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Sty   Listen
verb
Sty  v. t.  (past & past part. stied; pres. part. stying)  To shut up in, or as in, a sty.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sty" Quotes from Famous Books



... down on the edge of the sty, and looked long and silently at an empty bucket. But whether his thoughts were of T'nowhead's Bell, whom he had lost for ever, or of the food the farmer fed his pig on, is ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various

... ende of his mete. And in this manere he ledethe his lif. And so dide thei before him, that weren his auncestres; and so schulle thei that comen aftre him, with outen doynge of ony dedes of armes: but lyven evere more thus in ese, as a swyn, that is fedde in sty, for to ben made fatte. He hathe a fulle fair palays and fulle riche, where that he dwellethe inne: of the whiche, the walles ben in circuyt 2 myle: and he hathe with inne many faire gardynes, and many faire halles and chambres, and the pawment of his halles and chambres ben of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt

... came to a city, in which they again sought shelter for the night; but the master of the house where they applied sharply refused it. "For the love of heaven," said the angel, "give us shelter, lest we fall prey to the wolves." The man pointed to a sty. "That," said he, "has pigs in it; if it please you to lie there you may, but to no other place will I admit you." "If we can do no better," said the angel, "we must accept your ungracious offer." They did so; and next morning the angel calling their host, said, "My friend, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... doctrine was that happiness is the end of life. What men seek, and have a right to seek, is the most pleasant existence. Our conduct should secure for us as much real pleasure as possible. Now at first sight this looks like what it was opprobriously called by its enemies, "the philosophy of the pig-sty." It by no means meant this to its founder. For what is "pleasure"? Not by any means necessarily the gratification of the moment, physical or otherwise. A present pleasure may mean future pain, either of body or of mind. Wrong actions and bestial enjoyments bring their own penalty. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... East Essex, who has erected a pig-sty in the middle of his choice rose-garden, informs us that Frau Karl Druschki has already thrown out some nice ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various

... of the two; if you go aft you hear the one, if you go forward you hear the other, by way of variety, and that, they say, is charming. But, is it not shocking that such a beautiful frigate should be turned into a pig-sty, and that her main-deck should smell worse than ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... walked round the west wall till he came to the wall on the north, which was higher than the others. Here, against the north wall, was a sheltered cover like an immense sty, indescribably filthy and evil-smelling; about thirty rings were fastened to the wall, and from each ring depended a big rusty chain ending ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... old abbess believed the story, and forthwith conducted her to the cell, No. 11; but Sidonia spat out at it, said it was a pig-sty, and began to run clattering through all the cells till she reached the refectory, a large chamber where the nuns assembled for evening prayer. This, she said, was the only spot fit for her to put her nose in, and she would keep it for herself. Meanwhile, the whole sisterhood ran together ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... building, heard a crash about her, and realized that the house had been struck by lightning. The lightning had torn all the weather-boarding off the house, and had also followed a spouting which terminated in a wooden trough in a pig-sty, ten feet back of the house, and killed a pig. Another branch of the fluid passed through the inside of the building and, running along the upper floor to directly over where Mrs. F. was sitting, passed through the floor ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... they keep for paralytic idiots. I've known you all too long to expect sagacity, but the instinct of self-preservation characterizes even the lower animals. What swine, for instance, would leave its cosy sty——" ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... general dealer, purchased a cottage, to which pertained amongst other furniture a sty. As this was of course uninhabited, his first care was to supply it with inmates, and, having purchased a couple of fine pigs, he set off homewards with his bargains comfortably lodged in his cart. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... in. The barn is full of our wounded. Go up a bit higher, and you will see a sort of pig-sty to the right—that is where the General is. Good-bye, my dear fellow. If ever we meet again in a quadrille in a ballroom ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... ye haverin' aboot Shargar for, ye heepocreet loon? Ye'll no gang to Shargar, I s' warran'! Ye'll be efter that vile limmer that's turnt my honest hoose intil a sty this last fortnicht.' ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... kennel, that I might view the adjacent cottage and discover if I could remain in the habitation I had found. It was situated against the back of the cottage and surrounded on the sides which were exposed by a pig sty and a clear pool of water. One part was open, and by that I had crept in; but now I covered every crevice by which I might be perceived with stones and wood, yet in such a manner that I might move them on occasion to pass out; all the light I enjoyed came ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... poured all the butter-milk, and all the milk from which she had skimmed the cream, into a clean wooden pail, and stirred in some barley meal, and carried it off to the pig-sty. She stood outside the paling of the pigs' little yard, and called, "Pig—pig—pig!" and out came the pigs from their sty, little and big, grunting and squeaking and scrambling, and tumbling over one another. Then she poured all her pailful into the pigs' trough, and then they began squeaking and ...
— Adventure of a Kite • Harriet Myrtle

