Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Spree   /spri/   Listen
Spree

noun
1.
A brief indulgence of your impulses.  Synonym: fling.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Spree" Quotes from Famous Books



... headache, evidently; he kept rubbing his head with his fore legs as if to relieve the pain. After a fall or two on the second sash, he reached the top, and tumbled into his warm nest to sleep off the effects of his spree. ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... easy stages; though they used the railway, of course, they did so only for a few hours a day, and got out and remained at places of interest. Richard was very amenable, and indeed showed no desire for dissipation; his one weakness—that of having a "spree"—had no opportunity of being gratified; and Maitland wrote home the most gratifying letters, not only respecting the behaviour of his charge, but of the improvement in his health. As they drew nearer to Italy, Richard observed one day that he should spend a day or two at Monte Carlo. Maitland ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various

... and on the 16th April, carried Landsberg, when he was apprised of the danger of Magdeburg. He resolved immediately to march to the relief of that town; and he moved with all his cavalry, and ten regiments of infantry towards the Spree. But the position which he held in Germany, made it necessary that he should not move forward without securing his rear. In traversing a country where he was surrounded by suspicious friends and dangerous ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.

... and as I had actually spoken Gitano to a gypsy in their hearing, it must be so. They had come for wool with all their languages, poor little souls! and gone back shorn. The elder said something about their having just come to Brighton for six hours' frolic, and so they departed. They had had their spree. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... she replied, "I dinna greatly like stage-plays. John Blower, honest man, as sailors are aye for some spree or another, wad take me ance to see ane Mrs. Siddons—I thought we should hae been crushed to death before we gat in—a' my things riven aff my back, forby the four lily-white shillings that it cost us—and then in came three ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... a word; he's likely off on a spree." The old lady spoke bitterly now. "Everybody was kind to my Annie but him, and it was a word from him that would have cheered her the most. Dr. Mayo came and sat beside her just an hour before she died, and says he, 'You still have ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... destruction which had marked her career in South American waters. She lay in wait for Australian transports, with the result that the Australian warship Sydney sent her to the bottom but three months after war had been declared. Shortly after this the Australian fleet drove von Spree's squadron from the Pacific directly into the trap set by Admiral Sturdee ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... he had left his vessel at Barking Creek, and he was enjoying a very vigorous spree; but he never lost temper or became stupefied, and his loud merriment was rather pleasant than otherwise. Jack did not look by any means like a rough, for his face had a kind of girlish beauty. His dark cheeks were richly flushed, his throat was round and white, and his blue eyes twinkled ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... little over two hours the flotilla came in sight of the Russian army lying between Cuestrin on the right and Frankfort-on-Spree on the left. The distance between these two towns is nearly twelve English miles, and yet the wings of the vast host under the command of the Tsar spread for a couple of miles on either side to north and south of ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... subterfuge or not, Crabbe certainly had a standing temptation at his elbow which he must have forgotten when Ringfield entered, cold and shivering and plainly in need of a stimulant. Poussette's theory—that the Englishman had absented himself in order to enjoy a deliberate "spree" as it is called, was incorrect. Crabbe had simply brought the stuff with him from force of habit, the conventional notion of preparing for a journey, particularly in such a climate. Therefore the burden of his recent ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... Christmas we'll have a spree together in town and choose it. No need to tell me you 're all right, Ronnie. It's writ large on you, my boy. ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay

... to destroy the work already accomplished. Bloody fights took place between the mob and the troops appointed to protect the workmen, and on two occasions the populace even went so far as to cut the dams, and destroy the flood gates, deluging the foundations with the waters of the River Spree, and drowning each time ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... absent from the store a French half-breed, by the name of Shaunce got on a drunken spree and cleared out the store and saloon. Hearing the disturbance I ran to the store. I entered by the back door and went behind the counter. As I did so Shaunce ran to the counter and grabbed a large number of tumblers, and threw them about ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... not dignified and not to my taste. No! I shall celebrate by a terrific spree—a ride ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... subsequent midsummer bolt of lightning that destroyed not only the forge but shocked Joe so severely that he "saw green" for a matter of six weeks and finally resulted in his falling off the dock into deep water in the middle of what was intended to be a protracted spree brought on by the discovery that his insurance policy did not cover "loss by lightning." To this day, the older inhabitants of Windomville will tell you about the way his widow "took on" until she couldn't ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... who had the row over George's spree, but not with George, and owing to her clever diplomacy it was hardly a row ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... to Jane and Rochester—I'll never know. It cuts me to the quick. Mother oughtn't to take pleasure from one like that, but it's all of a piece. Well, I'll go in and say 'good night' to her, and then I'll go back to the girls. I'm sorry I've lost my evening's spree, but I can hear Hester Wright sing, leastways; and mebbe she'll let ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... bully opponent, "do you go into the crowd and take a few bets on my account, as I am in want of money, and after I've killed this young sprig of insolence, I intend to go on a spree. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... and was wise enough to take the advice of the clerk. By paying $100 and no questions asked he got back his watch and jewelry. He also got his pocket-book and papers, but not the $200 that was in the book when he started out on his spree. In the intervals of the dance his story has been told me as a sample of the ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... rather noisy. Soon they went up on the roof to help with the rafters and the clapboarding. They worked well a few minutes and suddenly they came scrambling down for another pull at the jug. They were out for a spree and Abe knew it and knew further that they had reached the limit ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... with the Desert that seemed to gather all its dreadful strength against them, were beginning to tell. Texas Joe, forced to give constant attention to his team and hardened by years of experience, showed the strain least, while Pat, unfitted for such a trial by his protracted spree in San ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... faces. And warmer and warmer they waxed in the dance, and round and round they went; now up in the air, now down on the ground; jumping and kicking, yelping and barking, spinning and whirling, yelling and howling, like a pack of hobgoblins and imps on a spree. The hollow woods gave back the barbarous din in a thousand obstreperous echoes; and afar off, from the depths of the lonely forest glens, might have been heard, had not the attention of the spectators been otherwise engaged, the answering howl of ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... brew ther malt, An' Robs and Allans spree; Mi Burns's songs an' Burns's name, Remember'd they ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... Conry's last engagement,—the last possible excuse for her lingering in the city. It was a suburban affair, and the place was difficult to reach. Vickers had invited the Falkners to go with them, to prevent gossip, and Bessie willingly accepted as a spree, though she had confided to Isabelle that "Mrs. Conry was dreadful ordinary," "not half good enough for our adorable Vickers to afficher himself with." Nevertheless, she was very sweet to the beautiful Mrs. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... even the new Globe editor accused the ship of having barnacles, we fail to remember that Mr. Rowell lifted his voice against it. He was a candidate for the Commons five years before James Whitney began his regime of government by indignation; at a time when if Ontario went on a political spree Ottawa got a headache. Big-party government was pretty strong in those days to keep a man like Rowell from talking out in meeting. The value of a conscience to a community, whatever it may be to an individual or a party, is in giving it a chance to speak out when something ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... Hank that if he would come and work for me I'd furnish him with so many drinks every day and meals and a comfortable place to sleep. I showed him that it was better to be sure of a few drinks every day than to get blind drunk on a week's wages and then go weeks maybe without a decent spree, without decent meals, maybe without underwear and an overcoat. And Hank saw the sense of that. He gets his meals up at the house. My old woman (Billy's wife was a pretty girl of twenty-three and still a bride) sides in with what I'm doing ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... the room was a picture of the capital of the German Empire, Berlin, showing the bridge across the Spree, with the renowned statue of the Great Elector; behind this the great Royal Palace; also a picture of the "Hohkonigsberg," in olden times a mighty castle in German Alsatia, which for centuries has been a desolate ruin, but now is built anew in its old pomp and splendor. The series of pictures ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... indifferently. "He looked in 'bout three o'clock. He was tolerable full then, and I 'spec he's been took up by now. He said he was goin' to buy me a bird-cage with a bird in it, but I surely hope he won't. Them white mice he brought me on his last spree chewed a hole in Berney's stocking; besides, I never did care much for birds. Good lands! what are you goin' ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice

... went on his spree just like a Siberian! Seems to have known a good thing when he saw it. ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... have felt the need of further creature comfort after his bout with the stalwart Sioux, and had availed himself to the limit of his capacity of the major's invitation. Webb's first thought was to partially remove the traces of that single-handed spree; then, refilling the decanter from the big five-gallon demijohn, kept under lock and key in the cupboard—for Michael, too, had at long intervals weaknesses of his own—he was thinking how best to protect Kennedy from the consequences of his, Webb's, rash invitation when ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... cosmic for him. He drains bogs, settles colonies in the waste places of his Dominions, cuts canals; unweariedly encourages trade and work. The Friedrich-Wilhelm's Canal, which still carries tonnage from the Oder to the Spree, is a monument of his zeal in this way; creditable, with the means he had. To the poor French Protestants in the Edict-of-Nantes Affair, he was like an empress Benefit of Heaven: one Helper appointed, to whom the help itself was profitable. He munificently ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... him gruff-like a moment or two, for it seemed to me he was raither too familiar for a stranger, but he's got such a pleasant, hearty look with him—as you know—that I couldn't feel riled with 'im, so 'I'm goin' on the spree,' says I. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... Saxony, an old town on the Spree, where Napoleon defeated the Prussians and Russians in 1813; manufactures cotton, linen, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Mars after terrible misfortunes, there; adventurers soured and maddened by months in a vacuum armor, smelling the stench of their own unwashed bodies; men flush with gains, and seeking merely to relieve the tensions of their restrained, artificial existences in a wild spree; refugees from rigid Tovie conformism—all these composed the membership of the wandering, robbing, hijacking bands, which, though not numerous, were significant. Once, most of these men had been reasonably well-balanced individuals, easily lost in a crowd. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... along," he said. Then, in answer to something in Mary Gowd's eyes: "I'm not going to Tivoli, you see. I met a man from Chicago here at the hotel. He and I are going to chin awhile this morning. And Mrs. Gregg and his wife are going on a shopping spree. Say, ma, if you need any more money speak up ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... five—and—forty years ago, at Jamaica, in the town of Port Royal, had his headrails smashed, the neb of his nose (stem) bitten off by a bungo, and the end of his spine (stern—post), that mysterious point, where man ends, and monkey begins, grievously shaken in a spree at Kitty Finnans, in Prince William ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... kitchen chair, and lifted a stone china pitcher from a corner of the highest cup-board shelf where it had been hidden. "This lemonade's gittin' kind o' dusty," he complained. "I cal'lated to hev a kind of a spree on it when I got through choosin' Rose's weddin' present, but I guess the pig 'll hev to help me out." The old man filled one of the glasses from the pitcher, pulled up the kitchen shades to the top, put both hands in his pockets, and walked solemnly round ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... dear, what a Mentor you are, Mary! No poor lad that ever ran up from Oxford for a spree in town got so lectured for his dissipation and iniquities as I do. Well, I beg Dr. Thorne's pardon, and Lady Scatcherd's, and I won't be sharp any more; and I will—let me see, what was it I was to do? Marry him myself, I believe; was ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... of birds—based by the fretful mewing of a querulous cat-bird, and the pleasant chippering-shriek of two kingfishers. I have been watching the latter the last half hour, on their regular evening frolic over and in the stream; evidently a spree of the liveliest kind. They pursue each other, whirling and wheeling around, with many a jocund downward dip, splashing the spray in jets of diamonds—and then off they swoop, with slanting wings and graceful flight, sometimes so near me I can plainly see their ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... of the fettered condition from which he had escaped, the name of Ephraim Swart, "a gambler and spree'r" was mentioned as the individual who had wronged him ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... made his first entrance at the Diet, or Assembly of the Three Estates, held in the "White Saloon" of the Royal Palace at Coelin on the Spree, our future empire-maker and throne-overturner knew by practical experience absolutely nothing about the diagonal ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... not. There were two or three asking for him, wanting him to bring the pipes to some spree-house at the time the fair will be ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... "Been havin' little spree down town, Profeshor. Good deal like one ev'body been havin' out here. Yours shpiritual; mine shpirituous. Joke, see! ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... contrive to let you know." He looked Amber up and down with a glance that took in every detail. "I'm sorry," he observed, "you couldn't have managed to look a trace shabbier. Still, with a touch here and there, you'll do excellently well as a sailor on a spree." ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... gone by the nose of the old ship, who should I run into but Klaus, coming back from a spree. He was pushing along on all fours like an animal, he was so drunk ... good, simple Klaus, whom I liked. I laid down my bundle, risking capture, while I helped him to the deck. He stopped a moment to pat the ship's side affectionately as if it were a living friend, or ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... righteousness which exalteth a people, and as often happens (especially aboard ship) when a bad example is shown by the master, the crew and officers drift into irregularities, and all discipline is destroyed. This was exactly what occurred aboard the Hebe. The master was known to be on the spree, so the mate, Munroe, thought he would have a day off, and took as a drinking chum, Ralph, the half-marrow; and, in order that they might not be disturbed, they travelled to a snapshop in the country, some miles away ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... get him before the day is over, never fear!" exclaimed Rogers, apparently in high glee at receiving the brutal order. "Come along, mates, and get your rifles; it isn't every day that we get the chance of such a spree as ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... can arouse them from any kind of deadness that the sex is heir to, but a few frank ones, like myself, for instance, will say such to be the case. For three weeks I gave myself up to a perfect debauch of clothes, and ended off each day's spree by dancing myself into a state of exhaustion. Everybody in Hayesville wanted to give Bess and me parties, and most of them did, that is, as many as we could get in at the rate of three a day between dressmakers and milliners and other clothing engagements. ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... English Chief was fond of a little fun, and despite the dignified position which he held, and the maturity of his years, he could not resist availing himself of any little chance that came in his way of having what is more pithily than elegantly styled "a spree." ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne

... be precious few larks if they wos, CHARLIE—where'd be the chance of a spree If every pious old pump or young mug was the equal of Me? It's the up-and-down bizness of life, mate, as makes it such fun—for the ups. Equal? Yus, as old BARNUM and BUGGINS, or tigers ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various

