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Batten   Listen
verb
Batten  v. i.  To grow fat; to grow fat in ease and luxury; to glut one's self. "The pampered monarch lay battening in ease." "Skeptics, with a taste for carrion, who batten on the hideous facts in history, persecutions, inquisitions."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Batten" Quotes from Famous Books



... in disdain Spurns with his foot, and cries aloud, "Lie there, Proud youth, and tell thy terrors to the slain. No tender mother shall thy shroud prepare, No father's sepulchre be thine to share. Thy carrion corpse shall be the vultures' food, And birds that batten on the dead shall tear Thee piecemeal, and the fishes lick thy blood, Drowned in the deep sea-gulfs, or ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... aught, none shall satisfy thee. What sane man will venture to join thy rablle rout? Ill indeed are thy revellers to look upon, young men impotent of body, and old men witless in mind: in the heyday of life they batten in sleek idleness, and wearily do they drag through an age of wrinkled wretchedness: and why? they blush with shame at the thought of deeds done in the past, and groan for weariness at what is left to do. During their youth ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... part of the 2nd, or Queen's regiment, was driven into Plymouth by stress of weather. She had been out seven weeks, and had many sick on board. The gale increasing in the afternoon, it was determined to run for greater safety to Catwater; but the buoy at the extremity of the reef off Mount Batten having broke adrift, of which the pilots were not aware, she touched on the shoal, and carried away her rudder. Thus rendered unmanageable, she fell off, and grounded under the citadel, where, beating round, she lay rolling heavily with her broadside ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... abruptly. The stranger was drawing the batten blinds together. Her ivory-white arms gleamed in the sun. For a moment they could see her face shining like a star against the dusky glooms within; then the bolt was shot sharply ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... way the Irish representation now stands, eighty-six men in favor of making Ireland a nation, eighteen wanting to keep her a province, and a province on which they can selfishly batten. The elections in every way have borne out the forecast of the Irish leaders, who calculated eighty-five as the minimum strength of the National party. Mr. Gladstone will now be gratified to learn that in response to his late Midlothian ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... Dead and undone for ever, while he lived And flourished. Heaven hath turned this turbulence To fall instead upon the harmless flock. Wherefore no strength of man shall once avail To encase his body with a seemly tomb, But outcast on the wide and watery sand, He'll feed the birds that batten on the shore. Nor let thy towering spirit therefore rise In threatening wrath. Wilt thou or not, our hand Shall rule him dead, howe'er he braved us living, And that by force; for never would he yield, Even while he lived, to words ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... must act—that is to say, must make our escape—that same night, although the hatches were off, and all the boats were ashore. Of course the fact that the hatches were off was the merest trifle, for Gurney and I could soon clap them on and batten them down; but I did not at all like the idea of going to sea without even so much as a single boat on board; while, of all the boats belonging to the ship, I should most have preferred the longboat, because she was a fine, wholesome boat, and in the event of anything ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... saw the Boy at Public Schools Regard his books with fear and loathing, From Latin's arbitrary rules Deriving practically nothing:— He said,—"O bounding human Boys, Of all the fare whereon you batten, What chiefly mars your simple joys?" With one accord they ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... congratulate myself an the co-operation of my friend Mr. J. D. Batten in giving beautiful or amusing form to the creations of the folk fancy of the Hindoos. It is no slight thing to embody, as he has done, the glamour and the humour both of the Celt and of the Hindoo. It is only a further proof that Fairy Tales ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... THE YARD-ARM. A marine punishment unknown, except by name, in the British navy; but formerly inflicted by the French for grave offences, thus: the criminal was placed astride a short thick batten, fastened to the end of a rope which passed through a block hanging at the yard-arm. Thus fixed, he was hoisted suddenly up to the yard, and the rope being then slackened at once, he was plunged into the sea. This chastisement was repeated several times; conformable ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... The batten door behind the bar now began to open slowly and noiselessly. Lefever peered through it. "Come in, Pedro," he cried reassuringly, "come in, man. This is no officer, no revenue agent looking for your license. Meet a friend, Pedro," he continued encouragingly, as the ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... For sure my love should ne'er induce the front And mask of Hate, whom woful ailments Of unavailing tears and heart deep moans Feed and envenom, as the milky blood Of hateful herbs a subtle-fanged snake. Shall Love pledge Hatred in her bitter draughts, And batten on his poisons? Love forbid! Love passeth not the threshold of cold Hate, And Hate is strange beneath the roof of Love. O Love, if thou be'st Love, dry up these tears Shed for the love of Love; for tho' mine image, The subject of thy power, be cold in her, Yet, ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... things, that His Excellency should be allowed to choose his own advisers. By this Mr. Froude certainly does not mean that the advisers so chosen must be all pure-blooded Englishmen who have rushed from the destitution of home to batten on the cheaply ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... of a tree, alias a wheel-less water-trolly. The horse was hitched to the butt end, and a batten nailed across the prongs kept the cask from slipping off going uphill. Sandy led the way and carried the bucket; Dad went ahead to clear the track of stones; and Joe straddled the cask to keep ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... glazedly Reflected. Upwards, upwards through the shadows, Through the lush sponginess of deep-sea meadows Where hare-lipped monsters batten, let me ply ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley

... skull, the weapon simply crashes through the bone, disintegrating it at the point of entrance, and cracking or splintering it for a variable, but limited, distance beyond. On the other hand, when the head is struck by a "blunt" object—for example, a batten falling from a height—the force is applied over a wider area and the elastic skull bends before it. If the limits of its elasticity are not exceeded, the bone recoils into its normal position when the force ceases to act; but if the bone is bent beyond the point from ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... and steady, and remember there's no danger, for we can make land any time in the boats if worse comes to worse. Mr. Gibbs, have the men get their dunnage up out of the forecastle, and then close the hatch and batten it." ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... sweet. Here we rejoice, because no rent We pay for our poor tenement, Wherein we rest, and never fear The landlord or the usurer. The quarter-day does ne'er affright Our peaceful slumbers in the night. We eat our own and batten more, Because we feed on no man's score; But pity those whose flanks grow great, Swell'd with the lard of others' meat. We bless our fortunes when we see Our own beloved privacy; And like our living, where we're known To very few, or else ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... has enabled powerful political movements to grow out of the hopes of solitary thinkers. It is this that makes Socialism and Anarchism important, and it is this that makes them dangerous to those who batten, consciously or unconsciously upon the evils of our present order ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... curious selection which will be welcomed by readers of all ages.... The illustrations by Mr. Batten are often clever and irresistibly humorous. A delight alike to the ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... provided by the calculating liberality of the gaming-house keepers, and to loiter round the brunnens of more or less nauseous flavour, the pretext of resort to this rendezvous of idlers and gamblers. The waiters had disappeared to batten on the broken meats from the public table, and to doze away the time till the approach of supper renewed their activity. My interlocutor, with whom I was alone in the deserted apartment, was a man of about thirty years of age, whose dark hair and mustaches, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... the small spread of canvas that we are showing. But it will be bad enough when it comes, I doubt not; so go below and call Murdock, the cook, and the cabin boy, and say I want them to come on deck, as I am about to batten down the fore scuttle. And when eight bells comes, you will have to go aft and stretch yourselves out on the cabin lockers, for the forecastle will be closed until ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... murdered her womanhood, that the red cross of Cain blazes upon her brow. Realizing that she is a social outcast, a moral pariah, she becomes reckless, defiant, and finally glories in betraying the fool who trusts her. No matter how fair the mountain upon which she has leave to feed, she will batten on the moor. Love was her excuse when first she went astray, and she hugs the delusion to her heart that Cupid can sanctify a crime; but where honor spreads not its wings of snow love perishes in the fierce simoon of lust. The man with whom she enters the primrose path feels ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man; This was your husband.—Look you now what follows: Here is your husband, like a milldew'd ear Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for at your age The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have, Else could you not have motion: but sure that sense Is apoplex'd; for madness ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... her last voyage to Calabria, having taken macaroni from Amalfi and bringing back wine of Verbicaro. A fine boat, the Giovannina, able to carry twenty tons in any weather, and water-tight too, being decked with hatches over which you can stretch and batten down tarpaulin. A pretty sight as she ran up to the end of the breakwater, old Luigione standing at the stern with the tiller between his knees and the slack of the main-sheet in his hand. She was running wing and wing, with ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... keepers in a very primitive manner. Old, worn-out horses were bought and slaughtered for the dogs. A horse would be killed and stripped of his hide somewhere away in the woods, and left for the hounds to batten on its flesh, tearing at and fighting over it like so many jackals. When only partially consumed the carcass would become putrid; then another horse would be killed and skinned at another spot perhaps a ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... Hazard o' life! As if a man would turn from his course for them! Spiders o' hell! I'll strike my topmast to Death himself first—so the devil go with them! The blind gods may crush—they shall not conquer! They may kill—but I snap my fingers in their faces to the death! A pretty pickle, indeed! Batten down the hatches, Ramsay. Lend Jean a hand to get the guns under ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... heightened by the conduct of, shall we say, the prussianized officials,[123] who are reported to have disposed of waggons for large sums to greedy merchants, who used to raise the prices of the merchandise and batten on ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... a demagogue of a new sort: an honest one, if possible, who will tell the people they are blind and foolish, and neither flatter them nor batten on them. I have my heritage—an order I belong to. I have the blood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I want to stand up for the lot of the handicraftsmen as a good lot, in which a man may be better trained to all the best functions ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... look as if we would have to take up gastritis and golf or be measured for kilts in spite of ourselves. This little turn in bug juice is, verily, all to the Skibo. And I can stand it,' says I, 'I'd rather batten than bant any day.' ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry

... been kept waiting ten years or more. You're spoilt; that's what's the matter with you. You got your heart's desire too easily. You think this world is your own damn playground. And it isn't. Understand? You're put here to work, not play; to develop yourself, not batten on other people. You won her like a man in the face of desperate odds. You paid a heavy price for her. But even so, you don't deserve to keep her if you forget that she has paid too. By Heaven, Piers, she must have loved you a mighty lot to ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... Rochester. Looking through the list of Mayors of the city from 1654 to 1887, we notice nearly twenty of the names as having been given by Dickens to his characters, viz. Robinson, Wade, Brooker, Clarke, Harris, Burgess, Head, Weller, Baily, Gordon, Parsons, Pordage, Sparks, Simmons, Batten, Saunders, Thomson, Edwards, and Budden. The name of Jasper also occurs as a tradesman several times in the city, but we are informed that this is a recent introduction. In the Cathedral burying-ground occur the names of Fanny Dorrett and Richard Pordage. Dartle, we were ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... slum counterpart of self-esteem, and Riis calls the gang a club run wild. They have their own ideality and a gaudy pinchbeck honor. A young tough, when arrested, wrenched away the policeman's club, dashed into the street, rescued a baby from a runaway, and came back and gave himself up. They batten on the yellowest literature. Those of foreign descent, who come to speak our language better than their parents, early learn to despise them. Gangs emulate each other in hardihood, and this is one cause of epidemics in crime. They passionately ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... Charles L. Batten, University of California, Los Angeles George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles Thomas Wright, William Andrews Clark ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]

... careless as I could. It seemed a rash thing to go down to the afterhold, where any one might batten me down. But, there being no help for it, I took the bucket and went. I filled it well up to the brim from the second cask, returned to deck, and handed it to the man who stood behind Martin. They took it, pretty respectfully, and went below, Martin still standing ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... first. Begin by getting all the legs of exactly the same length, and square top and bottom. Then cut off two 22-inch lengths of the 6 by 1 inch wood, squaring the ends carefully. Two of the legs are laid on the floor, one end against the wall or a batten nailed to the floor and arranged parallel to one another, as gauged by the piece C, which is nailed on perfectly square to both, and with its top edge exactly flush with the ends of ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... recorded the burying of his pet Parmesan, "as well as my wine and some other things," in a pit in Sir W. Batten's garden. And on the selfsame fourth of September, more than a century later, in 1784, Woodforde in his Diary of a ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... thyncke, What foemen[19] riseth to ifrete[20] the londe. Theie batten[21] onne her fleshe, her hartes bloude dryncke, And all ys graunted from the ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton

... is often only after much bush grumbling, accusation, recrimination, and denial—he severely and carefully re-arranges theme pages, folds the paper, and sticks it away up over a rafter, or behind a post or batten, or under his pillow where it will safe. He wants that paper to ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... originals, that same multiplicit concordance which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... crimes of violence among the disorderly and brutal classes as in dealing with the crimes of cunning and fraud of which certain wealthy men and big politicians were guilty. Mr. Sims in Chicago was particularly efficient in sending to the penitentiary numbers of the infamous men who batten on the "white slave" traffic, after July, 1908, when by proclamation I announced the adherence of our Government to the international agreement for the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... plain hardwood table, that Mary called her 'ironing-table', upside down on top of the load, with the bedding and blankets between the legs; there were four of those common black kitchen-chairs—with apples painted on the hard board backs—that we used for the parlour; there was a cheap batten sofa with arms at the ends and turned rails between the uprights of the arms (we were a little proud of the turned rails); and there was the camp-oven, and the three-legged pot, and pans and buckets, stuck about the load and hanging under ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... to slide down and let the crowd in again as I had done on former occasions. I slipped out of the window and down the side of the barn about two feet, when I was detained unavoidably. There was a "batten" on the barn that was loose at the upper end. I think I was wearing my father's vest on that day, as he was away from home, and I frequently wore his clothes when he was absent. Anyhow the vest was too large, and when I slid down that loose board ran up between the vest and my person in such a way ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... passed A long black time within, thou shalt come out To front the sun; and Zeus's winged hound, The strong, carnivorous eagle, shall wheel down To meet thee—self-called to a daily feast— And set his fierce beak in thee, and tear off The long rags of thy flesh, and batten ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... on July 12th, the anchor was raised, the cat falls manned, and we bade New York good-by once more. A brisk northeast breeze was blowing, kicking up an uncomfortable sea, and when Sandy Hook was passed it became necessary to close all ports and batten ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... can never come, Dogs shall devour it in the fleet of Greece. So they with prayers importuned, and with tears Their son, but him sway'd not; unmoved he stood, Expecting vast Achilles now at hand. 105 As some fell serpent in his cave expects The traveller's approach, batten'd with herbs Of baneful juice to fury,[3] forth he looks Hideous, and lies coil'd all around his den, So Hector, fill'd with confidence untamed, 110 Fled not, but placing his bright shield against A buttress, with his noble heart conferr'd. ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... leaving vain laments, arouse thy soul To exultation. Sing hosanna, sing, And halleluiah, for the Lord is great, And full of mercy! He has thought of man; Yea, compass'd round with countless worlds, has thought Of us poor worms, that batten in the dews Of morn, and perish ere the noonday sun. Sing to the Lord, for he is merciful: He gave the Nubian lion but to live, To rage its hour, and perish; but on man He lavish'd immortality and ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... little of her except that she had been great and that she had been unhappy; and the descendants of the men who had thronged the theatre to see the Oedipus of Sophokles, sickening with that strange disease which makes the soul crave to batten on the fruits that are its poison, found a rare feast furnished forth in the imaginary history of the one great ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... composed partly of stainless gentlemen who do not bet and who want no man's money, partly of perfectly honest fellows who have no judgment, no real knowledge, and no self-restraint, and who serve as prey on which the bookmakers batten. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... will be able to console herself for those and similar bitternesses by the knowledge that on the whole the world honours those who battle against ill-fortune without complaint far above the needy crowd of spongers who strive to batten without effort on the crumbs that fall from the tables of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various