... yer git 'im into an 'abit, yer cawn't git 'im out of it agyne. 'E'll go on sheddin' blood mechanical—Conservative by nyture. An' 'e won't myke nuffin' o' yours. Not even the Press wiv 'is 'oneyed words'll sty 'is 'and. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... were some of my people—a German family, by the name of Abraham, who lived on a little farm just outside our suburb. They had been to me typical representatives of a stupid class, who have all the hardships of life, and none of its soft lights and shades. They were the kind that plant their pig-sty on the lake side of their house—put the pig-sty betwixt them and every other beauty, it seemed to me. What can life hold for such people? They know nothing of love, or any other joy. Merely ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... 'opeless, Doctor," said Quick to me, dropping his h's, as he sometimes did in the excitement of the moment. "What can one do with a crowd of pigs, everyone of them bent on bolting to his own sty, or anywhere except toward the enemy? The sooner the Fung get them the better for all concerned, say I, and if it wasn't for our Lady yonder" (Quick always called Maqueda after "our Lady," after it had been impressed upon him that "her Majesty" was an incorrect title), ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... heart of the hearth. He had seen it with downcast eyes, with the long lashes lying on the cheek, and the curved red lips discreetly shut beneath; the masses of black hair shadowed the forehead and darkened the secret that he wished to read. Or he had watched her, like a jewel in a pig-sty, looking across the foul-littered farm where he had had to sleep more than once with his men about him; her black eyes looking into his own with tender gravity, and her mouth trembling with speech. Or best of all, as he ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... Beulah flowed through Nontland, and it was bounded on the north by the Celestial Mountains; on the south by the red brick wall, where the big pears grew; on the west by the Rose of Sharon tree; and on the east by the pig-sty. That last sounds something of a descent, but it wasn't really a pig-sty, and I can't think why it was called so, for, to my knowledge, it had never harboured anything but two innocent white Russian rabbits with ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... Turkish pipes mounted almost straight upward, and lingered over our heads in thin blue curls; yet the sullen, discontented heave and roll in the water were growing heavier every hour. The black tufa cliffs crested with shattered masonry—the foundations of the sty where the Boar of Capreae wallowed—were just on our starboard quarter, when Riddell, the master, came up to Livingstone. "I think we'd better make all snug, sir," he said. "There's dirty weather to windward, and we haven't too much sea-room." He was an old man-of-war's boatswain, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... mean an end, Whereby he'd lost his every friend, He perished in a pauper sty, His mate the ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy

... impromptu cudgelling. For this historical offence the magistrates of the district had always inflicted the equally historical punishment of shutting up the most incorrigible offenders, not in prison, but in their own pig-sty. In recent times, however, the government, wishing to correct the rudeness of these peasants, appointed an "enlightened" man as a magistrate, who at once abolished the original penalty above mentioned. But this relaxation of punishment was so far from being ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... was a slant-roofed, small-windowed hole above the kitchen, oppressive in summer, frigid in winter. She saw that while she had been considering herself an unusually good mistress, she had been permitting her friends Bea and Oscarina to live in a sty. She complained to Kennicott. "What's the matter with it?" he growled, as they stood on the perilous stairs dodging up from the kitchen. She commented upon the sloping roof of unplastered boards stained in brown rings by the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... Wear their small roses ere a rose is seen; The building thrush watches old Job who stacks The bright-peeled osiers on the sunny fence, The pent sow grunts to hear him stumping by, And tries to push the bolt and scamper thence, But her ringed snout still keeps her to the sty. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... had equalled, if not excelled, the two ancient painters who had vied with each other in the representation of a curtain and a bunch of grapes; for he had exhibited the image of a certain object so like to nature, that the bare sight of it set a whole hog-sty in an uproar. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... motive, a leading idea, a justification, while he with knowledge crammed is fixed in his resolve to tell them no more than that there are milestones on the Dover Road, or that there are so many nails of so many shapes and so many colours in the pig-sty at the back of Coate Farm. They prefer 'their geraniums in the conservatory.' They refuse, in any case, to call a 'picture' that which is only a long-drawn sequence of statements. They are naturally inartistic, but they have the tradition of a long ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... bell had rung, Hendry occasionally crossed over to the farm of T'nowhead and sat on the pig-sty. If no one joined him he scratched the pig, and returned home gradually. Here what was almost a club held informal meetings, at which two or four, or even half a dozen assembled to debate, when there was any one to start them. The meetings were only memorable when Tammas Haggart ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie

... Homnium, And ply your iron pen, And rise up, Sir John Jervis, And shut me up that den; That sty for fattening lawyers in, On ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... serviceable fence, trespass upon the newly planted field or unmown meadows, getting such living as fortune places in their way. The barn may be without doors, the barnyard without a gate or bars, and in full view from every passer by. The sty and the house drain—in fact, every necessary out-building—is in plain sight to the public, on the sunny side of the house, or as near the front of it as is possible for circumstances to permit. The ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... their purpose in our lives and vanish, leaving no trace, like the snows of Venice. Benham was still not a year and a half from the meretricious delights of Mrs. Skelmersdale, and he looked at Prothero as a marble angel might look at a swine in its sty.... ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... over again! "Down by the brook! down by the brook!" and so the whole family looked on the beach, and in the orchard, and up and down the road, and all over the barn and the stable, and in the pig-sty. If you will believe me, it was not till after a two-hour's hunt that they found the little fellow, curled up in the long grass by the side of ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards

... hall told her governess and children of the dream, before family prayers. When these were over, nobody who was told the story having left the hall in the interval, she went into the dining-room and there was the pig. It was proved to have escaped from the sty after Mrs. Atlay got up. Here the dream is of the common grotesque type; millions of such things are dreamed. The event, the pig in the palace, is unusual, and the coincidence of pig and dream is still ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... it's a sad pity," was Broom's answer; "but what else can be expected of poor folks that's brought up to live as they do—like pigs in a sty?" ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... echoed, her voice shrill with scorn. "My hovel, you would say. Could you abide there—in such a sty?" ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... going to develop into a pig," he said, with relish,—"a lovable, contented, unambitious porcine, who is alike indifferent to the Tariff, the importance of Equal Suffrage and the market-price of hams, for all that he really cares about is to have his sty as comfortable as may be possible. That is exactly what I am going to develop into,—now, isn't it?" And John Charteris, sitting, as was his habitual fashion, with one foot tucked under him, laughed cheerily. ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... had turned it into a pigsty; but he had left off keeping pigs for some time. It was a clean place, for Peter did not let his pigs live in a dirty sty ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various

... England was a cipher, I did not mean to confine the observation to the mere individual now on that throne. The practice of Kings marrying only into the families of Kings, has been that of Europe for some centuries. Now, take any race of animals, confine them in idleness and inaction, whether in a sty, a stable, or a state-room, pamper them with high diet, gratify all their sexual appetites, immerse them in sensualities, nourish their passions, let every thing bend before them, and banish whatever might lead them to think, and in a few generations ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... getting in the complimentary thing here and there about a knight that was likely to advertise—no, I mean a knight that had influence; and he also had a neat gift of exaggeration, for in his time he had kept door for a pious hermit who lived in a sty and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of caricatures of the pig-faced lady, in a poke bonnet and large veil, with "A pig in a poke" written underneath the print. Another sketch represented Sir William Elliot's misadventure, and was entitled, "Beware the pig-sty!" ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... sleep by fits and starts. How could his men endure three weeks of this? He must keep them occupied, amused. . . . He thought of amateur theatricals. . . . Good God! how unsatisfying a supper was biscuit, after a long day's ride! Was this how the regular army habitually lived? . . . What a pig's-sty of a barracks! . . . Well, it would rest upon Government, if he buried his men in this inhospitable hole. He raised himself on his pillow and stared at the fire. Strange, to think that only a few hours ago he had slept in Looe, and let the hours strike ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the newsboy. For model and newsboy, having laid aside the masks of the day which so often in New York persons find it necessary to wear,—- the tragic mask, the comic mask, the callous, coarse, brutal mask, the mask of the human pack, the mask of the human sty,—model and newsboy reappeared at home with each other as nearly what in truth they were as the denials ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen

... level, or in view of nature, temperament is final. I see not, if one be once caught in this trap of so-called sciences, any escape for the man from the links of the chain of physical necessity. Given such an embryo, such a history must follow. On this platform one lives in a sty of sensualism, and would soon come to suicide. But it is impossible that the creative power should exclude itself. Into every intelligence there is a door which is never closed, through which the creator passes. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... heard all kinds of music, from the Spanish band to the Samoan tom-tom. "Some of the music," he said, "was so peaceful like, but the rest was not half so nice as the growin' pigs rubbin' against splinters in the sty back of the barnyard." He had surely been all over, and there was nothing more of a startling nature to see. He had watched them check babies at the children's building as if they were poodles or handbags, ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... Gentiles who is it that has the most children? Is it your man that's high up in the ranks of society, who has money enough to give them a good education, to feed and clothe 'em? or is it your poor man, whose children run over one another like little pigs in a sty, and he caring nothing for them, and they have rickety bones and are half starved and grow up to be idle and steal? I have noticed that a good man is apt to have good children, and a clever man is apt to have clever children, and a worthless man is apt ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... I, that ne'er have squealed in your sty, know all the swine therein? Who was he, then, an ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... soul in patience, Bobsey," I said. "With our barn, I am going to make a sty, and then we ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe

... must milk the Tidy cow, For fear that she go dry; And you must feed the little pigs That are within the sty; And you must mind the speckled hen, For fear she lay away; And you must reel the spool of yarn, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... place—stall, forestall, install, pedestal. STEORFAN, to die—starve, starvation, starveling. STICIAN, to stick—stake, stick, stickle, stickleback, sting, stitch, stock, stockade, stocking. STIGAN, to ascend—stair, staircase, stile, stirrup, sty. STRECCAN, to stretch—stretch, stretcher, straight, straighten, straightness, outstretch, overstretch. STYRAN, to steer—steer, steerage, steersman, stern (the hind part of a ship), astern. STYRIAN, to stir—stir, bestir. SUR, sour—sour, sourish, sourness, sorrel, surly, ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton

... stall full of parliament gingerbread (whereat Annie fell into convulsions of laughing), and Hal should be the first to stop it, and jump on its back, and ride out of the fair holding it by the ears; and then they should pop it into the sty unknown to Hannah Higgins, and all lie in wait to hear what would happen; and when it squealed, she would think it the baby crying; but there Susan burst out at the notion of any one thinking a child could scream like a pig, taking it as an affront to all babyhood; and Miss Fosbrook ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge

... "something very queer about it, but"—pushing back hair from hot brow—"no one is to worry about it. It will be better to-morrow; or if it really is going to be fever, we must just try to make the best of it." A sty in the eye is cataract, "but lots of blind people are very happy;" and a bilious attack is generally that mysterious, oft-recurring and interesting complaint "camp fever." Cheer up, no one is to be discouraged if the worst happens! ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan

... of its domestic life. Cressy and Poitiers carried the military fame of England throughout the world, and struck terror into her enemies; but at home dwelt turbulence, corruption, rapine, and misery. The barons quarrelled and fought among themselves. The clergy wallowed in a sty of corruption and debauchery. The laboring classes were sunk in ignorance and hopeless misery. It was the dark hour that precedes the first glimmer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... I ever saw," said Dawn. "He's a complete hog. He has one of these old noses, all blue, like the big plums that grew down near the pig-sty. I think he was grown near the pig-sty, too, by the style of him. It must have taken a good many cases of the best wine to get a nose just to that colour. Like a meerschaum pipe, it takes a power of colouring to get 'em to the right tinge. And his eyes hang out like ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... came a time when she went away and I was left alone with the girls. The moment the mistress's back was turned the head girl, who was about my own age, came up, pointed her finger at me, made a face and said solemnly, "A na-a-sty bo-o-y!" All the girls followed her in rotation making the same gesture and the same reproach upon my being a boy. It gave me a great scare. I believe I cried, and I know it was a long time before I could again face a girl without a strong ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... prime little situation just adjoining, or tight in front. This done, we wait until the palace is half-way up, and then we pay some tasty architect to run us up an ornamental mud hovel, right against it; or a Down-East or Dutch Pagoda, or a pig-sty, or an ingenious little bit of fancy work, either Esquimau, Kickapoo, or Hottentot. Of course we can't afford to take these structures down under a bonus of five hundred per cent upon the prime cost of our lot and plaster. Can we? I ask the question. I ask ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... cried John, "even the garden can't be clear of her—there, Master Henry, put down the basket and be off, she is no company for you. If you see her, and she asks for me, tell her I am gone to clean the pig-sty; she will not follow me there." So off ran John one way, ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... up into his face for some while. "You would do that! You would sell Marian to Umfraville—[Footnote: "Whose entrance blushing Satan did deny Lest hell be thought no better than a sty."] to a person who unites the continence of a partridge with the graces of a Berkshire hog—to that lean whoremonger, to that disease-rotted goat! Because he has the money! Why, Harry, what a ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... each day which dawns upon you is your last; then each succeeding day will come unexpected and delightful. I practise what I preach: come and take a look at me; you will find me contented, sleek, and plump, 'the fattest little pig in Epicurus' sty.'" And he impresses the same lesson on another friend, Bullatius, who was for some reason restless at home and sought relief in travel. "What ails you to scamper over Asia or voyage among the Isles of Greece? Sick men travel for health, ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... far from being very unlike the original. Rather too many chimneys by about half-a-dozen; and where did you find that steeple immediately over the window marked "Dairy?" The pigs are somewhat too sumptuously lodged in that elegant sty, and the hen-roost might accommodate a phoenix. But the features of the chief porch are very happily hit off—you have caught the very attic spirit of the roof—and some of the windows may be justly said to be staring likenesses.—Ivy-cottage ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... useful. "K(1)" contains members of every craft. If the pig-sty door is broken, a carpenter is forthcoming to mend it. Somebody's elbow goes through a pane of glass in the farm-kitchen: straightway a glazier materialises from the nearest platoon, and puts in another. The ancestral eight-day clock of the household ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... to such a result! The cause must have lain in the unaccommodating nature of the Mahometan institutions, in the bigotry of the Mahometan leaders, and in the defect of expansive views on the part of their legislator. He had not provided even for other climates than that of his own sweltering sty in the Hedjas, or for manners more polished, or for institutions more philosophic, than those of his own sun-baked Ishmaelites. "The construction of the political government of the Saracen empire"—says Mr Finlay, (p. 462-3)—"was imperfect, and shows that Mahomet had ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... inlaid with gold, silver, iron and lead of boundless worth. Deep in the bosom of Columbia are fountains of gas and oil, sufficient to light and heat our homes for a century to come. Within these healthful lines of latitude is room enough not only to house all the peoples of the earth, but to sty all the pigs, stable all the horses, and corral all the cattle ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... conform insensibly to communistic modes of thought. Paul Goehre, in his keen observations printed in 'Three Months in a German Workshop,' interpreted this tendency in all clearness. The architecture of a city tenement house is to blame for the silent but certain transformation of the home into a sty. Instead of accepting this condition as inevitable, like a law of nature, and accepting its consequences, all experience demands of those who believe in the monogamic family, that they make a united and persistent fight on the evil which ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards

... summoned, from mystic communion with her own perfection, from majestic labours in the Sistine Chapel of the Stars,—yea, she must put aside her gold-leaf and purples and leave unfinished the very panels of the throne of God,—that Circe shall have her palace, and her worshippers their gilded sty. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... there," said Lalage, who seemed to know that I was thinking of the trough, "after they had done cleaning out the sty, so that it wouldn't go rotten in the wet before we got ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham

... long a-watching," said the pilgrim; "and, in good troth, I became over curious to know the capacity of thy sty. What tidings ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... grease from skin of meat. Git fat light'ood, make fire, cut de skin off bacon meat, broil it over flame and let grease drip into a pan, den rub us all over for de rash. Couldn' wash us you see, 'cep' under de arms a little 'cause water musn' tech us. For a sty in de eye we nused to say: 'Sty! Lie!' You see dat call 'em a lie and dey go on off. 'Um got a sty! Sty! Lie!' When witches ride me I took a sifter. An old lady told me de nex' time dey come, 'you put de sifter in de bed.' I done dat and dey ain' bother me ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration

... stand facing this street, all very primitive and all elevated on palm-trunk poles as far as possible above the usual high-water mark of the river. Everything, from the little sheet-iron church to the pig-sty, is built on poles. Indeed, if there is anything in the theory of evolution, it will not be many generations before the inhabitants and domestic animals are born equipped ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange

... two synagogues in Lisbon, both are small; one is, however, tolerably well furnished, it has its reading desk, and in the middle there is a rather handsome chandelier; the other is little better than a sty, filthy to a degree, without ornament of any kind. The congregation of this last are thieves to a man; no Jew of the slightest respectability ever ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... them. War still continues, in spite of the seductions with which you have invested peace. Such improvements as are in progress take an opposite direction to that which you prescribe. Public sense and decency are only bent on cleansing your sty." ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... cabin of the negro-hunter. So far as external appearance went, the shanty was a slight improvement on the "Mills House," described in a previous chapter; but internally, it was hard to say whether it resembled more a pig-sty or a dog-kennel. The floor was of the bare earth, covered in patches with loose plank of various descriptions, and littered over with billets of "lightwood," unwashed cooking utensils, two or three cheap stools, a pine settee—made from the rough log ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore

... treat: But venom'd was the bread, and mix'd the bowl, With drugs of force to darken all the soul: Soon in the luscious feast themselves they lost, And drank oblivion of their native coast. Instant her circling wand the goddess waves, To hogs transforms them, and the sty receives. No more was seen the human form divine; Head, face, and members, bristle into swine: Still cursed with sense, their minds remain alone, And their own voice affrights them ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... Bacchus and Circe, and how they seek to trick unwary passengers into drinking of the fateful cup which shall transform them to the likeness of beasts and, driving all remembrance of home and friends from their imaginations, leave them content 'to roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.' Wherefore the Spirit is sent to guide the steps of those 'favoured of high Jove,' and save them from the wiles of the fleshly god. Announcing that he goes to assume 'the weeds and likeness of a swain,' so as to perform his charge unknown, the Spirit leaves the stage, which is ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... This place so charming, With sailor garments Hung out to dry; And each abode is Snug and commodious, With pigs melodious In their straw-built sty.' Father Prout. ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... worst desertion:—renegadoes, Even shuffling Southey, that incarnate lie,[jx] Would scarcely join again the "reformadoes,"[530] Whom he forsook to fill the Laureate's sty; And honest men from Iceland to Barbadoes, Whether in Caledon or Italy, Should not veer round with every breath, nor seize To pain, the moment when you ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... eat, and be despised, and die, Even as the beasts that perish—save that thou Hadst a more splendid trough and wider sty:— He! with a glory round his furrowed brow, Which emanated then, and dazzles now, In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,[418][10.H.] And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow[mj] No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, That ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... broken into a thousand pieces, and scattered in confusion around me. Some of the geese and other poultry, escaped from their confinement, were cackling in the cuddy; while a solitary pig, wandering from its sty in the forecastle, was ranging at large in undisturbed possession of the Brussels carpet that covered one of the cabins. Glad to retire from a scene so cheerless and affecting, and rendered more dismal by the smoke which was oozing up from ...
— The Loss of the Kent, East Indiaman, in the Bay of Biscay - Narrated in a Letter to a Friend • Duncan McGregor

