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Spear   Listen
noun
Spear  n.  
1.
A long, pointed weapon, used in war and hunting, by thrusting or throwing; a weapon with a long shaft and a sharp head or blade; a lance. "A sharp ground spear." "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks."
2.
Fig.: A spearman.
3.
A sharp-pointed instrument with barbs, used for stabbing fish and other animals.
4.
A shoot, as of grass; a spire.
5.
The feather of a horse. See Feather, n., 4.
6.
The rod to which the bucket, or plunger, of a pump is attached; a pump rod.
Spear foot, the off hind foot of a horse.
Spear grass. (Bot.)
(a)
The common reed. See Reed, n., 1.
(b)
meadow grass. See under Meadow.
Spear hand, the hand in which a horseman holds a spear; the right hand.
Spear side, the male line of a family.
Spear thistle (Bot.), the common thistle (Cnicus lanceolatus).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spear" Quotes from Famous Books



... child, of mind and soul Too wild and free to brook control! In chase was none so swift as he, In battle none so brave and strong; To friends, all love and constancy,— But we to those who wrought him wrong! His arm would wage avenging strife, With bow, and spear, and bloody knife, Till he had taught his foes to feel, How true his aim, how keen his steel. Now others hold the sway he held,— His day and power have passed away; His goodly forests all are felled, And songs of mirth rise, clear and gay, Chaunted ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... did not propose to be finished. He threatened them with his gun, and they dared not rush in. The fat Indian at last determined to take a chance. Perhaps the white man's gun was not loaded. He charged, with his spear; Ranger Higgins had to ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... bridge rang under horse-shoe iron, and the party turned and saw Bennet Hatch come galloping—a brown-faced, grizzled fellow, heavy of hand and grim of mien, armed with sword and spear, a steel salet on his head, a leather jack upon his body. He was a great man in these parts; Sir Daniel's right hand in peace and war, and at that time, by his master's interest, bailiff of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sorely vexed, and spake: "Though I be lord of riches yet may I say that I am friendless! This may I say forsooth; since I lost Perceval, and the ill chance befell me that he had the will and the desire to seek the Grail and the spear (which he may not find) many a wounded knight hath he sent as captive to my court, whom, for their misdoing, he hath vanquished by his might. Ever shall he be thanked therefor. Now have I no knight so valiant of mind that for my sake will seek Perceval and bring him to court. Yet ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston

... the darkness is grown deep. That Emperour, rich Charles, lies asleep; Dreams that he stands in the great pass of Size, In his two hands his ashen spear he sees; Guenes the count that spear from him doth seize, Brandishes it and twists it with such ease, That flown into the sky the flinders seem. Charles sleeps on ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous

... and impurity. Their exterior worship consisted of hymns, prayers, and sermons; the hymns extremely ludicrous, and often indecent, alluding to the side-hole or wound which Christ received from a spear in his side while he remained upon the cross. Their sermons frequently contained very gross incentives to the work of propagation. Their private exercises are said to have abounded with such rites and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... ivory nor thy gold Will I unbind thy chain; That bloody hand shall never hold The battle-spear again. A price that nation never gave Shall yet be paid for thee; For thou shalt be the Christian's slave, In lands beyond ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... shield and spear, mounted the war-horse tethered near and rode at Arthur, who spurred his horse to meet the shock. They came together with such force that their horses were thrown back upon their haunches and their spears were shivered against their shields. Arthur recovered himself ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... but irregularly serrated, wrinkled; dark green above, paler underneath. Lower leaves egg-shaped; upper leaves spear-shaped. Leaf-stalks fleshy; bordered. ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering

... in their wars. Those who are next in authority to the king wear fillets round their heads of crimson or scarlet silk. Their arms are crooked swords, lances, bows and arrows, and targets. The royal ensign is an umbrella borne aloft on a spear, so as to shade the king from the heat of the sun, which ensign in their language is called somber. When both armies approach within three arrow-flights, the king sends his bramins to the enemy by way of heralds, to challenge ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... that in these wild days many clerics were careless as to that which the Church enjoins concerning the effusion of blood—nay, I have named John Kirkmichael, Bishop of Orleans, as having himself broken a spear on the body of the Duke of Clarence. The Abbe of Cerquenceaux, also, was a valiant man in religion, and a good captain, and, all over France, clerics were gripping to sword and spear. But such a priest as this I ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... with the scars on his face and the hole in his ear—a memory of jolting along on a camel, swinging upside-down, while a strong hand grasped his foot; of seeing his father rush at his captor with a long, broad-bladed spear, of being whirled and flung at his father's head; and of seeing his father's intimate internal economy seriously and permanently disarranged by the two-handed sword of one of the camel rider's colleagues (who flung aside a heavy gun which he had just emptied into Moussa's mamma) as ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... knight now, his helmet on, The spear and falchion handles; But knights then, as thick as hops, In bushy bobs shall keep their shops, And deal, good lack! in figs and tripe, And ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... heard some very strong language in the South Seas, but I have never heard anything so awful as that of Poore when I drew out the spear, and we started to run for our lives down the ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke

... of a uncorrupted and disinterested witness, gentlemen of the jury, if the honorable court pleases. What did that Jule Anderson do, poor thing, but spend some time making a most onseasonable visit to Cynthy Ann last night? And I 'low ef there's a ole gal in this sublunary spear as tells the truth in a bee-line and no nonsense, it's that there same, individooal, identical Cynthy Ann. She's most afeard to drink cold water or breathe fresh air fer fear she'll commit a unpard'nable sin. And that persecuted young pigeon that thought herself forsooken, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... winter—in the burning heat, as well as when the cold was sometimes fifty degrees below zero—he scoured the frozen plains, the thickets of birch and larch, the pine forests; setting traps; watching for small game with his gun, and for large game with the spear or knife. The large game was nothing less than the Siberian bear, a formidable and ferocious animal, in size equaling its fellow of the frozen seas. Peter Strogoff had killed more than thirty-nine bears—that is to say, ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... market is well up in price when we get to the yards," observed Bud, idly chewing on a spear of grass. ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... for the Prince to start, the King gave him a spear called the Eight-Arms-Length-Spear of the Holly Tree (the handle was probably made from the wood of the holly tree), and ordered him to set out to subjugate the Eastern Barbarians as the Ainu were ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... sunk beneath the zones of sympathy that pity might seem harmless. And the judge had pursued him with a monstrous, relishing gaiety, horrible to be conceived, a trait for nightmares. It is one thing to spear a tiger, another to crush a toad; there are aesthetics even of the slaughter- house; and the loathsomeness of Duncan Jopp enveloped and infected the image of ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... work was there; Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles' image stood his spear, Griped in an armed hand; himself, behind, Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, Stood for ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... bears with a knife, bulls with a hatchet, and wild boars with a spear; and once, with nothing but a stick, he defended himself against some wolves, which were gnawing corpses at the foot ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert

... gallant tilter's pride The rusty spear is laid aside, Oh spits now domineer!— The coat of mail is left alone,— And where is all chain armour gone? Go ask at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... mounted at its picket for several days. It is then taken out for exercise, secured between two tame elephants. The ropes still remain round its body to enable the mahout to hold on should the elephant try to shake him off. A man precedes it with a spear to teach it to halt when ordered to do so; whilst, as the tame elephants wheel to the right or left, the mahout presses its neck with his knees, and taps it on the head with a small stick, to train it to turn in the required direction. To teach an ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... stolen oxen at once and promised never again to pursue their evil ways. So the stags were released from their self-appointed labour, but ever after, they say, each bore a white ring like a yoke about its neck, and each enjoyed a charmed life, for no arrow or spear of ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various

... gave a shout, and a spear whistled past Chris's ear. Instantly the flames of bonfires spurted on all the walls, and to his terror Chris found himself in a glare of light as powerful as modern searchlights. He clutched the Jewel Tree, ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... his eye is fixed: away, Away, thou heedless boy! prepare the spear; Now is thy time to perish, or display The skill that yet may check his mad career. With well-timed croupe the nimble coursers veer; On foams the bull, but not unscathed he goes; Streams from his flank the crimson torrent clear: He flies, he wheels, distracted with his throes: Dart follows ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... Bongaree, went towards the extremity of Sandy Cape. Several Indians with branches of trees in their hands, were there collected; and whilst they retreated themselves, were waving to us to go back. Bongaree stripped off his clothes and laid aside his spear, as inducements for them to wait for him; but finding they did not understand his language, the poor fellow, in the simplicity of his heart, addressed them in broken English, hoping to succeed better. At length they suffered ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... day of autumn, in the threefold division of the Greek year. Her story is, indeed, but the story, in an intenser form, of Adonis, of Hyacinth, of Adrastus—the king's blooming son, fated, in the story of Herodotus, to be wounded to death with an iron spear—of Linus, a fair child who is torn to pieces by hounds every spring-time—of the English Sleeping Beauty. From being the goddess of summer and the flowers, she becomes the goddess of night and sleep and death, confuseable with Hecate, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... did befriend her; At space she spurned, With love she burned, And straight across the ocean Sent Freedom's rays, T' illume their days And quell their sons' commotion. Hail, Britannia! Thou loving, kind Britannia! Ne'er failed to wield Thy spear and shield. To guard ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... much imaginary work was there; Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind, That for Achilles' image stood his spear Grasped in an armed hand; himself behind Was left unseen, save to the eye ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... fell with him, then, maddened by fright and pain, struggled up, unseating his rider, and dashed away into the bush, leaving the Major surrounded by the enemy. He received two spear-wounds, mercifully not poisoned, was instantly stripped of most of his clothes by his captors, and gave himself up for lost. But the novel garments so delighted the natives that they left the late wearer while ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... in Fig. 43 bears a certain resemblance to that in Fig. 15; but, beautiful as that was, this is in reality a far higher and grander thought, and implies much more advanced development on the part of the thinker. Here we have a great clear-cut spear or pencil of the pure pale violet which indicates devotion to the highest ideal, and it is outlined and strengthened by an exceedingly fine manifestation of the noblest development of intellect. He who can think thus must already have entered ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant

... especially the men, are still a fine, lithe, clean-limbed people. While I was stationed in the Plains I managed to have an interview with the chief, Lenana, at one of his "royal residences," a kraal near Nairobi. He was affability itself, presenting me with a spear and shield as a memento of the occasion; but he had the reputation of being a most wily old potentate, and I found this quite correct, as whenever he was asked an awkward question, he would nudge his Prime Minister and command him to answer for him. I managed to induce him and his wives and children ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson

... number had already fallen dead on the floor; most of the others were desperately wounded, as was Captain Pinson. I saw him plunge his sword into the breast of a third Pastucian, who was making a lunge at me with a spear. This decided me. Though unwilling to desert my companions, I was convinced that the destruction of the whole of us was intended, and that I should fall a victim with the rest. With one bound I leapt from the window, and called ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston

... It was an affecting scene in such a remote and desolate region, separated from all communication with the human race. Near the huts was the burial-ground, with several well-formed graves of heaps of stones. On one lay a spear, which one of the officers of the "Assistance" took up, to bring away. Some of the crew were examining the graves to see whether they contained any of our missing countrymen. Seeing this, Kalli ran up to the officer, and, with tears and entreaties, as well as he could make himself understood, begged ...
— Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian - A Memoir • Thomas Boyles Murray

... moss, long before converted into stone, but which, faithful in death to the ruling law of their lives, still pointed, like the others, to the free air and the light. And then, in the deeper recesses of the cave, where the floor becomes covered with uneven sheets of stalagmite, and where long spear-like icicles and drapery-like foldings, pure as the marble of the sculptor, descend from above, or hang pendent over the sides, we found in abundance magnificent specimens for Sir George. The entire expedition was one of wondrous interest; and I returned next day to school, big with ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... sea island cotton," as it was called from the fact that it was then grown only upon the islands near the southern coast of the United States, was not believed to be of any value for manufacture on account, chiefly, of its poor color. But when a cotton broker named Spear received three hundred pounds of it from an American planter, with the request that he get some competent spinner to test it, Owen, with characteristic readiness, undertook the test and succeeded in making a much finer product than had hitherto been made from the French cotton, ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo

... care employed by them in building places so well adapted for defence, almost without the use of instruments, should not by the same means, have led them to invent a single weapon of any importance, with the sole exception of the spear they throw with the hand. They do not understand the use of a bow to throw a dart, or of a sling to fling a stone, which is the more astonishing, as the invention of slings, and bows and arrows is far more simple than the construction of these works by the people, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... Barrier Reef, and became a total wreck ten minutes after. With the cattle it's just the same. You'll reckon the cattle that you started with, add on each year's calves, subtract all that you sell,—that is, if you ever do sell any—and allow for deaths, and what the blacks spear and the thieves steal. Then you work out the total, and you say, 'There ought to be five thousand cattle on the place,' but you never get 'em. I've got to go and find five thousand cattle in the worst bit of brigalow scrub in ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... change, wherewith the traveller can pay for small services, for carrying messages, for draughts of milk, pieces of meat, etc. Beads, shells, tobacco, needles, awls, cotton caps, handkerchiefs, clasp-knives, small axes, spear and arrow heads, generally ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... given over to "shif'less" ways, and wives set him up, like a lurid guidepost, before husbands prone to lapse from domestic thrift; but the dogs smile at him, and children, for whom he is ever ready to make kite or dory, though all his hay should mildew, or to string thimbleberries on a grass spear while supper cools within, tumble merrily at his heels. Such as he should never assume domestic relations, to be fettered with requirements of time and place. Let them rather claim maintenance from a grateful public, and live, like ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... Sanders's face, over a naked black shoulder, and a spear driven clean through his neck, and out of his mouth and neck what looked like spirts of pink smoke in the water. And down they went clutching one another, and turning over, and both too far gone to leave go. And in another second my helmet came ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... down through the beaver-swamp to the Wagai river to spear carp-fish for dinner, and Taffy went too. Tegumai's spear was made of wood with shark's teeth at the end, and before he had caught any fish at all he accidentally broke it clean across by jabbing it down too hard ...
— Just So Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... the father and son separated, and approached the bear one on each side. This divided his attention, and puzzled him very much; for, when he made a motion as if he were going to rush at Myouk, Meetek flourished his spear, and obliged him to turn—then Myouk made a demonstration, and turned him back again. Thus they were enabled to get close to its side before it could make up its mind which to attack. But the natives soon settled the question for it. Myouk was on the bear's right side, Meetek on its left. ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne

... these knights wore a beautiful suit of armor and carried a long spear, while over his helmet there floated a great red plume that could be seen a long way off by any one in distress. But the most wonderful thing about the knights' armor was their shields. They were not like those of other knights, but had been made by a great magician who had lived in ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... John R. Spear, author of "The History of our Navy," who was with Sampson's fleet, wrote this complete story of the marvellous naval battle off Santiago and along the southern shore of ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... Emperors with their strange alternations of greatness and profligacy, descending occasionally to criminal lunacy. When the Empire went rotten it began at the top, and it took centuries to corrupt the man behind the spear. Neither did a religion of peace affect him much, for, in spite of the adoption of Christianity, Roman history was still written in blood. The new creed had only added a fresh cause of quarrel and violence to the many which already existed, and ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... shadow underruns us. Bristol and Cardiff Double Lights (those statelily inclined beams over Severnmouth) are dead ahead of us; for we keep the Southern Winter Route. Coventry Central, the pivot of the English system, stabs upward once in ten seconds its spear of diamond light to the north; and a point or two off our starboard bow The Leek, the great cloud-breaker of Saint David's Head, swings its unmistakable green beam twenty-five degrees each way. There must be half a mile of fluff over it in this ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling

... Upon the strong man: and the haughty form Is fallen, and the flashing eye is dim. It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged The bright and joyous; and the tearful wail Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er The battle plain, where sword, and spear and shield, Flashed in the light of midday; and the strength Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass, Green from the soil of carnage, waves above The crushed and mouldering skeleton. It came, And faded like ...
— Songs from the Southland • Various

