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Pother   Listen
verb
Pother  v. t.  (past & past part. pothered; pres. part. pothering)  To harass and perplex; to worry. "Pothers and wearies himself."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pother" Quotes from Famous Books



... the puzzle. The office of the company is on the Strand above the Savoy. Mrs. Farmingham went to the manager and showed him a lot of papers she had in an official-looking envelope. After a good bit of official pother the porters carried out a big portmanteau, a sort of heavy leather traveling case, and put it into the carriage. Mrs. Farmingham came to Hargrave where ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... little fellow, when Mrs. Brown gently tapped him on the shoulder, saying, "Master Merry, you're fetched!" Time was annihilated, and memory dumbfounded!—The entertainment that had been looked forward to for days, counted by the hours, and put so many mammas in a pother, is gone!—The hands of the hall-clock are almost perpendicular—it wants but half-an-hour of midnight!—Several anxious mammas have sent several times for their several little ones; and the several servants have been sent away with several evasive answers—for "the little dears are ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner

... pedigree bulls and his pedigree mares. "It's money clean wasted," said the old farmers, "for a calf's a calf no odds what begets it, and a horse that can work in chains and take its turn on the road is horse enough for any man, without sinking money in dumb beasts, and a' this sire-and-dam pother." It would anger the old man that talk, ay, even when he was the old frail frame of what once he was,—like a dead and withered ash-tree, dourly awaiting the death gale to send it crashing down, to lie where once its shade fell in ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... 'tis so long, it is not very wide, For two are the most that together can ride; And e'en then 'tis a chance but they sit in a pother. And joke and cross and run foul ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... pucker o' bewilderment, as he listened t' the sad strains o' Toby Farr's music, jus' as though he knowed he wasn't able t' rede the riddles of his life, jus' yet awhile, but would be able t' rede them, by an' by, when he growed up, an' expected t' find hisself in a pother o' trouble when he mastered the answers. I didn't know his name, then, t' be sure; had I knowed it, as know it I did, afore the night was over, I might have put down my flute, in amazement, an' stared an' said, "Well, well, well!" jus' as everybody did, ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... that of Hobbes and Mandevill. But granting it were so, which it is not, truth ought only to be regarded, and names to have no weight in a dispute of this kind. I wanted to say something on female chastity and delicacy, about which you and your heroines make such a rout and a pother, and I shall now apply it to examine how far your Pamela is a proper example of either. In the first place, she was not of that rank or situation in life which could entitle her to those notions of honour and ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... very plain, of course, that all the initial excitement and pother could not possibly last. Withhold food from gossip, and it starves and dies. Carlisle simply stayed quiet and held her tongue; and as the days passed without more developments of any sort, she found ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... enough so far as it went. Now for the gas-bags, the sausages; for these observation balloons were the real object of all this nocturnal pother. ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry

... cab-drivers, hotel-runnets, and coin missionaires, who assaulted us with a volley of French, Italian, and broken English, which beat pitilessly about our ears; for really it seemed as if all the dictionaries in the world had been torn to pieces, and blown around us by a hurricane. Such a pother! We took a commissionaire, a respectable-looking man, in a cloak, who said his name was Salvator Rosa; and he engaged to show us ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... service between some Bohemians and some Hungarians. A fracas was always conducted with rapiers and daggers in those days, and must have been a picturesque, if inconvenient, event. It was all about a lady too, which sounds quite likely: it was said that she was not worth all the pother: this is the sort of thing some people would say. As a consequence of this fracas several Bohemians were executed for robbery with violence, which sheds a different light on the incident, but I do not think it matters much ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... There was a terrific pother. Stephen wakened violently, and in a moment all three were staring ineffectually at the thousand crystal fragments ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... week after the Wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the North Coming on with a terrible pother, From the peak of the crag blew the Giant away. And what did these School-boys?