... through the marshes, the madness of despair within him, he heeded not the deep ditches and the bog-pools. They were the pits of darkness, the sty-pools, which his soul must either cross, or in which he must perish. He tore up the hills into the mists and the rising storm, the thick clouds, full of rain, enveloping him, and matching the ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... housewife Morn With pearl and linen hangs each thorn; When happy bards, who can regale Their Muse with country air and ale, Ramble afield to brooks and bowers, To pick up sentiments and flowers; When dogs and squires from kennel fly, And hogs and farmers quit their sty; When my lord rises to the chase, And brawny chaplain takes his place. 10 These images, or bad, or good, If they are rightly understood, Sagacious readers must allow Proclaim us in the country now; For observations mostly rise From objects ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... said the diminutive man, "and you cannot get into the castle. Sperver has fastened the inside door, I don't know why; he does not usually do so; the outer gate is enough. Come in here and get warm. You won't find my little hole very inviting, though. It is nothing but a sty, but when a man is as cold as you are he is not apt ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... till their fair land became a sty Stygian with moral darkness. Heart and mind Debased—dark passions rose, and with red eye, Rushed to their revel; until Freedom, blind And maniac, sought the rest the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... fencing fill the gaps in the bank; a clothes-line, with some clothes on it, striped blue and red, and a smock-frock, is stretched between the trunks of some stunted willows; a very small haystack and pig-sty being seen at the back of the cottage beyond. An empty, two-wheeled, lumbering cart, drawn by a pair of horses with huge wooden collars, the driver sitting lazily in the sun, sideways on the leader, is going slowly home along the rough road, it being about country dinner-time. At the end ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin

... our corn, lettuce, onions, etc., and as I stood smarting on the back verandah, behold the three piglings issuing from the wood just opposite. Instantly I got together as many boys as I could - three, and got the pigs penned against the rampart of the sty, till the others joined; whereupon we formed a cordon, closed, captured the deserters, and dropped them, squeaking amain, into their strengthened barracks where, please God, ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... often do great mischief by eating the Indian corn when it is ripening; for besides what they devour, they spoil a vast deal by trampling the plants down with their clumsy feet. They will, when hard pressed by hunger, come close to the farmer's house and rob the pig-sty of its tenants. Many years ago, before the forest was cleared away in the neighbourhood of what is now a large town, but in those days consisted of only a few poor log-houses, a settler was much annoyed by the frequent ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill

... habit of leaving things undone to a science, but it is doubtful if the so-called genius differed largely from that which forms a prominent characteristic of the porcine mother, and enables her to enjoy her home and little ones with apparent indifference to the fact that outsiders denominate one a sty, and ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... Whoo-up! Blowed if I ain't got some other party's legs on!... Sloide more? Whadjer torking about! I'm sloidin' every way at once, I am!... Stroike out? I've struck sparks enough out of the back o'my 'ed, if that's all!... Git up? Ketch me! I'm a deal syfer settin' dayown, and I'll sty ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various

... such display, in this he has what he seeks. For when prayer languishes, no one will take anything from him, and no one will withstand him. But if he noticed that wished to practise this prayer, even if it were under a straw roof or in a pig-sty, he would indeed not endure it, but would fear such a pig-sty far more than all the high, big and beautiful churches, towers and bells in existence, if such prayer be not in them. It is indeed not a question of the places ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... and will be, it seems, Given up to intemperance, prone to extremes; The wish of his heart (it has always been such) Is, give me by all means of all things too much! In pleasures and honours, in meats, and in drinks, He craves for the most that his coveting thinks; To wallow in sensual Lucullus's sty, Or stand like the starving Stylites on high, To be free from all churches and worship alone, Or chain'd to the feet of a priest on a throne, To be rich as a Rothschild, and dozens beside, Or poor as St. Francis (in all ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... "Callous I feel my mouth become, in form "A crooked snout; and feel my brawny neck "Swell o'er my chest; and what but now the cup "Had grasp'd, that part does marks of feet imprint; "With all my fellows treated thus, so great "The medicine's potency, close was I shut "Within a sty: there I, Eurylochus "Alone unalter'd to a hog, beheld! "He only had the offer'd cup refus'd. "Which had he not avoided, he as one "The bristly herd had join'd; nor had our chief, "The great Ulysses, by his tale inform'd "To Circe come, avenger of our woe. "To him Cyllenius, messenger of peace ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... the villagers who had remained in town agreed that this house had been occupied by German officers and that in leaving they had carried out much loot. The Teuton taste has been chiefly for enamels and lingerie. The interior of the house looked more like a pig-sty than a human dwelling. The Germans had broken all locks and emptied the contents of all bureaus, closets, and desks upon the floor, the more easily to pick and choose what they wanted. The floors were covered ankle-deep ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood

... the maternal aunt in question had also been christened Joe—after a grandfather of our tribe (my tribe, not Black Joe's)—the news caused a sudden and unpleasant sensation. But cross-examination explained the mistake, and I retired to the rear of the pig-sty, as was my custom when things went wrong, with another ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... them opened a sty and a litter of pigs wandered into the village. The innkeeper and the barber came out, and humbly asked the men what they wanted; but they did not understand Flemish, and went into the houses to look for ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various