... Thorwaldsen, to keep fresh the brave renown of the Swiss guard who perished in defence of the royal family of France during the massacre of the Revolution? Carved from the massive sandstone, the majestic animal, with the fatal spear in his side, yet loyal in his vigil over the royal shield, is a grand image of fidelity unto death. The stillness, the isolation, the vivid creepers festooning the rocks, the clear mirror of the basin, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... the others to be enemies. Thus the Athenians fell into sad disorder and ruin; for they were unable to distinguish friends from foes in the uncertain light, as the moon, now nearly setting, glanced upon spear-points and armour without showing them clearly enough to enable men to see with whom they had to deal. The moon was behind the backs of the Athenians: and this circumstance was greatly against them, for it made it hard for them to see the numbers of their own friends, but shone plainly on the ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... dropped what we held in our hands, and rushed to the door. I seized a rope as I ran, while Cudjo took his long spear, thinking it might be of use to us. This was the work of a moment, and the next we were ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... felt very friendly towards it, having been hard at work for some hours, with only the voice of the little rill, and some hares and a pheasant for company. The sun was gone down behind the black wood on the farther cliffs of Bagworthy, and the russet of the tufts and spear-beds was becoming gray, while the greyness of the sapling ash grew brown against the sky; the hollow curves of the little stream became black beneath the grasses and the fairy fans innumerable, while outside the hedge our clover was ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... to cease unto the end of the earth; He breaketh the bow and cutteth the spear in sunder; He burneth ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... and sorrowful, And down upon him bare the bandit three. And at the midmost charging, Prince Geraint Drave the long spear a cubit through his breast And out beyond; and then against his brace Of comrades, each of whom had broken on him A lance that splintered like an icicle, Swung from his brand a windy buffet out Once, twice, to right, to left, and stunned the ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... I was sleeping quietly here, some trading Arabs camped at Nasangwa's, and at dead of night one was pinned to the earth by a spear; no doubt this was in revenge for relations slain in the forty mentioned: the survivors now wished to run a muck in all directions ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... of a musical phrase can suggest kinds of motion may seem strange; but could we, for example, imagine a spinning song with broken arpeggios? Should we see a spear thrown or an arrow shot on the stage and hear the orchestra playing a phrase of an undulating pattern, we should at once realize the contradiction. Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, and practically everyone who has written a spinning song, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... eleventh bridge of the Paddington canal, was alarmed by the cry of 'one in jeopardy:' he rushed along, collected a body of Irish haymakers (supping on buttermilk in an adjacent paddock), procured three rakes, one eel spear and a landing-net, and at last ('horresco referens') pulled out—his own publisher. The unfortunate man was gone for ever, and so was a large quarto wherewith he had taken the leap, which proved, on inquiry, to have been Mr. Southey's last work. Its 'alacrity of sinking' was so great, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... before in the earthquake, and all the air looked, to my apprehension, as if it had been filled with flashes of fire. He was no sooner landed upon the earth, but he moved forward towards me, with a long spear or weapon in his hand, to kill me; and when he came to a rising ground, at some distance, he spoke to me - or I heard a voice so terrible that it is impossible to express the terror of it. All that I can ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... heaven. But o'er their heads Celestial armory, shield, helm and spear, Hung bright, with ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... from the right. But before they could meet and ring the tree in, he saw the branches violently shaken, and an Arab with a roll of yellowish dammar wound about his waist, and armed with a flat-headed spear and a shield of hide, dashed from the shelter and raced out between the soldiers into the open plain. He ran for a few yards only. For Mather gave a sharp order to his men, and the Arab, as though he understood that order, came to a stop before a rifle could be lifted to a ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... bigger even than walruses. Lots of them here some time. We find their bones everywhere. Nearly all our sled-runners are made of sea-cow bones. They grazed like cattle below water on the seaweeds of the shore and the natives used to spear ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... old home, when the black already described suddenly made his appearance from where he had been squatting amongst some low-growing bushes; and as soon as he stepped out into the track with his long stick, which was supposed to be a spear, bullocks and horses moved on at once in the right direction, and perhaps a ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... virtue, on what grace are you posted by your Lord to keep for yourself and for Him? And with what cost of meat and drink and sleep and amusement do you lose it or keep it for Him? Alexander used to leave his tent at midnight and go round the camp, and spear to his post the ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte

... loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander,[260] whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveler tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad ax, and in a day or two the flesh ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... for a cast!" cried the man with the prod, which was a sort of boathook without the hook. "I'll see if I can spear him!" ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton

... up some fine flint spear-heads near the line of Roman forts on the north side of the Gebel Sheikh Embrak, where I discovered an enormous manufactory of flint weapons and ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various

... examined on his past, present, and future, envied for his Forest home, and beguiled into magnificent accounts, not only of the deer that had fallen to his bow and the boars that had fallen to his father's spear, but of the honours to which his uncle in the Archbishop's household would prefer him—for he viewed it as an absolute certainty that his kinsman was captain among the men-at- arms, whom he endowed on the spot with scarlet coats ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... creditor lost confidence in each other."[701] "There is a detestable and actual slavery in these hills, which is now only carried on by independent tribes, beyond English jurisdiction. This is the captivity to the bow and spear,—men and women taken prisoners by force in war, and sold from master to master. The origin of this custom was the want of women."[702] In the Chin hills there are slaves who are war captives, or criminals, or debtors, and others who are voluntary slaves, or slaves by birth. The ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... originally a mere village, dependant on the Castle; but its mineral and subterranean wealth led the early inhabitants to become manufacturers of edged tools, of which arrow heads, spear heads, &c. are presumed to have been a considerable part; a bundle of arrows being at this day in the town arms, and cross arrows the badge of the ancient Cutlers' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various