—The very next day They went and they ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... habit," he began after a long gaze upwards at the rooks now settling to roost and making a mighty pother of it. "But I'm afraid there's no getting round the fact that this afternoon I acted a lie. And yet, on the whole, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... the good people to help us!" she cried. And with that she ran up-stairs, and I after her, in a great pother of haste. For the candle in her hand was the only bit of fire we had, and I did not want it blown out ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... somewhat spent itself, she retreated to her brothers, to whom she poured out a full and animated account of the night's happenings. They all agreed that Mademoiselle must have rats in the upper story to make such a pother over the adventure, though Maxwell, who held himself to be approaching years of discretion, gave it as his opinion that the whole thing was a piece of bad luck and an experiment not ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... endeavour to make the lady believe so, or rather, I begin first to make myself believe that I am in love—but I carry on my affairs quite in the French way, sentimentally—l'amour (say they) n'est rien sans sentiment. Now, notwithstanding they make such a pother about the word, they have no precise idea annexed to it. And so much for that same subject called love."—STERNE'S Letters, May ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... according to Fontenelle, to drop into his arms when asked, and leave those arms again with equal alacrity also when asked! It would have been quite pleasant and satisfactory to him, the Marquis;—and for Sylvie—well!—for Sylvie, she would soon have got over it! Now there was all this fuss and pother about virtue! Virtue, quotha! In a woman, and in Paris! At this time of day! Could anything ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... Hid in the hanging chalice of the rose: Which think you better? If my mood offend, We'll turn to business,—to the empty cares That make such pother in our feverish life. When at Ravenna, did you ever hear Of any romance in Francesca's life? A love-tilt, gallantry, or anything That might have touched ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... indignant, yet he could hardly help smiling at the pother. "What," said he, "have I to do with all this? I have paid for everything; I am surely entitled to go away if I like. Remember, that if I lose my passage to Boston, you ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... hash, hodgepodge; hotch-potch[obs3], hotch-pot[obs3]; imbroglio, chaos, omnium gatherum[Lat], medley; mere mixture &c. 41; fortuitous concourse of atoms, disjecta membra[Lat], rudis indigestaque moles [Lat][Ovid]. complexity &c. 59a. turmoil; ferment &c. (agitation) 315; to-do, trouble, pudder[obs3], pother, row, rumble, disturbance, hubbub, convulsion, tumult, uproar, revolution, riot, rumpus, stour[obs3], scramble, brawl, fracas, rhubarb [baseball], fight, free-for-all, row, ruction, rumpus, embroilment, melee, spill and pelt, rough and tumble; whirlwind &c. 349; bear ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... a world like to this The hot Grecian did miss, Of whom histories keep such a pother; To the bottom he sunk, And when he had drunk, Grew maudlin, and wept ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... along, extricating his boat-bonnet now from a bower of raspberry-bushes, now from the branches of a brotherly birch-tree,—"better," thought he, "were I seated in what I bear, and bounding gayly over the billow. Peril is better than pother." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... groom, "ye are NOT the young spark who is to marry Mistress Amy at the Hall, yet makes a pother and mess of it all by a duel with Sir Roger de Cadgerly, the wicked baronet, for his over-free discourse with our fair Maudlin this very eve? Ye are NOT the traveler whose post-chaise is now at the Falcon? ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... "Pother! Don't you fret about that!" said George. "I'm taking care of you now, and I'll see that you soon get home and to Grays', too; that's all buncombe. As for your share of your father's estate, you watch me get it! You are his child, and there ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... [U.S.], hash, hodgepodge; hotch-potch^, hotch-pot^; imbroglio, chaos, omnium gatherum [Lat.], medley; mere mixture &c 41; fortuitous concourse of atoms, disjecta membra [Lat.], rudis indigestaque moles [Lat.] [Ovid]. complexity &c 59.1. turmoil; ferment &c (agitation) 315; to-do, trouble, pudder^, pother, row, rumble, disturbance, hubbub, convulsion, tumult, uproar, revolution, riot, rumpus, stour^, scramble, brawl, fracas, rhubarb, fight, free-for-all, row, ruction, rumpus, embroilment, melee, spill and pelt, rough and tumble; whirlwind &c 349; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... pother arose since Niecks' comprehensive biography appeared. So sure was he of his facts that he disposed of the pseudo-date in one footnote. Perhaps the composer was to blame; artists, male as well as female, have been known to make themselves younger in years by conveniently forgetting their ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... determined to make itself as un-English as possible. If there had not been the patriotic urge to assert our essential Americanism more strongly than ever, there still would have been a reaction against all the pledging and the handshaking, the pother about blood and water, the purple patches in every newspaper asserting Anglo-Saxonism against the world. I remember my own nervousness when, in 