"Nipping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about. The few passers-by strode rapidly along, wrapped up in comforters; naturally enough one does not care to tarry when the cold is nipping at your heels. However, Gervaise perceived four or five women who were mounting guard like herself outside the door of the zinc-works; unfortunate creatures of course—wives watching for the pay to prevent it going to the dram-shop. There was a tall creature ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... vtmost, set in comely rowes equally distant with faire Allies twixt row and row to auoide the boisterous blasts of winds, and within them also others for Bees; yet wee admit none of these into your Orchard-plat: other remedy then this haue wee none against the nipping frosts. ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... slowly, breathing their mustangs, when his companion suddenly uttered a cry of alarm, and sprang from his horse. For on the trail before them lay the young lawyer quite unconscious, with his riderless steed nipping the young leaves of the underbrush. He was evidently stunned by a fall, although across his face was a livid welt which might have been caused by collision with the small elastic limb of a sapling, or a blow ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... and plunging beasts. The sharp-eyed pony would see almost as soon as his rider which cow was wanted and he needed small guidance from that time on. He would follow hard at her heels, edging her constantly toward the flank of the herd, at times nipping her hide as a reminder of his own superiority. In spite of herself the cow would gradually turn out toward the edge, and at last would be swept clear of the crush, the calf following close behind her. There was a whirl of the rope and the calf was laid by the heels ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough
... and another great Miaw! The Landcrabs went on nipping, until they had nipped a big round hole in the side of the Cat. By this time the Cat was lying down, in great pain; and as the hole was very big, out walked the Landcrabs, and scuttled away. Then out walked ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... and the seemingly inevitable fate of all these people, who disappear before the advances, or it might be termed the inroads, of civilization, as the verdure of their native forests falls before the nipping frosts, is represented as having already befallen them. There is sufficient historical truth in the picture to justify the use that ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... time now." He rubbed his chin reflectively, and as Bob turned to go Watts said: "My Heavens, how time does fly! It just seems like yesterday that all you boys were raking over the scrap-pile back of my shop, and slipping in and nipping leather strands and braiding them into whips, and I'd have to douse you with water to get rid of you. I got a quirt hanging up in the shop now that Johnnie Barclay dropped one day when I got after him with a pan of water. It's a six-sided ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... to be solicited and tickled by some such nipping incitation as this. Do but observe what youth, vigour, and gaiety it inspired the good Anacreon withal: and Socrates, who was then older than I, speaking of an ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... mortified pride, and dread of exposure (for till she knew Gerard no public stain had fallen on her), sat where he left her, masked, with her arms straight out before her, and the nails of her clenched hand nipping the table. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... had left, but the stick slipped a little in his hand, and the ball flew off to the left instead of keeping close to the boundary. Who's Who was far across the ground, thinking hard as he galloped. He repeated stride for stride The Cat's manoeuvres with another Archangel pony, nipping the ball away from under his bridle, and clearing his opponent by half a fraction of an inch, for Who's Who was clumsy behind. Then he drove away towards the right as The Maltese Cat came up from the left; and Bamboo held a middle course exactly between ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... barn-yard manure, increasing the thickness of the mulch with coarse stuff in the fall, so as to lengthen the season of root activity; and to draw the mulch aside about St. Patrick's Day, that the sun's rays may warm the earth as early as possible. Moderate pruning, nipping back of exuberant branches, and two sprayings of the foliage with Bordeaux mixture, to keep fungus enemies in check, comprise all the care required by the growing tree. This treatment will condense the ordinary growth of five years into three, and the tree ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... picture upon it. Then he turned and looked at the girl—a coarsely pretty young woman, very airily clothed in a white muslin dress, of which the transparency displayed her neck and arms with a freedom not at all in keeping with the nipping air of Westmoreland in springtime—going up to his easel again after the look to put in ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... No doubt he could be picked up somewhere in the enormous, ubiquitous net with which America had been gradually covered by the secret services and by the far-flung line of the American Protective League made up of private citizens. But there would be a certain unsatisfactoriness about nipping his plot so far from even the bud. Prevention is wisdom, but ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... allow that," said the old lady, and went to pull Jocko out. But he slipped away like an eel, and crept chattering and burrowing down to the bottom of the bed, holding on to Neddy's toes, till he waked up, howling that crabs were nipping him. ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... reporters, working his jaws with incredible rapidity, as he discoursed upon himself and the role he had played in the sinking of the Roland. They were about to enter their cab after their flight, through the crowd, when an elderly gentleman, panting breathlessly and perspiring, despite the nipping wind, stepped up to Ingigerd Hahlstroem with, "I beg your pardon, but I come from Webster and Forster." He took off his hat and wiped the inside band with his handkerchief. "I was told—I was told—I came ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... with poverty and distress. The sea of adversity is our natural element, and he that will not buffet with the billows deserves to sink. But you, oh you, by nature formed of gentler kind, can you endure the biting storm? shall you be turned to the nipping blast, and not a door be ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... Every day brought a lessened list of arrivals at the hotels; and already there was that sense of a season over and done with and about to be laid up and shelved for the winter, which all watering-places know so well, and which is as a nipping frost to the hopes of landlords and letters of lodgings. Just why "Finis" should be written so early on the fair page of the Newport season, it is hard to explain; for, charming as is the summer, September and October are more charming still, and nowhere does the ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... now, laughing nervously, but with an undertone of snarl in his voice, "why on earth are you nipping my arm off, Horrocks, and ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... there. It was so absurd, so kindly. The house was divided against itself and yet stood. Metaphysics, commerce, social aspirations—all lived together in harmony. Mr. Ansell had done much, but one was tempted to believe in a more capricious power—the power that abstains from "nipping." "One nips or is nipped, and never knows beforehand," quoted Rickie, and opened the poems of Shelley, a man less foolish than you supposed. How pleasant it was to read! If business worried him, if ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... snow. Beulah was clad in royal ermine; not only clad, indeed, but nearly buried in it. The timbers of the Yellow House creaked, and the wreaths of snow blew against the windows and lodged there. King Frost was abroad, nipping toes and ears, hanging icicles on the eaves of houses, and decorating the forest trees with glittering pendants. The wind howled in the sitting room chimney, but in front of the great back-log the bed of live coals glowed red and the flames danced high, casting flickering shadows on