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Spatter   Listen
verb
Spatter  v. i.  To throw something out of the mouth in a scattering manner; to sputter. "That mind must needs be irrecoverably depraved, which,... tasting but once of one just deed, spatters at it, and abhors the relish ever after."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spatter" Quotes from Famous Books



... Mr Jones right in backwards; and "spatter" went the foul mud all over his face and shirt-front, and then the poor little man tried to scramble out, but slipped in again, making himself worse than ever; but his next effort was more successful; and when Sam saw him standing ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... Suddenly the man's wrist jerked, the soldier saw a blue flicker of sunlight on the steel as it whirled, saw the arm of Poleon Doret fling itself across the bar with the speed of a striking serpent, heard a smash of breaking glass, felt the shock of a concussion, and the spatter of some liquid in his face. Then he saw the man's revolver on the floor half-way across the room, saw fragments of glass with it, and saw the fellow step backward, snatching at the fingers of ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... which the popping shots of the besieged garrison rang out sharply. They, too, had observed the group. But the distance was too great and in the spatter of spent musket-balls cutting up the ground, the group opened, closed, swayed, giving me a glimpse of busy stooping figures in its midst. I drew nearer, doubting whether this was a weird vision, a suggestive and ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... well, And that you do excell As a translator; but when things require A genius, and fire, Not kindled heretofore by other pains, As oft y'ave wanted brains And art to strike the white, As you have levell'd right: Yet if men vouch not things apocryphal, You bellow, rave, and spatter round your gall. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... a very quiet fellow When he's left alone; But oh, how he does roar and bellow, Rattle, snap and groan, Clatter, spatter, dash and patter, Rumble, shriek and moan Whene'er I take my sticks in hand And beat him ...
— Songs for Parents • John Farrar

... started on those battles of his he had everything to himself, and there was no use in anybody else's trying to get any attention. Those people had been living in the midst of real war for seven months; and to hear this windy giant lay out his imaginary campaigns and fairly swim in blood and spatter it all around, entertained them to the verge of the grave. Catherine was like to die, for pure enjoyment. She didn't laugh loud—we, of course, wished she would—but kept in the shelter of a fan, and shook until there was danger that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sky grew black as a tea kettle; It rained, too, quite as fast as ever steam Rose. But the thing which did at last unsettle The balance of John's steed, was what you'll deem A being that was nearly supernatural— But here the waves John's clothes began to spatter all. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various

... collision in the sky, and filled the great dome with uncanny light. Sometimes the flood of radiance would spread and flutter in waves, like a great, gorgeous canopy stirred by the wind, and fragments and balls of fire would spatter the breadth of the heavens. As always, in the face of the great phenomena of nature, ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... over physical conditions influencing explosions—especially as to barometric influence. There was a good deal of disjointed information on lavas, ropy or rapid flowing and viscous—also on spatter cones and caverns. ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... ferment, fester, rankle, reek; stink &c 401; mold, molder; go bad &c adj.. render unclean &c adj.; dirt, dirty; daub, blot, blur, smudge, smutch^, soil, smoke, tarnish, slaver, spot, smear; smirch; begrease^; dabble, drabble^, draggle, daggle^; spatter, slubber; besmear &c, bemire, beslime^, begrime, befoul; splash, stain, distain^, maculate, sully, pollute, defile, debase, contaminate, taint, leaven; corrupt &c (injure) 659; cover with dust &c n.; drabble in the mud^; roil. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Kirk attracted the attention of a near-by nozzleman. "Walk up to it. It won't bite you." But the valiant fire-fighter held stubbornly to his post, while the stream he directed continued to describe a graceful curve and spatter upon the sidewalk in front of the burning building. "You're spoiling that old woman's bed," Anthony warned him, at which a policeman with drawn club forced him back as if resentful of criticism. Other peace officers compelled the ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... without casting lots, I grant thee freely, that thou mayst not blame me hereafter. Bind them about thy hands; thou shalt learn and tell another how skilled I am to carve the dry oxhides and to spatter men's cheeks with blood." ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... dull and overcast, there was a spatter of rain on the sidewalk, as Susan loitered over her late holiday breakfast, and Georgie, who was to go driving that afternoon with an elderly admirer, scolded violently over her coffee and rolls. No boarders happened to be present. Mrs. Lancaster and Virginia ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... voices, a scuffle and a scream; a gray-black figure mounted the rail, and poised there a moment, an offence to the sunlight, and then, falling convulsively downwards, hit the yellow water with a smack and a spatter of spray, and ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... should have told them as I do, And yet I love your hunters too, That nothing is so vile As strutting up and down a street,8 Dirt-spatter'd o'er from head to feet, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... speak threateningly, at least he did not speak angrily. But the four Boyle children gave him one affrighted glance and started on a run for the corral, looking back over their shoulders now and then as if they expected a spatter ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... department of it. His attitude was comically that of a serious-minded European tourist. He not only purchased a catalogue, he treated it precisely as if it were the hand-book of the Autumn Salon in Paris. Carrying it in his hand, he spent busy hours minutely studying "Spatter Work," and carefully inspecting decorated bedspreads. He tasted the prize bread, sampled the honey, and twirled the contesting apples. Nothing escaped his notice. He was as alert, and (apparently) as vitally concerned as any of the "judges," but I, knowing his highly-critical ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... following. 1. The Hebrew usus loquendi is in [Hebrew: nzh] so sure, that we are not entitled to take the explanation from the Arabic. The verb is, in Hebrew, never used except of fluids. In Kal, it does not mean "to leap," but "to spatter," Lev. vi. 20 (27): "And upon whose garment is spattered of the blood;" 2 Kings ix. 33; Is. lxiii. 5. In Hiphil, it is set apart and used exclusively for the holy sprinklings; and the more frequently it occurs in this signification, the less are we at liberty to deviate ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... wheels and a spatter of hoofs coming up the drive sent Mrs. Dunlop to the sitting-room window. She tried to see out through streaming showers that darkened ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... escape from going down after being hit in the feed tank; but once in dry dock, all her damaged parts had been renewed. Particularly it required imagination to realize that this tower had ever been struck; visually more convincing was a plate elsewhere which had been left unpainted, showing a spatter of dents from shell-fragments. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... yellow flame from a gas-light is all that illuminates it. All round us are troughs and bottles and water-pipes, and ill-conditioned utensils of various kinds. Everything is blackened with nitrate of silver; every form of spot, of streak, of splash, of spatter, of stain, is to be seen upon the floor, the walls, the shelves, the vessels. Leave all linen behind you, ye who enter here, or at least protect it at every exposed point. Cover your hands in gauntlets of India-rubber, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... through the timberlands toward the west, shivered as a drop of rain touched his hand. He glanced up through the trees. The sky seemed clouded to the level of the pine-tops. He spurred his horse as he again felt a spatter of rain. Before him lay several miles of rugged trail leading to an open stretch across which he would again enter the timber on the edge of the hollow where Soper's cabin was concealed. When Corliss had suggested Soper's place as a rendezvous, Fadeaway had laughed to himself, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... this man. There was no room for him inside, and certainly no wish for his company, and so he must, perforce, balance himself under his umbrella, first on one leg and then on the other, in his effort to escape the spatter which now reached his knees, quite as would a wet chicken seeking shelter ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the spatter of red dust from a bullet near his feet, told him he was recognized. He stirred not; but another shout, and a cry, "There they are—BOTH of ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... in rhythm, their long bayonets a-twinkle, while down the wind came the regular tramp of their feet and the wild, frenzied wailing of their pipes. Soon we were up with them, bronzed, stalwart figures, grim fighters from muddy spatter-dashes to steel helmets, beneath which eyes turned to stare at us—eyes blue and merry, eyes dark and sombre—as they swung along to the lilting music ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol

... I tarnish the mirror of life, A spatter of rust on its polished steel! The seasons reel Like a goaded wheel. Half-numb, half-maddened, my days ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... don't spatter me all over the slide," said the cheerful stout girl, whose doll-like face was almost ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson

... how to make things strong and secure, and once or twice, when I tried leaping, it was only to bang my sides against the edges of the tank, and spatter the deck far and wide, making extra work ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever

... indeed, are not priests; but priests are, more or less, women. They are not in the army, it may be said but then they are the army. They are very formidable. In France one must count with the women. The drive back from Langeais to Tours was long, slow, cold; we had an occasional spatter of rain. But the road passes most of the way close to the Loire, and there was something in our jog-trot through the darkening land, beside the flowing river, which it was very ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... on the ship was already sliding open. A Ganymedan, space-suited, was coming through. He saw them, tried to spring back into the shelter of the ship. But a blue ray stabbed out and caught him in mid-flight. There was a spatter of dust, and the hapless creature disintegrated into ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner

... engaging and most famous of Greek women. On this point, Mr. Goodchild continued at intervals to breathe a vein of classic fancy and eloquence exceedingly irksome to Mr. Idle, until it appeared that the honest English pronunciation of that Cumberland country shortened Aspatria into 'Spatter.' After this supplementary discovery, Mr. Goodchild said no ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... kill him like a dog, if the other—but no! The Hungarian, struck in the presence of the Tzigana, would certainly not recoil before a pistol. Marsa should be the sole witness of the duel, and the blood of the Prince or of Menko should spatter her face—a crimson stain upon her pale cheek should be ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... suck. Soupe, sup, liquid. Souple, supple. Souter, cobbler. Sowens, porridge of oat flour. Sowps, sups. Sowth, to hum or whistle in a low tune. Sowther, to solder. Spae, to foretell. Spails, chips. Spairge, to splash; to spatter. Spak, spoke. Spates, floods. Spavie, the spavin. Spavit, spavined. Spean, to wean. Speat, a flood. Speel, to climb. Speer, spier, to ask. Speet, to spit. Spence, the parlor. Spier. v. speer. Spleuchan, pouch. Splore, a frolic; a carousal. Sprachl'd, clambered. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... but the thought that he might consider me "ondelicate," like Mr. Glegg, deterred me. Presently I was shown into what, only too evidently, was our host's own room, for a servant snatched away some last remaining effects of his master—a spatter-brush and a slipper—as I entered. I sat down on the bed and pondered over what I would have felt had I been a man, and shy, and seedy, and a strange female had been suddenly shot ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... it was all in your imagination, spurred by twenty-one simple words. And it was a moving picture, too, and it went away past the word-spurs, because you painted the balance of it yourselves like a flash. You saw the glass fall and smash on the floor, and you saw the water spatter the man's feet and trousers—then some of you saw him jump back and look up quick and kind of mad like at the person passing, and ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... on the point of it. Gurgurk, they reported, had fled to Keegark by air the night before, which explained the incident of the unaccountable aircar and lorry. The Channel Battery stopped firing, and, with the exception of an occasional spatter of small-arms fire, the city ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... a grand sight, as it rolled toward us, over the timber. And soon it was raining below us, down at the beaver pond—and then, with a drizzle and a spatter, the rain ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... dressing table with toilet water and ring my piano top with wet glasses and spatter grease on the kitchenette wall. But I'll be earning a million," Harrietta announced, recklessly, "or thereabouts. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... Indians would fire, and as he and his comrades went under he heard the spatter of bullets on the water. When they rose to the surface again they were where they could wade, and they ran toward the bank. They reached dry land, but even in the obscurity of the night their figures were outlined against the dark green bush, and the warriors from their canoes fired again. Henry ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... quick jerk, he raised his rifle, and a vivid spatter of fire followed. As the report died out, one of the great forms sank to the ground with a scream that sounded almost human. The others glided off in the same direction as they had the night before, and vanished in the same mysterious way, ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... case the cuckoo clock doesn't fall down off the wall and spatter the rice pudding all over the parlor carpet, I'll tell you in the story after this one about ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis

... the Thomas road, with the sun drawing closer down upon the long steel saw that the peaks to our westward made. The site of my shock lay behind me—I knew now well enough that it had been a shock, and that for a long while to come I should be able to feel the earth spatter from Mr. Adams's bullet against my ear and sleeve whenever I might choose to conjure that moment up again—and the present comfort in feeling my distance from that stone in the road increase continually put me in more cheerful ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... vast shapes... cooled and flushed through with darkness.... Lidless windows Glazed with a flashy luster From some little pert cafe chirping up like a sparrow. And down among iron guts Piled silver Throwing gray spatter of light... pale without heat... Like the ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... advantages in the way of being generally invited to write about what interests me, instead of indulging in a kind of spray or spatter work of beneficial publicity—instead of getting off ideas at a nation with a nice elegant literary atomizer, I insist on making ideas do things and I plan on having my ideas done up solidly in ten solid men who will make the ideas look ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... of nerves. He stood up in the firing-line. He drew himself up to the full of his height, and seemed to inhale with pleasure the dangerous air. All the time bullets were humming overhead like swift and malignant insects, or striking the ground with a spatter of brown earth. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... workingmen old age pensions, because they never reach old age. They find themselves ground up by all kinds of machinery, ground to death under car wheels, sawed to pieces in factories and mills, falling from ten and twelve story buildings, picked up on the ground just one big spatter of blood and bones. They know these conditions are wrong and they can't change them, and the people who have control of it are squeezing them tighter and tighter all the time and they don't know which way to turn. And which ...
— Industrial Conspiracies • Clarence S. Darrow

... there, a carriage rolled by. Some one looked out. "O, mamma," said a young voice in English, "look at that pretty little peasant," and a kid-gloved hand was stretched through the open window to spatter a shower of base coin toward her. It was terrible! The children sprang for it, and, fighting and laughing, ran homewards with the dreadful Talila. The parti-colored picturesque dress had been a joy to Mae. Now she longed to tear it off and die—die! No, she ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason

... spatter of bullets in the sandy ground about them; and then, with scarcely an appreciable interval, a second flutter of an automatic. This time the reports came from the pistol in Iff's hand. He was standing in full glare at the bottom ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... felt a little easier then, and went to work again: The sky was getting cloudier, 'twas coming on to rain. Before I knew, the clock struck six, and John had not come back; The rain began to spatter down, and ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... before Mr. Trimm's eyes Meyers vanished, tumbling forward out of sight as the car floor buckled under his feet. Then, as everything—the train, the earth, the sky—all fused together in a great spatter of white and black, Mr. Trimm, plucked from his seat as though a giant hand had him by the collar, shot forward through the air over the seatbacks, his chained hands aloft, clutching wildly. He rolled out of a ragged opening where the smoker had broken in two, flopped ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... yoked steers employs To tread his barley, the broad-fronted pair 610 With ponderous hoofs trample it out with ease, So, by magnanimous Achilles driven, His coursers solid-hoof'd stamp'd as they ran The shields, at once, and bodies of the slain; Blood spatter'd all his axle, and with blood 615 From the horse-hoofs and from the fellied wheels His chariot redden'd, while himself, athirst For glory, his unconquerable hands Defiled with mingled carnage, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... generation, probably because foolish parents seem to think it rather an amusing trait in their offspring. Now, the boy at Chittenden's who allowed his mind to wander, and did not concentrate, promptly made the acquaintance of the "spatter," a broad leathern strap; and the spatter hurt exceedingly, as I can testify from many personal experiences of it. On the whole, then, even the most careless boy found it to his advantage to concentrate. This clever teacher knew how ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... tell 'em now," said Uncle Tucker with an even increased gloom in his face and voice. "Breaking bad news to women folks is as nervous a work as dropping a basket of eggs; you never can tell in which direction the lamentations are a-going to spatter and spoil things. I'll go get the worst of the muss over before ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess

... speech I had been saying over and over until it would say itself. But somehow when I got up before that "last day of school" audience and opened my mouth, it was a great opening, but nothing came out. It came out of my eyes. Tears rolled down my cheeks until I could hear them spatter on ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... Crack!" came the spatter of German bullets against the side of the house; and occasionally a bullet struck home and left no sound, unless it was the sound of a man toppling over backwards to the floor, or a man as he clapped his hand to his head. The rifle bombardment ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes

... volley and another volley which answered came from his right, and then there was a spatter of musketry, stray shots following each other and quickly dying away. Talbot saw the flash of the guns, and the smell of burnt gunpowder came to his nostrils. He made a movement of impatience, for the powder poisoned the pure air. He heard the shouts ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... were ringing on the morning air and the bullets came singing about the stone parapet, some of them chipping off little fragments from the top of the parapet itself, but most of them striking the great mass of rocks overhead and doing no harm whatever, except to spatter little fragments of lead upon the parapet and its ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King

... magnificent, as always. Yellow landscape, spatter cones, glittering streaks that might be metal in the volcanic ground—created by dusting ground mica on wet glue to catch the reflection of the sun. It was ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins

... the method of making the four walls of a house at once by building double walls of boards and pouring in the concrete. When this has hardened, the boards are removed, and whatever sort of finish the owner prefers is given to the walls. They can be treated by spatter-work, pebble dash, or in other ways before the cement is fully set, or by bush hammering and tool work after the cement has hardened. Coloring matter can be mixed with the cement in the first place; and if the owner decides ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan

... Meg vehemently. "I know he was mad about missing the arithmetic lesson, but he wouldn't go and spatter ink on a book. And it was such a ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley

... the church. From the open floor between, the buzz of many voices and the smoke of many pipes rose to the roof; from the vestry room behind him, he heard the cleaner-cut accent of the officers. Outside, above the light spatter of rain on the windows, he could hear the horses stamping contentedly in the leafy avenue without the churchyard wall, and the brawl of the stream beyond. The twilight lay heavy over the church, heaviest of all over the distant organ gallery, ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... see the mouth of the cavern when they were yet a couple of hundred yards from it. It was a wide, low cleft in the north face of the chasm wall, and in front of it, spreading out like the flow of a stream, was a great spatter of white sand, like a huge rug that had been spread out in a space cleared of its chaotic litter of rock and broken slate. At first glance Aldous guessed that the cavern had once been the exit of a subterranean stream. The sand deadened the sound of ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... an end of it. You've no time to feel pain.' 'Well, then,' said I, 'if your majesty will make a hole for me as near the middle as is convenient to yourself, I will jump into the bed straightway.' The king made a great spatter among the coals, and in I jumped. You know, ma'am, that a great part of our bodies is composed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... stairs with a bowl of broth, stood in the doorway petrified. Under her spatter of freckles, her comely face ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... "you may set the muffins down and go at once to Miss Pollyanna's room and shut the windows. Shut the doors, also. Later, when your morning work is done, go through every room with the spatter. See that you make ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter

... sudden little spatter of shooting. A cry from Jones rang out. With no intermediate scrambling, the sergeant leaped straight to his feet. "Now," he cried, "let us see what you are made of! If," he added bitterly, "you are made ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... run like this," the Carl admonished, and he gave a wriggling bound and a sudden outstretching and scurrying of shanks, and he disappeared from Cael's sight in one wild spatter of big boots. ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... A sudden spatter of rain against the window-pane made them both look up in surprise; and in a lighter ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... exclaimed Dodo in amazement. "I'm sure the white Ducks at the Farm can only waddle on the ground, or swim and spatter along the water when Wolf or Quick chases them for fun. And anyway their legs are very stiff and queer and grow very far back, as if their bodies were too heavy and going to fall down front, and they had to hold up their heads very high to ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... damp fog of early morning moved from the rush of a great body of troops. From the distance came a sudden spatter of firing. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... No spatter of fire greeted him from the knoll; no flitting figures retreated before him. All was peace, and the fair ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... washable dress, or a washable apron which covers her dress. She should be sure that her hair is tidy, and she should remember to wash her hands before beginning work. She should try to use as few dishes as possible and not to spill or spatter. She should remember that her cooking is not finished until she has cleaned up after herself, has washed and put away the dishes, washed the dish towels and left the kitchen ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... station—rang clear and loud through the spatter of the electric storm. Peter flashed back his O.K., tuned for the Kahuka Head station at Honolulu, and ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... remark was drawn by a shout and another spatter of shots. Two or three bullets struck alarmingly close, and they increased the speed of their horses, while the Lipans urged their ponies to ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler

... ever famous, smelt a rat (you've heard the story)— Saw it floating in the air, he promptly nipped it in the bud; But I think our modern Colonel gets the greater share of glory For inventing shameful arrows that could only spatter mud. ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various

... about her, and at times she was almost entirely enveloped in smoke. Between the reports of the heavier artillery could be heard the staccato spatter of bullets on her iron sides as the machine-guns sprayed her from end to end. Now and then one of the gunners would reach one of her searchlights, and as the ray was extinguished, one almost expected to see her topple in the direction of her broken support, but in ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... well together, in an instant, Mr. Smithers is off and away in pursuit. His heavy rubber-boots spatter over the bricks with an echo that startles the sober residents from their slumbers. Strong of limb, and not wholly unaccustomed to such exercise, he rapidly gains upon the fugitive, who, finding himself so hotly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... upon the skirts of his fine dark-colored frock-coat a red-orange border sewed with tiny round black buttons; across the middle of his fore-wings, like the sash of an order, was a broad red ribbon, and the spatter of white on the tips may have been his idea of epaulets; or maybe they were nature's Distinguished Service medals given him for conspicuous bravery, for there is no more gallant sailor of the skies ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... red-curtained windows you could look down to where the steerage passengers were gathered on the deck. When the bow of the great vessel plunged down into the big Atlantic waves, the smother of foam that shot upwards would be borne along with the wind, and spatter like rain against the purser's window. Something about this intermittent patter on the pane reminded the purser of the story, and so he told ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr

... spray, in a thin, rising vapor of spicy odors, clean, medicinal odors, as of the brewing of many roots, the fragrance of shores of sedges, ferns, and aromatic herbs steeped in the slow, soft tide. And faint across the creek, the road, and the fields lay the pondy smell of spatter-docks. ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... accurs'd, Followers of Outis, whose escape from death Shall not be made to-day? Ah! that thy heart 540 Were as my own, and that distinct as I Thou could'st articulate, so should'st thou tell, Where hidden, he eludes my furious wrath. Then, dash'd against the floor his spatter'd brain Should fly, and I should lighter feel my harm From Outis, wretch base-named and nothing-worth. So saying, he left him to pursue the flock. When, thus drawn forth, we had, at length, escaped Few paces from the cavern and the court, First, quitting my own ram, I loos'd my friends, 550 Then, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... seen Horned Owls so plentiful. I did not know that there were so many Bear and Beaver left; I never was so much impressed by the inspiring raucous clamour of the Cranes, the continual spatter of Ducks, the cries of Gulls and Yellowlegs. Hour after hour we paddled down that stately river adding our 3 1/2 miles to its 1 mile speed; each turn brought to view some new and lovelier aspect of bird and forest life. I never knew a land of balmier air; I never felt the piney ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... Wouter Van Twiller, otherwise called the Doubter, the people of the Manhattoes were alarmed, one sultry afternoon, just about the time of the summer solstice, by a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning. The rain descended in such torrents, as absolutely to spatter up and smoke along the ground. It seemed as if the thunder rattled and rolled over the very roofs of the houses; the lightning was seen to play about the church of St. Nicholas, and to strive three times, in vain, to strike its weather-cock. Garret Van Horne's new chimney ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... a pump-handle and a spatter of water upon the red-tiled courtyard showed that somebody else was astir, and a few steps farther he beheld a brawny, sandy-haired man gasping wildly under severe ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... morning we bound up each other's burns. Ivory had three fingers and I two, done up in buttery rags to take the fire out. Ivory called us 'Soldiers dressing their Wounds after the Battle.' Sausages spatter dreadfully, don't they? And when you turn a pancake it flops on top of the stove. Can ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Vee himself had died of typhoid in the spring of 1902. The rustling of the papers continued, but Bayley, shifting slightly, revealed to me the three- day old wound on his left side that had soaked the ground about him. I saw Pigeon fling up a helpless arm as to guard himself against a spatter of shrapnel, and Luttrell with a foolish tight-lipped smile lurched over all in one jointless piece. Only old Vee's honest face held steady for awhile against the darkness that had swallowed up the battalion behind us. Then his jaw dropped and the face stiffened, so that a ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... seated on the semi-Oriental, semi-French gallery of the little cafe, called the Veranda, sipping his absinthe, smoking a cheroot and watching the rain drip from the roof of the balcony, spatter on the iron railing and form a shower bath for the pedestrians who ventured from beneath the protecting shelter. Before him was paper, partly covered with well-nigh illegible versification, and a bottle of ink, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... past the sentries without being seen. I'd hate to spoil any of them if we can help it. We're liable to get ourselves disliked if our guns spatter ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... the others and appeared at the head of the straightaway. The muffled thud of hoofs became audible, rising in swift crescendo as the shadow resolved itself into a gaunt bay horse with a tiny negro boy crouched motionless in the saddle. A rush, a flurry, a spatter of clods, a low-flying drift of yellow dust and the vision passed, but the Bald-faced Kid had seen enough to compensate him for the early hours and the lack of breakfast. ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... him to a standstill, and I drew a bead behind his shoulder, and low down, resting the rifle across the crooked branch of a dwarf spruce. At the crack he ran off at speed, making no sound, but the thick spatter of blood splashes, showing clear on the white snow, betrayed the mortal nature of the wound. For some minutes I followed the trail; and then, topping a ridge, I saw the dark bulk lying motionless in a snow drift at the foot of a low rock-wall, ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... Frog." This is part of the artist's business. The effect is a part of his art-effort in its inception. Emerson's substance and even his manner has little to do with a designed effect—his thunderbolts or delicate fragments are flashed out regardless—they may knock us down or just spatter us—it matters little to him—but Hawthorne is more considerate; that is, he is more ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... of Edom will flee for refuge to Bozrah, but God will appear there, and slay him, for though Bozrah is one of the cities of refuge, yet will the Lord exercise the right of the avenger therein. He will seize the angel by his hair, and Elijah will slaughter him, letting the blood spatter the garments of God.[275] All this Jacob had in mind when he said to Esau, "Let my lord, I pray thee, pass over before his servant, until I come unto my lord unto Seir." Jacob himself never went to Seir. What he meant was the Messianic time ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... side of a fish glittered just beneath the surface. With a skillful dip, a splash, and a spatter the trout lay ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... you, ole man. Haw! haw! he! he! ho! ho!" roared half a dozen fat men at my faceshusness, and they laffed and shook their sides, ontil I thought they'd colaps a floo and spatter me. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... close upon the heels, the caution is a good one for poets as respects truth to Nature. But it is a mischievous fallacy in historian or critic to treat as a blemish of the man what is but the common tincture of his age. It is to confound a spatter of mud ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... still continued. Later on there was rifle fire in the street, and, acting upon the Padre's suggestion, uncle and niece took refuge in their cellar, for the bullets were beginning to spatter on the ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce

... official announcement. At the first movement of feet, he dived headlong for the shelter of the exit. There was a spatter of tiny missiles on the wall next to him and he had a brief glimpse of raised blowguns before the wall intervened. He went up the dimly lit stairs three at ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... retorted Gabriel, with pure irrelevancy; "I'd scotch his sheets; I'd pour water in his boots; I'd sift sand in his hair-brush; I'd spatter vitriol on his shirts. A man who marries a ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... blind—blind in the sense of the dulled window-pane on which the pelting raindrops have mingled and run down, obscuring sunshine and the circling birds, happy fields, and storied garden; blind with the spatter of a misery uncomprehended, unanalysed, only felt as something corporeal in ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... his passive brain Of love that bleeding lies, Of hoping ever and hoping in vain, Of a sorrow that never dies— When a sudden spatter of angry rain Smote against every window-pane, And he heard ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... rain—wind that blows up out of Papagueria, rose up, big with promise, and whirled its dust clouds a thousand feet high against the horizon. But, after much labor, the keen, steely, north wind rushed suddenly down upon the black clouds, from whose edges the first spatter of rain had already spilled, and swept them from the horizon, howling mournfully the while and wrestling with the gaunt trees at night. In shaded places the icicles from slow-seeping waters clung for days unmelted, and the migrant ducks, down from the Arctic, rose ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... Angeline has seen 'em as thick as spatter! They come when you're asleep, and there don't anybody know it. I shouldn't dare open my eyes in the night. They're wrapped in a sheet, all white, and their eyes snap like fire. ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May

... lay down on the asphalt; and when their friend next poked his head and shoulders around the corner, they fired. They saw the adobe plaster spatter from a corner of the building just under the man's chin; but that wasn't getting him. They jacked their sights up 50 yards, making it 800 yards; and when next the native showed around the corner they both got him—one plumb between ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly

... girls really liked it better, or whether they only imagined they did, is a question. Certainly their lives were much more grey and dreary now that the grey clay had ceased to spatter its mud and silt its dust over the premises. They did not quite realize how they missed the shrieking, shouting lasses, whom they had known all their lives ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... through the whooping-cough and measles, pay for clothing and doctors' bills, and, while it complained about business losses and safe-guarded trees and harvests and buildings, destroyed the most valuable product of all with a spatter of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... place again, and then—Zou!—starting off at the head of the Fifty-first Demi-brigade with such a rousing play of drum-sticks that I protest we fairly heard the rattle of them, along with the spatter of Italian musketry in the face of which Andre ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... rain," supplied Pendrilla piteously, and a gusty spatter on the small-paned window confirmed her words, as the three girls went back into the room where the candle stood in the middle of the floor with the three portions of bread and ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... figure in the whole South Wessex than I, as I looked when dashing past the shop-winders with the rest of our company on the day we ran out o' Budmouth because it was thoughted that Boney had landed round the point. There was I, straight as a young poplar, wi' my firelock, and my bag-net, and my spatter-dashes, and my stock sawing my jaws off, and my accoutrements sheening like the seven stars! Yes, neighbours, I was a pretty sight in my soldiering days. You ought to have seen me ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... and several Pelton employees were on the central stop stage. The howling of the 'copter propeller overhead effectively blocked out any sounds that might be coming from the building, at least until the ambulance landed. Then a spatter of firing from ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire

... imagine what these courts are like and I'll usher you into hell at once if you are trying to spatter any foul scheme ...
— Clair de Lune - A Play in Two Acts and Six Scenes • Michael Strange

... gentlemen cantered up on thoroughbred hacks, spatter-dashed to the knee, and entered the house to pay their respects to the ladies, or, more modest and sportsmanlike, divested themselves of their mud-boots, exchanged their hacks for their hunters, and warmed their blood by a preliminary gallop round the lawn. Then they collected round the pack in ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... in handling the dishes and plates. Wherefore'—she looked funnily over her shoulder—'you are to think of Gloriana in a green and gold-laced habit, dreadfully expecting that the jostling youths behind her would, of pure jealousy or devotion, spatter it with sauces and wines. The gown was Philip's gift, too! At this happy juncture a Queen's messenger, mounted and mired, spurs up the Rye road and delivers her a letter'—she giggled—'a letter from a good, simple, frantic ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... setting foot in the icy water, and moving out into the shadow with no more noise than a chub's swirl or a minnow's spatter-leap when a great chain-pike snaps ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... the fellow, producing one, 'this is the infallible and invaluable composition for removing all sorts of stain, rust, dirt, mildew, spick, speck, spot, or spatter, from silk, satin, linen, cambric, cloth, crape, stuff, carpet, merino, muslin, bombazeen, or woollen stuff. Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains, pitch-stains, any stains, all come out at one rub with the infallible ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... there! Don't you spatter no grease a-fryin' that mush, or you'll wish you hadn't. I believe in the good old-fashioned rod, and there's one stuck up over that door, ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright

... are ways for authors to be great; Write ranc'rous libels to reform the State; Or if you choose more sun and readier ways, Spatter a minister with fulsome praise: Launch out with freedom, flatter him enough; Fear not, all men are dedication-proof. Be bolder yet, you must go farther still, Dip deep in gall thy mercenary quill. He who his pen in party quarrels draws, Lists an hired bravo to support ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... feet up as close to chin as possible, when that hollow which had seemed my path, and high up the ravine on either side, was filled with tumbling, hissing snow, while the rocks on either side echoed with the musketry spatter of stones ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... first start this morning we had seen mists in various quarters, betokening that there was rain in those spots, and now it began to spatter in our own faces, although within the wide extent of our prospect we could see the sunshine falling on portions of the valley. A rainbow, too, shone out, and remained so long visible that it appeared to have made a permanent stain in ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of a place?" He was on his knees digging a little trench with his knife, piling up the moist earth in miniature embankments, so that the dripping from the roof would not spatter this Princess of his whom he had saved from ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... particles of soot from the stove-pipe, and the heavy heat of midsummer sunshine on the unsheltered deck, or the chill, misty air draught of a cloudy day, and the spiteful little showers of rain that may spatter down upon you at any moment, whatever the promise of the sky; besides which there is some slight inconvenience from the inexhaustible throng of passengers, who scarcely allow you standing-room, nor so much as a breath of unappropriated ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... cardboard articles can be prettily decorated by spatter-work. Ferns are the favorite shapes to use. You first pin them on whatever it is that is to be ornamented in this way, arranging them as prettily as possible. Then rub some Indian ink in water on a saucer until it is quite thick. Dip ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... Intendant broke forth. "Damn the Golden Dog and his master both!" exclaimed he. "Philibert shall pay with his life for the outrage of to-day, or I will lose mine! The dirt is not off my coat yet, Cadet!" said he, as he pointed to a spatter of mud upon his breast. "A pretty medal that for the Intendant to wear in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... at 150 inches on the coast, to 350 on the mountains,—while the annual fall at Paris was only eighteen inches. The character of such rain is totally different from that of rain in the temperate zone: the drops are enormous, heavy, like hailstones,—one will spatter over the circumference of a saucer;—and the shower roars so that people cannot hear each other speak without shouting. When there is a true storm, no roofing seems able to shut out the cataract; the best-built houses leak in all directions; ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... hostile "bucker," and, clinching his italic legs around the body of his adversary, ride him till the blood would burst from Sam's nostrils and spatter horse and rider like rain. Most everyone knows what the bucking of the barbarous Western horse means. The wild horse probably learned it from the antelope, for the latter does it the same way, i.e., he jumps straight up into the air, at ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... and trudging down the road. He would have liked to howl himself. Montoya's kindliness at parting—and his gift—had touched Pete deeply, but he had fought his emotion then, too proud to show it. Now he felt a hot something spatter on his hand. His mouth quivered. "Doggone the dog!" he exclaimed. "Doggone the whole doggone outfit!" And to cheat his emotion he began to sing, in a ludicrous, choked way, that sprightly and inimitable ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... sculled the old punt back and forth, whenever the horn blew, until dusk. He had humbly pledged himself to curb a tendency to speed and excitement and therefore ferried the river well until a wind rose at twilight, clouds thickened overhead and a spatter of rain blew into his face. Then his patience waned and he tacked an enormous sign upon the willow under one of Hughie's lanterns. Owing to illness, it said, the ferry had been discontinued. Afterward he went to tell Joan what he had done, and met ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... big men stepped outside. In the night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs as the Texans mounted and rode. From across the river came a brief spatter of musket fire, then silence. In the dark, there had been no difficulty in breaking ...
— Remember the Alamo • R. R. Fehrenbach

... looked where he was looking, low in the east. But they saw nothing save boughs indeterminately moving and a spatter of sparkling points not more bright than those of ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale

... room and the same bed in which she had slept as a little girl. Nothing had been changed there, since those days. The same heavy white pitcher and basin stood in the old wash-stand with the sunken top and hinged cover; the same oval white soap-dish, the same ornamental spatter-work frame in dark walnut hung ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... ticklish thing to crawl over the stern of a canoe in the spatter of slugs, with the roar of muzzle-loaders above. It's shakin' to the nerves, but the maid never flinched, not even when a bullet split the gunnel. She ripped a piece of her dress and plugged a hole under the water line while I paddled ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach

... right out into green grass, and blue sky, and apple orchards. That puts me in mind of something! Zebiah Jane, Aunt Oldways' girl, always washes her face in the morning at the pump-basin out in the back dooryard, just like the ducks. She says she can't spatter round in a room; she wants all creation for a slop-bowl. I feel as if we had all creation for everything up here. But I can't put all creation in a letter if I try. That would ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... to write 'em in here, because the snow would freeze our fingers so the ink would spatter all over," said ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... night, very cold and gusty, with the wind whooping in the chimneys and blustering against the window-panes. A thin spatter of rain tinkled on the glass with each fresh sough of the gale, drowning for the instant the dull gurgle and drip from the eaves. Douglas Stone had finished his dinner, and sat by his fire in the study, a glass of rich port upon the malachite table at his elbow. As he raised it to his lips, he held ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle



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