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Whisker   /wˈɪskər/  /hwˈɪskər/   Listen
Whisker

noun
1.
A very small distance or space.  Synonyms: hair, hair's-breadth, hairsbreadth.  "They lost the election by a whisker"
2.
A long stiff hair growing from the snout or brow of most mammals as e.g. a cat.  Synonyms: sensory hair, vibrissa.



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"Whisker" Quotes from Famous Books



... your conversation will incline to flirting than political economy; and, moreover, that you make more progress during the performance of one single pas de deux upon the stage, than you have hitherto done in ten morning calls, with an unexceptionable whisker and the best fitting gloves in Paris. Alas! alas! it is only the rich man that ever wins at rouge et noir. The well-insured Indiaman, with her cargo of millions, comes safe into port; while the whole venture of some hardy veteran of the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... porch led into the long low hall, where the breakfast was beginning. To say what was on the table would be only waste of time, because it has all been eaten so long ago; but the farmer was vexed because there were no shrimps. Not that he cared half the clip of a whisker for all the shrimps that ever bearded the sea, only that he liked to seem to love them, to keep Mary at work for him. The flower of his flock, and of all the flocks of the world of the universe to his mind, was his darling daughter Mary: the strength ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... and physique, King Richard was unquestionably the finest man of his time. He was handsome, with a frank face, but with a fierce and passionate eye. He wore his moustache with a short beard and closely-cut whisker. His short curly hair was cropped closely to his head, upon which he wore a velvet cap with gold coronet, while a scarlet robe lined with fur fell over his coat of mail, for the emperor had deemed it imprudent to excite the feeling of ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... There is a German name Gutjahr and a Norfolk name Feaveryear.] Good-beer, Godbehere, Gotobed are classed by Bardsley under Godbeorht, whence Godber. But in these three names the face value of the words may well be accepted (pp. 156, 203, 206). Wisgar or Wisgeard has given the imitative Whisker and Vizard, and, through French, the Scottish Wishart, which is thus the same as the famous Norman Guiscard. Garment and Rayment are for ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... simple face, overcharged by a terrible growth of whisker, and emitted his usual ejaculations: "Bless my soul, sir! ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... and sinewy than robust, with a shock of dark-brown hair in their thick curls somewhat matted, covering the whole of his head; for he was still but a young man, and there were no signs of baldness. His face was good, rather darkish in complexion, and he wore neither beard nor whisker—which was rather odd for a sailor, whose opportunities for shaving are none of the best. But Ben liked a clean face, and always kept one. He was no sea dandy, however, and never exhibited himself, even on Sundays, with ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... Michael, pulling pensively at his whisker as he looked at his card. "This is Mr. Brandon, a friend of Sam's. Don't get up, Brandon, we don't make ceremonies here. Turn up ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... Loamshire. The inn is easily indicated by a round table bearing two mugs of liquid, while a fallen log emphasizes the rural nature of the scene. Gaffer Jarge and Gaffer Willyum are seated at the table, surrounded by a fringe of whisker, Jarge being slightly more of a ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne

... shook a finger at her and laid it on his lips. But the old Squire did not hear. He sat glum, pulling a whisker and keeping a sour eye on the bird, which was strutting about in rather foolish bewilderment at the pink ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... brushed up in his cheeks a warmer glow than they had shown in many a year, and faded out the heavier lines with which Time had marked his countenance. Moreover, because this was France, where one may affect a whisker without losing face, he neglected his razors; and though this was not his first thought, a fair disguise it proved. For when, toward the end of the second week, he submitted that wanton luxuriance to be tamed by a barber of Florac, he hardly knew the trimly bearded ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... a forced way, clutched at his tawny whisker, and with something like a flush on his heavy face, answered in what was meant ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... Davison? She's soon to be married, THEY say (d—n 'they say,' however—the greatest scandal-monger, if not mischief-maker and liar, in the world!)—she is soon to be married to young Trescott—a clover lad who sniffles, plays on the flute, wears whisker and imperial on the most cream-colored and effeminate face you ever saw! A good fellow, nevertheless, but a silly! She is a good fellow, too, rather the cleverest of the twain, and perhaps the oldest. The match, ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... personality. She swept him from head to foot with one of her "sizing-up" examinations, noticing the refinement and thoughtfulness of his clean-shaven face, the white teeth, and the careful trimming of his hair, and the way it grew down on his temples, forming a small quarter whisker. ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith

... the brim of his weather-beaten hat back from his tanned face. He wore a mustache and a chin whisker of that variety designated in the mountains by the most opprobrious of epithets. But his smile, which drew his cheeks into wrinkles all about his long, round nose, was not unfriendly. He looked with open ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... Colfax of New Hampshire, who found the climate of New Orleans very warm, came in in a minute or two, and his was a figure to attract the attention of anybody. Middle aged, nearly as tall as Jim Hart, red haired, with a sharp little tuft of red whisker on his chin, and with features that seemed to be carved out of some kind of metal, he was a combination of the seaman and landsman, as tough and wiry as they ever grow to be. He regarded Oliver Pollock out of twinkling little blue eyes that could be merry ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... have no speech as we understand it, but they have a way of conveying ideas by a system of sounds, signs, scents, whisker-touches, movements, and example that answers the purpose of speech; and it must be remembered that though in telling this story I freely translate from rabbit into English, I repeat nothing that they ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... a tall, broad-shouldered, mild-eyed man, with a blot of whisker under each ear, and the cleanest of clerical collars encompassing his throat. It was a kindly face that pored over the unpretentious periods, as they grew by degrees upon the blue-lined paper, in the peculiar but not ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... Thanksgiving. Granny, Mammy and Aunt Squeaky were good cooks and they forgot their sadness in their preparations to celebrate the holiday. And so it was a jolly, thankful party which sat down to the feast at Grand-daddy Whisker's long table which was laden with good things for their ...
— The Graymouse Family • Nellie M. Leonard

