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Taunt   /tɔnt/   Listen
Taunt

verb
(past & past part. taunted; pres. part. taunting)
1.
Harass with persistent criticism or carping.  Synonyms: bait, cod, rag, rally, razz, ride, tantalise, tantalize, tease, twit.  "Don't ride me so hard over my failure" , "His fellow workers razzed him when he wore a jacket and tie"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Taunt" Quotes from Famous Books



... find a feline pleasure in seeing how far he could taunt me to go. He held me on the knife-edge of irritation, and perillous as was the experiment he enjoyed seeing whether he could not drive me to ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... moment, the young man made no reply. His eyes were again on the hills and gleaming with a sudden fascination. From far above, they seemed to call to him, to taunt him with their imperiousness, to challenge him and the low-slung high-powered car to the combat of gravitation and the elements. The bleak walls of granite appeared to glower at him, as though daring him to attempt their conquest; the smooth ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... accused, his oxen were confiscated by Landenberg. The deputy sent to seize the animals, which Landenberg really coveted for his own, said sneeringly to Arnold, "If peasants wish for bread, they must draw the plow themselves." Roused to fury by this taunt, Arnold attempted to resist the seizure of his property, and in so doing broke an arm of one of the deputy's men. He then fled to the mountains; but he could not hide himself from the vengeance of ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... mounted to my cheeks, my temples burned, and what I should have replied to this taunt, I know not, for passion had completely mastered me. When Lord Callonby again entered the room, his usually calm and pale face was agitated and flushed; and his manner tremulous and hurried; for an instant he was silent, then turning towards my uncle, he took his hand ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... brothers and sisters. To this the king would not consent, and she continued to fight his battles with undiminished loyalty. But the other leaders were jealous of her, and even her friends, the soldiers, were sensitive to the taunt of being led by a woman. During the defense of Compigne in May, 1430, she was allowed to fall into the hands of the duke of Burgundy, who sold her to the English. They were not satisfied with simply holding as prisoner ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... as everybody knows who knows Russia, is that "barbarous," the classic taunt of the German against Russia, is, of all words, the least proper as a description of the Russian mind and character. I have myself been only once in Russia, but it was on a long visit and under conditions which were calculated, beyond anything that has happened since down to to-day, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine

... But he, this man.... He would be like a child Girt with the tomes of some vast library, Who reads romance after romance, and smiles When every tale ends well: impersonal As God he grows—melted in suns and stars; So would this boundless man, whom none could spy, Taunt him with virtue, censure him with vice, Rejoice in all men's joys; with golden pen Write all the live romances of the earth To a triumphant close.... Alone and free— In this grey, cool, clean garden, washed with winds, What do I come to do among the grass, ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton

... The taunt was followed by another prolonged silence. Carmena smiled and tossed down first a bare corn cob and ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... The taunt sank in as oil sinks into a cloth. I may have blushed and stammered, and I may have blubbered like a milksop, but it was not because I was afraid. I would show Woodford and I would show this fickle Miss Gadabout that I did not need any advice about roads. If my ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post

