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Snare   /snɛr/   Listen
Snare

noun
1.
Something (often something deceptively attractive) that catches you unawares.  Synonym: trap.  "It was all a snare and delusion"
2.
A small drum with two heads and a snare stretched across the lower head.  Synonyms: side drum, snare drum.
3.
A surgical instrument consisting of wire hoop that can be drawn tight around the base of polyps or small tumors to sever them; used especially in body cavities.
4.
Strings stretched across the lower head of a snare drum; they make a rattling sound when the drum is hit.
5.
A trap for birds or small mammals; often has a slip noose.  Synonyms: gin, noose.



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"Snare" Quotes from Famous Books



... Haouse evidently comes from one of the lesser inland centres of civilization, where the flora is rich in checkerberries and similar bounties of nature, and the fauna lively with squirrels, wood-chucks, and the like; where the leading sportsmen snare patridges, as they are called, and "hunt" foxes with guns; where rabbits are entrapped in "figgery fours," and trout captured with the unpretentious earth-worm, instead of the gorgeous fly; where they ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... They must make a hundred millions at one stroke. They floated a great mining company to which the public was invited to subscribe. The scheme having the endorsement of the Empire Trading Company no one suspected a snare, and such was the magic of John Ryder's name that gold flowed in from every point of the compass. The stock sold away above par the day it was issued. Men deemed themselves fortunate if they were even granted an allotment. What matter if, a ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... angles or the crossing point of the poles. Music, in which string instruments figure most conspicuously, should be selected, as this lends itself best to the weird effect which should be sought. Three or four pieces will generally be sufficient and they may consist of a violin, guitar, banjo and snare drum or the drum may be omitted if not convenient. The committee appointed to gather the refreshments must have the assistance of all the other women of the club, for its work is very arduous and necessitates great ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce

... the officers, named Statilius, then proposed to make the attempt to find his way out of the snare in which they had become involved. He would go, he said, as cautiously as possible, avoiding all parties of the enemy, and being favored by the darkness of the night, he hoped to find some way of retreat. If he succeeded, he would display a torch ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... in to ask counsel of Torfrida, ready to weep with rage. He had disappointed, deceived his men. He had drawn them into a snare. He had promised that the Danes should come. How should he ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... resist tampering with drugs of a deleterious nature, and was constantly betrayed by the thirst for scientific experiment into practices incompatible with the public health. The good nature which my detractors have not denied me was a veritable snare. I felt for youth debarred from its enjoyments by the unnatural vitality of age, and sympathised with the blooming damsel whose parent alone stood between her and her lover. I thus lived in constant apprehension of being ordered back to the Netherlands, and yearned ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... by the other masters, and persecuted by the boys; while the French master was so unused to notice of any kind, that he felt a trifle suspicious that the kindness of his new acquaintance might be in some way a snare. However, a little mutual mistrust sometimes paves the way to a good deal of mutual confidence; and after a few days the two men had risen considerably in one another's esteem. When Railsford, on the evening in question, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed

... die in Jesus, and are bless'd; How kind their slumbers are! From sufferings and from sins releas'd, And freed from every snare. ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts

... grief." This was an alarming decline. It troubled her again that she loved literature, whereas she ought only to care for religion. She writes to Edward: "You speak of your predilections for literature being a snare to you. I have found it so myself." Evidently, as she has before said, she was beset behind and before. What was perhaps worst of all, the heavens seemed closed to her. Calvinism was pure agnosticism; and she had been educated a Calvinist. There was ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... am a poor man, a maker of shoes for the poor who could not always buy them, and I had one daughter. She was all I had, and I wrestled with the devil for her that she might escape perdition through the snare of beauty. But the nephew of a rich man cast desiring eyes upon her, and Satan helped him. He might well be strong and comely, for he fed on the finest, while when trade was bad half of us went cold and hungry in Stoney Clough; but he was filled with the wiles of the devil ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... them. There are, for example, Bottom, the weaver; Flute, the bellows-maker; Snout and Sly, tinkers; Quince, the carpenter; Snug, the joiner; Starveling, the tailor; Smooth, the silkman; Shallow and Silence, country justices; Elbow and Hull, constables; Dogberry and Verges, Fang and Snare, sheriffs' officers; Mouldy, Shadow, Wart, and Bull-calf, recruits; Feebee, at once a recruit and a woman's tailor, Pilch and Patch-Breech, fishermen (though these last two appellations may be mere nicknames); ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... ex-junior acted the part of a weakling. Evan reflected that it was easy enough for himself to keep within bounds, speaking after the manner of Physical Culture, being mentally engaged all the time; but Henty seemed to contain himself by force of will. His virility made a man of him instead of being a snare to him. Evan conceived a hope, founded on the respect he had for his companion, that was some day going ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... when he called, but Emily led him into the little sitting-room, and for a time they talked in a desultory fashion. Morrow, who had brought so many malefactors to justice by the winning snare of his personality, felt for once at a loss as to how to ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... him. He was aware of the other's interest in the mare, and suspected, at least, that he had come to town to recover her. And caution would have had him refuse the snare. But his toadies were about him, he had long ruled the roast, to retreat went against the grain; while to suppose that the man had the least chance against Lemoine was absurd. Yet he hesitated. "What do you know about ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... a wealthy man named Eirik Snare, who had taken the land between Ingolfsfjord and Ofaera in Veidileysa. On hearing that Onund had arrived in those parts, he offered to let him have such portion as he needed from his own lands, adding that there was little land which had not ...
— Grettir The Strong - Grettir's Saga • Unknown

... a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years, not perniciously, but beneficially; not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity will bear testimony that I was right. I desire to thank God that He enables me to disregard 'the fear of man which bringeth a snare,' and to speak His truth in its simplicity ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various

... Melchizedek the Jew, with a story of three rings, escapeth a parlous snare set for him ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... cocoanut-shell. When the man sits on the shell, the turtle calls. He cannot discover source of noise, and thinks it comes from his testicles. He strikes these with a stone, and dies. The turtle and the lizard see a bees' nest. The lizard hastens to get it, and is stung. They see a bird-snare, and turtle claims it as the necklace of his father. Lizard runs to get it, but ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... is with me since I have seen Nieve. Men find such a horse; for years they follow the band in which it runs to snare it. They will suffer broken bones, as did my father, and hunger, and thirst, because there is one tossing head, one set of flying heels before them. Sometimes they are lucky and they catch that one. If they do not, ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... snare. "Well," he said, "I am not an admirer of Clavering, but I'm willing to admit that he has done everything he could; in fact, I'm 'most astonished they have stood him so long, and I don't think they would have done so, but for Larry. Anyway, it's comforting to know Larry is rapidly making himself ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss

... us Mussulmans, and treat those few of us that are here with great barbarity. I suppose you did not know this, and it is a miracle that you have escaped as you have thus far, these idolaters being very apt to fall upon the Mussulmans that are strangers, or to draw them into a snare, unless those strangers know how to ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon

... heart that, beholding the shore, Beholds her own grave unaware,— Though the days to come their shame should unveil Yet onward she still would dare! Though the meadows smile with statesmanly guile, And the cuckoo's call is a snare! ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... dominant race, which people bred under our free civilization can not at once understand, nor scarcely believe when it is declared unto them. This reluctance to believe unwelcome truths has been the snare of our national life. We have not been willing to believe how hardened, despotic, and cruel the wielders of irresponsible power ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... reversal of all those social and political arrangements which now, in the free States, exclude persons of color, not only from the common courtesies of life, but from the privileges and honors of citizens. I say, until this is done, the uproar about abolition is a delusion and a snare. ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... the most conspicuous place on the wall there was an empty place, emptied rather, for a great gold-headed nail near the ceiling showed the visible, almost clumsy, trace of a snare laid for the poor simpleton, who let himself be taken in it ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... ne'er had seen more than one trivial fray, But bold assurance sometimes wins the day. Winona gave him generous credit, too, For all the gallant deeds he meant to do. His gay, barbaric dress, his lofty air Enmeshed her in a sweet bewildering snare. Transfigured by the light of her own passion, She saw Chaske in much the usual fashion Of fairer maids, who love, or think they do. 'Tis not the man they love, but what he seems; A bright Hyperion, moving stately through The rosy ether of exalted dreams. Alas! that love, the ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... they dispatched a messenger into the island to inform Lord Mar that Sir William Wallace was on the banks of the Frith waiting to converse with him. My noble father, unsuspicious of treachery, hurried to the summons. Lady Mar accompanied him, and so both fell into the snare. ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... mesh, my Molly! What a snare for a man in this lovely cloud! How fragrant of roses! Ah, most beautiful wife, you could lead all Italy by a strand of this ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... and flashed from bay to bay Round the summer capes of time and winter headlands keen and bare Whence the soul keeps watch, and bids her vassal memory watch and pray, If perchance the dawn may quicken, or perchance the midnight spare. Silence quells not music, darkness takes not sunlight in her snare; Shall not joys endure that perish? Yea, saith dawn, though night say nay: Life on life goes out, but very life enkindles everywhere Light that leaps and runs and revels through ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the hut Roy set several snares. He had often helped his father in such work, and knew exactly how to do it. Selecting a rabbit-track at a spot where it passed between two bushes, he set his snare so that it presented a loop in the centre of the path. This loop was fastened to the bough of a tree bent downwards, and so arranged that it held fast to a root in the ground; when a rabbit should endeavour to leap or force through it, he would necessarily pull away the fastening ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne

... something else sacred, that make men put their trust in "God" or Christ or the Virgin or the Bible or the Church or its sacraments and rites, are a diverting of man from the real issue; they are the blind leading of the blind; they are a delusion and a snare.[1] ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... never shrinking, Drive what may through darksome smother; Saturate, but never sinking, Fatal only to the other! Deadlier than the sunken reef Since still the snare it shifteth, Torpid in ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... on which the emotions turned. The primitive Christian scorned the body, his own as well as that of his fellow; he despised beauty of form, and regarded only the divine as worthy of love. Woman was disparaged and suspected; all thinkers, down to Thomas and Anselm, looking upon her merely as a snare and a pitfall. The period discussed in detail in the foregoing chapter ushered in a new and, until then, unknown feeling. In crude and conscious contrast to sexuality, deprecated alike by classical Greece and primitive Christianity, spiritual love of man for woman ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... of face and form can be bought as easily as one buys a flower—but the loyal heart, the pure soul, the lofty intelligence which can make of woman an angel—these are unpurchasable ware, and seldom fall to the lot of man. For beauty, though so perishable, is a snare to us all—it maddens our blood in spite of ourselves—we men are made so. How was it that I—even I, who now loathed the creature I had once loved—could not look upon her physical loveliness without a foolish thrill of passion awaking within me—passion that had something of the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... middle of the pond, and were playing a selection from the opera of "Solid Muldoon," when a boy who had slipped into the boat with a fish-pole, got a bite from a bull-head, which caused the vessel to roll, and the utmost confusion prevailed. Ordering the snare drum player to "cut away the main bob-stay, and belay the cornet," Mr. Jarvis took the bass drum between his teeth and jumped overboard, followed by the band, ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... resolution against any deviation from moral duty. BOSWELL. 'But you would not have me to bind myself by a solemn obligation?' JOHNSON, (much agitated) 'What! a vow—O, no, Sir, a vow is a horrible thing, it is a snare for sin[1063]. The man who cannot go to Heaven without a vow—may go—.' Here, standing erect, in the middle of his library, and rolling grand, his pause was truly a curious compound of the solemn and the ludicrous; he half-whistled in his ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... at once dissipated the confusion which had thus far existed in Allan's mind. He saw the snare in which he had been caught (though he was still necessarily at a loss to understand why it had been set for him) as he had not seen it yet. Mrs. Milroy had clearly placed him between two alternatives—the alternative of putting himself ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... his brother's intended wife, in order to get possession of her dominions. The plan which he formed was to lie in wait for the boat which was to convey Eleanora down the river, and seize her as she came by. She, however, avoided this snare by turning off into a branch of the river which came from the south. You will see the course of the river and the situation of this southern branch on the map.[B] The branch which Eleanora followed not only took her away from the ambush which Geoffrey had laid for her, but conducted her ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... woman secretly to the king. When Alexander had heard what she had to say, he commanded her to continue her intrigue with Philotas, and give him an account from time to time of all that should fall from him to this purpose. He thus unwittingly caught in a snare, to gratify some times a fit of anger, sometimes a mere love of vainglory, let himself utter numerous foolish, indiscreet speeches against the king in Antigone's hearing, of which though Alexander was informed and convinced by strong evidence, yet he ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... WOLF, with hunger fierce and bold, Ravaged the plains, and thinned the fold; Deep in the wood secure he lay, The thefts of night regaled the day. In vain the shepherd's wakeful care Had spread the toils, and watched the snare; In vain the Dog pursued his pace, The ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various

