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Bug   Listen
noun
Bug  n.  
1.
A bugbear; anything which terrifies. (Obs.) "Sir, spare your threats: The bug which you would fright me with I seek."
2.
(Zool.) A general name applied to various insects belonging to the Hemiptera; as, the squash bug; the chinch bug, etc.
3.
(Zool.) An insect of the genus Cimex, especially the bedbug (Cimex lectularius). See Bedbug.
4.
(Zool.) One of various species of Coleoptera; as, the ladybug; potato bug, etc.; loosely, any beetle.
5.
(Zool.) One of certain kinds of Crustacea; as, the sow bug; pill bug; bait bug; salve bug, etc. Note: According to popular usage in England and among housekeepers in America around 1900, bug, when not joined with some qualifying word, was used specifically for bedbug. As a general term it is now used very loosely in America as a colloquial term to mean any small crawling thing, such as an insect or arachnid, and was formerly used still more loosely in England. "God's rare workmanship in the ant, the poorest bug that creeps." (). "This bug with gilded wings."
6.
(Computers) An error in the coding of a computer program, especially one causing the program to malfunction or fail. See, for example, year 2000 bug. "That's not a bug, it's a feature!"
7.
Any unexpected defect or flaw, such as in a machine or a plan.
8.
A hidden electronic listening device, used to hear or record conversations surreptitiously.
9.
An infectious microorganism; a germ (4). (Colloq.)
10.
An undiagnosed illness, usually mild, believed to be caused by an infectious organism. (Colloq.) Note: In some communities in the 1990's, the incidence of AIDS is high and AIDS is referred to colloquially as "the bug".
11.
An enthusiast; used mostly in combination, as a camera bug. (Colloq.)
Bait bug. See under Bait.
Bug word, swaggering or threatening language. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bug" Quotes from Famous Books



... an enormous can of bug-powder with him, and restored our popularity by lending generously after he had treated our quarters sufficiently for three days' stay. Fred did nothing to our quarters —stirred no finger, claiming convalescence ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... Jack, the fatherly Government has no intention that petticoats, even hobbled ones, should be flitting around while the habits and the methods of the busy insect were being examined through a microscope or a telescope. The choice of instrument depending, of course, upon the activity of the bug. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... corn in Egypt still. Out of that bug-riddled old barn we used to know a new and comely Phoenix has been born unto Princeton; the fire hath purged, not destroyed; and we wiseacres who flourished in the old 'flush times' yet survive in tradition, patterns for our children, very Turveydrops of collegiate deportment. The belfry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... trader. It is a great information bureau of world happenings where every item of news concerning the wheat in any way is gathered and classified—drouth, rain, frost, rust, locusts, hail, Hessian fly, monsoon or chinch bug. In every corner of the earth where the wheat streams take their rise, from green blade to brown head the progress of the crop is recorded and the prospects forecasted—on the steppes of Russia, the pampas of the Argentine, the valley of the San Joaquin, the prairies of Western Canada ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... appear. In the case of the newt it is evidently an acrid or other disagreeable secretion, which would cause any animal to repent that took it in its mouth. It is even less concerned at being caught than is the skunk, or porcupine, or stink-bug. ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... take care of that. She don't need to know nothing about it. We'll tell her we're sending her for a visit to the country for a while. After the second day she'll be as snug as a bug in a rug. They're good to 'em in those ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... Ambagamoe states that he has tried the following remedy for that destructive scourge, the coffee-bug, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... two can keep my cabin. The shack on the beach is poor, and I dare say you haven't much food. There's a bunk below the deck where I can be quite comfortable. We'll be snug as a bug ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell

... you taught me a lesson. When I see you at work, pegging away hard at something or other, every time I went into your office, up and coming with everybody, and just as ready to pass the time of day with me as the biggest bug in town, thinks I: 'You'd have made a great mistake to kill that fellow, Kinney!' And I just made up ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... the plains was the absence of vermin. I do not remember having seen a rat or a weasel on the frontier at that time, and many of the natives had never seen a potato bug or ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... Commissioners take the public school boys sleigh-riding in winter. Our Park Commissioner is ploughing up land for them to learn farming and gardening. It is all experimenting, and let us be glad we have got to that, if we do blunder once and again. The laboratory study, the bug business, we shall get rid of, and we shall get rid of some antediluvian ways that hamper our educational development yet. We shall find a way to make the schools centres of distribution in our library system as its projectors have hoped. Just ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... nice as a bug in a rug. But I was afraid something had happened, as you did not come off as soon as ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... a maggot, burrows into the feet of the natives and sucks their blood. Mr. Westwood says, "The tampan is a large species of mite, closely allied to the poisonous bug (as it is called) of Persia, 'Argos reflexus', respecting which such marvelous accounts have been recorded, and which the statement respecting the carapato or tampan would partially confirm." Mr. W. also thinks that the poison- yielding larva called N'gwa is a "species of chrysomelidae. The ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... it is some 'big bug trash,' 'tennyrate she come in a antymobile that stands to the door ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... finished the epistle, making it very spicy and satirical, with a garnish of similes and classical quotations—altogether rather a neat piece of work, only it might have been objected to as a waste of cleverness, and building a large wheel to break a very small bug upon. Then he dropped it into the post-office himself, never dreaming that Cranberry would publish it, but merely anticipating the wrath of the little-great man on receiving such a communication. It chanced, however, not long ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... upon Hawker's brow, and he kicked at the dressing case. "Say, Hollie, look here! Sometimes I think you regard me as a bug and like ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane

... "you must learn that history lesson to-day. You've dawdled over it so long, that it has become a real bug bear to you. But I'm sure if you determine to conquer it, you can easily do so. ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells

... bag and from it drew a small powder-spraying outfit such as I have seen used for spraying bug-powder. He then took out a sort of muzzle with an elastic band on it and slipped it over his head so that the muzzle protected ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... We haven't worked with the control of stink bug, because it is what might be classed as one of our minor problems. The damage is not so great but what we can overlook it at the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... ain't lidded too tight, and play roulette till either him or the game had to close down. Yes, sir; he'd string his bets along on fourteen and seven and twenty-eight and thirty-five, and if he didn't make a killing he'd believe all his life that the wheel was crooked. Stitches in a mule's hide is his bug. He could stitch up any horse on the place and never have the least hunch; but let it be a mule—Say! Down there right now he's thinking about the thousand dollars or so I'm keeping him out of. I judge from his song that he'd figured on a trip East to New York City or Denver. At that, I don't ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... metal in the dirt. I am speaking figuratively, brother. In the town I was in, there were no such back-alleys in the literal sense, but morally there were. If you were like me, you'd know what that means. I loved vice, I loved the ignominy of vice. I loved cruelty; am I not a bug, am I not a noxious insect? In fact a Karamazov! Once we went, a whole lot of us, for a picnic, in seven sledges. It was dark, it was winter, and I began squeezing a girl's hand, and forced her to kiss me. She was the daughter of an official, a sweet, gentle, submissive ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... animal-doctor than it does to be a good people's doctor. My farmer's boy thinks he knows all about horses. I wish you could see him—his face is so fat he looks as though he had no eyes—and he has got as much brain as a potato-bug. He tried to put a mustard-plaster ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... rose in the air and it attempted a somersault. It made ten times more noise than before—the flame from its tail making wild gyrations—and flopped back again with a crash. Two others rolled over on their sides after touching ground. One ended up on its back like a tumble-bug, wriggling. ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster

... cushion scale, was especially loathsome and destructive; whole orchards were enfeebled, and no way was discovered of staying its progress, which threatened also the olive and every other tree, shrub, and flower. Science was called on to discover its parasite. This was found to be the Australian lady-bug (vedolia cardinalis), and in 1888-89 quantities of this insect were imported and spread throughout Los Angeles County, and sent to Santa Barbara and other afflicted districts. The effect was magical. The vedolia attacked the cottony scale with intense vigor, and everywhere ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... under the old poplar. My wife, to whom I showed the little roll of paper, expressed a doubt, and smilingly hinted that perhaps I was too much impressed by that brilliant sketch of Edgar A. Poe called "The Gold Bug." ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... One man hit by a Soph-bug, drove eye down into stomach, carrying with it brains and all inside of the head. In order to draw them back to their proper place, your Surgeon caused a leaf from Barnum's Autobiography to be placed on patient's head, thinking that to contain more true, genuine suction than ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... instances are occurring of outbreaks of color-prejudice among the Catholics, but the policy of the church is openly and boldly against discrimination of whatever sort among its members. The fear of "social equality," that shadow of a something that never did, and never can, exist, that bug-bear of illiberal minds and narrow culture, does not stand guard at the doors of this church to drive away the colored worshipper or compel him to sit at the second table at the Lord's feast. Is it to be wondered at, then, that the colored people are ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various

... time for them to turn into grown-up beetles. While they are babies they eat as much and as fast as they can, as no baby but a beetle should. The more they eat the sooner they come out into the bright world as a June-bug or some other kind of beetle. They eat all the tender little roots they can find. This is ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... dog that spent most of his time pretending to sleep in front of Johnny Inkslinger's counter in the camp office was Fido, the watch dog. Fido was the bug-bear (not bearer, just bear) of the greenhorns. They were told that Paul starved Fido all winter and then, just before payday, fed him all the swampers, barn boys, and student bullcooks. The very marrow ...
— The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan • W.B. Laughead

... spare your threats: The bug which you would fright me with I seek. To me can life be no commodity: The crown and comfort of my life, your favour, I do give lost; for I do feel it gone, But know not how it went: my second joy, And first-fruits of my body, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... in the sun, without harming any one, crack! Gringalet gave a sweep into the web, delivered the fly, and crushed the spider, like a real Caesar! Yes, like a real Caesar! for he became as white as chalk at even touching these villainous creatures; he needed, then, resolution. He was afraid of a lady-bug, and had taken a very long time to become familiar with the turtle which Cut-in-half handed over to him every morning. Thus Gringalet, overcoming the alarm which spiders caused him, to prevent the flies from being ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... as if for a deep dive. His voice shook. "She lives in a bug-house," he said; "you drove her into it. Dr. Ferris says you were crazy yourself and nothing you ever done ought to be held against you. He says, and Miss Barbara, she says, that I ought to try to like you and feel kind to you. And—and I thought it was my duty to come and tell you ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... had bills on the slop-chest for tobacco or clothes. As each went over the poop he gazed at the line on the western horizon and smiled gladly. It meant a new life for more than one. Among the last to go was the old landsman whom Trunnell had given a chance to earn his clothes by bug-hunting. He smiled sadly at the setting sun over the dark line which meant home. Then he shook out several strings of vermin, and holding them at arm's length, stopped at the cabin window. His cheap trousers failed to reach the tops of his coarse shoes, and ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains

... of the keenest satisfaction. "I could have cried. I called him a worm, a bug, a boll-weevil; but he said he had a family and didn't intend to be shot up ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... room and have a talk with Darry. Dave knows just how to comfort and cheer a fellow who has that glum bug in his head ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock

... lah grip. Lasteways 'tis me opinion iv it, though th' docther says I swallowed a bug. It don't seem right, Jawn, f'r th' McGuires is a clane fam'ly, but th' docther says a bug got into me system. 'What sort iv bug?' says I. 'A lah grip bug,' he says. 'Yez have Mickrobes in ye'er lung,'he says. 'What's thim?' says I. 'Thims th' lah ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... fierce beyond parallel. Neither candidate's character could be assailed, but the motives governing many of their followers were. Catchwords like "gold bug" and "popocrat" flew back and forth. The question-begging phrase "sound money"—both parties professed to wish "sound money"—did effective partisan service. Neither party's deepest principles were much discussed. Many gold people assumed as beyond controversy that free coinage would drive ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... declaring that there was no plague. Governor Gage is not a physician or a man of scientific attainment. There is nothing in his record or career to show that he could distinguish between a plague bacillus and a potato-bug. Nevertheless he spent considerable of the State's money wiring positive and unauthorized statements to Washington. His State Board of Health refused to stand by him and he cut off their appropriation; whereupon they resigned, and he ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... take care of your pockets, sir,—neither robbery nor murder was it which brought me to the gallows; but innocent bug-hunting. The fact is, I was caught by a party of Mexicans, during the last war, straggling after plants and insects, and hanged as a spy. I don't blame the fellows: I had no business where I was; and they could ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... has settled back into the usual groove. There is a great deal to do about the shack. The grimmest bug-bear of domestic work is dish-washing. A pile of greasy plates is the one thing that gets on my nerves. And it is a little Waterloo that must be faced three times every day, of every week, of every month, ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer

... North much said about the great danger incurred by a night-stroll in New Orleans, and so will the stranger who next follows after me: but do not let these bug-a-boo tales deter him from a walk upon the Levee after ten P.M. It is not amongst these sons of industry, however rude, that he will encounter either insult or danger: I have traversed it often on foot and on horseback, ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... The woodland bug, whose egg is a masterpiece, invents I know not what magical centre-bit, what curious piece of locksmith's work, in order to unlock its natal ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped him a dead cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen Hand as give me the jady coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospeltrue. Criminal diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the game. Madden back Madden's a maddening back. O lust ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... courage, Miss Lizzie," she said to me; "but this thing of elderly women, with some sort of bug, starting out at night in canoes is too strong for me. Either she's going to stay in at ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... is made of grated Bread, Eggs, Cream, Nutmeg, Ginger, mixt together and Fried in a Pan with Butter, with green Wheat and Tansy stamped. R. Holme. 'To prevent being Bug-bitten. Put a sprig or two of tansey at the bed head, or as near the pillow as the smell may be agreeable.' T. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... goo-goo is no place for me, The reason porque is easy to see. I never was strong for bugs and lizards, Or the amoebic bug that tickles your gizzards. I have a reverse on fleas and snakes, And I hate the noise the ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian

... mossback! Don't you dare fall any more trees without measuring out the centre of gravity; and don't you split any more wood unless you calculate first the probable direction of riving; and don't you let any doodle-bug get away without looking ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... a doodle bug, my child Who lives alone, remote and wild. His domicile's a hole in the ground And when at home he's easily found. The only plan allowed by law Is to lure him forth upon a straw, For the doodle bug is a misanthrope And otherwise is ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck

... something that hardened too quickly in Rodan. He had the fame-and-glory bug, and could be savage about it. If you wanted to get away, you had to scheme by yourself. There wasn't only Rodan to get past; there was Dutch, the big ape with the ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... "Great bug war to-day. We play the big steam hose on mattresses, sofa-cushions—everything that we think can possibly harbor the enemies. All clothes are put into a barrel, which is hermetically closed, except where the hose is introduced. Then full ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... Swan," I found my friends were staying there, but had driven over to Homburg. Unwilling to follow them, and risk meeting my bug-bear, I awaited their return, which was to take place to a late dinner. As usual, there was much bustle at the "Swan;" many goings and comings, several carriages in the court-yard, others in the street packing for departure, a throng of greedy lohn-kutschers, warm waiters, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... mourner's-bench, meek voice of a South Carolina recruit: "It hain't a cigaroot, Sergeant; it's a lightnin'-bug as big as a ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves

... Bessarabia. We do not know why our political predecessors wanted to create a strong barrier in the face of Russia, behind which live, condemned to perpetual isolation, 3,000,000 Rumanians. That territory which lies between the Rivers Pruth and Bug contains a population of more than 5,000,000, of which 3,500,000 are Moldavians; it comprises, also, the mouth of the Danube, fertile lands, an extended shore, and the City of Odessa itself. The budget of that part of Bessarabia which lies between the Rivers Pruth and Dniester amounts ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... eyesight and his life, he proved an alibi, or spasmodic paresis, or something, and, having stood a compurgation and "ordeal" trial, was released. The historian very truly but inelegantly says, if memory serves the writer accurately, that Godwin was such a political straddle-bug that he early abandoned the use of pantaloons and returned to the toga, which was the only garment able to stand the strain of his ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye

... {arena}. Avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never alias allocated core, or by use of higher-level languages, such as {LISP}, which employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {memory smash}, {overrun ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... is the reason we sleep days and sing nights, so the birds and chickens and bug-eating animals cannot ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker

... good-naturedly as before. "Well," said he, "in the field 'The Lost and Strayed' didn't dandy much, but here I had not even unpacked my trunk; had a whole buckboard to myself after we left Captain Wickham at the Big Bug, so I just fetched 'em along. This is light, you see—nothing but serge," and he held forth his arm. "Up there, of course, we had no use for white. Gunboats and 'plebeskins' was full dress half the year round——" And just then it had occurred to ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... use of canvas caps upon the haycocks intolerably pathetic. "Why, I'm told," he said, "that they have to blanket the apple-trees while the fruit is setting; and they kill off our Colorado bugs by turning them loose, one at a time, on the potato-patches: the bug starves to death in forty-eight hours. But you've got plenty of schoolhouses, doctor; it does beat all, about the schoolhouses. And it's an awful pity that there are no children to go to school in them. Why, of course ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... and intelligence know that all the ills of life—scarcity of money, baldness, the comma bacillus, Home Rule, ... and the Potato Bug—are due to the Sherman Bill. If it is repealed, sin and death will vanish from the world, ... the skies will fall, and we shall ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... is a regular little water bug. You call him a "wiggler" when you see him swimming about in a puddle. His head is wide and flat and his eyes are set well out at the sides, while in front of them he has a pair of cute little horns or feelers. While the baby mosquito is brought up in the water, he is an air-breather ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... like to see how I wash myself? Don't laugh so loud, you might scare the fishes. I know very well that it seems to you as if I was washing or bathing all the time, but there! Some kind of a water-bug has plumped right down onto my head, and left a lot of sticky sand on it, that the ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever

... fore-and-aft sail on the mainmast, with a square sail directly above it. A pink was rigged like a schooner, but without a bowsprit or jib. For the fisheries a multitude of smaller types were constructed—such as the lugger, the shallop, the sharpie, the bug-eye, the smack. Some of these survive to the present day, and in many cases the name has passed into disuse, while the type itself is now and then to be ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... about Skinny, I knew he'd never make a good all-around scout, like some fellows. You know what I mean. Now you take Artie Van Arlen— he's got eleven merit badges and he's got the bronze medal. Maybe you'd say photography was his bug, but he never went crazy about it, that's one sure thing. Take me, I've got nine merit badges—the more the merrier, I ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... working, it cannot be less than a hundred and thirty. But the fire cannot go out, or the washing will stop, and there will be no food to-morrow. For these two miserable sweat-boxes—the paper half torn off, bed-bug dens that nothing could thoroughly cleanse except a fire that would exterminate the very walls—she pays two dollars and a half per week. As a striking illustration of the good results of agitation on these subjects, I called at this house during the past week, when one of the tenants ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks

... stopped smiling and turned away from the window. It hadn't been an easy path and what was coming up now was the hardest part. The goddam psychs were the toughest, always wanting him to bug out on the deal because of their brainwave graphs and word association tests and ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel

... sure,' Aunt Rose said, looking at me through her glasses, just as if I were a queer bug, or butterfly such as she'd never seen before. ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks

... and trains, and cows and horses were quite meaningless to him, but not quite so baffling as the odd little figures which appeared beneath and between the colored pictures—some strange kind of bug he thought they might be, for many of them had legs though nowhere could he find one with eyes and a mouth. It was his first introduction to the letters of the alphabet, and he ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... and fatness, and collected in the corner of some grazier's farm waiting, gaunt and ravenous as Ghouls, for their portion of blood. During these melancholy periods of want, everything in the shape of an esculent disappears. The miserable creatures will pick up chicken-weed, nettles, sorrell, bug-loss, preshagh, and sea-weed, which they will boil and eat with the voracity of persons writhing under the united agonies of hunger and death! Yet the very country thus groaning under such a terrible sweep of famine is actually ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... exactly in half, and then recombine it in perfect interference, you'd have annihilation of energy. Cancellation to extinction. The trouble is, you never do get that. You can't get monochromatic light, because light can't be monochromatic. That's due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty—my pet bug-bear. The atom that radiates the light, must be moving. If it isn't, the emission of the light itself gives it a kick that moves it. Now, no matter what the quantum might have been, it loses energy in kicking the atom. That changes the situation ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell

... larger dock marked the farthest point of land. A great derrick stood by one wharf, with piles of granite block near by. Little Simon was calling directions back to Hand at the engine as they chugged past fishing smacks and mooring poles, past lobster-pot buoys and a little bug-lighthouse, threading their way into the harbor and up to the dock. Agatha appealed to the ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... one; but now her lonely mamma discovered how good and affectionate a chicken she was, for Blot was a great comfort to her, never running away or disobeying in any way, but always close to her side, ready to creep under her wing, or bring her a plump bug when the poor biddy's appetite failed her. They were very happy together till Thanksgiving drew near, when a dreadful pestilence seemed to sweep through the farm-yard; for turkeys, hens, ducks, and geese fell a prey to it, and were seen by their surviving relatives ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... him. "I went immediately to the jail, where one of the rank and file of the Kittymunkses was confined; and say, you ought to have seen the poor, miserable, bug-bitten wretch they stood up in front of me. He wore about a half-pint of dirty whiskers, and in his make-up he reminded me of a scare-crow that brother and I once made to put out on the farm in Wisconsin. I have seen a number ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read

... San Domingo—is very slight; but then, according to the story, she is not wanted to be anything more. The cruelty, treachery, etc., of the half-caste Biassou are not overdone, nor is the tropical scenery, nor indeed anything else. Even the character of Bug-Jargal himself, a modernised Oroonoko (whom probably Hugo did not know) and a more direct descendant of persons and things in Rousseau, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, and to some extent the "sensibility" novelists generally (whom he certainly did know), is kept within bounds. And, what ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... it," he said fiercely. "He's dead—it can't help him any to——" He stopped and pulled himself together. "Swan, you take a fool's advice and don't tell anybody else about feeling words talk in your head. They'll have you in the bug-house at Blackfoot, sure as you live." He looked at the saddle, hesitated, looked again at Swan, who was watching him. "That blood most likely got there when Fred was packing a deer in from the hills. And marks on them ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... sativum, Linn.), "a plant of little beauty and of easiest culture," is a hardy annual herb of the natural order Umbelliferae. The popular name is derived from the generic, which comes from the ancient Greek Koris, a kind of bug, in allusion to the disagreeable odor of the foliage and other green parts. The specific name refers to its cultivation in gardens. Hence the scientific name declares it to be the ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains

... in an instant be precipitated into the ditch below, a very considerable depth, where they might either have remained till the doctor came to them, or, if they were able, begin their labours de novo. This was a very good bug-trap; for, at that time, I thought just as little of killing a Frenchman as I did of destroying the filthy little ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... is familiar by repoote at least with the several plans for redoocin' draw-poker to the prosaic level of shore-things. Thar's the "bug" an' the "foot-move" an' the "sleeve holdout" an' dozens of kindred schemes for playin' a cold hand. An' thar's optimists, when the game is easy, who depends wholly on a handkerchief in their laps to cover their nefariousness. If I'm driven to counsel a gent concernin' ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... take thee for a scout, he will place thee in the bug-house,—or he will cut off thy head with that same sabre. And how wilt thou make thy way to him? They ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... he swore he'd have a ride, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo; Sword and pistols by his side, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo. For lunch he packed a beetle bug, (Shovel) With a rinktum bolly kimo; Tucked inside his tummy snug, (Shovel) With a rinktum ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... to put up at the Clematis House. He's a big bug all right. Wanted a private setting-room, he did," Thomas chuckled. "Guess he's the sort that can't remember back further than he feels like doing. Old man Ware's private setting-room was a keg o' nails in Sol Peter's store. Nobody else ever thought of taking that particular keg. Stood ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... connected with gardening that is a bug-bear. That is hand-weeding. To get down on one's hands and knees, in the blistering hot dusty soil, with the perspiration trickling down into one's eyes, and pick small weedlets from among tender plantlets, is not a pleasant occupation. There are, ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... smile, much less speak. Under that look my self-importance shrank until the yellow dog with which I had compared myself loomed as large as an elephant. She might have looked that way at some curious and rather ridiculous bug, just before calling a servant to step ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... to-day at the legend of the native neglect of him. Was he not even at that time on all lips, had not my brother, promptly master of the subject, beckoned on my lagging mind with a recital of The Gold-Bug and The Pit and the Pendulum?—both of which, however, I was soon enough to read for myself, adding to them The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Were we not also forever mounting on little platforms at our infant schools to "speak" The Raven and Lenore and the ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... do something or die," he explained, gasping. "I've gone through a heap, the last few hours, and I was right where I couldn't do a thing. By gracious, I struck the ranch about as near bug-house as a man can get and recover. ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... let me have my say out," remonstrated Mother Mayberry as they all laughed merrily at Mrs. Peavey's scandalized remonstrance. "They are for them poor misfortunates over at Flat Rock what the Government have sent Tom down here to study about, so he can find the bug that makes the disease and stop it from spreading everywhere. While he's a-working with 'em he has to see that they are provided for; and they condition are shameful. He wants outfits for the women and children and Mr. Petway have ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... there, Bill," he said. "You sure got the argument of numbers. But say, boys, honest, what bug you all got in your heads? You see in this land of the free you can't subject me and my friend Gallito to such indignities as you're a heaping on us. As far as I can make out, you're only laying up trouble for yourself, and also"—here there rang a peculiarly ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... always have the line under perfect control, therefore do not attempt to cast a line too great a distance. If we do not fix the hook into the fish's mouth at the instant that he seizes the fly, he will very soon find that what he thought was a nice fat bug or juicy caterpillar is nothing but a bit of wool and some feathers with a sting in its tail, and he will spit it out before we can ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... take 'em away from you. Besides, we have some stuff that you'd like to have, too, so that makes us pretty much even. If we started confiscating illegal equipment from you, the JD's would swoop in here, take your legitimate equipment, bug it up, and they'd be driving us all nuts within a week. So long as you don't use illegal equipment illegally, the department ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... the mood to do much. I work in my garden intermittently, and the harvest bug (bete rouge we call him here) gets in his work unintermittently on me. If things were normal this introduction to the bete rouge would have seemed to me a tragedy. As it is, it is unpleasantly unimportant. I clean house ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich

... silver, then to moralise; not kill the bird and be compelled to spend the silver in destroying insects that the bird would have delighted to consume, and moralise upon the destructiveness of some hitherto insignificant bug or beetle, which has suddenly ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... up quickly. "Goin' away, is he? Well, maybe it's best, all around, girl. I see his name's been mentioned in all the medical papers, and the big magazines, and all that, lately. Gettin' t' be a big bug, Von Gerhard is. Sorry he's goin', though. I was plannin' t' consult him just before I go on my—vacation. But some other guy'll do. He don't approve of me, Von ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... "Love in Old Clothes;" but more of them are not love-stories at all. If we were to pick out the ten best Short-stories, I think we should find that fewer than half of them made any mention at all of love. In "The Snow Image" and in "The Ambitious Guest," in "The Gold-Bug" and in "The Fall of the House of Usher," in "My Double and how he Undid me," in "Devil-Puzzlers," in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," in "Jean-ah Poquelin," in "A Bundle of Letters," there is little or no mention of the love of man for woman, which is the chief topic of conversation in a Novel. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... will know that it is a hospital, and be too kind to hurt or frighten their neighbors," began Nelly; but as she spoke, a plump white dove walked in, looked about with its red-ringed eyes, and quietly pecked up a tiny bug that had just ventured out from the crack where it had taken refuge when ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... of material forces. The passion of physical fear or of superstitious horror is that which his writings most frequently excite. These tales represent various grades of the frightful and the ghastly, from the mere bug-a-boo story like the Black Cat, which makes children afraid to go in the dark, up to the breathless terror of the Cask of Amontillado, or the Red Death. Poe's masterpiece in this kind is ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... my microscope, upon my parlor rug, With a very heavy quarto and a very lively bug; The true bug had been organized with only two antennae, But the humbug in the copperplate would have them ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... to you since I was bug-bitten in France, and laid up in consequence, under a surgeon's hands in Holland? This mishap brought with it much more immediate good than evil. Bilderdyk, whose wife translated 'Don Roderic' into Dutch, and who is himself confessedly the best poet, and the most learned man in that country, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... ho'n un fly 'pon da tree. De fool bud bin tekky one nurrer ho'n un set by da crik-side. Dey bin sta't in fer starf deyse'f. Da fool bud, 'e stay by da crik-side wey dey bin no'n 't all fer eat; 'e no kin fin' no bittle dey-dey. Sma't bud git in da tree da y-ant un da bug swa'm in da bark plenty. 'E pick dem ant, 'e y-eat dem ant; 'e pick dem bug, 'e y-eat dem bug. 'E pick tel 'e craw come full; he feel ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... wonderfully good and lovely woman. I—I am going to want you then. I know it. Let's just be friends now, can't we—until later—for a long time yet? I'll promise on my word of honor never to put another bug in my pockets, or my handkerchiefs. But I can't promise not to touch them, for I have to do it in class. That's how I earn my living! But I will wash my hands with Ivory soap and sapolio, and rub them with cold cream, and powder them, and perfume them, before I ever come ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston

... logic, step by step, which led him from the natural rights of his countrymen to their liberty, from their liberty to their independence. He endured with a grim humor the revilings of those whom he called "malevolent critics and bug-writers." He broke with his old and dear associates in England, ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke

... all right, in a few moments," he said. "Please go to sleep. I shall be snug as a bug in ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland

... if you are out merely for sport, perhaps it is as well to stick to them. But utility is another matter. Personally, I do not care at all to kill trout unless by the fly; but when we need meat and they do not need flies, I never hesitate to offer them any kind of doodle-bug they may fancy. I have even at a pinch clubbed them to death in a shallow, land-locked pool. Time will come in your open-water canoe experience when you will pull into shelter half full of water, when you will be glad of the fortuity of a chance cross-wave to help you out, when ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White

... long time now I have wanted to dare to come out and stand up before this Modesty Bug-a-boo and have it out with it and say what I think of it, as one of the great, still, sinister threats against our having or getting a real national life ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... one-third an average—the chief damage being done by the frost—though the tarnished plant-bug was very destructive in Southern Illinois, and did some damage in other localities. Prices were from fifty to a hundred per cent higher than usual—supply and demand being the factors, in the fruit trade, as well as in all others, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... grumbled Bud, who was very tired, "if the old chestnut bug that's killing all the trees in the next county doesn't get up here next year and put the kibosh on our fine nut trees for keeps. Oh! look at that rabbit spin out of that brush pile! He's on the jump, let me tell you! Hugh, I'm beginning to recognize some things around here, ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler

... legends was published by the same scholar in 1839.[94] This important national feature has at last excited some attention among the Polish scholars. In 1838 a collection of the songs of the people in the country adjacent to the Bug was published.[95] Another appeared in the same year, prepared by the poets Siemienski and Bielowski (Prague 1838), with the title Dumki, i.e. Elegies,[96] being Polish translations of Malo-Russian ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... said the colonel. "'I cal'late ter chuck a bug ez fur ez enny o' them city fellers, 'n I kin,' says Hugh. Going to begin ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... trade! That's just a piece o' masters' humbug. It's rate o' wages I was talking of. Th' masters keep th' state o' trade in their own hands; and just walk it forward like a black bug-a-boo, to frighten naughty children with into being good. I'll tell yo' it's their part,—their cue, as some folks call it,—to beat us down, to swell their fortunes; and it's ours to stand up and fight hard,—not for ourselves ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... release in ease of any accident. Jardin buttoned himself into an elaborate and most expensive leather coat, carefully, adjusted his goggles, stepped into a plane beside the usual pilot who winked slyly at Lee, and proceeded, to send his big bug skimming here and there across the field under the wobbly and uncertain guidance of Horace. They did not leave the ground, but Frank soon soared upward on a short flight that filled Bill with joy and envy all at the same time. He felt that ...
— Battling the Clouds - or, For a Comrade's Honor • Captain Frank Cobb

... Clerodendron fallax is subject to attack by mealy bug, and this pest may be dealt with by hand picking or by washing the leaves with insecticide two evenings in succession. Aphis are also troublesome and should be cleared ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... low, sweet songs. He was doing the very thing of which I had so often told Harriet. We watched and listened with breathless interest. In the midst of the song he dived into the brook; in a moment he came up with a water-bug in his bill, settled on the boulder again, gave his nods, and resumed his song, seemingly at the point where he left off. After a few low, sweet notes he broke off again and plunged into the water. This time he came up quickly and alighted on the spot he had just left, and went on ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... a descendant of Aish-ki-bug-e-koszh, the most famous of all the Chippewa chiefs. He is stalwart in appearance and endowed with marked talents, and well deserves the title of "chief." At the appointed time for the dinner, Captain Glazier, accompanied ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... words that I have written on this bit of paper, which sound nearly alike, though, as you perceive, they are quite differently spelled. Bix, bax, box, bux, and bocks," continued Andrea, endeavoring to pronounce, "big," "bag," "bog," "bug," and "box," all of which, it seemed to him, had a very close family resemblance in sound, though certainly spelled with different letters; "these are words, Signore, that are enough to drive a foreigner to abandon your tongue ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Jackson," he said, with a backward glance at the men, "I've only played the regular dodge on 'em. They've all got the sailor's bug in their heads and want to go coasting; so I told ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... has a right to demand a perfect result. Suppose Mr. Smith should overhear a couple of small bugs holding a discussion as to the existence of Mr. Smith, and suppose one should have the temerity to declare upon the honor of a bug that he had examined the whole question to the best of his ability, including the argument based upon design, and had come to the conclusion that no man by the name of Smith had ever lived. Think then of Mr. Smith flying into an ecstasy of rage, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... gardener in growing grapes indoors. Of these, mealy-bug, red-spider, thrips and mildew are most troublesome. In a well-conducted grapery, there is never an intermission in the warfare against ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... the favorite haunt of this hateful little monster, and he who does not find it lying in wait when turning up land that has been long in sod, may deem himself lucky. The reader need not draw a sigh of relief when I tell him that I mean merely the "white grub," the larva of the May-beetle or June-bug, that so disturbs our slumbers in early summer by its sonorous hum and aimless bumping against the wall. This white grub, which the farmers often call the "potato worm," is, in this region, the strawberry's most formidable foe, and, by devouring the roots, will often destroy acres of plants. If ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe

... life I have left to swear by, There's nothing that can stir me from my self. What I have done, I have done without repentance, For death can be no Bug-bear unto me, So long as ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... grapes. Crop injured by attacks of rose-bug in the spring. Whether Noah was justifiable in preserving ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Johnny Cricket caught hold of Willy Ladybug's four little hands and helped him to climb up the tall reeds, for Willy was not as old as the other Bug Boys, and might fall in the water if they ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle

... came out of their shells, but no one saw them do it, for it was in the night; but Sly-boots was more obliging. One morning Miss Ruth heard a rustling, and lo! what looked like a great bug, with long, slender legs, was climbing to the top of the box. Soon he hung by his feet to the netting, rested motionless a while, and then slowly, slowly unfolded his wings to the sun. They were brown and ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... whom the colonists call Bugga-Bug. Her subjects are divided into three classes; the Laborers, who do nothing but work—the Soldiers, who do nothing but fight—and the Gentry, who neither work nor fight, but spend their lives in the pleasant duty of continuing their species. ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... special conditions of the forest-age set in. We are, therefore, quite prepared to hear that the geologist cannot give us the slenderest information. He finds the wing of what he calls "the primitive bug" (Protocimex), an Hemipterous insect, in the later Ordovician, and the wing of a "primitive cockroach" (Palaeoblattina) in the Silurian. From these we can merely conclude that insects were already numerous and varied. But we have already, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... candle, that flies as I sing, Bright little fairy-bug, night's little king; Come and I'll dream as you guide me along; Come and I'll pay you, my bug, ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... thing does not exist. I think the same may be said of the useless one. I don't believe even the humblest of God's creatures goes out of life without having been at one time or another an influence for good. I even have hopes of Diogenes. Some day there will be a scrap of refuse or an ugly little bug which mars the symmetry of the pool, and Diogenes will eat it,—and perhaps die of indigestion as ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... woman, and yet it had its good points. It offered a little religious freedom, which could not be had among those who wanted it so much that they braved the billow and the wild beast, the savage, the drouth, the flood, and the potato-bug, to obtain it before anybody else got a chance at it. Freedom is a ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye



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