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Tuft   /təft/   Listen
Tuft

noun
1.
A bunch of hair or feathers or growing grass.  Synonym: tussock.
2.
A bunch of feathers or hair.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Tuft" Quotes from Famous Books



... His attitudes were grotesque and his gestures awkward. Light, curly hair covered his head; his nose was long and inquisitive; his eyes, big, blue and good-humored; his mouth, incredibly wide, with shrewd, mobile lips, which habitually smiled. A tuft of yellow beard on the end of his sharp chin, gave his face a comical expression resembling that which caricature bestows on Uncle Sam. His voice was pitched in a high key, and was modified by that nasal twang supposed to indicate Yankee origin; ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... dessert at the Mitre, where very indifferent fare is provided for fashionable credit prices; a pale student, after Dr. Pusey's own heart, in cap and gown, pacing monk-like along, secretly telling his beads; a tuft (nobleman) lounging out of the shop of a tailor, who, as he follows his lordship to the door, presents the very picture of a Dean bowing to a Prime Minister, when a bishop ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... little tuft of down was wafted up into the air, quite high above the lamp, and then it sailed slowly away, and fell down upon ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott

... bluish-white, glittering diamond sparks. Countless insects (butterflies and bees mostly) lay in masses dead on the snow; they had ventured too high, or the wind had borne them thither, but to breathe their last in these cold regions. A threatening cloud hung over the Wetterhorn, like a fine, black tuft of wool. It lowered itself slowly, heavily, with that which lay concealed within it, and this was the "Foehn,"[A] powerful in its strength when it broke loose. The impression of the entire journey, the night quarters above ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen

... the shawls of their wear, And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair, All the rest ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... had in the meantime closed his eyes and lost Canton and all else in delicate thoughts of Mian, to look up. That which met his attention on doing so filled him with an intelligent wonder, for the person before him held in his hand what had the appearance of a tuft of bright yellow hair, which shone in the light of the sun with a most engaging splendour, but which he nevertheless regarded with a most undignified expression of confusion ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... surely, the Hemlock spruce of America; which, while growing by itself in open ground, is the most wilful and fantastic, as well as the most graceful, of all the firs; imitating the shape, not of its kindred, but of an enormous tuft of fern. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... thing to deal with the rich and great. If you treat them as the rest of the world does, you are a tuft-hunter; if you treat them as the rest of the world pretends to, you are a hypocrite; whereas, if you deal with them truly, it is hard not to seem, even to yourself, a bumptious person. I remember trying to tell myself on the launch-trip that I was not ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... leaves, notched at the edge with a pair of largo membraneous stipules at their base. When growing, this plant throws out two kinds of shoots—one called runners, which lie prostrate on the ground, and end in a tuft of leaves—these root into the soil, and then form new plants—and another growing nearly upright, and bearing at the end a tuft of flowers which produce the fruit. The calyx, which is flat, green, and hairy, is divided into ten parts, called sepals, and there are ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... doing the work usually performed by squaws. Kerr's captor, a warrior named Peewash, of the tribe of the Chippeways, dragged his prisoner home to his wigwam. There the boy was stripped naked, painted as Indians were painted, his head clean shaved except for one tuft on top called "the scalp lock," which amongst the Indians it was the custom to leave in order to facilitate the operation of scalping by their enemies should the owners chance to fall in battle. A scalp was the recognised trophy of victory. It was not ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... were particularly severe on the day of the young people's first visit. The former Fraeulein, now Frau, Frederike presented him, once more addressing him as 'lieber Herr Jacob,' to her husband, who was all splendour from top to toe; his eyes, his black hair brushed up into a tuft, his forehead and his teeth, and his coat buttons, and the chain on his waistcoat, everything, down to the boots on his rather large, turned-out feet, shone brilliantly. Pasinkov pressed Herr Kniftus's hand, and wished him (and the wish was ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... Amid yon tuft of hazel trees, That twinkle to the gusty breeze, Behold him perch'd in ecstasies, Yet seeming still to hover; There, where the flutter of his wings Upon his back and body flings Shadows and sunny glimmerings, That cover him ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... them up. Oh—oh—" And as she spoke her crazy purpose drove her forward; she held back against it—but, like the pressure of a hand upon her shoulder, it pushed her on down the bank—slowly—slowly—her heels digging into the crumbling clay, her hands clutching now at a tuft of grass, now at a drooping branch; she was drawing quick breaths of terror, and talking, in little gasps, aloud: "He'll forget Edith. He'll have Jacky. He'll know how much I love him...." So, over the pebbles, out on to the spit of sand; on—on—until she reached the river's edge. She stood there ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... Birds, that Nature has lavished all her Ornaments upon the Male, who very often appears in a most beautiful Head-dress: Whether it be a Crest, a Comb, a Tuft of Feathers, or a natural little Plume, erected like a kind of Pinacle on the very Top of the Head. [As Nature on the contrary [1] has poured out her Charms in the greatest Abundance upon the Female Part of our Species, so they are very assiduous ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... of the fern-seed which she now regarded as a hateful thing. She untied her shoes and shook it out in the grass. It dropped and seemed to melt into the air, for it instantly vanished. A mischievous laugh sounded close behind, and a beetle-green coat-tail was visible whisking under a tuft of rushes. But Toinette had had enough of the elves, and, tying her shoes, took the road toward home, running ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... never able to discover. When startled or hunted, the weka glides, for it can scarcely be called running, with incredible swiftness and in perfect silence, to the nearest cover. A tussock, a clump of flax, a tuft of tall tohi grass, all serve as hiding-places; and, wingless as she is, the weka can hold her own very well against her enemies, the dogs. I really believe the great desire of Brisk's life was to catch a weka. He started many, but used to go sniffing and barking round the flax bush where it had ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... atoms of life Lady Maude Blythe had been one of the vainest and most unprofitable,—though of such "social" importance as to be held in respectful awe by tuft- hunters and parasites, who feed on the rich as the green-fly feeds on the rose. The news of her sudden death briefly chronicled by the fashionable intelligence columns of the press with the usual— "We deeply regret"—created no very sorrowful sensation—a few vapid ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... as one looks down upon them; and it is remarkable that from the summit the eye takes in the whole crater, and notes all its contents, diminished, of course, by their great distance. Not a tree, shrub, nor even a tuft of grass obstructs the view. The natives have no traditions of Haleakala in activity. There are signs of several lava flows, and one in particular is clearly much ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... pleasant breeze, every slender branch swaying gently in the wind, every young sapling pushing its childish head panting for light through the mass of greenery and quivering with golden sunbeams, every trunk of aged tree gray with moss and lichens, every tuft of flowers, seemed thrilled and vivified by some wonderful knowledge which it held secret, some consciousness of boundless, inexhaustible existence, some music of infinite unexplored thought concealing treasures of unlimited action. And it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... would like some sea-thistles. Here they are, in thick bunches, fine and hairy, in faint, fair shades of green. And what can this be that looks so much like a sponge? Ah, it is a tuft of moss with green spires shooting ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever

... near to the castle, and taking advantage of every inequality in the ground, of every bush and tuft of high grass, worked up close to the moat, and then opened a heavy fire with their bows against the men-at-arms on the battlements, and prevented their using the machines against the main force now advancing to the attack upon ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... not long in reefing the mainsail and sweating it up—probably not more than fifteen minutes; but the felucca had in the meantime so shortened the distance between us that I now saw the tuft of hair on the heads of the crew,—by which, it is said, Mohammed will pull the villains up into heaven,—and they were coming on like the wind. From what I could clearly make out now, I felt them to ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... the slightest possible foreign accent, just sufficient to tell an educated ear that he was not an Englishman. If Captain Ducie's features were aquiline, those of the stranger might be termed vulturine—long, lean, narrow, with a thin, high-ridged nose, and a chin that was pointed with a tuft of thick, black hair. Except for this tuft he was clean shaven. His black hair, cropped close at back and sides, was trained into an elaborate curl on the top of the forehead and there fixed with cosmetique. Both hair and chin-tuft ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... pistols. I presently reached a glade in a thicket, about eight yards across, that had a scent of lime and orange, where the just-sufficient twilight enabled me to see some old bones, three skulls, and the edge of a tam-tam peeping from a tuft of wild corn with corn-flowers, and here and there some golden champac, and all about a profusion of musk-roses. I had stopped—why I do not recollect—perhaps thinking that if I was not getting to the Sweet Waters, I should seriously set about finding my way out. And as I stood looking ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... out, leaving Colonel Dodd staring after him with his square face twisted into an expression of utter astonishment, his little eyes goggling, his tuft of whisker ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... for thou art my only love for all my life." Then holding the gift above her head, the groom said: "I love thee; therefore I take thee for my wife, and this is the present with which I buy thee," and then he handed the present to her parents. Upon his head he wore a tuft of feathers, and in his hand a bow, emblematic of authority and protection. The bride held in one hand a green twig of the laurel-tree, and in the other an ear of corn—the twig indicated she would preserve her fame ever fair and sweet as the laurel leaf; the corn was to represent her capacity ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... himself off his horse, and standing for a moment on the hill that rises near the bridge, retraced, with his almost blinded sight, the long and desolated lands through which he had passed; then involuntarily dropping on his knee, he plucked a tuft of grass, and pressing it to his lips, exclaimed, "Farewell, Poland! Farewell all ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... feet in length, with which all of them were provided. They were attired in hunting-shirts, open in front, and showing the naked breast down to the wampum girdle, to which a second garment, reaching to the knee, was attached. Instead of the shaved head and scalping-tuft adopted by many Indian tribes, they wore the whole of their hair. They appeared to have taken their places according to their rank, the inner half-circle being composed of the older warriors, whilst the young men formed a second and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... hand, held slack so as not to jerk the horse's mouth, whether he means to mount by hoisting himself up, catching hold of the mane behind the ears, or to vault on to horseback by help of his spear. With the right hand he should grip the reins along with a tuft of hair beside the shoulder-joint, (3) so that he may not in any way wrench the horse's mouth with the bit while mounting. In the act of taking the spring off the ground for mounting, (4) he should hoist his body by help of the left hand, and with the right ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon

... wood, and then the house filled with ice, always putting straw between the ice and the walls, and covering ultimately with straw. About a third is lost by melting. Snow gives the most delicate flavor to creams; but ice is the most powerful congealer, and lasts longest. A tuft of trees ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... branches trailed the mosses, And whose trunk was coated over With the Dead-man's Moccasin-leather, With the fungus white and yellow. Suddenly from the boughs above him Sang the Mama, the woodpecker: "Aim your arrows, Hiawatha, At the head of Megissogwon, Strike the tuft of hair upon it, At their roots the long black tresses; There alone can he be wounded!" Winged with feathers, tipped with jasper, Swift flew Hiawatha's arrow, Just as Megissogwon, stooping, Raised ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... on the ground, and some of the red coals lit a tuft of dried moss that flared up, as all the Council drew back in terror ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... Moreover the sage is what is called in the books a social plant; where there is one there may be a thousand, as like each other as so, many peas. The particular bush that hid my chewink babies had to be marked, as one would mark the special tuft of grass that ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... follow him till he could place them in among the trees with a tuft of reeds before them, which proved sufficient screen and yet gave them a view of part of the pool, and the entrance to the pipe upon whose bank they had ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn

... scanty breakfast of bananas and rice, and a pineapple which Marie salted heavily before she ate it, she went to a native barber and had her long hair cut close to the scalp, except for a little tuft on top which she had him brush up ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey

... which we mean looking ashamed and depressed, comes from the old sport of cock-fighting. The bird whose crest (or tuft of hair on the head) drooped after the fight was naturally the one which had been beaten. The word pounce comes from hawking, pounces being the old word for a hawk's claws. The word haggard, which now generally means worn and sometimes a little wild-looking through grief or anxiety, ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill

... was ridgy roll of wind-smoothed, rain-washed rock. Not a tuft of grass or a bunch of sage colored the dull rust-yellow. He saw where, to the right, this uneven flow of stone ended in a blunt wall. Leftward, from the hollow that lay at his feet, mounted a gradual slow-swelling slope to a great height ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... lavishly-blossoming English flowers; so these Flemish and Dutch full blown flower pieces have not a trace of the sentiment which modern flower painters cannot help seeking, with good result or bad result, to introduce into every tuft of primroses or of violets, if not into every cluster of grapes and ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... what may be called its maturity, and not unfrequently reaches a hundred, the tall trunk slightly swelling near the middle and tapering at either extremity. The upper portion is of a fresh and shining green, contrasting with the lower section, which is of a light slate color. It is crowned by a tuft of branches and leaves at its apex, like a bunch of ostrich feathers drooping in all directions. It seems as though the palm could not be out of place in any spot. It imparts great beauty to the scenery ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... power and mind. Regin explained to him where Fafner was lying on the gold, and egged him on to try to get possession thereof. Then Regin made the sword which is hight Gram (wrath), and which was so sharp that when Sigurd held it in the flowing stream it cut asunder a tuft of wool which the current carried down against the sword's edge. In the next place, Sigurd cut with his sword Regin's anvil in twain. Thereupon Sigurd and Regin repaired to Gnita-heath. Here Sigurd dug a ditch in Fafner's path and sat down in it; ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... if they fall in love. There are a great many men in the world and even in New York, besides the small tuft-hunting, money-loving parasites that one meets at the so-called swell houses. If those you and I know were all, New York would be a very insignificant place. The brains and the character and the heart; the makers and leaders, are not found at the dinners and balls we are honored with invitations ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... is besieged by a lady and gentleman in search of a home. The gentleman, dressed in a very tight frock-coat, dusty and worn; a highly-glazed cap, the strap of which dangled above a tuft of hair, that graced his chin, its peak resting upon the tip of his nose, affording him little more than a view of his boots, with a portion of the hose protruding therefrom; his tightly-strapped trowsers carrying ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