... picture would be incomplete. He tells us he arose early on this day; and the vain fellow says he made himself as fine as could be, putting on his velvet coat for the first time, though he had it made half a year before. "And being ready," he continues, "Sir W. Batten, my lady, and his two daughters, and his son and wife, and Sir W. Pen and his son and I, went to Mr. Young's, the flag-maker, in Corne-hill; and there we had a good room to ourselves, with wine and good cake, and saw the show very well. In which it is impossible to relate the ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... possibilities of a Judith. She was the most interesting feminine problem he had in his long years encountered. The mother mildly amused him, for he could discern the character that she was sedulously striving to batten down beneath inane social usages and formalities. Some day she would revert to the original type, and then he would be glad to renew the acquaintance. In rather a shamefaced way (a sensation he could not quite analyze) ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... alternately different sets of warp filaments to form the 'sheds'; second, throwing the shuttle, or performing some operation that amounts to the same thing; third, after inserting the weft thread, driving it home, and adjusting it by means of the batten, be it the needle, the finger, the shuttle or a ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James

... February the queen, who had been absent on the Continent selling her jewels and endeavoring to raise a force, landed at Burlington, with four ships, having succeeded in evading the ships of war which the Commons had dispatched to cut her off, under the command of Admiral Batten. That night, however, the Parliament fleet arrived off the place, and opened fire upon the ships and village. The queen was in a house near the shore, and the balls struck in all directions round. She was forced ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... sound rough plank, from ten to fourteen inches wide, and at least one and a-half inches thick. These are to be tongued and grooved, so as to make a close joint, and nailed to the frame in a vertical manner. The joint is to be covered with a narrow strip, or batten, of one and a-half inch plank. These unplaned plank may be painted with two good coats and sanded, or they may be left to take such tints and complexion as time and the weather ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward

... Tressilian, "what make you here? Are you come to triumph over the innocence you have destroyed, as the vulture or carrion-crow comes to batten on the lamb whose eyes it has first plucked out? Or are you come to encounter the merited vengeance of an honest man? Draw, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... gaining rapidly on the schooner. I could see the brass glisten on the tiller as it banged about; and still no soul appeared upon her decks. I could not choose but suppose she was deserted. If not, the men were lying drunk below, where I might batten them down, perhaps, and do what I chose with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... garotter, or, indeed, a common thief Is very glad to batten on potatoes and on beef, Or anything, in short, that prison kitchens can afford,— A cut above the diet in a ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... be carried on into his cult, if Waitz-Gerland (vi. 811) are right in saying that the Australians have no ancestor-worship. The Kurnai ghosts 'were believed to live upon plants,'[13] which are not offered to them. Chill ghosts, unfed by men, would come to waning camp-fires and batten on the broken meats. The Ngarego and Wolgal held, more handsomely, that Tharamulun (Darumulun) met the just departed spirit 'and conducted it to its future home beyond the sky.'[14] Ghosts might also accompany relics of the body, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... exceeding bitter heritage Which still a jealous God bestows From inappellable age to age, The ghostly worms that softly move Through every grey old corse of love And creep across the coffined years To batten on our blood and tears; And there were hooded shapes of death Gaunt and grey, cruel and blind, Stealing softly as a breath Through the woods that loured behind The City; hooded shapes of fear Slowly, slowly stealing near; While all the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... Royal Navy. The rest of the King's following was billetted on farm-houses in the parishes nearest to the town. Yet, as a warning that all was not their own, four frigates and two line-of-battle ships, with a commission from the rebel government of London, and flying the broad pennant of Admiral Batten, cruised between Jersey and Guernsey, never far from sight, although giving for the most part a wide berth to both the island castles, whose gunners watched them night ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... of misrule and tokens of unthrift; Within, profusion to discomfort joined, The listless body and the vacant mind; The fear, the hate, the theft and falsehood, born In menial hearts of toil, and stripes, and scorn There, all the vices, which, like birds obscene, Batten on slavery loathsome and unclean, From the foul kitchen to the parlor rise, Pollute the nursery where the child-heir lies, Taint infant lips beyond all after cure, With the fell poison of a breast impure; Touch boyhood's passions with the breath ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... fare, devour, swallow, take; gulp, bolt, snap; fall to; despatch, dispatch; discuss; take down, get down, gulp down; lay in, tuck in*; lick, pick, peck; gormandize &c. 957; bite, champ, munch, cranch[obs3], craunch[obs3], crunch, chew, masticate, nibble, gnaw, mumble. live on; feed upon, batten upon, fatten upon, feast upon; browse, graze, crop, regale; carouse &c. (make merry) 840; eat heartily, do justice to, play a good knife and fork, banquet. break bread, break one's fast; breakfast ,lunch, dine, take tea, sup. drink in, drink up, drink one's fill; quaff, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... story on story, and tumbled house on house, than anything else I can think of, at this moment." In a later letter he was even less tolerant. "What would I give that you should see the lazzaroni as they really are—mere squalid, abject, miserable animals for vermin to batten on; slouching, slinking, ugly, shabby, scavenging scarecrows! And oh the raffish counts and more than doubtful countesses, the noodles and the blacklegs, the good society! And oh the miles of miserable streets and wretched occupants,[99] to ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... owners of slum property, all the grasping shipowners, all those who batten and fatten on other people's welfare in a most favourable light. We have been thinking them almost criminals when they were in reality public benefactors. They lead to many improvements, and even though the improvements come too late to benefit those who suffer from the ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... deep there. Who, indeed, would care for her, guard her against the world with its beasts of prey that batten their lusts upon beauty and innocence? And who would help her against herself? The desire to hold her for himself and for her sprang up fierce within him. Could he desert her, leave her to fight her fights, to find her way through ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... the blood and marrow and life of the struggling people, you heartless extortioner! Begone, sirra; a foot of land upon the property for which I am agent you shall never occupy. You and your tribe, whether you batten upon the distress of struggling industry in the deceitful Maelstrooms of the metropolis, or in the dirty, dingy shops of a private country village, are each a scorpion curse to the people. Your very existence is a libel upon the laws by which the rights ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... fiddler fiddle? I have. I heard a fiddler fiddle, and the hey-dey-diddle of his frolicking fiddle called back the happy days of my boyhood. The old field schoolhouse with its batten doors creaking on wooden hinges, its windows innocent of glass, and its great, yawning fireplace, cracking and roaring and flaming like the infernal regions, rose from the dust of memory and stood once more among the trees. The ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... is introduced here to show the method of using the batten stick represented in Fig. 546. There is not a family among the Pueblos or Navajos that does not possess the necessary implements for weaving blankets, belts and garters. Figs. 500-502 will convey an idea of the variety in design and coloring which prevails in this class of Indian fabrics, while ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of the Collections Obtained from the Indians of New Mexico in 1880 • James Stevenson

... have it, leave me; y'are infectious, the plague and leprosie of your baseness spreading on all that do come near you; such as you render the Throne of Majesty, the Court, suspected and contemptible; you are Scarabee's that batten in her dung, and have no palats to taste her curious Viands; and like Owles, can only see her night deformities, but with the glorious splendor of her beauties, you are struck blind as Moles, that undermine ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... evils should have sprung from the inauguration of a system such as this. It became almost a religion to every Spanish official and trader to batten upon the unfortunate colonial, quite regardless of the fact that the pioneer settler was being strangled during the process. Since the hapless dweller in South America was not allowed to bargain or haggle, and was forced to take whatever ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... the fertility of his invention and his consistent improvement in technique. The series, "Fairy Tales of the British Empire," collected and edited by Mr. Jacobs, already include five volumes—English, More English, Celtic, More Celtic, and Indian, all liberally illustrated by J. D. Batten, as are "The Book of Wonder Voyages," by J. Jacobs (Nutt), and "Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights," edited by E. Dixon, and a second series, both published by Messrs. J. M. Dent and Co. "A Masque ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White

