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Sprouting   /sprˈaʊtɪŋ/   Listen
Sprouting

noun
1.
The process whereby seeds or spores sprout and begin to grow.  Synonym: germination.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Sprouting" Quotes from Famous Books



... divisions of plate 16* Codex Troano, five persons are represented, each holding in his hand an ik symbol from which arises what appear to be the sprouting leaves of a plant, probably maize (plate LXIV, 30, 31). This is interpreted by Dr Seler as the heart just taken from the sacrificed victim, the leaf-shape figures representing the vapor rising from the warm blood and flesh. ...
— Day Symbols of the Maya Year • Cyrus Thomas

... walls, and permitted us to cover in. The drought is excessive. From the middle of October to the middle of December, not rain enough to lay the dust. A few days ago there fell a small rain, but the succeeding cold has probably prevented it from sprouting the grain sown ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... even see spots on your character, sometimes, Barcoo-Rot. I've known white spots to spread on chaps' characters until they were little short of saints. Sometimes I even fancy I can feel my own wings sprouting. And as for turning blackleg—well, I suppose I've got a bit of the crawler in my composition (most of us have), and a man never knows what ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... week or so a sprouting of hope had pierced the matchmaking soil in the querulous lady's really well-intentioned heart, for, like the proverbial half-loaf, a step-son-in-law is distinctly better than ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... strip of hallway, it was a scoured chromo of Victoria's age of horrors. The brilliantly flower-splashed wall paper and carpeting. A front room that smelled and pricked of horsehair. The little patch of dining room brightened by a red tablecloth, two canaries, and a window-sill array of turnips sprouting in bottles. The rush of bead portieres as you walked through them. Hassocks. A freshly washed-and-ironed ribbon bow on a chair back. Pillow shams. Nottingham-lace curtains with sham drapes woven into them. A ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... Spring when the wheat was sprouting, the wild ducks and geese would light in the field and pull it all up. They would seize the little sprouts and jerk the seeds up. They came by battalions. I have seen the fields covered with them. They made a terrible noise when rising in the air. I have seen the sun darkened by the ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... the fields; the Jews had left the village, carrying their business farther afield, following the new railway line now under construction, and no one sent for him from the manor—for there was no manor. He smoked, strolled about for days together in the yard, or looked at the abundantly sprouting corn. His favourite pastime, however, was to watch the Germans, whose habitations were ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... with the various seasons of the year. May, with her green lap full of sprouting leaves and bright blossoms, her song-birds making the orchards and meadows vocal, and rippling streams and cultivated gardens; June, with full-blown roses and humming-bees, plenteous meadows and wide cornfields, with embattled lines rising thick and green; August, with reddened ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel[22] and rafter With the lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf[23] of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's[24] roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... he warned. "They're coming to feed on the sprouting poplar along the mountain side. Just been over to the creek to get a drink. We may have ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... long the diameter of the ovum is greater than the depth of the mucous membrane which surrounds it. Consequently that part of the membrane which covers it is pushed into the uterine cavity, as the ground is raised by a sprouting seed. Growth continues, the bulging increases, and extensive alterations are wrought both in the womb and in the capsule of the ovum. One of these alterations will be more easily understood if we still think ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... crevices of logs supporting the water-trough, which proved to be a popular refreshment spot of many species of birds, clamorous with thirst, seeds were deposited, and when the rains came the trough was fringed and decorated with pinnate leaves of sprouting wattles, some of which grew so strongly, notwithstanding the absence of soil, save that which occurs from the slow decay of seasoned bloodwood, that if summary measures had not been taken the trough might have been embowered. The season seems to have been ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... conventional figure of sprouting maize, never inserted in the text, but frequently in the Manuscript Troano and in the Peresian Codex made a part of the head gear of figures of deities, in which case the Kan ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas

... his talons, as an Indian boy might begin practicing with his bow and arrow. He would strike at a dry leaf in the grass, or at a fallen apple, or at some imaginary object. He was learning the use of his weapons. His wings also,—he seemed to feel them sprouting from his shoulders. He would lift them straight up and hold them expanded, and they would seem to quiver with excitement. Every hour in the day he would do this. The pressure was beginning to centre there. Then he would strike playfully at a leaf or a bit of wood, ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... Under a flowery spray Downy heads and little pink feet Are cunningly tucked away! Along the shining furrows, The rows of sprouting corn Flash in the sun, and the orchards Are blushing red as morn; And the time o' the year for toil is here, And idle song and play With the jonquils, and the daffodils, Must wait for ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... Holland itself cannot be more completely on a level with the sea. The only dwellings are the old, whitewashed stone cottages, with thatched roofs, on the brown straw of which grow various weeds and mosses, brightening it with green patches, and sprouting along the ridgepole,—the homeliest hovels that ever mortals lived in, and which they share with pigs and cows at one end. Hens, too, run in and out of the door. One or two of these hovels bore signs, "Licensed to sell beer, ale, and ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of the anger of certain envious mice, she was triumphantly marched around the cellar, where, seeing her walk mincingly, mechanically move her tail, shake her cunning little head, twitch her diaphanous ears, and lick with her little red tongue the hairs just sprouting on her cheeks, the old rats fell in love with her and wagged their wrinkled, white-whiskered jaws with delight at the sight of her, as did formerly the old men of Troy, admiring the lovely Helen, returning from her bath. Then the maiden was conducted to ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... "the coat is growing black, the sprouting has commenced, the veins of the bulb are swelling, in eight days hence, and perhaps sooner, we may distinguish the first buds of the leaves protruding. ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... sprouting beard. "We all like to eat, but that doesn't mean we have to be slaves. But I can see that unless there are some radical changes in this environment I am not going to have much luck in freeing anyone, and I had better take ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey

... the first sprouting of a germon. He covered it up and left it: he had something else to talk to ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... away, glances around the courtyard, and darts to a corner where, under a fence, a clump of herbage is sprouting. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... himself analyzing, comparing, trying to find some earthly analogy for these unearthly creatures. Why did he think of potatoes sprouting in a cellar? What possible connection had these half-human things with that boyhood recollection? And he had seen some laboratory experiments with plants and animals that had been cut off from the sunlight—and now ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... creature of streets and crowding houses; no man could have been more ignorant of the every-day offices of rural life; I doubt if he ever knew from which side a horse was to be mounted or a cow to be milked, and a sprouting bean was a source of the greatest wonderment to him. Yet, in spite of all this, what a book those Essays of his make, to lie down with under trees! It is the honest, lovable simplicity of his nature that makes the keeping good. He is the Izaak ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... in clearness crystalline, O worthy of the wine, the flowers we vow! To-morrow shall be thine A kid, whose crescent brow Is sprouting all for love and victory. In vain: his warm red blood, so early stirr'd, Thy gelid stream shall dye, Child of the wanton herd. Thee the fierce Sirian star, to madness fired, Forbears to touch: sweet cool thy waters yield To ox with ploughing tired, And lazy sheep afield. Thou ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... enough there was a pollywog with a pair of legs sprouting out. They were his fore legs, and they certainly did make him look funny. And only a few days before there hadn't been a ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess

... tell you what your trouble is, Gussy. You're simply scared of this contraption. You've loaded your skull with horror-story nonsense about machines sprouting minds and taking over the world—until you're even scared of a simple miniaturized and clocked recorder." He ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... sea lost its purity. The sediment and ooze of decades were churned up, and, as the agitation ceased, were precipitated—a brown furry, slimy mud, all over the garden—smothering the industrious polyps to whom all its prettiness was due. Order is being restored, fresh and vigorous shoots sprouting up from the fulvid basis; but it may be many years before the damage is wholly repaired and the original beauty of the garden restored, for the "growth" of coral—the skeletons of the polyps—is methodical and very ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... dawn, they repaired to the cemetery. Bouvard felt with his walking-stick at the spot indicated. They heard the sound of a hard substance. They pulled up some nettles, and discovered a stone basin, a baptismal font, out of which plants were sprouting. It is not usual, however, to ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... hall are song and laughter. The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly: Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... end of their talk, and Eustacia left him. Clym watched her as she retired towards the sun. The luminous rays wrapped her up with her increasing distance, and the rustle of her dress over the sprouting sedge and grass died away. As he watched, the dead flat of the scenery overpowered him, though he was fully alive to the beauty of that untarnished early summer green which was worn for the nonce by the poorest blade. There was something in its oppressive ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... jubilant as it rose into the blue sky. It was spring, spring. The fresh grass was sprouting near the broad ditch, the corn that had been kept warm under the snow was now green and thick. Christ was risen ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig

... creature of infinite capacities for the best kind of romance—the romance of the fancy. It may turn out to be (I always suspect it) the very mysterious steed which carried adventurous knights and damsels through forests of delightful enchantments, sprouting wings, proving a hippogriff and flying up, whenever fairies were lacking or whenever envious wizards were fussing about. And, as reward—or perhaps crown—for its many good services, reposed occasionally by Britomart's or Amadis' side, far from the world's din, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... hands a large lighted candle, and Charles felt himself growing weaker at this continual repetition of prayers and torches, beneath this oppressive odour of wax and of cassocks. A fresh breeze was blowing; the rye and colza were sprouting, little dewdrops trembled at the roadsides and on the hawthorn hedges. All sorts of joyous sounds filled the air; the jolting of a cart rolling afar off in the ruts, the crowing of a cock, repeated again and again, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... Terminal leaf-bud alone active and open, with most of the flowers abortive and succulent, as in the cauliflower and broccoli. V. All the leaf-buds active and open, with most of the flowers abortive and succulent, as in the sprouting-broccoli. This latter variety is a new one, and bears the same relation to common broccoli, as Brussel-sprouts do to common cabbages; it suddenly appeared in a bed of common broccoli, and was found faithfully to transmit its newly-acquired ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... "bean sprouting," ceremony occurs, with very elaborate ritual signifying consecration of fields for planting. Various masks and symbolic costumes are used, and the children's initiation is accompanied with a ceremonial ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett

... she could see nothing but the paved yard, and an old tin biscuit box that stood on the window-sill, and contained two little green shoots sprouting up from ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... the very cactus seems shriveled and the deep blue of the sky gives no promise of any relief. Then, in the night, thunder-clouds roll up from the painted hills, a tropical deluge resembling a cloud-burst falls, and in the morning—lo! where was yellow sand parched from months of drought, is now sprouting green grass! It is a marvelous transformation—a miracle never to be forgotten by one who ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady

... in storms and hurled the lightning bolt. Apollo, a mighty god of light, who warded off darkness and evil, became the ideal of manly beauty and the patron of music, poetry, and healing. Dionysus was worshiped as the god of sprouting and budding vegetation. Poseidon, brother of Zeus, ruled the sea. Hera, the wife of Zeus, represented the female principle in nature. Hence she presided over the life of women and especially over the sacred rites of marriage. Athena, who sprang full-grown from the forehead ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... surveyed them, checking. The priest's right shoe was twice as broad as his left, the rabbi's head, beneath the black cap that covered it, was long and thin as a zucchini squash. The witchman, defiantly bare and black as ebony from the waist up, had a tiny duplicate of his own handsome head sprouting from the base of his sternum. The visible deformities of the lama and abbess were concealed beneath their flowing robes. But they were there—they had ...
— It's All Yours • Sam Merwin

... snows."[25] Rich sheltered plains lie at their feet, covered with an unequally woven mantle of trees, and shrubs, and flowers,—"the verdant gloom of the thickly-mantling ivy, the narcissus steeped in heavenly dew, the golden-beaming crocus, the hardy and ever-fresh-sprouting olive-tree,"[26] and the luxuriant palm, which nourishes amid its branches the grape swelling with juice. But it is the combination of these features, in the most diversified manner, with beautiful inland bays and seas, broken by headlands, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... the Greek fire used in ancient warfare, which burnt unquenched beneath the water, or like the weeds which when you have extirpated them in one place are sprouting forth vigorously in another spot, at the distance of many hundred yards; or, to use the metaphor of St. James himself, it is like the wheel which catches fire as it goes, and burns with a fiercer conflagration as its own speed increases; "it sets on fire the whole course ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... and through an old orchard. The trees were scraggly and untrimmed, littered with dead branches, but Spring, the mother, had decked them with green leaves and buds until they looked as jaunty as old people going to a fair. The sun sifted through the tender sprigs to the sprouting soil beneath, making there the semblance of a choice rug of a green and gold pattern. The bungalow stood upon the top of a small hill, concealed from the road. It was of rather attractive appearance, though sadly in need of repair. All the windows ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... felt actually stronger than ever, and should have liked to get in balls and all; her buttocks were pushed out to facilitate my efforts, and getting past that muscular obstruction, my cock glided in to the roots of my sprouting hair; what a luscious feeling that was; Mary was handling my balls most lovingly, as she feared they might be lost inside, and I could feel ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous

... was bright in middle heaven, And steeped the sprouting forests, the green hills, And emerald wheat-fields, in his yellow light. Upon the apple-tree, where rosy buds Stood clustered, ready to burst forth in bloom, The robin warbled forth his full clear note For hours, and wearied not. Within the woods, Whose young and half ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... Palatine refugee and a rebel, like the majority of Sir Lupus's tenants; and I gazed curiously at these fields and cabins where gaunt men and gaunter women, laboring among their sprouting vegetables, turned sun-dazzled eyes to watch us as we clattered by; where ragged children, climbing on the stockades, called out to us in little, shrill voices; where feeding cattle lifted sober heads to stare; where lank, yellow dogs rushed out barking and snapping ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... space in the middle of the castle. And there you would see cows quietly grazing, or ruminating under the shade of young trees, and perhaps a calf frisking about, and trying to catch its own tail; and sheep clambering among the mossy ruins, and cropping the little tufts of grass sprouting out of the sides of the embrasures for cannon. And once I saw a black goat with a long beard, and crumpled horns, standing with his forefeet lifted high up on the topmost parapet, and looking to sea, as if he were watching for a ship that was ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... new box for company, at the little round table whose root was buried deep in the ground beneath the red may-tree. A garden for such mild pleasures, but not for play. A garden that was the delight of our city-bred father, who protected the sprouting mignonette seeds from depredations of snail and slug, who trained with tenderest care the slenderest shoots of sweet-pea and canariense, who tied and pruned and watered with his own hands when office hours were over. A broken toy would have been as great an offence in that treasured spot as a stray ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... on his head; But—hidden thus—there was no doubting That, all with crispy locks o'erspread, His gnarled horns were somewhere sprouting; His club-feet, cased in rusty shoes, Were crossed, as on some frieze you see them, And trousers, patched of divers hues, Concealed his ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... wall was a group of daguerreotypes, hideous but rare and valuable. An oil painting of James Oglethorpe, long dead, hung over the fireplace; an amiable looking gentleman with long side-whiskers sprouting out of plump cheeks, a florid complexion, and the expression of a New Yorker who never shirked his civic obligations, his chairmanships of benevolent institutions, nor his port. Opposite was another oil painting of young James ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... the gardens of Adonis—terra-cotta pots filled with earth in which wheat and barley, lettuce and fennel, were sown. These were set out at the door of each house, or in the courts of the temple, where the sprouting plants had to endure the scorching effect of the sun, and soon withered away. For several days troops of women and young girls, with their heads dishevelled or shorn, their garments in rags, their faces torn with their nails, their breasts and arms scarified ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... Americanization sprouting," replied the mother, "but you haven't said what you thought of the plan of making her ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... humanity needs men of their stamp in high places. Humanity needs men in control of state and national affairs who would hold the interests of humanity sacred. Engineers are such men. Not that engineers more than any other professional men are sprouting wings—not that. But engineers do see things in their true light—cannot see them in any other light than the one imposed by the law of mathematics, which is that two and two make four, never five or three—and this involuntarily would admit of decisions and grant graces from the point ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton

... has been adopted to prepare potatoes as food, which has at least one advantage—that of economy. The potatoes are roasted in a kiln or oven, and are thus prevented from sprouting, (which injures their quality so much at this season of the year,) and are thus preserved for some time in a fit state for consumption. They are better for being again heated before they are used, and though ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 372, Saturday, May 30, 1829 • Various

... long. 127 degrees 17 minutes; from it we steered to Mount Bannerman, over the usual ridges of sand, now further apart and lower. On some of the flats between we found splendid little patches of feed [Amongst it GOODENIA RAMELII], where the spinifex had been burnt and was just sprouting up again. One plant, new to us, was growing in profusion and resembled nothing so much as bunches of grapes with the fruit pulled off. We camped early, as such feed was not to be passed by. The next morning, ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... seed o'er hill and plain, Beneath the sun of May, And frightened from our sprouting ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... bridegroom made up for it. There was something almost spiritual in the look of Arthur Alce's eyes, as he stood beside Ellen, his arm held stiffly for the repose of hers, his great choker collar scraping his chin, lilies of the valley and camellias sprouting from his buttonhole, a pair of lemon kid gloves—split at the first attempt, so he could only hold them—clutched in his moist hand. He looked devout, exalted, as he armed his little bride and watched ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... accelerate growth. Such premature and feeble shoots perish as quickly as they spring up; the fierce Eastern sun makes a speedy end of them, and a few days sees their springing and withering. It is a case of 'lightly come, lightly go.' Quick-sprouting herbs are soon-dying herbs. A shallow pond is up in waves under a breeze which raises no sea on the Atlantic, and it is calm again in a few minutes. Readily stirred emotion is transient. Brushwood catches fire easily, and burns itself out quickly. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... nothing on earth can be more difficult than bringing up well a young man who has not to earn his own bread, and who has no recognised station among other men similarly circumstanced. Juvenile dukes, and sprouting earls, find their duties and their places as easily as embryo clergymen and sucking barristers. Provision is made for their peculiar positions: and, though they may possibly go astray, they have a fair chance given to them ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... scolloped with more than Chinese grotesqueness. Above all, I was struck with the profusion of windows, so large and so many, that the houses look all glass. Mr. Pitt's window tax, with its pretty little additionals sprouting out from it like young toadlets on the back of a Surinam toad, would certainly improve the appearance of the Hamburg houses, which have a slight summer look, not in keeping with their size, incongruous with the climate, and precluding that ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... we were going to the store and should leave him tied for hours in the hot sun, switching flies, while we sat comfortably in the shade of the porch discussing the universe's affairs. Believing this, he protested, stopping in the middle of the clearing to enjoy a few tidbits of sprouting corn. Discovering that the small boy on his back lacked his master's strength and courage, he decided to go on, but as he chose. He chose first a trot. To Penelope and me it seemed a mad gallop, and I clung desperately to his scanty mane while she clutched my waist and pleaded with me to halt him ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... a farm-house, in the old style, as venerably black as the church, with a roof sloping downward from the three-story peak, to within a man's height of the ground. It seemed uninhabited. There were the relics of a wood-pile, indeed, near the door, but with grass sprouting up among the chips and scattered logs. The small rain-drops came down aslant; the wind was not turbulent, but sullen, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... not accounted among the big mitres. This was plain from the complete absence of young priests about him. We have seen that he "did not take" in Paris. Not a single future dreamed of engrafting itself on this solitary old man. Not a single sprouting ambition committed the folly of putting forth its foliage in his shadow. His canons and grand-vicars were good old men, rather vulgar like himself, walled up like him in this diocese, without exit to a cardinalship, and who resembled their bishop, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... from the feeling that there was nothing she could do, she took a hoe that was by no means light, and loosened the ground and cut off all the sprouting weeds around her strawberry-vines. The day was rather cool and cloudy, and she was surprised at the space she went over. She wore her broad-brimmed straw hat tied down over her face, and determined she would not look at the road, and would act as if it were not there, letting ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... strained voice that it was with something like astonishment I looked upon the speaker. Whence he had issued I could not guess; but there he stood behind us, nodding and smiling—a squab, thick-set old fellow with a great bald head, and, for all the hair on his face, a tuft like a teasel sprouting from his ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... oil in the house for his lamp, and he had to wait until morning to see what was the matter. At early dawn he stepped outside his shanty. Lo, and behold! he found little red spots all over his body. Before his very eyes he saw tiny duck feathers sprouting from these spots. As the morning went by, the feathers grew larger and larger, until his whole body was covered with them from head to foot. Only his face and hands were free of ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman

... house-party goes on. We farm-hands are busy measuring, ploughing, and sowing; some of the fields are sprouting green already after ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... and was so often bored, that he had first eaten with civilized beings in what he had imagined was an atmosphere of high culture and refinement. He caught a glimpse of that pathetic figure of him, so long ago, a self-conscious savage, sprouting sweat at every pore in an agony of apprehension, puzzled by the bewildering minutiae of eating-implements, tortured by the ogre of a servant, striving at a leap to live at such dizzy social altitude, and deciding in the end to be frankly himself, pretending no knowledge and ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... had given the Lenni-Lenape on account of the feathers they tied to the top of their hair, straight up like horns sprouting. Of course, they could have had no possible excuse for stopping us, being at peace, but I began to put this together with things Ongyatasse had told me, particularly the reason why no older man than he could be spared from Three Towns. He said the men were rebuilding the stockade and getting ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... cried Godfrey McCulloch to the leader, waving his hand in the direction of the fiery beacon, now loudly crackling, and sprouting ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... in bed and looking grotesquely terrible, they discussed the event. Caroline, like Medusa, but with hair curlers instead of snakes sprouting from her head, and Sophia with her heavy plait hanging over her shoulder and defying with its luxuriance the yellowness of her skin, they sat side by side, propped up with pillows, inured to the sight of each ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... Froude's life were Devonshire and the sea. "Summer has come at last," he wrote to Mrs. Kingsley from Salcombe in the middle of September, "after two months of rain and storm. The fields from which the wrecks of the harvest were scraped up mined and sprouting now lie basking in stillest sunshine, as if wind and rain had never been heard of. The coast is extremely beautiful, and I, in addition to the charms of the place, hear my native tongue spoken and sung in the churches in undiminished purity." Carlyle often kept him in ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... horrid bunches of daisies on her shoulders and in her hair; and, as that is dark and greasy, and dragged off her face, and done in the tightest twist at the top, it does not look a suitable place for daisies to be sprouting from. I hate things in the hair anyway, don't you, Mamma? However she was delighted with herself, so it ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn

... thought of the sweet fields and gardens of the country, and the woods just bursting into leaf. There were many woods about Saint Cloud. He knew nothing of armed nobles lurking there to save him and his family. What he thought of was the violets and daffodils, and fresh grass and sprouting shrubs,—the young lambs in the field, and the warbling larks in the air. And now, when actually in the carriage to go (his garden tools probably gone before), he had to get out again, and stay in hot, ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau

... I ought to have sawed and thrown into the shed long since, but which will cumber the earth, I fear, till June, at least. Quantities of chips are strewn about, and on removing them we find the yellow stalks of grass sprouting underneath. Nature does her best to beautify this disarray. The grass springs up most industriously, especially in sheltered and sunny angles of the buildings, or round the door-steps,—a locality which seems particularly favorable to its growth; for it is already high enough to bend over and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... in I found the massive roof supported by a number of peeled poles painted white and ringed with black and ornamented with rude devices. The floor was covered thick and green with sprouting wheat, which had been scattered to feed the spirit of the captain of the tribe, lately deceased. Not long afterwards a deputation of the Senel come up to condole with the Yo-kai-a on the loss of their chief, and a dance or series of dances was held ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... Sussex" would be a more accurate description of Crowborough proper. Never was a fine remote hill so be-villa'd. The east slope is all scaffold-poles and heaps of bricks, new churches and chapels are sprouting, and the many hoardings announce that Follies, Pierrots, or conjurors are continually imminent. Crowborough itself has shops that would not disgrace Croydon, and a hotel where a Lord Mayor might feel at home. Houses in their own grounds are commoner than cottages, and near the summit ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... lad's-love, rosemary, Basil, tansy, centaury,— Was the grass of that orchard, hid Love's amazements all amid. Jarring the air with rumour cool, Small fountains played into a pool With sound as soft as the barley's hiss When its beard just sprouting is; Whence a young stream, that trod on moss, Prettily rimpled the court across. And in the pool's clear idleness, Moving like dreams through happiness, Shoals of small bright fishes were; In and out weed-thickets bent Perch and carp, ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie

... wanted one! I've dreamed of a dinky little house like this—dreamed and ached for it there in Manila—on blistering hikes, on wibbly-wabbly gunboats—knee-deep in sprouting rice—I've dreamed of a house in New York like this! slopping through the steaming paddy-fields, sweating up the heights, floundering through smelly hemp, squatting by green fires at night! always, always I've ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... old man," he said. "The lady is a base materialist, while I—your funny old master—am sprouting wings and growing a halo as a visionary." Vane looked sideways at the girl. "He manages to make his own life, Joan. He'd be as happy with me in a garret as he would in a palace. . . . Probably happier, because he'd mean more to me—fill a bigger ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... and hair-cuts I have ever seen were given in that shop. The men lathered themselves, and the barbers shaved them at the rate of a minute to a man. A hair-cut took a trifle longer. In three minutes the down of eighteen was scraped from my face, and my head was as smooth as a billiard-ball just sprouting a crop of bristles. Beards, mustaches, like our clothes and everything, came off. Take my word for it, we were a villainous-looking gang when they got through with us. I had not realized before how ...
— The Road • Jack London

... called. The stupid boy, however, woke up the wrong passenger, and the last locks were reached before the mistake was discovered. By sunrise we had reached Lilla Edet, on the Gotha River, where the buds were swelling on the early trees, and the grass, in sunny places, showed a little sprouting greenness. We shot rapidly down the swift brown stream, between brown, bald, stony hills, whose forests have all been stripped off to feed the hostile camp-fires of past centuries. Bits of bottom land, held ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... upon informing you of your whereabout; or you recognize in the distance some landmark that you may have known,—an insulated villa, perhaps, with its garden-wall around it, or the rudimental street of a new settlement which is sprouting on this otherwise barren soil. Half a century ago, the most frequent token of man's beneficent contiguity might have been a gibbet, and the creak, like a tavern sign, of a murderer swinging to and fro in irons. Blackheath, with its highwaymen ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... seeds that soaked twenty-four hours will sprout readily (Fig. 36), while most, if not all, of those that soaked only two hours will not sprout. Why is this? It is because the two-hour soaked seeds do not receive sufficient moisture to carry on the process of sprouting. ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich

... a romance. People of poor and dry imagination do not reach the second period. Thus, the religion of the Romans peopled the universe with an innumerable quantity of genii. No object, no act, no detail, but had its own presiding genius. There was one for germinating grain, for sprouting grain, for grain in flower, for blighted grain; for the door, its hinges, its lock, etc. There was a myriad of misty, formless entities. This is animism arrested at its first stage; abstraction ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... a glance at the tower in question. At first inspection it looked like a stony mushroom sprouting from the rocks. Some distance above the base opened a rough entrance and a low parapet encircled the top. To scramble over the exposed rocks to the base of this especial tower appeared a hard climb, to say nothing of the difficulties of ascending. The feat looked beyond Win's accomplishment ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... two grains of wheat, one before sprouting and one after, you could tell by the taste that this ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews

... stood two large pearl shells, obviously a pair, intricately carved by the patient hands of New Caledonian convicts. In the centre of the mantel was a stuffed bird-of-paradise, while about the room were scattered gorgeous shells from the southern seas, delicate sprays of coral sprouting from barnacled pi-pi shells and cased in glass, assegais from South Africa, stone axes from New Guinea, huge Alaskan tobacco-pouches beaded with heraldic totem designs, a boomerang from Australia, divers ships in glass bottles, a cannibal ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London

