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Scramble   /skrˈæmbəl/   Listen
Scramble

verb
(past & past part. scrambled; pres. part. scrambling)
1.
To move hurriedly.
2.
Climb awkwardly, as if by scrambling.  Synonyms: clamber, shin, shinny, skin, sputter, struggle.
3.
Bring into random order.  Synonyms: jumble, throw together.
4.
Stir vigorously.  Synonym: beat.  "Beat the cream"
5.
Make unintelligible.



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"Scramble" Quotes from Famous Books



... of Luxor temple does not face the river on the side we came in; to find it we have to scramble over heaps of rubbish to one end and there we see a great obelisk, a companion to the one which is now in the principal square of Paris, the Place de la Concorde, and we see also two huge buildings reared up on each side of the ancient entrance—these were called ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... the work of man, having once been a railroad cut, but it had been in disuse for many years and was now covered with vegetation. You could walk up the hill till you came to the brink of this almost vertical chasm, but you could no more scramble down it than you could scramble down a well. On the opposite side of the cut the hill continued upward and the bridging of the chasm by the scouts themselves had been a subject of much discussion; but up to the present time nothing had been done and there was no way to continue one's ascent ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... temperature to fifty degrees below. They never knew what kind of weather was going to turn up next, and if they settled any place the whole continent suddenly sank from under them, and they had to make a scramble for dry land. Sometimes a volcano would turn itself loose just as they got located. They led that uncertain, strenuous existence for about twenty-five million years, always wondering what was going to happen next, never suspecting that it was just a preparation for ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Betty; and off they went again, one to scramble up a pile of stones and look over the wall into the avenue, the other to scamper to the spot they had just left. Still, nothing appeared but the dandelions' innocent faces looking up at Bab, ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... and the whole of the company form up in a straight line outside the church. Then the best man comes forward with a kind of cake, which, after various feints, he throws among the crowd of children which quickly collects, and they scramble for it. Then the husband and wife, with the best man, go to the goldsmith's to buy the marriage present. Later there is a dance. The men and women face each other in line. They pace rapidly back and forth without moving forward. Then the couples advance, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... life of Washington, "the enemy, the bleak winters, raw soldiers, and all the difficulties of impecunious government, with a cheerful courage that never failed. But the spectacle of wide-spread popular demoralization, of selfish scramble for plunder, and of feeble administration at the centre of government, weighed upon him heavily." And all this at the period of the French alliance, which it was thought would soon end the war. Indeed, hostilities were practically over at the North, and hence the public lassitude. Nearly ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord

... and its unjustly poor, with its palaces and its slums, its millionaires and its paupers, be it ours to proclaim that there is a higher ideal in life than that of being first in the race for wealth, most successful in the scramble for gold. Be it ours to declare steadfastly that health, comfort, leisure, culture, plenty for every individual are far more desirable than breathless struggle for existence, furious trampling down of the weak by the strong, huge fortunes accumulated out of the toil of others, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... Baxter, his black servant Wylie, and the other two natives; and taking with him a few horses, carrying a supply of water and provisions for several weeks, he set out to follow the coast along the Great Australian Bight. His party had to scramble along the tops of rough cliffs which everywhere frowned from three hundred to six hundred feet above the sea; and if they left the coast to travel inland they had to traverse great stretches of moving sands, ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... the girls seated than there was a scramble in one corner, an excited scuffling of feet. "I've got it!" a boy screamed. He stood on his chair and held up a live mouse by its tail. There was a shout of applause and ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... a few articles of wearing apparel, a pair of boots, and a pipe and pouch of tobacco. The big Indian kept the latter articles, grunting with satisfaction, and threw the boots and clothes to the others. Immediately there was a scramble. One brave, after a struggle with another, got possession of both boots. He at once slipped off his moccasins and drew on the white man's foot-coverings. He strutted around in them a few moments, but his proud manner soon changed ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... men say that the use of the limbs, first on one side and then on the other, is instinctive to all creatures of the monkey tribe. That is the way they do in an emergency, since that is the way to scramble up among the tree limbs. I know that it is the easiest way to swim, and the least effective. When the arms are extended together in the breast stroke, it is as much superior to dogfashion as man is superior to the ape. I have always thought ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... stood there, just outside the door, watching a man scramble down the road, who finally returned with Stefansson. Helen stood perfectly still, except for the toe of one of her boots, which was tapping a tattoo ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... scramble of the alarm, Somerset made good his escape, and came out upon the Euston Road, his head spinning, his body sick with hunger, and his pockets destitute of coin. Yet as he continued to walk the pavements, he wondered ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... Tomah also in 1827, I was tempted soon after to endeavour to explore it by ascending the river from its junction with the Hawkesbury near Richmond; but I had not proceeded far in this attempt, accompanied by Major Lockyer and Mr. Dixon, when we were compelled to leave our horses and, soon after, to scramble on our hands and feet until, at length, even our quadrumanous progress was arrested in the bed of the river by round boulders which were as large as houses, and over or between which we found ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... patches of snow under the pine trees above the camp. But the stir of spring was in the air, and every afternoon, while Mrs. Ware was resting, Mary slipped away for a long walk. Sometimes she would scramble up the hill-side to the great over-hanging rock which gave the place its name, and sit looking down at the tiny village below. It was just a cluster of miners' shacks, most of them inhabited by Mexicans. There were the Company's stores and the post-office, and away at ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... of the numerous vertical cracks by which the precipices are traversed, and which in so many cases on the Orkney coast have been hollowed by the waves into long open coves or deep caverns. It was up there, he said, that about twelve years ago the sole survivor of a ship's crew contrived to scramble, four days after his vessel had been dashed to fragments against the rocks below, and when it was judged that all on board had perished. The vessel was wrecked on a Wednesday. She had been marked, when ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... continent names have too often lost the flavor of history; have, in truth, done so, save in isolated instances. The "Smithtons" and "Griggsby Stations" are monotonous and uninteresting, and the Tombstones are little short of sacrilege. In the crush of movers' wagons there appeared to be a scramble for names of any sort. Places multiply, imagination is asleep, and names nearest at hand are most readily laid hold of; yet, even in such a dearth of originality and poetry, scant names flash out which remind you of the morning names in our continent's history. A Springdale reminds you ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... that child do but trot out of the nursery, and try to scramble down the stairs.—Never tell me but that they you wot of trained him out—not that they had power over a Christian child, but that they might work their will on the little one. So they must needs trip him ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... shuddering. The cry came again, and kept coming at regular intervals, but drawing nearer and nearer. Its expression was of intense and increasing pain. The creature whence it issued seemed to come close to the house, then with difficulty to scramble up on the roof, where it went on yowling, and screeching, and throwing itself about as if tying itself in knots, Nancy said, until at last it gave a great choking, gobbling scream, and fell to the ground, after which all was quiet. Persuading herself it was only a cat, she tried to sleep, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... It was a terrible scramble. As he looked above, at the point where the sky-line was cut by the broken rocks, even the reckless heart of the man quailed. Yet there was no turning back. To do so meant certain disaster. No horse, however sure-footed, could ever hope to make the descent ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... peculiar genius that God has given to woman. The questions that are to fill up our days are not forever to be mere money questions. Those will always constitute a large part of politics; but not so large a portion as hitherto. We are coming to a period when it is not merely to be a scramble of fierce and belluine passions in the strife for power and ambition. Human society is yet to discuss questions of work and the workman. Down below privilege lie the masses of men. More men, a thousand times, feel every night the ground, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... the little boy duck, but he didn't know what was going to happen, or, maybe, he wouldn't have tried to climb up. Well, the squirrels selected quite a tall tree, but rather an easy one, and Jimmie managed to scramble up to the first low limbs, with Billie ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis

... powerfully on my education in two ways,—it gave my mother the best of her education, and it gave to me a respect for scholarship. The library and collections, though small, suggested pursuits better than the scramble for place or pelf; the public exercises, two or three times a year, led my thoughts, no matter how vaguely, into higher regions, and I shall never forget the awe which came over me when as a child, I saw Principal Woolworth, with his best students around him on the green, making astronomical ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... up," ordered the general. "Get up a squadron. Scramble the Moon patrol and send out ...
— Double Take • Richard Wilson