... The taunt would have angered me had his condition been other than it was; but coming from one so possessed of the devil of terror, it did no more than provoke ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... His blazoned lineage, for his lofty fame Lives in the mouth of men, and distant climes Re-echo his wide glory; where the brave Are honoured, where 'tis noble deemed to save A prostrate nation, and for future times Work with a high devotion, that no taunt, Or ribald lie, or zealot's eager curse, Or the short-sighted world's neglect can daunt, That name is worshipped! His immortal verse Blends with his god-like deeds, a double spell To bind the coming age he loved ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... then, more than ever, he perceived the immense superiority in all lovable, all feminine points, of the elder to the younger sister; for Agnes, though brilliant and seemingly thoughtless and spirit-free as ever, let fall full many a bitter word, many a covert taunt and hidden sneer, which, with his eyes now opened as they were, he readily detected, and which Blanche, as he could discover, even through her graceful quietude, felt, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... educated at the charges of the King of France (April, 1779). He was now, at the tender age of nine, a stranger in a strange land, among a people whom he detested as the oppressors of his countrymen. Worst of all, he had to endure the taunt of belonging to a subject race. What a position for a proud and exacting child! Little wonder that the official report represented him as silent and obstinate; but, strange to say, it added the word "imperious." It was a tough character which could defy repression amidst such surroundings. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... lost his presence of mind. "Who's trying to taunt you?" he demanded, hotly. "Why, you'd do more harm ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... not find the drive back so agreeable as the previous one. Du Meresq, chafing at the confinement his fast swelling foot would probably entail, and provoked at coming to grief after Lilla's taunt ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... Lucilla felt the taunt base, as recalling to her the dependent position into which she had carelessly rushed, relying on the family feeling that had hitherto made all things as one. 'Henceforth,' said she, 'I take my share of all that we spend. I will ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... breath to taunt her rival later, and, skating around the bits of ice, won the heat before Agnes, much shaken and bruised, had climbed to ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... taunt stung him. He looked up. He was not facing a helpless, dependent old woman as he had been the day before, but a handsome, clever girl, in every way his superior—and in the right! In his vague sense of honor it seemed more creditable for him to fight it out with ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... ungrateful task of carrying a coercion bill through the House. It was generally felt that O'Connell, powerful though he was, had fairly met his match in Stanley, who, with invective scarcely inferior to his own, evaded no challenge, ignored no argument, and left no taunt unanswered. The title "Rupert of Debate" is peculiarly applicable to him in connexion with the fearless if also often reckless method of attack he showed in his parliamentary war with O'Connell. It was first applied to him, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... did my envious countrymen taunt me, until, asserting all my dignity, I rose from my seat, mounted my horse, and left the place amidst their scoffs and expressions of contempt. My first sensation was that of indignation at them, my second of ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... an easy and romantic time carried the day, and Harry's practical common-sense reasoning was of no avail, and a taunt at his cowardice induced ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... the Spanish vessel lay dead upon his bloody deck, and if any answered the jeering taunt it was drowned by the laughter and cheering of the English crew. They had eliminated the first ship from the game. They had diminished their enemies by a third, and full of confidence they swept down upon ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... urn, could not prevent revenging tongues, and stones thrown at his monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent, who deal so with men in this world that they are not afraid to meet them in the next; who when they die make no commotion among the dead, and are not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... aching hearts. Sometimes it is the crucifixion of sin, the determined battle with "lusts which war against the soul." Sometimes it is the resistance of evil maxims and practices of a lying world; vindicating the honor of Christ, in the midst, it may be, of taunt, and obloquy, and shame. And as there are different crosses, so there are different ways of bearing them. To some, God says, "put your shoulder to the burden; lift it up, and bear it on; work, and toil, and labor!" ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... justice of this taunt prevented a reply (for there lurks some fairness in the roughest of us), or perhaps the crowd, being chiefly men knew from experience that there are occasions when it is best to let ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... cruelest taunt, which she had brought out against her better feelings, seemed to have relieved her soul of a hundred-weight of care; she drew a deep breath, and turning to Philippus, went on far more ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... either nominating or recommending the candidates whom he preferred. Needless to say, those candidates were invariably elected. It was, of course, monstrous arrogance for Caligula to boast that he could make his horse a consul if he chose, but the taunt contained ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... eglantine wherewith Milton's eyes were delighted. The works of our hands often mock us by their durability. Years and ages and centuries after the busy brain and the feeling heart are dust, the houses built with hands stand up to taunt our mortality. Yet the works of the mind remain. Though Forest Hill be only a party-wall, and Chalfont a suburb of London, the Forest Hill of Mary Powell, the Chalfont of Milton, yet live for us ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning

... alone with his intellect and his epigrams. Sometimes he shivered with cold among those epigrams. He was tired of them. He knew them so well, and then so many of them had foreign blood in their veins, and were inclined to taunt him with being English. Ah! youth with its simple puns and its full-blooded pleasures, when there is no gold dust in the hair and no wrinkles about the eyes, when the sources of an epigram, like the sources of the Nile, are undiscoverable, and the joy of being led into sin has not lost its ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... of the Manchester scaffold! The brutal populace thronged thither in tens of thousands. They danced; they sang; they blasphemed; they chorused "Rule Britannia," and "God save the Queen," by way of taunt and defiance of the men whose death agonies they had come to see! Their shouts and brutal cries disturbed the doomed victims inside the prison as in their cells they prepared in prayer and meditation to meet their Creator and their God. Twice the police had to remove ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan

... in darksome durance was compressed, I 2 King of Edonians, Dryas' hasty son[5], In eyeless vault of stone Immured by Dionysus' hest, All for a wrathful jest. Fierce madness issueth in such fatal flower. He found 'twas mad to taunt the Heavenly Power, Chilling the Maenad breast Kindled with Bacchic fire, and with annoy Angering the Muse that in the ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... tortured as Miss Starbrow had desired. But suddenly this feeling gave place to another, to a burning resentment experienced for the first time against this woman who had made her suffer so cruelly, and now came to taunt her and mock at her misery. It suffocated and made her dumb for a time. Then she burst out: "You wicked bad woman! You beast—you beast, how I hate you! Oh, I wish God ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... went wandering off, as always, to thy painting, or the pleasures of thy bride; and, for the lack of a little attention, mere politeness, the hopes of our house lie ruined. Naturally poor Hilda thought thy question was designed to taunt her. I saw how red she went, though thou didst not. But for that she would certainly have praised thy picture. Now she hates thee. Well, no doubt it is from Allah! But none the less it is hard for me ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall

... bid me rifle My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst; Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first; Though it should bid me stifle The yearning in my throat for my sweet child, And taunt its mother till my ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... what chain of thought the idea presented itself, but it instantly darted into my mind that the murderer had come to mock at my misery and taunt me with the death of Clerval, as a new incitement for me to comply with his hellish desires. I put my hand before my eyes, and cried out in agony, "Oh! Take him away! I cannot see him; for God's sake, ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley

... the poor girl, quite unaccustomed to control herself, would almost break out into some furious response to an unkind word or implied taunt, and remember just in time that she was pledged to the Lord's service and must not disgrace his cause. A swift, silent prayer for help then would always bring the promised aid of the Holy Spirit, and so by degrees Bertie learned to conquer herself and to lead others ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... "Boy, don't taunt me, don't make my sufferings more than they are," and Brady heaved a prodigious sigh. "I have given up drinking. It's this way: An old-time friend of mine, who has made eighteen million dollars in a diamond mine ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster

... Dan tried to taunt me into action, and reviewed the "kennel" with critical eyes. "Never saw a dog makin', its own chain before," he said to the Maluka as I sat among billows of calico and mosquito netting. But the homemaking instinct ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... Dost taunt, and deem thy power beyond The resolution reason gave? Tut! Falsity hath snapt each bond, That kept me once thy quiet slave, And made thy snare a spider's thread, Which e'en my breath can break in twain; Nor will I be, like Sampson, led To trust ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... expectest a fine description of this young woman, Alan Fairford, in order to entitle thee to taunt me with having found a Dulcinea in the inhabitant of a fisherman's cottage on the Solway Firth, thou shalt be disappointed; for, having said she seemed very pretty, and that she was a sweet and gentle-speaking creature, I have ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... And thus with taunt and laugh and hurrah, Morgan's men rode away, leaving their enemies standing helpless on the ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... sons of Jacob heard the rebukes dealt out by their father to these three, they feared to hear like reproaches, and they tried to slip away from his presence. Especially Judah was alarmed, that his father might taunt him with his trespass touching Tamar. But Jacob spoke thus to him: "Judah, thou dost deserve thy name. Thy mother called thee Jehudah, because she gave praise to God at thy birth, and so shall thy brethren praise thee, and they all will call themselves by thy name. And ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... breast of the offended schemer. The latter bristled at the words, lost for an instant his self-possession, said in his anger more than he intended—more than he might easily unsay—enough to bruise the already smarting soul of Allcraft. A threat escaped his lips—a reproach—a taunt. He spoke of his power, and touched cuttingly upon the deep schemes of other men, more feasible than his own perhaps, and certainly more honest. Allcraft winced, as every syllable made known the speaker's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... daggers, before which stood Menko, preventing her from advancing, and regarding her with eyes which burned with reckless passion, wounded self-love, and torturing jealousy. "Yes, coward!" she repeated, "coward, coward to dare to taunt me with an infamous past and speak of a still ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... intellectual cultivation of numbers of their fellows. The old insolent resource of assailing them and making the most audaciously wicked statements that they are politically indifferent, has borne the inevitable fruit. The perpetual taunt, "Where are they?" has called them out with the answer: "Well then, if you must know, here we are." The intolerable injustice of vituperating the bribed to an assembly of bribers, has goaded their sense of justice beyond ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... kill him with my little finger," said Pietro, stung by this taunt, and for the moment he looked as if he ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... Governor, grave and sedate, with their aids and secretaries, their books and documents, their mandates and red-sealed processes, and were rowed out to confront the master whom they believed to have dared to thwart the hand of justice and remain to taunt them with his egregious presence. This should be made an international episode, whose ramifications would wind down through years to come, and embrace long, stupid congressional debates, apologies demanded, huge sums to salve a wounded nation, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... last shaft, keenly barbed and doubly envenomed, and it sped as with the fierce hiss of a viper. Was it possible in this the final and most dreadful stage of Christ's mission, to make Him doubt His divine Sonship, or, failing such, to taunt or anger the dying Savior into the use of His superhuman powers for personal relief or as an act of vengeance upon His tormentors? To achieve such a victory was Satan's desperate purpose. The shaft failed. Through taunts and derision, through blasphemous challenge ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... As a taunt to Caiaphas, Calcol echoed, "Behold your king!" and raising a stalk of hyssop, on which was a sponge that he had dipped in the posca, the thin wine the soldiers drink, he ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus

... keep a clerk for my own pleasure, or because of my own wish, you provoking rascal!' said Mr Brass, putting his pen in his mouth, and grinning spitefully at his sister. 'What do you taunt me about going to keep a ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... went the same way back, and again ascended up to the skerry. Then she confided to him that the reason why her father had been so bitter against him was because he had mocked her with the taunt about church-cleansing when she had wanted to go to church—the name the folks down below wanted to know might, the Merman thought, be treasured up in Eilert's memory; but during their conversation on their way down to her father, she ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... The taunt came from a tall and well-built man who strode into the midst of the rout. His tilmatli, or cotton cloak completely enveloped his figure, while the long staff in his hand showed him to be a traveller, ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks

... the Duke of Anjou rather than witness the destruction of the Catholic cause. Charles, who had listened sullenly, and, if we may believe Anjou, for a long while angrily refused to sacrifice Coligny, was at length stung by the taunt of cowardice and broke into a delirium of passion; he swore by la mort dieu to compass the death of every Huguenot in France, that none might be left to ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... for Ellen now to keep to what she thought right. Disagreeable feelings would rise when she remembered the impoliteness, the half-sneer, the whole taunt, and the real unkindness of several of the young party. She found herself ready to be irritated, inclined to dislike the sight of those, even wishing to visit some sort of punishment upon them. But Christian principle had taken strong hold in little Ellen's heart; ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... carnage, and supped full of horrors. Lady Macbeth complains of the smell of blood on her hand: Macbeth makes no complaint—he has ceased to notice it now; but the same smell is in his nostrils. A contained fury and disgust possesses him. He taunts the messenger and the doctor as people would taunt their mortal enemies. And, indeed, as he knows right well, every one is his enemy now, except his wife. About her he questions the doctor with something like a last human anxiety; and, in tones of ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Lords to enable a poor Catholic peasant to take a lease of a cabin and a potato-garden; but, at the third reading, the Lords rushed in tumultuously, voted Lord Charlemont out of the chair, and taunted him with being little better than a Papist. The failure and the taunt bewildered an intellect never very clear; and, perhaps, hopelessness quenched the spirit of patriotism, which had once, at least, burned brightly. In fear of being taunted as a Papist, like many a wiser man, he rushed into the extreme of Protestant loyalty, and joined in ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... in England at least, Socialism is not a party, but a sect. That is sometimes brought against it as a taunt; but I am not dismayed by it; for I can conceive of a sect—nay, I have heard of one—becoming a very formidable power, and becoming so by dint of its long remaining a sect. So I think it is quite possible that Socialism will remain a sect till the very eve ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... been the opinions of later times respecting the doctrines of Eusebius—was convinced that he was at heart an Arian. Potammon of the one eye had known him formerly in the days of persecution, and was ready with that most fatal taunt, which, on a later occasion, he threw out against him, that, while he had thus suffered for the cause of Christ, Eusebius had escaped by sacrificing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... the strength when real temptation comes, because he has always been looking at the outside effect of his life, instead of looking inward, to see if he is true to his promise. Avoid priggishness, but do not be afraid of being called a prig when it is only the taunt by which someone hopes to shame you into doing that which you know in ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous

... their plaids." One of the King's Ministers said long afterwards that this passage touching the itch was worth two regiments of horse to the cause of Government. At this distance of time one doesn't see much wit in a scurrilous lampoon, of which the gist was to taunt one's neighbours with being afflicted with a disease of the skin: and, indeed, the lower ranks of English were, in those days, anything but free from similar ailments, and, in London at least, were in their persons and manners inconceivably ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... With this taunt, delivered in a voice that expressed the most profound contempt, Gianbattista went back to his seat and took up his hammer as though nothing had happened. Don Paolo drew a long breath of relief. As for Marzio, his teeth ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... divest himself of the impression that he was under arrest, and the sins of his life gathered themselves in fearful and oppressive array, as if to stifle him, and the phantom of poor Margaret with her lamp—which had haunted him from the beginning of his illness—seemed to taunt him with having been too fainthearted and tardy to be worthy to espouse her cause. The faith to which he tried to cling WOULD seem to fail him in those awful hours, when he could only cry out mechanical prayers for mercy. Then there had come a night when ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... join with the commune in traducing the Senate of the United States, to blacken the character of Senators who are as honorable as they are, who are as patriotic as they ever can be, who have done as much to serve their party as men who are now the beneficiaries of your labor and mine, to taunt and jeer us before the country as the advocates of trust and as guilty of dishonor ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... this achievement alone would mark it as unique among hills. It appears as if for once man and nature had agreed to work in concert to produce a masterpiece in stone. The hill and the architectural beauties it carries aloft, are like a taunt flung out to sea and to the upper heights of air; for centuries they appear to have been crying aloud, "See what we can do, against your tempests and your futile ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... preceding inquiry in regard to the effect of titles on the progress of a fever, or the amenability of its paroxysm, to flexure and low bending, might have seemed perhaps in the mouth of a subject to savour somewhat of irony; it might have sounded too much like a taunt upon the royal helplessness under cover of a serious philosophical inquiry, or it might have betrayed in such an one a disposition to pursue scientific inquiries farther than was perhaps expedient. But thus it is, that THE KING ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... his quick temper was at the boiling point. He did not believe a word of the taunt; indeed, on the way over from the island, listening to the men's talk, he had formed the opinion that they were trying to "bluff" him, trying to impress him with the idea that he was helpless and far ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler

... "culminating chronology by the most preposterous anachronisms." "I doubt not," said the annoyed speaker, "that 'Orator Mum' possesses wonderful talents for eloquence, but I would recommend him to show it in future by some more popular method than his silence." Stung by the taunt, Curran rose and gave the man a "piece of his mind," speaking quite fluently in his anger. Encouraged by this success, he took great pains to become a good speaker. He corrected his habit of stuttering by reading favorite ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... school the student hears no mention of living immigrant or pioneer save in terms of gibe and sneer and taunt. The color and high romance of his own township is a thing undreamed of, as vague and shapeless as the foundations of Enoch, the city of Cain. And for his own farmstead, though for the first time on earth a man made here a home; though valor blazed the path; though ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... I will gae zour black errand, Though it be to zour cost; Sen ze by me will nae be warn'd, In it ze sail find frost. The baron he is a man of might, He neir could bide to taunt, As ze will see before its nicht, How sma' ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... the taunt—as though I were the common interrogation mark, the abuser of hospitality, the abominable Paul Pry. But ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... not get rid of the feathers, although he had made several clever attempts. He had tried to catch them with his mouth and paws, but they had evaded him in the most wonderful manner, and had maddened him at times by floating round him, and even alighting on his very nose, as if to taunt him. In vain he slapped his nose sharply with his paw each time he felt that nasty, irritating, tickling sensation. He always gave his nose a hard knock, while the feathers went floating gaily off as before. He gave it up at last, and lay down in his kennel with a meek expression ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin

... the taunt—the words of discouragement that were sent to the people and to the army of ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... very wide. 'Then why do you let me go?' she asked on an ascending note, and she did not mean to taunt him. It would be so easy for him to keep her, if he knew how. She expected a despairing groan, she half hoped for a violent embrace, but he answered quietly, 'I don't really let you go. It's you I love, not just your hair ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG

... her indiscretion, and feared she had raised the moral question; but the taunt that it was he and not she that was acting had sunk into his heart, and the truth of it overcame him. It was he who had been acting. He had pretended an anger which he did not feel, and it was quite true that, whatever she did, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... the trail of Numa, the lion, pausing for a moment to hurl a soft fruit at the snarling face of his enemy, and to taunt and insult him, calling him eater of carrion and brother of Dango, the hyena. Numa, his yellow-green eyes round and burning with concentrated hate, glared up at the dancing figure above him. Low growls vibrated his heavy ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the hour should arrive for making the attempt. What if the sailors did see me going about? They could not hinder me from walking along the quay, and they would never dream of my object in staying there. What if they should take notice of me, and taunt me as before? I could talk back to them, and thus gain a good opportunity for observation—the very thing ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... Shelley's mad career after that. It was mad most of the time. He had already begun to fight as well as to use language, and by the time he was ten he was a very nasty scrapper. And ready—it soon got so that only boys new-come to town would taunt him about his golden locks. And unless they was too much out of Shelley's class he made believers of 'em swiftly. From ten to twelve he must of had at least one good fight a day, what with the new ones and the old ones that still couldn't believe ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... form. A prose introduction tells how the giant Oegi, or Gymi, gave a feast to the Aesir. Loki was turned out for killing a servant, but presently returned and began to revile the Gods and Goddesses, each one in turn trying to interfere, only to provoke a taunt from Loki. At last Thor, who had been absent on a journey, came in and threatened the slanderer with his hammer, whereupon Loki said, "I spoke to the Aesir and the sons of the Aesir what my mind told me; but for thee alone I will go away, for I know thou wilt strike." ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday

... her would be a very great superiority; if her pride cannot bear to be under the small obligation, how will she make up her mind to the greater? If she cannot bear to think that her husband might taunt her with the fact that he has enriched her, would she permit him to blame her for having brought him to poverty? Wretched boy, beware lest she suspects you of such a plan! On the contrary, be careful and economical for her sake, lest she should ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau

... determined not to tell his name: she too much feared a taunt when Miss Aldclyffe's fiery mood ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... The taunt was the last thing needed to unleash Gordon's volatile temper. He stepped forward and swung a hard left hook for that expressionless masque of a face. But the blow never landed. The stranger dodged with uncanny swiftness. His answering ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... nerved to a sort of desperation, did speak to his father, ending with the usual declarations that his choice was unalterable. Perhaps it was; but, whether or not, Richard Dryce went the very way to make it so when he laughed that discordant laugh, and, with a taunt against his son's weakness of purpose and his dependent position, told him to dismiss such a scheming little hussey from his thoughts, for he was to marry when he had permission, which would never be granted to such a match as the beadle wanted to ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... petition to Congress for woman suffrage. It is not a pleasant work, often subjecting me to rudeness and coldness; but we are so frequently taunted with: 'Women don't want the ballot,' that we are trying to get one hundred thousand names of women who do want it, to reply to this taunt." ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... without blessing send thee forth Into the bleak wide world, whose voice unkind Perchance will mock at thee as nothing worth; For the cold critic's jealous eye may find In all thy purposed good little but ill, May taunt thy simple garb as quaintly wrought, And praise thee for no more than the small skill Of masquing as thine own another's thought: What then? count envious sneers as less than nought: Fair is thine aim,—and having done thy best, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... blessed, who, for death preparing, tak'st Experience of our limits, in thy bark! Their crime, who not with us proceed, was that, For which, as he did triumph, Caesar heard The snout of 'queen,' to taunt him. Hence their cry Of 'Sodom,' as they parted, to rebuke Themselves, and aid the burning by their shame. Our sinning was Hermaphrodite: but we, Because the law of human kind we broke, Following like beasts our vile concupiscence, Hence parting from them, to our own disgrace Record the name ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... down upon her lover, and the announcement of the means by which he may be released made to her in slumber by the Fay Morgana. Her maidens seek to rouse her with choral appeals, in which are heard phrases of her hunting song. Meanwhile mocking spirits appear about Merlin and taunt him in characteristic music. Then follows the compact with the demon, which releases him. He rushes into the battle accompanied by an exultant song from Viviane; but soon the funeral march, as his followers ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... he asked, and though he tried his best he could not for the life of him keep back one final taunt. "I s'pose, like your sister, you've got a man in your eye?" He chose this, to him, impossible suggestion as being the most insulting one that he could ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the actresses, joking with them. And Mrs. Bracegirdle, when my Lord Mohun said something rude, turned on him, and asked him what he did there, and whether he and his friends had come to stab anybody else, as they did poor Will Mountford? My lord's dark face grew darker at this taunt, and wore a mischievous, fatal look. They that saw it remembered it, and said ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... bowlegged, hunch-backed little Judkins (a sight to make a recruiting-sergeant shudder) forever taunt one with having enlisted as a ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... ill-tongu'd tinkler, Charlie Fox, May taunt you wi' his jeers and mocks; But gie him't het, my hearty cocks! E'en cowe the cadie! An' send him to his ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... |surgeons to dissect her from the social scheme that | |governs puss-wants-a-corner with the same iron rule | |that in later life determines who shall be asked to | |play bridge and who shall be outlawed. | | | |"Your parents aren't your own," was the taunt that | |Ruth heard from playmates. Some of the little girls | |added the poison of sympathy to the information. And| |Ruth Camilla Fisher at 12 found herself a stranger | |in a strange land. | | | |She extradited herself ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... neglect and Folly's taunt Conspire to distress the poor, Pray can you tell me why sharp want Can ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... it as she cowered under each separate count of the curse launched against her. She bent like a slender reed under the strokes of a flail, lower and lower against his arm, but when the deadly voice flung the final taunt at her, she straightened slowly and ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... to leave the room without replying to this last taunt; but she remembered that her indifference to it might provoke ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... on to taunt them with cowardice (Act 3, Sc. 3). They are the "mutable, rank-scented many" (Act 3, Sc. 1). His friend Menenius is equally complimentary to his fellow citizens. "You are they," ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy

... to deal with Him in whose strength she had undertaken the work of her children's education. She spread before Him those letters from the study table, and told Him of her husband's half scoffing taunt. She also reminded Him how her life had been redeemed from the very gates of death, for the children's sake, and then declared that she could not believe that He meant to forsake her at this juncture; she was willing to be the second ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... elated by the thought of its miraculous power, or meditated to use it for selfish ends, it deserves the taunt of the yet more selfish world. And it is reason for great rejoicing, that the difficulties of transition from the isolated to the harmonic mode of life are so great. God thus sifts his people. None are worthy to enter upon this work ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... on granite than have web feet and paddle in muck," retorted Uncle Trufant, ready with the ancient taunt as to the big bog that occupied ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... finally passed the Lords by eighty-three votes to forty-three. The bishops, with a single exception, were in the majority. Their conduct drew on them a sharp taunt from Lord Bathurst, a warm friend of Atterbury and a zealous Tory. "The wild Indians," he said, "give no quarter, because they believe that they shall inherit the skill and prowess of every adversary whom they destroy. Perhaps the animosity of the right reverend prelates to their ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... utterly false. If people could only know just how much the drunkard suffers; how sad, lonesome, gloomy and wretched he feels while trying to resist the accursed appetite which is destroying him, they would never taunt him with doubts, nor go to him, as I have had men, and even women, come to me (I say "men and women," but they were neither men nor women, but libels on men and women), and say that this or that person had said that that or this person had ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson

... This good-natured taunt happened to hit most of those around, and the situation looked stormy until a little, awkward-looking man strolled up and ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney

... certainly more people than that in the great Land of Oz," laughed Salye. "Why don't you raise an army and conquer them, and be Queen of all Oz?" she asked, trying to taunt Ann and so to anger her. Then she made a face at her sister and went into the back yard to swing in ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... the taunt and his face grew purple in the fire glow, but old Daurn went on remorselessly: "Twenty years he's laughed at the Wolf and his whelps, an' think you he'll stop now? He was always too lucky for me. I thought when my lads grew strong—— ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various

... unseen death. Even now I see him coming. The shallow streams he has forded, the deep rivers he has swum. He is tired and hungry; and his quiver has no arrows, but he brings a prisoner in his arms. Lay the deer's flesh on the coals, and bring hither the pounded corn. Taunt him not, for he is valiant, and has fought like ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... Lionel's cheek turned white with the taunt the words might be supposed to imply. He held her two hands ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... Richard was a tough customer, and he made no further allusion to any suffering in store for his defiant rival. But Richard's taunt about Kennedy, and his promises to introduce him, were not pleasant to the bully, and he walked away. He feared that the victim had ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic

... Her old taunt: sending men to death and taking no risk himself! She saw that he winced; she realized that she had stayed words that were about to come in a flood. Then she seemed to see him through new lenses. He appeared ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... not escape," said the young Indian, his face darkening with anger at the savage taunt. "A man's death for a man, but jackals shall die like jackals. With hearts of terror and blood turned to water in their fear, they shall die a death more horrible than the palefaces ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... stuff for a place in the memory,' said Fleetwood; and the late hour, with the profitless talk, made it a stinging taunt. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... still struggling to overcome his defect, he was stung into eloquence by the sarcasms of a member of a debating club, who characterised him as "Orator Mum;" for, like Cowper, when he stood up to speak on a previous occasion, Curran had not been able to utter a word. The taunt stung him and he replied in a triumphant speech. This accidental discovery in himself of the gift of eloquence encouraged him to proceed in his studies with renewed energy. He corrected his enunciation by reading aloud, emphatically and distinctly, the best passages in literature, for several hours ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... sufferer, and exercised themselves in appointed days of humiliation and fasting during the course of a whole year. All respect for the demon seems to have abandoned the reverend gentlemen, after they had relieved guard in this manner for some little time, and they got so regardless of Satan as to taunt him with the mode in which he executed his promise to teach his vassal dancing. The following specimen of raillery is worth commemoration:—"What, Satan! is this the dancing that Richard gave himself to thee for? &c. Canst thou dance no better? &c. Ransack the old records of all past times ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... is fifty times worse than a fishwoman's hung. If these be the plagues of a beautiful wife, O ease me, Great Jove, of so cursed a life; If La Pies divine, who inhabit the Heavens, Will Whore on like mortals, at sixes and sevens; Rave, rattle, and taunt at their horrify'd spouses, And ramble abitching thro' all the twelve houses; For all your fine features I'll e'en give you over, The charms of a Whore are but plagues to a lover. Get you gone and be pox'd, to your old bully Mars, ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous

... transplant our fogs and chilling atmosphere, and so to nip and kill plants which crave only the sun to live, that is a crime against humanity; a crime posterity with execration will one day taunt us with, and hold us up to execration, as we to-day in our hypocrisy piously curse the memories ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... taunt at the close of this speech, there was so much truth in the observations of Amine, that Father Mathias felt their power. As the wife of a Catholic, he had been accustomed to view Amine as one who had backslided from the church of Rome—not ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat

... others—Himself He cannot save!" Amidst the din of discordant voices, this taunt sounded out clear and loud, and fell upon the ears of a dying thief. Perhaps, as so often happens now, the Devil over-reached himself even then, and the strange words made the poor criminal think. "'Others'—'others'—He ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth

... of the spear and the cruse was a couch of almost humour, and it, with the ironical taunt flung across the valley to Abner, gives relief to the strain of emotion in the story. Saul's burst of passionate remorse is morbid, paroxysmal, like his fits of fury, and is sure to foam itself away. The man had no self-control. He had let wild, ungoverned moods master ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... Senor de Melinza," whispered the broken voice, "you may taunt me with my helplessness. I may not break these bonds, it is true; but neither can you sever those that bind to me the love of a true-hearted English maid.... That is a foul lie, Don Pedro, and I cast it back into your teeth!... Strike a helpless prisoner? Do so, and you add but another black ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock

... thought answered the taunt. "If the witch-woman was yours, the girl Desire is mine. This I know: as little as man has to do with you, so little have you to do with the human and the good. Living or dead, our path is not yours. I did not summon you. I do dare look upon you, if ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... been discharged—his appearance in that bold, self-assured fashion only led to covert whispers and furtive looks. But suddenly, from somewhere in the crowd, a sneering voice flung a contemptuous taunt across the ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... not the last taunt to sadden Psyche. She knew that it was not for mortals to go into Hades and return alive; and feeling that Love had forsaken her, she was minded to accept her doom as soon ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... in procuring the protection of the kings of Bosporus for the Athenian colony of Nymphaeon in the Crimea, and whose wife was a native of that region. On these grounds the adversaries of Demosthenes, in after-days, used absurdly to taunt him with a traitorous or barbarian ancestry. The boy had a bitter foretaste of life. He was seven years old when his father died, leaving property (in a manufactory of swords, and another of upholstery) worth about ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... mutinous!" said the old Colonna. And as the band swept on, the rude foreigners, encouraged by their leaders, had each some taunt or jest, uttered in a barbarous attempt at the southern patois, for the lazy giant, as he again appeared in front of his forge, leaning on his anvil as before, and betraying no sign of attention to his insultors, save by a heightened glow of his swarthy ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... man! I have thrown this taunt, this defiance, in the teeth of society!" cried the monster, in ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... the young prince was a tossing throng of restless and angry boys, while the beleaguered lad, still standing at bay, flourished a wicked-looking stiletto above his head and answered taunt with taunt. ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... custody he was impatient to browbeat the youth and taunt him with his helplessness. But Arnold Baxter would not listen to it, so the graceless son had ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield

... to taunt me so, Madame, I do very bitterly regret what has taken place. But you might do me the justice to remember that what I did I did as much for others as for myself. As much, indeed, for ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... bound in velvet and embroidery, and adorned with massive silver clasps and knosps. But she found her utmost efforts unable to withdraw her mind from the resentful recollection of what had last night passed betwixt her and the Queen, in which the latter had with such bitter taunt reminded her of her ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... to please the monarch well, When deeds of mine his soul offend, That hour I pray my life may end. How should a man to him who gave His being and his life behave? The sire to whom he owes his birth Should be his deity on earth. Hast thou, by pride and folly moved, With bitter taunt the king reproved? Has scorn of thine or cruel jest To passion stirred his gentle breast? Speak truly, Queen, that I may know What cause ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... view to their total repeal, prefaced his motion with a speech, in which he said that he brought the subject forward in compliance with the request of the anti-corn-law delegates; and because, in the late discussion on the state of the nation, a taunt had been thrown out on the ministerial side, that, if the opposition thought that a repeal of the corn daws would remedy the evil, they ought to submit that proposition to the house. The motion was seconded by Mr. Fielden, and supported by Mr. Aglionby, who declared the new sliding-scale ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... The piece had run through the summer and autumn, and Paul, a favourite with the management, was engaged for the next production. At rehearsal one day the author put in a couple of lines, of which he was given one to speak. He now was in very truth an actor. Jane could no longer taunt him in her naughty moods (invariably followed by bitter repentance) with playing a dumb part like a trained dog. He had a real part, typewritten and done up in a brown-paper cover, which was handed to him, with lack of humour, by ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... friendly paragraph as the one which had had its kindness extracted, and been abbreviated and twisted into that cruel taunt which I had heard in my childhood from the lips of ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... Jerusalem I shall plant my crucified hero, and near him a converted courtesan—ah! what a master of the theatre I am!—in company with a handful of faithful disciples. The others have run away to save their cowardly skins in the tumult. The mobs that hailed him as King of the Jews now taunt him, after the manner of all mobs. His early life I shall borrow outright from the Buddha legends. He shall be born of a virgin; he shall live in the desert; as a child he shall confute learned doctors in the temple; and later ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... was gone again. "Hello, Fat Father!" piped the shrill little voice. "Hello,—Fat Father!" Yet so subtly was the phrase mouthed, to save your soul you could not have proved just where the greeting ended and the taunt began. ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... this as by any other taunt, to all appearance. 'Throth, I thried her every way,' quoth Andy subsequently, after an experience of some months; 'I thried her by flatthery an' by thruth-tellin', by abusing her relations an' herself, an' by praisin' 'em, by appalin' to her compassion an' by bein' stiff an' impident, ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... over, and the tired sophomores were getting ready for bed, Marjorie, who still felt the sting of Ruth's taunt, remarked ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell

... to be actually empty. But there are pangs to which, at the time, starvation itself would seem to be preferable. The angry eyes of unpaid tradesman, savage with anger which one knows to be justifiable; the taunt of the poor servant who wants her wages; the gradual relinquishment of habits which the soft nurture of earlier, kinder years had made second nature; the wan cheeks of the wife whose malady demands wine; the rags of the husband whose outward occupations demand ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Taunt" :   aggravation, rally, barrack, tease, rag, banter, tantalise, taunting, irritation, bemock, jolly, josh, kid, jeer, flout, scoff, mock, gibe, provocation, chaff



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