... newly-planted piece of ground. All at once, Cadmus fancied he saw something glisten very brightly, first at one spot, then at another, and then at a hundred and a thousand spots together. Soon he perceived them to be the steel heads of spears, sprouting up everywhere like so many stalks of grain, and continually growing taller and taller. Next appeared a vast number of bright sword blades, thrusting themselves up in the same way. A moment afterwards, ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Captain means when he speaks of settling down!" said Burke when he heard of this. "He'll buy a canon and two or three counties and live out there like a lord! And if he does that, I'll go out and see him. I want to see this Inca money sprouting and flourishing a good deal more ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton

... the latest McCann baby was tugging with might and main at her apron in vain endeavor to hoist himself upon his pudgy uncertain legs. Aileen was laughing at his efforts. Catching him suddenly in her arms, she covered the little soft head, already sprouting a suspicion of curly red hair, with hearty kisses; and Billy, entering into the fun, crowed and gurgled, clutching wildly at the dark head bent above him and managing now and then, when he did not grasp ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... 'It is so. It was cold, and there was no room. But that is past. Now my heart is like the snowfall in the spring, when the sun has come back. There is a great thaw and a bending, a sound of running waters, and a budding and sprouting of green things. And there is drumming of partridges, and songs of robins, and great music, for the winter is broken, Passuk, and I have learned the love ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... 1850, "The Germ" showed no further sign of sprouting for many years, though I suppose it may have been known to the promoters of "The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine," produced in 1856, and may have furnished some incitement towards that enterprise—again an unsuccessful one commercially. ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... muzzle-loading rifle, and one day offered it to me, but as I could not hold it at arm's length, I sorrowfully returned it. We owned a shotgun, however, and this I used with all the confidence of a man. I was able to kill a few ducks with it and I also hunted gophers during May when the sprouting corn was in most danger. Later I became quite expert in ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... of wheat in Mr. Bronson's bins, 30 are cracked, dead or otherwise not capable of sprouting, what per cent, of the ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... parlours. Thus he stood for a little while looking in at this cosy if commonplace interior of the carrier and his wife; but he did not stand there very long. He was on his way to quainter towns and villages. Already the plants were sprouting upon the balcony of Miss Tox; and the great wind was rising that flung Mr. Pecksniff against his own ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... to bawl up some piece of information to the little collector, who had established himself on one of the elephants and looked down over the edge of the howdah, the great pith hat on his head making him look like an immense mushroom with a very thin stem sprouting suddenly from the back of the huge beast. He smiled pleasantly at the old sportsman from his elevation, and seemed to know all about it. It so chanced that when he received Isaacs' telegrams he had been planning a little excursion on his own account, and had been sending out ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... of the long-day summer. No matter what the weather, there was always something to do. During heavy rains or snowstorms we worked in the barn, shelling corn, fanning wheat, thrashing with the flail, making axe-handles or ox-yokes, mending things, or sprouting and sorting ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... to represent lawns, and cut a round flower bed in the middle of each. Joan's garden was subject to violent changes. Last year it had been a potato patch, but as she dug up those useful vegetables every day to see how they were sprouting, it was not surprising that they refused to make much growth. Lately she had converted the whole into a dolls' cemetery, and, with Cyril's aid, keenly enjoyed conducting the funerals of various headless favourites, waxing so enthusiastic over the obsequies that she even buried several ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... drills about 2 to 3 feet apart so that horses may be used for cultivation. The seeds are sown to a depth of 2 to 3 times their thickness. They are placed close enough in the drill so that from 12 to 15 seedlings to the linear foot result. In order to hasten the sprouting of the seeds, some planters soak them in cold water for several days before sowing. In the case of such hard-coated seed as the black locust or honey locust, it is best to soak them in hot water ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack

... belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. It is possible that they may be among those who understand my "Zarathustra": how could I confound myself with those who are now sprouting ears?—First the day after tomorrow must come for me. ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche

... the verandah of his house, with both his elbows on the table, and holding his head between his hands, stared before him, away over the stretch of sprouting young grass in his courtyard, and over the short jetty with its cluster of small canoes, amongst which his big whale-boat floated high, like a white mother of all that dark and aquatic brood. He stared on the river, past the schooner anchored in mid-stream, past the forests of the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad

... observed with glee that she had fastened into the band a dove-coloured kittiwake's wing-feather, a somewhat cherished possession of her own, which she used to keep over her best picture on the wall. Thus did she seek to make amends for the speech about the sprouting cabbage-head, which had been weighing heavily upon ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane

... mild spring feelings. A sort of ferment was in all his limbs and around his still young heart, which felt the call of spring, remembered old days, and began to consider whether there might not be a spring for it too amidst all this universal growing, sprouting and well-being. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... their appearance, I remarked silently, in regard to Grandma Keeler's hair, what proved afterward to be its usual holiday morning arrangement. It was confined in six infinitesimal braids which appeared to be sprouting out, perpendicularly, in all directions from her head. The effect of redundancy and expansiveness thus heightened and increased on Grandma's features was striking ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... remembered how that very afternoon Benita and he had watched them through his field glass sprouting up against the cruel walls of rock, and wondered that when the ocean was so calm they had still such power. Now, should he live to reach them, he was doomed to match himself against that power. Well, the sooner he did so the sooner ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... symbolical. Christ's seamless white robe, with its single heavy fold, typifies the Church catholic; the jewelled clasps of the priestly mantle, one square and one oval, are the Old and New Testaments. The golden crown is enwoven with one of thorns, from which new leaves are sprouting. The richly embroidered mantle hem has its meaning, and so have the figures on the lantern. To get the light in this picture right, Hunt painted out of doors in an orchard every moonlight night for three months from nine o'clock till five. While ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... on which were three crowns, one above the other. Round the neck hung a gold cross and chain; and a pair of great keys hung down on one side. A devil in tight fitting black, with a masked face, and long sprouting nails, with a tail hung behind him, and two tall horns on his head, rolled his eyes from side to side, and whispered continually into the ear of the effigy from behind the throne. A great mob of people ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... Accordingly, it is the rich or well-to-do class, in other words the more or less cultivated class, which buys off its sons: reliance may be placed on their giving them more or less complete culture. In this way, it prevents the State from mowing down all its sprouting wheat and preserves a nursery of subjects among which society is to find its future elite.—Thus attenuated, the military law is still rigid enough: nevertheless it remains endurable. It is only towards 1807[3274] that it becomes monstrous and grows worse and worse from ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... the anxious politicians of his party have been looking upon him as certainly at no distant day to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his ruddy, jolly, fruitful face, postoffices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. On the contrary, nobody has ever seen in my poor lank face that ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... on such a spring day, when the air was pungent with the smell of sprouting birch and pine, that General Viggo and his trusty army had betaken themselves to the cataract to share in the sport. They were armed with their bows, as usual, knowing that they were always liable to be surprised by their vigilant enemy. Nor were ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... it together, and looked at every fence and stump and implement. They visited the live stock, and estimated the value of the sprouting crop. Then they returned to the house, where they struck a ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne

... for this much-needed House of Praise than the Catholic Church,—the word 'catholic' being applied in its widest sense, meaning a 'Universal' answering to the needs of all;—and I am willing to maintain that the ROMAN Catholic Church has within it the vital germ of a sprouting perfection. If it would utterly discard pomp and riches, if it would set its dignity at too high an estimate for any wish to meddle in temporal or political affairs, if it would firmly trample down all superstition, idolatry and bigotry, and 'use ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... corpus. I must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha? Hope it's not chucked in the dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That's the first sign when the hairs come out grey. And temper getting cross. Silver threads among the grey. Fancy being his wife. Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live in the graveyard. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... following four well-known symbols of sacrificial gifts appear in connection with god B in the Dresden manuscript; a sprouting kernel of maize (or, according to Foerstemann, parts of a mammal, game), a fish, a lizard and a vulture's head, as symbols of the four elements. They seem to occur, however, in relation also to other deities and evidently are general symbols ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas

... unfurnished. They can be read in eloquent Rulhiere; but by no mortal held in memory. Anarchy is not a thing to be written of; a Lernean Hydra, several Lernean Hydras, in chaotic genesis, getting their heads lopped off, and at the same time sprouting new ones in such ratio, where is the Zoologist that will give account of it? There was not anything considerable of fighting; but of bullying, plundering, murdering and being murdered, a frightful amount. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... is sprouting, else might ye have taken him for a maid of theirs, one of those of whom we wot. But to say sooth I seem to know the fashion of his gear, even as Duke Jacob knew Joseph's tabard. So ask him whence he is, lord, and if he lie, then I bid bind him and lead him ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... my mule with patient tread Had moved along the plain, Now o'er the lava's ashen bed, Now through the sprouting grain, Across the torrent's rocky lair, Beneath the aloe-hedge, Where yellow broom makes sweet the air, And ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions—why, that is something ...
— The Yellow Wallpaper • Charlotte Perkins Gilman



Words linked to "Sprouting" :   growing, ontogenesis, sprout, maturation, growth, development, ontogeny



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