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Mutter   /mˈətər/   Listen
Mutter

noun
1.
A low continuous indistinct sound; often accompanied by movement of the lips without the production of articulate speech.  Synonyms: murmur, murmuration, murmuring, mussitation, muttering.
2.
A complaint uttered in a low and indistinct tone.  Synonyms: grumble, grumbling, murmur, murmuring, muttering.



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"Mutter" Quotes from Famous Books



... with Ralph. He would teach you another lesson, my lad." "I would rather that I had you, Wolf, to live in my house. I would be kind to you, and help you to be good, and tell you about God, who lives in the sky." "And is that He who is speaking? Listen!" Thunder began to mutter in the clouds. "Yes, it is He," replied Eric; "and if you will only listen, you can also hear Him often speak with a small, still voice in your heart." "I never heard Him," replied Wolf; "but I cannot stay longer with you, for my pigs will wander: there ...
— The Gold Thread - A Story for the Young • Norman MacLeod

... again over the thousands Glaucon turned toward the only faces that he saw out of the innumerable host: Themistocles, Democrates, Simonides, Cimon. They beheld him raise his arm and lift his glorious head yet higher. Glaucon in turn saw Cimon sink into his seat. "He wakes!" was the appeased mutter passing from the son of Miltiades and running along every tier of Athenians. And silence deeper than ever held the stadium; for now, with Lycon victor twice, the literal turning of a finger in the next event might win or ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... took hours to tell the story, and when we had all finished and Aggie had gone to bed in Tish's spare room with hysteria, and Tish had gone to bed with tea and toast, Charlie Sands was still walking up and down the parlor, stopping now and then to mutter: "Well, I'll be——" and then going on ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... who might participate My deeper pleasures (nay, I had not once, Though not unused to mutter lonesome songs, Even with myself divided such delight, 240 Or looked that way for aught that might be clothed In human language), easily I passed From the remembrances of better things, And slipped into the ordinary works Of careless youth, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... his family, I said: 'Why, Twigsmith, retire to one of your country seats, and live on the interest of some canal or other, or discount bonds and mortgages for the country banks.' Actually, I heard Twigsmith mutter as he went out, that it wasn't right to insult a man's poverty. Now I hadn't the remotest idea of injuring Twigsmith's feelings, for he was a very clever fellow, and we made a good thing out of him in his time, but it seems that my advice might ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... his case in the teeth of adverse decisions in the Lower Courts to the bitter end in one of the divisions of the Court of Session. After the decision of this tribunal affirming the judgment he had appealed against, and thus finally blasting his fondest hopes, he was heard to mutter as he left the Court: "They ca' themselves senators o' the College o' Justice, but it's ma opeenion they're a' the waur ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... began to mutter, then to jabber a mixed jargon of several native tongues, sometimes raving, sometimes praying, till he had worked himself into a frenzy and foamed ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... man realized that he was doomed. Fate had struck at him mercilessly. He could only wait in dumb despair, and mutter prayers too long forgotten, and concoct bogus letters from a cousin's address in the south of England for ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... soon burning splendidly, and the giant commenced to brew the ale, drinking it off as fast as it was made. Ashpot watched him getting gradually drunk, and heard him mutter to himself, "To-night I will kill him," so he began to think of a plan to outwit his master. When he went to bed he placed the giant's cream-whisk between the sheets as a dummy, while he ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman

... leaving her: if I go but for one night, I have fulfilled my promise: and if she think not, I can mutter and grumble, and yield again, and make a merit of it; and then, unable to live out of her presence, soon return. Nor are women ever angry at bottom for being disobeyed through excess of love. They like ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... Areopagus which rises before him. Here, if time did not press, he might have tarried to pay respectful reverence before a deep fissure cleft in the side of the rock. In front of this fissure stands a little altar. All Phormion's company look away as they pass the spot, and they mutter together "Be propitious, O Eumenides!" (literally, Well-minded Ones). For like true Greeks they delight to call foul things with fair and propitious names; and that awful fissure and altar are sacred to the Erinyes (Furies), the horrible maidens, the trackers of guilt, the ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... for the last time, your compact, do you hear? Behave properly or I will pay you out!" Miuesov had time to mutter again. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... stolen into my room like a thief, it felt like my own room no longer. All the most precious rights which I had over it vanished at the touch of my theft. I began to mutter to myself, as though telling mantrams: Bande Mataram, Bande Mataram, my Country, my golden Country, all this gold is ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore

... Lucetta Almazida close by, her eye glued to another hole in the canvas, her breath coming short and thick, her face livid and drawn. Not knowing what she did, she clutched Philemon's hand, and he heard her mutter, ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... hearing him mutter; "Why meddle again," she explained, "in things that don't concern you? I had endless trouble in getting to speak to your paternal aunt; and your aunt had, on the other hand, a thousand and one ways and means to devise, before she could ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... that Heaven took back the Saint it gave;— "That I've but vanished from this earth awhile, "To come again with bright, unshrouded smile! "So shall they build me altars in their zeal, "Where knaves shall minister and fools shall kneel; "Where Faith may mutter o'er her mystic spell, "Written in blood—and Bigotry may swell "The sail he spreads for Heaven with blasts from hell! "So shall my banner thro' long ages be "The rallying sign of fraud and anarchy;— "Kings yet unborn shall rue MOKANNA'S name, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... insolence my face flushed hotly and I opened my mouth to make some indignant reply, but I thought better of it and only walked away, laughing softly to myself. As I went away, I heard him mutter, 'What a cat.' ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... a mutter of bees, And Bill 'gan muttering too,— "If the honey-comb swells in the hollow trees, (What else can a Didymus do?) I'll steer to the purple woods myself And see if this thing be so, Which the chaplain found on his little book-shelf, For ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... to blow away and the agonized Bosja to mutter curses not loud, but deep, upon his head and ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng

... doctor then bathed his head for some time in hot water, but was obliged to cut off some of his hair, in order to remove the bandage. As he examined the wound, Charlie was astounded to hear him mutter ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... light behind waxed fiercer still, and a low rumbling as of distant thunder began to mutter round us. The air became difficult to breathe. It was no longer air, but a mephitic stench that choked us with disgusting fumes. Then a great shock shook the land, and right in front of us a seam opened that must ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie

... he let Jack go off without offering him even a syllable of thanks, the bystanders smiled, and somebody might have been heard to mutter, "Peakslow all over! Just like ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... would look cross and dissatisfied, and mutter somethin' about the milkin'. There was ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... light cloud passed over his visage, and I heard him mutter to himself in the Scottish dialect, "Beef and pudding! 'tis cauld ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... close to Abdul Ali. There was no room there. That was the seat of the mighty. You could not have dropped a handkerchief between the men who wanted to be nearest the throne of influence. But Anazeh solved that riddle. He strode, stately and magnificent, up the middle of the carpet amid a mutter of imprecations. And when one more than ordinarily indignant sheikh demanded to know what he meant by it, he paused in front of him and laid his right hand on my shoulder. (There was a loaded ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... is queer!" they heard him mutter, as he thrust a finger through the hole in the garboard ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... knew not then, nor by any means suspected how fearful was its character in the remote and hidden depths of her soul. She sat with Osborne's right hand between hers, and scarcely for a moment ever took her sparkling eyes off his countenance. Many times was she observed to mutter to herself, and her lips frequently moved as if she had been speaking, but no words were uttered, nor any sense of her distress expressed. Once, only, in the course of the evening, were they startled into a hush of terror and dismay, by ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... No mutter of it. I am from walking the whole ground I trap, And there's no likeness of it, but the moles I've turned up dead and dried out of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)

... week besides. They talk of matins and even-song; they are full of vestments, and have seen 'such lovely things' in that line. At Christmas and Easter they are mainly instrumental in decorating the interior till it becomes perfectly gaudy with colour, and the old folk mutter and shake their heads. Their devotion in getting hothouse flowers is quite touching. One is naturally inclined to look with a liberal eye upon what is capable of a good construction. But is all this quite spontaneous? Has the new curate nothing at all to do with it? Is ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... managed to mutter, touching his suddenly dampened forehead with his handkerchief, and attempting to set his thoughts in some sort of order. He could not; the incoherence held him speechless, dazed, under the magic of this superb young being instinct with ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers

... do that much, anyway," Tubby was heard to mutter to himself, "if only I thought I could stand the terrible sights. You know, seeing blood always used to make me feel faint-like. But then a scout ought to overcome ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... Richard and Storri stood glaring at one another after the episode of the hands, Richard had vastly the better of Storri, who fell into a three-ply mood of amazement, fright, and rage. Finally, Storri seemed to mutter threats while he retreated; and at the last got himself out of the Harley front door in rather an incoherent way. It was understood that he mumbled "Good-afternoon!" to Dorothy; and that "he would talk with him again," to Richard; and all as he found his hat with his left hand, the right ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... enthusiasm, the wild cheers of the crowd for their favorites, The artillery, the silent cannons bright as gold, drawn along, rumble lightly over the stones, (Silent cannons, soon to cease your silence, Soon unlimber'd to begin the red business;) All the mutter of preparation, all the determin'd arming, The hospital service, the lint, bandages and medicines, The women volunteering for nurses, the work begun for in earnest, no mere parade now; War! an arm'd race is advancing! the welcome for battle, no turning away! War! be it weeks, months, or years, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... longer alone, for though I could see nothing but the grim idol, I could hear around me the murmur of many tongues. Low, but vast in volume, it seemed as though thousands were there below me, hushed and waiting for the consummation of the sacrifice. At times the murmur rose to a mutter as of distant thunder, then again it would be hushed ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... and ere he was aware he fell asleep—a restless, wretched sleep, that made him glad when the half-oblivion was over. Christine, however, was apparently at rest, and he soon relapsed into the same dark, haunted state of unconsciousness. Suddenly he began to mutter and moan, and then to speak with a hoarse, whispered rapidity that had in it something frightful and unearthly. But Christine listened with wide-open eyes, and heard with sickening terror the whole wicked plot. It fell from his half-open lips over and over in every detail; and over and over he ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... arms and glared at me with his excitable, slanting brown eyes. His head was the shape of a chocolate drop, and was covered with dry, straw-colored hair that fuzzed up about his pointed crown. He had never done more than mutter at me as I passed him, and I was surprised when he now ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... present had been anything but beautiful, was nevertheless encouraged, and put all he knew into his hits. Occasionally Joe Bevan would push out his left glove. Then, if Sheen's guard was in the proper place and the push did not reach its destination, Joe would mutter a word of praise. If Sheen dropped his right hand, so that he failed to stop the blow, Bevan would observe, "Keep that guard up, sir!" with almost a pained intonation, as if he had been disappointed in ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse

... stone sepulchre is all about her, and she only reaches out of it when she wants bread and water. She, herself, does not seem to be in her body: she is a ghost. When we pass by her tomb-like body, perhaps a head will nod to us, or lips will mutter monosyllables. If our dress touches her garments we feel like begging pardon, A kind of horror and at the same time a sort of pity invade us, yet we are paralyzed and cannot help her. I hardly think the word is employed by lexicographers ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder

... his cap on the muzzle of his gun, and his fustian shooting-jacket belted in tightly, the sturdy river-lightermen would respectfully bob, and blinking towards the huge biceps swelling out his arms, would mutter ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... with his dream that it was not for some moments after he had turned into St. Mark's, obsessed of the sense of life unconquerable and pervading, that he began to take notice of what he saw there in the dim wonder. It was first of all the smell of stale incense and the mutter of the mass, and then as he bowed instinctively to the elevated Host, the snare of the intricate mosaic pavement; so by degrees appreciation cleared to the seductive polish of the pillars, the rows of starred candles, and beyond that to the clear gold of the walls, with all the pictures wrought ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... draw himself up instantly and look rudely and insolently about him, and smile malignantly to himself if he caught some comrade dropping his eyes before his glance. 'All right, my man, you're so learned and well educated,...' he would mutter between his teeth. 'I'll ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... boys outside heard the man mutter to himself. "Phil Lawrence? Oh, it can't be!" Then he raised his voice: "You are trying to play some ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer

... did Amalek set upon them; just so does the Devil set upon the people of God, when their Losses, their Crosses, their Exercises have Enfeebled their Souls within them; and what says the Devil? E'en the same that was mutter'd in the Ear of the Afflicted Job, Is not this the Uprightness of thy Ways? Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being Innocent? If thou wert a Child of God, He would never follow thee, with such Testimonies of his Indignation. This ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... raid and a lucky one," said the Viking complacently to himself. "A fairer face and brighter eyes I never saw before. Who can she be? Like enough some lady come to hear the spaeman's mystic jargon, and swallow potions or mutter spells at his bidding. I am in two minds about turning wizard myself, if such visitors be common. Methinks I could give her as wise a rede as Atli. But it is strange how she came here; she is not of this country, I'll ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... and flings her from side to side, the music is as brutal, as "virile," as the most exigent could reasonably demand. Later, as he hints at his purpose,—"I shall await my chance,"—the trombones, tubas, and double-basses pizzicato mutter, pp, the motive of Vengeance. The orchestral interlude is long and elaborate. We hear a variant of the Fate theme, which reaches a climax in a fortissimo outburst of the full orchestra. The theme in this form is developed at length; there is a reminiscence of the Melisande theme, ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman

... much like gambling," he would mutter uneasily to himself at each success, "uncommonly ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... his words producing an effect, and he was not disappointed. The vendor of miscellanies gasped, open-mouthed, like a fish, and steadied himself against the counter. When he spoke, after a short interval, it was in a hoarse mutter, tremulous and unsteady. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... turned pale; Freddy and Teddy opened their eyes to their widest. Jeffreys, on hearing Freddy mutter "Father," looked round curiously, to get a view of the ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed

... to have given me something better to do, then. If you had taught me an honest trade, I should not have been so given to making penny whistles and cutting cockades out of foolscap paper. Nay, don't look so black, and mutter, 'Fool's cap paper, indeed!' between your teeth. I'll go, I'll go," and ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... the blinkard will put me to death in your absence." By the former he meant Requelme the treasurer, who was very fat, and by the latter Almagro, who had lost an eye, whom he had observed frequently to mutter against him, for certain reasons, which will appear in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... looked embarrassed again. "The thing that was most unpleasant is difficult to explain. The old man sat there by the fire and leered at me with a silly sort of admiration that was—well, more than humiliating. 'Gay boy, gay dog!' he would mutter, and when he grinned he showed his teeth, worn and yellow—shells. I remembered that it was better to talk casually to insane people; so I remarked carelessly that I had been out with ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather

... ihnen an Wein, Den Landeskindern an Lautertrank,[1] nichts war brig gelassen Irgendwo in dem Hause, was vor die Heerschar frder Die Schenken trgen, sondern die Schffer[2] waren 2015 Des Lautertrankes leer. Da war es nicht lange hernach, Dass dieses sofort erfuhr der Frauen schnste, Kristi Mutter; sie kam, mit ihrem Kinde zu sprechen, Mit ihrem Sohne selbst, sie sagte ihm sogleich, Dass da die Wehrhaften nicht mehr des Weines htten 2020 Fr die Gste beim Gastmahle; bittend begehrte sie, Dass hiefr ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas

... thimble on her middle finger, she sat down again. She examined a rent through which wadding peeped out on the world, cautiously. But in spite of her attention fixed on the work she whispered, or rather talked on in a low and monotonous mutter: ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... spoke another word, but I saw a storm was brewin, and I heard her mutter to herself, 'Creation! what a spot of work! I'll have no teaching of 'mother tongue' here.' Next morning she sent me to Boston of an errand, and when I returned, two days after, Flora was gone to live with sister Sally. ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... NO TALES!" The words boomed deep from his cavernous chest, a mutter that was a rumble, with something almost solemn in its note and certainly menacing, breathing murder. As Kells had propounded his ideas, revealing his power to devise a remarkable scheme and his passion for gold, ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... the goddess was resting in her sleep in such a way that no one could possibly unclasp the necklace without awaking her. Loki stood hesitatingly by the bedside for a few moments, and then began rapidly to mutter the runes which enabled the gods to change their form at will. As he did this, Heimdall saw him shrivel up until he was changed to the size and form of a flea, when he crept under the bed-clothes and bit Freya's side, thus ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... the auto stood up, the better to see, Carrie was revealed. The faker, closely held by the constable who had arrested him, and by a brother officer who had hurried up, gave the strange girl one look. Then those who were near him heard him mutter: ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope

... your coat. Good-night, sir, good-night." He was holding the door open and smiling politely. Paul, scowling, arose and shook hands with the Robinson emissary. Neil kept up a steady stream of talk, and his chum could only mutter vague words about his pleasure at Mr. Brill's call and about seeing him to-morrow. When the door had closed behind him the coach stood a moment in the hall and ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour

... in a joyous flutter, till we heard some fellow mutter: "Here comes Griggs, the southpaw pitcher, fairly burdened with his fame! He it was who beat the Phillies—gave the Quaker bugs the willies—he it was who saved our ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... and abashed, could answer little save to mutter a few words about the greediness of monks, who, judging everyone else by themselves, thought no one inaccessible to a bribe. He protested the innocence of the archdukes in the matter, who had given no directions ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... She sat quite confounded. 'Is it Robert Moore that speaks?' I heard her mutter. 'Is it a ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... Local quid-nuncs mutter "Compromise," as they seek the spiritual consolation of the Magnolia Saloon and Palace Varieties. Is there to be no pistol practice ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... wolves drew nearer his body grew tense, his muscles hardened, and in his throat there was the low whispering of a snarl instead of a howl. He sensed danger. He had caught, in the voice of the wolves, the ravening note that had made Pierrot cross himself and mutter of the loups-garous, and he crouched down on his belly at the top of ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... is the matter?" asked a deep voice, suddenly, and Mary Lee started up to see the kind face of the old general bending anxiously over her. "Are you ill? What is the mutter?" he repeated. ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston

... use abusive language" the babu retorted mildly, stopping to speak, and then again to wipe his spectacles, and his forehead, and his hands, and to glance at the clock, and to mutter what may or may not ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... remark of Tournefort's which gave Chauvelin the first inkling of something strange and, to him, positively awesome. Tournefort, who walked close beside him, heard him suddenly mutter a fierce exclamation. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... did not hear us, for I heard him mutter: "I verily believe those miserable Cook's tourists that were down here yesterday picked some of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... hold," said the knight, and proceeded to mutter to himself, "Am I either the subject or slave of King Richard, more than as a free knight sworn to the service of the Crusade? And whom have I come hither to honour with lance and sword? Our holy ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... send my bill in too—mind that." (Some of his poorer patients never received any, and he, when twitted of the fact, would mutter, roughly, "Business ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... of doom High over him. One moment's flash of fear, And yet not fear, but rather life's regret, Felt Drake, then laughed a low deep laugh of joy Such as men taste in battle; yea, 'twas good To grapple thus with death; one low deep laugh, One mutter as of a lion about to spring, Then burst that thunder o'er him. Height o'er height The heavens rolled down, and waves ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... Cloth Hall burst into flames. The spikes of fire rose and fell and rose again. Showers of sparks went upward. A pall of smoke would form and cloud the moon, waver, break and pass. There was the mutter and rumble and roar of great guns. There was the groan of wounded and the ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat

... idea into your head that I am a genius," he would mutter fiercely at her. "I never did, nor work of mine. You don't know good from bad, anyway, and we may both be crazy." He buried his face in his hands, overcome by the awfulness of failure. She put her ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick

... to mutter, and finally spoke in a mixed jargon of scarcely intelligible dialects. He now yelled, prayed, and foamed at the mouth, till in about three quarters of an hour he was exhausted and speechless. 'But in an instant he sprang upon his ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... box on the right-hand side of the stage at the front, and Peter sat in the shadow back of me. Julia and one of Peter's classmates were just behind us. As the curtain went up Peter took a hard hold on my hand under my white chiffon scarf, and I heard him mutter under ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... I heard his voice. "Ah! here it is." He had found his hat. For a few seconds we hung in the wind. "What will you do after—after . . ." I asked very low. "Go to the dogs as likely as not," he answered in a gruff mutter. I had recovered my wits in a measure, and judged best to take it lightly. "Pray remember," I said, "that I should like very much to see you again before you go." "I don't know what's to prevent you. The damned thing won't make me invisible," he said with intense bitterness,—"no such ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... her patient, trying so far as she could to set her straight and comfortable again. But the woman had begun to mutter once more words in a strange dialect that Marcella did not understand, and could no longer be kept still. The temperature was rising again, and another fit of delirium was imminent. Marcella could only hope that ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... not answer, but he began to mutter in a sleepy monotone, "Don't hit me, sir. It was snow. I'll not come home late again. Ninepence, sir, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... his harsh alarm, hopped in and out of some young hazels fringing the glade beyond the "set." Presently, a brown owl, in a group of tall pines near the little rill that made faint music in the woods, began to mutter and complain, in those low, peculiar notes that are often heard before she leaves her daytime resting place. Then no sound disturbed the stillness but the far-off cawing of the rooks, and the only creatures visible ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... each other in blank surprise, and began to mutter among themselves, "What game is he agate of now?" "Aw, it's true." "True enough, you go bail." "I wouldn't trust, he's been so reckless." "Twenty thousands, they're saying." "Aw, he's been helped—there's that Mister Loviboy, a power of money ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine

... her center are beginning to be felt. The deep heavings begin to swell beneath us. 'All the old signs fail.' 'God answers no more by Urim and Thummim, nor by dream, nor by prophet.' Men's hearts are failing them for fear and for looking after those things that are coming on the earth. Thunders mutter in the distance. Winds moan across the surging bosom of the deep. All things betide the rising of that final storm of divine indignation which shall sweep away ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... A mutter of voices in Pogosa's tepee interrupted his thought. "She is delirious again," he thought, but the cold nipped, and he dreaded rising and dressing. As he hesitated he thought he could distinguish two voices. Shaking Eugene, he whispered, "Listen, ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... purple velvet, with gilt clasps, out of which in her haste she let fall a shower of the little pictures, each in a lace fringe of yellowish paper, which she used to mark the places of the greater feasts of the church, my aunt, while she swallowed her drops, began at full speed to mutter the words of the sacred text, its meaning being slightly clouded in her brain by the uncertainty whether the pepsin, when taken so long after the Vichy, would still be able to overtake it and to 'send it down.' "Three o'clock! It's unbelievable how ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... stillness was in some way made more terrifying by the rustle of the papers her husband was reading, by the creaking of his chair as he moved, and by the little fidgeting grunts and half-exclamations which from time to time broke from him. His wife's hand shook at every unintelligible mutter from him, and the slight habitual contraction between her ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... a sudden surging forward, and a mutter of admiration much more flattering than the cheers had been, when the principals followed their hats, and slipping out of their great- coats, stood forth in all the physical beauty of ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... mutter of astonishment arose, and the waiter-girls, giggling, marvelling, and envious, paused, their platters in hand, to exchange comment on the new-comer's hat and gown. A cowboy at the washing-sink in the ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... enough: now do the sepulchres mutter: "Free the dead! Why is it so long night? Doth not the ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... ordered me to read it to them, which I did with a very clear Voice, till I came to the Greek Verse at the End of it. I must confess I was a little startled at its popping upon me so unexpectedly. However, I covered my Confusion as well as I could, and after having mutter'd two or three hard Words to my self, laugh'd heartily, and cried, A very good Jest, Faith. The Ladies desired me to explain it to them; but I begged their pardon for that, and told them, that if it had been proper for them to hear, they may be sure the Author would not have wrapp'd ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... to prepare for it," mused the old man, with a jerk of his shoulders. "France! So the mutter runs. There is a Napoleon in France, but no Bonaparte. Clatter-clatter! Bang-bang!" He laughed ironically and cautiously glanced at his watch, an article which must have cost him many and many a potato-patch. He pulled his hat over his eyes, scratched the irritating stubble ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath

... perfectly still. He first gazes up at the skylight, then down at the floor. Slowly he begins to shake his head, and mutter, as ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... slavey for those stuck-up pigs," said the girl in a subdued mutter, and then she went on to recount, quaintly and in a half incoherent jumble, the salient facts of her life. I glanced at Mick. He was leaning forward, peering through another slit. His face had its old set look; stern, condemnatory. Twice I had had to reach out and grip his wrist. He wanted to ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... words he seemed to see London rise up before him in the night, with shadowy domes and towers and chimneys; he seemed to hear through the exquisite silence of night upon the sea the mutter of its many voices. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... swallow, many a worse one. As might be this doctrine of a great triangle, so is the doctrine of Home Rule. Why is a gentleman of property to be kept out in the cold by some O'Mullins because he will not mutter an unmeaning shibboleth? "Triangular? Yes,—or lozenge-shaped, if you please; but, gentlemen, I am the man for Tipperary." Phineas Finn, having seen, or thought that he had seen, all this, began, from the very first moment of ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... evening dress of rusty black velvet with a long train. It gave her a very imposing appearance, and the effect of her evening dress and her handsome face and imperious manners were so overpowering that the old postman, as he hobbled toward her, had to mutter ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... Hudsonia tomentosa the antipathetic compositor set up Hudsonia tormentosa. That compositor was a Cape Cod man,—I would wager a dinner upon it. "Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges," I hear him mutter, as he slips the superfluous ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... and to my office, and there we sat a very full board all the morning upon some accounts of Mr. Gauden's. Here happened something concerning my Will which Sir W. Batten would fain charge upon him, and I heard him mutter something against him of complaint for his often receiving people's money to Sir G. Carteret, which displeased me much, but I will be even with him. Thence to the Dolphin Tavern, and there Mr. Gauden did give us a great dinner. Here we had some discourse of the Queen's ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... a representation of the Siamese twins in old age. On each side of them is a son. The original photograph is in the Mutter Museum, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... whining in her little tent when she came into the camp. She heard Bill Holmes stumble over the end of the chuck-wagon tongue and mutter the customary profanity with which the average man meets an incident of that kind. She whispered a fierce command to the little black dog and stood very still for a minute, listening. She did not hear anything further, either from Bill Holmes or the dog, and finally reassured by the silence, ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower

... was a far greater fault than the first, and his father only treated it as his just desert when he was ordered off under the squire in charge to be soundly scourged, all the more sharply for his continuing to mutter, ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge

... trafficked with as so much coin! where is all this going on? Do you suppose it was only going on in the time of David, and that nobody but Jews ever murder the poor? If so, it would surely be wiser not to mutter and mumble for our daily lessons what does not concern us; but if there be any chance that it may concern us, and if this description, in the Psalms, of human guilt is at all generally applicable, as the descriptions in the Psalms of human sorrow are, may it not be advisable to know wherein ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... his waistcoat, and his right hand free for the performance of some graceful salutation. "Linda," said he, as soon as he saw the two ladies standing a few feet away from him, "I am glad to see you down-stairs again,—very glad. I hope you find yourself better." Linda muttered, or tried to mutter, some words of thanks; but nothing was audible. She stood hanging upon her aunt, with eyes turned down, and her limbs trembling beneath her. "Linda," continued Peter, "your aunt tells me that you have accepted my offer. I am very glad of it. I will be a good husband to ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... back from Germany, and the Imperial tragedy, which had as central figure one so noble and so selfless, had moved her eager young heart very deeply. She remembered how hurt she had felt at hearing her cousin mutter to his wife, "I'm sorry she is here. She oughtn't to have come to this kind of thing. Royalties, especially foreign Royalties, should have no politics." And with what satisfaction she had heard Mrs. Hayley's spirited rejoinder: "What nonsense! She hasn't come because ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... hut was the Dutch boy, Hans Dunnerwust, who sat on the ground, his back against the wall, his jaw dropped and his eyes bulging. Occasionally, as he listened to the words of the dying man, he would mutter: ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish

... to shake her head and mutter "Impossible" for some time, while she stared at the candle as if she expected that it would solve the mystery. Then she got up and examined the bedclothes, and found that a good deal of the rhubarb had been spilt on the sheets, and that a good deal more of it ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... her reflective answer. "His thoughts often run on his sister Dorothy and Lady Latimer: I hear him mutter to himself the same words often, 'It was a lifelong mistake, Olympia.' But that is true, is it not? He is as clear and collected as ever when he dictates to me a letter on business; he makes use of me as ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... am one of the weaklings who, in grumbling at the weather, merely invite compassion. July, this year, is clouded and windy, very cheerless even here in Devon; I fret and shiver and mutter to myself something about southern skies. Pshaw! Were I the average man of my years, I should be striding over Haldon, caring not a jot for the heavy sky, finding a score of compensations for the lack of sun. Can I not have patience? Do I not know that, some morning, the east will ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... thou set'st over us, by a free air Is swept away, senseless." And old Sword then First knew the might of great Captain Pen. So strangely it bow'd him, so wilder'd his brain, That now he stood, hatless, renouncing his reign; Now mutter'd of dust laid in blood; and now 'Twixt wonder and patience went lifting his brow. Then suddenly came he, with gowned men, And said, "Now observe me—I'm Captain Pen: I'll lead all your changes—I'll write all your books— I'm every thing—all things—I'm clergymen, cooks, Clerks, carpenters, ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt

... Earthmen with surprising strength, and the latter stumbled to his knees. All five men hastened to ape the position of the prostrate Arrillians; they knew better to risk committing sacrilege on a strange planet. As Tyndall sank to the ground and covered his eyes, he heard that priest mutter another sentence, in which his own name was included. He thought it was ...
— Grove of the Unborn • Lyn Venable

... in my shoes," whispered Betty back with ever so slight a trembling of her left eyelid; while Margaret heard the king mutter to ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... man above-mentioned, and followed by two others carrying the two pigs. As soon as we got upon a rising ground, I stopped to look round me, and observed a woman, on the opposite side of the valley where I landed, calling to her countrymen who attended me. Upon this, the chief began to mutter something which I supposed was a prayer; and the two men, who carried the pigs, continued to walk round me all the time, making, at least, a dozen circuits before the other had finished his oration. This ceremony being performed; we proceeded, and presently met people coming ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... Cheverley Chase, The day when first I saw your face Put me in such a fearful flutter I could do naught but moan and mutter. Whether I'm standing on my head, Or if I'm on my heels instead, I scarce can tell, for Cupid's arrows Have made my brain like any sparrow's. When you come near, my foolish heart Goes pit-a-pat with throb and start, ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... came to his quarter, and on still I brought her, And up to his girth, to his breastplate she drew; A short prayer from Neville just reach'd me, "The devil!" He mutter'd—lock'd level ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... in height, slim, well-built, with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair. Soon he sank into deep thought, or more accurately speaking into a complete blankness of mind; he walked along not observing what was about him and not caring to observe it. From time to time, he would mutter something, from the habit of talking to himself, to which he had just confessed. At these moments he would become conscious that his ideas were sometimes in a tangle and that he was very weak; for two days ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Rochus They made him stand, and wait his doom; And, as if he were condemned to the tomb, Began to mutter their hocus pocus. First, the Mass for the Dead they chaunted. Then three times laid upon his head A shovelful of church-yard clay, Saying to him, as he stood undaunted, "This is a sign that thou art ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... managed to mutter, "that would be funny now, for a fact. My dad'd like mighty well to get that stuff back, Paul, sure ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... hell!" and the man fades away again, without even looking startled, to mutter "Well, you needn' be so damn peeved about it—I'll say you needn' be so damn peeved—whatcha think you are, anyhow—Marathon Mike?" as Oliver's feet take Oliver ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... every foot should be at the same angle. In reading "Paradise Lost" one has a feeling of vastness. You float under an illimitable sky, brimmed with sunshine or hung with constellations; the abysses of space are about you; you hear the cadenced surges of an unseen ocean; thunders mutter round the horizon; and if the scene change, it is with an elemental movement like the shifting of mighty winds. His imagination seldom condenses, like Shakespeare's, in the kindling flash of a single epithet, but loves better to diffuse ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... the dawn that, stopping in my walk, I listened, and heard amid the whistling of the wind and the wash of the water a little mutter of sound somewhere in the disintegrating darkness below. I called to Legrand under my breath, and I heard his "hist." He was at attention, his ears straining in the wind to get news of what was passing. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... —That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line— Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, 80 And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, And see God made and eaten all day long, And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke! For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, Dying in state and by such slow degrees, I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... ought to treat such, though their Enemies, as Brothers; and that to use a gallant Man (who does his Duty) ill, speaks a Revenge which cannot proceed but from a Coward Soul. He order'd that the Prisoners should leave their Chests; and when some of his Men seem'd to mutter, he bid 'em remember the Grandeur of the Monarch they serv'd; that they were neither Pyrates nor Privateers; and, as brave Men, they ought to shew their Enemies an Example they would willingly have follow'd, and use their Prisoners as they ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe

... terror was universal. "Friar Bungey himself!" repeated the burly impostor. "Right, lassie, right; and he now goes to the palace of the Tower, to mutter good spells in King Edward's ear,—spells to defeat the malignant ones, and to lower the price of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to fool me so," Jack heard him mutter to himself; "only a scrap of waste paper, and I thought I'd found it. Twice now I've gone over the whole lot, and never a trace have I seen. Oh! what shall I do about it? ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... that he does not mean to do it injury, or to cast a spell of jettatura upon it. The modern Greeks are even more jealous of praise, and if you compliment a child of theirs, you are expected to spit three times at him and say, [Greek: Na maen baskanthaes], ("May no evil come to you!") or mutter [Greek: Skordo], ("Garlic,") which has a special power as a counter-charm. So, too, in Corsica, the peasants are strict believers in the jettatura of praise, which they call l'annocchiatura,—supposing, that, if any evil influence attend you, your good wishes will turn into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... of him; but occasionally, sitting by the fire here when a storm was heavy outside, for the coming of storms was always the prelude of these moods in him, he would begin to mutter to himself, and to talk to his dog of days long gone; of men and women he had once hated or loved, or who loved or hated him—God knows which—and of deeds he had once done, but which were now deeply buried ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray

... straight way the Surgions and Physicians were sent for, and the prince was dressed, and within few dayes after, the wound began to putrifie, and the flesh to looke dead and blacke: wherupon they that were about the prince began to mutter among themselues, and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... about their waists, of which herb they make their drink. To make sure of a welcome, this king brought with him a present of sixteen hogs. When the two kings came in sight of each other, they began to bow and to mutter certain prayers; on meeting they both fell prostrate on the ground, and after several strange gestures, they got up and walked to two seats provided for them, where they uttered a few more prayers, bowing reverently to each other, and at length sat down under the same canopy. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... minutes I was on the stage shaking hands with Mr. Daly, and the big man standing around glowing with satisfaction. "Come around in front," said Mr. Daly, "and see the performance. I will put you into my own box." And as I moved away I heard my honest friend mutter, "Well, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... this world are as dross to us. The missionary has a modulator, and he trains the young men and women in the sol-fa so that they may sing Sankey's hymns in all the parts." I was dreadfully floored by this answer, and could only mutter mechanically, "Dross," "Missionary,'" "Modulator," in a vain effort to seize the situation. Conversion I understood and approved of, but where, in the wee island of Eigg, were the vain, fleeting joys? There is no public-house ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... back, you scoundrel!" and then his heavy feet sounded upon the carpet. "The deuce!" he said, in an odd, low mutter, which sounded as though he was speaking half to her, half to himself. "My lady's protege, is it? The other Pamela! Rather an improvement on Pamela, too. Not ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett

... mutter. Pat with a farewell string of oaths rolled off down the road, too sleepy to look behind, and Billy held his breath and ducked low till the rolling Pat was one with the deep ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... to t' other," old Oth used to mutter; "on'y dem birds done forgot to eat, an' Mars' Gurney ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... the dead man's brat I saved last night for Hugo's sake!" I heard my father mutter, "the maid with the girdle of ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... squeaking voices. Gelt-stags and bucks have hornless heads, like hinds and does. Thus wethers have small horns, like ewes; and oxen large bent horns, and hoarse voices when they low, like cows: for bulls have short straight horns; and though they mutter and grumble in a deep tremendous tone, yet they low in a shrill high key. Capons have small combs and gills, and look pallid about the head, like pullets; they also walk without any parade, and hover chickens like hens. Barrow- hogs have also small ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White



Words linked to "Mutter" :   sound off, utter, kvetch, grumble, talk, sound, verbalize, speak, quetch, plain, complaint, kick, mouth, verbalise, mussitate, complain



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