1918, after the best part of a year in England, in England's darkest days, I came back full of admiration for the pluck of all England ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... of his Majesty that he was delighted to see his courtiers wearing the French fashions outside their heads, provided they didn't carry the French ideas within. You are too young, doubtless, cavaliere, to have heard of the philosophers who are raising such a pother north of the Alps: a set of madmen that, because their birth doesn't give them the entree of Versailles, are preaching that men should return to a state of nature, great ladies suckle their young like animals, and the peasantry own their land like nobles. Luckily you'll ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... ones, who make up this pother; Who gape and stare, just like stuck pigs at each other, As mirrors, wherein, at full length do appear, Your follies reflected so apish and ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... fool. Did I not tell thee that there are no Gods? lo! you now! for what should they have roused this trumpery pother, if not to strike me? Tush, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... Dickon admiringly, "what a wonder tha' art! Tha' always sees a way out o' things. They was quite in a pother yesterday. They didn't see how they was to manage without orderin' up more food—they felt ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... which eugenists raise such a pother, are surely not the worst curses that mankind has to bear. Some of the greatest men in history have had them; whole nations have had them and survived. The truth about them is that, save in relatively ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken

... from ordinary affairs; but the air is keen, the outlook grand, the heavens near. Our companions are the familiar earth by day or the mysterious stars by night, and these are good if only to recall the silent splendor of God's universe amid the pother of human inventions. There also the very spirit of liberty, which seems to have its dwelling among the hills, enters into us and makes us sympathize with ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... captain, "I know nothing about him. But he came to your factor and wanted to take the first ship that cleared, and seemed in such a mortal pother that Mr. Horsley suspicioned something, and gave me a slant to look out for him. And all the time we lay off Bristol, my fine fellow kept himself ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... "Sure, the pother o' life. It's an' up an' down, so fast it makes a body dizzy in their wits. That boy, Fayetty, one day as good as a fine fish o' Friday; the next—eatin' me heart out with the worry. Never a doubt I doubt 'twas himself belabored ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... up on the beach and seemed to try to embrace the earth, possess it. But it fell away baffled. Over its subsiding pother sprang a new wave with the same bosomful of desire and the same frantic clutching here and there—the same rebuff, the same destruction under the surge of the next and the next. The descending night gave a strange pathos to the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... but as they both spoke at once and shrilly, the unfortunate Commissary learnt little of the matter at issue between them. Not until the united efforts of all the men present had silenced feminine vociferation was it possible to understand what in the world the pother was about. The old gentleman, to whom in courtesy priority of speech was accorded, ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West

... Carlos in highest person came in: Baby Carlos (more power to him!) got the Duchies, and we hope there was an end. No young gentleman ever had such a pother to make among his fellow-creatures about a little heritable property. If Baby Carlos's performance in it be anything in proportion, he will be ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... name, is all this pother about? For what cause do they embitter their own and other people's lives? That a man should publish three or thirty articles a year, that he should finish or not finish his great allegorical picture, are questions of little interest ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... for giving themselves such trouble about so very little. What would become of us without philosophy, without this reasonable contempt of things frivolous, transient and fugitive, about which the greedy and ambitious make such a pother, fancying them to be solid! This is to become wise by stripes, you will tell me; well, if one do become wise, what matters it how?—I read a great deal; I devour my Books, and that brings me useful ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... places when a bridge has to be made, there is an infinite pother and worry about building the piers, coffer-dams, and heaven knows what else. Some swing their bridges to avoid this trouble, and some try to throw an arch of one span from side to side. There are a thousand different tricks. In Belfort they simply wait until ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... the friend who had come to help quarrelled shrilly, she murmured, 'Poor things! putting themselves in such a pother!' When, after a crash, Martha was heard to say, 'There's the cream-jug now! Well, break one, break three!' she only shook her head, and murmured that servants were not what they used to be. When Martha's friend's little boy dropped ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... the door a minute afore and was afeared to come in 'cause of you, mistress. Give me that dish o' bacon, Betty. The man who saw his breakfast tumbling on the floor is in a sad pother." ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... in my young memory, and would have done so even had I not had that tangible memento of them. Who were they, those two of whom that one strange glimpse had befallen me? What, I wondered, was the previous history of each? What, in particular, had all that tragic pother been about? Mlle. Ange'lique I guessed to be thirty years old, her friend perhaps fifty-five. Each of their faces was as clear to me as in the moment of actual vision—the man's fat shiny bewildered ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... in my chair and gazed steadily at Chord; but his eyes would not bring themselves to meet mine, and so he made some pother about filling up his cup again, with the neck of the bottle trembling on the edge, as ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane

... it is evening, and back comes the lord and master. What a bustle and a pother this home-coming meant we know well, since we know what he expected. Such a running and fetching of bowls of warm water to wash his feet, and comfortable shoes to ease him; such a hanging on his words and admiring of his labours. Then comes ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... again for the last time. I walked straight to her room. Mademoiselle Leblanc tried to throw herself in front of the door; I pushed her aside so roughly that she fell, and, I believe, hurt herself slightly. She immediately filled the house with her cries; and later, in the trial, made a great pother about what she was pleased to call an attempt to murder her. I at once entered Edmee's room; there I found the abbe and the doctor. I listened in silence to what the latter was saying. I learnt that the wounds in themselves were not mortal, that they ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... this appears to me little better than idle, restless vanity. O my friend, what a fuss and a pother we are all making, we little flies who are going round on the great wheel of time! To-day we are flickering and buzzing about, our little bits of wings glittering in the sunshine, and to-morrow we are safe enough in the little crevice at the back of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... after, the wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the north, Coming on with a terrible pother, 15 From the peak of the crag blew the giant away. And what did these school-boys?—The very next day They went and they ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... the repairs. And all the while wise, gray old Finn sat erect on his haunches beside the writing-table, looking on approvingly, and reflecting, no doubt, upon the prowess of the youngster who had caused all this pother. ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... wrathful and sullen, had scarce understood what the whole pother was about. She was hard of hearing, and Petty Constable Pyot was at great pains to explain to her that by the major-general's orders the body of the murdered man should be laid decently under shelter, until such time as proper burial could be ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... in such a pother, out in the world," Isabelle remarked to Margaret, as she turned over the leaves of her husband's letter. "The President is calling names, and a lot of good people are calling names back. And neither side seems to like being called ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... chicanery; I passed over in state to our territories in Ireland, where I entertained the gentry in a style the Lord Lieutenant himself could not equal; gave the fashion to Dublin (to be sure it was a beggarly savage city in those days; and, since the time there has been a pother about the Union, and the misfortunes attending it, I have been at a loss to account for the mad praises of the old order of things, which the fond Irish patriots have invented); I say I set the fashion to Dublin; and small praise to me, for a poor place it was ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... man made his way to the end of the table and drew out the chair opposite Miss Carmichael with a degree of assurance that precipitated the rest of the table into a pretty pother. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... toiling to provide our meat and bread! Where the eager crowd is moiling, struggling on with weary tread! Battling with stockjobbing ladies, meeting all their wiles and tricks, or embarking in the Hades of the city's politics! But forgotten is the pother, all the work day cares are gone, when she comes home to dear father with his nice clean apron on! There's your chair, he says; "sit in it; supper will be cooked eftsoons: I will dish it in a minute—scrambled eggs and shredded ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... believe, on my soul, He'd manage to get betwixt somebody's shins, And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins, To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice, All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice; Or, if he found nobody else there to pother, Why, one of his legs would just trip up the other, For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, 250 Like a well-meaning dunce, with the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... crawled upon their bellies. I thought the landlady would have kissed me; such a flutter of cordiality, such smiles, such affectionate attentions were called forth, and the good lady bustled on my service in such a pother of ringlets and with such a jingling of keys. 