the children's ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the dreariness of winter; the hard ground was covered with withered leaves; icicles depended from leafless branches; he heard the sweet low note of the robin, who familiarly approached him; and he felt his fingers numbed by the nipping frost. Father Cuddy found it rather difficult to account for such sudden transformations, and to convince himself it was not the illusion of a dream, he was about to arise, when, lo! he discovered that both his knees were buried at least six ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... between the wheels, and but little other sign of life visible. When dusk came the lights were lit, and the drummer and fifer from the booth of tumblers were sent into the town to entice an audience. They marched quickly through the nipping, windy streets, and then returned with two or three score of men, women, and children, plunging through the snow or mud at their heavy heels. It was Orpheus fallen from his high estate. What a mockery the glare of ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... refrained from all criticism of George's leader, knowing that both the boy and dog were unduly excited by the noisy, laughing groups surrounding them. Queen, while she waited with very scant patience for the strange situation, diverted herself by nipping viciously at any one who went past, and Baldy stood quiet and different save when Ben Edwards was near, or ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... from the tallest spread-head to the smallest button-face—all knew the pleasure of the uncertain winds; all knew the game of holding flying things just a moment longer, by fascinating them, by drowsing them into sleepiness, by nipping their probosces, or by puffing perfume into their nostrils while they caught their feet with the pressure of a hundred ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... these young Africans of our own growth—these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth without assumption; and from their little pulpits (the tops of chimneys), in the nipping air of a December morning, preach a ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... from; the synovial membrane becomes puckered, the quadriceps atrophies and no longer puts the ligamentum mucosum on the stretch; and the infra-patellar pad of fat, not undergoing the normal compression during extension, is readily nipped between the femur and tibia. Each nipping implies a fresh sprain, with return of the effusion, and so a vicious circle is set up which terminates in what has been called a villous arthritis, with fringes and loose bodies; in time, the articular ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... when they put their powers into act, and days when they suffer them to repose.' Piozzi Letters, i. 265. In 1781 he wrote:—'I thought myself above assistance or obstruction from the seasons; but find the autumnal blast sharp and nipping, and the fading world an uncomfortable prospect.' Ib. ii. 220. Again, in the last year of his life he wrote:—'The: weather, you know, has not been balmy. I am now reduced to think, and am at least content to talk, of the weather. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... an eagle (aquila) to imaginative Linnaeus when he gave this group of plants its generic name. Smaller bumblebees, unable through the shortness of their tongues to feast in a legitimate manner, may be detected nipping holes in the tips of all columbines, where the nectar is secreted, just as they do in larkspurs, Dutchman's breeches, squirrel corn, butter and eggs, and other flowers whose deeply hidden nectaries make dining too difficult for the little rogues. Fragile butterflies, ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... cold during this voyage as we got farther south if it had not been for the friendly presence of a rough Scotch plaid. Even the days were cold on deck out of the sun, and the long nights—for darkness treads close on the heels of sunset in the winter months of these latitudes—would have indeed been nipping without warm wraps. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... move her heart on me to take compassion; O then, poor Corin, scorned and quite despised, Loathe now to live since life procures thy woe; Enough, thou hast thy heart anatomised, For her sweet sake which will no pity show; But as cold winter's storms and nipping frost Can never change sweet Aramanthus' hue, So though my love and life by her are crossed. My heart shall still be constant firm and true. Although Erynnis hinders Hymen's rites, My fixed ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... passing the open door of his step-mother's room when she called him. He found her standing by one of the big windows, a very girlish figure in her trim walking-suit and long furs. The face she turned to him, under her wide hat, was rosy from contact with the nipping ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... sale at no price," Uncle Billy emphatically announced, nipping all negotiations right in the bud. "It's too pesky hard to sneak this here licker in past Marge't, but I reckon it's my treat, gents. Ye kin have ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... was they humbly prayed That Honorable Nursery, That such reforms be henceforth made, As all good men desired to see;— In other words (lest they might seem Too tedious), as the gentlest scheme For putting all such pranks to rest, And in its bud the mischief nipping— They ventured humbly to suggest His Majesty ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... animal, and me top of her, the biggest fool dug out, up the same cañon. The rocks on the sides was pecked smooth as a beaver-skin, ribbed with the grain, and the ground was covered with bits of cedar, like a cavayard of mules had been nipping and scattering them about. Overhead it was roofed, leastwise it was dark in here, and only a little light come through the holes in the rock. I thought I knew where we was, and eeched awfully to talk, but I sot still and didn't ask ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... a nipping curiosity to learn how Judge Pike had "taken" the strange performance of his daughter, and the eager were much disappointed when it was truthfully reported that he had done and said very little. He had merely discharged both Sam Warden and Sam's wife from his service, the mild ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... hunter's face close to his again, felt the whole weight of the man crushing him, felt the bite of teeth through cloth and flesh, nipping down on his shoulder as the man lay on him, striving to hold him down until he regained the strength that the blow in the groin had ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... were about three thousand of them—began without zest to while away the time, nipping at the low, half-trampled grass. The sun had not yet risen, but by now all the barrows could be seen and, like a cloud in the distance, Saur's Grave with its peaked top. If one clambered up on that tomb one could see the plain from it, level and boundless as the sky, one could see ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... had their tea and Huldah was ready to start, it was already growing light out of doors. The night had been cold, and there was a thin layer of ice on the puddles in the road, and a nipping little wind made Huldah glad to wrap her old shawl snugly about her,—the shawl which Mrs. Perry had lent her, to save the new cloak. Dick bounded along delightedly; it was not often now that he had a walk at that hour of the morning, and he rejoiced ...