... Ducks and onions are the grand staple of Bermuda, but there was a fearful dearth of both at the time I speak of; a knot of young West India merchants, who, with heavy purses and large credits on England, had at this time domiciled themselves in St George's, to batten on the spoils of poor Jonathan, having monopolized all the good things of the place. I happened to be acquainted with one of them, and thereby had less reason to complain, but many a poor fellow, sent ashore on duty, had to put up with but Lenten fair at the taverns. At length, having refitted, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... with a thin layer of damp kelp and put in the potatoes. Another layer of sea-weed, then the roasting-ears. After that come the fish, wrapped in paper. Then the mussels, clams or anything else you want. When you get them all in, cover the whole thing with a lot of heavy kelp and batten it down with a big piece of canvas. The whole trick is knowing just when to open the oven. Nothing can burn so it's better to leave it too long than to try ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... seeme to set his Seale, To giue the world assurance of a man. This was your Husband. Looke you now what followes. Heere is your Husband, like a Mildew'd eare Blasting his wholsom breath. Haue you eyes? Could you on this faire Mountaine leaue to feed, And batten on this Moore? Ha? Haue you eyes? You cannot call it Loue: For at your age, The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waites vpon the Iudgement: and what Iudgement Would step from this, to this? What diuell was't, That thus hath cousend ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... in which there are man, wife, young woman, and a daughter of about fourteen years of age; the young woman and daughter sleep in a kind of box under the man and his wife. In another part of the yard is a Gipsy tent, where God's broad earth answers the purpose of a table, and a "batten of straw" serves as a bed. There is a woman, two daughters, one of whom is of marriageable age and the other far in her teens, and a youth I should think about sixteen years of age. I should judge that the mother ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... to the attack. Could she but pierce the skin, her paralyzing venom would quickly do its work. Then the murderous task would be easy. Eggs would be laid deep in the wound; grubs would hatch from them, and batten luxuriously on their unwilling host, sapping his strength, but cunningly avoiding his vitals, until they were full-fed. As they turned to pupae he would die, and from caterpillar, or may be chrysalis, there would then issue, in place of gorgeous butterfly, a host of dingy hymenoptera. So would ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... It is most unreasonable to flee the knowledge of good like the infection of a horrible disease, and batten and grow fat in the real atmosphere of a lazar-house. This was my first thought; but my second was not like unto it, and I saw that our satirist was wise, wise in his generation, like the unjust steward. He does not want light, because the darkness is more pleasant. He does not wish to see ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... non-juring clergyman in "Waverley" was a Laud; but they soon became tired of being Lauds, for Laud's Church, gewgawish and idolatrous as it was, was not sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous for them, so they must be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still calling themselves Church of England men, in order to batten on the bounty of the Church which they were betraying, and likewise have opportunities of corrupting such lads as might still resort to Oxford with principles uncontaminated. So the respectable people, whose opinions are still sound, are, to a certain extent, right when they say that the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... of the picturesque, sometimes you get sight of comfort, sometimes of opulence, through the unlatched wicket in some porte-cochere—red-painted brick pavement, foliage of dark palm or pale banana, marble or granite masonry and blooming parterres; or through a chink between some pair of heavy batten window-shutters, opened with an almost reptile wariness, your eye gets a glimpse of lace and brocade upholstery, silver and bronze, and much similar ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... speech to yourself: 'I am getting up now to do the business of a man; and am I out of humor for going about that which I was made for, and for the sake of which I was sent into the world? Was I then designed for nothing but to doze and batten beneath the counterpane? I thought action had been the end ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... protective duties were for "the people" of the United States. She might not know how Hood, employed to evade the laws enacted to hedge and restrain his master, bribed and bought, schemed and contrived, lobbied, traded, and manipulated, that his owner might batten on his blood-stained profits, while he kept his face turned away from the scenes of carnage, and his ears stopped against the piteous cries of his driven slaves. But she did know how needless it all was, and how easy, oh! how pitiably easy, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... There are times when the mind is lifted up by a master-emotion, arising one hardly knows how, nor whither leading; a feeling that takes charge of one, as a big wave is said to take charge of a boat when it destroys steerageway; an emotion so powerful that it does but batten on all which might be expected to clash with it. These are the periods when day and night are enveloped in one large state of mind, and life ceases to be a collection of discrete, semi-related moods. These are the dawns of the soul, the spring seasons ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... dancing, the first time that ever I did in my life Have been so long absent that I am ashamed to go I took occasion to be angry with him Justice of God in punishing men for the sins of their ancestors Lady Batten to give me a spoonful of honey for my cold My great expense at the Coronacion She hath got her teeth new done by La Roche That I might not seem to be afeared The monkey loose, which did anger me, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger

... the lessons from maid and nurse, A Governess help'd to make still worse, Giving an appetite so perverse Fresh diet whereon to batten— Beginning with A B C to hold Like a royal playbill printed in gold On ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... general reader" is nowadays fond of literary dram-drinking—he wants small pleasant doses of a stimulant that will act swiftly on his nerves; and, if he can get nothing better, he will contentedly batten on the tiny paragraphs of detached gossip which form the main delight of many fairly intelligent people. Books are cheap and easily procured, and the circulating library renders it almost unnecessary for any one to buy books at all. In myriads of houses in town or country ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... Missions from the Home Base McAfee Missions Striking Home McAfee The Church and the New Age Henry Carver American Social and Religious Conditions Charles Stelzle The Church of To-morrow J. II. Crooker The Social Task of Christianity Samuel Zane Batten The Christian State Samuel ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen

... shouted Dan as they struggled out of the hold. "You've done all I can ask. Hurry! Get out!" and they got out and then turned to batten the hatch cover down. But the rush of fire was too swift to be denied. A thick-bodied pillar choked through the opening and spouted to the top of the funnel—great gouts of the devouring element pulsed softly, but with lightning swiftness, ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... which I endure, When my coy-looking nymph, her grace envying, By fatal frowns my domage doth procure. It is not life which we for life approve, But that is life when on her wool-soft paps I seal sweet kisses which do batten love, And doubling them do treble my good haps. 'Tis neither love the son, nor love the mother, Which lovers praise and pray to; but that love is Which she in eye and I in heart do smother. Then muse not though I glory in my miss, Since she who holds ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... is dawning, Let her have a weaver's shuttle, 60 And a batten that shall suit it, And a loom of best construction, And a treadle of the finest. Make the weaver's chair all ready, For the damsel fix the treadle, Lay her hand upon the batten. Soon the shuttle shall be singing, And the treadle shall be thumping, Till the rattling fills the village, And the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... of the fife to his mouth, blew out all the flour, and in this humble imitation of the smoke of a gun, poor puss was run up to the batten, where she hung till she was dead. I am ashamed to say I did not attempt to save the kitten's life, although I caused her foul murder to be revenged ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... side. 'See the gray pennons I prepare, To seek my true love through the air! I will not lend that savage groom, To break his fall, one downy plume! No!—deep amid disjointed stones, The wolves shall batten on his bones, And then shall his detested plaid, By bush and brier in mid-air stayed, Wave forth a banner fail and free, Meet ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... The dates, being in new style, differ by eleven days from those of the English accounts. The Dutch hamlet of Saratoga, surprised by Marin, was near the mouth of the Fish Kill, on the west side of the Hudson. There was also a small fort on the east side, a little below the mouth of the Batten Kill.] Albany was left uncovered, and the Assembly voted L150 in provincial currency to rebuild the ruined fort. A feeble palisade work was accordingly set up, but it was neglected like its predecessor. Colonel Peter Schuyler was stationed there with his regiment in 1747, ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... face like life; for he was one of those ill-omened creatures who feed upon the misfortunes of their kind, and stand on shore in foul weather hoping the worst, instead of praying for the best: briefly, a wrecker. He and his comrade, Jacques Moinard, had heard the Agra's gun fired, and came down to batten on the wreck: but ho! at the turn of the tide, there were gensdarmes and soldiers lining the beach, and the Bayonet interposed between Theft and Misfortune. So now the desperate pair were prowling ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... while I was aching to tooth every detail of the great fight. And when they talked on military affairs, as Letchford and others did sometimes, it was difficult to keep from sending them all to the devil, for their amateur cocksureness would have riled Job. One had got to batten down the recollection of our fellows out there who were sweating blood to keep these fools snug. Yet I found it impossible to be angry with them for long, they were so babyishly innocent. Indeed, I couldn't help liking them, and finding a sort of quality ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... frightful punishment of climbing that tower, of touching those skeletons, of undressing them and burying them. That will be enough. We will not ask for more. We will not give it to the public to batten on and create a scandal which would recoil upon M. d'Aigleroche's niece. No, let us leave ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... furore began to subside. By degrees the latest boats arrived, and in about three hours from the time of commencing, the crew of the steamer began to batten down the hatches. Just then, like the "late passenger," the late trawler came up. The captain of the steamer had seen it long before on the horizon doing its best to save the market, and good-naturedly delayed a little to take its fish on board, but another smack that ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne

... covered by them in swarms; they scorned to use their wings, they preferred walking to flying; one might kill them in millions, yet other, and hungrier millions would still come on, rejoicing in the death of their predecessors, as they now had not only men's eyes and wounds to eat, but could batten upon the bodies of their slaughtered friends also. Strange to say, we were not troubled here with ants; had we been, we should only have required a few spears stuck into us to complete our happiness. A very pretty view was to be obtained from ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... afford. He was particularly desirous that Sir George and Lady Kirkbank, with Lady Lesbia, should stay at his Berkshire place during the Henley week. He had a large steam launch, and the regatta was a kind of carnival for his intimate friends, who were not too proud to riot and batten upon the parvenu's luxurious hospitality, albeit they were apt to talk ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... narrow streets and heart-broken cabmen mourning over the mistakes of misspent lives, larrup disconsolate horses over stony streets as they creak and jog and wheeze ahead of the invisible crows that seem always to be hovering above ready to batten upon their rightful provender. For an hour in the morning before our train left for Paris we chartered one of the ramshackle cabs of the town and took in Bordeaux. It was vastly unlike either Emporia or Wichita, ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... a large amount of credulity, has made Russia for two hundred years the happy hunting-ground of charlatans and impostors of various sorts claiming supernatural powers: clairvoyants, mediums, yogis, and all the rest of the tribe who batten on human weaknesses, and the perpetual desire to tear away the veil from the Unseen. It so happened that my chief at Lisbon had in his youth dabbled in the Black Art. Sir Charles Wyke was a dear old man, who had spent most ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... common—locks seven inches across; several windows without sashes, but with sturdy iron gratings and solid iron shutters. On the fourth floor the doorway communicating with the main house is entirely closed twice over, by two pairs of full length batten shutters held in on the side of the main house by iron hooks eighteen inches long, two to each shutter. And yet it was through this doorway that the ghosts—figuratively speaking, of course, for we are dealing with plain fact ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... weeks of camp life proved to be monotonously dreary. Ivan was not of the type of man to press his popularity and batten upon it. Rather, flattery, and the inevitable toadyism of weaker natures, revolted him; and he began once more to retire into himself, and to live again with dreams, which now formed themselves round any ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... make the acquaintance of that loving couple, Mr. and Mrs. Numagawa Jiro. You must disguise yourself. Jiro is to be shadowed constantly. Get any help you require, but do it. Be off, Winter, on the wings of the wind. Fasten on to Jiro. Batten on him. Become his invisible vampire. Above all else, discover his associates. Run now to the bank and cash this cheque. It repays the sum you advanced last night, and ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... fishing canoes. These canoes were of unequal sizes, some thirty feet long, two broad, and three deep; and they are composed of several pieces of wood clumsily sewed together with bandages. The joints are covered on the outside by a thin batten champered off at the edges, over which the bandages pass. They are navigated either by paddles or sails. The sail is lateen, extended to a yard and boom, and hoisted to a short mast. Some of the large canoes have two sails, and all ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook

... to alleviate it," continued Rachel. "Over work, low prices and middle-men perfectly batten on the lives of our poor girls here. I have thought it over again and again, and it is a constant ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... by wrapping them in burlap for a distance of 2 feet from the forward end, and pouring boiling water over them, as was done with the snow shoes (page 39). Before bending the boards we had fixed screw eyes in the ends of each batten, except the forward one; a rope had been strung through these screw eyes and the ends were now tied to the head piece and drawn tight so as to bend the boards into a graceful curve. In this way the ropes were of service not only ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond

... Connecticut. Plymouth was represented by its governor, Josiah Winslow, with the younger William Bradford; Massachusetts by William Stoughton, Simon Bradstreet, and Thomas Danforth. These strong men were confronted with a difficult problem. From Batten's journal, kept during that disastrous summer, we learn the state of feeling of excitement in Boston. The Puritans had by no means got rid of that sense of corporate responsibility which civilized man has inherited from prehistoric ages, and which ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... (46) "To batten the black-feathered wound-bird With the blade of my axe have I stricken Full thirty and five of my foemen; I am famed for the slaughter of warriors. May the fiends have my soul if I stain not My sharp-edged falchion once over! And then let the breaker of broadswords Be borne—and ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... staying when we arrived at Sutter's Fort was part of a long, low, single-story adobe building outside the fortification walls, and like others that were occupied by belated travellers, was the barest and crudest structure imaginable. It had an earthen floor, a thatched roof, a batten door, and an opening in the rear wall ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... Burns about this excessive care. I would have been well content to batten the hatch down and let them ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... arrival of the settlers, a desperado, named Rogers, had taken possession of a part of the lands on the Batten Kill. He warned the people off, making various threats; but the Highlanders knowing their titles were perfect, disregarded the menace, and set about industriously clearing up their lands and erecting their houses. One day, when ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... the wreckers, whose lair is secure past compare, All who batten on bones with a maw debonair, And the carcase of Poverty torture and tear With historical fraud, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various

... lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water. It had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the bow, and this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to cross the Strom, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for this circumstance we should have foundered at once—for we lay entirely buried for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill



Words linked to "Batten" :   secure, strip, fortify, strengthen, batten down, batting, stuffing, beef up



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