... There was a scramble to get out of the room, Washington falling down on the threshold. Jack, who was in a corner, behind some chairs, found his way blocked. This gave him a chance to take a little longer look at the object that had been thrown ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood

... kiting," said he. "Ten miles down-grade and a two-mile straightaway from Cimarron Bend, out yonder." Again the whistle, and nearer. "That's for the crossing at the creek. By gad, she's just jumping! Hang onto your hair when you see her head-light and scramble for ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... send an angel from heaven in answer to this little one's prayer: the cat would do. Annie heard a scratch and a mew at the door. The rats made one frantic scramble and ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... from the forest again the sun was already fairly high, and I saw, lying ahead of me, something dark, over which a thick mist was resting. One moment I was obliged to scramble over hills, the next to follow a winding path between rocks. I now guessed that I must be in the neighboring mountains, and I began to feel afraid of the solitude. For, living in the plain, I had never seen any mountains, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... their other limbs more freedom. I did not suppose that such muscular power could have existed in an animal's tail. They seemed to be playing each other all sorts of comical tricks. Now one would catch hold of a horizontal sipo, and swing vehemently backwards and forwards; now two or three would scramble up a perpendicular one, and a fourth would catch hold of the tail of the last and hang by it, whisking about his own tail meantime till it had found a branch of liana, when he would let go, and bring himself up again by that wonderful member of his, and skip away to a distance from his playmate, ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... generous love? If educationists do not view such a proposal with favour, this shows how miserable and distorted our common conception of God has become; and how small a part it really plays in our practical life. Most of us scramble through that practical life, and are prepared to let our children scramble too, without any clear notions of that hygiene of the soul which has been studied for centuries by experts; and few look upon this branch of self-knowledge as something ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... [Purpose in action.] Pursuit — N. pursuit; pursuing &c. v.; prosecution; pursuance; enterprise &c. (undertaking) 676; business &c. 625; adventure &c. (essay) 675; quest &c. (search) 461; scramble, hue and cry, game; hobby; still-hunt. chase, hunt, battue[obs3], race, steeple chase, hunting, coursing; venation, venery; fox chase; sport, sporting; shooting, angling, fishing, hawking; shikar[Geogloc:India]. pursuer; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... offspring. Though two or three were sickly, and one was found dead in its mother's arms, yet they had suffered less than the somewhat older children, who had been unable to obtain their share in the scramble for food, which, from the mode the Arabs had of distributing it, must have taken place; the more helpless ones went without it, while the stronger ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... coast clear to Broom and Dust-pan, I believe that Charles Keene will be here from Friday to Monday. As he has long talked of coming, I do not like to put him off now he has really proposed to come, and we shall scramble on somehow. And I will get a Carriage and take him a long Drive into the Country where it is greenest. He is a very good fellow, and has lately lost his Mother, to whom he was a very pious Son; a man who can reverence, although a Droll ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald

... down to try and drink, the wooden framework at the top gives way and precipitates me head first into the water. Luckily, the tank is large enough to enable me to turn round and reappear at the surface, head first, and with considerable difficulty I scramble out again, with, of course, not ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... driving from Markton Station to Stancy Castle to rest and prepare herself for her evening triumph. There was a train at six o'clock, timed to reach Markton between eleven and twelve, which by great exertion he might save even now, if it were worth while to undertake such a scramble for the pleasure of dropping in to the ball at a late hour. A moment's vision of Paula moving to swift tunes on the arm of a person or persons unknown was enough to impart the impetus required. He jumped ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... two great loads of empty crates, which in passing had got entangled, and reeled, leaning to fall disastrously. Then the drivers cursed and swore and dismounted and stared at their jeopardised loads: till a thin fellow was persuaded to scramble up the airy mountains of cages, like a monkey. And he actually managed to put them to rights. Great sigh of relief when the vans ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... in your face, I could better endure it! For I love you. With all my body and heart and soul I love you. Mine is the agony, for I love you! and presently I shall stand quite still and see little Frenchmen scramble about you as hounds leap about a stag, and afterward kill you. And after that I shall live! I preserve France, but after I have slain you, Henry, I must live. Mine is the agony, the enduring agony." She stayed motionless for an interval. "God, God! Let me not fail!" Katharine breathed; and ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... very little of the genuine spirit of hospitality in them, from those tables, should one by chance happen upon them, one senses, certainly with a feeling of satisfaction and expansion, chiefly physical, but entirely without the expansion of heart which one gets at the scramble of the hospitable man. So that we are driven to remark, even in such everyday matters as these, but it is the invisible, the spiritual, which after all gives value and reality even to dinners; and, with Solomon, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... ascended, we could hear the dog barking furiously, then, presently, just as we reached the upper landing, we heard a loud curse, a scramble, and then ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... Clodius Glaber, and occupied the approaches to Vesuvius with the view of starving out the slaves. But the brigands in spite of their small number and their defective armament had the boldness to scramble down steep declivities and to fall upon the Roman posts; and when the wretched militia saw the little band of desperadoes unexpectedly assail them, they took to their heels and fled on all sides. This first success procured for the robbers arms and increased accessions ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... would run down stairs, and out of the house, and scramble through a little hole in the fence at the back of the house, and rush up to Lillie, and Lillie would rush up to Alice, and they would knock each other down, without meaning to, on the soft grass, and roll over together, and jump up again, as good as new, and laugh! you never heard ...
— Baby Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... man told me he had seen him take a keg of gold and silver coins down to the sand-bank, with a company of his comrades, on a holiday spree, and when they were all thoroughly drunk he would take up a handful of gold and silver pieces, throw them in the sand, and tell them to scramble, and he that got the most was the best fellow. He, with the rest, "scrambled," as he called it. William Allen declared that the Yankees had robbed him of fifty thousand dollars worth of negroes under ten years of age, and more than one hundred and fifty thousand dollars' ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... regular ramparts, however, even when completed, can never be relied on as a security against the guerilla attacks of these daring marauders, who can wade through the sea at low water round the flanks of the Turkish wall, and scramble over precipices to get in the rear of the outposts—and accordingly, during 1840, the garrison had to withstand two more desperate attempts (May 20, and July 4,) to surprise the place, both of which were beaten off after some hard fighting, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... danger of his officer, and had ordered Kelly to fire, blazing away too himself. There was a headlong, hasty scramble to carry off the fallen warriors, and then the assailants swept back to a point beyond accurate musket shot. Thurstane reached the rear of the train unhurt, and found the six Mexican cattle-drivers there in a group, pointing ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... have received such a storm of fisticuffs without giving up the ghost. Fortunately for him, he had one of those excellent Breton heads that break the sticks which beat them. Save for a certain giddiness, he came out of the scramble safe and sound. Far from losing his presence of mind by the disadvantageous position in which he found himself, he supported himself upon the ground with his left hand, and, passing his other arm behind him, he wound it around the workman's legs, who thus found himself reaped down, so to speak, ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... If I had a thousand lives the price were still too cheap," and once more I essayed to scramble up. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... the tests of ambition. Ambition sees the mountain-peak blessed with sunlight and cries, "That is my goal!" But the feet must cross every ditch, wade every swamp, scramble across every ledge. The peak is the harder to see the nearer it comes; the last cliffs hide it altogether, and when it is reached it is only a rough crag surrounded by higher crags. The glory that lights it is glory in distant ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... messages, and letters forwarded, asking us to come over; and now that we've come, is it likely, though your uncle is busy with his preparations to start on his journey, that your aunt of the Chia family won't do all she can to press us to stay? Besides, were we to have our house got ready in a scramble, won't it make people think it strange? I however know your idea very well that were we kept to stay at your uncle's and aunt's, you won't escape being under strict restraint, unlike what would be the case were we to live in our ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... a young maiden, they say, Who grows more beloved every day. When we talk or we ramble, there's always a scramble To be next to the maid ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Rose, the Potter's daughter, that it was thought it would be the jester's own fault if Jack was long without his Jill. Much pithy matter concerning the bringing the bride to bed, the loosing the bridegroom's points, the scramble which ensued for them, and the casting of the stocking, is also ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... crossing, same old boat, Same old dust round Rouen way, Same old narsty one-franc note, Same old "Mercy, sivvoo play;" Same old scramble up the line, Same old 'orse-box, same old stror, Same old weather, wet or fine, Same old ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various