... off his mustaches and the tuft on his chin, and the whole look of him was changed. A year had gone for every stroke of the razor; he seemed such a boy, so particularly guileless! He had stained his face so well that it looked for all the world as though the Southern sun had done it for him; his eyebrows and, ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... Pigeon call'd the Turner, which is said to have a Tuft of Feathers hanging backward on the Head, which parts, as Mr. Ray ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... of Halley, as observed by Dr. Bessel in 1835, showed that a more or less well-defined tuft of rays emanated from that part of the nucleus which was turned towards the sun; and the rays being bent backward formed a part of the tail. The nucleus, with its emanations, presented the appearance of a burning rocket, the end of which was ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots which afforded precarious footholds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a cat, among the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... lad does not learn in the streets, it is because he has no faculty of learning. Nor is the truant always in the streets, for, if he prefers, he may go out by the gardened suburbs into the country. He may pitch on some tuft of lilacs over a burn, and smoke innumerable pipes to the tune of the water on the stones. A bird will sing in the thicket, and there he may fall into a vein of kindly thought, and see things in a new perspective. Why, if this be not education, what is? We may conceive Mr. Worldly Wiseman accosting ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... All have a short black mane, a dark streak upon the back; and their tail, which so particularly distinguishes them from horses, is covered with short hair, except at the tip, which is adorned with a tuft, generally dark in color. Their peculiar cry or bray, is produced by two small cavities in their windpipes; their hoofs are, in Damascus, made into rings, which the lower classes wear under their armpits, ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... personality' of Sir Morton Pippitt. And if the fact of that 'striking and jovial personality' were not properly insisted upon, Sir Morton went himself to see the editor of the 'Riversford Gazette,' an illiterate tuft-hunting little man,—and nearly frightened him into fits. He had asserted himself in this kind of autocratic fashion ever since he had purchased Badsworth, when he was still in his forties,—and it ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... why one knocks off the tops of thistles; and then I had thought of Tarquin; and then I had recited most of Macaulay's VIRGINIA to myself, for I was young. And then I came to a tattered edge where the very tuft had whitened with the sawdust and brick-dust from the new row of houses; and two or three green stars of dock and thistle grew spasmodically about the ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... consideration. The second son of a very wealthy baronet (who was the first commoner of his county) and of the daughter of a rich and highly-descended peer, Mr. Merton had been brought near enough to rank and power to appreciate all their advantages. In early life he had been something of a "tuft-hunter;" but as his understanding was good and his passions not very strong, he had soon perceived that that vessel of clay, a young man with a moderate fortune, cannot long sail down the same stream with the metal vessels of rich earls and extravagant dandies. Besides, he was destined for the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... contrasting with the stern, gray rock. A rill of water trickles down the cliff and fills a little cistern near the base. I drain it at a draught, and find it fresh and pure. This recess shall be my dining-hall. And what the feast? A few biscuits, made savory by soaking them in seawater, a tuft of samphire gathered from the beach, and an apple for the dessert. By this time, the little rill has filled its reservoir again; and, as I quaff it, I thank God morn heartily than for a civic banquet, that he gives me the healthful appetite ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... surface was quite four feet below that of the ground. There was not a moment to lose. The man had already gone down twice; he was coming up for the second time. Frank took his coat in one hand, and, leaning over the edge of the quarry at the risk of falling in himself, he caught hold of a tuft of grass with the other hand, and awaited the drowning ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel

... has a brilliant golden plumage around the neck, while the rest of the body is of a purple colour; except the tail, which is azure, with long feathers intermingled of a roseate hue; the throat is adorned with a crest, and the head with a tuft of feathers. The first Roman who described this bird... was the senator Manilius.... He tells us that no person has ever seen this bird eat, that in Arabia it is looked upon as sacred to the sun, that ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... human being. Immersed in vexing thoughts concerning her future, she mechanically stretched out her hand to pluck a bunch of phlox and of lemon-hued primroses that were nodding in the sunshine close to her feet; but, as she touched the stems, a large copper-colored snake slowly uncoiled from the tuft of grass where they nestled and, gliding into the water, disappeared in the midst of ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... Hill, clad in undergrowth with a topping tuft of tall figs. At its eastern base lies the townlet, showing more whitewash than usual; and, nearer still, the narrow mouth of the fiery little Yenna, Prince's or St. John's River. The view is backed by the tall and wooded ridge of Cape Threepoints, the southernmost headland of the Gold Coast, behind ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... steadily from all society through a period of very many months,—did, and reasonably might, interest many Manchester people on her behalf. In all this there was nothing to be ashamed of; and, judging from what personally I witnessed, this seems to have been the true nature and extent of the "tuft-hunting;" and I have noticed it at all simply because there is a habit almost national growing up amongst us of imputing to each other some mode of unmanly prostration before the aristocracy, but with as little foundation for ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... M'dame!" A deformed man, who looked like a distorted beetle, crept round her feet, gazing up at her with eyes that squinted horribly, and roaring in an imperative voice some Arab formula in which the words "Allah-el-Akbar" continually recurred. A tall negro, with a long tuft of hair hanging from his shaven head, followed hard upon her heels, rolling his bulging eyes, in which two yellow flames were caught, and trying to engage her attention, though with what object she could not imagine. From all directions tall men with naked arms and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... eyes to the royal box, where sat a stout, middle-aged man, with a dull, good-humored face, a star and ribbon on his breast, and by his side a woman, ample and motherly, with an ugly tuft of feathers on her head, and a diamond tiara, which lit up her heavy Dutch features like a torch. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... man on the pail of a very strange dream he had had a few weeks previously: 'I dreamt I was walkin' along the top of a 'igh cliff or some sich place, and all of a sudden the ground give way under me feet and I began to slip down and down and to save meself from going over I made a grab at a tuft of grass as was growin' just within reach of me 'and. And then I thought that some feller was 'ittin me on the 'ead with a bl—y great stick, and tryin' to make me let go of the tuft of grass. And then I woke up to find my old woman shouting out and punchin' ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... Torulosus means a tuft of hair. The pileus is two to three inches broad, fleshy, then tough, coriaceous; plane, then funnel-shaped, or dimidiate; even; smooth; almost flesh color, varying to reddish-livid, ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... vessel with the militia volunteers reached Amherstburg some five days before General Brock, and, under the command of Colonel Proctor and the direction of a skilful engineer, commenced erecting a battery at Windsor, opposite to Detroit, behind a tuft of trees which skirted the river shore. Sentries were stationed at convenient distances along the north shore of the river, to prevent any intercourse with the American side; while the militia, officers and men, worked each night with the utmost quietness, in the erection of the battery, retiring ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... of Mother Goose (Contes de Ma Mere l'Oye). These tales were "The Fairies" ("Toads and Diamonds"), "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood," "Bluebeard," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Puss-in-Boots," "Cinderella," "Rique with the Tuft," and "Little Thumb." Perrault was prominent as a scholar and may have felt it beneath his dignity to write nursery tales. At any rate he declared the stories were copied from tellings by his eleven-year-old son. But Perrault's fairies have not ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... cobbler under Plinlimmon, concerning whom would to heaven I had the space to tell you all here, for he knows the legends of the mountain), while it is public that barbers are garrulous and servile, that millers are cheats (we say in Sussex that every honest miller has a large tuft of hair on the palm of his hand), yet—with every trade in the world having some bad quality attached to it—bakers alone are exempt, and every one takes it for granted that they are sterling: indeed, there are some societies in which, no matter how gloomy and churlish the conversation ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... his crown, which he erects at pleasure, consists of black in the centre, surrounded with lovely blue of two different shades; he has a triangular black spot, edged with blue, behind the eye extending to the ear, and on his breast a sable tuft consisting of nine feathers edged also with blue. This bird seems to suppose that its beauty can be increased by trimming the tail, which undergoes the same operation as our hair in a barber's shop, only with this difference, that it uses its own beak, which is serrated, in lieu of a pair ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... of true poems, The words of true poems do not merely please, The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of beauty; The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers, The words of true poems are the tuft and ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... concealing his thick, short, pointed horns standing wide apart from each other. As he turns round we shall see that a large oblong hump rises on his back, diminishing in height towards the tail: that member is short, with a tuft of hair at the tip. The hinder part of the body is clothed with hair of more moderate length, especially in summer, when it becomes fine and smooth, and soft as velvet. From his awkward, heavy appearance, when seen at a ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... probable from the inscription and position, that the cave now shown may be one of the "artificial caverns," of which, indeed, there is another a little way higher up the valley, under a tuft of alder bushes; but a single grotto of Egeria is a mere modern invention, grafted upon the application of the epithet Egerian to these nymphea in general, and which might send us to look for the haunts of Numa upon the banks of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... of a ham gradually enlarging it outwardly. Then again many carve a ham by first cutting from 1 to 2, then across the other way from 3 to 4. Remove the skin after the ham is cooked and send to the table with dots of dry pepper or dry mustard on the top, a tuft of fringed paper twisted about the knuckle, and plenty of fresh parsley around the dish. This will ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... smooth, being usually thickly covered with fibrous matter known as raw cotton. As is well known, the wind performs a very important function in the dispersal of seeds. It is clear that when a seed is ready to be set free, and is provided by a tuft of hair, such as is seen on the cotton seed, dandelion and willow herb, it becomes a very easy matter for it to be carried ever so far, when a good breeze is blowing. Most of us have blown, when children, at the crown of white feathery matter in the dandelion, and have been delighted to see ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... scattering huddle of newspaper reporters, stepping on the balls of his feet as lightly as a puss-cat, emerged Major Putnam Stone. His sleeves were turned back off his wrists and his vest flared open. His head was thrust forward so that the tuft of goatee on his chin stuck straight out ahead of him like a little burgee in a fair breeze. His face was all a clear, bright, glowing pink; and in his right hand he held one of the longest cavalry revolvers that ever was made, I reckon. It had a square-butted ivory handle, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... had slipped on a heather-tuft. One of the men whipped off his sack apron and spread it down. They saw Sailor feel for it, and recover. Still the log hung, and the team ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... extraordinarily polished hair, which told of responsibility, looked as if it were kept up to the same high standard as the plate; in his small clear anxious eyes, even in the permitted, though not exactly encouraged, tuft on his chin. "He thinks me rather mad, but I've broken him in, and now he likes the place, he likes the company," said the old man. I embraced this fully after I had become aware that Brooksmith's main ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James