... timber, gettin' out early when none but the sun and the pair of you are yet up, I'll give you the little rifle you lovin'ly handled at my place the other day. But mind, it's your neck she may break at the first wall, for I've niver taken her over anything much higher than a pig sty.' ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... there appeared to be no chance for that in the scheme of things. For the boche had begun to squeal for mercy; the frightened swine was squirting life-blood as he rushed headlong for the home sty across the Rhine; his death-stench sickened ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... torment of their lives, for some of the devils said to haunt Vailima seemed to have entered into them, and no sty could be made strong enough to ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... with scatter'd grain supply The restless wand'ring tenants of the STY; From oak to oak they run with eager haste, And wrangling share the first delicious taste Of fallen ACORNS; yet but thinly found Till the strong gale have shook them to the ground. It comes; and roaring woods obedient wave: Their home well pleas'd ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... will not serve their turn, but they must have their sins too, take them, Devil; if Heaven will not satisfy them, take them, Hell; devour them, burn them, Hell!" "Tell the hogs of this world what a hog-sty is prepared for them, even such an one as a God hath prepared to put the devil ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... bridge there was a pigsty with one trough full of corn and another full of water. There were two sows in the sty and they were fighting each other and tearing at each other and paying no attention whatever to all the good food in ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore

... down, your honor? And when shall I get the mud off my uniform? and what will the duke say in the morning if he comes round and sees me look like a hog that has been rowling in his sty?" ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand": "'We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns, We sieve mine-meshes under the hills, And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills, To relieve, O God, what manner of ills? — The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die; And so do we, and the world's a sty; Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry? "Swinehood hath no remedy" Say many men, and hasten by, Clamping the nose and blinking the eye. But who said once, in the lordly tone, "Man shall not live by bread alone ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... "Surely you are my friend, Bossy." But the fairy said, "Come on, little girl, there are many more friends to see." So Ethel visited all the friendly animals,—the sheep with their woolly coats, the pigs in their sty, the chickens, the ducks and the geese in the barnyard, the pigeons in their home on the roof, the great clever collie in his kennel; and she found that she owed something to ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie

... indifference. Then bursting into a laugh, "Girls," she said, "I've had an offer too, and mamma would have had me accept it, but it didn't suit my ideas. The man himself is well enough, I don't really dislike him; but such a name! Hogg! only think of it! I told mamma that I didn't want to live in a sty, if it was ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley

... to sell her now, Tom?" cried cruel old Madge, popping her head round the door of the pig-sty one day, when Tom was feeding ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... "Jude" "a tragedy of unfulfilled aim" as the author calls it; so is "Tess"; but it fills the reader with a kind of sullen rage to be an eye-witness of the foul and brutal: he is asked to see a drama develop beside a pig-sty. It is therefore, intensely unesthetic which, if true, is a word of condemnation for any work of art. It is deficient in poetry, in the broad sense; that, rather than frankness of treatment, is the ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... a favorite with Aunt Church, but you are nothing at all to me; I can just twist her round my fingers. It's a fine time I mean to have. I won't worry you at all when you are having your commotion in the yard. For the matter of that, I'll creep into the pig-sty with Brownie, and we can look ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... Mudfog—more than in Ratcliff Highway and Limehouse put together. The public buildings, too, are very imposing. We consider the town-hall one of the finest specimens of shed architecture, extant: it is a combination of the pig-sty and tea-garden-box orders; and the simplicity of its design is of surpassing beauty. The idea of placing a large window on one side of the door, and a small one on the other, is particularly happy. There is a fine old Doric beauty, too, about the padlock and scraper, which is strictly in keeping ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... of a system which had borne good fruit. These literary guilds befitted and denoted a people which was alive, a people which had neither sunk to sleep in the lap of material prosperity, nor abased itself in the sty of ignorance and political servitude. The spirit of liberty pervaded these rude but not illiterate assemblies, and her fair proportions were distinctly visible, even through the somewhat grotesque garb ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley



Words linked to "Sty" :   pen, stye, eye infection, hordeolum, pigsty, infection



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