— Dick and Brownie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... plenty thus the summer passed; Revolving winter came at last: The trees no more a shelter yield; The verdure withers from the field: Perpetual snows invest the ground; In icy chains the streams are bound: Cold, nipping winds, and rattling hail, His lank, unsheltered ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... to the floor and, jumping into papa's lap, began to rub her face against his breast. "Meow! meow!" she said. Still the shrill noise did not atop. Pussy put her front paws high up on papa's chest and rubbed her face against his chin, at the same time nipping it gently with her teeth and calling, "Meow! meow!" which meant, "Stop! stop! Please, master, I am here. What do you want? Oh, do ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... to stand with little nipping scissors in a garden of alternatives. "Or by shipping HER off. Will you help me to save her?" she broke out again after a moment. "It isn't true," she continued, "that she ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... one floe, but formed by the close junction of two, so that our situation was by no means so secure as I had supposed for this bight was so far from being a protection to us, in case of ice driving on shore, that it would probably be the means of "nipping" us between the floes which formed it. I therefore determined on immediately removing the ships in-shore, and went in a boat to look out for a place for that purpose, there being no alternative between this ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... It was a nipping frosty air, but Baldassarre could feel no chill—he only felt the glow of conscious power. He walked about and paused on all the open spots of that high ground, and looked down on the domed and towered city, sleeping darkly under ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... sun is sufficient to melt the snow, it is also powerful enough to send the sweet sap of the rock and sugar maples rushing through all the delicate bark veins up toward the branches and twigs. At night, when the sun has set, and the air is full of a nipping frost, the sap does not run; so, as it must be collected during the daytime, the boiling is very often done ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... whether these birds were the same as our sparrows, which are so common everywhere, even in the busy streets London, and so mischievous in the country, eating the grain, and stealing the peas, and nipping off the ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... the more as he saw that she was serious. And yet there was a nipping satire in her ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... school-girl of ninety, who has had leave to come out for a day of Christmas holiday. Shall there be many more Christmases for thee? Think of the ninety she has seen already; the fourscore and ten cold, cheerless, nipping New Years! ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... but there is none warm.' The clothing was to guard against the nipping air that blew shrewdly on their hills, and it failed to keep them from the weather. We may be indulging in fancy in this application of our text, but still raiment is as needful as food, and its failure to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... to a long and cheerless winter, which all too slowly yielded to a late and nipping spring. The wild March wind swept across the moors, roaring loudly around the old conventicle, chasing the last year's leaves in a mad whirl among the rows of headstones, and hissing, as though in anger, through ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... the first one up, and he soon had the camp astir with his cheery calls. The nipping, frosty air proclaimed that now the Fall had come in earnest, and that they would be glad after this to keep a fire burning ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... stroke; and for that purpose, summoning around him the brave companions of former campaigns, and other officers of state, he retired with them to his private closet to deliberate more at length on the extraordinary news they had received, and the best means of nipping the rebellion in ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... dark dried strips. The Indians laid their weapons aside. Every sagebush and low stone held a blanket. A few of these blankets were of solid color, most of them had bars of white and gray and red, the last color predominating. The mustangs and burros filed out among the cedars, nipping at the sage and the scattered tufts of spare grass. A group of fires, sending up curling columns of blue smoke, and surrounded by a circle of lean, half-naked, bronze-skinned Indians, cooking and eating, completed a picture which afforded ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... it grew too dark to read, I laid my book down and began to think, and presently it seemed as if a whole pack of Indians were dancing like wild round me, in full war-paint and feathers, and nipping little pieces out of my arms and legs. I stood it as long as I could, and then I began to hit out at 'em. All at once one of the creatures commenced flourishing his tomahawk at me, getting nearer and nearer all the time. "I have tried, but I can't get in," he said, ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... the black dog; nipping at the plodding forepaws. The mongrel raged; as might some painfully sick human who is pestered when he asks only to be let alone. His dull apathy gave place to sullen anger. He bit growlingly at the spaniel, throwing himself to one side in pursuit of the elusive foe. And ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... singularly lively and unrestrained. Mother Anastasia would not play cards, but we amused ourselves with various sprightly social games, in which the lady who preferred to be called a Person showed a vivacious though sometimes nipping wit. I had no opportunity for further private talk with Mother Anastasia, nor did I desire one. I wished to interest her in my love for Sylvia, but not to bore her ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... were very much interested in hearing them tell through an interpreter how they, with their rude weapons, aided by their clever dogs, had been able to kill these fierce animals. All were very much delighted when told by these friendly Esquimaux how that with two well-trained dogs nipping at the hind legs of a great bear they could keep him turning round and round from one to the other and thus get him so wild and excited that in his efforts to catch hold of the nimble animals, which were able to keep out of his grasp, ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... to her? Will you make her a home?" asked Carabine. "A girl of such beauty is well worth a house and a carriage! It would be a monstrous shame to leave her to walk the streets. And besides —she is in debt.—How much do you owe?" asked Carabine, nipping Cydalise's arm. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to and fro nipping the buffaloes' legs, and though the herd wheeled once to charge up the ravine again, Mowgli managed to turn Rama, and the others followed him to ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... with what patience he could assume; until by degrees the dreadful truth began to dawn on him, that he was selected to replace the faithless Lothario! Of late Cossie's manner had become jealously possessive, She seemed to hold him by a nipping tenacious clutch, and pattered out to meet him at the gate, sat next to him at table, and was invariably his partner at tennis. Once, arriving unseen, he had overheard her declaiming ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... morning breeze. Presently the pallid veil at the east takes on a purplish blush, that is changing every instant to a ruddier hue. Faces are beginning to be dimly visible in the groups of defenders, pinched and drawn and cold in the nipping air, and Wayne notes with a half sob how blue poor Dana's lips are. The boy's thoughts are far away. Is he wandering? Is ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... at railroad speed. Camels journey much after their own inclination, straying to the right or left—nipping here a straw, and there browsing on a bush—and, being obstinate creatures, it is difficult to urge them forward faster than they like. The doctor would have preferred a horse, but it would have been necessary to carry barley and water for it, as it cannot live like the camel without drinking ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... McClanahan walked about the garden in her much made-over black silk, and compared the progress of Mrs. Morrison's touch-me-nots and four-o'clocks with her own, nipping herself a sprig of tansy from the patch under ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... tearing along and put its chilly, icy, clammy clamps on the nose of Henry Hagglyhoagly, fastening the clamps like a nipping, gripping clothes pin on his nose. He put his wool yarn mittens up on his nose and rubbed till the wind took off the chilly, icy, clammy clamps. His nose was warm again; he said, "Thank you, mittens, ...
— Rootabaga Stories • Carl Sandburg