... and every variety of shell-fish, and sea-weeds also, some of which are excellent and very nutritious; but I can do very well without going to the sea. Of animals in England there are not many; but I can snare rabbits, and so I could hares, but that would be poaching, and therefore I cannot give you hares; but you shall have all sorts of birds—larks, and blackbirds, and sparrows, and young rooks, and wildfowl, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... to the Persian Gulf the net is spread. Is it not easy to understand the eagerness for peace that has been manifested by Berlin ever since the snare was set and sprung? "Peace, peace, peace" has been the talk of her Foreign Office for a year or more, not peace upon her own initiative, but upon the initiative of the nations over which she now deems herself to hold the ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... replied, "I was but fifteen years old at that time. I didn't do much good or harm, for I was but a snare drummer the first two years of my soldiering, and the last year I was detailed as mounted orderly at brigade headquarters. But just see the people! Give them some messages! We shall be out of ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... as a man hath destroyed his enemy, so hast thou lost the love of thy friend; as one that letteth a bird go out of his hand, so hast thou let thy friend go, and shall not get him again: follow after him no more, for he is too far off; he is as a roe escaped out of the snare. As for a wound, it may be bound up, and after reviling, there may be reconciliation; but he that betrayeth secrets, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... that I had no duties to perform as a teacher, for none of the three French pupils desired to learn English. English girls, who had been decoyed into the same snare by the same false photograph and prospectus which had entrapped me, were all of families too poor to be able to forfeit the money which had been paid in advance for their French education. Two of them, however, completed ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... why he had given her three days. A reason suggested itself to her mind. Perhaps he believed what she had told him—that she was as safe from him as the eagle in the air—and was sure that the only way to snare her was by using Richard as a lure, in other words, by threatening to murder him. It is true that he could have brought the matter to a head at once, but then, if she remained obdurate, he must carry out his threat, and this, ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... world's literature, especially to classical and Scriptural lore, which have played so considerable, yet on the whole so idle, a part in modern poetry. It is here that an inordinate love of decoration finds its opportunity and its snare. To keep the most elaborate comparison in harmony with its occasion, so that when it is completed it shall fall back easily into the emotional key of the narrative, has been the study of the great epic poets. Milton's description ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... serve not (neither doth the fox use always one track for fear of a snare), they will compound with some one of the town where the market is holden, who for a pot of "huffcap" or "merry-go-down," will not let to buy it for them, and that in his own name. Or else they wage one poor man or ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed

... knowing that it pleased the Nawab, often spoke all the ill they could think of about the English, so as to excite him against them and at the same time gain his confidence. The Nawab fell readily into the snare, and said everything that came into his mind, thus enabling his enemies to guard against all the evil which otherwise he might have managed to do them. The English had also on their side all the chief officers ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill

... determined the matter. Gallatin warned him against the attempt that would be made to disaffect that district because none of the representatives whose seats had been vacated were residents of it. "Fall not into the snare," he wrote; "take up nobody from your own district; reelect unanimously the same members, whether they be your favorites or not. It is necessary for the sake of our general character." Here is an instance of that true political instinct which made of him ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... friendship is abroad. Name you my successor! The treach'rous snare! That in my life you might seduce my people; And, like a sly Armida, in your net Entangle all our noble English youth; That all might turn to the new rising sun, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... the west; and the bat began to tire of going up and down her streets, and already the owl was home. And the dark lions went up out of the plain back to their caves again. Not as yet shone any dew upon the spider's snare nor came the sound of any insects stirring or bird of the day, and full allegiance all the valleys owned still to their Lord the Night. Yet earth was preparing for another ruler, and kingdom by kingdom she stole away from Night, and there marched ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... nearly all saints and heroes and most philosophers; a little ungratefully, perhaps, as if forgetting that, compared with the mass of men, he had himself always been rich, and that what he owed to the toil of his father had not proved in his case a snare or a cumbrance, but the necessary condition of the learning and the leisure he had used so nobly. Finally, to give no more instances, there is the confession at once so personal and so representative of the feeling of all men who have ever ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... from the room and received the offering of silver that "paid the floor" and averted guillons (interferences of outside imps), Aurora,—alas! alas!—went down upon her knees with her gaze fixed upon the candle's flame, and silently called on Assonquer (the imp of good fortune) to cast his snare in her behalf around the mind and heart of—she ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... had slowly dragged away Since Hercules, upon that fateful day, Within Arcadian wilds had sought in vain To snare the sacred stag; through sun and rain, Through wintry cold and winds that tossed and whirled The falling leaf, through drifting snows that pearled Arcadian slopes, untiring in pursuit, He held a ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various