'You're probably expected, sir, at the Place? I do trust you may 'ave better accounts of his lordship's 'elth, sir. We understood that his lordship, Mosha de Carwell, was main bad. Ha, sir, we shall all feel his loss, poor, dear, noble gentleman; ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "Oh pother! It's not that I'm not a man, or a laggard in love; but I'd like to know what you'd do to a girl dumb with grief over the recent loss of her mother, who was her only relative worth counting, sick from God knows what exposure ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... repercussions of sound Concerning which bards make a pother, There's none like that happy rebound When one blockhead echoes ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... is enough! Was it round?—and thick?—and had it letters and devices graved upon it?—yes? Oh, NOW I know what this Great Seal is that there's been such worry and pother about. An' ye had described it to me, ye could have had it three weeks ago. Right well I know where it lies; but it was not I that put ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... or so, and membership is ranked as the highest honor of the college. But in God's name, what is all this pother? Are there not already enough jealousies without this one added? Does not college society already fall into enough locked coteries without this one? No matter how keen is the pride of membership, it does not atone for the disappointments and the heart-burnings of failure. It is hinted obscurely ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... autocratic, czar-like ordinance of banishment to Bermuda offered him against his enemy. It is nearly always in the power of a party politician to distort and misrepresent the act {17} of an opponent, however just or blameless that act may be. Brougham made a great pother about the rights of freemen, usurpation, dictatorship. As a lawyer he raised the legal point, that Durham could not banish offenders from Canada to a colony over which he had no jurisdiction. He enlisted other lawyers on his side to attack the composition of Durham's council. ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... after a severe and dangerous confinement, gave birth to a dead child. Immediately after the intelligence had been made known, a servant, having upon some business passed outside the gate of the castle-yard, was met by Jacque, who, contrary to his wont, accosted him, observing, 'So, after all the pother, the son and heir is still-born.' This remark was accompanied by a chuckling laugh, the only approach to merriment which he was ever known to exhibit. The servant, who was really disappointed, having ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... last the contest rose, From words they almost came to blows: When luckily came by a third— To him the question they referred, And begged he'd tell 'em, if he knew, Whether the thing was green or blue. "Sirs," cries the umpire, "cease your pother! The creature's neither one or t'other. I caught the animal last night, And viewed it o'er by candlelight: I marked it well—'t was black as jet— You stare—but, sirs, I've got it yet, And can produce it." "Pray, sir, do; I'll lay my life the thing is blue." ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... and was seized by Hippias, who begged him to get out of the noise and pother, and caught hold of his slack arm to bear him into a conveyance; but Richard, by wheeling half to the right, or left, always got his face round to the point where young Tom was manoeuvring to appear at his ease. Even when they were seated in the conveyance, Hippias ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... had ceased, but the wind blew tremendously. The coach stood upon the bridge like a stranded vessel, its two lamps holding doubtful battle with the wind, now flaring out triumphantly, now almost yielding up the ghost. Inside, the guard was snoring in defiance of the pother o'er his head. ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... Sarkantyus, and a very great pother he made, insisting that the whole company should instantly hasten back to town, as if they remained there the pale death would speedily overtake them, and it would therefore boot them little to have escaped from the red death. And indeed the plague was raging fearfully in that district, and dying ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... a pother. What could be done? Grifone, of course, had he been there, would have drawn his master's sword for him, dragged him out of the room, and sent him back in half an hour's time with a bloody testimony of nothing on the blade. Molly would have been pacified, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... in to dinner that night and she found him poor company. He tried indeed by fits and starts to entertain her, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He was in a great pother and trouble about Stella Ballantyne, who sat over against him on the other side of the table. She wore no traces of the consternation which his