... irrigate the rainless slope. Thus the hydra-headed Amazon has been spreading and multiplying its sources among the Andean valleys, to the detriment of agriculture on the dry Pacific slope; thus the torrents of the Western Ghats, gorged by the monsoon rains from the Indian Ocean, are slowly nipping off the streams of the ill-watered Deccan, [See map page 484.] All these direct and indirect effects of climate may combine to produce ultimate politico-geographical results which manifest themselves in the expansion, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... day never goes off properly. In partridge time, the partridges are wild, and won't come to be killed. In hunting time the foxes won't run straight,—the wretches. They show no spirit, and will take to ground to save their brushes. Then comes a nipping frost, and skating is proclaimed; but the ice is always rough, and the woodcocks have deserted the country. And as for salmon,—when the summer comes round I do really believe that they suffer a great deal about the salmon. I'm sure they never catch any. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... husband, calmly, nipping the flesh of her shoulder between his thumb and finger. "Heise's waiting for me." Trina wrenched from him with a sharp intake of breath, frowning with ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... natural little eminence formed the pulpit, while the dell would hold under its shade at least a thousand people—and now I must give you the countryman's eloquent description of the meetings of his ancestors. "Here, under the canopy of heaven, with the rigour of winter's nipping frost, while the clouds, obscuring the moon, have discharged their flaky treasures, they often assembled while the highly-gifted and heavenly-minded Bunyan has broken to them the bread of life. The word of the Lord was precious in those days. And here over his devoted head, while uncovered in prayer, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... from behind, nipping it slightly. The huge beast stopped and whirled in clumsy astonishment. For a moment it looked almost curiously at the white-fanged fury leaping away. Then turning lumbered on again toward the mound. The monster had lived so long on Kon Klayu undisturbed by man or beast that ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... seas had quenched that holocaust, That self-fed flame, that passionate lustihead, Ere grisly death with chill and nipping frost Had withered up those lilies white and red Which, while the boy would through the forest range, Answered each other in a sweet ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... the lassitude of an antiquated age. Henry IV. was still disputing his throne with the League and Spain. Several times, amidst his embarrassments and his wars, the king had manifested his desire to see Montaigne; but the latter was ill, and felt "death nipping him continually in the throat or the reins." And he died, in fact, at his own house, on the 13th of September, 1592, without having had the good fortune to see Henry IV. in peaceable possession ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... porter's lodge, and asked the little girl sweeping out the place if she might see Abraham Dixon. The child stared at her, and ran into the house, bringing out her father, a great burly man, who had not yet donned either coat or waistcoat, and who, consequently, felt the morning air as rather nipping. To him Ellinor ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... mittens, and then she turned down the lamp, chucked a log in the stove, put on the dampers like a prudent householder, and, having made quite sure that the door was latched, scampered off to town in vast and twittering delight with the nipping frost, with the roistering wind, the fluffy snow, the stars, the whole of God's clean world, and with herself, too, and with the blessed Night ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... out immediately, and continued the course of the march. The rain-laden clouds had rolled completely away. The sky looked hard and was scarcely blue; the country was swept by a strong nipping wind, for which they were very thankful, since it ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... private secretary, in a small room latticed off from his cabin, and he first called on them to go out, and, when we were alone, he enlarged on the folly of Sloat's proclamation, giving the people the right to elect their own officers, and commended Kearney and Mason for nipping that idea in the bud, and keeping the power in their own hands. He then sent for the first lieutenant (Drayton), and inquired if there were among the officers on board any who had ever been in the Upper Bay, and learning that ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... temperature of about zero. The water should not be allowed to waste. It should be returned to the first pail for continual use, or as long as it has freezing properties. As a matter of further economy, it is necessary to limit the rate of exit of the freezing water. This is regulated by nipping the discharge-tube with the spring clothes pin supplied for the purpose. Should the cold within the chamber be too intense, the edge of the knife is liable to be turned and the cutting will be imperfect. When this occurs ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... betimes on Christmas morn, but the grim and deliberate landlady detained us an hour in preparing our coffee. I was in the yard about five minutes, wearing only my cloth overcoat and no gloves, and found the air truly sharp and nipping, but not painfully severe. Presently, Braisted came running in with the thermometer, exclaiming, with a yell of triumph, "Thirty, by Jupiter!" (30 deg. of Reaumur, equal to 35-1/2 deg. below zero of Fahrenheit.) We were delighted with this sign ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... when the last yellow leaves are fluttering in the chill breeze? The young ladies in Milby would have told you that the Miss Linnets were old maids; but the Miss Linnets were to Miss Pratt what the apple-scented September is to the bare, nipping days of late November. The Miss Linnets were in that temperate zone of old-maidism, when a woman will not say but that if a man of suitable years and character were to offer himself, she might be induced to tread the remainder of ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... first he must have marked what paleness fear, Like nipping frost, did to her visage bring; Then think he sees, in a cold backward year, A rosy morn ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... you are driving at," said he. "But Cricket is a social art, and must be judged by the good it does to boys and men. You, I perceive, make it an art-in-itself, and would treat it as the gardeners treat a fine chrysanthemum, nipping off a hundred buds to feed and develop a single ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at five-thirty. The air was cold and nipping and frost shone on grass and sage. A red glow of sunrise gleamed on the tip of the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... the gardeners' carts, laden with vegetables for the ensuing market, alone disturbed the quiet of the adjoining streets. In a dark angle might be seen the houseless wanderer, or the abandoned profligate, 341gathered up like a lump of rags in a corner, and shivering with the nipping air. The gloom which surrounded us had, for a moment, chilled the wild exuberance of my companions' mirth; and it is more than probable we should have suspended our visit to the Finish, at least for that night, had not the jocund note ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... cold; mercury below zero; every one complaining of the unusual duration of a temperature rarely encountered here. I am fast screwing my relaxed fibres up to their ancient Northern pitch of hardihood, and begin to face this nipping air with pleasure. Out early for a long ride: towards noon the wind shifted a little to the west, when it became perceptibly milder, the sun shining brightly and the sky cloudless. Dined in the country at Mr. M——'s; where I had a long conversation with Colonel W——s ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... tub-carriers or the troopers' horses it was not for me to guess. The mare knew, however, for as the slope grew easier, she whinnied and slackened her pace to give them time to come up. This also gave me a chance to shift my seat a bit, for the edges of the kegs were nipping my calves cruelly. The beach below us was like the wicked place in a priest's sermon—black as pitch and full of cursing—and by this time all alive with lanterns; but they showed us nothing. There was no more firing, though, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... you all dat ver' quick, senor," she explained frankly, nipping the rock-pile with her riding whip, and bending over to peer, with undisguised curiosity, into the yawning shaft-hole. "I ride out from San Juan for vat you call constitutional—mercy, such a vord, senor!