... uncertain. Our morals (I do not mean our sexual morals only, but our whole ethical and social conduct) has become like a skein of wool that has been unraveled by a puppy. We want a firm broad way in which it is good and possible for all of us to walk without hurting one another, not the horrid scramble that to-day we ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... of a gun, some excited shouts, and when Tom could scramble to his feet, and rush out, he beheld Mr. Parker calmly sitting on a struggling man, while Mr. Jenks held a gun, that was ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton

... afternoon when the acrid, gray dust cloud kicked up by the listless plodding of eight thousand cloven hoofs formed the only blot on the hard blue above the Staked Plains, an ox stumbled and fell awkwardly under his yoke, and refused to scramble up when his negro driver shouted and prodded him with the ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... almost dinner-time—their dinner-time, that is to say—when the children reached the Rectory, and there was something of a scramble to get hands washed, hair smoothed, and thick boots changed so as to be in time and not keep papa and mamma waiting. Randolph came into the dining-room, carrying ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth

... and complexion and her father's refinement of feeling, she added to them a truthful simplicity and frank ingenuousness of manner which won all hearts to her. Much as they might despise her mother, everybody loved and pitied Bessie, whose life was a kind of scramble, and who early learned to think and act for herself, and to know there was a difference between her father and her mother. She learned, too, that large hotels, where prices were high, meant two rolls and a cup of milk for breakfast, a biscuit or apple ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... very cloistral one, with a ribbon of gravelly road, bordered on each side with a rich margin of turf and a scramble of blackberry bushes, green turf banks and dwarf oak-trees making a rich and plenteous shade. My attention was caught firstly by a bicycle lying carelessly on the turf, and secondly and lastly by a graceful woman's figure, recumbent and evidently sleeping against the turf bank, well tucked ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... moment. We took off every stitch of clothing and fastened our garments, with our rifles, &c., on the pack-saddles of the yaks, which we sent into the water. They are good swimmers, and though the current carried them over a hundred yards down stream, we saw them with satisfaction scramble out of the water on to the opposite bank. Notwithstanding the faith that Chanden Sing and Mansing had in my swimming, they really thought that their last hour had come when I took each by the hand and asked them to follow me into the stream. Hardly ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... his hands and feet in an attempt to scramble upward, and, possibly more by chance than design, he fell into the stroke that a dog uses when swimming, so that within a few seconds his nose was above water and he found that he could keep it there by continuing ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... all know you're late? You ought to be dressed long before this." Then follows the big scramble and soon everybody ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... to Jerusalem! I'm going to Jerusalem!" in singsong. Every few moments he stops at his discretion and knocks with his cane on the floor behind the chair of some player. Immediately the player thus summoned rises from his chair and follows the leader, sometimes having a lively scramble to encircle the row of chairs and catch up with him. The next player knocked for follows this one, and so on, until all are moving around in single file. The leader may reverse his direction at pleasure. This general hurry and confusion for the start may, with ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... and flowers grew up in that neglected spot! Some of the happiest hours I spent in the bush are connected with reminiscences of "Irving's shanty," for so the raspberry-grounds were called. The clearing could not be seen from the shore. You had to scramble through a cedar-swamp to reach the sloping ground ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... pastures, to point out the cattle and goat paths, and to introduce Martin to Kohli, Kraunsi, Blasi, Zottel, Nageli and all the other cows, as well as to Tiger, Schweiz and their fellow-oxen. We set out to accompany them, but the cattle were too far away on distant heights for us to continue long in the scramble. We therefore sat on a breezy mountain platform watching the athletic young men grow ever smaller, more indistinct, whilst Jakob's voice was borne to us on the rarefied air as he called lovingly, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... solemn procession round the statue in front of the church, and finally enter, when another religious celebration takes place. Services are going on all day long and late into the night. Hardly do these devotees give themselves time for meals, which are a scramble at best, every hotel and boarding-house much overcrowded. The table d'hte dinner, or one or two dishes, are hastily swallowed, and the praying, chanting, marching and prostrating begin afresh. At eight o'clock from afar comes the sound of pilgrims' voices as ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... to have broken the tacit truce against a resort to arms. There was a sharp fusillade, followed by a scramble as the belligerents sought cover. The men who had been left outside now leaped over the barricade. The appearance of reenforcements either frightened Carey or the success of his shot had awakened a new rage in his crazed mind, for ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... last, and you were at a distance, it is very probable that she and her young ones, if they were big enough, would all scramble out of sight in a very short time, for the black bears are very shy of man if circumstances will permit them to get away before he approaches too near to them. But if you are so near as to make the ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... scramble along those rugged tracks we made our way to the point where the Gypsy expected that Winifred would pass. We remained for hours, beating about in all directions in search of her,—Sinti every now and then touching her crwth with ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... classes. She always got rid of this task on Saturday morning, so as to have her Saturday afternoon and Sunday free. She had never succeeded in winning Laura and Vi over to her method, so that on their part there was usually a wild scramble to prepare Monday's lessons ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler

... Tiberius the cake-eating fell into disuse, but the wheat ears survived. In the middle ages they were either worn or carried by the bride. Eventually it became the custom for the young girls to assemble outside the church porch and throw grains of wheat over the bride, and afterwards a scramble for the grains took place. In time the wheat-grains came to be cooked into thin dry biscuits, which were broken over the bride's head, as is the custom in Scotland to-day, an oatmeal cake being used. In Elizabeth's reign these biscuits began to take the form ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... make decency seem an affectation, invaded religion and politics. To religion it brought about a general indifference, which in the higher ranks of the clergy took effect in disregard of their duties and in a shameless scramble for lucrative posts, and in the lower ranks produced poverty and social degradation. In politics are to be dated from this reign the gross corruption which enabled every public officer, however high or however low, to use his position for the purpose of private ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... that their eel was gone, and crowded round the man, yelling continuously, "Where's our ale? Where's our ale? You've stole our ale." And the ragged man with drooping shoulders and white scared face slunk along the fence under the road, looking for a weak place by which he might scramble out of the field. At last he found one and made a bound to climb up it; but the bank was too steep and he fell back. The boys seeing that he was afraid of them began to raise the cry of thief, or, as they ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... home sulkier than a bear: but he did not let his father find out his trouble. It was his last evening with the old man. To-morrow he must go to London, and then—to scramble and twist about the world again till he died! "Well, why not? A man must die somehow: but it's hard on the poor ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... mother!" Tommy screamed, and he hurried to scramble back over the fallen walls by which he had come. He must take care of his mother. But ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... saw a diver it was in deeper water. I was sporting to and fro at another time when there was just such a panic among the fishes as I had seen before, and just such a scramble. ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever

... impulse for colonial expansion which had prompted the Germans to occupy Damaraland and the Cameroons on the western, and the Zanzibar coasts on the eastern, side of Africa was now telling on other European powers, and made them all join in the scramble for Africa, a continent which a few years before had been deemed worthless. Italy and France entered the field in the north-east, France in the north-west; and Britain, which had in earlier days moved with such slow and wavering steps in the far south, was roused by the competition to a swifter ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... wonderfully reveals her all-comprehending sympathy and her spiritual buoyancy and intellectual poise. "You are very wrong," she says to him, "and I am very right to upbraid you. I take the pen from Robert—he would take it if I did not. We scramble a little for the pen which is to tell you this, and be dull in the reiteration, rather than not to instruct you properly.... I quite understand how a whole life may seem rumpled and creased—torn for the moment; only you will live it smooth again, dear Mr. Chorley, ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... succession of shrill sounds, which indicated that the engineer was either frightened or frantic; the conductor rushed bare-headed through the car; people sprang to their feet; there was a scramble on the platform; then a shock and crash as if the day of doom had dawned—and all ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... the young Englishman. He had dressed himself in white clothes, like a miller's man, and was climbing the path to the miller's house, but he had never been taught to climb, and therefore slipped, and nearly went in head-foremost. He managed, however, to scramble out with wet sleeves and bespattered trousers. Still, wet and splashed with mud, he contrived to reach Babette's window, to which he had been guided by the light that shone from it. Here he climbed the old linden-tree ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... and lakes, feeding on water insects and mollusks in the coves. They build their nests in hollow trees and stumps, often at quite a distance from the water. When the young are a few days old, they slide, scramble, or flutter down the tree trunk to the ground below, and are led to the water. The nest is made of twigs, weeds and grass, and warmly lined with down. The eggs are a buff color and number eight to fifteen. Size 2. ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed

... was, with red face and black hair which seemed to scramble in all directions at once, and with a mustache which appeared to scamper in even more directions than his hair. Fairchild was a large man; suddenly he felt himself puny and inconsequential as the mastodonic thing before him ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... those who would have fled to places of safety. The rush of waters caught hundreds in their homes, and as the darkness fell the scramble to escape became wild and foreboding. Those who were able to do anything sent their appeals for aid to outlying cities before the wires had ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... vanished suddenly from sight, as if diving into the earth. The arid soil was cracked into a deep ravine. Down we all went in succession and galloped in a line along the bottom, until we found a point where, one by one, the horses could scramble out. Soon after we came upon a wide shallow stream, and as we rode swiftly over the hard sand-beds and through the thin sheets of rippling water, many of the savage horsemen threw themselves to the ground, knelt on the sand, snatched a hasty draught, and leaping back again to ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... communicative, the Red Cross ladies produced chocolate. It was the genial hour before the final nap, from which one awoke abruptly at the sound of squeegees and brooms to find the deck a river of sea water, on whose banks a wild scramble for slippers and biscuit-boxes invariably ensued. No experience could have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of a new series of books by Oliver Optic will delight boys all over the country. When they farther learn that their favorite author proposes to 'personally conduct' his army of readers on a grand tour of the world, there will be a terrible scramble for excursion tickets—that is, the opening volume of the 'Globe Trotting Series.' Of one thing the boys may be dead sure, it will be no tame, humdrum journey, for Oliver Optic does not believe that fun and excitement are injurious to boys, but, on the contrary, if of the right kind he ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic

... outside smoking, and all making a most disreputable noise. There were also one or two women in amongst the crowd, evidently searching for truant sons or husbands, and Harry feared their inquisitive eyes even more than he feared the men. For he remembered he was covered with dust and dirt from his scramble; his hair all rough; hatless, and generally untidy. Besides, what business had a boy of his age and station in life to be wandering about a village, ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly

... was seen in them. The savages on the little hill still kept hallooing, and making signs for us to land. However, as soon as we got close in, we all fired. The first volley did not seem to affect them much; but on the second, they began to scramble away as fast as they could, some of them howling. We continued firing as long as we could see the glimpse of any of them through the bushes. Amongst the Indians were two very stout men, who never offered to move till they found themselves forsaken by their companions; and then they marched away ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... day began to break I put on my shoes and climbed a hill—the ruggedest scramble I ever undertook—falling, the whole way, between big blocks of granite, or leaping from one to another. When I got to the top the dawn was come. There was no sign of the brig, which must have lifted from the reef and sunk. The boat, too, was nowhere to be seen. ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... nothing to do but wait. Johnny pushed the girl toward the cabin and saw her scramble under the lowest branches and join the others unconcernedly, tagging the boy Josef, and, then running off into the open—where she could see the hillside—with Josef running after. She did not seem to be watching the hill, while she was apparently absorbed ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower

... morning at the east end of Candia, and had a glorious scramble over the mountains, which seem built of adamant. Time has worn away the softer portions of the rock, only leaving sharp, jagged edges of steel; sea eagles soaring above our heads—old tanks, ruins, and desolation at our feet. The ancient Arsinoe stood here: a few blocks of marble with the cross ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... trashy, but grammatically O.K. He said he never read novels, not having time, but he thought that "The Crimson Cord" was just about the sort of thing a silly public that refused to buy his "Some Light on the Dynastic Proclivities of the Hyksos" would scramble for. On the whole ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... to start, and Percival watched anxiously to see the nature of the race he had entered. He saw his adversary dash forward as the signal sounded, climb over a pile of upturned chairs, scramble under a table, scale a high net fence, then disappear around the deck, only to emerge later from the mouth of a funnel-shaped tunnel, through which his contortions had been ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice

... are kept in great fenced-in pastures and fed from troughs or feeding racks. They have alfalfa hay, turnips, rape, kale, corn, pumpkins and grain. The range sheep are the hardiest, though. Sheep were made to climb and scramble over rocky places, and they are stronger and healthier ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett

... really cross, and wouldn't hear a word more of such nonsense, so I jumped up, and he had to scramble up, too. ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... while he himself directed the chase after Robertson, which he still hoped might be successful. As Ratcliffe approached, Sharpitlaw pushed the young woman towards him with some rudeness, and betaking himself to the more important object of his quest, began to scale crags and scramble up steep banks, with an agility of which his profession and his general gravity of demeanour would previously have argued him incapable. In a few minutes there was no one within sight, and only a distant halloo from one of the pursuers ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... secure bearings of some prominent hill to the south. I found the brush, however, so thick on the top of the mountain, that I could obtain no satisfactory view, and and M'Leay, who accompanied me, agreed with me in considering that we were but ill repaid for the hot scramble we had had. Crossing the western extremity of Goulburn Plains on the 15th, we encamped on a chain of ponds behind Doctor Gibson's residence at Tyranna, and as I had some arrangements to make with that gentleman, I determined to give both the men and animals a day's rest. I availed myself ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... after this a little woman, carrying a very big bandbox in her hands, might have been seen to scramble with difficulty out of a boat in the Thames up the side of a steamer bound from thence for Boulogne; and after her there climbed up an active little man, who, with peremptory voice, repulsed the boatman's demand for further payment. He ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... grand scramble, in the course of which Betty captured the tea-ball and the lemons, and Katherine the teakettle, while Rachel secured two cups and retired from the scene of action to wash them for Betty and herself. Finally Katherine ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde

... no more of the vile rant I strode forward and thus presently came on a small dell or dingle full of the light of a fire that crackled right merrily; at the which most welcome sight I made shift to scramble down the steepy bank forthright and approached the blaze on eager feet. Drawing near, I saw the fire burned within a small cave beneath the bank, and as I came within its radiance the song broke off suddenly and a man rose up, facing me across the fire and with one hand ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... Spanish and the French methods of colonization and missions in America is at almost every point honorable to the French. Instead of a greedy scramble after other men's property in gold and silver, the business basis of the French enterprises was to consist in a widely organized and laboriously prosecuted traffic in furs. Instead of a series of desultory and savage ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... scramble for the service and only got in by the skin of my teeth. I guess I will go to bed—I will ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... rush of heavy police boots on the stairs, the lights were suddenly turned out, and in the dark a wild scramble for liberty. Someone smashed a window that was not barred, and a swarm of men fought round the opening, dropping one by one on to the roof of some stables. The first man through shouted something and tried to push back, but a frenzied stream of men pushed him and the others into the arms ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone



Words linked to "Scramble" :   stir up, agitate, cream, scamper, disorder, unscramble, rushing, shake up, whisk, battle, hurry, sputter, rush, disturb, haste, whip, scrambler, disarray, preparation, locomote, climb, cooking, modify, cookery, raise up, change, travel, commove, go, alter, tumble, move, vex



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