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Pricking

noun
1.
The act of puncturing with a small point.  Synonym: prick.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pricking" Quotes from Famous Books



... ensued between him and the coachman as to the clumsiness of smiths in general, who when they pare away a horse's hoofs in order to shoe it, so often cut into the living flesh, which is very dangerous, and is technically known as "pricking." ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... for the moment dazed by their success, so that Cap'n Bill was all alone among the Blueskins when he stepped his wooden leg into a hole in the ground and tumbled full length, his sharp stick flying from his hand and pricking the Boolooroo in the leg ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum

... in spite of her scars—Yet, as a matter of fact, I was not really in love with her during that drive, but having once stirred up in myself old MEMORIES of love, felt PREPARED to fall into that condition, and the more so because, of late, my conscience had often been pricking me for having discarded so many ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... been put on, with much pricking of fingers, and a blue ribbon added, la Fan, he surveyed himself with satisfaction, and considered the effect so fine, that he was inspired to try a still greater metamorphosis. The dress Fan had taken off lay on a chair, and into it got Tom, chuckling ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... upon me for some time—I noted not how long; but I was at length aroused from it by an acute pain, which I felt in the tip of my middle finger. It was sudden as acute, and resembled the pricking of a needle, or a sharp cut with ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... asked, still pricking me with the knife. "Will you get up, go to find the dog's cattle and drive them to a certain place, and hide them there?" And he named a secret valley that was known to very few. "If you do that, I will spare you and give you three of the cows. If you refuse or play my false, ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... had started in some little inward trouble. She had promised to join this walk to Shanmoor, she had promised to go with the others on a picnic the following day, but her conscience was pricking her. Twice this last fortnight had she been forced to give up a night-school she held in a little lonely hamlet among the fells, because even she had been too tired to walk there and back after a day of physical exertion. Were not the world and the flesh encroaching? She had been ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... privacy of his feelings sometimes drives him. He was reclining upon a sofa when I entered, but immediately arose and motioned me to take a seat. I had scarcely occupied a comfortable looking stuffed back-piece of furniture, when a pricking sensation in the region of my coat-tails caused me to resume the perpendicular with amazing rapidity, and, upon looking down, I observed the point of a pin protruding through the cushion of the chair. The Secretary did not lose his ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various

... dirhems in a monastery there. After awhile, I went thither and taking the money, bound it about my middle. [Then I set out to return] and when I came to the desert, the carrying of the money was burdensome to me. Presently, I espied a horseman pricking after me; so I [waited till he came up and] said to him, "O horseman, carry this money [for me] and earn reward and recompense [from God]." "Nay," answered he; "I will not do it, for I should weary myself and weary my horse." Then he went ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... know. The new throne did not stand very long. The troops of Ferdinand appeared at Fulneck. The village was sacked. Comenius reeled with horror. He saw the weapons for stabbing, for chopping, for cutting, for pricking, for hacking, for tearing and for burning. He saw the savage hacking of limbs, the spurting of ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton

... last-mentioned fact, it may be truly said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally one. Is any such unity predicable of their forms? Let us seek in easily verified facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be drawn by pricking one's finger, and viewed with proper precautions and under a sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be seen, among the innumerable multitude of little, circular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles, which float in it and give it its ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... that had been lurking at the corner of the lane, and had thrust out a leg as I pass'd. He was pricking up his ears now to the cries of "Thief—thief!" that had already reach'd the head of the street, ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... highway. Now it was a mere blotch moving in the sun and dust; then clearer; and then out of the cloud of light, flying sand came the clatter of hoofs on the pavement, the whir of wheels, and ahead of the rest of the party two dark Numidian outriders in bright red mantles appeared, pricking along their white African steeds. Chloe clapped her little hands, steadied her water-pot, and sprang up on the staging of the treadmill ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... a king trembled in the balance, as the judgment: death—banishment: banishment—death, with awful alternation echoed through the hall. Amid the speeches of the deputies was heard the chatter of fashionable women in the boxes, pricking with pins on cards the votes for and against death, and eating ices and oranges brought to them by friendly deputies. Above, in the public tribunes, sat women of the people, greeting the words of the deputies with coarse gibes. Betting went on outside. At every entrance, cries, ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... young matron, dwelt not a mile from him in her darkened dwelling; the fatherless boy would constantly cross the path of his well-protected, well-cared-for children. How bear the thousand little memories—the trifling dates, acts, words, pricking him with anguish? They say the man grew sick at the mere sight of the corn-cockle, which, though not plentiful on other moors, chanced to abound on this uncultivated tract, and bestowed on it its name; and he shivered as with an ague fit, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... chapel the next morning. It was his week for pricking in. Every man who entered—from the early men who strolled in quietly while the bell was still ringing, to the hurrying, half-dressed loiterers who crushed in as the porter was closing the doors, and disturbed the congregation in the middle of the confession—gave ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... to unhitch the team-mate. And it was just here that he proved his foresight. In the work of unhitching the mate, he should have encountered, and had expected, trouble from the black. But he did not. The mare sounded another friendly nicker when arranged beside him, and the black, pricking up his ears sharply, turned to her and proceeded to establish his friendship by licking her. So Felipe did not meet with difficulty from that direction; nor did he have trouble in the direction of the team-mate ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... sergeant, a very young officer, with a file of seven men, to protect the sentinel. They went over in a kind of trot, using rough words and actions towards those who went with them, and, coming near the party round the sentinel, rudely pushed them aside, pricking some with their bayonets, and formed in a half-circle near the sentry-box. The sentinel now came down the steps and fell in with the file, when they were ordered to prime and load. Captain Preston almost immediately joined his men. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... story has it, the young student "came pricking on hastily, complaining that they went at such a pace as gave him little chance of keeping up with them. One of the party made answer that the blame lay with the horse of Don Miguel de Cervantes, whose trot was of the speediest. He had hardly pronounced the name when the student ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... In all the pin-pricking embarrassment of the moment, he did not fail to remark that she quickly recovered the serenity which belongs to the well-bred. She was even smiling, rather ruefully, ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... which produce poisoning do not float in the air, but may be conveyed by any thing which is not sterile, as, for instance, the splinter or the instrument that did the cutting, scratching or pricking. They may be carried to the scratch by our hands, by water, or cloth ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... lines of apple trees; she walked with the unhasting gait of a cat which is crossing a yard after a shower of rain, and from time to time, whenever a puddle is encountered, lifts and shakes fastidiously one of its soft paws. Probably, in the woman's case, this came of the fact that things kept pricking and tickling her soles as she proceeded. Also, her knees, I could see, were trembling, and her step had in it a certain hesitancy, a ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... righted so many? Here are thousands of miserable men all around us; but they have every path opened to them. They have their advocates; they have their votes; they make the laws, and, at last and at worst, they have their strong right hands for defense. And here are thousands of miserable women pricking back death and dishonor with a little needle; and now the sly hand of science is stealing that little needle away. The ballot does not make those men happy nor respectable nor rich nor noble; but they guard it for themselves with sleepless jealousy, because they know it is the golden gate to every ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... the Germans drove women in front of them by pricking them with bayonets. The wounds were afterward ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Dick did what both Indians and hunters are accustomed to do on these occasions—he put a piece of rag on the end of his ramrod, and keeping his person concealed and perfectly still, waved this miniature flag in the air. The antelope noticed it at once, and, pricking up its ears, began to advance, timidly and slowly, step by step, to see what remarkable phenomenon it could be. In a few seconds the flag was lowered, a sharp crack followed, and the antelope fell dead upon ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... he spreads out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous all-including Case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox: every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of Slavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, into lands of true Liberty; were the work done, there is in ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... quite wrong in trying to fetch him round too soon, according to all accounts. The things he did! Even now it makes me feel all—ugh! Mustard, snuff, pricking. And one of those beastly ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... have seen the gusto with which Beauty pricked those sausages—I had better explain to the un-Bohemian reader that to attempt to cook a sausage without first pricking it vigorously with a fork, to allow for the expansion of its juicy gases, is like trying to smoke a cigar without first cutting off the end—and oh! to hear again their merry song as they writhed in torment in the hissing pan, like Christian martyrs raising ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... uttermost. Besides it cannot be fear and anxiety which brings on her night wandering. Another current explanation also seems to me to have little ground. As Brandes has recently interpreted it, "The sleep walking scene shows in the most remarkable fashion how the pricking of an evil conscience, when it is dulled by day, is more keen at night and robs the guilty one of sleep and health." Now severe pangs of conscience may well disturb sleep, but they would hardly create sleep walking. Criminals are hardly noctambulists. ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger

... ravening beasts. But evill fortune prevented so good a consideration; for the other Asse being of the same purpose that I was of, by feigned and coloured wearinesse fell downe first, with all his burthen on the ground as though hee were dead, and he would not rise neither with beating nor with pricking, nor stand upon his legs, though they pulled him by the tail, by his legs, and by his eares: which when the theeves beheld, as without all hope they said one unto another, What should we stand here ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... heard of their tossing people up, though I don't know just how it's done. If they don't, we are in the path and some of those children are sure to find us," answered Flora cheerfully, though she stood on her head with a bunch of burrs pricking her nose. ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... pricking on the plaine, Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde, Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine, The cruell marks of many a bloody fielde; Yet armes till that time did he never wield. His ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... intolerably irksome to bear the strain of the fads and fancies, the nerves and frets of a delicate, child-bearing woman; he had wondered more than once if jolly cynics like Rokeby weren't right after all; the numerous small inroads upon his pocket had been unexpected, pin-pricking sort of shocks. But all this now receded; the hour was upon them, upon him, and the woman he loved; what did a spoiled dinner matter? What did a fretful quarrel matter, if only she won through? He begged the doctor's immediate ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton

... complaining in a hollow voice. He seemed to suffer a great deal more than the day before. His broken murmurs disclosed all sorts of ailments. Thousands of pins were pricking him. He felt something heavy all about his body; some cold, wet animal was crawling over his thighs and digging its fangs into his flesh. Then there were other animals sticking to his shoulders, tearing his back ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... which she herself now sank. She held tight by two rocks, sitting straight beside him, staring, and murmuring aloud, "I must not faint; I will not faint;" and the standing horses looked at her, pricking their ears. ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... she could go on sewing at the hem and pricking her finger for ever if Mamma would only keep that look ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... could do upon a Body not so contrived: Representing, I say, an Animal in this manner, and thence inferring, how it may be alter'd for the better or worse by motions or impulses, confessedly Mechanicall, observes, How some are recover'd from swouning fits by pricking; others grow faint and do vomit by the bare motion of a Coach; others fall into a troublesome sickness by the agitation of a Ship, and by the Sea-air (whence they recover by rest, and by going a shore.) Again, how in our Stables a Horse ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... breast, That in our yard I saw a murderous beast, That on my body would have made arrest. With waking eyes I ne'er beheld his fellow; His colour was betwixt a red and yellow: Tipp'd was his tail, and both his pricking ears Were black; and much unlike his other hairs: The rest, in shape a beagle's whelp throughout, 120 With broader forehead, and a sharper snout: Deep in his front were sunk his glowing eyes, That yet, methinks, I see ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... night I have waited for it, listened for it—longed for it, I know now. I heard the passing of its feet upon the bridge, the tapping of its hand upon the door, three times—tap, tap, tap. I felt my loins grow cold, and a pricking pain about my head; and I gripped my chair with both hands, and waited, and again there came the tapping—tap, tap, tap. I rose and slipped the bolt of the door leading to the other room, and again I waited, and again there came the tapping—tap, tap, tap. Then I opened ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome

... pricking his ears. He would have immediately turned in a contrary direction; but the prospect of seeing a new phase of life was a strong temptation to Captain Argent, so they went forward towards a smoke that curled above a ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... by the prince, the leaders ran away, and one of the armed men struck the cloth from the head of the bull. The beast stood some moments in a maze; then he chased after the dart man, who vexed him by pricking. ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... This he did, five francs at a time; and his risk was so small, and his luck so even, that by degrees he was drawn into conversation with his neighbor, a young swell, who was watching the run of the colors, and betting in silver, and pricking a card, preparatory to going in for a great coup. Meantime he favored Mr. Ashmead with his theory of chances, and Ashmead listened very politely to every word; because he was rather proud of the other's notice: he was so handsome, well ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... was inadequate and Gale was cold and wet with dew. Hunger and thirst were with him. His bones ached, and there was a dull, deep-seated pain throbbing in his unhealed wound. For days unshaven, his beard seemed like a million pricking needles in his blistered skin. He was so tired that once having settled himself, he did not move hand or foot. The night was dark, dismal, cloudy, windy, growing colder. A moan of wind in the mesquite ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... so soft as to be hardly audible, not behind me, not on the other side of the door in front of me, but somewhere beyond the entry partition on my right. It was there, I reckoned, that one of those dark anterooms, through which we had approached the sala, must be. The flesh of my back was pricking, but I was almost safe. Once let me reach Mr. Dingley and I knew that somehow he would get us out. With a great effort I pulled open the heavy door into ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... Houghton, Eleanor had planned an early and extra good dinner, after which they meant to take their guests out on the river and float down into the country to a spot—green, still, in the soft October days—from which they could look back at the city, with its myriad lights pricking out in the dusk, and see the copper lantern of the full moon lifting above the black line of the hills. Eleanor, taught by Maurice, had learned to feel the strange loveliness of Mercer's ugliness, and it was her idea that Mr. Houghton ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... all mankind cry out at the inhumanity of one who, as things are to-day, should propose the substitution of pricking or cutting or burning for whipping? It would, however, be easy to show that small jabs or pricks or cuts are more human than the blows many children receive. Why may not lying be as legitimately cured by blisters made with hot coals as by black and blue spots made with a ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... the rats came tumbling. 110 Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, gray rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives— Followed the Piper for their lives. From street to street he piped advancing, And step for step they followed dancing, 120 Until they came to the river Weser, Wherein all plunged and perished! —Save one, who, stout as ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... bit of a slim thing"—he made an odd embracing gesture with his arm—"the size that you could pick up with one hand and set on your knee as if she was a child"—the duke remained still, knowing this was only the beginning and pricking up his ears as he took a rapid kaleidoscopic view of all the "Ladies" in the neighborhood, and as hastily waved them aside—"a bit of a thing that some way seems to mean it all to you—and moves the world?" The conclusion was one which brought the incongruous ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... These stretching shapes and branches, these candle-holders and bushy twigs have sharp, hard points, and bouncing against them too suddenly might severely wound a fish, or it might slip into a crevice where it would be pricking work to ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever

... in the first place?" asked Gloria, for he seemed to need pricking along to prevent him from getting off the track into a maze of ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... to the saddle, and started. The ram went along all right till we got out to the road, when he held back a little. Mac jabbed the ram in the rear with his saber, and he came along all right, only a little too sudden. That was one of the mistakes of the war, Mac's pricking that ram, and it has been the source of much study on my part, for twenty-two years, as to whether the Irishman did it on purpose, knowing the ram would charge on my horse, and butt my steed in the hind legs. If that was the plan of the Irishman, ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck

... especially satisfactory way to make pies of juicy fruit, as it does away largely with the saturated under crusts, and the flavor of the fruit can be retained much more perfectly. Pies with one crust can be made by simply fitting the crust to the plate, pricking it lightly with a fork to prevent its blistering while baking, and afterward filling when needed for the table. For pies with two crusts, fit the under crust to the plate, and fill with clean pieces of old white linen laid in lightly to support the upper crust. When baked, slip the pie ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... other privation. It was long before our football- field rose again from the deeps, and was dry enough for play. Its goalposts pricking up mournfully through the floods were a landmark which the boys recognised with rueful eyes in the midst of the drowned ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine

... Overmore stared; she had a stocking pulled over her hand and was pricking at it with a needle which she poised in the act. Her task was homely, but her movement, ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... pricking up his ears like an ancient hunter at the cry of the hounds, would gladly have scoured the Strand, with the charitable purpose, now he saw himself so well supported, of knocking the London knaves, who had insulted him, into twiggen bottles; but he was withheld by the prudence ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... pricking, shooting pain the repeated stabbing of the snake's fangs or was it "pins and needles"? Was this deadly faintness death indeed, or was it ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... easily along, bounding over the springy turf with long, elastic stride, horse and rider taking the rapid motion as an every-day matter, in a cool, imperturbable, this-is-the-way-we-always-do-it style; while my poor old troop-horse, in answer to pressing knee and pricking spur, strove with panting breath and jealously bursting heart to keep alongside. The foam flew from his fevered jaws and flecked the smooth flank of his apparently unconscious rival; and when at last we returned to camp, while Van, without a turned hair or an abnormal heave, coolly nodded off to ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... to supplement the words, a single shrill cry, half whistle, half scream, rose up ahead. Had they been closer, they might have noted the pricking ears of the desert steeds; but this much they saw:—one horse and rider darting out of the press, like arrow from bow, and scurrying away over the plain as if their former gait had ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... unpleasant place. Most of the people look rather cheerful. You don't see any frantic gamblers gnashing their teeth or dashing down their last stakes. The winners have the most anxious faces; or the poor shabby fellows who have got systems, and are pricking down the alternations of red and black on cards, and don't seem to be playing at all. On fete days the country people come in, men and women, to gamble; and THEY seem to be excited as they put down their hard-earned florins ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... who staggered against books as a baby, and will totter against them, if he lives to decrepitude; with a brain full of tingling thoughts, such as they are, as a limb which we call "asleep," because it is so particularly awake, is of pricking points; presenting a key-board of nerve-pulps, not as yet tanned or ossified, to finger-touch of all outward agencies; knowing nothing of the filmy threads of this web of life in which we insects buzz awhile, waiting for the gray old spider to come along; contented enough with daily ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... glanced brightly over the glittering sheet of snow. It was perfectly calm, and we trudged on cheerfully, every now and then exchanging remarks with each other. We had been walking for some hours, and had agreed that it would soon be time to stop for dinner, when Martin complained of a peculiar pricking in the eyelids. ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston

... head and pricking forward his great ears, Harry Mule opened his eyes, and looked at the girl for a moment so earnestly that she almost thought he was going to speak to her. Then the big, wondering eyes were closed again, and ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe

... roaring, the snow falling all round; miles and miles away from human creatures. I fancied I saw it all, and that I, somehow, was Marcantonio Frangipani come to liberate her—or was it Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi? I suppose it was because of the long ride, the unaccustomed pricking feeling of the snow in the air; or perhaps the punch which my professor insisted ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... made half a dozen hurried paces something forced her to turn and look again at the handsome head of the horse. He stood quite motionless, with his ears pricking after her, and now as she stopped he whinnied softly, hardly louder than the whisper of a man. So she ran back again and threw the reins over the horn of the saddle; he should be free to wander where he chose through the free mountains, ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... to read the skies, To know when hail will fall, or winds arise; He taught us erst the heifer's tail to view, When struck aloft that showers would straight ensue. He first that useful secret did explain, That pricking corns foretell the gathering rain; When swallows fleet soar high and sport in air, He told us that the welkin ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... King. 'Thy counsel liketh me.' And he pulled a whistle out of his neck and whistled whistles three. Then came my Lord of Arundel pricking across the down, And behind him the Mayor and Burgesses of merry ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... Landa gave me before that," she pursued, eagerly. Mr. Orson had the effect of pricking up his ears, though it was in fact merely a gleam of light that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... mind with pricking force the thought of Mary Batchelor at her door, blind with weeping and pain—of the poor boy, dead in his prime. Did those two figures stand for the realities at the base of things—the common labours, affections, agonies, which uphold ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... one day. One can hear the wild geese calling.... There are lots of them here too. One often comes upon a string of cranes or swans.... Snipe and woodcock flutter about in the birch copses. The hares which are not eaten or shot here, stand on their hindlegs, and, pricking up their ears, watch the passer-by with an inquisitive stare without the slightest misgiving. They are so often running across the road that to see them doing so is not considered a ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... most enviable part of her was her neck, which was blue in colour and of a velvet texture, and of course showed off her diamond necklace as no white throat could have glorified it. The high-born fairies obtain this admired effect by pricking their skin, which lets the blue blood come through and dye them, and you cannot imagine anything so dazzling unless you have seen the ladies' busts ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie

... Students at the bottom of the list that is to say, the eight who had been nominated last—had to mark, by pricking on weekly papers called "the Bills," the attendance at morning and evening chapel. They were allowed to arrange this duty among themselves, and, if it was neglected, they were all punished. This long-defunct custom explains ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... Big game before him, possibly nerved to spring, and yet the tensity was not like that. The man stood still, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness—waiting for the mystery to clear. Then to the right, like a little constellation suddenly pricking through the twilight, Skag saw a cluster of young stars. His heart warmed—kittens hunched there in a bundle and watching him. Their pricked ears presently shadowed somewhat from the blacker background; then he saw the little party suddenly ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... their horses on the divide. To the west lay Malapi and the plains. Eastward were the heaven-pricking peaks. A long, bright line zig-zagged across the desert and reflected the sun rays. It was the bed of the new road already spiked ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... I cried, my conscience pricking me that I had not thought of asking for his company. 'I'm very glad. My last hours at school will always be ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... pain to speak with her about the business that I received a letter yesterday, but had no opportunity of speaking with her about it, company being with her, so I only invited her to come and dine with me on Sunday next, and so away home, and for saving my eyes at my chamber all the evening pricking down some things, and trying some conclusions upon my viall, in order to the inventing a better theory of musique than hath yet been abroad; and I think verily I shall do it. So to supper with my wife, who is in very good humour with her working, and so am I, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... let the butler show you out, Mr. Cleek," she said, as they stood together in the wide entrance hall. "I couldn't let you go until I had said something that is on my mind—something that has been pricking my conscience all evening. I want to tell you that from this night on I am going to forget those other nights: that one in the mist at Hampstead, that other on the stairway at Wyvern House—forget them utterly and entirely, Mr. Cleek. Whatever you may have been ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... not less wanting to him who would push a roadster from the Connecticut to the Wish-Ton-Wish, between a rising and a setting sun! The stranger no longer journeys in the saddle, as is plain by the sign that his boot beareth no spur. When he worried, by dint of hard pricking, the miserable hack that proved food for the wolves, through the forest, he had better appointments. I saw the bones of the animal no later than this day. They have been polished by fowls and frost, till the driven snow of the mountains is ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... a tooth, too, Adam!" Mother Golden continued, triumphantly. "I feel it pricking through the gum this minute. And he so good, and laughing like a sunflower! Did it hurt him, then, a little precious man? he shall have a nice ring to-morrow day, to bitey on, so ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards

... grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the houses the rats came tumbling— Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats. Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cocking tails, and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives— Followed the Piper for their lives. From street to street he piped, advancing, And step for step they followed dancing, Until they came to the river Weser Wherein all plunged and perished, Save one, who ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... Effie two or three times, and then go bouncing off, shaking their fat sides with laughter. There was an old sword-fish, that seemed to be a kind of special constable, who kept going round and round, pricking the dolphins whenever he got a chance and frightening the little fishes almost out of their senses; as often as he made his appearance, with that long sword of his sticking out, such a scampering as there would be! and how the wee fishes would try to hide behind the ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder

... most easily started and grown, at least up to the time of pricking out, in light, well-ventilated greenhouses, and many large growers have them for this specific purpose. Houses for starting tomato plants should be so situated as to be fully exposed to the sun and not shaded in any way; be provided with heating apparatus by which ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... you want it for?" cry I, curiously, pricking my ears, and for a moment forgetting my private troubles in the hope ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... cabins of the tenantry, fields of oats and barley glimmered, thin blades pricking the loam, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... life be! But now, to the poor Duke the wound had no salve, no consolation. When he was told that this young Tregear was the owner of his girl's sweet love, was the treasure of her heart, he shrank as though arrows with sharp points were pricking him all over. "I will not hear of such ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... the edge of furze-clumps, cautiously parted the dry stems before his face. At the foot of the long slope sat three farmers smoking. To his natural lust for tobacco was added personal wrath because spiky plants were pricking his belly, and Private Copper slid the backsight up ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... supposed by his master to be asleep some minutes, when suddenly the creature uttered a short sleepy bark, and then, raising his head and pricking his ears, he remained a minute in the attitude of ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... when I was beginning to feel quite strong again, and I was able to take a long breath once more without feeling sharp pricking sensations, and afterwards a long dull aching pain, I went down the garden to find Bigley standing before my father with his head bent and listening patiently to what ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... soldier's arquebus, made him go on before him, and urged him toward his companion by pricking him behind ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... fear lions, so it was with considerable difficulty that they were led past the rock which was blackened with a puddle of blood. The horses snorted, dilating their nostrils and stretching their necks towards the blood-stained stones; nevertheless, when the donkey, only pricking his ears a little, passed by calmly, they also passed on. Night had already fallen; they nevertheless rode over half a mile, and halted only in a place where the ravine widened again into a small amphitheatrical vale, overgrown with dense thorns ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... lions continued to prowl up and down, licking their chops and occasionally glancing at the top of the rock. Suddenly they halted in the middle of their beat, and, pricking up their ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon

... and drying herbs came, Georgia and I had opportunity to be together considerably. It was after we had picked the first drying of sage and were pricking our fingers on the saffron pods, that grandma, in passing, with her apron full of Castilian rose petals, stopped and announced that if we would promise to work well, and gather the sage leaves and saffron tufts as often as necessary, she would let ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... to him; also an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as through a window, it could look upwards and discern its celestial Home." That "shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any Vatican or Loretto-shrine...Stitch away, every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of slavery." Thirty-six years after Fox had begun to wear his leathern doublet he directed all Friends everywhere that had Indians or blacks to ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... hour before he was conscious that he lived. At first he felt nothing but a dull quickening throb within his body. His feet and hands were ice-cold, and he swayed from side to side, feeling for his strength. Then came the pricking of ten thousand tiny needles in his limbs. His heart beat as though it would burst its prison. His whole frame quivered. His bristles stood stiff-pointed from their roots. As the heart-throb slowed, his muscles slackened and obeyed his will, but yet he felt that ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... cattle, and then killed themselves. They tell of one who hung herself from the end of the pole of a wagon, with her children tied dangling at her heels. The men, for want of trees, tied themselves, some to the horns of the oxen, others by the neck to their legs, that so pricking them on, by the starting and springing of the beasts, they might be torn and trodden to pieces. Yet for all they thus massacred themselves, above sixty thousand were taken prisoners, and those that were slain were said to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... the pane; I know the other is trying the lock, but I hear no sound. I am in a silence like that of the grave. I try to speak. My lips move, but, try as I may, no sound comes out of them. A sharp terror is pricking into me, and I flinch as if it were a knife-blade. Well, sir, that is a thing I cannot understand. You know me—I am not a coward. If I were really in a like scene fear would be the least of my emotions; but in the dream I tremble and am afraid. Slowly, silently, the door opens, the men of the ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... was aware of a pricking along his spine. He looked at the unconscious face of the ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... like a faint, thin, pricking current of sound almost unable to reach him through the seas of distance. "I'm coming; hold on a ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood

... Sptz had to help her mother about the cooking, when there was any. She also had to help tan the skins of wild animals into a beautifully soft kind of leather which they could make into cloaks for winter wear by pricking holes in them with sharp bits of bone and weaving thongs, instead of sewing edges together with needles and thread. Sptz never saw either in ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... spread out in the distance. The wind, carrying white, shaggy masses, raced over the plain, piping cold, shrill whistles. Across the snowy expanse moved a girl's figure, dark and solitary, rocking to and fro. The wind fluttered her dress, clogged her footsteps, and drove pricking snowflakes into her face. Walking was difficult; the little feet sank into the snow. Cold and fearful the girl bent forward, like a blade of grass, the sport of the wanton wind. To the right of her ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... the clear sun and the whole meadow was cloth of gold where before it, had been olive green with ripe grass tips, while all among the gold the blue asters came out like stars on a frosty evening, pricking through the pale glow of sunset. The meadow has lacked vivid color masses since June. Now it is a veritable mixing pat for the autumn colors to come, yellow with goldenrod, blue with asters, purple with Joe-Pye weed, rosy because of the hardhack, and rimmed ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... and I had to put an end to him by sending a couple of rifle balls into his side. We thought that we had killed him, for he lay perfectly still with his eyes closed. We were again running up to him, when one of the natives called us back, and another pricking him with a spear, up he started as full of life as ever once more, making a push for the water, with the hook and line still in his mouth. He was, however, soon brought back again, when one of the natives pushed a long sharp spear into his neck, and ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... painful prayers that he made upon the cross, where, for all the torment that he hanged in—of beating, nailing, and stretching out all his limbs, with the wresting of his sinews and breaking of his tender veins, and the sharp crown of thorns so pricking him into the head that his blessed blood streamed down all his face—in all these hideous pains, in all their cruel despites, yet two very devout and fervent prayers he made. One was for the pardon of those who so dispiteously put him to his pain, and the other about his own deliverance, commending ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... I do know, is that you are wonderful," said Stephen, his conscience pricking him because of certain unjust thoughts concerning this child which he had harboured since learning that she was a dancer. "You're the most wonderful girl I ever ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... which inhabit the dry, sandy plains of South Africa, which bear a striking resemblance to many of the Cactuses, particularly the columnar ones and the Rhipsalis. (The Euphorbias all have milk-like sap, which, on pricking their stems or leaves, at once exudes and thus reveals their true character. The sap of the Cactuses is watery). Amongst Stapelias, too, we meet with plants which mimic the stem characters of some of the smaller kinds of Cactus. Again, in the Cactuses themselves ...
— Cactus Culture For Amateurs • W. Watson

