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Foul   /faʊl/   Listen
Foul

adjective
(compar. fouler; superl. foulest)
1.
Highly offensive; arousing aversion or disgust.  Synonyms: disgustful, disgusting, distasteful, loathly, loathsome, repellant, repellent, repelling, revolting, skanky, wicked, yucky.  "Distasteful language" , "A loathsome disease" , "The idea of eating meat is repellent to me" , "Revolting food" , "A wicked stench"
2.
Offensively malodorous.  Synonyms: fetid, foetid, foul-smelling, funky, ill-scented, noisome, smelly, stinking.  "The kitchen smelled really funky"
3.
Violating accepted standards or rules.  Synonyms: cheating, dirty, unsporting, unsportsmanlike.  "Used foul means to gain power" , "A nasty unsporting serve" , "Fined for unsportsmanlike behavior"
4.
(of a baseball) not hit between the foul lines.
5.
(of a manuscript) defaced with changes.  Synonyms: dirty, marked-up.
6.
Characterized by obscenity.  Synonyms: cruddy, filthy, nasty, smutty.  "Foul language" , "Smutty jokes"
7.
Disgustingly dirty; filled or smeared with offensive matter.  Synonyms: filthy, nasty.  "A foul pond" , "A nasty pigsty of a room"
8.
Especially of a ship's lines etc.  Synonyms: afoul, fouled.  "A foul anchor"



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"Foul" Quotes from Famous Books



... very unhappy on the occasion. He had at last been reasoned into believing that the horse had been made the victim of foul play; but he persisted in saying that there was no conclusive evidence against Tifto. The matter was argued with him. Tifto had laid bets against the horse; Tifto had been hand-and-glove with Green; ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... to persuade a Chinaman or an Indian or a Kanaka to desert his church or a fellow-American to desert his party. The man who deserts to them is all that is high and pure and beautiful—apparently; the man who deserts from them is all that is foul and despicable. This ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... weather," said Dan. "Why, you an' me could set thet trawl! They've only gone out jest far 'nough so's not to foul our cable. They ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... sanity. He accuses Maimonides of not being quite honest with himself. Maimonides, he intimates, did not choose this position of his own free will—a position scientifically quite untenable—he was forced to it by theological exigencies.[346] He felt that he must vindicate, by fair means or foul, God's knowledge of particulars. And so Gersonides proceeds to demolish Maimonides's position by ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... that will be about all for you, Ned," laughed Walter. "At least, Chunky didn't foul the dinner table ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin

... surprising in this, as every one made a point of carrying his gold about him, no matter how heavy it might happen to be. One or two dead bodies had been found floating in the river, which circumstance was looked upon as indicative of foul play having taken place, as it was considered that the poorest of the gold-finders carried fully a sufficient weight of gold about them to cause their bodies to sink to the bottom of the stream. Open attempts at robbery were rare; it was in the stealthy ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks

... our first light, first teaching, and first practices, we have always put ourselves close beside the man irrespective of whether his condition is fair or foul; whether his surroundings are peaceful or perilous; whether his prospects are promising or threatening. As a people we have felt that to be of true service to others we must be close enough to them to lift part of their load and thus carry out that grand injunction of the Apostle Paul, "Bear ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... balanced by the assassination of the great Duke of Guise, the ablest general and leader of the Catholics. So when all hope had vanished of exterminating the Huguenots in open warfare, a deceitful peace was made; and their leaders were decoyed to Paris, in order to accomplish, in one foul sweep, by wholesale murder, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... for awhile, it was in the middle of May, on the sixteenth day, I think, as well as my poor wooden calendar would reckon, for I marked all upon, the post still; I say, it was on the sixteenth of May that it blew a great storm of wind all day, with a great deal of lightning and thunder, and a very foul night was after it: I know not what was the particular occasion of it; but as I was reading in the Bible, and taken up with serious thoughts about my present condition, I was surprised with the noise of a gun, as ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... cytee of Elyople, [Footnote: Heliopolis.] that is to seyne, the cytee of the sonne. In that cytee there is a temple made round, aftre the schappe of the temple of Jerusalem. The prestes of that temple han alle here wrytinges, undre the date of the foul that is clept Fenix: and there is non but on in alle the world. And he comethe to brenne him self upon the awtere of the temple, at the ende of 5 hundred zeer: for so longe he lyvethe. And at the 500 zeers ende, the prestes arrayen ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... and his consort fell foul of an English sloop of war, the Greyhound, whereby they were so roughly handled that Low was glad enough to slip away, leaving his consort and her crew behind him, as a sop to the powers of law and order. And lucky for them if no worse fate awaited them than to walk ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle

... love quite beyond the imagination of Rufus Griswold to conceive of, even. His furtive eye was on the watch, his jealous heart was filled with foul surmises and he added a new poison to the old, with which he was working, drop by drop, upon the good name ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... floated sightless, nor did know That I had ears until I heard the cry As of a mighty man in agony: "How long, Lord, shall I lie thus foul and slow? The arrows of thy lightning through me go, And sting and torture me—yet here I lie A shapeless mass that scarce can mould a sigh!" The darkness thinned; I saw a thing below Like sheeted corpse, a knot at ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald

... aquatics is the making of the pond. It is possible to grow water-lilies in tubs and half barrels; but this does not provide sufficient room, and the plant-food is likely soon to be exhausted and the plants to fail. The small quantity of water is likely also to become foul. ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... nothin'," said the Trainer; and his voice was quite different from his usual rough tone. Then a sudden suspicion took possession of him. Faust's readiness to lay long odds against the mare had haunted him like a foolish nightmare. Had there been foul play? The mare couldn't have taken a cold—they had been so careful of her; there had been no rain for ten days; she hadn't got wet. No, it couldn't be cold. But she undoubtedly had fever. A sickening conviction came that it was the ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... followed in a few months by that of the royalists, who foolishly flattered themselves with the notion of doing great things by feeble or foul means. They counted on all the discontented, from whatever cause, and tried to rouse, in their turn, the class of people who had been following the others. But these new chiefs acted as if they thought society had nothing ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... me foul trick at La Chine. Could he have found the paper of restoration, and kept it concealed, until all ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish

... vomiting as if he had taken an emetic. He said to White; "I'll return as soon as I take my wife home," but he never came back. As Boss and the madam rode off, White came galloping back, and said to Brooks, our overseer: "If I am shot down on foul play would you speak of it?" Brooks replied: "No, I don't care to interfere—I don't wish to have anything to do with it." White was bloodthirsty, and came back at intervals during the entire night, where we were working, to see if he could find Boss. It is quite probable that White ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes

... bore arms. Mingled with this sentiment is the thought of all the trouble to come from the revival of the feud, but his vexation does not spring from mere self-interest. Fromondin his son is also angry with Thibaut his cousin; Thibaut ought to be flayed alive for his foul stroke. But while Fromondin is thinking of the shame of the murder which will be laid to the account of his father's house, Fromont's thought is more generous, a thought of respect and regret for his enemy. The tragedy of the feud continues after this; ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... colored people. Their prejudices were very strong; but the spread of intelligence and religion in the community has wrought a great change in them. Prejudice is fast being uprooted; indeed, they do not appear like the same people that they were. In a short time I hope the foul spirit will depart entirely. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... Constipation accompanied by a feverish condition precedes the diarrhoea; colicky pains are sometimes manifested; the diarrhoea is usually accompanied by depression, falling off in appetite and weakness. At first the intestinal discharges are not very foul smelling; later the odor is very disagreeable. The faeces may be made up largely of undigested, decomposed milk that adheres to the tail and hind parts. If the diarrhoea is severe, the animal refuses to suckle or drink from the pail, ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... the nonce! and will put more strength to an iron crow at a piece of great ordnance in training of a cannon, or culvining with the direction of the experimented master Gunner, then two or three of the forenamed surfeited sailors. And in distress of wind-grown sea and foul winter's weather, for flying forward to their labour, for pulling in a top-sail or a sprit-sail, or shaking off a bonnet in a dark night! for wet or cold cannot make them shrink nor stain, that the North ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... spaceman paused and glared at the men in front of him. "Ever since that space-crawling cadet pulled a fast one on me there's been talk about voting for another leader!" He spat the word as if it had left a foul taste in his mouth. "Well, get this. There'll be no voting! I'm the boss of this outfit! Any man who thinks he can take over my job," Coxine's voice dropped to a deadly ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... we think that the dead woman knew of the existence of these papers is simply this. It appears that she came out from England with Whyte as his mistress, and after staying some time in Sydney came on to Melbourne. How she came into such a foul and squalid den as that she died in, we are unable to say, unless, seeing that she was given to drink, she was picked up drunk by some Samaritan of the slums, and carried to Mrs. Rawlins' humble abode. Whyte visited her there frequently, but appears to have made ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume

... says he, 'for not looking after your Army better. There was mutiny in the midst, and you didn't know—you damned engine-driving, plate-laying, missionary's-pass-hunting hound!' He sat upon a rock and called me every foul name he could lay tongue to. I was too heart-sick to care, though it was all his foolishness that brought ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... endeavouring to get up a pair of mustachios, had seen the fight, and spoke in the most scientific manner about the battle and the condition of the men. It was he who had driven the Butcher on to the ground in his drag and passed the whole of the previous night with him. Had there not been foul play he must have won it. All the old files of the Ring were in it; and Tandyman wouldn't pay; no, dammy, he wouldn't pay. It was but a year since the young Cornet, now so knowing a hand in Cribb's parlour, had a still lingering ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... crafty. He was tall, and strongly built—the kind of man who impresses you at first sight as accustomed to sudden effort of mind and body; yet he cringed under my stare, even as I added, "Yes, I'll feed you." I had noticed a blue foul ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... cannot even report to another person,—by his attitude, his look, his voice,—when he insults, when he attacks as an enemy, when he smites with his fist, when he strikes a blow on the face. These rouse a man; these make a man beside himself who is unused to such foul abuse." ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... he was so noble as to give up his life to avenge his father's most foul murder. Not because he was a chivalrous King Arthur, to protect Ophelia's womanly pride from the jeers of a coarse court by openly declaring that he had loved her when he hadn't. Not for any of Shakespeare's reasons for painting him a hero. But for two much ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... relief in the temporary oblivion of his own misery, with the pittance which, divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendour. If Temperance Societies would suggest an antidote against hunger, filth, and foul air, or could establish dispensaries for the gratuitous distribution of bottles of Lethe-water, gin-palaces would be numbered among the things ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... its skilful fangs about the heart, while it paints the cheek with the very hue of health. Here is undying remorse in the breast of one who has wronged the widow and the fatherless; there the suffering being the victim of foul slander; here is imbecility, there smothered revenge. The bride and the belle, both so seemingly blessed, have each their sacred ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... as if this resemblance was an after-thought of Lofthouse's, for he dismissed the matter from his mind till prayers, when it 'discomposed his devotions'. He then mentioned the affair to his wife, who inferred that her sister had met with foul play. On April 23, that is the day after the vision, he went to Selby, where Harrison denied all knowledge of Mrs. Barwick. On April 24, Lofthouse made a deposition to this effect before the mayor of York, but, in his published statement of that date, he only avers that 'hearing ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang

... altogether fatal to matrimonial prospects if accidentally disturbed. So the piazza and the old man furnished him with a means of killing time that was "devilish dull," and at the same time with a certainty of being kept in a place where he could not possibly "run foul of anything" or do ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... Patrick angrily, 'it is to save an ancient ally from the tyranny of our foulest foe. It is the only place where a Scotsman can seek his fortune with honour, and without staining his soul with foul deeds. Bring our King home, and every sword shall be ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... down the inclined gallery. Water splashed upon his slickers and trickled about his feet; the tunnel was narrow and the air was foul. Here and there a smoky light burned among the props lining the walls, and the dim illumination touched the beams that crossed the roof, but the gaps between the spots were dark. The timbers were numerous, and where one could see a short distance, ran on into the gloom ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... so prejudiced the community against him that there is scarcely a man who doesn't believe him guilty. If this matter ever comes to trial how can we pick an unprejudiced jury? Added to this foul injustice you have branded this young man's wife with every stigma that can be put on womanhood. You have hinted that she is the mysterious female who visited Underwood on the night of the shooting and openly suggested that she is the cause of ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... our girdles—the muskets as well as cutlasses had been lost among the loose earth at the bottom of the chasm. Subsequent events proved that, had we fired, we should have sorely repented it, but luckily a half suspicion of foul play had by this time arisen in my mind, and we forbore to let the savages know of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... living from this inhospitable region. The boat channels which threaded the ooze were choked with weed and covered with green slime from long disuse, the little stone quays were thick with moss, the rotting planks of a broken fishing boat were foul with the encrustations of long years, the stone cottages by the roadside seemed deserted. Here and there the marshes had encroached upon the far side of the road, creeping half a mile or more farther inland, ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... ought. I only wish I could meet Preston, and horsewhip him within an inch of his life. I wish I'd the doctoring of these slanderous gossips. I'd make their tongues lie still for a while. My little girl! What harm has she done them all, that they should go and foul her fair name.' ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... Anxiety, corrosive Care, The tear of Woe, the gloom of sad Despair, And deepen'd Anguish generous bosoms rend;— Whilst patriot souls their country's fate lament; Whilst mad with rage demoniac, foul intent, 5 Embattled legions Despots vainly send To arrest the immortal mind's expanding ray Of everlasting Truth;—I other climes Where dawns, with hope serene, a brighter day Than e'er saw Albion in her happiest times, 10 With mental eye exulting now explore, And soon with kindred minds shall ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Mr. Quest," he said, "but Fate has been too strong. Remember this, though. It is quite true that the cunning of Hartoo may have made it possible for him to have stolen the skeleton and to have brought it back to its hiding-place, but it was jealousy—cruel, brutal, foul jealousy which smeared the walls of that hut with kerosene and set a light to it. The work of a lifetime, my dreams of scientific immortality, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... embittered, in the same spirit which led him to find more heroism in a marauding Viking or in one of Frederick the Great's generals than in Washington, or Lincoln, or Grant, and which caused him to see in the American civil war only the burning out of a foul chimney, he, with the petulance natural to a dyspeptic eunuch, railed at Darwin as ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... pocketing the profit. To outwit such practices the company not only printed their name on the dials of their watches but they carefully printed the exact price on the boxes in which they were packed. You would have thought this would have forever put at an end any foul play, wouldn't you? But even these precautions were circumvented by sharpers who advertised their wretched wares as marked-down Ingersolls. Thus the company was compelled to fight inch by ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... abundantly and vigorously during the following years. The 'Saturday Review,' like the old 'Edinburgh,' was proud beyond all things of its independence. It professed a special antipathy to popular humbugs of every kind, and was by no means backward in falling foul of all its contemporaries for their various concessions ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... of the severities of the Old Testament Theocracy, in its wars of extermination against the Canaanites and Phoenicians, is to be found in a careful study of the foul and cruel types of heathenism which those nations carried with them wherever their colonies extended. A religion which enjoined universal prostitution, and led thus to sodomy and the burning of young children in the fires of Moloch, far exceeded the worst heathenism of Africa or ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... lift up your voices like so many trumpets against this enormity. See there! and in the face of persecution, poverty, imprisonment, and (if needs be) even death itself, bear your faithful testimony, and cease not until this foul stain be wiped away from your national escutcheon. Dr. S——, to-morrow morning let this be your text,—'Where is Abel, thy brother?' Dr. II——, let your discourse be founded on Exod. xxi. 16: 'And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... station at pleasure; that under pretence of uncommon ardour to pursue the enemy, he may waste his time in endless preparations for expedition; that he may loiter in the port to careen his ship; that before it is foul he may bring it back again, and employ the crew in the same operation; and that our merchants may be taken at the mouth of the harbours in which our ships of war ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson

... sufficient proof of their spurious birth; and that the duke of Glocester alone, of all her sons, appeared by his features and countenance to be the true offspring of the duke of York. Nothing can be imagined more impudent than this assertion, which threw so foul an imputation on his own mother, a princess of irreproachable virtue, and then alive; yet the place chosen for first promulgating it was the pulpit, before a large congregation, and in the protector's presence. Dr. Shaw was appointed to preach in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... you may say, in all your experiments, it appears to us the result is a question of degree. Exactly, a question of degree, as purity of air is, but who chooses the foul when he can live in the pure? As with flowers in their unassuming simplicity up to such elegance of form, colour and fragrance, that we stand amazed before them! As with man, from the worse than bestial state to which intemperance and crime have brought ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... the students that Merwell and Dave had had a fight and the tall boy had gotten the worse of it. To this Dave said nothing, but Merwell explained to his friends that Porter had hit him foul, taking him completely ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer

... foul oath and sat up on the couch. "That," he muttered, "is a fine thing to wake up to." He focused his eyes, with only slight difficulty, on his watch. The time ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... dreary den, Are both rank and foul to see? Hidden from the glorious sun, That teems the fair earth's canopie: Ever must our evenings lone Be spent on the ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... sexes Daudet was above all things truthful; his veracity is inexorable. He shows how man is selfish in love and woman also, and how the egotism of the one is not as the egotism of the other. He shows how Fanny Legrand slangs her lover with the foul language of the gutter whence she sprang, and how Jean when he strikes back, refrains from foul blows. He shows how Jean, weak of will as he was, gets rid of the millstone about his neck, only because of the weariness of the woman to whom he has bound himself. He shows ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... example. Touched by thine, The extortioner's hard hand foregoes the gold Wrung from the o'er-worn poor. The perjurer, Whose tongue was lithe, e'en now, and voluble Against his neighbour's life, and he who laughed And leaped for joy to see a spotless fame Blasted before his own foul calumnies, Are smit with deadly silence. He, who sold His conscience to preserve a worthless life, Even while he hugs himself on his escape, Trembles, as, doubly terrible, at length, Thy steps o'ertake him, and there is no time For parley—nor ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... bad day for Spain when Philip allowed the "Holy Office" to throw Thomas Seeley, the Bristol merchant, into a dungeon for knocking down a Spaniard who had uttered foul slanders against the Virgin Monarch of England. Philip did not heed the petition of the patriot's wife, of which he must have been cognisant. Elizabeth refused the commission Dorothy Seeley petitioned for, but, like a sensible ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... which wrought conviction in the minds of men less wary than Mr. Tescheron, who might, indeed, have renounced all his worldly possessions had he remained more than six weeks under its spell to escape the horrors of an entanglement in the meshes of foul crime across the river. I see now how it must have affected him—this fireplace talk. Steam heat is the only thing to preserve a man's common sense, and if he be shy of that desirable faculty he should ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... to those who are bad, "because you have hitherto indulged yourself with all pleasures within your reach, because you have never worked steadily or submitted yourself to restraint, because you have been a drunkard, and a gambler, and have lived in foul company, therefore now,—now that I have got a hold of you and can manipulate you in reference to your repentance and future conduct,—I will require from you a mode of life that, in its general attractions, shall be about ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope

... on securing possession of the islands, and would not venture on any enterprise against the coast of Asia. Perhaps it was because he still feared to risk another engagement on the sea, that the Persian admiral found a pretext for laying up his ships. He declared that they were so foul with weeds and barnacles that, as a prelude to any further operations, they must be beached and cleaned. They were therefore hauled ashore under the headland, and a stockade was erected round them, the fleet thus becoming a fortified camp ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... you to send for me or ask anything, after the foul injustice with which you have treated me as ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... Many of the unwounded became so weak from hunger and thirst that they, too, were forced to lie upon the floor. Ned had reserves of strength that came to his aid. He leaned against the wall and breathed the foul air of the old church, which was breathed over and over again by ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler

... still unresolved, the alternate resentment at his apparent indifference and attraction of his strong and somewhat mysterious personality still vitally present to her. Later she had driven out to Pozzuoli. But neither stone-throwing urchins, foul and disease-stricken beggars, the pale sulphur plains and subterranean rumblings of the Solfaterra, nor stirring of nether fires therein resident by a lanky, wild-eyed lad—clothed in leathern jerkin and hairy, goatskin leggings—with the help of a birch broom and a few ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... young morn when the game broke up. The outside air was clear as washed gold; within it was foul and fetid as a drunkard's breath. Men with pinched and pallid faces came out and inhaled the breeze, which was buoyant as champagne. Beneath the perfect blue of the spring sky the river seemed a shimmer of violet, and the banks dipped down with ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... you at Twickenham plan the future wood, Or turn the volumes of the wise and good, Our senate meets; at parties, parties bawl, And pamphlets stun the streets, and load the stall; So rushing tides bring things obscene to light, Foul wrecks emerge, and dead dogs swim in sight; The civil torrent foams, the tumult reigns, And Codrus' prose works up, and Lico's strains. Lo! what from cellars rise, what rush from high, Where speculation roosted ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... brave, my faithful Nettuno!" he said. "What are all these to me, without thee! Thou alone lovedst me—thou alone hast passed with me through fair and foul—through good and evil, without change, or wish for another master! When the pretended friend has been false, thou hast remained faithful! When others were sycophants thou wert never ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... shining laurels in the shrubbery were the only things in nature that seemed no worse for the perpetual downpour. The gravel drives were spongy and sloppy. There was no hunting, or Vixen would have been riding her pony through rain and foul weather, and would have been comparatively independent of the elements. But to be at home all day, watching the rain, and thinking what a horrid, ungrateful young man Rorie was! ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... disorderly streets of that dingy place, and her way, which she was not quite sure of, took her through some of the worst of them. They were filled with loud-laughing uncleanly women, and skulking hang-dog- looking men, and the grime-clogged atmosphere was heavy with foul odours; but she noticed nothing of this. The golden glow the sun made in his efforts to shine through the clouds of smoke might have been a visible expression of her own ecstatic feeling, and she would have thought so at any other time, but ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand

... sheep" and at times whole tribes have been almost swept away. Many of the Cherokees tried to ward off the disease by eating the flesh of the buzzard, which they believe to enjoy entire immunity from sickness, owing to its foul smell, which keeps the disease ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... the head of King Capet, We called for the blood of his wife; Undaunted she came to the scaffold, And bared her fair neck to the knife. As she felt the foul fingers that touch'd her, She shrunk, but she deigned not to speak: She look'd with a royal disdain, And died with a blush ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the caverns of leafy shade came the gleam and flicker of many-colored plumage. The cormorant, the pelican, the heron, floated on the water, or stalked along its pebbly brink. Among the sedges, the alligator, foul from his native mud, outstretched his hideous length, or, sluggish and sullen, drifted past the boat, his grim head level with the surface, and each scale, each folding of his horny hide, distinctly visible, as, with the slow ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... virtue of his holy office, the good man thus accosted him: 'You that were once an angel of light, ain't you ashamed to appear in the shape of a dirty swine?' This expostulation was too much for the foul fiend, who at once jumped over the railing of the bridge into the river, and was no ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous

... an' I hear 'em callin' now when I'm awake. I've breathed indoor air long enough. It's layin' heavy on my lungs, an' I want to put in its place air that's swep' clean across from the Pacific Ocean an' that ain't hit not bin' foul on the way." ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... which we have undertaken is not a light and trivial nature. It is, on the contrary, one of the utmost magnitude and importance. To remove the foul blot which now stains our country, to break the chains with which so many of our degraded fellow creatures are fettered, and to qualify them for the station for which a beneficent Creator designed them, are labours requiring the vigorous endeavours ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... On once a flock-bed, but repair'd with straw, With tape-ty'd curtains, never meant to draw, The George and Garter dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow, strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies—alas! how chang'd from him That life of pleasure, and that foul of whim! Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove, The bow'r of wanton Shrewsbury[3] and love; Or just as gay in council, in a ring Of mimick'd statesmen and their merry king. No wit to flatter left of all his store! No fool to laugh at, which he valued ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... attended with the effect desired. They fumigated the Church with burnt wool and feathers instead of incense, put foul water into the holy-water basins, and celebrated a parody on the Church-service, the mock Abbot officiating at the altar; they sung ludicrous and indecent parodies, to the tunes of church hymns; they violated whatever vestments or vessels belonging to the Abbey they could lay their hands upon; and, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... for hundreds of others in like trouble? Again, she ponders, and now a crimson hue mounts to her temples—her fatal beauty! Away with the thought—it is shame to dwell upon it—would she wrong by so foul a suspicion the Lord's anointed? She wearies herself with surmises, and all in vain. But there is the command, and she must be gone. The king's will is absolute. Whatever that summons imports, "dumb ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... for commerce that it attracted a colony of Phoenician traders at a very remote period. When its art declined, it remained celebrated for its wealth and its {134} extreme licentiousness. The patron deity of the Corinthians was Aphrodite, who was no other than the foul Phoenician Astarte. Her temple on the rock of the Acrocorinthus dominated the city below, and from it there came a stream of impure, influences "to turn men ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan

... was an imp. He turned the keep doors out of dortoirs while we had him. He sang foul songs, learned in the Barons' camps—poor fool; he set the hounds fighting in hall; he lit the rushes to drive out, as he said, the fleas; he drew his dagger on Jehan, who threw him down the stairway for it; and he rode his horse through crops and among sheep. But when we had beaten him, ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... sharp jags Cut brutally into a sky Of leaden heaviness, and crags Of houses lift their masonry Ugly and foul, and chimneys lie And snort, outlined against the gray Of lowhung cloud. I hear the sigh The goaded city gives, not day Nor night can ease her heart, her ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... pudding, and sausages; and three-and-thirty people sitting round it, eating and drinking; and savory bottles of gin, and whiskey, and brandy, and rum, in the bar hard by; and seven-and-twenty out of the eight-and-twenty men, in foul linen, with yellow streams from half-chewed tobacco trickling down their chins. Perhaps the best time for you to take a peep would be the present: eleven o'clock in the forenoon: when the barber is at his ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... all, for the sloop, being ahead, made the signal to us for seeing a sail, and afterwards another, and a third, by which we understood she saw three sail; whereupon we made more sail to come up with her, but on a sudden were gotten among some rocks, falling foul upon them in such a manner as frighted us all very heartily; for having, it seems, but just water enough, as it were to an inch, our rudder struck upon the top of a rock, which gave us a terrible shock, and split a great piece off ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe

... frank Stout Scottish legs, men watched thee snarl and scowl, And boys responsive with reverberate howl Shrilled, hearing how to thee the springtime stank And as thine own soul all the world smelt rank And as thine own thoughts Liberty seemed foul. Now, for all ill thoughts nursed and ill words given Not all condemned, not utterly forgiven, Son of the storm and darkness, pass in peace. Peace upon earth thou knewest not: now, being dead, Rest, with nor ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... example, in 1895, baled hay from Kansas or that vicinity examined at the Missouri Agricultural College was found to contain fifteen species of weeds. Others from the west were examined in Michigan and found to contain much foul stuff. Some are carried from farm to farm by wagons, sleighs, or threshing machines; or they are spread by plows, cultivators, and harrows. A few are introduced to grow for ornament or food, and afterwards spread as weeds. A number have been shipped to distant ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal

... Joe. "Of course, to counteract this we must force more air down to you the deeper you go, so that the pressure inside of you may be a little more than the pressure outside, in order to force the foul air out of the dress through the escape-valve; and what between the one an' the other your sensations are peculiar, you may be sure.—But come, young man, don't be alarmed. We'll not send you down very deep at first. If some divers go down as deep as twenty-five fathoms, ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... But you see after the men had made a thorough search and could not find the box, Tom Fletcher became much excited. He swore like a trooper, declared that there had been foul play, and hinted that the parson had something to do with it. You know that the Fletchers have been waiting a long time for Billy to die in order to get ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... will take my advice, nothing,—for two or three weeks. He cannot sail for India before then, and do his best. Preserve an offended silence. Then obtain an interview with him by fair means, or, if not, by foul." ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... had the ace, king, queen, and eight of diamonds, the ace of spades, and one, just one little heart, and she—may the foul fiend fly away with her,—she couldn't make ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov

... and soundly. He had not stirred. His breathing was unnaturally heavy, Jen thought, but, no suspicion of foul play came to her mind yet. Why should it? She gave herself up to a sweet and simple sense of pride in the deed she had done for him, disturbed but slightly by the chances of discovery, and the remembrance of the match that showed her face at Archangel's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... it clouded over; the wind mounted to a gale, and the sea rose until the craft was wallowing and rolling frightfully. Nearly everyone aboard was sick; the air became foul and oppressive. For twenty-four hours I did not leave my post in the conning tower, as both Olson and Bradley were sick. Finally I found that I must get a little rest, and so I looked about for some one to relieve me. Benson volunteered. He had not been ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... such it was pretty clear she must be considered to be. And of course all interests in the little provincial city were for many days to come absorbed in the terrible interest belonging to the investigation of the foul ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... said. "What a strange sight! One can't see one's hand before one's face. Wind of the morning! up with you, you sluggard, and drive the foul Mists away." ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... fourescore and sixe of which number besides those that be named, we haue taken, eaten, & haue the pictures as they were there drawne with the names of the inhabitaunts of seuerall strange sortes of water foule eight, and seuenteene kindes more of land foul, although wee haue seen and eaten of many more, which for want of leasure there for the purpose coulde not bee pictured: and after wee are better furnished and stored vpon further discouery, with their strange beastes, fishe, trees, plants, and hearbes, ...
— A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land Of Virginia • Thomas Hariot

... like water, and was hauled out of one scrape only to fall into another. Then came the time of my cousin old Justin Stanislaws' death. It happened under strange circumstances; there was suggestion of foul play. Young Marcel was in the house at the time—had arrived secretly. I know that certain jewels disappeared mysteriously—couldn't be found afterward—jewels that Stanislaws always kept near him because of certain associations. Not only did they disappear, ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... was white, and the Lord called him Gorgio. Then he adapted himself to that name, and adorned himself with jewelry and fine clothes, and went gorgeous. And the other man was black and the Lord called him Nigger, and he lounged away [nikker, to lounge, loiter; an attempted pun], so idle and foul; and he is always lounging till now in the sunshine, and he is too lazy [kalo-kalo, black-black, or lazy-lazy, that is, too black or too lazy] to work unless you compel and punish him. And the third man was ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... person had once made up his mind to become a highwayman, his best policy was to go the whole hog, fearing nothing, but making everybody afraid of him; that people never thought of resisting a savage-faced, foul-mouthed highwayman, and if he were taken, were afraid to bear witness against him, lest he should get off and cut their throats some time or other upon the roads; whereas people would resist being robbed by a sneaking, pale-visaged rascal, and would ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... he explained, "I know Cronin's reputation, for I was a police reporter. He is a sterling man. There's foul work here which extends beyond your father's case. But we are wasting time. Why don't you introduce me to your physician? Just tell him about Cronin, and that you have ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... amongst various honourable and respectable gentlemen concerning what had been disseminated by our enemies, the result of which was, that he declared himself convinced of the utter groundlessness of the foul report; and he replied to the heads of the Christians in the city that henceforth they ought to treat us with justice and equity; and he then commanded me that I should take upon myself to see that my people should behave themselves as might best become them, which ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... different character and tendency, and foremost among these was exorcism. In an exorcism widely used and ascribed to Pope Gregory XIII, the formula is given: "I, a priest of Christ,... do command ye, most foul spirits, who do stir up these clouds,... that ye depart from them, and disperse yourselves into wild and untilled places, that ye may be no longer able to harm men or animals or fruits or herbs, or whatsoever is designed for human use." But ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... issue between Rome and the reformed Churches. The offer of a free trade with England was treated as an insult. "Our fathers," said one orator, "sold their King for southern gold; and we still lie under the reproach of that foul bargain. Let it not be said of us that we have sold our God!" Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall, one of the Senators of the College of Justice, suggested the words, "the persons commonly called Roman Catholics." "Would you nickname His Majesty?" exclaimed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... firm tones, "do? How can you ask me such a question? The matter is not one of my life, but of your—of your—oh! I cannot say it. Let this foul beast kill me, of course, and then, if you care enough, follow the same road. A few years sooner or later make little difference, and so we ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... sports and conversations of the menials of the household." And Laukhard adds in a note that, in the Palatinate, obscenity was so universal, and among the common people the general conversation was so utterly shameless, that a Prussian grenadier would have blushed on hearing the foul talk of the Jacks and Gills of the Palatinate. He also relates that he soon found an opportunity of practising with one of the servant-girls what the manservant who had been his instructor had extolled ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... yearnings towards great ends, yet with that imperfect perception of means which forces a resort to some supernatural constraining influence as the only sure hope. The Florentine youth had had very evil habits and foul tongues: it seemed at first an unmixed blessing when they were got to shout "Viva Gesu!" But Savonarola was forced at last to say from the pulpit, "There is a little too much shouting of 'Viva Gesu!' This constant ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... there are two a "fight" can be arranged for. At the word "go," two boys spin their tops, and then lash them till they crash together. The tops must be kept within a described ring, and the one that knocks the other out is regarded as the King top. If a boy strikes his opponent's top, it is a "foul," and he loses the game. Another contest is where, after the lashing, one calls "stop." The one that ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... impression of ink from paper, and of rendering it as new. Wives of emigrants forbid to marry foreigners. Eight thousand men sent to La Vendee. The revolutionary army is disbanded. Means discovered to expel foul air, by burning common salt moistened with oil of vitriol. 30. The brother of Abbe (now Cardinal) Maury guillotined at Avignon. 31. Jourdan appointed commander in chief of the army of the Moselle. Barrere exclaims against atheism ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz

... the wearying doubt would be buried, and my heart might find peace in some remote corner of the earth. Well, well-perhaps I am wasting all this torture on an unworthy object. I should have thought of this sooner, for now foul slander is upon every tongue, and my misery is made thrice painful by my old flatterers. I will make one more effort, then if I fail of getting a certain clue to her, I will remove to some foreign country, shake off these haunting dreams, and be no longer a victim to my own thoughts." ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... father's spirit, Doom'd for a certain time to walk the night; And for the day confin'd too fast in fires, Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... ship. I should not have come in here if I had not been told that it was a good secure place; but I found it so much otherways that I was in pain to be gone. Captain Barefoot, who came to an anchor while I was here, in foul ground, lost quickly 2 anchors; and I had lost a small one. The island Fogo shows itself from this road very plain, at about 7 or 8 leagues distance; and in the night we saw the flames of fire issuing from ...
— A Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... breeds insolent underlings, and if everything else fails, blows and foul words cover defeat, and treat calm assertion of right as impertinence to high-placed officials. Caiaphas degraded his own dignity more than any words of a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... discrediting the more honourable and straightforward courses which Walsingham and Burghley habitually advocated—is one of the most remarkable features of Elizabeth's reign. Her good fortune did not desert her now. Don John died suddenly, not without the usual suspicions of foul play. The peculiar danger of his association with Mary Stewart, disappeared with his death. No wild schemes were likely to be conceived or encouraged by his successor Alexander of Parma, one of the ablest statesmen and probably ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... Don Diego Estenega," he said,—"welcome to Casa Grande. The house is thine. Burn it if thou wilt. The servants are thine; I myself am thy servant. This is the supreme moment of my life, supremer even than when I learned of my acquittal of the foul charges laid to my door by scheming and jealous enemies. It is long—alas!—since an Estenega and an Iturbi y Moncada have met in the court-yard of the one or the other. Let this moment be the seal ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... promoted from being a steward of the emperor's table to a receivership in the provinces. Paulus, as I have already mentioned, had been nicknamed The Chain, because in weaving knots of calumnies he was invincible, scattering around foul poisons and destroying people by various means, as some skilful wrestlers are wont in their contests to catch hold of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... sick and wretched; to teach him to smoke and to drink beer and spirits, and to listen to your foul conversation—you reprobate!" answered Lemon calmly, as he stopped and ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... while it was still raging, Menendez fell suddenly on Fort Caroline and massacred men, women, and children. A few days later, falling in with Ribault and his men, who had been driven ashore south of St. Augustine, Menendez massacred 150 more.[1] For this foul deed a Frenchman named Gourgues (goorg) exacted a fearful penalty. With three small ships and 200 men, he sailed to the St. Johns River, took and destroyed the fort which the Spaniards had built on the site of Fort Caroline, and put to death every ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... the never-ending struggle with England. It was succeeded, in 1416 or 1417, by an unfortunate expedition into England, known as the "Foul Raid", and after the Foul Raid came the battle of Bauge. They are all part of one and the same story; although Harlaw might seem an internal complication and Bauge an act of unprovoked aggression, ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... of the lochia is at first that of fresh blood; later it has the odor peculiar to these parts. If at any time the odor should become foul or putrid it is a danger signal to which the nurse should immediately ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.

... end. Seven players constitute a team. A pin guard is placed within each circle, with the pin and he is the only one that is allowed to step inside the circle. The object of the game is to knock down the opponent's pin by hitting it with the ball. It is a foul to carry the ball or to hold an opponent. Where basketball rules are known to the players, use the same rules for this game. In case of a foul, a 15 foot line measured from the pin in the circle is used as a free ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper



Words linked to "Foul" :   athletics, bemire, block, unfair, sport, repellent, occlude, close up, stuff, disgrace, out-of-bounds, grime, cruddy, infect, choke up, attaint, foul out, baseball game, taint, unpleasant-smelling, technical, play, infringement, unjust, begrime, malodorous, crap up, offensive, fouled, dishonour, ill-smelling, lug, silt up, hack, repelling, baseball, fair, unclean, stinky, shame, impede, hit, soil, illegible, dishonor, revolting, funky, soiled, tangled, unclog, colly, change, obstruct, jam, malodourous, obturate, violation, gum up, silt



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