give up the ghost. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... you're a foot high!" exclaimed George, hopefully. "It's the only way we'll get that ship loaded on time. All we need is a riot or two." ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... making create a diversity of atmospheres and call forth a diversity of reminiscences. They cause imagination to run riot in history. But nature is the same the world over, and there would be reactions and yearnings if one knew nothing of the past from books. There is no conflict. Nature transcends. We dreamed that night not of crusaders, but of Idaho and the Bitter ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... me out, and entered into a broad thoroughfare. As I sped after him, Bacchanalian voices burst upon my ear, and presently a large band of those young men who, under the name of Mohawks, were wont to scour the town nightly, and, sword in hand, to exercise their love of riot under the disguise of party zeal, became visible in the middle of the street. Through them my fugitive dashed headlong, and, profiting by their surprise, escaped unmolested. I attempted to follow with equal speed, but was less successful. "Hallo!" cried the foremost ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... was an exceptionally low barometer at 27.794 inches. At the same time the wind ran riot once more—two hundred and ninety-eight miles in three hours. The highest barometric reading was recorded on September 3, 30.4 inches, and the comparison indicates a wide range ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... to the door. He put out his hand to open it, then realized just in time that he could not do that. A door stealthily opening and closing again, with no apparent hand to manipulate it? Such a spectacle would start a riot! ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst

... the magistrates from the first acted with culpable weakness, as Whitbread proved in the House of Commons, for they did not enrol special constables until the rioters had got the upper hand. Dundas, as Home Secretary, seems to have done his duty. The news of the riot of the 14th reached him at 10 a.m. on the 15th (Friday); and he at once sent post haste to Nottingham, ordering the immediate despatch of the 15th Dragoons. By dint of a forced march of fifty-six miles the horsemen reached Birmingham on ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... passions; and had Macota, through an excess of fear or an excess of bravery, started up, he would have been slain, and other blood would have been spilt. But he was quiet, with his face pale and subdued, and, as shortly as decency would permit after the riot had subsided, took his leave. This scene is a custom with them; the only exception to which was, that it was pointed so directly at Macota. I was glad, at any rate, that all had ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... him; and so alas! they rode away beyond the fragrance of the roses and through the neglected grounds, carrying with them a new memory of home life which it will be hard to forget. The shabby, neglected house—the sacks of coffee and flowers run riot—the deaf, courteous ex-official, perhaps proud of his descent from some great Makassar chief—the kindly lady, embodiment of perfect health, who long ago had left her home in Europe for life in a distant land with the husband of her choice—and last but not least of all these ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser

... heart, Should learn how to cook, and prepare him a dinner, And serve it with talent, refinement, and art. Full many a question is solved by digestion. Bad morals are caused, oftentimes by bad cooks, And many a riot results from poor diet— Conversion may lie in ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... crowd was exceedingly dense. There were oyster-stands, stalls of oranges, and booths with gilt gingerbread and toys for the children. The mob were quiet, civil, and remarkably good-humoured, making allowance for the national gruffness; there was no riot. What immensely perplexed me was a sharp, angry sort of rattle sounding in all quarters, until I discovered that the noise was produced by a little instrument called "the fun of the fair," which was drawn smartly ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... throw a sail to the breeze in the unequalled Bay, or take a flying trip to Tarifa to sketch the beautiful from the living model, or go to Ceuta to see the Spanish galley-slaves and disciplinary regiments, forgetful of our own chain-gangs; or steam across to Tangier to riot in Nature ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... may have need of you yet, nor do I bear you any grudge. But, I forgot, is it thus that you would fight for me, by causing riot in my streets, and bringing me into trouble with my good friends ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... mos' discombobulationest eveh was nohow. Yass, sah. Dey's been su'thin' happen aft. Yass, sah. Ah ain't gwine tell no boy, nohow. No, sah. 'Taint dis nigger would go tell a boy dat Mistah Hamlin he have a riot with Mistah Cap'n Falk, no sah. Ah ain't gwine tell no boy dat Mistah Hamlin, he say dat Mistah Cap'n Falk he ain't holdin' to de right co'se, no, sah; nor dat Mistah Cap'n Falk he bristle up like a guinea gander and ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... Law! It was not the Roman law. It was their law, what they called God's law. There were the zealots, who murdered anybody who broke this law. And for a procurator to punish a zealot caught red-handed was to raise a riot or an insurrection. ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... riot down there." The speaker pointed down the street. "A fuss over an American flag some dirty German dog had spit at. It didn't take long to start a life sized row. We are all spoiling for a chance to stick a few of the pigs ourselves whether we're ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... from time to time with literary fare which no young person of sixteen could possibly want to devour in secret. To take infinite precautions, they complained, against the juvenile perusal of such eminently innocuous literature was like reading the Riot Act on an uninhabited island. Both reviews suffered a serious falling-off in circulation and influence. Peace hath its ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... to me where the lines are barely fifty yards apart, and at the present time the grass is hiding the enemy's trenches; to peep over the parapet gives one the impression of looking on a beautiful meadow splashed with daisy, buttercup, and poppy flower; the whole is a riot of colour—crimson, heliotrope, mauve, and green. What a change from some weeks ago! Then the place was littered with dead bodies, and limp, (p. 080) lifeless figures hung on to the barbed wire where they had been caught in a mad rush to the trenches which they never ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... high reputation by his preaching at Antioch, more especially by his homilies on The Statues, a course of sermons delivered when the citizens were justly alarmed at the prospect of severe measures being taken against them by the emperor Theodosius, whose statues had been demolished in a riot. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... thy skilful vein Shall gently bear us to our homes again; By which descent thy former flight's impli'd To be thy ecstacy and not thy pride. And here how well does the wise Muse demean Herself, and fit her song to ev'ry scene! Riot of courts, the bloody wreaths of war, Cheats of the mart, and clamours of the bar, Nay, life itself thou dost so well express, Its hollow joys, and real emptiness, That Dorian minstrel never did excite, Or raise for dying so ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... of being able to achieve great things, and the joy in accomplishing them, is what gives the artist the exultant mood, the feeling of gayety. To be sensible of such an heritage, to participate in this God-given wealth, to run riot in it, to know that the more of it that is used the more will be given, to be favored of the gods in a way that the possessor of untold wealth cannot aspire to—this is what gives the serene and joyous mood, which characterizes the man of genius ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... Antipope John was afraid, and fled secretly by night, in disguise. Crescenzio, of sterner stuff, heaped up a vast provision of food in Sant' Angelo, and resolved to abide a siege. The stronghold was impregnable, so far as any one could know, for it had never been stormed in war or riot, and on its possession had depended the long impunity of Theodora's race. The Emperor might lay siege to it, encamp before it, and hem it in for months; in the end he must be called away by the more ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... dinner was a riot. I have the clearest recollection of G. K. C. seated ponderously at the table, drinking champagne by magnums, continually feeding his face with food which, as he was constantly employed in the most dazzling and epigrammatic conversation, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... living. With all his vigor, in spite of his brusqueness, notwithstanding his forceful assaults on the degenerate customs of the times, this John was no agitator against established institutions, no inciter of riot, no advocate of revolt, no promoter of rebellion. He did not assail the tax system but the extortions of the corrupt and avaricious publicans; he did not denounce the army, but the iniquities of the soldiers, many of whom had taken ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... to a study of Spenser, Milton, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and therefore a delicate taste in word and phrase, and thanks also to an innate genius for verbal music, restrained from Swinburnian riot by a true artistic instinct, Mr. Watson is a poet most delightful to the physical and the mental ear. That he has taken pains with his study is avowed by himself. Beginning with Shelley and passing through Keats to ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... China Merchants' steamer Kweili, the only triple-screw steamer on the River, and four days later, on February 21st, I landed at Ichang, the most inland port on the Yangtse yet reached by steam. Ichang is an open port; it is the scene of the anti-foreign riot of September 2nd, 1891, when the foreign settlement was pillaged and burnt by the mob, aided by soldiers of the Chentai Loh-Ta-Jen, the head military official in charge at Ichang, "who gave the outbreak the benefit of his connivance." Pleasant zest is ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... sufferer. A few remarks very soon set her wildly laughing. Both were laughing when Danvers entered the room, rather guilty, being late; and the sight of the prim-visaged maid she had been driving among the lawyers kindled Diana's comic imagination to such a pitch that she ran riot in drolleries, carrying her friend headlong ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... laughed and talked over the funny incidents of the day, and joked each other as merrily as two boys. Then Parson Whitney told some reminiscences of his college days, and the scrapes he got into, and a riot between town and gown, when he carried the "Bully's Club;" and the deacon responded by narrating his experiences with a certain Deacon Jones's watermelon patch when he was a boy, and over their tales and their mulled ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... feature followed, in a swiftly-moving, tightly-packed programme lasting three hours. The riot drill, showing with vivid effect how a battalion of regular infantry can move through a densely packed mob, brought forth tumultuous cheers. When the cheering had subsided such shouts as these were ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock

... sun-dial where the screaming peacock used to perch and spread his tail; the dove-cote, where the silver-necks and fan-tails used to coo and ruffle their feathers. You know, too, all the quaint plannings and accidents of the old house; how the fiery creeper ran riot through the ivy on the dark walls, dangling its burning wreaths over the windows; how the hall door lay open all day with the dogs sleeping on the broad door-step. Also, within, that there were long dark passages, ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland

... this, I say, which upholds her in the midst of opprobrium, insults, and hostile demonstrations. For the king's subjects, so far from being charmed by his resolution to marry a woman out of their midst, are scandalized. They riot, sing mocking songs, circulate base slanders, and threaten to mob the royal bride on her way to her first public function. She is herself terribly wrought up, particularly by the curse of her father, who hates the king with ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... into the papers now and then of riot amongst the "high-spirited young gentlemen" at the Universities, I am a little unwilling to say more about the unruliness of our village youths, as though it were something peculiar to their rank of life. Yet it must not be quite passed over. To be sure, not ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... up the hills and down into the valleys, between rail fences which were a riot of honeysuckle, and with the roads in places rough under their wheels, with the fields gold with stubble, the sky a faint blue, with that thick look on ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey

... And I have heard people preach," the old lady went on, "who seemed most like as if they were laying out a Chinese puzzle, and you had to look sharp to see where the pieces fitted. And some, again, preach sermons as if they were a magistrate reading the Riot Act, only they don't want the people to disperse by any ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... matters for encouragement rather than positive command. About festivals they seem to follow the usage current in the days of Jerome: better, I think, than the modern calendar, full of saints-days which end in riot and carouse, and on which the honest journeyman is forbidden to work for his children's bread.' As Slechta read these words, he must surely have felt as did Balak, the son of Zippor, when he listened to the seer from Mesopotamia taking up his parable ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... there was a procession—such a pandemonium! such a rabble-rout, with music and shouting, soldiers marching at the double, carrying blazing torches, and a cloud of paper lanterns that caught fire and flared out. We could hear the discordant riot ever so far off, and when the mob came up our street again, almost in the dark, I covered my ears. Of all horrible sounds, a mob of excited Frenchmen can make the worst. The wind in a storm at sea ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... earl cried, running out of his tent, "to horse! The rascals inside are breaking out into a riot, and there will be a massacre unless I can put a ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... shops, among servants, among workingmen. Every arrest aroused a timid, uncomprehending, and sometimes unconscious sympathy when judgment regarding the causes of the arrest was expressed. She heard the words that had once frightened her—riot, socialism, politics—uttered more and more frequently among the simple folk, though accompanied by derision. However, behind their ridicule it was impossible to conceal an eagerness to understand, mingled with fear and hope, with hatred ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... afterward to deal with booksellers, and I wondered how a bank clerk aged twenty could put into my hands with a profligate abundance of detail, all given with absolute assurance, the story of extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death in unnamed seas. He had led his hero a desperate dance through revolt against the overseas, to command of a ship of his own, and ultimate establishment of a kingdom on an island "somewhere in the sea, you know"; and, delighted ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... found a strong republican party headed by Gamba and his friends, and a government weakened by debt and dissensions. The air was thick with intrigue. The little army could no longer be counted on, and a prolonged bread-riot had driven Trescorre out of the ministry and compelled the Duke to appoint Andreoni in his place. Behind Andreoni stood Gamba and the radicals. There could be no doubt which way the fortunes of the duchy tended. The Duke's would-be ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... that tune, Phelim. Play your reel again. There's trouble where those French tunes are played. It was so in Belfast a while ago. We want no riot in Antrim nor ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... November a Chartist riot occurred at Newport in Monmouthshire. The leaders were John Frost and Zephaniah Williams. The Mayor, Mr. T. Phillips, behaved with great gallantry, and ordered the troops to load. The mob, said to be 20,000 strong, first fired on the troops, who then returned the fire with effect and ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville



Words linked to "Riot" :   howler, race riot, make merry, make happy, violence, jollify, saturnalia, racket, rampage, belly laugh, bacchanal, riotous, joke, gag, debauch, bacchanalia, riot control, orgy, disorder, wow, scream, laugh, thigh-slapper, rioter, carouse, force, revel, riot act, roister, public violence



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