... individual plant appears frightened at a time. We tried how long it took one to recover; 'tis a sanguine creature; it is all abroad again before (I guess again) two minutes. It is odd how difficult in this world it is to be armed. The double armour of this plant betrays it. In a thick tuft, where the leaves disappear, I thrust In my hand, and the bite of the thorns betrays the top-most stem. In the open again, and when I hesitate if it be clover, a touch on the leaves, and its fine sense and retractile action betrays its ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... iron seat with his elbow on his knee while he took a chew of tobacco. The big tongue of his "busting" plow knocked in the ring of the wheelers' yoke; the chain clanked idly against it; a little cloud of debris—hair and dust which the cracker had bit out of the tuft between Squat's horns—floated away on ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart

... low. In some colonies the Loyalists were clearly in the majority. In all they were a menacing element, made up of the conservative, the prosperous, the well-educated, with a mixture, of course, of mere placemen and tuft-hunters. They composed weighty pamphlets, eloquent sermons, and sparkling satire in praise of the old order of things. When their cause was lost forever, they wrote gossipy letters from their exile in London or pathetic verses in their new home in Nova Scotia and Ontario. Their place in our national ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... by wild vines, jessamine, and a multitude of deep scarlet-blossomed creepers, so thickly interlaced in their living cordage, that neither sun nor storm could penetrate them; or if a wandering beam found entrance through the thick natural trellice-work, it was only enough to cover some little tuft of violets or strawberries, its own offspring, growing up in its genial warmth with a strength and vigour pre-eminent amidst the pale and sickly brood of the neglected children of the shade. Nothing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various

... earliest knowledge of tender, passionate, and mystic aspirations, and which lent itself most willingly to the lulls and pangs of hope and despair, the race of the Anglo-Saxons. And while Chaucer sleeps, as he should, under the vault of Westminster, some unknown tuft of Malvern moss perhaps covers, as it also should, the ashes of the dreamer who took Piers Plowman ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin! And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as if my great-grandsire, Starting up at ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... and looked at it. It was of coarse straw, very wide, very much out of shape, without a band, and with a hole in the crown surrounded by a tuft of ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton

... his forehead, down to his eyebrows, and he said to me, pressing my hand; "At last, Valentine; you are mine; do you love me? oh! tell me, do you love me?" And as his head moved as he uttered these words, the horrible tuft at the end of his ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... of the country, which seem indefatigable, go twenty leagues at a stretch, and, never combed, never covered, give themselves a shake at the end of their journey, and go to graze on the first tuft of heath, their ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas

... room overlooking the river in a house owned by a very fat woman with a very red face and a tuft of hair ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... bow-stave sufficiently, I showed him how to trim the shafts as smooth and true as possible with a cleft or notch at one end into which I set one of my rusty nails, binding it there with strips from my tattered shirt; in place of feathers I used a tuft of grass and behold! my arrow was complete, and though a poor thing to look at yet it would answer well enough, as I knew by experience. So we fell to our arrow-making, wherein I found Sir Richard very quick and skilful, as I told him, the ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... pounds were against him, and when we crossed his course he was so winded that our horses ran all around him. After we had both shot a few times, missing him, he squatted in some tall grass and stuck his head under a tuft. Dismounting, Dan sprang on to him like a fox, and he was ours. We wrung his neck, and agreed to report that we had shot him through the head, thus concealing, in the absence of ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... was a short, fat man, immaculately dressed in most conventional morning attire. He was almost bald, except for a little tuft on either side, and a few long, fair hairs carefully brushed back over a shining scalp. His face was extraordinarily round except towards his chin, where it came to a point; his eyes bright and keen, his mouth the mouth of a professional ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the waves had tossed ashore— Feather, or leaf, or weed, or withered bough, Each on the other heaped, along the line 15 Of the dry wreck. And, in our vacant mood, Not seldom did we stop to watch some tuft Of dandelion seed or thistle's beard, That skimmed the surface of the dead calm lake, Suddenly halting now—a lifeless stand! 20 And starting off again with freak as sudden; [1] In all its sportive wanderings, all the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... there are several species, differing somewhat in appearance. These were fawn-coloured, with sleek, soft fur, which, like the chinchilla, was blueish next to the skin. They were about the size of small rats, with little ears and long tails, with a black tuft at the end. The fur was white underneath, the eyes jet black and very large, and long black whiskers, which were always in motion. The hind legs being longer than the front ones, enabled the creature to spring and leap along the ground with ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... graceless graces, seemed the essential voice of the kirk itself upraised in thanksgiving, "Everything's alive," he said; and again cries it aloud, "thank God, everything's alive!" He lingered yet a while in the kirk-yard. A tuft of primroses was blooming hard by the leg of an old black table tombstone, and he stopped to contemplate the random apologue. They stood forth on the cold earth with a trenchancy of contrast; and he was struck ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... light-foot Iris brought it yester-eve Delivering, that to me, by common voice Elected umpire, Her comes to-day, Pallas and Aphrodite, claiming each This meed of fairest. Thou within the cave Beyond yon whispering tuft of oldest pine, May'st well behold them unbeheld, unheard Hear all, and see thy Paris judge ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... Fig. 3) is in section a triangle, of which two sides are equal and the other side is a little larger, this triangular form being carried for a foot or less from the tip, and the larger surface being barbed bilaterally. This last-mentioned form is also generally decorated with a little tuft of bright-coloured feathers, just above the ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... seized him by the afterscalp and said: 'It will be necessary that thou name thyself or that not a hair remain upon thee here.' Whence he to me: 'Even if thou unhair me I will not tell thee who I am.' I already had his hair coiled on my hand and had plucked off more than one tuft of it, he barking and keeping down his eyes, when another cried, 'What ails thee Bocca?' Having thus learned the sinner's name, the poet releases him, saying: 'accursed traitor I do not want thee to speak, ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... bred. They vary in form, color, and disposition, and also in the quality of their hair. The standard calls for a small head, with not too long a nose, large eyes that should harmonize in color with the fur, small, pointed ears with a tuft of hair at the apex, and a very full, fluffy mane around the neck. This mane is known as the "lord mayor's chain." The body is longer than that of the ordinary cat in proportion to its size, and is extremely graceful, and covered with long, ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... been accused of drinking deeply. Our universities, certainly, did turn out more famous drinkers than scholars. In the good old times, to drink lustily was the characteristic of all Englishmen, just as tuft-hunting is now. Eternal swilling, and the rank habits and braggadocio manners which it engendered, came to a climax in George IV's reign. Since then, excessive drinking has gone out of fashion, but an ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... shoe, wiped the mud from it with a tuft of dried grass, and, carrying it in her hand, went forward. She was on the track now, and here and there prints of small feet in the earth guided her. She called "Tommy! Isaphine! Belinda!" but no answer came. They ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... pretty severe and painful. All the hair of the head was plucked out by a tedious operation, leaving simply a tuft three or four inches in diameter on the crown. This was called the scalp-lock. The hair was here allowed to grow long, and was dressed with ribbons and feathers. It was to an individual warrior what the banner is to an army. The ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... "heather cow," a twig or tuft of heath. Equivalent to the English saying, "It is a long lane that ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop

... [63] A tuft of hair worn on a man's forehead, or a projecting conspicuous part of the women's caps worn by the fashionables of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... leagues, and from thence to the western point of Cape Three-points it is S.E. by S. and N.W. by N. This western point of Cape Three-points is low land, stretching half a mile out to sea, and on the neck nearest the land is a tuft of trees. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... gazelle; But I was given a parroquet - (How I did nurse him if unwell!) He's imbecile, but lingers yet. He's green, with an enchanting tuft; He melts me with his small black eye: He'd look inimitable stuff'd, And knows it—but ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley

... turned southward, stepping daintily, the "bell," or tuft of coarse hair beneath his chin, swinging to his pace. Occasionally a cottontail leaped from his path and paused to stare, big ears alert and nose twitching sensitively; or a red squirrel, that saucy mischief-maker of the woods, ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... of rugged rocks and seamed with roaring torrents—indeed, the very pass of Bally-Brough in which the reivers had last been spied—across weary and dangerous morasses, where Edward had perforce to spring from tuft to tussock of coarse grass, Evan Dhu led our hero into the depths of the wild Highland country,—where no Saxon foot trod or dared to tread without the leave of Vich Ian Vohr, as the chief's foster-brother took occasion to inform Edward more ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... four feet, out of the sum total of six, composed of blue cotton net, which fitted very close to a very spare figure. He wore no cravat, but a turn-down collar with a black ribbon, his hair very long, with a very puny pair of moustachios on his upper lip, and something like a tuft on his chin. Altogether, he was a strange-looking being, especially when he had substituted for his long coat a short nankeen jacket, which was the case at the time ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... the lineaments of his face. How much the constant use of oatmeal could produce such an effect, was plainly visible in the countenances of McGibbet and his lady-love. Both had an unmistakable equine cast; McGibbet, wild, scraggy, and scrubby, with a tuft on his poll that would not have been out of place between the ears of a plough-horse, stared at us, just as such an animal would naturally over the top of a fence; while his gentle mate, who had more of the ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... all the eagerness of despair. Then there came a heavy splash into the water, and I heard her implore me to endeavour to make for a small shrub that grew in a hollow of the rock, at a very short distance from the tuft of seaweed that had become ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat

... when we landed, to see that what we took for woods as we sailed along the coast, was nothing but bushes of a tall rush, standing very close together. The bottom of its stalks being dried, got the colour of a dead leaf to the height of about five feet; and from thence springs the tuft of rushes, which crown this stalk; so that at a distance, these stalks together have the appearance of a wood of middling height. These rushes only grow near the sea side, and on little isles; the mountains ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... sunset I was stumbling through the bracken of the little copse that was like a tuft of hair on the brow of the great white quarry. It was quite dark, in among the trees. I made the circuit of the copse, whistling softly my three bars of "Lillibulero." Then I plunged into it. The bracken underfoot rustled and rustled. I came to a halt. A little bar of light ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... back seat the White Linen Nurse could have sworn that she heard a sharply ejaculated, maliciously joyful "Ha!" piped out. But when both she and the Senior Surgeon turned sharply round to make sure, the Little Crippled Girl, in apparently complete absorption, sat amiably extracting tuft after tuft of fur from the thumb of one big sable glove, to the rumbling, sing-song monotone of "He loves me—Loves me not—Loves ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... TUFT HUNTER. A it anniversary parasite, one who courts the acquaintance of nobility, whose caps are adorned with ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... cameleopard kind, standing at a little distance. The neck and fore legs were very long; the head was furnished with two short black horns, turning backwards; the tail, which reached down to the ham joint, had a tuft of hair at the end. The animal was of a mouse colour; and it trotted away from us in a very sluggish manner; moving its head from side to side, to see if we were pursuing it. Shortly after this, as we were crossing a large open plain, where there were a few scattered bushes, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake's eyes that never change their expression, whatever the snake may ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... it can be seen that these warriors are of splendid physique. Most of them are nearly naked save for their flowing war-adornments of hair or jackal-tails. Many are crowned with towering ostrich plumes, both black and white; others wear balls of feathers surmounted by the scarlet tuft of the egret; some, again, have round their heads bands of the hide of the spotted cat; but all flaunt some wild and fantastic adornment. And the great hide shields, with their party-coloured facings and tufted tops, are Zulu shields, and ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... your heart out; you'd always get what you wanted somehow, and you wouldn't wait for it either; and I'm just the same. I'm not built for giving up, and enduring, and sacrificing. I'm naturally just a tuft of thistle-down, Mark; but living beside Waitstill all these years I've grown ashamed to be so light, blowing about hither and thither. I kept looking at her and borrowing some of her strength, just enough to make me worthy to be her sister. Waitstill is like a bit of Plymouth Rock, only ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin



Words linked to "Tuft" :   bunch, staghead, witch broom, witches' broom, crest, cluster, clustering, coma, hexenbesen, clump, wisp



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