—an' I stray up dis trail. See? It ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... had fed on this when Death's white arms Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, Not back to Seville and its sunny plains Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once again, Lords of a palace in Tenochtitlan, They guarded Montezuma's treasure-hoard. Gold, like some finny ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... days of battle between winter and spring. On these excursions, though spring was to the forward during the daylight, winter would reassert itself at night, and not unfrequently at other moments. Tepid airs and nipping breezes met on the confines of sunshine and shade; trembling raindrops that were still akin to frost crystals dashed themselves from the bushes as he pursued his way from town to castle; the birds were like an orchestra waiting for the signal to strike up, and colour ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the village coal-merchant, not a Cockerell by any means, but a merchant who would have a couple of trucks of "Derby Brights" down at a time, and sell them round the village by the hundredweight. No doubt he was a very thrifty man, and to the extent, so some people said, of nipping the poor in their weight. And once he nearly lost the contract for supplying the coal-gifts at Christmas on that account. But he made it a rule to attend church very regularly as the season came round, and so did Mrs. Josiah ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... Tegeloo!" cried Hope, stroking the parrot, who grunted with satisfaction, and informed her many times that he was still, "Poor Texas, pretty Texas!" nipping her finger gently as he sidled and snuggled, while Andy leaped to Faith's lap, and was so determined to stay that he had to be removed by force, soft-hearted Faith looking back at the crying baby with the expression of a mother bereft ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... and who floats back to me through the Rhinebeck picture, aquiline but easy, with an effect of handsome highbrowed, high-nosed looseness, of dressing-gowns or streaming shawls (the dowdy, the delightful shawl of the period;) and of claws of bright benevolent steel that kept nipping for our charmed advantage: roses and grapes and peaches and currant-clusters, together with turns of phrase and scraps of remark that fell as by quite a like flash of shears. These are mere scrapings of gold-dust, but my mind owes her a vibration that, however ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... balmy day, one of those lovely autumn days which hang upon the edge of winter, and Miss Wendover was pacing her garden walks bare-headed, armed with gardening scissors and formidable brown leather gauntlets, nipping a leaf here, or a withered rosebud there, with eyes whose eagle glance not so much as an aphis could escape. From the slope of her lawn Aunt Betsy saw the cobs turn into the lane, and she was standing at the gate to welcome the traveller when the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... me,' whispered Quilp, nipping and pinching her arm; 'worm yourself into her secrets; I know you can. I'm listening, recollect. If you're not sharp enough, I'll creak the door, and woe betide you if I have to ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... excess of affection for her late husband, or because she had had enough of him and the matrimonial state together. At first, indeed, she had seemed to take a pleasure in mortifying my vanity and crushing my presumption—relentlessly nipping off bud by bud as they ventured to appear; and then, I confess, I was deeply wounded, though, at the same time, stimulated to seek revenge;—but latterly finding, beyond a doubt, that I was not that empty-headed coxcomb she had first supposed me, she had repulsed my modest ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... facing master; in Kazan it was more than that for he was Gray Wolf's mate. In an instant more he would have leaped over her body to have fought for her, more than for the right of leadership. But the big husky turned away sullenly, growling, still snarling, and vented his rage by nipping fiercely at the flank of one of ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... them together was not a wise plan. Of course, Helen must not marry Emanuel Prockter. The notion of such a union was ludicrous. (In spite of all the worry she was heaping upon him, he did not see any urgent reason why she should marry anybody.) But the proper method of nipping the orange-blossom in the bud was certainly to have a plain chat with Helen, one of those plain chats which can only occur, successfully, between plain, common-sense persons. He was convinced that, notwithstanding Mrs. Prockter's fears, Helen ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... immense rapidity. The web of paper taken up by the first roller is led into a series of small hollow cylinders filled with water and steam, perforated with thousands of minute holes. By this means the paper is properly damped before the process of printing is begun. The roll of paper, drawn by nipping rollers, next flies through to the cylinder on which the stereotype plates are fixed, so as to form the four pages of the ordinary sheet of The Times; there it is lightly pressed against the type and printed; then it passes downwards round another cylinder covered ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... freeze, freeze to death, perish with cold. [transitive] chill, freeze &c. (render cold) 385; horripilate[obs3], make the skin crawl, give one goose flesh. Adj. cold, cool; chill, chilly; icy; gelid, frigid, algid[obs3]; fresh, keen, bleak, raw, inclement, bitter, biting, niveous[obs3], cutting, nipping, piercing, pinching; clay-cold; starved &c. (made cold) 385; , chilled to the bone, shivering &c. v.; aguish, transi de froid[Fr]; frostbitten, frost-bound, frost-nipped. cold as a stone, cold as marble, cold as lead, cold as iron, cold as a frog, cold ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... sweetness, were, in a manner, outposts about an inner citadel and one might for years remain, hospitably entertained, yet kept at a distance. But the stars, when they did form, were very fixed. Of such were the two friends who now came in eager for tea, after their nipping drive: Mrs. Pakenham, English, mother of a large family, wife of a hard-worked M.P. and landowner; energetically interested in hunting, philanthropy, books and people; slender and vigorous, with a delicate, emaciated ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... robustness, with delicacy, with qualities that were immature and required development, with absence of qualities that were desirable and required implanting, with unfortunate tendency to qualities that were undesirable and needed repression and nipping in the bud. He placed these children, thus handicapped or endowed, before the principals of selected schools; he desired that terms and full particulars might be placed before him to assist him in the anxious task of right ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... estimation will bring out and foster all that is good in us. There is between this and the unfavorable judgment all the difference between the warm, genial sunshine, that draws forth the flowers and encourages them to open their leaves, and the nipping frost or the blighting east-wind, that represses and disheartens all vegetable life. But though thus you would not choose for your special companion one who thinks poorly of you, and though you might not even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... the house yard he rushed with uplifted wings, and fell down almost exhausted by the side of his mate. A half hour later the two were nipping the grass together in the pasture, and he, I have no doubt, was eagerly telling her ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... when, completely exhausted, I stopped before an old log cabin. Dogs charged out, barking furiously at the strange thing I rode and nipping at my legs; but I was too weary to remember distinctly even now what happened. I must have tumbled off my wheel for I learned afterward that I was picked up and put to bed; but for hours I tossed about, my body racked ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... showed their high spirits with comical sporting. The mules frolicked together, pitching hind quarters, rearing to box and nipping at Simon. Fully as gay was he, though his shaggy flanks were gaunt. He played at goring them, or frisked in ungainly circles. Occasionally, however, he gave signs of ill-humour, lowered his broad horns threateningly, even at Dallas, pawed up ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... Louie went out to sit on the steps, and Hannah contemptuously forbore to make her come in and help clear away. Out in the air, the child slowly quieted down. It was a clear, frosty April night, promising a full moon. The fresh, nipping air blew on the girl's heated temples and swollen eyes. Against her will almost, her spirits came back. She swept Aunt Hannah out of her mind, and began to plan something which consoled her. When would they have their stupid prayers and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... eternity of pains. Then, reflecting with herself that she was created only for God, and cannot be truly satisfied but by enjoying God, and that, out of Him, all this goodly machine of the world is no better than a direct hell and an abyss of evils. Alas! what worms, what martyrdoms, and what nipping pincers are such pinching thoughts as these. The fire is to her but as smoke in comparison to this vexing remembrance of her own follies, which betrayed her to this disgraceful and unavoidable misfortune. There was a king who, in a humor gave away his crown and his whole estate, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... master for miles through crowded streets by the infinitesimal odor which his footsteps left upon the pavement, is quite beyond our conception. Equally incomprehensible to us are the keenness of sight and wide range of vision of the eagle, which enable him to discover the rabbit nipping the clover amid the thick grass at a distance at which a like object would be to us altogether imperceptible. The chameleon is enabled to seize the little insects upon which it feeds by darting forth its wonderfully constructed tongue with such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... a trowel and make a hole," said Logan, nipping off some useless buds and shoots from the plants in his neighbourhood as he was speaking—"and be sure your hole is deep as it should be; and make the bottom soft with your trowel, or throw in a little earth, well broken, for the roots to ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... characteristic blue sky April unfolded its myriad leaves beneath which robins ran over shaven lawns and purple grackle bustled busily about, and the water fowl quacked and whistled and rushed through the water nipping and chasing one another or, sidling alongside, began that nodding, bowing, bobbing acquaintance preliminary to ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... candles, for this odorous twilight was far more companionable. Odorous, for there were a great number of pink roses about. I imagine that someone must have sent them—because there were not any daffodils obtainable, by reason of the late and nipping frost—in honour ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... jealousy nips our aspirations: "O Paradise, O Paradise, the world is growing old; who would not be at rest and free where love is never cold." So sing the fearsome dyspeptics of the stylus. O anemic he, you bloodless she, nipping at crackers, sipping at tea, why not consider that, although evolutionists tell us where we came from, and theologians inform us where we are going to, yet the only thing we are really sure of is that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... and mysterious threat, Thorny slammed the doctor's gate in the faces of the mercenary youths, nipping their hopes in the bud, and teaching them ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... William the Norman—the death-place of Joan of Arc; we had devised little tours and detours all over the mysterious land that sent forth the conquerors of England; but soon there cane "a frost, a nipping frost,"—are we to be boxed up in an hotel in a French town the whole time? No, we must go somewhere, where we can get a country-house—a place on the swelling side of some romantic hill, where we can trot about all day upon ponies, or ramble through fields and meadows at our own sweet will. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... the middle of November I had an opportunity of observing the method pursued when culling the tea, which is performed by black slaves, chiefly women and children. They carefully selected the tenderest and pale-green leaves, nipping off with their nails the young leaf bud, just below where the first or second leaf was unfolded. One whole field had already undergone this operation; nothing but tea shrubs stripped of their foliage remained. The inspector assured me that the plant received no injury from this process, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... in deep water already, and his struggles were carrying him down stream. Preston seized him by his calico frock, and tried to drag him toward the bank; but that dreadful baby had always had a habit of nipping at everything like a snapping-turtle, and now he caught Preston's throat between his thumb and forefinger, half strangling him. And, oh, the current was ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... independently of us, so successfully, with their strange happy minute inch of a candle, as it were, to light them; while we run about and against each other with our great cressets and fire-pots. I once saw a solitary bee nipping a leaf round till it exactly fitted the front of a hole; his nest, no doubt; or tomb, perhaps—'Safe as Oedipus's grave-place, 'mid Colone's olives swart'—(Kiss me, my Siren!)—Well, it seemed awful to ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... is terrible on women. And now, Dick, my lad, we'll get our supper. This nipping air makes me hungry, and the Northern troops do not suffer for lack ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in the great toe, as if it had been suddenly seized with a pair of red-hot pincers. Whew! There they are at it! nipping and tearing the flesh, and then rubbing the lacerated joint with aquafortis, or a solution of blue vitriol. And now, the pain shoots along the nerves on that side, till my head bumps and bumps as if a legion of imps were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... any trouble," replies Mr. Gause; "and it is owing to a way we have of nipping sea-lawyers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... missile went through the fleshy part of his arm, and sped twenty feet beyond, nipping several branches and twigs before its force was spent. No doubt the American race as a rule is hardy and stoical, but the stricken Pawnee acted like a schoolboy. Dropping his gun, he clasped his hand over the wound, and emitted a yell which surpassed ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... massacre; not, however, without its advantages, as it eliminates the more brutal and troublesome of the Isosceles; and by many of our Circles the destructiveness of the Thinner Sex is regarded as one among many providential arrangements for suppressing redundant population, and nipping ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... tow; and in company with a portion of the whalers, for several had retreated, we again had to dock, to escape nipping from the ice, and on the morrow, a similar scene of hurry and excitement took place ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... leader in his church which was to him a club, a forum and a commercial exchange. He was a native of Maine and proud of the fact. His eyes were keen and gray, his teeth fine and white, and his expression stern. His speech was neat and nipping. As a workman he was exact and his tools were always in perfect order. In brief he was a Yankee, as concentrated a bit of New England as was ever transplanted to the border. Hopelessly "sot" in all his eastern ways, he remained the doubter, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the wind in February Snowflakes float still, Half inclined to turn to rain, Nipping, dripping, chill. Then the thaws swell the streams, And swollen rivers swell the sea:— If the winter ever ends How ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... the nipping wintry air, he could hear the sounds of a liberty he no longer shared: the trotting of cab-horses, the cry of newsboys, the whiffle and hoot of