... saw: A whisker first, and then a claw, With many an ardent wish, She stretched in vain to reach the prize: What female heart can gold despise? ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... laugh and the other to "greet," as his comrades described it. He had been badly disfigured in a burning accident in the pit when he was a young man, and a broken nose added still more to the strangeness of his appearance. Andrew, on the other hand, was stout and broadly built, with a bushy whisker on each cheek, and a clump of tufty hair ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... them. He shows no great interest even in the modern face, if there be a modern face apart from a modern setting; I am not sure what he thinks of its complications and refinements of expression, but he has certainly little relish for its banal, vulgar mustache, its prosaic, mercantile whisker, surmounting the last new thing in shirt-collars. Dear to him is the physiognomy of clean-shaven periods, when cheek and lip and chin, abounding in line and surface, had the air of soliciting the pencil. Impeccable ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... waiting for his son, was undeniably a remarkable-looking man. For good or for evil no weak character lay beneath that hard angular face, with the strongly marked features and deep-set eyes. He was clean shaven, save for an iron-grey fringe of ragged whisker under each ear, which blended with the grizzled hair above. So self-contained, hard-set, and immutable was his expression that it was impossible to read anything from it except sternness and resolution, qualities which are as likely to be associated with ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... broadly-built man, whose large, flat, pale face was bounded on the North by a fringe of hair, on the East and West by a fringe of whisker, and on the South by a fringe of beard—the whole constituting a uniform halo of stubbly whitey-brown bristles. His features were so entirely destitute of expression that I could not help saying to myself—helplessly, as if in the clutches of a night-mare— ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll

... could have worn at sea in any wind under heaven; nevertheless, a glimpse of his sagacious, weather-beaten face, or his strong, brown hand, would have established the captain's calling. Whereas Mr. Pettifer—a man of a certain plump neatness, with a curly whisker, and elaborately nautical in a jacket, and shoes, and all things correspondent—looked no more like a seaman, beside Captain Jorgan, than he ...
— A Message from the Sea • Charles Dickens

... to have sold them to a vulgar practical joker, who had one shaved off, but suffered the other to remain for a long time on the face of his victim, annoying him meantime with inquiries as to 'my whisker.' It is the true type of a great number of stories which originated in the Southern and South-Western United States, the point of which almost invariably turns on vexing, grieving, or maltreating some victim, who is an inferior as regards wit, fortune, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... be a melancholy letter, for I have nothing to tell your ladyship but tragical stories. Poor Dr. Shawe(967) being sent for in great haste to Claremont—(It seems the Duchess had caught a violent cold by a hair of her own whisker getting up her nose and making her sneeze)—the poor Doctor, I say, having eaten a few mushrooms before he set out, was taken so ill, that he was forced to stop at Kingston; and, being carried to the first apothecary's, prescribed a medicine for himself which ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... Dick had brought down another figure in china, the figure of a man in a red coat with a hooked nose and two curves of black whisker on his cheeks, underneath which was ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... rather than before him, he was at the time not unlike the conventional drawings of Parson Thirdly, which graced the humorous papers of that day. Two moon-shaped eyes, a long upper lip, a mouth like the sickle moon turned downward, prominent ears, a rather long face and a mutton-chop-shaped whisker on either cheek, served to give him that clerical appearance which the humorous artists so religiously seek to depict. Add to this that he was middle-sized, clerically spare in form, reserved and quiet in demeanor, and one can see ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... Marlotes, when he beheld them fail, The whisker trembled on his lip, and his cheek for ire was pale; And heralds proclamation made, with trumpets, through the town,— "Nor child shall suck, nor man shall eat, till the ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... conditions, that the A. D. T. boy rapped long and was not heard. No wonder that the ultimate opening of the door was unnoted by those present, or that no one observed the tall man with whisker extensions to a mustache naturally too large, who came in after the messenger. Observed or not, however, he entered and ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... is an excellent man, He scratches off verses as fast as he can, With a hat on one whisker and an air that says go it,— He says I'm the great North American poet. Hey, fellow, bright fellow, Professor Longfellow, He's the man that ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... at the court. There were already a pretty large sprinkling of spectators in the gallery, and a numerous muster of gentlemen in wigs in the barristers' seats, who presented, as a body, all that pleasing and extensive variety of nose and whisker for which the bar of England is so justly celebrated. Such of the gentlemen as had got a brief to carry, carried it in as conspicuous a manner as possible, and occasionally scratched their noses therewith, to impress the fact more strongly on ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald

... could hear the two Kalis purring contentedly like cats. Well, they had done a good job. Let them purr. He would like to have thanked them, but how can you thank two bowling balls with scalps of cat's whisker wire? ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... with wonder saw; A whisker first, and then a claw With many an ardent wish She stretch'd, in vain, to reach the prize— What female heart can gold despise? ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... cottage, finishing the late breakfast. He received me with enthusiasm. Tall, very spare, and his skin pale despite his wearing only a pareu and never a hat, Choti's black eyes shone under long, black hair, and over a Montmartre whisker that covered his boyish face from his ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... our sportsmen. He is just turned out of the hands of his valet, and presents the very beau-ideal of his caste—"quite the lady," in fact. His hat is stuck on one side, displaying a profusion of well-waxed ringlets; a corresponding infinity of whisker, terminating at the chin, there joins an enormous pair of moustaches, which give him the appearance of having caught the fox himself and stuck its brush below his nose. His neck is very stiff; and the exact Jackson-like ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... ceased, and the most curiously twisted face Tresler had ever seen glanced back over the man's bowed shoulder. A red, perspiring face, tufted at the point of the chin with a knot of gray whisker, a pair of keen gray eyes, and a mouth—yes, it was the mouth that held Tresler's attention. It went up on one side, and had somehow got mixed up with his cheek, while a suggestion of it was continued by means of a dark red scar right up to the ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... would kill me in the Council because he had not killed me when I was a cub. Thus and thus, then, do we beat dogs when we are men. Stir a whisker, Lungri, and I ram the Red Flower down thy gullet!' He beat Shere Khan over the head with the branch, and the tiger whimpered and whined in ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... little man with a fresh, well-fed face, bordered by a touch of old-fashioned, gray side-whisker, rather outstanding blue eyes, and he carried, and sometimes used as it was intended to be used, a heavy gold pince-nez, which more frequently, however, acted as a kind of lightning-conductor for the expression of his feelings. A pince-nez of many parts:—now ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... wizened old face, with its fringe of white whisker, beamed with the joy of a scientist who has made a new and important discovery. He had a long, hooked nose, and was painfully near-sighted, but refused to wear glasses. Just now he sniffed inquiringly at the open bottle of medicine. ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... he received for some time was a loud and ill-boding murmur. The long whisker of the Archduke of Hockheimer curled with renewed rage; audible, though suppressed, was the growl of the hairy Elector of Steinberg; fearful the corporeal involutions of the tall Baron of Asmanshausen; and savagely sounded the wild laugh of ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... the tinkle of sheep bells. He told her of his father, of the things that he himself had once planned to be and do. He told her of his friends: of Lily, his pal, so-called because he used a safety razor every morning of his life; of Whisker, the finest dog in Colorado; of Ruby, the ruddy brown horse that would follow him miles through the mountains and always find the master at the end of the trail. And he told her it was a lonely life. And it was. Prince Ingram had lived here fourteen years, with no ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston

... Mr Clennam's card in his hand, had a youthful aspect, and the fluffiest little whisker, perhaps, that ever was seen. Such a downy tip was on his callow chin, that he seemed half fledged like a young bird; and a compassionate observer might have urged that, if he had not singed the calves of his legs, he would have died of cold. He had a superior eye-glass dangling round ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... Leprecauns, who had a grey, puckered face and a thin fringe of grey whisker very far under his chin, ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... enough to go on the broken one, so if anything happens to the other one, deary me! I don't know whatever in the world we could do. Now run and get the cup of paste in the woodshed, and in the shake of a lobster's whisker I'll have it ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... dangerously. For a moment, Bleak, who was watching the plane, thought it was going to careen into a tail-spin and crash down fatally. Then he saw Quimbleton, still recognizable by an adhering shred of whisker, lean over the ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... worn, but there was the same complacent repose upon his features that they always wore: and through dirt, and beard, and whisker, there still shone, unimpaired, the self-satisfied smirk of flash Toby Crackit. Then the Jew, in an agony of impatience, watched every morsel he put into his mouth; pacing up and down the room, meanwhile, in irrepressible excitement. It was all of no use. Toby continued to eat with ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... 'Only once,' it said; 'the end of the twelfth hair of my top left whisker - I feel the place still in damp weather. It was only once, but it was quite enough for me. I went away as soon as the sun had dried my poor dear whisker. I scurried away to the back of the beach, and dug myself ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... lumps of muscle, etc., and shave down the skin enough to be molded to the surface of the form when dampened. Do not, however, cut away the bunch of muscles on each side of the cheeks in which the whisker roots are embedded, or these distinguished ornaments will drop out. By criss-crossing these with cuts they are made as flexible as the rest of the skin. After the shaving process get a suitable needle and ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham

... penning a scathing indictment of the President for lack of firmness and decision on the tariff question, Ann, putting her thin arms round his neck and rubbing her little sallow face against his right-hand whisker, took him to task ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome

... only got the edge of it, for at that moment I caught sight of a gray face, with little tufts of whisker under the ears, and glancing glasses that hung over the railings of the music balcony above. It was Pye. Had he been there long in the darkness or had he only just arrived, attracted by the light and the voices? The latter seemed the more probable assumption, ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... an old friend of Anderson's, fidgeted a little and in silence. He took off his glasses and put them on again. His tanned face, long and slightly twisted, with square harsh brows, and powerful jaw set in a white fringe of whisker, showed an unusual amount of disturbance. At last he said, clearing his throat: "We are much obliged to you, Mr. Anderson, for your frankness towards this court. There's not a man here that don't feel for you, and don't wish to offer you his respectful ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... beautifully inlaid riding-whip though he never rode. His white muslin pocket-handkerchief hung very prominently out of the breast pocket of his coat, and his hat was set a little on one side of his head, and rested with a coquettish air on the top of the left whisker. What with his prodigious width, and the flourishing of his whip, and the imposing dignity of his appearance altogether, he seemed to fill the street. Several humble pedestrians stepped off the pavement on to the dirty causeway to give him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... heard in the distance indistinctly cursing because the water is not hot enough, or because Dawkins, his convict servant, has not brushed his trousers sufficiently. We resume our chat, but he returns all hungry, and bluff, and whisker-brushed. "Dinner. Ha-ha! I'm ready for it. North, take Mrs. Frere." By and by it is, "North, some sherry? Sylvia, the soup is spoilt again. Did you go out to-day? No?" His eyebrows contract here, and I know he says ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... every soul upon it—interests identical with his own? Who was more fit to control the country than a man who had breathed the atmosphere of State from childhood, and learnt history from the breast-plates, the swords, the cloaks, the wigs, and the side-whisker portraits of men whose very blood ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... at Glorieta. From what I've heard most of them weren't old enough to grow a good whisker crop." Topham's voice had lost its detached note. "And he sure wasn't the only Confederate to surrender. Hunt, he's got to learn that losing a war doesn't mean that a man has lost the rest of his life. But the way he's been acting these past months, Johnny might just lose it. Bayliss' tongue is ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... haply 'tis thy week For looking pale,) with paly cheek; Tho' more we love thy roseate days, When the rich rouge-pot pours its blaze Full o'er thy face and amply spread, Tips even thy whisker-tops with red— Like the last tints of dying Day That o'er ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... sensibility. The head was altogether well-formed and symmetrical, and the air and carriage of it extremely spirited. The hair, so scant and grizzled in later days, was then of a rich brown and the most luxuriant abundance, and the bearded face of the last two decades had hardly a vestige of hair or whisker, but there was that in the face, as I first recollect it, which no time could change, and which remained implanted on it unalterably to the last. This was the quickness, keenness, and practical power, the eager, restless, energetic ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... madam,' said the Slave of the Lamp, stroking his respectable butlerial whisker. 'Now, if you're ready, your footman shall ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit

... city dames give routs and reels, And ape high-titled prancers, When City misses dance quadrilles, Or waltz with whisker'd Lancers; When City gold is quickly spent In trinkets, feasts, and raiment, And none suspend their merriment Until they all stop payment, Then Gog shall start, and Magog shall Tremble upon ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... hands as if to stay their clamouring voices, and nodded his head triumphantly toward Albert de Chantonnay, who stood near a lamp fingering his martial whisker of the left side with the air of one who would ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... exceedingly so. His complexion is swarthy, his hair is black, and his teeth are ivory white. He is often moustached, but rarely takes the trouble to trim or keep these ornaments in order. His whisker is seldom bushy or luxuriant. His trousers (calzoneros) are of green or dark velvet, open down the outside seams, and at the bottoms overlaid with stamped black leather, to defend the ankles of the wearer against ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... raw-boned, typical "Uncle Sam," even to the chin whisker and quid of tobacco, had an eye like an eagle. He shot a keen glance at Mr. St. Clair and then ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... exclaimed my uncle George feebly, and groped for his short, crisp-curling whisker ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... notably long as to the skirts, well fitted at the waist, the surface of them traversed by heavy seams. His double chin rested within the points of a high, white collar, and was further supported by voluminous, black, satin stock. His face, set in soft, gray hair and gray whisker, brushed well forward, suggested that of a benign and healthy infant—an infant, it may be added, possessed of a small and particularly pretty mouth. Save in actual stature, indeed, his lordship had never quite succeeded in growing up. Very full of the milk of human kindness, he earnestly wished ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... suddenly bethought herself of the pitcher of water, and, hoping that it might have some magic power, she ran to fetch it, and sprinkled a few drops over the fierce-looking swarm of rats. In a moment not a tail or a whisker was to be seen. Each one had made for his hole as fast as his legs could carry him, so that the Princess could safely take her pot of pinks. She found them nearly dying for want of water, and hastily poured ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... am sure, took the bearings of this question at once. But he laid his head on one side, and while he pulled one whisker, as if ringing up the information, his eyes grew dull and seemed to be withdrawing into visions of a far-away past. "I have been many times to see it, Mr. George, and would be hard put to it to specify the first occasion. But it ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... streets of Cooperstown, in his later years, G. Pomeroy Keese was a picturesque and characteristic figure. His face seemed weather-beaten rather than old; his eye was like that of a sailor, with a focus for distant horizons; the style of thin side-whisker affected by a former generation gave full play to every expression of his countenance. It was a common sight, of a winter's day, to glimpse his slight and dapper form with quick step ambling to the post-office, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... therefore particularly needed in a tropical climate; and of a Creole heiress who had wept bitterly at his departure. Such conversational talents as these, we know, will overcome disadvantages of complexion; and young Towers, whose cheeks were of the finest pink, set off by a fringe of dark whisker, was quite eclipsed by the presence of the sallow Mr. Freely. So exceptional a confectioner elevated the business, and might well begin to make disengaged ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot

... pretty tail, and half unsheathes his claws! Yet not the less, for modern lights unapt, I trust the bolts and cross-bars of the laws More than the Protestant milk all newly lapt, Impearling a tame wild-cat's whisker'd jaws! ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons

... head was shattered and the fragments scattered round him as he leaned against the corner of the house and took careful aim at the first assistant, who missed his next shot by a whisker and died in his tracks with two cartridges still in ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... held out his hand—mud from the elbow—with something lordly in the gesture. The rich man cocked his head quickly, in the way he had, and hung in the breeching for a moment, ere he rendered his hand to Kornel, with a reddening of the cheek above his white whisker that betrayed him, I thought, ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... the thrilling word Quilp became tense with excitement), cats are another affair. Personally I don't care two pence if Mr. McKenna taxes them a guinea a whisker. There is only one moment in the life of a cat that is tolerable, and that is when it is not a cat but a kitten. Who was the Frenchman who said that women ought to be born at seventeen and die at thirty? Cats ought to die when they cease to be ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... were extremely spirited. The hair so scant and grizzled in later days was then of a rich brown and most luxuriant abundance, and the bearded face of his last two decades had hardly a vestige of hair or whisker; but there was that in the face as I first recollect it which no time could change, and which remained implanted on it unalterably to the last. This was the quickness, keenness, and practical power, the eager, restless, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... discernibly flushes for me through the ominous haze that preceded the worst visitation of cholera New York was to know. Alexander, whom, early widowed and a victim of that visitation, I evoke as with something of a premature baldness, of a blackness of short whisker, of an expanse of light waistcoat and of a harmless pomp of manner, appeared to have quite predominantly "come in" for the values in question, which he promptly transmitted to his small motherless ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... the Chanta Seechee and vicinity. Gee! What a diving into wannegans and a fetching out of good clothes there was. And trading of useful coats and things for useless but decorating silk handkerchers and things! And what a hair cutting and whisker trimming! ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips

... said I, as I stepped up towards him. 'I should know that crooked nose of his from a thousand, so often have I clipped the whisker that ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... appear abroad again without moustaches?" "Beware of refusing what is asked of you," returned the old woman, "you will spoil your fortune, which is now in as favourable a train as heart can wish. The lady loves you, and has a mind to make you happy; and will you, for a nasty whisker, renounce the most delicious favours that man can obtain?" Backbarah listened to the old woman, and without saying a word went to a chamber with the slave, where they painted his eyebrows with red, cut off his whiskers, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... seemed to shut her in with the dead. She waited in the passage. After an age—seven minutes by any honest clock—Grodman made his appearance, looking as dressed as usual, but with unkempt hair and with disconsolate side-whisker. He was not quite used to that side-whisker yet, for it had only recently come within the margin of cultivation. In active service Grodman had been clean-shaven, like all members of the profession—for surely your detective ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... decks the flat face of the great man. I saw him, last week, at two balls and a party,— For a prince, his demeanour was rather too hearty. You know, we are used to quite different graces, * * * * * The Czar's look, I own, was much brighter and brisker, But then he is sadly deficient in whisker; And wore but a starless blue coat, and in kersey- mere breeches whisk'd round in a waltz with the J * *, Who, lovely as ever, seem'd just as delighted With majesty's presence as those ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... quite an old man, with mustaches and red, bushy whiskers. Zebede seized one of the latter, but received two blows in the face. Nevertheless, a fist-full of the whisker remained in his grasp, and, as the dispute had attracted a crowd to the spot, the hussar ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... wise scorn, half laughing, half pouting. Then with wistfulness: "Will it be so very different? Why should it? I hate the idea of going away from Beechhurst!" and she laid her cheek against the doctor's rough whisker with the caressing, confiding affection that made her so inexpressibly ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... shirts to let him in. All of us jumped up to see Dan. This time he had been away a long while, and when the slush-lamp was lit and fairly going, how we stared and wondered at his altered looks! He had grown a long whisker, and must have ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... five feet eleven inches high, very square shouldered and deep chested, but so symmetrical, and light in his movements, that his size hardly struck one at first. He was smooth shaved, all but a short, thick, auburn whisker; his hair was brown. His features no more then comely: the brow full, the eyes wide apart and deep-seated, the lips rather thin, but expressive, the chin solid and square. It was a face of power, and capable of harshness; but relieved by an eye of unusual ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... to brush the dust from knee and elbow while my uncle Jervas, lounging against the balustrade, viewed me languidly through his glass, and uncle George stared at me very round of eye and groped at his close-trimmed whisker. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... know you, too," said a ruffianly fellow, with a dark whisker meeting beneath his chin, "and have some scores to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... stomach; his short legs were stuck out before him; his head was quite bald, his color high, his gray eyes weak, though they had some laughter hidden in them. His double chin was shaved, but a very white bristle of stubbly whisker surrounded it and ascended to where all that remained of his hair stuck, like two patches of cotton wool, above his ears. The old man wore a suit of gray tweed and blinked benignly through a pair of spectacles. He had already heard enough of Mrs. Tregenza's troubles ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... Australian Station came on board. The event of the inspection was Nigger, the black ship's cat, distinguished by a white whisker on the port side of his face, who made one adventurous voyage to the Antarctic and came to an untimely end during the second. The seamen made a hammock for him with blanket and pillow, and slung it forward among their own bedding. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... three-ringed circuses was sellin' for six bits a throw me an' Bart couldn't buy a whisker from a dead tiger." The dreadful admission brought a dull flush to Mr. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... people. We cannot commend him for this trait of character. But it was one of his faults, and all men have their failings. It would have given him great pleasure, could he have induced Abel Lee to set up a rivalry in the moustache and whisker line; but Abel had too much good sense for that, and Marston, be it said to his credit, was rejoiced to find that he had. Still, the idea having once entered his head, he could not drive it away. He had a most unconquerable desire to see some one start in opposition ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur

... felt was too much for her. She couldn't, in spite of his love and constancy and her own acknowledged regard, respect, and gratitude. What are benefits, what is constancy, or merit? One curl of a girl's ringlet, one hair of a whisker, will turn the scale against them all in a minute. They did not weigh with Emmy more than with other women. She had tried them; wanted to make them pass; could not; and the pitiless little woman had found a pretext, and determined to ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... at last, And springing to the floor I cast Bewildered and distrustful glances round When, like an added insult, there I found Harry convulsed with laughter at my side, Which nettled my already wounded pride. My anger was extreme on rushing out With one loved whisker curled my ear about, The other brushed across my face; my hair All twisted in a vortex of despair; I felt unable to express my rage At his so vaunted but abusive cage. 'Tis an infernal, demon-formed machine, Shrieked I to Hal, as ever yet was seen, He only ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby

... into what was called a Greek cap, composed of brown network strewn with gold beads. Here and there very small, thin dark curls strayed from under it, like the tendrils of a delicate vine; and nestling close to each ear was a little dark, downy crescent, which papa called her whisker when he was playfully inclined ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... piano he sat majestically, and cast upon the countess, as she entered, that coldly gracious look which a woman, surprised by the beauty of another woman, might have given. He did not move, and merely waved the two silver threads of his right whisker as he turned his golden eyes ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... snatched the pot of grease from the woman's hands, daubed gobs of the stuff liberally on his face and hands, and sat up—resembling an unknown kind of angry animal with his eyebrows and mustache burned off except for a stray, outstanding whisker here and there. In a voice like a bull's at the smell of blood he reversed what he had shouted through the flames, and commanded his Turks to ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... us yourself, Mr. Chairman?' said a young man with a whisker, a squint, and an open shirt collar (dirty), from the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... after all! I can see the captain's whisker all gilt at the edges! We took 'ee for the Bournemouth steamer. Three cheers for the ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... Whitehall, but I shall not dine out of my room for some time. Wine is my destruction, with the cold that I endure after it. I shall keep myself, if I can, from any complaint that will prevent my going to Parliament. The rat-catchers are going about with their traps, but they shall not have a whisker of mine. ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... puzzle a musquash to get out of my trap. I'd fix it so that it would go off if he touched it with a whisker." ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May

... gun was fired, a thing that never occurred but once, the head of the rash man who fired it was afterwards found in the Old Woman's Tank, eleven miles from the spot, without so much as a blemish, except a slight singing of the right whisker." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... quick ear caught a peculiar cry coming from the direction of the road. It was a sharp, shrill bark, followed by a low whine. He sat up, bent his head and listened again. Velour's fur stood on end, and its whisker bristled like wire. The sound was heard again, made clearer and more striking by a sudden ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... one auburn whisker with knotty fingers. "Haven't been able to get a man that was any good since. It's nothing but worry, worry, worry in business. And where might you have come across him, captain, if it's fair ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... and her kittens are under the stove, and Susan keeps hissing at a big tiger-striped tomcat crouching under the sofa. He turns his head away from her and looks like he never intended to get mixed up with family life. For a stray cat he's sleek and healthy-looking. Every time he moves a whisker, Susan hisses again, warningly. She believes in ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville

... time to waste in flirting,' so I spoke right out. 'If you have anything particular to discuss with me, Mr. Pryor, I would feel obliged if you would mention it without loss of time, because I am very busy this afternoon.' He fairly beamed at me out of that circle of red whisker, and said, 'You are a business-like woman and I agree with you. There is no use in wasting time beating around the bush. I came up here today to ask you to marry me.' So there it was, Mrs. Dr. dear. I had a proposal at last, after waiting sixty-four ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... a fierce, red-faced individual, with long legs encased to the knees in cowhide boots, overalls, a checked shirt, and a whisp of yellow whisker under his chin that parted and waved, as he strode ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson

... Mr. Brimberly, smiling and caressing his left whisker, "'e may be on 'is way to Hafghanistan or Hasia Minor at this pre-cise moment—'e is that metehoric, lord! These millionaires is much of a muchness, sir, 'ere to-day, gone to-morrer. Noo York this week, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... excited grave curiosity, would not, like the other, have provoked you to wish yourself, almost blindly, in his place. Tall, lean, loosely and feebly put together, he had an ugly, sickly, witty, charming face, furnished, but by no means decorated, with a straggling moustache and whisker. He looked clever and ill—a combination by no means felicitous; and he wore a brown velvet jacket. He carried his hands in his pockets, and there was something in the way he did it that showed the habit was inveterate. His gait had a shambling, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... . . Ensign Hicks, of the Sappers and Miners. Hicks received a ball in his jaw, and was half choked by a quantity of carroty whisker forced down his throat with ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... with wonder saw: A whisker first and then a claw, With many an ardent wish, She stretched, in vain, to reach the prize. What female heart can gold despise? What Cat's averse ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... beating that it was the proximate cause of his death, but called out the Doctor, who manfully avowed the authorship. Each, it is understood, fired five shots, without further effect than that one ball struck the whisker of Mr. Berkeley and another the boot of Maginn, and when Fraser, who was Maginn's second, asked if there should be another shot, Maginn is reported to have said, "Blaze away, by ——! a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... Sicrety iv War seen him comin', an' called, 'Pussy, pussy.' Goold Bonds wint through his legs, an' galloped f'r where th' Postmaster-gin'ral was settin' editin' his pa-aper. Th' Postmaster-gin'ral had jus' got as far as 'we opine,' whin he see Goold Bonds, an' he bate th' cat to th' windy be a whisker. ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne

... hat over one brow; there is something of Columbine about her, something of the Watteau shepherdess, something of a vivandiere, something of every age but the present age. Her face, subject to the strange dictates of the mode, is smooth like the back of a spoon, with small features and little whisker-like curls before the ears such as butcher-boys used to wear half a century ago. Even so, she dare not do this thing alone. Something in khaki is with her, to justify her. You are to understand that this strange rig is for seeing him off or giving him a ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... his person certain other traits that help a man to eminence in the arm of the service referred to. He ran to high colors, to wide whisker, to open pores; he had the saddle-leather skin common in Englishmen, rarer in Americans,—never found in the Brahmin caste, oftener in the military and the commodores: observing people know what ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... They are both Presbyterian," quoth she, in her ignorance; so in they went, to be met in the doorway by an elder in his Sabbath "blacks," his solemn face surrounded by a fringe of sandy whisker. The pews were very narrow and very high, shut in a box-like seclusion by wooden doors; the minister, in his pulpit, was just giving out the number of the psalm, and the precentor, after tapping his tuning-fork and holding it to his ear, burst forth into wailing notes of surprising strength ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... at a grocer's; thirty-five years of age; five feet ten inches in height; sandy hair; grey eyes; fair face; good looking; short whisker, light; rather slight person, dresses ... Supposed a ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... for a Report of several successful Experiments in laying down his own Cheeks for a permanent growth of Whisker, with a description of the most approved Hair-fence worn on the Chin, and the exact colour adapted to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... against the mantelpiece in moody reflection, Mr Blatherwick was musing sadly on the hardships of the schoolmaster's life. The proprietor of Harrow House was a long, grave man, one of the last to hold out against the anti-whisker crusade. He had expressionless hazel eyes, and a general air of being present in body but absent in spirit. Mothers who visited the school to introduce their sons put his vagueness down to activity of mind. 'That busy brain,' ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... perfectly black. At those periods of his anger, all his face which was not scar, was eye and eyebrow. He wore a thick black moustache, which covered his mouth, but no whiskers. People said of him that he was so proud of his wound that he would not grow a hair to cover it. The fact, however, was that no whisker could be made to come sufficiently forward to be of service, and therefore he ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... blanched look, like forced sea-kale; a man of under, rather than over middle height, not of slight make, but lean as if the flesh had been all worn off his bones; a man with sad, anxious, outlooking, abstracted eyes, with a nose slightly hooked, without a trace of whisker, with hair thin and straight and flaked with white, active and lithe in his movements, a swift walker, though he had a slight halt. While looking at him thrown up in relief against the glowing western sky, I noticed, what had previously escaped my attention, ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... sir," said Kit, patting Whisker's neck. "I hope you've had a pleasant ride, sir. He's a ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... at the fringe of whisker under his jaws and said faintly, "It's the fourth time up to now. ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke

... who came home full of Malaria and Lead were met at the Station by Hezekiah, who had grown a Chin Whisker and was sporting a White Vest. He gave each one a Card announcing that all of our country's Brave Defenders who had failed to become well fixed on $13 per, would get what Money they needed at 2 per cent. a Month, with ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... returned Helen, with vigor, and turned her car into a field where already a dozen automobiles were parked. A man with a whisp of whisker on his chin, and actually chewing a straw, motioned the young girl where to run her car. He was evidently the farmer who owned the field, and he was surely "making hay while the sun shone," for he was collecting a quarter from every automobile owner who wished to get ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson

... he sprang nimbly to his feet, (or rather, his foot), and stood revealed as a short, yet strongly built man, with a face that, in one way, resembled an island in that it was completely surrounded by hair, and whisker. But it was, in all respects, a vastly pleasant island to behold, despite the somewhat craggy prominences of chin, and nose, and brow. In other words, it was a pleasing face notwithstanding the fierce, thick eye-brows which were ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... the kitchen. He, too, was short and square of build, though he had no superfluous flesh. His ankles would doubtless continue to bear him for many a year to come. His face was but slightly accented; he had very thin eyebrows, light hair, and only a shaggy fringe of whisker beneath the chin. This was Heman Blaisdell, the Widder Poll's brother-in-law, for whom she had persistently kept house ever since the death of his wife, four years ago. He came in without speaking, and after shaking himself ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... number of classical anecdotes of those blighting snubs, vindictive retorts and scandalous miscarriages of justice that are so dear to the forensic mind. Now he reposed. He was breathing heavily with his mouth a little open and his head on one side. One whisker was turned back against the comfortable padding. His plump strong hands gripped the arms of his chair, and his frown was a little assuaged. How tremendously fed up he looked! Honours, wealth, influence, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... taken off his beard and wig, and had put on the small whisker, which is the general fashion of wearing the hair throughout Spain. Thus he trusted, if surprised in the dark, to pass as one of the band. So quiet was the village when he entered, that he at first thought it was deserted; at last, however, he saw a light in one of the houses in the center of the ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty

... corpulent beast, Just exhibits his face, like the moon in a mist. On each is a gentleman riding astraddle, With neat Turkey carpets in lieu of a saddle; The camels, behind, seem disposed for a lark, The taller's a well-whisker'd, fierce-looking shark. An Arab, arrayed with a coal-heaver's hat, With a friend from the desert is holding a chat; The picture's completed by well-tailed Chinese A-purchasing opium, and selling of teas. The minister's navy is seen in the rear— They long turned their backs on the service—'tis ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... with bright sunshine. It had rained all night; but by eleven o'clock the dear old garden was quite dry, and how sweet it did look! The pink roses twinkled and winked their whisker-like calyxes as she went by; the white ones shook their serene leaves, and sent out delicious smells. Every green thing looked greener than it had done before the rain. The blue sky, swept clear of clouds, seemed to have been rubbed ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... well his height Half-disappears in flow of chest and limb; Moustache and whisker trooper-like in trim; Frank-faced, frank-eyed, frank-hearted; always bright And always punctual—morning, noon, and night; Bland as a Jesuit, sober as a hymn; Humorous, and yet without a touch of whim; Gentle and amiable, yet full of fight. His piety, though fresh and ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley

... whose ankle-rings are dumb, her girdle sounds; So this one is content and that a tale of need must tell. Thou'dst have me, foolwise, in her charms forget thee. God forfend I, that a true believer am, should turn an infidel! No, by a whisker that makes mock of all her curls, I swear, Nor maid nor strumpet from thy side shall me ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... was at this time nearly thirty years old. He was a good-looking, but not strikingly handsome man; thin, of moderate height, with sharp grey eyes, a face clean shorn with the exception of a small whisker, with wiry, strong dark hair, which was already beginning to show a tinge of grey;—the very opposite in appearance to his late friend Sir Florian Eustace. He was quick, ready-witted, self-reliant, and not over scrupulous in the outward things of the world. ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... complexion—so creamy and spotless and fair—he had no right to it: it ought to have been a woman's complexion, or at least a boy's. He looked indeed more like a boy than a man: his smooth face was quite uncovered, either by beard, whisker, or mustache. If he had asked me, I should have guessed him (though he was really three years older) to have ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... the heroine was but a painted dummy mechanically repeating the lines that some Jew had written for her as he puffed a reeking cigar in his rear office, and the villain but a popinjay with a black whisker stuck on with a bit of pitch. Yet I grinned and clapped to deceive them, and agreed that it was the most inspiriting performance I had seen ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... was spoiled by them all, in fact; and by no one more than Mr. Peggotty himself, whom she could have coaxed into anything, by only going and laying her cheek against his rough whisker. That was my opinion, at least, when I saw her do it; and I held Mr. Peggotty to be thoroughly in the right. But she was so affectionate and sweet-natured, and had such a pleasant manner of being both sly and shy at once, that she ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... out into the shade of Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr. Guppy becomes conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below and turning itself up in the direction of his face. At the same time, a low whistle is wafted through the Inn and a suppressed ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... saying, "All the gold in the world cannot equal this natural ornament of my valour." And it is said the people of Goa were so much affected by the noble message that they remitted the money and returned the whisker—though of what earthly use it could prove to the gallant admiral, unless, perhaps, to stuff a tennis ball, it ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... this outrage at all," insisted Bundy, pulling in calculation at his little chin-whisker, "let us do it thoroughly. A hundred dollars can't take Potts any too far. We must see that he keeps going until he could never get back—" We all ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... attained to long trousers, people in our town mainly had outgrown the unlicensed expert and were depending more and more upon the old-fashioned family doctor—the one with the whisker-jungle—who drove about in a gig, accompanied by a haunting aroma of iodoform and carrying his calomel with him ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb

... in him had taken the form of obesity, a tendency not confined, if we may trust the evidence of scholars, to descendants of Saxon kings. To those who had little sympathy with genius in its more alarming shapes, his fair chin whisker seemed an absurdity. The more discriminating, however, welcomed it. Anything might be expected of a man with a chin whisker which some one, with more imagination than restraint, had described as ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... Good as new, with pencils piled, Bring me the immortal cupboard Where the Hymn of Hate was filed; Who can say how oft, when brisker Beat the heart behind his ribs, TIRPITZ wiped upon a whisker ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various

... Darting across whose blue expanse was seen Of sculptured barques and galleys many a score; Whence noise was none save that of plashing oar; Nor word was spoke, to break the calm serene. Unhear'd is whisker'd boatman's hail or joke; Who, mute as Sinbad's man of copper, rows, And only intermits the sturdy stroke When fearless gull too nigh his pinnace goes. I, hardly conscious if I dream'd or woke, Mark'd that strange piece ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various

... lumber-camp, was an open space, about two acres in extent, lighted up like day by a bonfire at each end. In the centre, alongside a stump, his figure boldly revealed by the firelight, stood a man with dishevelled hair and a stubby growth of black whisker. He wore the corduroys and Strathcona boots of a shantyman; about his waist was a bright red scarf. Inverted upon the stump was an empty wooden box and in each hand he flourished an ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... least, startled and surprised. I dodged the threatening club and turned a dazed face toward the person brandishing it. He appeared to be a middle-sized, elderly person, in oilskins and souwester, and when he spoke a gray whisker wagged above the ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... company occasionally. Boys, I'll tell you something about seals. The old bull seals have long, stiff whiskers—a foot long. Do you know there's a market for those whiskers? Well, there is. The Chinese mount them in gold and use them for cleaners for their long pipes. Each whisker is worth from six bits to a dollar and a quarter. Why don't you kill a few bull ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... "it's a run he's goin' to hit, with one spur in the shoulder an' th' other in th' flank. Why, th' way he's throwin' that whisker-cutter at his face, he's plumb shore to dewlap and wattle his fool self till you could spot him in airy herd o' humans as fer as you ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... half-past ten the first carriage, that of James, drove up. It contained James and his son-in-law Dartie, a fine man, with a square chest, buttoned very tightly into a frock coat, and a sallow, fattish face adorned with dark, well-curled moustaches, and that incorrigible commencement of whisker which, eluding the strictest attempts at shaving, seems the mark of something deeply ingrained in the personality of the shaver, being especially noticeable in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... abruptly at this point, for they had reached the inn referred to. At the door stood a tall, good-looking young man, whose shaven chin, cut of whisker, and Tweed shooting costume, betokened him an Englishman of the ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... "Now the whisker on the other side. Turn him over!" Between match and razor this, too, was removed. "Give him his shaving-glass. Take the gag out. I want to ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... bowed with eighty years that have dashed over him like waves, and he seemed caught in the tangling undertow of death. There was no evidence in his appearance of being a "fence." He looked rather an aged Hebrew who simply wished to go his way. The white semi-circle of whisker under his chin, the trembling hands, the bald head, like a globular map with the veins as rivers, all attested extreme decrepitude. He was dressed in a light suit of fluttering linen that blew about him as if his ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... a thanks, and dropped into the chair, his thin, wrinkled face drawing into a queer smile. He let the package fall across his knees, and his hat dropped from his trembling fingers. He stroked a tuft of whisker ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore

... condescend to give me instructions. I am quick to learn. The short time I have been so happy as to be in your company I have gained much knowledge. I am sure I can imitate the mew-sic of your voice. I know I can gently wave my tail, and touch my left whisker with my paw as you do. When I leave you I shall spend every moment till we meet again in practising your airs and graces, till I make them all my own. Dear friend,—if you will let me call you so,—help me ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... surprised, over the faces never seen before yet suggesting old days—his youth—other seas—the distant shores of early memories. Mr. Travers gave a start also, and the hand which had been busy with his left whisker went into the pocket of his jacket, as though he had plucked out something worth keeping. He made a quick ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... so many scars on his face, from falls and fights, that somehow he produced the impression of a target. His hair stood out like a halo of straw, and one defiant wisp reared itself above his forehead with the grace of a cat's whisker. Mrs. Lilly could never sleep until he was safe in her arms, and his life knew no cross until after the accident to Katharine Kirk, who became, in her turn, the pivot round which the family revolved. Horrible to relate, his mother one evening, in her hurry to get back to the invalid, ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... says Archibald. 'Fat and red and funny. Most as funny as the whisker man. I never saw such ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... shuddered. "Only once," it said; "the end of the twelfth hair of my top left whisker—I feel the place still in damp weather. It was only once, but it was quite enough for me. I went away as soon as the sun had dried my poor dear whisker. I scurried away to the back of the beach, and dug myself a house ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... more common type which is the antithesis of the conventional sailor. He was a thin, hard-featured man, with an ascetic, acquiline cast of face, grizzled and hollow-cheeked, clean-shaven with the exception of the tiniest curved promontory of ash-colored whisker. An observer, accustomed to classify men, might have put him down as a canon of the church with a taste for lay costume and a country life, or as the master of a large public school, who joined his scholars in their ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the whisker'd Count Help'd his Bride in the carriage to mount, And fain would the Muse deny it, But the crowd, including two butchers in blue, (The regular killing Whitechapel hue,) Of her Precious Calf had as ample a view, As if they had come ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... lady!" cried the contriver of the passage indignantly, "her Grace might sleep there herself and take no harm. There is not even the whisker of ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... back of a cow! The wager was, I believe, considerable. A young Englishman did something more respectable, yet quite as extraordinary, at Paris, not a hundred years ago, for a small bet. He was one of the stoutest, thickest-built men possible, yet being but eighteen, had neither whisker nor moustache to masculate his clear English complexion. At the Maison Doree one night he offered to ride in the Champs Elysees in a lady's habit, and not be mistaken for a man. A friend undertook ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... the prompter, and cry'd, 'Zounds, Downs, what sucking scaramouch have you sent on there?' 'Sir,' replied Downs, 'He's good enough for a Spaniard; the part is small.' Betterton return'd, 'If he had made his eyebrows his whiskers, and each whisker a line, the part would have been two lines too much for such a ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... grand head it is!" cried the young enthusiast, gazing rapt upon the complacent marble whisker so delightfully curled and bristling ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... another of the "sketches," where he is supposed to sing "My Dog and My Gun," as "Hawthorn," in the then popular opera of "Love in a Village." His Royal Highness made himself a remarkable character in those smooth-faced days by wearing a profusion of whisker and moustache perfectly white. A rumour somehow got abroad and was circulated in the tittle-tattle newspapers of the time, that at the instance of some fair lady he had shaved off these martial appendages. The cavalry for some unexplained reason were the only ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... my mind is drawn away By the rose of a cheek, whereo'er a whisker's myrtles stray. I'm fallen in love with a fawn, a youngling tunic-clad, And joy no more in love of bracelet-wearing may. My mate in banquet-hall and closet's all unlike To her with whom within my harem's close I play: O thou that blames me, because I flee from Hind[FN33] ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... Greenwich, for Scotland. I remember a double line of soldiers along the road, several very fussy horsemen riding to and fro, a troop of Cavalry, and a carriage, in which sat a very fat elderly man, with a pale flabby face, without beard or whisker, but fringed with the curls of a large brown wig. That is all I remember, or care to remember, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards



Words linked to "Whisker" :   furnish, provide, supply, hair's-breadth, hairsbreadth, small indefinite quantity, whiskery, render, small indefinite amount



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