... the proof for which he has asked. He is convinced upon suspicion, as Othello was, and the very nimbleness of his Hamlet-intellect, seeing that probabilities are against him, entangles him in the snare. Even his servant Pisanio will not believe in Imogen's guilt though his master assures him of it. Shakespeare does not notice this peculiar imprudent haste of his hero, as he notices, for example, the hasty speech of Hotspur ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... pervaded his senses, and he felt her hair brush against his cheek. Then she stood released, having recovered herself with a swift impulse, like a wild creature that had felt in time the first touch of the snare. This elusiveness, this sudden recoil from his contact, sobered him. What he might have done, had she remained a moment longer in his arms, must be forever a matter of conjecture with him now; but the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... and societies, and all people opposed to further slavery aggression and extension, at once took alarm and violently assailed the new doctrines of the report; the South, too, at first viewed them with surprise, denominating them "a snare set for the South," yet later regarded them as favorable to the extension of slavery. Southern statesmen, however, determined to force Douglas to amend them so as to accomplish the ends of the South. Accordingly, Senator Dixon of Kentucky, on January ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... This possibility aroused in the old lawyer a grim, voiceless rancor against Cissie. In his thoughts he linked the girl with every manner of evil design against Peter. She was an adventuress, a Cyprian, a seductress attempting to snare Peter in the brazen web of her comeliness. For to the old gentleman's eyes there was an abiding impudicity about Cissie's very charms. The passionate repose of her face was immodest; the possession of a torso ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... that were never intended to be performed. This did divide them; some of Jack's men saying that they ought to take the conditions which were offered, and others saying that they ought not, for they were only a snare; some going home at once; others staying where they were; and all doubting ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... country, seeing him for the first time, always loitered there, suspected—who could tell what kind of powers? hidden under the white veil of that youthful form; and pausing to ponder the matter, found themselves also fallen into the snare. The sight of him made old people feel young again. Even the sage monk Hermes, devoted to study and experiment, was unable to keep the fruit-seller out of his mind, and would fain have discovered the secret of his charm, partly for the friendly purpose of explaining ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... all kinds of birds and the smaller animals with the phanda or snare. Mr. Ball describes their procedure as follows: [411] "For peacock, saras crane and bustard they have a long series of nooses, each provided with a wooden peg and all connected with a long string. The tension necessary to keep the nooses open is afforded by a slender slip of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... in Wallenstein's sincerity, had repaired to the chancellor at Gelnhausen, to persuade him to lend some of his best regiments to the duke, to aid him in the execution of the plan. They began to suspect that the whole proposal was only a snare to disarm the allies, and to betray the flower of their troops into the hands of the Emperor. Wallenstein's well-known character did not contradict the suspicion, and the inconsistencies in which ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... itself. In the first Messenian war, which was fought more than seven hundred years B.C., the leader of the Messenians was named Aristodemus. A quarrel had arisen between the two nations during some sacrifices on their border lands. The Spartans had laid a snare for their neighbors by dressing some youths as maidens and arming them with daggers. They attacked the Messenians, but were defeated, and the Spartan ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... pursue external pleasures; (thus) they fall into the wide- spread snare of death. But the wise, knowing the nature of immortality, do not seek the permanent ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda

... If, indeed, this battle, this slaughter and stress, is life, why have we this craving for pleasure and beauty? If there is no refuge, if there is no place of peace, and if all our dreams of quiet places are a folly and a snare, why have we such dreams? Surely it was no ignoble cravings, no base intentions, had brought us to this; it was love had isolated us. Love had come to me with her eyes and robed in her beauty, more glorious than all else in life, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... They don't feed me any too high, but they don't live any higher themselves. Phrony has the dyspepsy—I dono as it's surprisin' that she should—and the old lady has an idee that eatin' is a snare of the evil one, and she gits along on next door after ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards

... indirectly to the house of Narveo. And its proprietor, the same silent, alert man, had taken advantage of a less restricted government, following the Mexican War, to increase his interests. So mine and meadow, flock and herd, trappers' snare and Indian loom and forge, all poured their treasures into his hands—a clearing-house for the products of New Mexico to swell the great overland commerce that ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... nothing happened. Next, out of a lair not fifteen yards from the distorted dummy, rose a figure that shone white as snow under the moon. Mark Brendon approached the snare that he himself had set, shook the grass out of his coat, lifted his hat from the ball of leaves it covered, and presently drew on his knickerbockers, having emptied them of their stuffing. He was cold and calm. He had learned more than he expected to learn; ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... to be altered by mere aliens. At night they shoot by the sound of the strangers' feet. O, Thangobrind, was ever a jeweller like you! He dragged two stones behind him by long cords, and at these the archers shot. Tempting indeed was the snare that they set in Woth, the emeralds loose-set in the city's gate; but Thangobrind discerned the golden cord that climbed the wall from each and the weights that would topple upon him if he touched one, and so he left them, though he left them weeping, and at last came to Theth. There ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany

... the rumours your conduct had occasioned) to give to the world your very singular book, you have acted a part unjust towards me, and injurious to yourself, for you now see the consequence. You are taken in the snare you had laid for me, and your violent dealing has come down on your ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English

... Kindly greeting found the hunter, Fire to warm and food to nourish, Golden trout from Gitchee Gumee, Caught by Kah-kah-ge—the Raven. With a snare he caught the rabbit— Caught Wabose,[7] the furry-footed, Caught Penay,[7] the forest-drummer; Sometimes with his bow and arrows, Shot the red deer in the forest, Shot the squirrel in the pine-top, Shot Ne-ka, the wild-goose, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... was not a certain success. Cornwallis was a better bet. They decided to leave Clinton in New York believing he was about to be attacked by a large army and move quickly southward to Virginia. Coordinating their arrival with that of de Grasse in the Chesapeake, they would snare Cornwallis at Yorktown. ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education

... girl was silent. His voice both thrilled and fascinated her. Partly proud, partly shy, like the bird who shuns the snare set for it, only fluttering its wings over the spot for an instant, and then flying to a greater distance, Adele bestirred her powers and resolved not to suffer herself to be drawn into the meshes. She felt a new, strange influence creeping over her, to which she ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... with thy face as if they were open, so smooth and simple are they and with their long full lashes. But well are thine eyen set in thine head, wide apart, well opened, and so as none shall say thou mayst not look in the face of them. Thy cheeks shall one day be a snare for the unwary, yet are they not fully rounded, as some would have them; but not I, for most pitiful kind are they forsooth. Delicate and clear-made is the little trench that goeth from thy nose to thy lips, and sweet it is, and there is more might in it than in sweet words ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... coverlet, pulled here The golden silken curtain halfway in It may be, and made room to lean out loose, Fair tender fallen arms. Now, if God would, Doubtless he might take pity on my soul To give me three clear hours, and then red hell Snare me forever: this were merciful: If I were God now I should do thus much. I must die next, and this were not so hard For him to let me eat sweet fruit and die With my lips sweet from it. For one shall have This fare for common days'-bread, which to ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Narkom," said Cleek as he held the letter out. "That's why he came by this particular train. There's the snare. ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... full of his smiles and flatteries and cajolements, and the wisest of women can do nothing with them. But the cold years bring them out of that!" she added bitterly. "They find what they call love, is a folly and a snare." ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... fine meshes, hung between two enormous tulip-trees, and in the midst of this snare, with its wings entangled, was a poor little bird, uttering pitiful cries, while it vainly struggled to escape. The bird-catcher who had laid this snare was no human being, but a venomous spider, peculiar to that country, as large as a pigeon's egg, and armed with enormous claws. The hideous ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... It is just possible that you never went on a fine fishing excursion down the Bay with a party of nice young men. If you never did, don't. I confess it sounds well on paper. But it's a Deceit, a Snare, and a Hollow Mockery. I ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various

... capable of courage and also of the most enduring affection. He has been known to risk his life for the welfare of his master's family. He has worked without hope of reward. He has laboured in the expectation of pain. He has toiled in the snare of the fowler. Yet shy a brickbat at him!—for he is only a Kaffir! "However much the Native may excel in certain qualities of the heart, still, until purged of the poison of racial contempt, that will be the expression ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler

... skirmished with us in front, and kept our attention alive with part of their troops, till the rest, acquainted as they doubtless were with every inch of the country, had got into our rear, and, by a similar mode of proceeding, cut off our retreat. Thus we should have been taken in a snare, from which it would have been no easy task to extricate ourselves, and might, perhaps, have been obliged in the ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... of John of Gischala, and Simon, fight to the last. They are as wild beasts, inclosed in the snare of the hunter; and they merit a thousand deaths, for it is they who have brought Jerusalem to this pass, they who have robbed and murdered the population, they who have destroyed the granaries which would have enabled the city to exist for years, they who refused the terms by which the Temple ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty

... would it be in such days as these if the most renowned of all orders and most venerable, that of Mount Carmel, should pass unscathed through the tempting fires! Not only wonderful, but in itself a snare. What a temptation to the sin of pride in the order! What a drawing on of others (too disposed already) to the sin of envy, to uncharitable speaking—ah, and to unlovely dealing! Let sin be owned, therefore, since men were born sinners; ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... Amrynkeus caught in the snare of fate; for he was smitten by a jagged stone on the right leg hard by the ankle, and the caster thereof was captain of the men of Thrace, Peirros son of Imbrasos that had come from Ainos. The ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... poor Mrs. Wragge, falling headlong into the snare, and darting at the parcel as eagerly as if nothing ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... to God for blessings on their protector, and pardon to their enemies. No one, I believe, will be able to object to us under our new establishment, that the extent of our revenues will be inconsistent with our vows of poverty and abstinence; but, let us strive to be thankful to God, that the snare of temporal abundance is removed ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... was full, and she fell into the snare which she had set for others. For a certain coloured policeman went off to her one night; and having poured out his love-lorn heart, and the agonies which he endured from the cruelty of a neighbouring fair, he ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... expected that he should resist the snare which Mrs. Mannering's imprudence threw in his way, or avoid becoming attached to a young lady whose beauty and manners might have justified his passion, even in scenes where these are more generally met with than in a remote fortress in our Indian settlements. The scenes which ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... teaching &c. 538. sophism, solecism, paralogism[obs3]; quibble, quirk, elenchus[obs3], elench[obs3], fallacy, quodlibet, subterfuge, subtlety, quillet[obs3]; inconsistency, antilogy[obs3]; "a delusion, a mockery, and a snare" [Denman]; claptrap, cant, mere words; "lame and impotent conclusion" [Othello]. meshes of sophistry, cobwebs of sophistry; flaw in an argument; weak point, bad case. overrefinement[obs3]; hairsplitting ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... gloom, Like birds escaping from a snare, Like school-boys at the hour of play, All left at once the pent-up room, And rushed into the open air; And no more tales were told ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Gustavus had heeded his anxious medical directions and gone entirely to bed betimes, leaving the butler's pantry free for the nocturnal operations of the victim of Madame. For he recognised that she was the guiding spirit of the family that dwelt beside the Mouse. He might have escaped out of the snare of Mr. Sagittarius, but Madame was a fowler who would hold him fast till she had satisfied herself once and for all whether it were indeed possible to dwell in the central districts, within reach of the Army and Navy heaven in Victoria Street, and ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... with me; the average British servant is worse than useless in a foreign country, and the dubiously-polyglot courier is a snare and a deception on campaign. I had my eye on Andreas for a couple of days, during which he was of immense service to me. He seemed to know and stand well with everyone in Belgrade; it was he, indeed, who presented me in the restaurant to the Prime Minister and the Minister for War, who got ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... snare of truth, Weeping, distressed with woe and ruth, Thus spake the monarch, while the queen Kaikeyi urged him on unseen: "Go then, O Rama, and begin Thy course unvext by fear and sin: Go, my beloved son, and earn Success, and joy, and safe return. So fast the bonds ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... peace And welfare of the Emperor'; but she, Lifting far forth her large and noteless eyes, As one that saw a vision, only said: 'I cannot sacrifice'; and he, harsh tongued, Bending a brow upon her rough as rock, With eyes that struck like steel, seeking to break Or snare her with a sudden stroke of fear: 'Art thou a Christian?' and she answered, 'Yea, I am a Christian!' In brow-blackening wrath He motioned a contemptuous hand and bade The lictors scourge the old man down and forth ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... mind was passion-tossed, When Ellen's hints and fears were lost; But Murdoch's shout suspicion wrought, And Blanche's song conviction brought. Not like a stag that spies the snare, 610 But lion of the hunt aware, He waved at once his blade on high, "Disclose thy treachery, or die!" Forth at full speed the Clansman flew, But in his race his bow he drew. 615 The shaft just grazed Fitz-James's crest, And thrilled in Blanche's faded breast. Murdoch of Alpine! prove thy ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... Baudraye was wily enough—an innocent form of cunning, to be sure—to show the two Parisians, one of whom she would choose to be her conquerer, the snare into which he would fall, reflecting that she would have the upper hand at the moment when he ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... my reason; because this reason alone enables me to distinguish good from evil, truth from falsehood. If, as you say, my reason comes from God, I shall never believe that a God, whom you call good, has given me reason, as a snare, to lead me to perdition. Priests! do you not see, that, by decrying reason, you calumniate your God, from whom you declare it to ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

... to him in person, and with this intention had proceeded to the public walks, as already mentioned. His artful and wily behavour, assisted by the distracting position of Don Lope's affairs, had betrayed the latter into that snare which the renegade had so cunningly devised, and which, if followed up with success, would lead the unwary Gomez Arias towards a labyrinth, in the mazes of which his destruction ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... firm fling of slender gray legs, as regularly intervaled as the teeth of a giant comb. Company by company, the regiment fell into the cadence of full-step. Midway, the standards of the Republic and Alleghenia rippled side by side. And so, with blare of brass and sharp staccato of snare-drums, with sheen of rifles and accoutrements, with flash of slender swords, raised in salute,—above all and always, with that magnificent unanimity, that mighty pulse of the thunderous advance, the Ninth swept past its Governor and ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... whole detachment of the Prussian army appeared in order of battle, in a well-chosen situation, strengthened with a numerous train of artillery, placed to the best advantage. Laudohn was not a little mortified to find himself caught in his own snare, but he had advanced too far to recede; and therefore, making a virtue of necessity, resolved to stand an engagement. With this view he formed his troops, as well as the time, place, and circumstances would permit; and the Prussians advancing to the attack, a severe action ensued. The ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... have, to pound corn, or to fetch home heavy loads of buffalo flesh, or to make snow-sledges, or to wade into the icy rivers to spear salmon, or basket kepling, or to lie concealed among the wet marsh grass and wild rice to snare pelicans, and cranes, and goosanders, while her lazy, good-for-nothing husband lay at home, smoaking his pipe, and drinking the pleasant juice of the Nishcaminnick by the warm fire in his cabin. She had only to procure her own food, and this was the berries, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... that when I saw a change in my father. He no longer tried to snare me; instead, he began, of his own free will, to train my mind to other than warlike things. At first, I was suspicious enough. I looked for new traps, and watched all the closer. I told him that his next try would surely be his last, and I ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... a young hare, fresh from its kind, run headlong into a snare? Have you ever seen a young man free of the trammels of college, dash into a NET? I ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... Whilst the kind Skill of our Law-Emperick, Sublim'd his Mercury to save his Neck. In Law, they say, he had but a slender Mite, And Sense he had less: for as Historians write, The Arabian Legate laid a Snare so gay, As Spirited his little Wits away. Of the Records of Law he fancied none Like the Commandment Tables graved in Stone. And wish'd the Talmude such, that Soveraign sway When once displeased might th'angry Moses ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... wife said that I was mad." He paused a moment, as though waiting for a reply; but Mr. Glascock had none to make. It had not been his object, in the advice which he had given, to entrap the poor fellow by a snare, and to induce him so to act that he should deliver himself up to keepers; but he was well aware that wherever Trevelyan might be, it would be desirable that he should be placed for awhile in the charge of some physician. He could not bring himself at the spur ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Snare" :   iron trap, capture, string, slipknot, hunting, surgical instrument, tempt, speed trap, tympan, design, plan, catch, drum, entice, membranophone, accost, solicit, hunt, lure



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