motor-cars. Up through the bare trees of the park swam a soft radiance of light from the lamps below, and emergent like a full ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... different states of society in this country; the one, but the vestige of that which has been; the other, the full and perfect image of that which is. The old squires are like the last fading and shriveled leaves of autumn that yet hang on the tree. A few more days will pass; age will send one of his nipping nights, and down they will twirl, and be swept away into the oblivious hiding-places of death, to be seen no more. But the young squire is one of the full-blown blossoms of another summer. He is flaunting ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... a voyage, this queer little half-pumpkin! A frail and leaky shell. She bent and cracked from stem to stern among the nipping masses. Water oozed in through her dry seams. Any moment a rougher touch or a sharper edge might cut her through. But that was a risk they had accepted. They did not take time to think of it, nor to listen to the crunching and crackling of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... and alarm this sudden change; but she was an invalid—and the poor suffering one strove to hide her sickness of the heart, and mother though she was, Mrs. Layton discovered not the canker-worm which was nipping her bud of promise, but would whisper, "You confine yourself too much to my room, my child, and must go out into the bright sunshine, so that the smile may come back to your lip, the roses ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... disturbance. Martella was the only one with the quickness of resource to meet the crisis. In a twinkling, he slipped the bridle of the horse over his head, unfastened the cinch and flung the saddle to the ground. Then, pointing the nose of the animal toward the trail, he gave his haunch a pinch like the nipping of a fire ant. The animal responded with a snort and leap, and then trotted to the group who stared at ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... Rachel treated her to divers acidulated lectures upon the ingratitude of her behaviour, and the intensity with which she ought to be ashamed of herself. None of these courses of treatment was exactly what Blanche needed; but perhaps the nipping north wind of Aunt Rachel was better than the dead calm of Clare, and far superior to the soft summer breeze ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... under your correction and favour, seemeth unto me not unlike to the song of Gammer Yea-by-nay. It is full of sarcasms, mockeries, bitter taunts, nipping bobs, derisive quips, biting jerks, and contradictory iterations, the one part destroying the other. I know not, quoth Pantagruel, which of all my answers to lay hold on; for your proposals are so full of ifs and buts, that I can ground nothing on them, nor pitch upon any solid and positive ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... remote, her teeth nipping at the velvet of her underlip. He, too, remained lost in gloomy retrospection for a while, but finally looked up with a more ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... o'er her shoulders thrown, A russet kirtle fenced the nipping air; 'Twas simple russet, but it was her own: 'Twas her own country bred the flock so fair, 'Twas her own labour did ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... busily occupied with a piece of needlework. She was a very pretty child, of fair complexion and deep blue eyes, with the beseeching look that you sometimes see in the young face, when trouble and hard treatment have too early visited the little heart—like an untimely frost, nipping the tender blossoms of spring. Sad indeed it is to see that look in childhood, when, under the sheltering wings of parents and friends, the body and mind should expand together in an atmosphere of love and gentleness—such ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... had come to de Sigognac's rescue, and now suddenly roared out in his stentorian voice, "What the deuce is nipping me? Is it a viper? I felt two sharp fangs meet in the calf ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... that he brought small furrows into his forehead by sheer force of reverie. Where the issue of an interview is as likely to be a vast change for the worse as for the better, any initial difference from expectation causes nipping sensations of failure. Oak went up to the door a little abashed: his mental rehearsal and the reality had had no ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... and a sense of parting arouse. In what family's courts do not the blasts of autumn winds intrude? And where in autumn does not rain patter against the window-frames? The silken quilt cannot ward off the nipping force of autumn winds. The drip of the half drained water-clock impels the autumn rains. A lull for few nights reigned, but the wind has again risen in strength. By the lantern I weep, as if I sat with some one who must go. The small ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... bettered. This first ration was a decided improvement on those of the Pemberton building; we had left the snow and ice behind at Richmond—or rather at some place between Raleigh, N. C., and Columbia, S. C.—and the air here, though chill, was not nipping, but bracing. It looked as if we would have a plenty of wood for shelter and fuel, it was certainly better to have sixteen acres to roam over than the stiffing confines of a building; and, still better, it seemed as if there would be plenty of opportunities to get beyond the stockade, and attempt ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... have to say till we see the Duke. What a charming morning;—is it not? How sweet it would be down in the country." March had gone out like a lamb, and even in London the early April days were sweet,—to be followed, no doubt, by the usual nipping inclemency of May. "I never can get over the feeling," continued the Duke, "that Parliament should sit for the six winter months, instead of in summer. If we met on the first of October, how glorious it would be to get away ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... nipping air and soon began to walk briskly. And then as he crossed Park Avenue and entered her street he saw two men coming down her steps. They were Mr. Dinwiddie, and the extremely good-looking young man whom Osborne had brought to the box on Monday night. The young ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... ceased. The snow was two feet deep, in the streets, and the air was nipping chill. The streets were deserted, as evening settled down and Charley neared home. Now when he passed an open stairway, leading up into a building, he saw a huddled figure ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... matter which mineral he found, so long as it spelled wealth for him? Then he would buy a bigger car and a faster car, and he would bore farther and farther into yonder. In his past were tucked away months on end of tramping across deserts and up mountain defiles with a packed burro nipping patiently along in front of him and this same, seductive dream beckoning him over the next horizon. Burros had been slow. While he hurtled down the road from Pinnacle to Lund, Casey pictured himself plodding through sand and sage and over malapai and up dry canyons, ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... been made in the construction of the nippers. In the ordinary Heilmann's comber, the upper blade has a groove in its nipping edge, and the cushion plate is covered with cloth and leather, the fibers being held by the grip between the leather of the cushion plate and the edges of the groove in the upper blade, or knife, as it is called. The objections to this mode of construction were that the leather on the cushion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... any one should be as respectable as that man looks!" thought Sir James, impatiently. He walked forward to the fire, warmed hands and feet chilled by a nipping east wind, and then, with his back to the warmth, he examined ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... we crept on them the way a cat creeps on a mouse. In the daytime a moose is usually lying down. We'd find their tracks and places where they'd been nipping off the ends of branches and twigs, and follow them up. They easily take the scent of men, and we'd have to keep well to the leeward. Sometimes we'd come upon them lying down, but, if in walking along, we'd broken a twig, or made the slightest noise, they'd think it was one of their mortal enemies, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... your attitude and question. We came out to see the moon rise on the moor, and found the night breeze nipping." ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... whence it flew very prettily branched or creased, which was easily discoverable by the Microscope. This drop, after I had thus ground it, without at all impairing the remnant that was not ground away, I caused to fly immediately all into sand upon the nipping off the very tip of ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... be no doubt that Margaret Shields was extremely pleasing. Beside her two shivering chamber-mates ("chamber-dekyns" they would have been called, in Oxford slang, four hundred years ago), Miss Shields looked quite brilliant, warm, and comfortable, even in the eager and the nipping air of Miss Marlett's shuddering establishment, and by the frosty light of a single candle. This young lady was tall and firmly fashioned; a nut-brown maid, with a ruddy glow on her cheeks, with glossy hair rolled up in a big tight knot, and with a ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... they were as fair as the full moon shining above the mountains. They walked with noiseless feet among 5 the clouds and showered gifts upon the earth. They sent the refreshing rain, the silent dew, and the nipping frost, each in its season. They gave life to the fields, and strength to the mountains, and grandeur to the sea. And because of their bounty the earth was glad and the stars twinkled ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... been from a well-to-do patient who fostered a half-fancied illness, he might have been more put out than he certainly was when, upon turning into the street, he felt the keen east wind nipping his ears; but it was from a poor house lying in the midst of a very labyrinth of squalid back streets and foul courts, and yet but a mere stone's-throw from his own ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... unexpected command, in Polly's voice, Dr. Dudley endeavored to obey. He did succeed in slamming the door in front of pussy, though at the risk of nipping her little black nose; but when he stooped to snatch her she slipped between his feet, and dashed into his office. Polly flew after, and the door went together just as the Doctor ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... the cold are the softer, and the easier to "tap" or perforate with the screw—thread. Other machines are scissors trimming plates of iron like cardboard; others, in a careless kind of way, spend all their time in nipping off whatever bolts and bars are presented to them; and others make pretty rows of rivet-holes all along the edges of huge iron plates. These animated creatures of the mill, performing their tasks like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... seems a pleasant thing Nipping daisies in the spring; But what chilly nights I pass On the cold and dewy grass, Or pick my scanty dinner where All the ground ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... the world who had known herself loved by him, yet had been capable of sending him away! If he would do such things as these for an acquaintance, at best a "pal," what would he not do for a woman beloved? I should have liked to duck that creature under the pump in the court, on just such a nipping night as this. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... said the barber. "You WILL get it, though, if you don't sit stiller," he continued, nipping in the bud any attempt on the part of his patient to think that he ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... hillside was the little pasture in which the old mare was grazing, moving slowly about and nipping at the short grass as if that which lay directly under her nose could not be nearly as choice as that which she could obtain by ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... manufactures to agriculture, from the consequences of the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in the Italian republics in modern times. But no government, not even that of the Czar Peter or Sultaun Mahmoud, could succeed in destroying or nipping in the bud brances of national industry, by simple acts of the legislature or sovereign authority, not imposed by external and irresistible authority. The Emperor Paul tried it, and got a sash twisted about his neck, according to the established ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... of the Cowdenknowes. All the world seemed happy, and I could scarcely believe—what I kent to be true for all that—that we were still walking in the realms of sin and misery. The milk-cows were nipping the clovery parks, and chewing their cuds at their leisure;—the wild partridges whidding about in pairs, or birring their wings with fright over the hedges;—and the blue-bonneted ploughmen on the road cracking their whips in wantonness, and whistling along ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of the nipping gale Jones slipped close upon the herd without alarming even a cow. More than a hundred little reddish-black calves leisurely loped in the rear. Kentuck, keen to his work, crept on like a wolf, and the hunter's great fist clenched the coiled lasso. Before ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... Powers that Greece would never tolerate a Bulgarian attack upon Serbia. It was largely on the strength of this assurance that, when, a little later, the attitude of Bulgaria grew menacing and the Serbian General Staff suggested marching upon Sofia and nipping the Bulgarian mobilization in the bud, the then Russian Foreign Minister, M. Sazonov, supported in this by Sir Edward Grey, warned Serbia not to take the initiative. Serbia yielded to the demands of her great Allies, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... from the other bank came across, lowing for their share. But on the third day, when the sprouts began to show on the twining stick-cactus, the great herd that had dogged his steps for months left the bitter sahuaros and scattered across the mesa like children on a picnic, nipping eagerly at every shoot. ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... but left to trail along the ground at their own sweet will. At the vintage, as we witnessed it, men and women—young, middle-aged, and old—accompanied by troops of children, were roaming all over the slopes dexterously nipping off the bunches of grapes with their thumb and finger nails and flinging them into the little wooden tubs with which they were provided. The pressing of the grapes and the after-treatment of the wine destined to become sparkling ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... closed with an enemy, the rest of the dogs each sought an especial adversary, hoping to wipe out some past defeat; while the pups, having no past to wipe out, diverted themselves by skirmishing about on the outskirts of the scrimmage, nipping joyously at any hind quarters that came handy, bumping into other groups of pups, thoroughly enjoying life, and accumulating material for future fights ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... and snow! The air bites shrewdly, nipping, eager, As in old Denmark long ago. A long, long watch through storm and leaguer That dim, departing Sentinel Has held. He hails the Young Guard's entry— "Who goes there?" "Friend!" "Pass, friend!" "All's well!" Tired age retreats—fresh ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... deluge had come again. It stood at the cabin eaves before the break came, six feet on the level. With the end of the storm came a bright, cold sky and frost,—not the bitter frost of the high latitudes, but a nipping cold that held off the melting rains and laid a thin scum of ice on every patch ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... care being taken to daily inspect them and remove the worms which have followed them from the nursery. The next operation is that of "topping" the plants, that is, of stopping their further growth by nipping off the heads. ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... everywhere; Ballbody kept rolling up them and over them, confining his attentions to no one in particular; the scorpion kept grabbing at their legs with his huge pincers; a three-foot centipede kept screwing up their bodies, nipping as he went; varied as numerous were their woes. Nor was it long before the last of them had fled from the kitchen ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald |
