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Crab   Listen
noun
Crab  n.  
1.
(Zool.) One of the brachyuran Crustacea. They are mostly marine, and usually have a broad, short body, covered with a strong shell or carapace. The abdomen is small and curled up beneath the body. Note: The name is applied to all the Brachyura, and to certain Anomura, as the hermit crabs. Formerly, it was sometimes applied to Crustacea in general. Many species are edible, the blue crab of the Atlantic coast being one of the most esteemed. The large European edible crab is Cancer padurus. Soft-shelled crabs are blue crabs that have recently cast their shells. See Cancer; also, Box crab, Fiddler crab, Hermit crab, Spider crab, etc., under Box, Fiddler. etc.
2.
The zodiacal constellation Cancer.
3.
(Bot.) A crab apple; so named from its harsh taste. "When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl."
4.
A cudgel made of the wood of the crab tree; a crabstick. (Obs.)
5.
(Mech.)
(a)
A movable winch or windlass with powerful gearing, used with derricks, etc.
(b)
A form of windlass, or geared capstan, for hauling ships into dock, etc.
(c)
A machine used in ropewalks to stretch the yarn.
(d)
A claw for anchoring a portable machine.
Calling crab. (Zool.) See Fiddler., n., 2.
Crab apple, a small, sour apple, of several kinds; also, the tree which bears it; as, the European crab apple (Pyrus Malus var. sylvestris); the Siberian crab apple (Pyrus baccata); and the American (Pyrus coronaria).
Crab grass. (Bot.)
(a)
A grass (Digitaria sanguinalis syn. Panicum sanguinalis); called also finger grass.
(b)
A grass of the genus Eleusine (Eleusine Indica); called also dog's-tail grass, wire grass, etc.
Crab louse (Zool.), a species of louse (Phthirius pubis), sometimes infesting the human body.
Crab plover (Zool.), an Asiatic plover (Dromas ardeola).
Crab's eyes, or Crab's stones, masses of calcareous matter found, at certain seasons of the year, on either side of the stomach of the European crawfishes, and formerly used in medicine for absorbent and antacid purposes; the gastroliths.
Crab spider (Zool.), one of a group of spiders (Laterigradae); called because they can run backwards or sideways like a crab.
Crab tree, the tree that bears crab applies.
Crab wood, a light cabinet wood obtained in Guiana, which takes a high polish.
To catch a crab (Naut.), a phrase used of a rower:
(a)
when he fails to raise his oar clear of the water;
(b)
when he misses the water altogether in making a stroke.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crab" Quotes from Famous Books



... IV. of the Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits before this book is published. Here again I find interesting records of imitative dancing. One dance imitates the swimming movements of the large lizard (Varanus), another is an imitation of the movements of a crab, another imitates those of a pigeon, and another those of a pelican. At a dance which I witnessed in the Roro village of Seria a party from Delena danced the "Cassowary" dance; and Father Egedi says it is certainly ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... toothpicks. The Crows howled with glee over the ludicrous antics of the fellow, and set him such a pace that he was soon a perfect waterfall of perspiration, and was crying for mercy. At length he caught a crab and went heels over head backward on the ground, and they left him to recover his ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... another girlish voice, a little firmer, but hardly less sweet, than the first, "only think! While we were all in school, he watched his opportunity and killed the robin that lives in the crab-apple-tree. The gardener says he heard it cry, and ran with his hoe; and there was this wicked, horrid, grim, great Pet galloping as fast as he could gallop to the stable, with its poor little beak sticking out at one side of his grinning mouth, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... children; no less than nineteen Jupiters, one in silver with a goat at his side. These are continued in the following case (78), including Isis; Ganymede and the eagle; Terpsichore; Apollos; Junos; a fine Apollo from Paramythia; a Triton, with crab's claws, and a face turning into sea weed; Dianas, one, in silver, holding a crescent; and Neptune, distinguishable by his trident. Three cases, next in order of number (80-82), are devoted to ancient Roman horse-trappings. Busts ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... some water to cook something good for your brother, who must remain in that stall and get fat; when he is fat enough I shall, eat him." Grethel began to cry, but it was all useless, for the old witch made her do as she wished. So a nice meal was cooked for Hansel, but Grethel got nothing else but a crab's claw. ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten

... probably the best fish that swims—better even than the pompano of the Gulf—and when you say that you are saying about all there is to be said for a fish. And the big crabs of the Pacific side are the hereditary princes of the crab family. They look like spread-eagles; and properly prepared they taste like Heaven. I often wonder what the crabsters buy one-half so precious as the stuff they sell—which is a quotation from Omar, ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... accordin' to the planets and such hidden things. Why so, I can't tell 'e, any more 'n anybody could tell 'e why the moon sails higher up the sky in winter than her do in summer; but so 't is. An' facts be facts. Why, theer's the auld 'Sam's Crab' tree in this very orchard we'm walkin' to. I knawed that tree three year ago to give a hogshead an' a half as near as damn it. That wan tree, mind, with no more than a few baskets of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... to pitch upon me here in broad daylight, so I paid them little heed at the moment. I found old Crab Bolster and his skiff to lighter my cargo across the inlet, and when the boy came down from the store with the barrow, Crab and I loaded the provisions and spring water into his boat. Paul and his companions looked on, whispering together ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... and expressed complete agreement. He was watching a small crab hurrying among the stones with a funny frown between his brows. He was not quite sure of the nature or capabilities of these creatures, and till he knew more he deemed it advisable to let them pass ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... more on the "two-sticks" Uncle Jabez had made for her; but she never liked to have even Ruth see her at these exercises. She certainly did get about in a very queer manner— "just like a crab with the St. Vitus ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson

... macassar oil with salt and stubborn locks, yet the artificiality is kept at a minimum. People really do bathe, really do take walks on the beach for the love of the ocean, really do pick up shells and throw them away again, really do go yachting and crab-catching; and if they try city manners in the evening, they are so tired with their honest day's work that it is apt to end in misery. On the hotel piazzas you see beauties that surprise you with exquisite touches of the warm and languid South. That dark Baltimore girl, her hair a constellation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... to the land these last few years. But what do they amount to? Whereas in 1901 the proportion of town to country population in England and Wales was 3 10/37—1, in 1911 it was 3 17/20—1; very distinctly greater! At this crab's march we shall be some time getting "back to the land." Our effort, so far, has been something like our revival of Morris dancing, very pleasant and sthetic, but without real economic basis or strength to stand up against the lure of the towns. And how queer, ironical, ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... soales, dabs, whitings, sturbuts, gurnets, and all such other, as are well knowne not to be ill, or unwholesome to feed on. All which may be altered with mint, hyssope, anise, &c. Also cre-fishes, crab-fish, lobsters, and the ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane

... to the roots—may somewhat alter the fruit, though all within narrow limits; so may change of circumstances a little affect an author's writings, but only within a certain range. The apple-tree may produce a somewhat different apple; but it will never producn an orange, neither will it yield a crab. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... of this suitor, presumptive if not apparent, did not particularly please Xanthippe. Socrates was an ill-favored young man. He was tall, raw-boned, and gangling. When he walked, he slouched; and when he sat down, he sprawled like a crab upon its back. His coarse hair rebelled upon his head and chin; and he had a broad, flat nose, that had been broken in two places by the kick of an Assyrian mule. Withal, Socrates talked delightfully; and it is not hard to imagine that Xanthippe's pretty face, plump figure, and vivacious manners ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field

... Learn from the crab, O runner fresh and fleet, Sideways to move, or backward, when discreet; Life is not all ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... permission to go out together and be gone the entire afternoon. We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an old shoe-box, and then strolled hand-in-hand across that most delightful of New ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... be thankful, you poor starving beings! Here, Mrs. Griggs! Accept, and do all you can! Here are eggs, and some milk and fresh water, four poulets, such as they are, and a huge monster of a crab; but all the bread is leavened, and you little guess what Ivy and I had to go through before we were allowed to buy anything. We were had up to the Mayor, and had to constater all manner of things about our ship, to prove that we ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... he might catch cold from standing there in his own draught. He was gazing off into space in an absent-minded kind of way, apparently not aware that anything was wrong with him; and on all sides he was surrounded by interesting exhibits, such as a crab, and a scorpion, and a goat, and a chap with a bow and arrow—and ...
— "Speaking of Operations—" • Irvin S. Cobb

... kitchen of Mrs. Owen's house on Waupegan. The August afternoon sun struck goldenly upon battalions of glasses and jars in the broad, screened veranda, an extension of the kitchen itself. The newly affixed labels announced peach, crab-apple, plum, and watermelon preserves (if the mention of this last item gives you no thrill, so much the worse for you!); jellies of many tints and flavors, and tiny cucumber pickles showing dark green amid ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... frequently seen, both rorquals and killers. On the pack, sea-leopards and crab-eater seals sometimes appeared. At one time as many as a hundred would be counted from the bridge and at other moments not a single one could be sighted. They were not alarmed, unless the ship happened to bump against ice-masses ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... blemishing the excellence of nature. Whelps of one litter are ever most loving, and brothers that are sons of one father should live in friendship without jar. O Saladyne, so it should be; but thou hast with the deer fed against the wind, with the crab strove against the stream, and sought to pervert nature by unkindness. Rosader's wrongs, the wrongs of Rosader, Saladyne, cries for revenge; his youth pleads to God to inflict some penance upon thee; his virtues are pleas that enforce ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge

... the bullying sheriff away from the cook-tent—away from the camp, indeed. He was going sideways like a crab, and Barnacle was growling and almost choking himself as he ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison

... I wouldn't mind the darkness and the dreariness—and I'm sure such a place for spiders I never did see in my life; there was one as I took down with my broom to-day, and scrunched, as big as a small crab—but it's worse than, ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... will now proceed to relieve your animal spirits by some spirited animal conduct. The animal that you will represent will be the crab. Down on your ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock

... night, how full of weariness after heavy tramping through leagues of loose stones. I had been tramping from desolate Cape Pitsoonda over miles and miles of sea holly and scrub through a district where were no people. I had been living on crab-apples and sugar the whole day, for I could get no provisions. It is a comic diet. I should have liked to climb up inland to find a resting-place and seek out houses, but I was committed to the seashore, for the cliffs were sheer, and where the rivers made what might have been a passage, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... labour. They are toiling for their daily bread: a round bit of moist sand appears at the little labourer's mouth, and is quickly brushed off by one of the claws; a second bit follows the first; and another, and still another come as fast as they can be laid aside. As these pellets accumulate, the crab moves sideways, and the work continues. The first impression one receives is, that the little creature has swallowed a great deal of sand, and is getting rid of it as speedily as possible: a habit he indulges in of darting into his hole ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... see Drusilla, as you call her," said Mrs. Reynolds, "and take her some of my crab jelly. I've seen her many's the time sitting out in the yard with naught but a trained maid by her. Poor, poor old soul, with ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... tumbled-down shack, hardly bigger than a closet, in which boys who had been wont to dive from the old bridge had donned their bathing suits. It had been thrown together as a storage place for fishing tackle and crab nets and these latter, rotten and gray with age still hung in the ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... the wedding in the spring, and the tour through the parishes for days together, lads and lasses journeying with them; and afterward the new home with a bigger stoop than any other in the village, with some old, gnarled crab-apple-trees and lilac bushes, and four years of happiness, and a little child that died; and all the time Jacques rising in the esteem of Michelin the lumber-king, and sent on inspections, and to organize camps; for weeks, sometimes for months, away from ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... bags. There were nectarines and plums, and pomegranates and persimmons from Japan, and later on, little dishes of plump strawberries-raised in pots. There were quail which had come from Egypt, and a wonderful thing called "crab-flake a la Dewey," cooked in a chafing-dish, and served with mushrooms that had been grown in the tunnels of abandoned mines in Michigan. There was lettuce raised by electric light, and lima beans that had come from Porto Rico, and artichokes ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... looked over his shoulder, caught a crab, recovered himself, and steered the boat in under the shade ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... here. My staying won't help your lung a damn bit and if you want anything you can hunt up the men that carry the light. Maybe they are the ones that are killing off the horses. Any way, you can wash your own dishes from now on. It will do you good. If I had of known you were the crab you are I'll say I would never have come. You are welcome to my share of the outfit. I hope some one shoots me and puts me out of my misery quick if I ever show symptoms of wanting to camp out again. I am going ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... Salter, a former servant of Hans Sloane, lived in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. "His house, a barber-shop, was known as 'Don Saltero's Coffee-House.' The curiosities were in glass cases and constituted an amazing and motley collection—a petrified crab from China, a 'lignified hog,' Job's tears, Madagascar lances, William the Conqueror's flaming sword, and Henry the Eighth's coat ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... cases. 2 cups crab meat. 3 tablespoons butter. 3 tablespoons flour. Yolks 2 eggs. 1 tablespoon onion finely chopped. Salt, pepper, paprika. Few grains each cayenne, mustard and nutmeg. ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller

... she won't git nothin' outa me. She never did. I wouldn't give a poor consumpted cripple crab a crutch to cross ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes

... county then was the White-sour, white in colour, of a middling size, and early ripe; other good ones were the 'Deux-Anns, Jersey, French Longtail, Royal Wilding, Culvering, Russet, Holland Pippin, and Cowley Crab.' In Herefordshire it was the custom to open the earth about the roots of the apple trees and lay them bare and exposed for the 'twelve days of the Christmas holidays', that the wind might loosen them. Then they were covered ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler

... tell you the whole thing now, but here are the main heads. They're at the Savoy Hotel, in Carlsbad I mean. I go to Pupp's. We meet. They stare. I come out of my British shell as the humble hero of the affair at the other Savoy. I crab my hotel. They swear by theirs. I go to see their rooms. I wait till I can get the very same thing immediately overhead on the second floor—where I can even hear the old swine cursing her from under his mud-poultice! ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... of Peters was something like the sidewise waddle of a very aged crab. He looked to the north, but his feet carried him to the east. That he was much moved was attested by the colour which had mounted even to the gleaming expanse of that ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... the bull, the heavenly twins. And next the crab, the lion shines, The virgin and the scales, The scorpion, archer, and the goat, The man who holds the watering-pot, And fish ...
— The Song of Sixpence - Picture Book • Walter Crane

... sawyers and two carpenters to work in building houses; one man was employed in making a crab to heave the boat by, another attended the live-stock, and the remainder were busied in clearing ground at ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... lobsterman," explained Amy. "He is called Tin-Back because he never sells that sort of crab, and he hopes he can find a lump of ambergris in a dead whale ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope

... all very well in the Doctor's prospectus, and Miss Zoe Birch—(a pretty blossom it is, fifty-five years old, during two score of which she has dosed herself with pills; with a nose as red and a face as sour as a crab-apple)—this is all mighty well in a prospectus. But I should like to know who would take Miss Zoe for a mother, or would have her ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a little before, Half an apple goes to the core; At Christmas time, or a little after, A crab in the hedge, and thanks to ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... know, Avdotya Romanovna, you are awfully like your brother, in everything, indeed!" he blurted out suddenly to his own surprise, but remembering at once what he had just before said of her brother, he turned as red as a crab and was overcome with confusion. Avdotya Romanovna couldn't help laughing when she looked ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... garden?" asked George. "The boys down at the dock say they can make lots of money selling soft crabs. They get from sixty to seventy-five cents a dozen, and, oh, mother, if Bert and me could only have a net and a boat and a crab car, and roll up our pants like Nat Springer, we'd just bring you so much money that you needn't hardly sew at all!" and in his enthusiasm George's eyes sparkled, and he ruthlessly trampled upon every rule of grammar he had ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... have answered the desired purposes most effectually. The pipe was hauled over a road built to the inlet end, and shot down the mountain side by means of a V-shaped trough of wood. For the lower end, the joints were hauled up the cliff side into place by a crab worked by horse-power. On steep inclinations, the pipe was held firmly in place by wire ropes fastened to iron pins in the solid rock, as shown by the sketch. The covering of earth and stone was 1 foot ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... ground, is so largely used for grafting; but the paradise stocks, it is asserted (10/84. See 'Journ. of Hort. Tour, by Deputation of the Caledonian Hort. Soc.' 1823 page 459.) cannot be propagated true by seed. The common wild crab varies considerably in England; but many of the varieties are believed to be escaped seedlings. (10/85. H.C. Watson 'Cybele Britannica' volume 1 page 334.) Every one knows the great difference in the manner of growth, in the foliage, flowers, and especially in the fruit, between the almost innumerable ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... the fruit and the peaches, he said, "If anybody wants to see the image of one who rejoiceth in hope, he has here the real model. Oh, that we might look forward so cheerfully to the Judgment Day! Adam and Eve must have had much better fruit! Ours are nothing but crab-apples in contrast. And I think the serpent was then a most beautiful creature, kindly and gracious; it still wears its crown, but after the curse it lost its feet and beautiful body." Once he looked at his three-year-old son who was playing and talking to himself ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... boat, that was backed like a partan-crab, came gingerly alongside, and the skipper of it hailed our master in the Dutch. Thence Captain Sang turned, very troubled-like, to Catriona; and, the rest of us crowding about, the nature of the difficulty was made plain to all. The Rose was bound to the port of Rotterdam, whither ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the good old gentleman's heart; my laughter opened it still more. "Hark ye, sirrah!" said he, pausing abruptly, and grasping my hand with a vigorous effort of love and muscle, "hark ye, sirrah,—I love you,—'Sdeath, I do. I love you better than both your brothers, and that crab of a priest into the bargain; but I am grieved to the heart to hear what I do of you. They tell me you are the idlest boy in the school; that you are always beating your brother Gerald, and making a scurrilous jest of your ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that is seeded with crab-grass should not be selected, as the pulling up of the grass injures the growth of the onions. Onions feed near the surface; in fact, the larger portion of the bulb grows on top of the soil, and as a natural consequence the plant food should be well worked in the surface. Of course it is too ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... crabs, pick the meat out carefully, arrange a head of lettuce on a round platter. Put the crab meat in the centre, cover with ...
— 365 Luncheon Dishes - A Luncheon Dish for Every Day in the Year • Anonymous

... Red Currant Jelly Black Currant Jelly Gooseberry Jelly Grape Jelly Peach Jelly Preserved Quinces Preserved Pippins Preserved Peaches Preserved Crab-Apples Preserved Plums Preserved Strawberries Preserved Cranberries Preserved Pumpkin Preserved Pine-Apple ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie

... trusted To thy own instinctive wisdom." Saying this, he shook his locks, and Dived beneath the water's surface; And the foaming surging waves then Closed the whirlpool where he vanished. And afar rang out his laughter, For, the battle of the crab had Ended now, one lay there bleeding, Of the ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... can smile—and immediately took the shape of a pretty little old woman. "Madam," said she, "we now need not walk crab-fashion. Consider me as your friend, for, indeed, I am ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... and the hermit, a large, strong-built man, in his sackcloth gown and hood, girt with a rope of rushes, stood before the knight. He had in one hand a lighted torch, or link, and in the other a baton of crab-tree, so thick and heavy, that it might well be termed a club. Two large shaggy dogs, half greyhound half mastiff, stood ready to rush upon the traveller as soon as the door should be opened. But ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... for instance, Iden used to have the great bushes that bore unusually fine May bloom saved from the billhook, that they might flower in the spring. So, too, with the crab-apples—for the sake of the white blossom; so, too, with the ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... to be produced by those little Crustaceans named "Barnacles." With the "Barnacles" every one must be familiar who has examined the floating driftwood of the sea-beach, or who has seen ships docked in a seaport town. A barnacle is simply a kind of crab enclosed in a triangular shell, and attached by a fleshy stalk to fixed objects. If the barnacle is not familiar to readers, certain near relations of these animals must be well known, by sight at least, as amongst the ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... condition, with the aid of two thick sticks, was no bad embodiment of Commodore Trunnion, or of one of those many gallant Admirals of the stage, who have all ample fortunes, gout, thick sticks, tempers, wards, and nephews. With this distinguished naval appearance upon him, Thomas made a crab-like progress up a clean little bulk-headed staircase, into a clean little bulk-headed room, where he slowly deposited himself on a sofa, with a stick on either hand of him, ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... dictates, and passed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds at my call have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my command. I have restrained the rage of the dog-star, and mitigated the fervours of the crab. The winds alone, of all the elemental powers, have hitherto refused my authority, and multitudes have perished by equinoctial tempests which I found myself unable to prohibit or restrain. I have administered ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson

... adjoining kitchen she assembled a glass pitcher of sweet milk, a glass pitcher of buttermilk, a plate of cold cornbread, a platter of cold fried chicken, a dish of golden butter, a pan of cold fried potatoes, a jar of preserved crab apples and another of peach butter. Susan watched with hungry eyes. She was thinking of nothing but food now. Her aunt looked ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... the shore. There is a perpetual "jabble" against the cliffs on this coast—and we have seldom met with a soul save an aged and solitary fisherwoman—a study for a Bonington—pursuing her precarious calling of crab or shrimp fishing, or of pulling lobsters from their retreats in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... you had seen that eminent scholar when he got outside his library by accident and wanted to get back, you wouldn't have thought he was the anybody, and would probably have likened him to a disestablished hermit-crab—in respect, that is, of such a one's desire to disappear into his shell, and that respect only. For no hermit-crab would ever cause an acquaintance to wonder why he should shave at all if he could do it no better than that; nor what he was talking to himself about so frequently; ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... true: neatly inserted, as he stooped forward, between his neck and his collar, was a large live shore-crab, holding on ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... get 'em down on theirr knees beforre you make a treaty with 'em," boasted Archer. "You can see yourself they'rre no good when they haven't got any commanderr—or any arrms. When Uncle Sam makes a treaty with that gang, crab-apples, but I hope he ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... justice, as he afterwards said when he brought up the matter one day.—"Sure, how can I till where he or any other mother's son is that I can't say before my eyes? I can till you, though, where I belaives him to be this blissid minnit; an' that is, by the 'Crab an' Lobster' at Gravesend, lookin' out for to say if he can say the Silver ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... along" with her long, thick, black jacket bumping against her.... She would leave it off to-morrow and go out in a blouse and her long black lace scarf. She imagined Harriett at her side—Harriett's long scarf and longed to do the "crab walk" for a moment or the halfpenny dip, hippety-hop. She did ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson

... a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down; for you yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if, like a crab, you ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... directed by a nervous and none too competent Tagalog captain, maneuvered in the six-mile tidal current which swept west through the Straits making Zamboanga a nightmare to all the native skippers who called at that port. Crab-like, she crawled obliquely to within a few hundred feet of the low-lying town, then the screw churned up a furious wake as the anxious Tagalog on the bridge swung her back into the Straits to circle in a new attempt. Carried ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... dwelling, and pursued the Spider direct, in her own house, instead of remaining outside, going from one door to the other. With such swiftness and dexterity as hers, it seemed to me impossible that the stroke should fail: the quarry moved clumsily, a little sideways, like a Crab. I judged it to be an easy matter; the Pompilus thought it highly dangerous. To-day I am of her opinion: if she had entered the leafy tube, the mistress of the house would have operated on her neck and the huntress would ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... crab that landed him in a graceful parabola in the bow, where he lay biting at the air to recover his breath. Then his boat's nose plowed into the sandy neck of land; he clambered to his feet, jumped out, and ran headlong into the belt of trees which screened the singer. Speed and gait recalled ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... anxiously looking around, She saw a stout crab-stick lie flat on the ground. "Kind stick," she exclaim'd, "I entreat you to flog "This cruel, regardless, unmannerly dog, "Who will not bite Piggy, though plainly you see "My pig will not stir, and there's no home for me." No reply made the stick, not a blow would it strike, ...
— The Remarkable Adventures of an Old Woman and Her Pig - An Ancient Tale in a Modern Dress • Anonymous

... remote country a custom similar to that of the fiery cross, which in old times summoned the Celtic tribes to arms. On the alarm of invasion, a branch, torn by the priest from the nebek, (a tree bearing a fruit like the Siberian crab,) is lighted in the fire, the flame is then quenched in the blood of a newly slaughtered ram. It is then sent forth with a messenger to the nearest clan. Thus, great numbers are assembled with remarkable promptitude. In the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... sour Apple, if rubbed on warts first pared away to the quick, will serve to cure them. The wild "Scrab," or Crab Apple, armed with thorns, grows in our fields and hedgerows, furnishing verjuice, which is rich in tannin, and a most useful application for old sprains. In the United States of America an infusion of apple tree bark is given ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... timbered land near the mouth for 1 mile above, only a fiew Trees, and thickets of Plumbs Cheres &c are Seen on its banks the Creeks & little reveens makeing into the river have also Some timber- I got grapes on the banks nearly ripe, observed great quantities, of Grapes, plums Crab apls and a wild Cherry, Growing like a Comn. Wild Cherry only larger & grows on a Small bush, on the side of a clift Sand Stone 1/2 me. up & on Lower Side I marked my name & day of the month near an Indian Mark or Image of animals ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... possessive case and its governing noun, combining to form a metaphorical name, should be written with both apostrophe and hyphen; as, Job's-tears, Jew's-ear, bear's-foot, colts-tooth, sheep's-head, crane's-bill, crab's-eyes, hound's-tongue, king's-spear, lady's-slipper, lady's-bedstraw, &c. (6.) The possessive case and its governing noun, combining to form an adjective, whether literal or metaphorical, should generally ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... than Washington with its simple-minded standards of the field and farm, its Southern and Western habits of life and manners, its assumptions of ethics and history; but even in Washington, society was uneasy enough to need no further fretting. One was almost glad to act the part of horseshoe crab in Quincy Bay, and admit that all was uniform — that nothing ever changed — and that the woman would swim about the ocean of future time, as she had swum in the past, with the gar-fish and ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... reject the help that would have opened some higher and less distasteful career to him, yet if he had accepted it he would never have known the extent of his own powers. He would have been a hermit-crab still, fitted with another shell by the kindness of his friends. Had he clearly understood what he was doing when he went to Brenthill, it was very likely that he might never have gone. He was almost glad that he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... temples on the way. On the contrary, the road is through the midst of frightful monsters. You pass by the horns of the Bull, in front of the Archer, and near the Lion's jaws, and where the Scorpion stretches its arms in one direction and the Crab in another. Nor will you find it easy to guide those horses, with their breasts full of fire that they breathe forth from their mouths and nostrils. I can scarcely govern them myself, when they ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... shinin' old river are fine as garden hollyhocks. Maria says 'at thy'd be purtier 'an hers if they were only double; but, Lord, Mr. Redbird, they are! See 'em once on the bank, an' agin in the water! An' back a little an' there's jest thickets of papaw, an' thorns, an' wild grape-vines, an' crab, an' red an' black haw, an' dogwood, an' sumac, an' spicebush, an' trees! Lord! Mr. Redbird, the sycamores, an' maples, an' tulip, an' ash, an' elm trees are so bustin' fine 'long the old Wabash they put 'em into poetry books an' ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter

... [Cuneiform] Twins. [Cuneiform] Crab. [Cuneiform] Lion. [Cuneiform] Virgin. [Cuneiform] Scales. [Cuneiform] Scorpion. [Cuneiform] Bow. [Cuneiform] Capricornus ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum

... little white teeth together as she gazed on the teacher's sour-faced visage and listened to the tones of her high-pitched voice. "Regular crab-apple, and as cross as two sticks," she muttered, knitting her brow in an angry frown, but smoothing it hastily and calling up the necessary look of attention as Miss Smith cast a swift glance in her direction; "how I should ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... has his condemnation written visibly on his forehead, so that Faithful reads it. At the very instant the net closes round the pilgrims, 'the white robe falls from the black man's body.' Despair 'getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel'; it was in 'sunshiny weather' that he had his fits; and the birds in the grove about the House Beautiful, 'our country birds,' only sing their little pious verses 'at the spring, when the flowers appear and ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the lobster is alive, as, if dead, it will not be fit to use. Have water boiling in a large kettle, and, holding the lobster or crab by the back, drop it in head foremost; the reason for this being, that the animal dies instantly when put in in this way. An hour is required for a medium-sized lobster, the shell turning red when done. When cold, the meat can be used either plain ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell

... which the king of Calicut staked his crown and his life on the issue of battle was known as the "Great Sacrifice." It fell every twelfth year, when the planet Jupiter was in retrograde motion in the sign of the Crab, and it lasted twenty-eight days, culminating at the time of the eighth lunar asterism in the month of Makaram. As the date of the festival was determined by the position of Jupiter in the sky, and ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... stones extend a little above the surface, and slope gradually toward the other end until the fire pit is reached ten inches below the surface of the trench. Over the fire pit, about five inches above the ground, is placed a crab or a piece of boiler iron, on which is boiled all the water for washing dishes, etc. The fire pit is only about one-half of the stone surface, as the radiated heat keeps the rest of the stones hot, causing all dish and slop water to ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... hard showers of rain and hail, the wind at north. Shot several sea-gulls, geese, hawks, and other birds: The carpenter had this day given him by one of the people, a fine large rock crab, it being the first of the kind ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... lasso. Sepia, for instance, approaches gently and cautiously till it is within striking distance of a prawn, then the two long tentacles are suddenly and swiftly shot out from their sockets and the prawn is caught between the suckers at the ends of them. Another example is afforded by the masked crab (Corystes cassivelaunus). This species has unusually long and hairy antennae. These are usually tactile organs, but it has been found that the habit of Corystes is to bury itself deep in the sand with only the tips of the antennae at the surface, and the ...
— Hormones and Heredity • J. T. Cunningham

... Beth began pulling in the line. There, hanging on the meat with two awful claws, was a great big greenish crab. His eyes bulged out, and altogether he looked so fierce that Beth was somewhat frightened at him, but she wished to surprise Harvey. Therefore she overcame her fear, and continued pulling up the line. For a wonder, the crab hung on all the way from the water to the wharf. Beth ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... the common oak, and their cups and outer rind had been removed, so that they had evidently been prepared to serve as food for, man; the apples were small and coriaceous, resembling the modern crab-apple; the Indian poppy cannot have grown without cultivation; but this was perhaps but an example of the same species already recognized in the Lake dwellings of Switzerland. It is difficult to say whether it was used for food or whether oil was ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... unedifying character, Turkey, the rodent cancer, has been infected by another with greater organisation for devouring; the disease of Ottomanism is threatened by a more deadly hungerer, and Prussianism has inserted its crab-pincers into the cancer that came out of Asia. Those claws are already deeply set, and the problem for civilised nations is first to disentangle the nippers that are cancer in a cancer, and next to deprive of all power over alien peoples the domination that has already been ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson

... sharp blow with one of lesser size. My companion and myself soon collected a heap of "hermits," when presently he took one up in his hand, and holding it close to his mouth, whistled softly. In a few moments the crab protruded one nipper, then another, then its red antennae, and allowed the boy to take its head between his finger and thumb and draw its entire body from ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... the kitchen empty, and she surmised that Mrs. Birch had not finished milking; so Beth sat down on the rough bench beneath the crab-apple tree and began to dream of the olden days. There was the old chain swing where Arthur used to swing her, and the cherry-trees where he filled her apron. She was seven and he was ten—but such a man in her eyes, that ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt

... Athens was home and a good place at that. He saw no reason for going back just to please an ignoramus who didn't know how to ride and who would probably change his mind again before they had gone a mile. Consequently, when Li kicked, Cochise threw his head in the air and made crab-like motions with his legs. Li pulled and Cochise reared. Li, mindful of past instructions, loosed the reins and Cochise whirled. Li leaned over and patted the horse's neck and ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... great number of plants from Jamaica and founded the botanic garden at Chelsea. His servant, James Salter, set up the famous Don Saltero's museum in the same place, containing, as Steele tell us, '10,000 gimcracks, including a "petrified crab" from China and Pontius Pilate's wife's chambermaid's sister's hat.' Don Saltero and his master seemed equally ridiculous; and Young in his satires calls Sloane 'the foremost toyman of his time,' and describes him ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... wommerahs, nulla-nullas, and jagged spear ends. Mr. J.H. Maiden determined the percentage of mimosa tannic acid in the perfectly dry bark as 8.62." The mulga bears a small woody fruit called the mulga apple. It somewhat resembles the taste of apples, and is sweet. If crab apples, as is said, were the originals of all the present kinds, I imagine an excellent fruit might be obtained from the mulga by cultivation. As this tree is necessarily so often mentioned in my travels, the remarks of so eminent a botanist upon it cannot ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... consciousness of sympathy rouses him, he all at once becomes a different being. His quiet eyes kindle, his face becomes full of life—you wonder that you ever thought it heavy or commonplace. Then the world interrupts in some way, and, just as a hermit-crab draws down its shell with a comically rapid movement, so Derrick ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall

... content as he sank into a chair, his eyes scarcely leaving Helen. He owned himself beat out and glad of a dish of tea; but when Clesta had served him in her scuttling crab fashion, he would stop in the middle of a sentence, with saucer half lifted, to gaze with perplexed, wistful ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... have finished," said the younger man; and Joseph having shouldered the ladder and gone off with it in his own crab-like way, the two stood together until the musicians in the garden had finished the theme upon which they ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray

... staircase, spreading out his hands to balance himself and showing me his huge, bulky back and red neck, he gave me the unpleasant impression of a sort of crab. ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... grasses, Loudoun has red clover, timothy, herd's-grass, orchard-grass, and Lucerne to which last little attention is now given. Native grasses are the white clover, spear grass, blue grass, fox-tail and crab grass, the two last-named being summer or annual grasses. Several varieties of swamp or marsh grass flourish under certain conditions, but soon disappear with ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head

... in my brain, I became aware that I was whizzing along backwards. I tried to think of instructions received, but utterly failed; I endeavoured to keep cool. Where was I? I banged against something, and the sledge twisted round again; it did its best to run along sideways for awhile, like a crab; it butted me against a tree and got itself straight again; then it seemed to take the bit in its teeth, and, as if determining to get rid of me somehow, steered a bee-line for a Chinese-lantern post at a distance of thirty yards. I plunged my hand down, determined ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... was cooked, and some plovers' eggs also roasted, along with a large crab which had been taking an airing before Gloy's gleg[1] vision, and was obliged to yield to fate on the instant. The lads were very hungry, and enjoyed their ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... different distortion. The whole company stood astonished at such a complicated grin, and were ready to assign the prize to him, had it not been proved by one of his antagonists that he had practised with verjuice for some days before, and had a crab found upon him at the very time of grinning; upon which the best judges of grinning declared it as their opinion that he was not to be looked upon as a fair grinner, and therefore ordered him to be ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... fro like that funny little crab we saw lately in Aquaria, who adorns his head and shoulders with bits of sea-weed, or any other stuff within his reach, and paddles about his tank self-satisfied and ridiculous. Women must and will trim, as spiders ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... was also supposed to be incarnate in the octopus, and also in the land crab. If one of these crabs found its way into the house, it was a sign that the head of the house ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner

... in May, a day which opens the crab-apple blossoms and sets the bees humming, and the children longing for a chance to pull off shoes and stockings and go wading in the brook; on such a day the door of the little schoolhouse stood open and the sunlight lay in a long patch across the floor toward the "teacher's ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... people waiting, waiting, waiting, while the boat is sliding, sliding, sliding into the great desert, where there is no tree and no fountain. As I don't want my wreck to be washed up on one of the beaches in company with devil's-aprons, bladder-weeds, dead horse-shoes, and bleached crab- shells, I turn about and flap my long narrow wings for home. When the tide is running out swiftly, I have a splendid fight to get through the bridges, but always make it a rule to beat,—though I have ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... shell, and a number of fine legs or swimmers below. It burrows in the loose bottom, or lies in it with its large compound eyes peeping out in search of prey. It is the chief representative of the hard-cased group (Crustacea) which will later replace it with the lobster, the shrimp, the crab, and the water-flea. Its remains form from a third to a fourth of all the buried Cambrian skeletons. With it, swimming in the water, are smaller members of the same family, which come nearer ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... of former magistrates: The First (wears a cap with bows, her face is wrinkled, her nose sharp, voice hard, carries a prayer-book in her hand): "What was that Madame Firmiani's maiden name?"—The Second (small face red as a crab-apple, gentle voice): "She was a Cadignan, my dear, niece of the old Prince de Cadignan, consequently cousin to the present Duc ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac

... 'I, having been acquainted with the smell before, knew it was Crab, and—goes me to the fellow, who whips the dogs,' etc. Two ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various

... rid of me, and she proposed to lie farther off, and come back (maybe) when I'd finished my job. So she pointed straight in for where I was standing amid my duds and chattels, just as if she was going to thump herself ashore—and then she began to slip off sideways like a misbegotten crab, and backward, too—until what with the darkness tumbling down, and a point o' palms, I lost sight of her. Why didn't I shout, and threaten, ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... occasion, coupled also with modes of growth involving occasionally quite astonishing transformations, and beginnings of new life under new circumstances; so that, until very lately, no mortal knew what a crab was like in its youth, the very existence {160} of the creature, as well as its legs, being jointed, as it were and made in separate pieces with the narrowest possible thread of connection between them; and its principal, or stomachic, period ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... divers places, but the water proved to be salt; some of us went to the higher land, where by good luck we found in a rock a number of cavities, in which a quantity of rain-water had collected. It also seemed that a short time before there had been natives there, for we found some crab-shells lying about and here and there fire-ashes. Here we somewhat quenched our cruel thirst, which almost prevented us from dragging ourselves along, for since the loss of our ship we had had no more than one or two mutchkins daily, without ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres

... intense gratification—he couldn't make up his mind which. After nightfall if he flung a burning cigar stump out upon the sand he could see it moving off in the darkness apparently under its own motive power. But the truth was that a land crab, with an unsolvable mania for playing the role of torchbearer, would be scuttling away with the stub in ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... the course of an hour and we secured a good view of our "will o' the wisp" of the night's chase. It was a great lumbering tramp, as high out of the water as a barn, and as weather-stained as a homeward-bound whaler. She slouched along like a crab, each roll of the hull showing streaks of marine grass and barnacles. There was little of man-o'-war "smartness" in her make-up, ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday

... they immerse her, and all the other women join in splashing water over both the girl and her bearers. When they come out of the water one of the two attendants makes a heap of grass for her charge to squat upon. The other runs to the reef, catches a small crab, tears off its claws, and hastens back with them to the creek. Here in the meantime a fire has been kindled, and the claws are roasted at it. The girl is then fed by her attendants with the roasted claws. After that she is freshly decorated, and the whole party marches back to the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... Poog don't take finger bets for hundreds, and Trimmer never did bet that way. He's a born welsher, anyhow. He looks the part, and I just want to tell you, Bobby, that if you go to the mat with this crab you'll get up with the marks of his pinchers on ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... won't, sir, not one step," said that young lady, sitting down, resolutely. "I know you. I'd find myself in a crab hole in about a minute. I'll ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... manager particularly wished Mr. Brock to see before leaving the mountain country was the Crab Valley dam and irrigation canal, and the second day after the president's special entered the division it was side-tracked at a way station near Sleepy Cat for an inspection of the undertaking. The trip to the canal was by stage with four horses, and the ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman

... alone to enter Mr. Toyner's gates. I found myself in a large pleasure-ground, where Nature had been guided, not curtailed, in her work. I was walking upon a winding drive, walled on either side by a wild irregular line of shrubs, where the delicate forms of acacias and crab-apples lifted themselves high in comparison to the lower lilac and elderberry-bushes. I watched the sunlit acacias as they fluttered, spreading their delicate leaves and golden pods against the blue above me. I made my way leisurely in the direction of music which I heard at ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall

... also) had given the Blind Man a Dog, who led him out in the morning to a seat in the sun under the crab-tree, and held his hat for wayside alms, and brought him ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... hurriedly, and entered upon a renewed examination of the filly's legs. Even Rupert Gunning, after his brief and unsympathetic survey, had said she had good legs; in fact, he had only been able to crab her for the length of her back, and he, as Fanny Fitz reflected with a heat that took no heed of metaphor, was the greatest ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... among plants and trees, and probably among animals! One spring an unseasonable cold snap in May (mercury 28) killed or withered about one per cent of the leaves on the lilacs, and one tenth of one per cent of the leaves of our crab-apple tree. In the woods around Slabsides I observed that nearly half the plants of Solomon's-seal (Polygonatum) and false Solomon's-seal (Smilacina) were withered. The vital power, the power to live, seems stronger in some plants than in others of the same kind. I suppose this law holds ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... "Yes; a horseshoe-crab about a mile below here on the smooth sand, with a long dotted trail behind him, a couple of girls in a pony-cart who nearly drove over me, and a tall young lady with a red parasol, accompanied by a big black-and-white dog, walking rapidly, close to the edge ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... hackberry, the oaks, the linden, the locusts on the hill and the solitary old honey-locust down by the river's brink are as yet unresponsive to the smiles of spring. The plum, the crab apple, the hawthorn and the wild cherry are but just beginning to push green points between their bud scales. But the elms are a glory of dull gold; every twig is fringed with blossoms. The maples have lost their fleecy white softness, for the staminate flowers which were ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... a crab" is to roast a wild apple in the fire in order to throw it hissing hot into a bowl of nutbrown ale, into which had been put a toast with some spice and sugar. Puck describes one of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... of the crab as the little red fish which walks backwards, it contains only three demonstrable errors. Shakespeare does not warble, his notes are not woodnotes, and they ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... kneeling on the leads, making peace over the precious crab's claw, which, with a few cockles and mussels, was the choicest toy of these forlorn young Stewarts; for Stewarts they all were, though the three youngest, the weans, as they were called, were only ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is the great test of man's nature, as an earthly combining with a celestial. In superstition lies the possibility of religion. And though superstition is often injurious, degrading, demoralizing, it is so, not as a form of corruption or degradation, but as a form of non-development. The crab is harsh, and for itself worthless. But it is the germinal form of innumerable finer fruits: not apples only the most exquisite, and pears; the peach and the nectarine are said to have radiated from this austere stock when cultured, developed, and transferred to all varieties ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... and looking back as I walk, I hear her talking of me, hastily, as one who confides a choking secret, while Apolline follows, with her arms swinging far from her body, limping and outspread like a crab. ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... the woman a substratum of the brute, and in the man the material for a blackguard. Both were susceptible, in the highest degree, of the sort of hideous progress which is accomplished in the direction of evil. There exist crab-like souls which are continually retreating towards the darkness, retrograding in life rather than advancing, employing experience to augment their deformity, growing incessantly worse, and becoming more and more impregnated with an ever-augmenting blackness. This man ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... creamy-white jug, and is filled with a drop of exquisitely flavored honey. The jugs in a short time change to smooth purple berries, and in autumn they take on their winter dress of scarlet. When ripe the berries taste like mealy crab-apples. I have often seen chipmunks eating the berries, or apples, sitting up with the fruit in both their deft little hands, and eating it with such evident relish that I frequently found myself thinking of ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... masts, drying in the sun. Curious great bulging baskets, dingy brown in colour and shaped like giant sea-urchins, depended from the gunwales, half immersed in water, the mortal remains of small, crab-like creatures sticking to their sides. All this picturesqueness, and more besides, was reflected in the placid water. On the one hand was the quay, with its irregular row of houses done in delicious sun-baked colours, in front of which women in sulphur shawls and children ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller

... to play the giddy crab, then." Phinuit busied himself with the decanter, glasses and siphon. "Let's make it a regular party; we'll have all to-morrow to sleep it off in. If I try to hop on your shoulder and sing, call a steward and have him lead me to my ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... when the first star of the ram rose above the horizon, (when, in order to give this nonsense the air of a science, the star was supposed to have its greatest influence,) he would be rich in cattle; and he who should enter the world under the crab, would meet with nothing but disappointments, and all his affairs go backwards and downwards. The people were to be happy whose king entered the world under the sign Libra; but completely wretched if he should light under the horrid sign scorpion. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... readiness and profusion had a merit in itself, independent of the intrinsic value of the composition. Talking of Churchill, I believe, who had little merit in his prejudiced eyes, he allowed him that of fertility, with some such qualification as this, "A Crab-apple can bear but crabs after all; but there is a great difference in favour of that which bears a large quantity of fruit, however indifferent, and that ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... heard the goblins cry: "Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy: Apples and quinces, Lemons and oranges, Plump unpecked cherries, Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheeked peaches, Swart-headed mulberries, Wild free-born cranberries, Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries, Apricots, strawberries;— All ripe together In summer weather,— Morns that pass by, Fair eves that fly; Come buy, come buy: Our grapes fresh from the vine, Pomegranates full and fine, Dates and sharp bullaces, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... about, and just beyond lay a star-fish clinging to a bunch of seaweed. She found other treasures scattered about by the largess of the tide—tiny spiral shells, stones of all colors, and a horseshoe crab, besides seaweed with pretty little pods which popped delightfully when she squeezed them with her fingers. Then she heard the cries of gulls overhead and watched them as they wheeled and circled between her and the sky. When they ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... never failed to win great applause. And once in the tank Joe did some of the under-water tricks that had brought him fame. He was careful, however, not to duplicate anything that Benny Turton did, for he did not want to "crab" the act ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... forgive me, I have been cursing the day I was born. Sam, I started about three minutes after you, and had very nearly succeeded in overhauling the Doctor, about two miles from here, when this brute put his foot in a crab hole, and came down, rolling on my leg. I was so bruised I couldn't mount again, and so I have walked. I see you are all right though, and that is enough for me. Oh my sister—my darling Alice! Think ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... you that question,—you who know everything that goes on in our set," said the young serpent. Any tree planted in "our set," if it had been but a crab-tree, would have tempted Mr. Avenel's Eve ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... class of animals, of which the lobster, crab, and shrimp are familiar examples, have this peculiarity of structure—that their soft bodies are enclosed within a coat-of-mail formed of carbonate and phosphate of lime. In fact, they carry their skeleton outside their bodies, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various

... probably sincere, his surliness was his breeding, and he extracted from his painful, unsocial habitudes the peculiar poetry which suits with hardship. It was not for him to sing of summer and nectarines, nor to honestly appreciate or kindly judge those who did so; but he sang of winter, of crab-apples, of cranberries, of reptiles, of field-mice, with just the right accent and with a tingling vibration of life in his chords. The Bernard Palissy of literature, he modeled his frogs and water-snakes so true that they seemed better than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... style of architecture does not, then a bird's nest is a house: and human occupancy is not the standard to judge by, because we speak of dogs' houses; nor material, because we speak of snow houses of Eskimos—or a shell is a house to a hermit crab—or was to the mollusk that made it—or things seemingly so positively different as the White House at Washington and a shell on the seashore are ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... he continued, sent a note to Bailie Nicol Jarvie, the other correspondent of the house in Glasgow. But, as he said, "If the civil house in the Gallowgate used him thus, what was to be expected from the cross-grained old crab-stock in the Salt Market?" ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... reached out her hand and, to George's extreme astonishment, a little door swung open, revealing the foot of a winding staircase. Turning sideways in order to get her tray through the narrow opening, the little maid darted in with a rapid crab-like motion. The door closed behind her with a click. A minute later it opened again and the maid, without her tray, hurried back across the hall and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. George tried to recompose his ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... faster than I could pay out cable. Therefore, instead of resting, I had to "man the windlass" and heave up the anchor with fifty fathoms of cable hanging up and down in deep water. This was in that part of the strait called Famine Reach. Dismal Famine Reach! On the sloop's crab-windlass I worked the rest of the night, thinking how much easier it was for me when I could say, "Do that thing or the other," than now doing all myself. But I hove away and sang the old chants that I sang when I was a sailor. Within the last few days I had ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... chose to play his freaks in the brewing copper, the ale was sure to be spoiled. When a few good neighbors were met to drink some comfortable ale together, Puck would jump into the bowl of ale in the likeness of a roasted crab, and when some old goody was going to drink he would bob against her lips, and spill the ale over her withered chin; and presently after, when the same old dame was gravely seating herself to tell her neighbors a sad ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various

... and if you renew your hospitable proposition then, I shall probably be glad to accept it; though I have now been a hermit so long, that the thought affects me somewhat as it would to invite a lobster or a crab to ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... commanded the corps, consisting of three divisions commanded by Generals White, Hascall and Carter, respectively. We were attached to Gen. Hascall's division, and marched with our division by way of Stanford, Crab Orchard and Cub Creek to the Cumberland river. The Ninth Corps was reported to be at Cincinnati and to follow close upon the tracks of the Twenty-third Corps. The strength of the Twenty-third Corps was, perhaps, 15,000 or 20,000 men of ...
— Campaign of Battery D, First Rhode Island light artillery. • Ezra Knight Parker

... all that. This was true with some restrictions—but as to Phillips' interests to oblige G.B.! Lord help his simple head! P. could by a whistle call together a host of such authors as G. B. like Robin Hood's merry men in green. P. has regular regiments in pay. Poor writers are his crab-lice and suck at him for nutriment. His round pudding chops are their idea of plenty when in their idle fancies they aspire to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... actually gained on Fred, who continued to breast the water with all the strength at his command. Terry was hopeful, and now that he was fully roused, he did not waste his strength in shouting to his companion. As he advanced in his crab-like fashion, he frequently flirted his face around so as to look in front, and thus to ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... nothing with it (if you do not choose split pea which needs croutons, or petite marmite which needs grated cheese). Fish dishes which are "made" with sauce in the dish, such as sole au vin blanc, lobster Newburg, crab ravigote, fish mousse, especially if in a ring filled with plenty of sauce, do not need anything more. Tartar sauce for fried fish can be put in baskets made of hollowed-out lemon rind—a basket for each person—and used as a ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... foreign product, imported from a neighbouring country famous for its barrenness, counted the most; and the fruit faction which chiefly frightened the Vraibleusian Government was an acid set, who crammed themselves with Crab-apples. ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... rules went down to most delicate selection of ovine vicera for the sacrifice—"the fat and the rump, and the fat that covereth the inwards and the caul above the liver, and the two kidneys"; and into careful dietetics, which would cut out from our food list the hare and rabbit, the lobster, the crab, the turtle, the clam, oyster ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman



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