... he came to Denver in that fall uv '83 His old friend, Cantell Whoppers, disappeared upon a spree; The very thought uv seein' Dana worked upon him so (They hadn't been together fer a year or two, you know) That he borrowed all the stuff he could and started on a bat, And, strange as it may seem, we didn't see him after that. So when ol' Dana hove in sight we couldn't ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... per cent. and more a year? Oh, John! I pray thee that within thy heart The lesson that 'Police Court' teaches thee, That other Jones' rob hen-roosts, and take part In many a rousing fight and drunken spree, May have its influence; and that thou wilt start And have thy name changed, quickly ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... gathering-place for a rude population, which inhabits not only the valley, but the mountains within fifty miles around, and which rides into Covelo on mustang ponies whenever it gets out of whisky at home or wants a spree. ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... distance it looked like a monster sea serpent on a spree. It was really a dragon, at least that's what the Chinese call it; but it was in fact the finest exhibit ever beheld of what a diseased imagination can do for a victim of strong drink. It could easily claim the prize as being the most ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... N. has a spree with his step-son, an undergraduate, and they go to a brothel. In the morning the undergraduate is going away, his leave is up; N. sees him off. The undergraduate reads him a sermon on their bad behavior; they quarrel. N: "As your father, I ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

... He couldn't shoot, but he could yell. Brunner, however was ready for that. He began to bawl a reveler's song, popular with cowboys on a spree, and old man Thomas joined him. From above, it sounded as if a drunken riot had broken out, in which the outpost's warning shout became only a meaningless discord. The babel brought the four sleeping men out of their blankets. They listened a moment, then stepped out in view of the posse ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... and for many years Pete Wiggs, an honest, hardworking German, was grandfather's right-hand man. But Pete, jewel of a farmhand though he was, possessed one serious flaw: he would have a periodical spree. But, so considerate was he, that he always chose a time for his sprees when 'Dere really vos notting else to do, Uncle Ezra,' as he assured my grandfather by way of extenuation. So it became an understood ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... be able to go on to that book of a portion of which I had a glimpse years ago. I hear good accounts of your health, indeed the last was that you were so rampageous you meant to come to London and have a spree among its dissipations. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... growled, answering the virago's call of warning. "More likely a spree ashore. And where might you come from, young gentleman? And what might be your business to-night, breakin' ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... enjoyment recalling her father's. She was only moving to let her pew-fellows pass out, and was waiting for him to come for her, as he did in a few moments, and he too was all pleasure and cordiality. He told us when we were outside that he had come up to preach, and 'had brought Miss Anne up for a spree.' They were at a hotel, Mrs. Fordyce was at home, and the Lesters were not in town this season—a matter of rejoicing to us. Could we not come home and dine with them at once? We were too much afraid of disappointing ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and because through her you were handed the whaling of yore life and are being hounded out of the country. You're sore clear through at all her people and at all her friends. Naturally, you're as sweet-tempered as a sore-headed bear, and you've probably been drinking like a sheepherder on a spree." ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... hundred dollars that he never would drink another drop as long as he lived. I thought the bet a safe one for me, at all events, and took it and made him write it down, and it probably kept him from another spree as long as I remained there, but when I saw him again the next summer he was as drunk as ever. I asked him about my oxen, and he leered and jeered and joked with drunken cunning, but said ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... a good shepherd among the men, though he had recently lost the head foremanship by a spree complicated with language and violence. He looked like one of the Merian bulls, with broad short neck and short curly hair above a thick-skinned deeply wrinkled low forehead. He never undressed, but was always seen, as now, in heavy ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... Street they went first to a large saloon, where a set of roysterers were having a Christmas-Eve spree preparatory to a Christmas-morning headache. Charley could not imagine why the ghost had brought him here, to be smothered with the smell of this villainous tobacco, for to nothing was Charley more sensitive than to the smell of a poor cigar ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston

... the Spree Quay, and my apartment was on the ground floor. One morning I was awoke at eight o'clock, and told that Prince Louis-Ferdinand was on horseback under my windows, and wished me to come and speak to him. Much astonished at this early visit, I hastened to get up and go to him. He was a singularly graceful ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein

... journey. We had only walked a little way from the castle when a lady came across the park to speak to us, and told us that the cannon and the large wooden structure we could see in the park had been used for the "spree" at the royal wedding, when the Marquis of Lome, the eldest son of the Duke, had been married to the Princess Louise of England. She also told us that the Princess and the Marquis had been staying at the castle a short time before, but were not there then. Who the lady ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... Was that a scene from the Arabian Nights? Or am I really on the banks of that homely river Spree which flows into the Havel? Of a truth this Prussian Court with its queer pigtails and gaiters is more romantic than I had thought. Laharpe down there behind the flower-pots! Laharpe tete-a-tete with a Princess who visits ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... a lucky "find," for some of the largest nuggets in the State had been taken out at Tough Case. It was not a grand spree, for all sprees at Tough Case were grand, and they took place every Sunday. It was not a fight, for when the average of fully-developed fights fell below one a fortnight, some patriotic citizen ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... civilization, as hard as I did to ride sidewise to Governor Hunt's office. To Denver men go to spend the savings of months of hard work in the maddest dissipation, and there such characters as "Comanche Bill," "Buffalo Bill," "Wild Bill," and "Mountain Jim," go on the spree, and find the kind of notoriety ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird

... of revolt against the monotony of her work, and "that nasty sticky stuff," she stole from her father $300 which he had hidden away under the floor of his kitchen, and with this money she ran away to a neighboring city for a spree, having first bought herself the most gorgeous clothing a local department store could supply. Of course, this preposterous beginning could have but one ending and the child was sent to the reform school to expiate not only her own sins but the sins of those who had ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... Tuileries"; next, "real life" in the galleries of the Palais Royal; next, Dick, the Captain, Lady Halibut, and Lydia "enjoying a lounge on the Italian Boulevard." To these succeed a representation of a dinner at Very's; Dick and his companions "smashing the glim on a spree by lamplight"; Dick and the Captain "paying their respects to the Fair Limonadiere at the Cafe des Mille Colonnes"; Dick introduced by the Captain to a Rouge et Noir table; the same and his valet "showing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... understand. They stirred in their seats, turning aside, with gestures almost of pain, of imprisonment. Only Alfredo, laying his hand on mine, was laughing, loosely, floridly. He would upset all the Government with a jerk of his well-built shoulder, and then he would have a spree—such a spree. He laughed wetly ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... o'clock, so that he wadna sleep in. I hinna missed a creelin' for thirty-five years, an' I wasna' gaun to miss Tam Donaldson's. I heard him goin' oot two or three minutes afore me. We're in for a guid day, for he telt me he had in two bottles for the spree." ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... be acting as Pack-Pony for some Old Lady on a Shopping Spree and in the Afternoon he would be ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... torches carried by the servants who accompanied their masters to places of amusement. By eleven o'clock the streets were deserted. Pollnitz was therefore sure to meet no one on his way to the castle. He directed his steps to that door which opened upon the River Spree, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... I do," Quest replied coolly. "You garrotted and robbed an old man and had the spree of your life. The old man happened to be a friend of mine, so I took the trouble to see that you ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... two attended to the upper part of his body. Thus they carried him, followed by an admiring crowd, and watched by other envious drunkards who had to content themselves with a single officer when they went on a similar spree. Sometimes Joe managed to place a kick where it would do the most good against the stomach of a policeman, and when the officer rolled over there was for a few moments a renewal of the fight, silent on the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... all the fuss of a coach, as if I were afraid people would speak to me. Shanks' mare is always ready; if she is tired or ill, her owner is the first to know it; he need not be afraid of being kept at home while his coachman is on the spree; on the road he will not have to submit to all sorts of delays, nor will he be consumed with impatience, nor compelled to stay in one place a moment longer than he chooses. Lastly, since no one serves us so well as we serve ourselves, had we the power ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... at the feet of John Jr., as he was called, he could not have been more startled. He was not expecting his father for two or three days, and was making the most of his absence by having what he called a regular "spree." Taking him altogether, he was, without being naturally bad, a spoiled child, whom no one could manage except his father, and as his father seldom tried, he was of course seldom managed. Never yet had he remained at any school more than two quarters, for if he were not sent away, ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... superintendent promptly established as manager of the Pyramid Park Hotel, had been a Missouri steamboat captain and was regarded far and wide as a terror. He was, in fact, a walking arsenal. He had a way of collecting his bills with a cavalry saber, and once, during the course of a "spree," hearing that a great Irishman named Jack Sawyer had beaten up his son Frank, was seen emerging from the hotel in search of the oppressor of his offspring with a butcher-knife in his boot, a six-shooter at his belt, and a rifle ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... every bit as bad; and Mysie after her disgusting schoolchildren; and Val and Prim horrid little empty chatterboxes; and if one does turn to a jolly girl for a bit of fun, their tongues all go to work, so that you would think the skies were going to fall; and if one goes in for a bit of a spree, down comes the General like a sledge-hammer! I wish you would take me ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... took him." But it seems to me that this unskilled labor of fishing from a steamboat must be epidemic, if not contagious; for even Young New York, who in the early forenoon doubted visibly his discretion at having got himself into such an ugly scrape as an "excursion-spree," put off his delicate gloves, and set to hauling, hand over hand, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... hags were free Than out they swarmed for a midnight spree; I couldn't tell all they did in rhymes, But the Essex people had dreadful times. The Swampscott fishermen still relate How a strange sea-monster stole their bait; How their nets were tangled in loops and knots, And they found dead crabs in their lobster-pots. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... zero and the lands be unsaleable. If one man sells out and throws the money into the slums, the only result will be to add himself and his dependents to the list of the poor, and to do no good to the poor beyond giving a chance few of them a drunken spree. We must therefore bear in mind that whereas, in the time of Jesus, and in the ages which grew darker and darker after his death until the darkness, after a brief false dawn in the Reformation and ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... night I drinked up my lastest bottle o' that Hundson's Bay rum. Hit war right good rum, an ez I lay lookin' up at the stars, all ter oncet hit come ter me that I was jest exactly, no more an' no less, jest ter the ha'r, ez drunk I was on the leetle spree with Kit at Laramie. Warn't that fine? An' warn't hit useful? Nach'erl, bein' jest even up, I done thought o' everything I been fergettin'. Hit all come ter me ez plain ez a streak o' lightnin'. What it was Kit Carson told me I know now, but no one else shall know. No, not even you, ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... ward that are awfully needed. And now comes along a miserable lawyer who finds something the matter with the will, and everything goes to that worthless Charlie Winthrop, who'll probably blow it all in on one grand poker-playing spree. It makes me tired! We can't begin to keep up with the latest X-ray developments without the new apparatus, and only the other day we lost a case, a man hurt in a railroad wreck, that I know we could have pulled ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... brisk trade among the uninvited guests, who paid for their own. Inside, they drank the health of the married couple; but the dozen of beer barely wet their throats. Jonah and Chook went to the "Woolpack" with jugs, and the company settled down to the spree. At intervals the men offered to shout for a few friends, and, borrowing a dead marine from the heap of empty bottles, shuffled off to the hotel to get it filled. The noise grew to an uproar—a babel of tongues, sudden explosions of laughter, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... Court, if Potsdam may be so described, is hardly less rich in memories than the old palace by the Spree. Indeed it is richer from the cosmopolitan point of view, for though Frederick the Great was born in the Berlin Schloss and spent some of his time there, it was at Potsdam that, when not campaigning, he may ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... into confidence; that could not be avoided. He, Sebright, answered for their discretion while sober, anyhow; and he promised me that no leave or money would be given in Havana, for fear they should get on a spree, and let out something in the grogshops on shore. We all knew what a sailor-man was after a glass or two. So that was settled. Now, as to our rejoining the Lion. This, of necessity, must be left to me. Counting from the time we parted from her to land on the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... daresay, but worthless and unreliable in an executive capacity, and I can't trust a ripping fine barkentine like the Retriever with that kind of man. I suppose he feels the hankering for a spree coming on right now. Skinner, if we gave the man Peasley permission to draw drafts he'd paint Cape Town red. I ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... who was going to be trained for the priesthood at Louvain—lots of Irish used to come there in those days. And somehow a fit of naughtiness had overcome him—he was only twenty—and he thought he'd like to see a bit of the world. So he'd sloped from his college and had a bit of a spree at Brussels and Ostende. Then he was took ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... the ready response; "you look a good sort of chap. I'll go anywhere you please. Not that I've got a penny of money left. What a spree it has ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... easy swell of the water, giving a gentle send forward every minute or so, when the sluggish sails would come with a thundering slap against the masts, and the loose cordage would rattle like a drum-major's ratan on a spree. The sea was one glassy mirror of undulations, shimmering out into full blaze as the rising sun just threw its rays along the crest of the ocean swell; and then, dipping down into the rolling mass, the hue would change to a dark green, and, coming up ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... responsible for the exploits, good, bad or indifferent, of the man who, having made money at manufacturing, or mining, or in other commercial pursuits, blows into town, either physically or by telephone or telegraph, and goes on a financial spree, more ...
— High Finance • Otto H. Kahn