... that these people should have left nothing undone to prejudice the people against her. Even when my brother died, this Murdock paper spoke of me "raving in jail," and I was not privileged to go to him in his dying hours. Such people drove the nails in the hands and the spear in ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... Artois marched with seven thousand knights and forty thousand foot, of which one-fourth were archers. The Flemish were but twenty thousand, of which none but the chiefs had horses. Neither was their armor nor their weapons of a perfect kind, the latter being a lance like a boar-spear, or a knotted stick pointed with iron, and called in Flemish a "good day." The princes of Juliers and Namur posted their combatants on the road which leads from Courtrai to Ghent, behind a canal that communicated with the river Lys. A priest came with the host, but, there ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... athlete of great powers, and was able to jump thirty feet either in a backward or a forward direction. The Irishmen set fire to his house, and Macvicar—hoping, no doubt, to make a final leap for life—tried to escape by the chimney. His foes struck him on the knee with a spear: he fell into their hands, and was ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... the makers of the myths little more than mud and water[13]—the mere bioplasm of deity. The seven divine generations are "born," but do nothing except that they give Izanagi and Izanami a jewelled spear. With this pair come differentiation of sex. It is immediately on the apparition of the consciousness of sex that motion, action and creation begin, and the progress of things visible ensues. The details cannot be put into English, but it is enough, ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... Spear—a "Reverend Mr. Spear"—who was mixed up, it appears, with the machinery-part of the business, and who was a medium himself, transmitted to the lady a request from the spirits that she would visit said Spear at High Rock on a certain day. She did so, of course; and while there was ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... the time of the cave-dweller, who was clothed in shaggy hair instead of in broadcloth or silk, prehistoric man learned that the best arrow or spear was that tipped with the best piece of flint. In brief, to do good work, you must have good tools. Translated into the terms of today, this means that the expert or specialist must be preferred to the untrained. In nearly all walks ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... the hurdle out of his way, and strides into the garden. In pose, voice, and dress he is insistently warlike. He is equipped with huge spear and broad brass-bound leather shield; his casque is a tiger's head with bull's horns; he wears a scarlet cloak with gold brooch over a lion's skin with the claws dangling; his feet are in sandals with brass ornaments; his shins ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... opposite wall of cliff; where turning, they fought at bay, blood for blood, and life for life, till at last, overwhelmed by numbers, they were all put to the point of the spear. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... strooke with sword; and thou were the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights; and thou were the meekest man and gentlest that ever sat in hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest Knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... care anything about that mummery unless he has changed for the worse since he left this mortal spear, which hain't very likely bein' the man he wuz. And as I thought of the evil things done in the name of the power that rared up that figger, I methought I hearn ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... jest as nice as a new pin! Every spear's in!" she cried delightedly. "Them three boys did it before breakfast. I knew what they was up to, but I wasn't goin' to spoil their little surprise! I guess I know how boys like surprises. Don't you remember how Hilary an' Eben got the potatoes all dug that ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... yet more to be dreaded than any foe he had ever known, was a miracle which nature alone could explain. It was a hearkening back in the age-dimmed mental fabric of Thor's race to the earliest days of man—man, first of all, with the club; man with the spear hardened in fire; man with the flint-tipped arrow; man with the trap and the deadfall, and, lastly, man with the gun. Through all the ages man had been his one and only master. Nature had impressed it upon him—had been impressing it upon him through ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood

... were here in numbers, but twenty yards away on a level, sandy spot he set four traps in a twelve-foot square. Near each he scattered two or three scraps of meat; three or four white feathers on a spear of grass in the middle completed the setting. No human eye, few animal noses, could have detected the hidden danger of that sandy ground, when the sun and wind and the sand itself ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... zephyr throws The shifting shuttle of the Summer's loom And weaves a damask-work of gleam and gloom Before thy listless feet. The lily blows A bugle-call of fragrance o'er the glade; And wheeling into ranks, with plume and spear, Thy harvest-armies gather on parade; While faint and far away, yet pure and clear, A voice calls out of alien lands of shade—: All hail the Peerless Goddess ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley

... whisper of a bullet, the sound of which has not time to reach their ears, fired by an invisible foe. Their death is merely the quod erat demonstrandum of a mathematical and mechanical proposition. But with bow and arrow, spear or battle-axe, Mauser or Lee-Metford, the heart behind the weapon is just the same now as then. Probably faint hearts fail now as then, just as much—shrink to a panic that falls on them suddenly as cold mist on mountain-top; ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... dealt with as divided into three parts: the sharp spear-thrust of Peter's closing words (vs. 32-36), the wounded and healed hearers (vs. 37-41), and the fair morning dawn ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... magistracy of Peter van der Werff, was accordingly enclosed by a solid palisade of oaken planks, strengthened by rows of iron bars with barbed prongs: The entrenchment was called by the populace the Arminian Fort, and the iron spear heads were baptized Barneveld's teeth. Cannon were planted at intervals along the works, and a company or two of the Waartgelders, armed from head to foot, with snaphances on their shoulders, stood ever ready to issue forth to quell any disturbances. Occasionally a life ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... on a pedestal, leans upon her spear. The Gorgon's skin covers her breast, and a linen peplum descends in regular folds even to her toe-nails. Her grey eyes, which shine beneath her vizor, gaze intently ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert

... 'n' persevere, An' show 'em how much better 't pays to mind their winter-schoolin' Than to go off on benders 'n' sech, an' waste their time in foolin'; Ef 't warn't for studyin', evening, I never 'd ha' ben here An orn'ment o' saciety, in my approprut spear: She wanted somebody, ye see, o' taste an' cultivation, To talk along o' preachers when they stopt to the plantation; For folks in Dixie th't read an' write, onless it is by jarks, Is skurce ez wut they wuz among th' oridgenal patriarchs; To fit a feller ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... few objects of interest. The dismal green-shuttered Stadkirche, a relic of Dutch Calvinism; the earliest warehouse of the Netherlands Company, a commonplace lighthouse, and the gate of Peter Elberfeld's dwelling (now his tomb), with his spear-pierced skull above the lintel, as a reminder of the sentence pronounced on traitors to the Dutch Government, comprise the scanty catalogue. Antiquities and archaeological remains fill a white museum of classical ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... been giants," said Rabba, as Ali, with his spear uplifted, rode under the raised knee of one of the bodies. "These must be the bodies of the Ephraimites who left Egypt before the rest of the children of Israel ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... hardly yields before that of the oyster plant. Nor must we forget the lesser thistle tribe, with first of all, the prickly or 'cruel' thistle, which is so well armed that the plant collector knows not where to grasp it; next, the spear thistle, with its ample foliage, ending each of its veins with a spear head; lastly, the black knapweed, which gathers itself into a spiky knot. In among these, in long lines armed with hooks, the ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... gun-shot wounds differed from the wounds made by ordinary weapons—that is, spear, arrow, sword, or axe—in that the bullet, being round, bruised rather than cut its way through the tissues; it burned the flesh; and, worst of all, it poisoned it. Vigo laid especial stress upon treating this last ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... great travellers were followed by, or worked simultaneously, although in a totally different part of the continent, namely the north-west coast, with Sir George Grey in 1837-1839. His labours and escapes from death by spear-wounds, shipwreck, starvation, thirst, and fatigue, fill his volumes with incidents of the deepest interest. Edward Eyre, subsequently known as Governor Eyre, made an attempt to reach, in 1840-1841, Central Australia by a route north from the city of Adelaide; and as Sturt imagined himself ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... 'asn't got no papers of 'is own, 'E 'asn't got no medals nor rewards, So we must certify the skill 'e's shown In usin' of 'is long two-'anded swords: When 'e's 'oppin' in an' out among the bush With 'is coffin-'eaded shield an' shovel-spear, An 'appy day with Fuzzy on the rush Will last an 'ealthy Tommy for a year. So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an' your friends which are no more, If we 'adn't lost some messmates we would 'elp you ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... I never heard a old hen called out of her spear, and unhenly, because she would fly out at a hawk, and cackle loud, and cluck, and try to lead her chickens off into safety. And while the rooster is a steppin' high, and struttin' round, and lookin' surprised and injured, it is the old ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... which shall, so to speak, brood over, and aggravate the general horror. It is, in a word, plain, good painting, but it is not poetry. There is not a metaphor, such as "he laugheth at the shaking of a spear," in it all. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... many-sided sympathy, which threatened to hinder any persistent course of action: as soon as he took up any antagonism, though only in thought, he seemed to himself like the Sabine warriors in the memorable story—with nothing to meet his spear but flesh of his flesh, and objects that he loved. His imagination had so wrought itself to the habit of seeing things as they probably appeared to others, that a strong partisanship, unless it were against an immediate oppression, had become an insincerity for him. His plenteous, flexible sympathy ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... into the Lancers," answered Peterkin. "You see, Jack, I find the club rather an unwieldy instrument for my delicately formed muscles, and I flatter myself I shall do more execution with a spear." ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... we 'll drink to old St. George, (By George!) Then we 'll drink to our valiant knight, With his trusty spear, And never a fear, And the dragon pinned down tight, tight, tight, And the dragon pinned ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... and they dived into the interior of the shop, and, arming themselves with a plate and fork each, proceeded to spear up such as most appealed to them of the delectable patisseries arranged in tempting rows along shining trays. Then, giving an order for their tea to be served outside, they emerged once more into ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... called out to the soldiers of the Fleur de Lis to come over and try a joust or two with him. At once Robert Fitz-Walter, with his visor down, ferried over alone with his barbed horse, and mounted ready for the fray. At the first course he struck John's knight so fiercely with his great spear, that both man and steed came rolling in a clashing heap to the ground. Never was spear better broken; and when the squires had gathered up their discomfited master, and the supposed French knight had recrossed the ferry, King John, who delighted in a well-ridden course, cried out, with ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... eye is dim. It trod the hall of revelry, where thronged The bright and joyous; and the tearful wail Of stricken ones is heard, where erst the song And reckless shout resounded. It passed o'er The battle plain, where sword, and spear, and shield Flashed in the light of midday; and the strength Of serried hosts is shivered, and the grass, Green from the soil of carnage, waves above The crushed and moldering skeleton. It came, And faded like a wreath of mist at eve; Yet, ere it melted in the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... weapons were the axe, the bow, the pike, and the sling, the latter sometimes throwing pieces of red-hot iron. Gustavus instructed his men to fashion their arrows in a more effective shape, and increased the length of the spear by four or five feet, with a view to repel the attacks of cavalry. He caused monetary tokens to be struck—an expedient which seems to have been not uncommon in Sweden, since, from a remote period, even leather ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... no more proud chivalry recalls The tourneys bright and pealing festivals; Though now on high her idle spear is hung, Though time her mouldering harp has ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... are frequently speared by the natives, who, by taking care to stand stock-still the moment the creature lifts up its head, manage to approach within a few yards of them while feeding. Though the savage may have his hand raised in the act of throwing the spear, he remains fixed in that attitude whilst the emu takes a survey of him. Perceiving only an object without motion, the bird takes him for a tree, and continues to graze, falling a victim, like other innocent things, to a misplaced confidence ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... forced on him by the fact that he was now made to don a black domino and mask, and to march, carrying a tin-headed spear, with a file of similar figures to examine the candidate, who turned out to be the discharged Stevens, sitting in an anteroom, foolish and apprehensive, and looking withal much as he had done in the counting-room. He was now asked by the leader of the file, in a sepulchral tone, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... groups: Society for the Promotion of Education and Research (SPEAR) headed by former PUP minister; ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... hunting. They are of a dark copper colour, and although not tall men are wonderfully strong and well-built, and will endure a great amount of fatigue. They are also endowed with great courage, and are very skilful in the use of weapons, especially the Parang ilang[9] and spear. This tribe has been found by missionaries to possess some small amount of religion, inasmuch as they believe in the existence of a Supreme Being, Batara, who made this earth and now governs it. They believe, also, in good and evil spirits, who dwell in the jungles and mountains. Sickness, ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... writing now about minstrels and princesses; he was not painting enraptured pictures of joy and love. The pain of life had become too real to him. His six months of contact with the world had filled him with bitterness; and he was forging a sharp spear, that he could drive into the heart of folly ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... twenty-five to thirty men, from the youth unbearded to the grizzled trooper, whose swarthy, sunburnt face, large whiskers and moustaches touched with grey, wiry frame, and easy lounging seat in saddle, as he balanced his heavy Maratha spear across his shoulder, showed the years of service he had done. There was no richness of costume among the party; the dresses were worn and weather stained, and of motley character. Some wore thickly quilted ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... man's Ikia" would be silver, for which the more advanced Mpongwe have corrupted the English to "solove." An idea exists on the Lower River that our hardware is broken up for the purpose of being made into spear-heads and other weapons. Such is not generally the case. The Wamasai, the Somal and the Cape Kafirs— indeed, all the metal-working African barbarians—call our best Sheffield blades "rotten iron." They despise a material ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Pass the great pines and through the wood, Up where the lean hounds softly go, A-whine for wild things' blood, And madly flies the dappled roe. O God, to shout and speed them there, An arrow by my chestnut hair Drawn tight, and one keen glimmering spear— Ah! ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... as the cry was repeated, and then, in a low voice, he said: "Look, just where the light of the lamp shines faintly, I thought I saw the gleam of a spear. Can ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn

... hurt while pig-sticking in Morocco, being but an indifferent spear. During convalescence he read "Under Two Flags," and approved the idea; but when he learned that the Spahi cavalry was not recruiting Americans, and when, a month later, he discovered how much romance ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers

... had been burnished to a high degree, and he found himself a dazzling sight indeed when he looked into the supply-room mirror. This effect was enhanced no end when he buckled on his chrome-plated scabbard and red-hilted sword and hung his snow-white shield around his neck. His polished spear, when he stood it beside him, was almost anticlimactic. It shouldn't have been. It was a good three and one-half inches in diameter at the base, and it was as tall as a ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young

... blood from the shoulder to the wrist," Sir Robert said. "A spear-head has penetrated at the shoulder-joint and torn a gash well-nigh to the neck. 'Tis well that it ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... a sword and with a spear and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... the hall, or in the offices below. Above this they came out on the lead-covered roof, surrounded with a high crenellated stone parapet, where two or three warders were stationed. Still higher rose one small octagonal watch-tower, on the summit of which was planted a spear bearing St. George's pennon, and by its side Sir ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... women have not saluted and only the chiefs offered the hand. Many of the people have thin lips and Semitic noses and most are well made. As usual, if one meets a husband and wife, the former strolls ahead with a spear or stick, while the latter follows carrying a baby riding on one of her hips, tied on by her wrap of cloth, and with a heavy load of wood or food-stuff on her head. We cross the river in the evening and dine with Captain ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman

... other ten dinars, the man took them, saying, "I commit the affair to Allah the Almighty!" and fared on with him down stream. When they came to the flower garden, the youth sprang out of the boat, in his joy, a spring of a spear's cast from the land, and cast himself down, whilst the boatman turned and fled. Then Ibrahim fared forward and found all as it had been described by the Gobbo: he also saw the garden- gate open, and in the porch a couch of ivory, whereon sat a hump backed man of pleasant presence, clad in gold-laced ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... classical languages. He also taught himself English by reading McPherson's "Ossian," which kept ringing in his memory for many years to come. It was during his first enthusiasm for "Ossian" that, in order to rid himself of the line "the spear of Connell is keen," he cut it into his chamber-door, where probably it is yet to be seen. At the end of fifteen months the elder brother accepted a more profitable position as tutor in the family of the great iron-manufacturer Myhrman, at Raemen, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... it. In the long interval vast forests have been cleared away and the warlike habits of the northern and mountainous races have been greatly modified, but manufacturing progress among them has enabled them to perpetuate the power originally secured by the bow and the spear. The irrigating races of mankind are now held in fear of the modern weapons which are the products of the iron and steel industries, just as they were thousands of years ago terrorised by the inroads of the wild ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... kept intact for him, when the letting of it to a rich Englishman would greatly have helped the failing fortunes of the family; it was not enough that the poor people about, knowing Lady Macleod's wishes, had no thought of keeping a salmon spear hidden in the thatch of their cottages. Salmon and stag could no longer bind him to the place. The young blood stirred. And when he asked her what good things came of being a stay-at-home, what ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... trophies—not of spear and shield, But leaps, and bursts, and sometimes foxes' brushes; Yet I must own,—although in this I yield To patriot sympathy a Briton's blushes,— He thought at heart like courtly Chesterfield, Who, after a long chase o'er ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... exaltation of cruelty. A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle, but races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear. ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... occur. The less frequency of infection in modern wars is in part due to the simpler character of the wounds and in part to the fact that modern fixed ammunition is practically free from germs. The old spear-head, the arrow, the cross bow bolt, had little regard for the probabilities of infection. Whether infection follows a wound depends both upon the entry of pathogenic organisms and upon these finding in the tissues suitable opportunities for growth. In wounds in which there is much laceration ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman

... it, Bore a slave with him, in his chariot; So this insulting female brave, Carries behind her here a slave: 680 And as the ancients long ago, When they in field defy'd the foe, Hung out their mantles della guerre, So her proud standard-bearer here Waves on his spear, in dreadful manner, 685 A Tyrian-petticoat for banner: Next links and torches, heretofore Still borne before the emperor. And as, in antique triumphs, eggs Were borne for mystical intrigues, 690 There's one with truncheon, like a ladle, That carries eggs ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... sore a wound as this!" Therewith still kneeling beside Sir Tristram she searched the wound with very gentle, tender touch (for her fingers were like to rose leaves for softness) and lo! she found a part of the blade of a spear-head embedded very deep in the wound ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... said this, and something he saw in my face inclined him to chuckle, but he suppressed the inclination, twirling his fair moustache instead, first on one side and then on the other, rapidly. In his youth he must have been one of those small boys who delighted to spear a bee with a pin and watch it buzz round. The boy is pretty sure the bee can't hurt him, but yet half the pleasure of the performance lies in the fact of its having a sting. It would not have been convenient for Colonel Colquhoun to quarrel with me, because ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... temper of his sword, the tried Escalabour, The bigness and the length of Rone, his noble spear, With Pridwin, his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... gone to church, but now she realized a strange uplifting of her thoughts above the happiness itself, to a sense of God. She was conscious of a thankfulness which at once exalted and humbled her. She sat down beside the window and looked out, and everything, every dry spear of grass and every slender twig on the trees, was streaming like rainbows in the frosty air. It came to her what an unspeakable blessing it was that she had been allowed to come into a world where there were so many rainbows and so much happiness, and ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... with demoniac triumph in the air; and as he returns home, yet reeking with blood and intoxicated with victory, and suspends above his threshold the ghastly trophy. Look again—the scene is changed—the glittering arms are flung aside. With his mantle floating in the breeze, his light spear quivering in his hand, he plunges into the pathless forest; with fearless step he pursues his way through the leafy shade, and traverses the treacherous surface of the morass. Beneath yon giant oak he has encountered the fiercest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... the Tower of London, and there are now only some tattered banners, of which I do not know the history, and some festoons of pistols, and grenades, shells, and grape and canister shot, kept merely as curiosities; and, far more interesting than the above, a few battle-axes, daggers, and spear-heads from the field of Bannockburn; and, more interesting still, the sword of William Wallace. It is a formidable-looking weapon, made for being swayed with both hands, and, with its hilt on the floor, reached ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Devil, when spoken of in general terms, was but the Devil's representative, or the Devil in quo vis vehiculo, for that time, clothed in a bodily shape, acting under cover and in disguise, or if you will the Devil in masquerade: Nay, if we believe Mr. Milton, the Angel Gabriel's spear had such a secret powerful influence, as to make him strip of a sudden, and with a touch to unmask, and stand upright in his naked original shape, meer ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... speaking, a stout, athletic, well made race of people, and particularly harmless in their dispositions, though from their appearance you would not imagine that to be the case, as each individual is always armed with a spear about eight feet in length, made of hard wood, and barbed at each end; which, added to their fierce color and smell, would daunt the courage of a more ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... dreadful appearance. He resembled a man somewhat, but much larger than any human being I ever saw. He must have been at least ten feet high. He had great wings on his back. He was black as the coal I had been digging, and in a perfectly nude condition. He had a large spear in his hand, the handle of which must have been fully fifteen feet in length. His eyes shone like balls of fire. His teeth, white as pearl, seemed fully an inch long. His nose, if you could call it a nose, was very large, broad and ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds

... pistol at the black wall of writhing, yelling humanity, and bowling them over by dozens at a time. When at length another port-fire was found and lighted, it disclosed to us an appalling picture of dusky, panting bodies, blazing eyeballs, waving skins and plumes, gleaming spear-points, and upraised war-clubs hemming us in on both sides, from stem to stern, every separate individual glaring at us with demoniac hate and fury as he strove ineffectually ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood



Words linked to "Spear" :   spear-point, weapon, spearpoint, protrude, harpoon, leister, barb, fishgig, gig, transfix, king's spear, jut out, lance, impale, assagai, assegai, project, tackle, spear carrier, trident, empale, fishing rig, jut, weapon system, implement, javelin, stick out, spear thistle, fizgig, rig, spear up, spike, spearhead



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