... finger; and if the ends which remain in connection with the cord be pricked, the pain which arises will appear to have its seat in the finger just as distinctly as before. Nay, if the whole arm be cut off, the pain which arises from pricking the nerve stump will appear to be seated in the fingers, just as if they were still connected with ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... of life saver, do look out for anybody who looks suspicious hanging about the Hercules Three-Oughts-One. I'll take care of rival inventors. You and Koku keep your eyes peeled for the H. & W. spies. Especially for that Andy O'Malley. I feel that he will again show up. Maybe by 'the pricking of my thumb' as Macbeth's witch used ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton

... love be rough with you, be rough with love; Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.— Give me a case to put my visage in: [Putting on a mask.] A visard for a visard! what care I What curious eye doth quote deformities? Here are the ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... happily, made a series of discoveries regarding his bodily sensations that caused him to view life with disaffection. Noting that the hour was early, however, he took cheer, and after a long, strong, cold drink, which he rang for, and a pricking icy shower, which he nerved himself to, he was ready to ignore his aching head and ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... such a murder as that! I ran to a livery stable, secured a swift horse, mounted him, and spurred furiously for the reservation. The hack, with its generous start, had gone far on its way, but my horse was nimble, and his legs felt the pricking of my eagerness. A few miles of this furious pursuit brought me within sight of the hack just as it was crossing a dark ravine near the reservation. As I came nearer I imagined that the hack swayed somewhat, and that ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow

... three huntsmen crashed through the brushwood at the end of a glade, winding the long horns they wore about their shoulders. Once a strayed hound came very near them, Elsie threw the dog a piece of bread. It did not see the bread, and pricking up its ears it trotted away. The horns came nearer and nearer, and the girls were affrighted lest they should meet the hunted boar and be attacked. It must have turned at the bottom of the hill. The horns died through the twilight, a spectral moon was afloat ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... itself. There are those who think that the precious time of so remarkable a writer, and profound a thinker as George Plechanoff is simply wasted in pricking Anarchist wind-bags. But, unfortunately, there are many of the younger, or of the more ignorant sort, who are inclined to take words for deeds, high-sounding phrases for acts, mere sound and fury for revolutionary activity, and who are too young or too ignorant to know that such sound ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff

... I cried, pricking my ears. "Why, what harm was there in that? Why on earth didn't he want me to talk ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen

... that was over, Mrs. Melrose had taken her to Newport, whither Alice was carefully moved every June. Leslie was gone now, and Norma free from pricking reminders of her supremacy, and as old friends of Mrs. Melrose began to include her in the summer's merrymaking, she had some happy times. But even ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... came to visit them he would find everything in perfect order. There was an air of truth about these promises. The poor shrew-mouse was, however, in spite of this speech, troubled by ideas from on high, and serious pricking of shrew-mousian conscience. Seeing that he turned up his nose at everything, went about slowly and with a careworn face, one morning the mouse who was pregnant by him, conceived the idea of calming his doubts and easing his mind by a Sorbonnical consultation, and sent for the doctors of his tribe. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac

... of preparing brandy peaches is, after rubbing off the down and pricking them, to put them into a preserving kettle with cold water, and simmer them slowly till they become hot all through; but they must not be allowed to boil. Then dry them in a cloth, and let them lie till they are cold, ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... Grandma was cross—Sally was cross—and the school-teacher was cross; the bucket fell into the well, and the cows got into the corn. I got called up at school and set with some hateful boys, one of whom amused himself by pricking me with a pin, and when, in self-defense, I gave him a good pinch, he actually yelled out: "She keeps a-pinchin' me!" On the whole, 'twas a dreadful day, and when at night I threw myself exhausted upon my little bed I cried myself to sleep, ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes

... in most cases a peculiar sense of heaviness or weight in the hands on the table, and an impression that the hands are being held to the table as if by glue or other adhesive material. In the arms are manifested peculiar tingling, pricking sensations, or a "needles and pins" feeling, something akin to a gentle current of electricity passing along them. Sometimes there is experienced the sensation of a gentle cool breeze passing over the sitters—particularly over the backs of their hands. In other cases there ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... suspected how their fortunes were mending, during those last days of June! Had they known, they might almost have been disappointed, for the spur of need was already pricking them, and their valiant young spirits longed to be in the thick of the fray. Plans had been formed for the past week, many of them in secret, and the very next day after the close of the academy, various business projects ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... side of the chimney, or sputtered a few sparks and sulked themselves out, or kept up a faint show of burning, so that their ground glasses looked as feebly phosphorescent as so many invalid fireflies. With much coaxing and screwing and pricking, a tolerable illumination was at last achieved. At eight there was a grand rustling of silks, and Mrs. and Miss Sprowle descended from their respective bowers or boudoirs. Of course they were pretty well tired by this time, and very glad to sit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... I had ended, I sealed the sheet with balsam, pricking the globule from the tree behind me, and setting over it a leaf of partridge-berry. Also I wrote letters to General Clinton and to Major Parr, sealed them as I had sealed the other, and set a tiny, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... attention. Looking up, we saw fully a score of wild shaggy heads thrust out from the clustering foliage; but before we had time to collect ourselves, another fusilade of feather-like missiles descended upon us, penetrating our thin clothing, and pricking us most painfully. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... some for their horns or hair or bones or wings; others torn or killed in mutual conflict, friend or relative before, contending thus; some burdened with loads or dragging heavy weights, others pierced and urged on by pricking goads. Blood flowing down their tortured forms, parched and hungry—no relief afforded; then, turning round, he saw one with the other struggling, possessed of no independent strength. Flying through air or sunk in deep water, yet no place as a refuge ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... to the Taj. The moonlight lay in an empty splendour over the broad sandy road, with the acacias pricking up on each side of it and the gardens of the station bungalows stretching back into clusters of crisp shadows. It was an exquisite February night, very still. Nothing seemed abroad but two or three pariah dogs, upon vague and ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... grown involuntarily restless, and when her last tragic whisper ceased all his body seemed shaken with a terrible violence of his joy. He strode to and fro in the dark shadow of the stone. The receding blood left him cold, with a pricking, sickening sensation over his body, but there seemed to be an overwhelming tide accumulating deep in his breast—a tide of passion and pain. He dominated the passion, but the ache remained. And he returned to the quiet figure ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... wretched monks and nuns came tottering forward with the ladders, they begged of him, "by all the Saints of Heaven," to haul his colours down, to the saving of their lives. Behind them were the pirates, pricking them forward with their pikes and knives. In front of them were the cannon of their friends, so near that they could see the matches burning in the hands of the gunners. "They ceased not to cry to him," says the narrative; ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... this region, possibly the islands reported by the shipwrecked pilot, possibly the island of Antilla; and Pinzon said he thought that they were somewhere in the region of them, and the Admiral said that he thought so too. There was a deal of talk and pricking of positions on charts; and then, just as the sun was setting, Martin Alonso, standing on the stern of the Pinta, raised a shout and said that he saw land; asking (business-like Martin) at the same time for the reward which had ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... however, made his escape from the wreck and found his way back again to Shoreby. He was now at Arblaster's heels, and, suddenly sniffing and pricking his ears, he darted forward and began to bark furiously at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... A young lady sat pricking a framed canvas in the drawing-room of Kent Villa, a mile from Gravesend; she was making, at a cost of time and tinted wool, a chair cover, admirably unfit to be sat upon—except by some severe artist, bent on obliterating discordant colors. To do her justice, her mind was not in her ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... never minded anything, and that Johnny knew and cared little about the matter, their tea that evening would have been wonderfully unsociable. Gerald had not much to say, but the bent of his thoughts was evident enough when his ever-busy pencil produced the sketch of a cat pricking her paw by patting a hedgehog rolled up in ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... shackles, thus checking his words and his thoughts. At last he went so far, that the line of various physiognomies, stretched out by the table opposite him, seemed to him a long and wavy white strip besprinkled with laughing eyes, and all these eyes were pricking ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... giving a preliminary word of direction to the maid as she lifted the portieres, Mrs. Markham entered the drawing room. Pricking with a sense of impatience, tinctured by nervousness over his own folly, Robert H. Norcross awaited her there. She stood a moment regarding him; in that moment, the quick perception, veiled away by an expression of thought, to which the railroad ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... same principle that fashionable coachmen "hit and hold" their high-bred horses while they thread the crowded streets of the West end in season, or that you see a hard rider, when starting with three hundred companions at the joyful sound of Tally-ho, pricking and holding his horse, to have him ready for a great effort the moment he ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... time Seward received this letter he regarded it as only a passing cloud-shadow. "To-day I have a long letter from Greeley, full of sharp, pricking thorns," he wrote Weed. "I judge, as we might indeed well know from his nobleness of disposition, that he has no idea of saying or doing anything wrong or unkind; but it is sad to see him so unhappy. Will there be a ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... the game was a classical one, and called pentalitha. It was played with five astragals—knuckle-bones, pebbles, or little balls—which were thrown up into the air, and then attempted to be caught when falling on the back of the hand. Another Irish game, "pricking the loop," in Greece is called himantiliginos, pricking the garter. Hemestertius supposes the Gordian Knot to have been nothing but a variety of the himantiliginos. The game consists in winding a thong in such an intricate manner, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... Mr. Joseph Pelman, pricking up his ears at the smooth conciliation of eye and voice, warily circled the room, holding Mitchell's eyes as he went, selected a corner chair for obvious strategic reasons, pushed it against the wall, ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... asked of Peter, kept pricking him and breaking through the stupefaction of this sudden tragedy. He kept nodding a mechanical agreement until the undertaker had arranged all the details. Then the little man moved softly out of the cabin and went stepping away through the dust of ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... Governor of the province of Penza, brought to justice, among others, a proprietor who had caused one of his serfs to be flogged to death, and a lady who had murdered a serf boy by pricking him with a pen-knife because he had neglected to take proper care of a tame rabbit committed to his charge!—Korff, "Zhizn Speranskago," ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... Voban, and, pricking him with his sword, said, "You are a bungler, barber. Now listen. I never wronged you; I have only been your blister. I prick your sores at home. Tut! tut! they prick them openly in the market-place. I gave you life a minute ago; I give you freedom now. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... "My conscience is pricking me. My work is calling me. I must go up and see my old darlings in the Brown Borough. There is, I see, a ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... passers-by. One band, called the Modocs, indulged in the amusement called "tipping the lion" which consisted in flattening the nose of the victim on his face and boring out his eyes with the fingers. There were also the "dancing masters," who made people dance by pricking them with swords, the "sweaters," who pricked their victims with swords till they fell exhausted, and the "tumblers," who set women on their heads and mutilated their limbs.[140] Others rolled women down hill in barrels, cut the faces of ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... beblubbered with weeping. Then came a man or two also on horseback, old and reverend. After them a draggled rabble of lads and half-grown girls, bound together with ropes and kept at a dog's trot by the pricking spears of the men-at-arms behind, who thought it a jest to sink a spear point-deep in the flesh of a man's back—"drawing the claret wine" they called it. For these riders of Duke Casimir were every one jolly companions, and must have ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... the one who is left behind. For the one who sets out there are fresh faces, new activities in store. Even though the new life adventured upon may not prove to be precisely a bed of thornless roses, the pricking of the thorns provides distraction to the mind from the sheer, undiluted ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler

... was to make him lose money on his horse. If he had been timid he would have hesitated about backing Nemo for anything; but the ones who had been taunting him had reckoned well on his mettle, and they had succeeded in pricking his pride and ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... feel certain pricking sensations in his right leg as well as in his conscience. The leg grew more painful as he advanced, and, on examination of the limb by feeling, he found, to his surprise, that he had received a bullet-wound in the thigh. Moreover he discovered that his trousers ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... music, Theseus and Hippolyta and Emilia in a noble procession took their places; and from the west gate under the temple of Mars came Arcite with a red banner, and from the east, under the temple of Venus, Palamon with a white banner. And the names of the two companies were recited, the heralds left pricking up and down, the trumpet and clarion sounded, and the just began. Sore was the fight, and many were wounded and by the duke's proclamation removed from the fight; and many a time fought Palamon and Arcite together. But everything must have an end; Emetreus gave Palamon a wound; and though ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... by means of a wisp of cotton wool stroked gently across the skin; the capacity of discriminating two points as separate, by a pair of blunt-pointed compasses; the sensation of pressure, by means of a pencil or other blunt object; of pain, by pricking or scratching with a needle; and of sensibility to heat and cold, by test-tubes containing water at different temperatures. While these tests are being carried out, the patient's eyes ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... in England the people will be pricking up their ears when they learn what we are doing here, and that we shall have plenty of emigrants from home. I hardly like to advise upon the subject here; there certainly is a wonderful amount of gold. What the chances of obtaining it and getting it taken ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks

... reported of him, that, when the bill of his confession was read unto him, instead of pen, he took a pin, and pricking his hand, sprinkled the blood upon the said bill, desiring the reader thereof to show the bishop that he had sealed the same bill with his ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... scarlet, and he stood silent, staring in reply, beginning almost to cower—he, the brave, young, growing warrior—before the old servant's stern eyes, and ready to shiver at the pricking of the conscience that ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn

... this child which I have seen develop to this point under my guidance and protection, I stand here prepared to fight for its honor against you who threaten its destruction—and I warn you that the parent love dares much. As the Roman Virginius stood with his sword pricking the flesh over the heart of his beloved daughter, so do I stand ready to destroy my offspring rather than suffer its dishonor at the hands of any Appius Claudius. Gentlemen, the Consolidated Companies has been a one-man corporation in the ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... and as I emerged from the slightly disreputable neighborhood where I had passed the night I felt sure that a glance in the mirror would show me up a haggard, white-haired wreck. The air was wonderfully reviving, though, and I felt a subtle change stealing over me. An odd, pricking sensation, like one's foot awakening from sleep, gradually took possession of me, and to my horror I appeared to be separating from myself. Any one who has had that feeling knows what it is. At one moment I was the Professor; the next, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... HUDIBRAS, whose stubborn blows Deny'd his bones that soft repose, Lay still expecting worse and more, Stretch'd out at length upon the floor; 1330 And though he shut his eyes as fast As if h' had been to sleep his last, Saw all the shapes that fear or wizards Do make the Devil wear for vizards, And pricking up his ears, to hark 1335 If he cou'd hear too in the dark, Was first invaded with a groan And after in a feeble tone, These trembling words: Unhappy wretch! What hast thou gotten by this fetch; 1340 For all thy tricks, in this ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... biscuit. As we smoked in silence our eyes rested gloomily upon the landscape—our domain. Before us lay an amber- coloured, sun-scorched plain; beyond were the foot-hills, bristling with chaparral, scrub-oaks, pines and cedars; beyond these again rose the grey peaks of the Santa Lucia range, pricking the eastern horizon. Over all hung the palpitating skies, eternally and exasperatingly blue, a-quiver ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... sign was manifested of making camp. They held steadily on through a deepening gloom that vanished under a sky of light—great, glittering stars half veiled by a greenish vapor of pulsing aurora borealis. His dogs first caught the noises of the camp, pricking their ears and whining in low eagerness. Then it came to the ears of the humans, a murmur, dim with distance, but not invested with the soothing grace that is common to distant murmurs. Instead, it was in a high, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... any rule by which people are guided who play? I observed many of those who were seated, pricking the chances with great care, and then staking their ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... noble Selim sorely needed food and grooming, and I could not but wish for a few days of rest for him. He had been my companion in many a wild dash, and had learned to respond to my patting of his finely-arched neck with a pricking up of his ears and a toss of his head, as much as to say, "I am ready." When first I formed Selim's acquaintance he was wild and self-willed, and, as already related, gave me a blow upon the knee from which I have not yet entirely recovered. But I had long ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson

... books are thus opened, there will without doubt, be sad throbbing and pricking, in every heart that now stands for his life, before the judgment-seat of Christ, the righteous Judge; and without all question, they will be studying a thousand ways to evade and shift the stroke, that by the sin that these three books do charge them with, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Tumbler, but we may suppose that a bird was born with some affection of the brain, leading it to make somersaults in the air (6/46. Mr. W.J. Moore gives a full account of the Ground Tumblers of India ('Indian Medical Gazette' January and February 1873), and says the pricking the base of the brain, and giving hydrocyanic acid, together with strychnine, to an ordinary pigeon, brings on convulsive movements exactly like those of a Tumbler. One pigeon, the brain of which had been pricked, completely recovered, and ever afterwards occasionally ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... wish that he had taken off his boots before entering, for they weighted his feet so that it made him leg-weary to kick. Nevertheless he trusted in the brave heart of the mustang. There was no wavering in the wild horse. Only his head showed over the water, but the ears were pricking straight and high, and it never once swerved back toward the ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... is more like the pricking of numerous needles. It is felt not only upon the tongue and palate, but wherever the part tasted comes into contact with the lips, roof of mouth or any delicate membrane. It is not perceived where this ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... any attempt at magnetisation was made by M. Berna, the Commissioners determined to ascertain how far, in her ordinary state, she was sensible to pricking. Needles of a moderate size were stuck into her hands and neck, to the depth of half a line, and she was asked by Messieurs Roux and Caventon whether she felt any pain. She replied that she felt nothing; neither did her countenance express any pain. The Commissioners, somewhat surprised at this, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... the prick of a needle. Elizabeth Russell, whose effigy is sculptured with one finger extended, in reality to direct attention to the death's-head at her feet. Cf. Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, Letter xiii., in which the guide to the Abbey 'talked of a lady who died by pricking her finger; of a king with a golden head, and ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... water. The long lingering of the sun slanted over Percy's brow, as she sat leaning her head on her hand, and looking away off, as if over thousands of miles. Her pretty pale fingers were purple with working on hospital shirts and drawers, and bloody with pricking through the slipper soles for the wounded men. She was the most untiring and energetic of all the young people; but they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... storm-king flies, His whip he plies, And bellows down the wind. The lightning rash With blinding flash Comes pricking on behind. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still reeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the Roman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him; as one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy anguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville



Words linked to "Pricking" :   puncture, prick



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