... trio returned they came dragging themselves along, stiff, foot-sore, gaunt, and hungry. For a day or two afterward they lay about the kennels, seeming to dread nothing so much as the having to move. The stolen hunt was their "spree," and of course they must take time ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... goes off on a spree in the same quarter, what does he see but a border dog strung up by the neck, who has been seized and condemned as many an innocent fellow has been before him on circumstantial evidence, and he laughs and says to himself, 'What fools humans be, they don't ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... Upstairs in one of de rooms. He's been on a terrible spree he said, but he's sober now and sick—gee, mister, but he sure was sick. Me mudder helped ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... of the window of Rusty Brown's place when they rode up, and Cal Emmett swore aloud at sight of him. Joe Meeker was the most indefatigable male gossip for fifty miles around, and the story of Weary's spree would spread far and fast. Worse, it would reach first of all the ears of Weary's School-ma'am, ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... pourin' down; In the mornin' when the costers come a-shoutin' with their mokes, In the evenin' when the gals walk out a-spoonin' with their blokes, When Mother's slappin' BILLY, or when Father wants 'is tea, When the boys are in the "Spotted Dog" a 'avin' of a spree, No matter what the weather is, or what the time o' day, Our music allus visits us, and never goes away. And when they've tooned theirselves to-rights, I tell yer it's a treat Just to listen to the lot of 'em a-playin' ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various

... foolish on de farm? dere's no good chances lef' An' all de tam you be poor man—you know dat's true you'se'f; We never get no fun at all—don't never go on spree Onless we pass on 'noder place, an' mak' ...
— The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems • William Henry Drummond

... to cheerful garrulity, the wilder fun of weddings has given the Fr. faire la noce, to go on the spree. In Ger. Hochzeit, wedding, lit. high time, we have a converse ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley

... in the house who disturbed my rest last night. He's a very respectable man in general, but when on the "spree" a most consummate fool. When he came in he stood on the top of the stairs and preached in the dark with great solemnity and no audience from 12 P.M. to half-past one. At last I opened my door. "Are we to have no sleep at all for that drunken brute?" I said. As I hoped, it had the desired ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the gun,—his leisure hours, which included every one in the twenty-four, were passed in the invention and perpetration of curiously regulated mischiefs, with all of which he took pains to combine an element of the ludicrous. His great spree was to run amuck into a flock of small children coming out of school. If there was a dirty crossing hard by, over which they had to pass, he would wait until they had got half-way, and then, going through them like a rocket, would chuck them down into the mud, right ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... and my servant have been separated in a scuffle with some drunken Germans; it's only a tipsy spree, and whether I have got scratched, or whether in collaring one of these fellows I have drawn some of his blood, it all arises from the row. I don't think I am hurt a bit." So saying, he pretended to feel all over ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... come over for a small spree, and to fetch you. Suppose I were to come on the 9th or 10th of August to stay three or four days in town, would that do for you? Let me know at the end ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... sorry for Mister Bluebeard, I'm sorry to cause him pain; But a terrible spree there's sure to be When he ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... They'd have jailed an Englishman—me, f'rinstance. One little spree, an' they'd put me in the Fort! One li'l indishcresshion an' they'd jug me for shix months! Him they let go wi' a admonisshion! It's 'nother case o' Barabbas, an' a great shame, but you can't change the English. They're ingcorridgible! Brown ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... looking upon them as mere machines, out of whom they were to get as much work as their strength would allow. When we reached Hull I was glad to leave the Jane and Mary; and without even going on shore for a day's spree—as most of the other hands did, and accordingly fell in with press-gangs—I transferred myself to a barque trading to Archangel, on the ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... and stones are stumps and stones. You'd better take a person—like me, you know," he said, winking comically at Hetty—"who won't mistake a frightened squirrel for the king of the brown elves off on a hunting spree, or for anything else that never was born, except inside of your ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... was common to nearly all the great towns: and the hereditary prejudices of chaste Germany against Latin immorality awoke in him once more. And yet Sylvain Kohn might easily have pointed to what was going on by the banks of the Spree, and the impurity of Imperial Germany, where brutality made shame and degradation even more repulsive. But Sylvain Kohn never thought of it: he was no more shocked by that than by the life of Paris. He thought ironically: "Every nation has its little ways," and the ways of the world in which ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... the door by which Nikita entered the hut). Well, have you had enough spree? You've been puffing yourself up, but now you'll know how it feels! You'll ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... it and you take it in their presence.' 'This is indeed hard,' replied I; 'Well, it can't be helped,' continued he: 'and it ought not to be if it could. It's best for society; people's better off without drink. I recollect when your father and I, thirty years ago, used to go out on a spree and spend more than half a dollar in a night. Then here's the rising generation; there's nothing like settin' a good example. Look how healthy your cousins are there's Benjamin, he never tasted spirits in his life. Oh, John, I would you were a teetotaller.' ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown

... had accepted his explanation that he was a mechanic by trade who had roughed it all over the world and was possessed with an itch for painting, that lately he had worked in various garages, that it was his habit to hoard his money till he got a bit ahead and then go off on a painting spree. All these admissions were indubitably plausible, for his paintings seemed the unmistakable handiwork of an irresponsible, hard-fisted ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... creatures that rode them. A circus was nothing to them—neither is a theatre. Some of them were dressed in red, some in yellow, some in blue; one had on purple—all fitting just as tight as the skin to a rabbit's back. Each one had a boy's cap on his head; and, in fact, they all looked like boys out on a spree. There was a place just above the long tavern where most of these fellows always took their horses after a little run and blow—that was a little, cubby house, built up high from the ground, in which some men stood like captains ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... revellers was the cook, Charlie, commonly called The Doctor. The rivermen early worked off the effects of their rather wild spree, and turned up at noon chipper as larks. Not so the cook. He moped about disconsolately all day; and in the evening, after his work had been finished, he looked so much like a chicken with the pip that Orde's attention ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... "But it will do no harm to look around. If this isle is like the rest of the West Indies there will be little on it to hurt you. There are few wild animals down here, and no savages outside of some negroes who occasionally go on a spree ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)

... spree to misel? Aw can treat mi old mates wi' a glass; An' aw sha'nt ha' to come home an' tell My old lass, ha' aw've shut all mi brass. Some fowk say, when a chap's getten wed, He should nivver keep owt thro' his wife; If he does awve oft heard 'at it's sed, 'At it's sure to breed ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley

... Turnbull, "this is a spree I little looked for; to have a blunderbuss full of shot ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... vex and worry him, Dull, modeless Man, whose spark Long (beside Woman's) burning dim, Has now gone down in dark? Ha! He'd kick up the greatest shine (If he could kick) at—CRINOLINE. Were he recalled to breath, I'll have one last man-mocking spree By donning hooped skirts. Victory! This takes all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various

... life. She supports a mother, and sends a brother to college in Florence. You people think we are fast. That's all nonsense. It is only the little dancers, la canaille, who can afford to be dissipated. I can't, I know that. I'm too tired after the theatre to think of going out on a spree, as they call it. Besides, it doesn't do for a dancer to be too cheap. It hurts ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... scann'd Strange waiting infantry with brand-new rifles, In backward areas, but close at hand; And some had marked the D.A.Q.M.G. Approaching Railhead in the dusk, and he (Who, as a fact, was simply on the spree) Had gone, of course, to view ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various

... to be Of Tutors and Deans an acute circumventist, Has been known to declare, when he went on the spree, 'Twas to bury his uncle, or call ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various

... that during the previous winter the village was full, and when he stopped a night there, en route from Winnipeg, some of the Indians took his dog-train over to an opposite point for a fiddler who lived there, and all spent the night in a grand "spree" of dancing and drinking. But in the morning only the shattered remains of his toboggan and dogs were to be found, the half-starved native animals having devoured provisions and robes, and gnawed the toboggan to pieces, so that he had to make the best of his way ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... Loraine had made her some costly presents, that she had treated him rather coolly and wanted to ship him, and so he got dreadfully put out with Loraine and made some bitter threats against him. But I don't believe he would have done the deed if he had been sober, but he's been on a spree for several days and he was half crazy when he did it. Oh it was heartrending to see Loraine's wife when they brought him home a corpse. She gave an awful shriek and fell to the floor, stiff as a poker; and his poor little children, it made my heart bleed to look at them; ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... "His father, it is true, is a hog-merchant, but as for himself he follows no business; he is what is called a fast young man, and goes about here and there on the spree, as I think they term it, drawing, whenever he wants money, upon his father, who is in affluent circumstances. Some time ago he came to Cerrig Drudion, and was so much pleased with the place, the landlady, and her daughters, that he has made it his headquarters ever since. Being frequently ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... cheque or a sum of money in a spree. There is an old English verb, of Scandinavian origin, and properly spelt lamm, which means to ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... filled. No; he is "nothing if not" odd. His very hat never sits squarely upon his head like the hat of a gentleman. It is either elevated in front like a sophomore's, or depressed on one side, as if he had just come from a cheap spree in the Bowery, or was troubled with some obtrusive "bump" that kept his hat awry. If by chance he gets a seat inside the omnibus, (as "accidents will happen," etc.,) he must cross his legs and wipe the mud from his ill-shod feet upon your trowsers ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various

... keeping his eyes open on his own account. He satisfied himself that if there had been whisky there, it was drunk up by now. Some of the men showed the sullen depressed air that follows on a prolonged spree, but ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... record. It was entirely comprehensible and fully in accordance with human nature and the merits of the case that a man should quit drinking when he quit the army, but that a man with the blot of an occasional spree on his escutcheon should enlist for any other cause than sheer desperation, and should then become a teetotaler, was nothing short of prima facie evidence of ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... women were generally sad, broken-spirited drudges, to whom this kind of show was like an opera or a ball. There were two or three shame-faced believers of the better class, who scoffed a little but trembled in secret, and a few avowed skeptics, young clerks on a mild spree, ready for fun if any ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... intentions and bald greed go to the wall, but subtle selfishness with a dash of unscrupulousness pulls more plums out of life's pie than the seven deadly virtues.[4] If you are a good man you want a bad one to convert; if you are a bad man you want a bad one to go out on the spree with. And you, my dear, my exquisite reader, place your hand upon your heart, tell the truth, remember this is a magical tĂȘte-Ă -tĂȘte which will happen never again in your life, admit that you feel just a little interested in my wickedness,[5] admit that if you ever ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... to imagine they were having "fun" when they went on a spree, to get "gloriously drunk," as they phrased it. You can see no fun in this. You realize that it is a most serious tragedy, with not an element of real fun in it, involving, as it does, the loss of health, the risking of life, the possibility of ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen

... ought to have known better, certainly, than to talk that way, even if there didn't seem to be anyone around to hear me. I only hope he didn't understand, or that he really is what he seems to be—just a sailor on a spree." ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland

... get hunting for half of the year, but it's not every day we have a visitor in the house. You go with father, Esmeralda, and don't think of me! We will have a fine little spree on our own account, Mademoiselle and I! Maybe we'll drive into Roskillie and have a ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey



Words linked to "Spree" :   intemperateness, gratify, self-indulgence, pander, spending spree, fling, intemperance, spree killer, indulge



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com