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Itch   /ɪtʃ/   Listen
Itch

verb
(past & past part. itched; pres. part. itching)
1.
Scrape or rub as if to relieve itching.  Synonyms: rub, scratch.
2.
Have or perceive an itch.
3.
Cause to perceive an itch.
4.
Have a strong desire or urge to do something.  Synonym: spoil.  "He is spoiling for a fight"



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"Itch" Quotes from Famous Books



... not say it in that fashion;—that's easy. You must say it at some moment when the itch of play is on you; when there shall be no one by to hear: when the resolution if held, shall have some meaning in it. Then say, 'there's that money which I had from old Grey. I am bound to pay it. But ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... went, was in delirium. She seemed to lie upon a bed. She lay, in fact, upon the altar of her gods, of self, of what is vain, of liberty undisciplined, of restless itch for pleasure, and of the gods of Rosalie, a piteous sacrifice to them. You that have tears to shed prepare to shed them now. Or if you have no tears, but for emotion only sneers, do stop and put the thing away. It is intolerable to think to ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson

... an expensive talking machine, the slurring notes of a jazz orchestra greeted their ears as plainly as though it were coming from a neighboring room instead of a broadcasting station many miles away. Amy confessed that it made her feet itch. She loved to dance. ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose

... to loiter. While there he exposed himself to the sculptor's art; but it didn't take very hard. However, Virgie came back and acquired the studio habit. And you can't live for long in a studio, you know, without getting the itch to see yourself in print. That's what brought Virgie to me. And now! Well, now I have to ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... speaking, I mean. If our race muffs this chance, we may never get another. But you and I wouldn't care about that, not really, unless it was personally important too. Would we? Why did you accept this thankless job, commanding a colonial fleet? It can't be an itch to explore. Rustum's already been visited once, and you'll have precious little time to carry on any further studies. You could have been off to some star where men have never traveled at all. Do you see, captain? You're not a bit more cold-blooded about ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... nightingales on myrtle sprigs, 40 Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew, And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too; But now our sties are fallen in, we catch The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch; Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch, 45 And then we seek the shelter of a ditch; Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none Has yet been ours since your ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... would strike out of the cold iron, be often in the dumps, and frig and wriggle it. He would flay the fox, say the ape's paternoster, return to his sheep, and turn the hogs to the hay. He would beat the dogs before the lion, put the plough before the oxen, and claw where it did not itch. He would pump one to draw somewhat out of him, by griping all would hold fast nothing, and always eat his white bread first. He shoed the geese, kept a self-tickling to make himself laugh, and was very steadable in the kitchen: made a mock at the gods, would cause ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... the Duke of Buckingham guided his hand aright." It is he, too, who tells the story of the mulberry mark upon the neck of a certain lady of high condition, which "every year, in mulberry season, did swell, grow big, and itch." And Gaffarel mentions the case of a girl born with the figure of a fish on one of her limbs, of which the wonder was, that, when the girl did eat fish, this mark put her to sensible pain. But there is ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... for firing in the direction of Matammeh, some lying down with their ears to the ground to hear the farther. But all was still as the desert only can be, and the great battle which was expected had certainly not yet begun. But expectation of a fight excites men, and if at a distance they itch to be in it, this feeling even actuating men who fail to show any particular heroism when ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... to be a greater degree of titillation, and to be owing to the stimulus of some acrid material, as the matter of the itch; or of the herpes on the scrotum, and about the anus; or from those universal eruptions, which attend some elderly people, who have drank much vinous spirit. It occurs also, when inflammations are declining, as in the healing ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... observance of which the undertaker will find the establishment unproductive and injurious to his interest. Purity cannot exist without cleanliness. Cleanliness in the human system will destroy an obstinate itch, of consequence, it is the active handmaid of health and comfort, and without which, decency ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry

... inevitably form a multiplicity of ever-shifting parties, sects, fashions and opinions; and while each might resent the impertinence of disagreement from its own standard, the very multiformity of the whole mass must preserve a general balance of fair play, since every single sect with an itch for persecuting would be confronted by an overwhelming majority of dissidents. It is obvious, therefore, that persecution can only be indulged in when some particular form of opinion is in the ascendant: and if this form is artificially developed; if it is ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... can. It can get along without the hoarded gold, the inherited gold, the cheating, bribing, starving gold—that's the kind I mean, the kind that gets into a man's heart and veins until his fingers itch to gild everything he touches, like the rich man in ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer

... very climacteric of exquisite artistic skill, and I am always delighted to the point of laughter or of tears; for moods run together in presence of such poetry. No poet of my knowledge so haunts the illustrative. In reading him, so perfect are the pictures that your fingers itch to play the artist's part, so you might shadow some beauty on every page. Some painter, working after the manner of Turner's "Rivers of France," might make himself immortal by devoting his life to the adequate ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... though, when I tell you what worried me like the mischief for awhile? Family, parson! You can't live in South Carolina without having the seven-years' Family-itch wished on you, you know. I felt like a mushroom standing up on my one leg all by myself among a lot of proper garden plants—until I got fed up on the professional Descendant banking on his boneyard full of dead ones; ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... different sexes should be obliged to come to the touch, which we call copulation or coition, besides the natural desire of begetting their like, which stirs up men and women to it, the parts appointed for generation are endowed by nature with a delightful and mutual itch, which begets in them a desire to the action; without which, it would not be very easy for a man, born for the contemplation of divine mysteries, to join himself, by the way of coition, to a woman, in regard to the uncleanness of the part and the action. And, on the other side, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... us, and the sun draws himself upward to his strength. We have on us the English itch for change. The breeze comes and goes as we plunge among the groves of Virgilian ilex, and through the interstices of the trees we see on a hill-slope above us thirty great horned oxen, ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... and pulled away a quantity of charred hair. His forehead began to itch, and, rubbing his finger across it, he realized that his eyebrows were gone. Tode laughed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... blast, after all I've learned he's plannin' to slip us, if I wasn't sure that he's going to get it, worse than I could ever give it to him, from that girl herself? Well, I would. He makes me shiver, that man; makes me crawl and itch to take his head in one hand and his throat in the other and exert a little strength in opposite directions. Give our entry time! The game is running dead against him at present, I'll admit, but he's husbanding his chips. He ain't drawing ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... Davids and Jonathans in the sagebrush country. David may have flocks and herds, and Jonathan may have naught but the care of them. David may possess lands and water-rights, and Jonathan nothing more than a pick, a shovel, a pan, and an incurable itch for placering. A Westerner likes a man for what he is and not because of his vocation. He usually proceeds cautiously in the matter of friendship, but sudden and instinctive friendships are not infrequent. ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... for a moment at their hundreds of officials scampering away with the public money to Texas, to Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a villain may hope to find refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they are most distressingly affected in their heels with a species of running itch? ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... of disposing of kingdoms, the thing not having succeeded well with him in some instances, but he lays the same claim still, continues the same inclinations, and though velvet-headed hath the more itch to be pushing. And, however, in order to any occasion he keeps himself in breath, always by cursing one prince or ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury

... (That's not so soon unriddled.) And where is "Fum" the Fourth, our "royal bird?"[604] Gone down, it seems, to Scotland to be fiddled Unto by Sawney's violin, we have heard: "Caw me, caw thee"—for six months hath been hatching This scene of royal itch and loyal scratching. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... of the number of authors he mastered before his twelfth year. Two attacks of the plague, agues, tertian and quotidian, malignant ulcers, hernia, haemorrhoids, varicose veins, palpitation of the heart, gout, indigestion, the itch, and foulness of skin. Relief in the second attack of plague came from a sweat so copious that it soaked the bed and ran in streams down to the floor; and, in a case of continuous fever, from voiding a hundred and twenty ounces of urine. As a boy he was a sleep-walker, and he ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... reminded him, that, notwithstanding her unfortunate itch for the seven deadly sins, she was a good Catholic, a zealous daughter of the Church; and she let him know her desire to retire from both lovers into a convent, and so, freed from the world and its temptations, yield up her ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... the means of subsistence. A partial amendment has taken place, and still greater improvements are about to be made. There is a great want of medical treatment. Many of the foundlings are placed in the wheel[127], full of disease, fever, or more often a dreadful species of itch called sarna, and which is often fatal to them. Nay, dead children are also brought, that they may ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... short sharp-shooter; "he's the only one. It was a good afternoon's sport—very good. We saw 'e'd got no rifle, and was in a tight clove-'itch, so we took the job on right there an' finished four of 'em; but it took some creepin' ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... unable to comprehend just what was being said, thanks to his complete ignorance of the language employed; but he felt morally certain that ugly threats were passing through those thin lips, and even so soon his hands began to itch and his blood to glow, both ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... Unfortunately for the widow, confinement told on her nerves. She became anxious, excited. Her very ignorance of what was going on around her, her lover's silence made her apprehensive; she began to fear the worst. At length—the widow always had an itch for writing—she determined to communicate at all costs with Gaudry and invoke his aid. She wrote appealing to him to come forward and admit that he was the man the police were seeking, for sheltering whom she had been thrown into prison. She drew a harrowing ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving

... never have allowed the monkeys to get quietly out of the zamang—for it being an isolated tree, it would have afforded him a capital opportunity of "treeing" them. His blow-gun had been causing his fingers to itch all the time; and as soon as Don Pablo and the rest were satisfied with observing the monkeys, Guapo set out, blow-gun, in hand, followed ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... the finishing touches, when all the time you dread seeing her dressed up. It is excruciating, it is brutal. It is inhuman, Lord Henry! Shall I tell you the truth,—though it's dreadful, wicked. Well, I hate my sister. I loathe her with a deadly loathing. My fingers itch to—oh, all through the night I think of some means of disfiguring her. It is the most diabolical cruelty to put any woman into the position I am in now. I long to fly away, where I shall never, never see her again. It's that and nothing else that has ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici

... will soon turn. It is not in my plans that this day shall go down in Exchange history as a bear day. When I resolve on that, your threats will hardly alter me. This is not that day. The rumor of my attack is absurd. My brokers will be found bracing the market. The next time that you feel an itch to coerce me, regard my answer as given in advance. It is that you may go ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... been left without women were anxious to procure some, and one day saw the shape of human beings sliding down the trees, whom they could not catch. But by employing four men who had rough hands from a disease like the itch, these four ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... out, until I see'd the blackies jump out of the bushes, and then I knowed at once what a reg'lar fix you was in. I see'd ye fire at 'em, lad, and bring 'em up with a round turn, and my fingers was just all of a itch to be alongside of ye with one of them same revolvin' rifles in my fist, though I'm, a'ter all, no great matter of a shot. Well, I see'd ye run, and I see'd the little lady here step into the canoe and lie down; and ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... all was, owin' to a 'itch with the canal company—a matter of money, I may say. They make yer pay before they'll take yer through. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer

... the pain had subsided to an over-all smarting itch. He'd have to bear with that until his work was finished and he could enjoy a hot bath. He got another bottle out of the first-aid kit—a flat pint, labeled "Old Overholt," containing a locally-manufactured specific for inward and subjective wounds—and medicated himself copiously ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper

... realities. Study or experiment, to some rare natures, is the unbroken pastime of a life. These are enviable natures; people shut in the house by sickness often bitterly envy them; but the commoner man cannot continue to exist upon such altitudes: his feet itch for physical adventure; his blood boils for physical dangers, pleasures, and triumphs; his fancy, the looker after new things, cannot continue to look for them in books and crucibles, but must seek them on the breathing stage of life. Pinches, buffets, the glow of hope, ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... are found, and the four sensations of touch, warmth, cold and pain are believed to be the only elementary skin sensations. Itch, stinging and aching seem to be the same as pain. Tickle is touch, usually light touch or a succession of light touches. Smooth and rough are successions of touch sensations. Moist is usually a compound of smooth and cold. Hard and soft combine ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... they burst into the redoubt after it was found that the Browns had gone, all, even the judge's son, were the war demon's, own. The veneer had been warped and twisted and burned off down to the raw animal flesh. Their brains had the fever itch of callouses forming. Not a sign of brown there in the yard; not a sign of any tribute after all they had endured! They had not been able to lay hands on the murderous throwers of hand-grenades. Far away now was the barrack-room geniality of the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... I'd quit working," said E. Eliot. "I said I'd quit business. That's another thing. There's plenty of real work in the world that won't earn you a living. Lord! Don't I see it going by right here in this office! There are things I just itch to get my hands into, and I have to wait and tell myself 'some day, perhaps!' There's a thing I'd like to do now, and that's to take a hand in this political campaign for district attorney. It would kill my business deader than Pharaoh's aunt, so I've got to let it go. But it would certainly ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... our labors, I became afflicted with the itch, which was then epidemic in that part of the country. A neighboring high school had been closed because of this disagreeable affliction. Previous to taking the disease myself, I had met some of the ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... SORBONIST; And weave fine cobwebs, fit for skull That's empty when the moon is full; 160 Such as take lodgings in a head That's to be let unfurnished. He could raise scruples dark and nice, And after solve 'em in a trice; As if Divinity had catch'd 165 The itch, on purpose to be scratch'd; Or, like a mountebank, did wound And stab herself with doubts profound, Only to show with how small pain The sores of Faith are cur'd again; 170 Although by woeful proof we find, They always leave a scar behind. He knew the seat of Paradise, Could tell in ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... have paid his passage to Hong-Kong, and achieved his ends quite as handily as in his present role of wireless operator. But his fingers had begun to itch again for the heavy brass transmission-key, and his ears were yearning for the drone of radio voices ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... the reader of the necessity of keeping the bowels regular, and removing all morbid taints of the blood and faults of the secretory organs by the persistent use of Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery. The successful treatment of scabies, or common itch, generally requires only local applications, for the object to be obtained is simply the destruction of the little insects which cause the eruption. Happily, we possess an unfailing specific for this purpose. Numerous agents have been employed with success, but Sulphur enjoys ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... maintain the dead man pose for the long silent minutes that crawled by before there came any sound from behind. The Jupiter-light, flooding down on him from the glittering blue sky above, was hot and growing hotter, and of course he began to itch. Had he had the freedom of his limbs, he would not have itched, he knew; it happened only when he had to keep absolutely still; he cursed the phenomenon to himself. Minute after minute, and no sound to tell him what was happening behind, ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... make me itch so I can scarcely stand it! I feel like screaming out, the pain is so great," and again Wang got down and began to kowtow to the other; that is, he knelt and bumped ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman

... public? Had they hopes of skulking into obscurity among the motley multitude of certificates which throng the folio of the book? or have they like one of the moral personages in Hudibras, "catch'd the itch on purpose to be scratch'd?" It now requires an eye less keen than that of a ministering spirit to pierce the cob web veil which ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector

... then. Spring weather; time for adventure. Genoa, this cruise, on a Twillingate schooner, with the first shore-fish. A Barbadoes cruise again. Then a v'y'ge out China way. Queer how the flea-bite o' travel will itch! An' so long as it itched I kep' on scratchin'. 'Twas over two years afore I got a good long breath o' the fogs o' these parts again. An' by this time a miracle had happened on the Labrador. The good Lord had surprised Mary Mull at Come-By-Guess ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... dates and other fruits. The wheaten bread, however, is so bitter, owing to the bitterness of the water, that no one can eat it who is not used to it. The baths that I mentioned have excellent virtues; they cure the itch and several other ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... training, and preparing ourselves for the next forward push. The whole battalion was put through a course of musketry. The forward slopes of our position provided an admirable field firing range, with all No Man's Land for the stray bullets to spend themselves upon. How it must have made the Turk itch to see men lying about in platoons in the open before his very eyes, and how he must have longed to have had a gun within range, and to have dispersed us with a few rounds of shrapnel. We also instituted a very successful shooting-gallery. In the front line beer was seldom procurable, though much ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... calf calm catch castle caught chalk climb ditch dumb edge folks comb daughter debt depot forehead gnaw hatchet hedge hiccough hitch honest honor hustle island itch judge judgment knack knead kneel knew knife knit knuckle knock knot know knowledge lamb latch laugh limb listen match might muscle naughty night notch numb often palm pitcher pitch pledge ridge right rough scene scratch should sigh sketch snatch soften stitch switch sword talk ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... lay down, there was apparently not a mosquito in the woods; but the "no-see-ems," as Thoreau's Indian aptly named the midges, soon found us out, and after the fire had gone down, annoyed us very much. My hands and wrists suddenly began to smart and itch in a most uncomfortable manner. My first thought was that they had been poisoned in some way. Then the smarting extended to my neck and face, even to my scalp, when I began to suspect what was the matter. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... the satirist has seated the emperor (a lean, ragged, forlorn, miserable, diseased object) on a huge article of bedroom furniture, labelled, "Imperial Throne." He is in a forlorn condition, suffering from itch, with large excrescences growing on his toes. He is all alone in his island prison (Elba), and tempted by a fiend, who tenders him a pistol—"If you have one spark of courage left," it says, "take this." ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... Ali Baba should be satisfied with the oblivion-mantle of knighthood and relapse into dingy respectability in the Avilion of Brompton or Bath; but since he has taken to wearing stars the accompanying itch for blood and fame ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... Their flesh is often caked with dirt. They do not smell sweet. Their manners are crude: I think they must all have studied Guides to Good Society. They spit when and where they will. Some of them writhe in a manner so suggestive as to give you the itch. This writhe is known as the Spitalfields Crawl. There is a story of a constable who was on night duty near the doors of one of the doss establishments, when a local doctor passed him. "Say," said the doctor, with a chuckle, "you're ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... abhorrence of separating the twain if they begin to throw their old shoes at each other; for they are sincerely convinced that if people were permitted to do as they pleased, nothing on earth would please them but vice. And so those who have the lawmaking itch set about saving humanity from itself by making inhuman laws, which the clever and the criminal evade or break through, leaving the gentle and the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... legs like those. And they're all-woman's legs, too. Never mistake them in the world. The arc of the front line of that upper leg! And the balanced adequate fullness at the back! And the way the opposing curves slender in to the knee that IS a knee! Makes my fingers itch. Wish I ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... more or less, at the time inflamed, and which cast the ancient state and monarchy of France into the perdition of anarchy and confusion. I think, upon the whole, however, that our royal burgh was not afflicted to any very dangerous degree, though there was a sort of itch of it among a few of the sedentary orders, such as the weavers and shoemakers, who, by the nature of sitting long in one posture, are apt to become subject to the flatulence of theoretical opinions; but although this ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... talking, they reached the interior of Mrs. Ch'in's apartments. As soon as they got in, a very faint puff of sweet fragrance was wafted into their nostrils. Pao-y readily felt his eyes itch and his bones grow weak. "What a fine smell!" he exclaimed ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... of the scalp, such as ringworm and dandruff, are due to other forms of vegetable germs, and may be cured by their proper poisons; while others, such as the so-called "prairie itch" (scabies), and lice in the hair, are due to the presence of ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... know that type of woman, with an itch to get into Society. Perhaps she thought that the marriage of her niece to a Penreath of Twelvetrees would open doors for her. At any rate, I remember there was a great deal of tittle-tattle at the time to the effect that she manoeuvred desperately hard to bring ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... here he comes back, sent by the Government right down to Flat Rock, on the other side of Providence Nob, to study out about that curious corn disease they calls Pellagra, what I don't think is a thing in the world but itch and can be cured by a little sulphur and hog lard. But I'm blessing the chanct that brought him back to me, even if I know it are just for a spell. And, too, he oughter be happy to have brung his mother such a song bird ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... does not offend the palate, and so spares the nursery those scenes of single combat in which infants were wont to yield at length to the pressure of the spoon and the imminence of asphyxia. It gives the ignorant, who have such an inveterate itch for dabbling in physic, a book and a doll's medicine-chest, and lets them play doctors and doctresses without fear of having to call in the coroner. And just so long as unskilful and untaught people cannot tell coincidences from cause and effect in medical practice,—which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... the account he wrote for Columbus of the Indian religion, gives as Indian words, the Mande toto, "frog," and the Malinke kobo, "bug." What is more important, he imputes to the Indians, a knowledge of the terrible West African itch, or craworaw, which he calls by the supposed Indian name caracaracol. The critic faces a dilemma. Either Ramon Pane lied, or he told the truth. Either he fabricated stories of Indians, which he drew from books or manuscript relations by Spanish ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... eruptions, and others would have been smeared with tar like sheep. His couch would have been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be; and from that couch he would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half mad with the itch, [322] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... nothing that belongs to any other man ought to be indifferent to you." The physical calamities of life are not omitted; and there is in particular a disquisition on the advantages of having the itch, which, if not convincing, is certainly ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... with a melancholy expression of eye, and protruding under lip and jaw, he was now comparatively alert and vigorous in constitution, although for the first seven years of his life it had been doubtful whether he would live from week to week. He had been afflicted during that period with a chronic itch or leprosy, which had undermined his strength, but which had almost entirely disappeared as he advanced ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... only, in comparative quiet, the Concerned struggled with the Concerned. Then true to all Dog Psychology,—absolutely indisputable, absolutely unalterable, the Non-Concerned leaped in upon the Non-Concerned! Half on his guard, but wholely on his itch, the jostled Parrot shot like a catapult across the floor! Lost to all sense of honor or table-manners the benign-faced Giraffe with his benign face still towering blandly in the air, burst through his own neck with a most curious anatomical effect,—locked his teeth in the Parrot's ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... under the traveller's star, sir—created with a roving spirit. And the Lord help 'em, I say, for they're so made as to be powerless to help themselves seemingly. Rove they must and will, if they are to taste any contentment—an itch in their feet from the cradle nought but foreign lands'll serve to pacify. The sight of the ocean now, seems fairly tormenting to 'em till they can satisfy themselves of what's on the far ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... Graham—prig; What was thy delighted musing? Now accepting, now refusing, Till on the Admiralty pitch'd, Still would that thought his speech prolong; To gain the place for which he long had itch'd, He call'd on Bobby still through all the song; But ever as his sweetest theme he chose, A sovereign's golden chink was heard at every close, And Pollock grimly smiled, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various

... in a sweat to be gone, you unmannerly churl! You, a raw, untried boy, are invited to dine with the king, and your one itch is to ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... Dare in the teeth Of the balk and the failure; The clasp and the linger Of loosening finger, Loth to dissever; Thrill of the comrade heart to its fellow Through droughts that sicken and blasts that bellow From purple furrow to harvest yellow, Now and forever. How our feet itch to keep time to their measure! How our hearts lift to the lilt of their song! Let the world go, for a day's royal pleasure! Not every ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... said Mrs. Church, in a voice which made Mrs. Banks itch to slap her. "I knew a lady once just the same, but she was a ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs

... unavoidable dispensations of divine wrath. Yet some advance had been made. Baths had been absolutely essential in the Middle Ages when every one wore wool; the result of the common use of linen had been at first to put them out of fashion; under Louis XVI. they were coming in again. The itch, so common in Auvergne early in the century that in the schools a separate bench was set apart for the pupils who had it, was almost unknown in 1786. Leprosy had nearly disappeared from France before the end of the seventeenth century. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... the silver on the desk, he exclaimed, "There, Captain Riga, you may keep your tin! It has been in your purse, and it would give me the itch to ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... discipline, I need not tell you, Major, doesn't take into account the sensitiveness of a recruit's back. It flatly denies such a phenomenon. Now I think I can defy anything in God's quaint universe to make me itch. But that's by the way. I tore the letter up and never answered it. You do these things, sir, when the whole universe seems to be a stumbling-block and an offence. Phyllis was the stumbling-block ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... Again, a Blackfoot Indian who has set a trap for eagles, and is watching it, would not eat rosebuds on any account; for he argues that if he did so, and an eagle alighted near the trap, the rosebuds in his own stomach would make the bird itch, with the result that instead of swallowing the bait the eagle would merely sit and scratch himself. Following this train of thought the eagle hunter also refrains from using an awl when he is looking after his snares; for ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... on arriving was often laid in the bed and in the sheets of a man who had had the itch, and had just died. ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... Unaccountable that he should still have an affection for a place, who never, when in it, received above common civility; who never brought anything out of it except his brogue and his blunders. Surely my affection is equally ridiculous with the Scotchman's, who refused to be cured of the itch because it made him unco' thoughtful of his wife and ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... household things, and everything, in a way that I cannot describe. But I dare not confess to you all my misdeeds, because speaking of them makes my mouth water, and the thing with which God curses me makes me itch dreadfully. If this folly bites and pricks me, and slays my virtue, will God, who has placed this great love in my body, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... quietly, and Rawling shivered at this cool fury. The rattles made his spine itch, and suddenly his valley seemed like a place of demons. The lanterns circling on the lawn seemed like frail glow-worms, incredibly useless, and he leaned on the window-pane listening ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... grievance.] I beg yo' par'n— no' a 'itch! [In difficulties with his overcoat.] When a gen'leman'sh invited b' th' lady 'f th' house t' partake ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero

... with what the settlers called "prairie dig." It was a kind of itch that seemed to come from the new land. It made the hands very sore and troublesome. We did everything but could find no cure. The Dakota Sioux were our neighbors and were very friendly. They had not yet learned to drink the white man's firewater. A squaw came ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... upon beast. This was the punishment of the Egyptians, because they would say to the children of Israel, "Go and prepare a bath for us unto the delight of our flesh and our bones." Therefore they were doomed to suffer with boils that inflamed their flesh, and on account of the itch they could not leave off scratching. While the Egyptians suffered thus, the children ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... frantic, by rubbing his handkerchief which always laid by his side, and with which he was accustomed to wipe his face every five minutes (for he was profuse in his perspiration), with what is called cow-itch: not being aware of what was the cause, he wiped his face more and more, until he was as red as a peony, and the itching ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... "My hands itch to give them a lesson," rejoined Henry. "But I will be ruled by you. God's death! I will return to-morrow, and hunt them down ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and there shall be none to fray them away. The LORD shall smite thee with the boil of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scurvy, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and with blindness, and with astonishment of heart: and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... card. They were asked to wait till the service was concluded, then I took them to my quarters and had some conversation with them. One of them had come for the doctor, and wished to get cured of so prosaic a disease as the itch. ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... a land of supreme elegance and fashion, superior even to France, the conditions were the same, and how little water found favor even with aristocratic ladies we may gather from the contemporary books on the toilet, which abound with recipes against itch and similar diseases. It should be added that Burckhardt (Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien, eighth edition, volume ii, p. 92) considers that in spite of skin diseases the Italians of the Renaissance were the first nation in Europe ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... barrator, but sovereign. With him frequents Don Michael Zanche of Logodoro,[2] and in talking of Sardinia their tongues feel not weary. O me! see ye that other who is grinning: I would say more, but I fear lest he is making ready to scratch my itch." And the grand provost, turning to Farfarello, who was rolling his eyes as if to strike, said, "Get ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... O'Hickory, I think you will not question his being a son of Satan, whose brazen instruments (one of whom gave his first born the name of Morse) instigated by the Gent in Black, not content with inflicting us with the Irish Potato Rot, has recently brought over the Scotch Itch, if, perhaps, by plagues Job was never called upon to suffer (for there were no Courts of Equity and Chancery in those early days) the American inventor might be tempted to curse God and die. But, Ah! you have such a sweet wife, and Job's was such ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... shoulders, took staves in our hands, and set forth. For seven whole days we trudged on, and all the while the weather favoured us, and was even downright wonderful! There was neither sultry heat nor rain; the flies did not bite, the dust did not make us itch. And every day my Yakoff acquired a better aspect. I must tell you that Yakoff had not been in the habit of seeing that one in the open air, but had felt him behind him, close to his back, or his shadow had seemed to be gliding alongside, which troubled my ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... lay down, there was apparently not a mosquito in the woods; but the "no-see-ems," as Thoreau's Indian aptly named the midges, soon found us out, and after the fire had gone down annoyed us very much. My hands and wrists suddenly began to smart and itch in a most unaccountable manner. My first thought was that they had been poisoned in some way. Then the smarting extended to my neck and face, even to my scalp, when I began to suspect what was the matter. So, wrapping myself ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... pint. This solution is shaken up with the sulphur, and the clear liquid remaining on the top is used. This recipe is founded on the fact that sulphur is a poison for inferior vegetable or animal growth, like dandruff, itch, etc., and is not at all a poison for ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... existence must have shown the same front under such discipline. I did not see enough of their gentry to enable me to form an opinion about them; but the middling and lower orders are extremely filthy both in their persons and in their houses, and they have all an intolerable itch for gambling. The soldiers, though fainting with fatigue on the line of march, invariably group themselves in card-parties whenever they are allowed a few minutes' halt; and a non-commissioned officer, with half-a-dozen men on any duty of fatigue, are very generally to be seen as follows, ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... high sp'rited paragons of wit, That fly to fame beyond our earthly pitch, Whose sense is sound, whose words are feat and fit, Able to make the coyest ear to itch; Shroud with your mighty wings that mount so well, These little loves, new ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... the carriage violently, carefully hiding the book Pamela had been reading and putting the cushion on the rack. Finally, tucking the travelling-rug firmly round her mistress, she remarked pleasantly, "A h'eight hours' journey without an 'itch!" ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... you proved your case to my conviction, I'd not stir a hand against this lady, be she who she may. Nay,' adds he, with greater fury, 'I will not stay where my loyalty and better judgment may be affected by the contagion of a vile suspicion. Away while you may; my fingers itch to be revenged on you for sundering me from one who should have been my ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... a good thing for John, don't you think,' said Rose briskly, covering a parish library book the while in a way which made Catherine's fingers itch to take it from her, 'and for us? It's some use having ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Lincoln, "then Douglas loses the vote of the great slave-holders, the vote of the solid South, that he has been fostering ever since he has had the itch to be President. Without the solid South the Little Giant will never live in the White House. And unless I'm mightily mistaken, Steve Douglas has had his aye as far ahead ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... his hand, the skipper revolved his head under it until the itchy place was scratched. Most men itch instantly they are unable to scratch. The skipper's space gloves were sprouting ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... the itch, or some other disease; the blessing of the Lord'll never rest upon it," said the Boer-woman. Then suddenly she broke forth. "And she eighty-two, and goats, and rams, and eight thousand morgen, and the rams real angora, and two thousand sheep, and a short-horn bull," said Tant Sannie, standing upright ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... a saddle-horse; not that he would attempt to throw his rider, but whenever a saddle was put on him it made his back itch, and he would always insist upon rubbing it against the first tree or fence or corner of a house that he came to; and if he could bark the rider's leg, he seemed to be better contented. The last time I rode him was upon the day of Mr. Johnson's ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... O.K. in a flip," said Trask, with an itch for schemes of chance. "I'll throw you the dice, my room against your forty-five—and the devil take your luck ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... naught to say to thee," replied Birnier, "but the fingers of Tarum will to make thee to itch even ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... brought home seventy-three guineas, and let my old governess see what good luck I had at play. However, it was her advice that I should not venture again, and I took her counsel, for I never went there any more; for I knew as well as she, if the itch of play came in, I might soon lose that, and all the rest of what I ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... pale, but never the colour washed from a brave man's face. The sight made my fingers itch to ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... Peers withholds Its legislative hand, And noble statesmen do not itch To interfere with matters which They do not understand, As bright will shine Great Britain's rays, As in ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... out for higher stakes? Do you expect him to buy that great six-year contract and divvy the proceeds with me? Because he will—when once they get their eye on you, they'll have you; and to turn up your nose at their offer if in just the way to make them itch for you. But how the deuce did you find it out? And where do you get your nerve from, anyway? A little beggar like you to refuse an offer from the T. T. and sit hatching your schemes on your little old 'steen dollars a week! ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson

... Thus if a person is bitten by a mad dog, and they give him but a small pennyweight of this medicine to drink, he is cured in a moment. Again if a woman is hard in labour they give her just such another dose and she is delivered at once. Yet again if one has any disease like the itch, or it may be worse, and applies a small quantity of this gall he shall speedily be cured. So you see why it sells at such a ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... fear of rain, go cross, fall into dumps, look demure, skin the fox, say the ape's paternoster, return to his sheep, turn the sows into the hay, beat the dog before the lion, put the cart before the horse, scratch where he did not itch, shoe the grasshopper, tickle himself to make himself laugh, know flies in milk, scrape paper, blur parchment, then run away, pull at the kid's leather, reckon without his host, beat the bushes without catching the birds, and thought that bladders were lanterns. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... from his language that speculation in his day was active respecting the causes of this plague, according to the vague and fanciful physics, and scanty stock of ascertained facts, which was all that could then be consulted. By resisting the itch of theorizing from one of those loose hypotheses which then appeared plausibly to explain everything, he probably renounced the point of view from which most credit and interest would be derivable at the time. But his simple and precise summary of observed facts ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... nothing but ill can be said for it, it is pitched into the fire; if it has been good, it is allowed to pass on to the abode of the blessed. The soul that meets with neither fate, is punished according to its sins: if it has lied, its mouth pains; if it has been a thief, its hands itch and burn, and eventually, after the period of punishment is over, it precedes to heaven, cleansed of ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... to scour, they began on the yard, orchard, barn and road. Mother even had Leon stack the wood pile straighter. She said when corded wood leaned at an angle, it made people seem shiftless; and she never passed a place where it looked that way that her fingers didn't just itch to get at it. He had to pull every ragweed on each side of the road as far as our land reached, and lay every rail straight in the fences. Father had to take spikes and our biggest maul and go to the bridges at ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... and attracted their sight They look'd so heavy and new, And their fingers itch'd as they were bewitch'd And they knew not ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... day, however, the world's most sensitive news-nose began to itch. Did, or did not, this quiet, unannounced closing smell ever-so-slightly of cheese? Wherefore, Benjamin Bundy, the newscaster who had covered the starship's maiden flight, went out himself to look the thing over. He found the whole field closed. Not only closed, but Gunther-blocked ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... may happily serve To cure the scab of the nation, Whene'er't has an itch to swerve To rebellion by innovation. A lanthorn here is to be bought, The like was scarce ever gotten, For many plots it has found out Before they ever were thought on. Says ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... not. He's old enough to be my father, and, besides, he's been in the Tyee Lumber Company longer than I. I did itch to give him a ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... passed and beg for a lift. She was half-starved; her feet could no longer carry her. A motor thrilled by at high speed, a fiery, stinking dragon in the night. Mosquitoes tormented her. She had no strength with which to oppose them. The hand in which she had held the poison-ivy was beginning to itch and swell. ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... self-confident system of the ancients, that kept the world dark so many centuries. It is [Greek] versus Induction. "[Greek]," ladies, is "divination by means of an ass's skull." A pettifogger's skull, however, will serve the turn, provided that pettifogger has been bitten with an insane itch for scribbling about things so infinitely above his capacity as the fine arts. Avoid this sordid dreamer, and follow, in letters as in science, the Baconian method! Then you will find that all uninspired narratives are more or less inexact, and that one, and one ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... quarrel. Let him handle books, but not cards. [110] Let him [not] direct the Indians in the government of his village, but let him leave them to those who govern them; for the wish to command is a sort of itch in Filipinas. Consequently, let him leave to each one the care of what God has given him. Let him check sins, but not lawful games and amusements, since thereby other and illicit amusements will be prevented. Let him eradicate drunkenness, but not prohibit all use of wine to all; for, if the cura ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... wear a better. I should just like to go and kick it overboard." His friend touched him, and said, "Don't speak so to a gentleman." "Why not?" exclaimed the fellow. He grated his short teeth, which appeared to be nearly worn away by the incessant chewing of tobacco, and said, "It always makes me itch all over, from head to toe, to get hold of every d——d nigger I see dressed like a white man. Washington is run away with SPILED and free niggers. If I had my way I would sell every d——d rascal of 'em way down South, where the devil would be ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft

... lad, let them itch," was my answer; "here's the gig by the point, and they won't trouble you with that complaint long. Do you, Peter, give them a hail when I cry, 'Now!' If they stop, well and good; if they come on—why, you won't be asking them to walk right ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... as beauty, disorder as well as order, in nature. If there is evidence of design in a rose, there is at least as much evidence of design in the tubercle bacillus, and the tetanus bacillus. Whatever in nature produced the peacock produced the itch-mite; whatever produced man produced the spirochete of syphilis. If this earth is evolving for the better, the past is still vivid in all its cruelty. The old and familiar argument from design and beauty in nature is so inconsistent with the facts at hand, that ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... notes I have suggested the principal strong points of the Prussian character. A failure in honour which almost amounts to a failure in memory: an egomania that is honestly blind to the fact that the other party is an ego; and, above all, an actual itch for tyranny and interference, the devil which everywhere torments the idle and the proud. To these must be added a certain mental shapelessness which can expand or contract without reference to ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton

... writer is a compound of ignorance, egoism and garrulity, and this may account for the great crop of reasons for "diseases." However, the writers in question are not so much to blame after all, even though they do belong to county medical societies; for how can they well resist the literary itch with which most of them are afflicted? Let them keep on writing while victims of pruritus ani wear out their weary lives scratching through weary nights—nights that extend into years, until permanent invalidism seems to be their destiny and ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... her that: his own act had rendered it impossible, that act the outcome of wilful trifling with his infirmity, his itch for thieving. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... peas, excep' they don't swar quite so bad, but they make up for that in prayin'—and prayin' too much, I reckon, when a man's a d—d hippercrit, is 'bout as bad as swearin'. But I tell you, the decent folks up North han't ab'lisheners. They look on 'em jest as we do on mad dogs, the itch, or the nigger-traders. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... scholar of the age for a son-in-law. Scala was a meritorious public servant, and, moreover, a lucky man—naturally exasperating to an offended scholar; but then—O beautiful balance of things!—he had an itch for authorship, and was a bad writer—one of those excellent people who, sitting in gouty slippers, "penned poetical trifles" entirely for their own amusement, without any view to an audience, and, consequently, sent them ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... light), Thus gracious Chandos is beloved at sight; And every child hates Shylock, though his soul Still sits at squat, and peeps not from its hole. At half mankind when generous Manly raves, All know 'tis virtue, for he thinks them knaves: When universal homage Umbra pays, All see 'tis vice, and itch of vulgar praise. When flattery glares, all hate it in a queen, While one there is who charms us with his spleen. But these plain characters we rarely find; Though strong the bent, yet quick the turns of mind: Or puzzling ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... news to be the question, a public Mercury should never have my vote, because I think it makes the multitude too familiar with the actions and counsels of their superiors, too pragmatical and censorious, and gives them not only an itch, but a kind of colorable right and license.... A gazette is none of the worst ways of address to the genius and humor of the common people, whose affections are much more capable of being turned and wrought upon by convenient hints and touches in the shape ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... objection is a mere childish prejudice reinforced by outworn superstitions. The religious terror excited by certain formidable free-thinkers and anti-social philosophers in earlier days went much deeper than this, and was quite free from that mere prurient itch of perverted sensuality which inspires ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... were worthy of a hero of romance. His sufferings were all the more terrible and exasperating, that at first they came in the shape of an effect without a cause. The skin of his face and hands began to inflame and to itch beyond endurance—to his great surprise; for the midges were so exceedingly small and light, that, being deeply intent on his line, he did not observe them. He had heard of midges, no doubt; but never having seen them, and ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... was led. He had an itch for a bad name, you know. But Beasley made the plan. It was Nell they wanted instead ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... she frequently scratched herself, no matter on what part of her person, totally indifferent as to who might see her, and so persistently, that anyone who saw her might think that she was suffering from something like the itch. The only adornments that she allowed herself were silk ribbons, which she had in great profusion, and of various colors mixed together, in the pretentious caps which she wore ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... Tommy had behaved splendidly to him, and called him his dear preceptor, and yet the Dominie still itched to be at him with the tawse as of old. "And fine he knows I'm itching," he reflected, which made him itch the more. ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... methinks, I do itch to go thro' stich The needle-beard to amend, Which, without any wrong, I may call too long, For ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews

... us nothin' to eat. "My fingers itch to turn you out beyutiful dishes as your mouths 'ud water to come to a second time," she said, "but it 'ud be a crule kindness, knowin' you'll be fendin' for yourselves in a 'ole in the ground in three weeks' time. Better ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various

... three times with oil all o'er, Then swim the Tiber through from shore to shore, Taking good care, as night draws on, to steep Your brain in liquor: then you'll have your sleep. Or, if you still have such an itch to write, Sing of some moving incident of fight; Sing of great Caasar's victories: a bard Who works at that is sure to ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... rich; I'm delighted. I delight in everything that's yours—whether it be money or virtue. Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet. It seems to me, however, that I've sufficiently proved the limits of my itch for it: I never in my life tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be less subject to suspicion than most of the people one sees grubbing and grabbing. I suppose it's their business to suspect—that of ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... threw his head back, and laughed. "Well, well, but it is droll! Last night, an English gentleman, an honourable member with the Treasury Bench in view; this morning an adventurer, a Romany. I itch for change. And why? Why? I have it all, yet I could pitch it away this moment for a wild night on the slope, or a nigger hunt on the Rivas. Chateau-Leoville, Goulet, and Havanas at a bob?—Jove, I thirst for a swig of raw Bourbon and the bite of a penny Mexican! Games, Gaston, games! Why the devil ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... what to do for an itch. Now, I'm going to make a bet. We had those points separated for a half-million volts discharge, but there was a dust-cover thrown over them just now. That, you notice, is missing. I'll bet that served as a starter lead for the main arc. Now I'm going to start that projector thing again, ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell

... from the Heads to the river mouth in the wake of the tug-boat Platypus, slow and toil some, set Jim in an itch of impatience. He was longing to feel land under his feet once more, and was leaning over the side, his awkwardly-packed canvas bag of belongings at his feet, watching the line of Liardit Beach, with its few dingy buildings standing ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... time leaving the girl at work, she told her on no account to eat any of the rice. But no sooner was the mother gone than the girl began to husk some PADI and nibble at it. Then at once her body began to itch, and hair began to grow on her arms like the hair of a DOK. Soon the mother returned and the girl said, "Why am I itching so?" The mother answered, "You have done some wicked thing, you have eaten some rice." Then hair grew all over the girl's body except ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... "I shall just have it pointed white and do the doa—I'm not su' how I shall do the doa. Whetha I shall do the doa gold or a vehy, vehy 'itch blue." ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... lived life up to the hilt, and was all pulse and granite. Then he began to talk in his quiet way about hunting and fishing; about stalking in the Highlands and tiger-hunting in India; and wound up with some wonderful stuff about moose-hunting, the sport of Canada. This made me itch like sin, just to get my fingers on a trigger, with a full moose-yard in view. I can feel it now—the bound in the blood as I caught at Malbrouck's arm and said: 'By George, I must kill moose; that's sport for Vikings, and I was meant to be a Viking—or a gladiator.' Malbrouck ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... away, old chum; forget that we are rich, And earn an honest appetite, and scratch an honest itch. Let's be two jolly garreteers, up seven flights of stairs, And wear old clothes and just pretend we aren't millionaires; And wonder how we'll pay the rent, and scribble ream on ream, And sup on sausages and tea, and ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... English sink of iniquity, for whom neither rack, thumb-screw, nor stake was sufficient reward. Me he denounced to the people as a runaway criminal, describing me in such terms as made my blood boil within me, and my hands itch to take him by the neck and crush the life out ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher

... bidden. The king welcomed him with marvellous joy, honouring him right gladly. He cherished him richly, and was ever about him with prayers and entreaties that he would show him somewhat of things that were yet to come, for these he was on itch to hear. "Sire," replied Merlin, "this I may not do. I dare not open my lips to speak of such awful matters, which are too high for me, save only when needs speak I must. Should my tongue be unloosed ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... way of mending the matter—that's curing the itch by scratching the skin off. I could not give your tall fellows less than a crown a-piece, and I could buy off the bloodiest Mohawk in the kingdom, if he's a Whig, for half that sum. But, thank Heaven, the ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... mostly are, but a nose decidedly in earnest to make the best of itself and of things in general,—a nose that would push its way up in life, but so pleasantly that the most irritable fingers would never itch to lay hold of it. With such a nose a man might play the violoncello, marry for love, or even write poetry, and yet not go ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... there was such lovely moonlight along the river and on the snow that I was taken with an itch for movement, and I walked for two hours and a half imagining all sorts of things, pretending that I was travelling in Russia or in Norway. When the tide came in and cracked the cakes of ice in the Seine and the thin ice which covered the stream, it was, without ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... severed with a sharp knife there flows from the cane a fluid bright and limpid as a judge's summing up; occasionally it is all as dry as dust and as sneezy, and its prickly leaf sheathes the abode of that vexing insect which causes the scrub itch. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... Suddenly the itch to write came to John, and he began to rummage among the papers and books on the ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine

... chafed under the bed-clothes and the black-currant tea and the hushed eucalyptic calm of the chamber. He fervently desired to be up and active and stressful. His mother and aunt cogitated in vain to hit on some method of allaying the itch for work. And then one day—it was the day before Christmas—his ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... instructor or idea but those of parasitism. She was honest and earnest, was eager to learn the truth. She might be put to some use. At any rate he had been unworthy of his own ideals when he, assuming without question that she was the usual capitalistic snob with the itch for gratifying vanity by patronizing the "poor dear lower classes," had been ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips



Words linked to "Itch" :   want, tickle, infection, vellicate, pruritus, haptic sensation, skin sensation, desire, ache, titillate, cutaneous sensation, tingle, smart, prickle, hurt, irritate



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