words had caused her a couple of hours before. She had come dressed in a slim gown of shimmering ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... great gods, That keep this dreadful pother o'er our heads, Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch, That hast within ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... that wants it badly, as you may judge, or I wouldn't be trudging off with it at this hour of the night. Katty, you go to bed, and let Barney stay up till I come back—did you mind my words, I repate—read you both out, if ever a syllable comes to Father Pother's ears, or ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... be done by a man. It can't be done by an ordinary man, because he does not understand it. Vain fool! and he sends off to the pastry-cook in Great Russell Street or Baker Street, he lays on a couple of extra waiters (green-grocers in the neighborhood), he makes a great pother with his butler in the cellar, and fancies ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of three camels by voice persuasion alone is no mean performance, but no voice, not even the vocal chords of the Archangel Gabriel, would have moved the cause of all this pother, for at the word of command, in a tone which should have put fear of death into her black heart, she slightly shifted ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... wrung with her wet hands, and cried, 'A ship! I have been down the beach. O pitiful! A Spanish ship ashore between the rocks, And none to guide our people. Wake.' Then I Raised on mine elbow looked; it was high day; In the windy pother seas came in like smoke That blew among the trees as fine small rain, And then the broken water sun-besprent Glitter'd, fell back and showed her high and fast A caravel, a pinnace that methought To some great ship had longed; her hap alone Of all that multitude it was to drive ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow

... Gordon: wrote to a friend the ship he was coming home in—Morning Star. It was the same; price on G.G.'s head to this day: shouldn't mind getting it. Needn't pother over it, sir; 'twas Gordon: but he'd never ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood

... left her somewhere, got drunk afterward, and plunged into the ditch. Things have happened like that. Abby, don't make a camel's-hair shirt out of your paint-brushes. What a pother about a singer! If it had been a great inventor, a poet, an artist, there would have been nothing more than a two-line paragraph. But an opera-singer, one who entertains us during our idle evenings—ha! that's a different matter. Set instantly that great municipal ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... a fearful to-do over it, rolling completely over several times, backward and forward, at the same time smiting the sea with his mighty tail, making an almost 25 deafening noise and pother. But we were comfortable enough while we unshipped the mast and made ready for action, being sufficiently far away from him to escape the full effect ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... to make such a pother about," she said settling back comfortably in her chair, a cup of coffee in hand. "I knew that Tom wouldn't be able to hold Fairfax much longer, and I wasn't going to have those rascals get him if I could help it. Providence was on my ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison

... this self-dubbed ignoramus making all this pother about being deprived of the classics? Surely he cannot have failed to realise that it is impossible to understand and appreciate the classics properly without having learnt Latin and Greek? But you cannot learn Latin and Greek without learning the grammar. He not only on ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... I'm, in heart and soul, a friend To genuine talent, Heaven forefend That I should raise a pother, Because the philanthropic folks Wink and applaud a pious hoax, For ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... the guardian friend or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste; Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother,— You can hang or drown ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... What an immense pother, by parliamenting and palavering in all corners of your empire, to decide such a question as that! I say, if that is the function, almost any human creature can learn to discharge it: fling out your orange-skin again; and save an incalculable labor, and an emission of nonsense and ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... to lay a finger on one of them themselves. So these states regard it as the duty of a ruler to provide them with all the good things imaginable, but to keep his own hands off them all the while. (12) So then, for my part, if anybody desires to have a heap of pother himself, (13) and be a nuisance to the rest of the world, I will educate him in the manner suggested, and he shall take his place among those who are fit to rule; but for myself, I beg to be enrolled amongst those who wish ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon

... all away in their proper places, so that he might know where to find them; though, for that matter, he was half his time worrying about the house in search of some book or writing which he had carefully put out of the way. I shall never forget what a pother he once made, because my wife cleaned out his room when his back was turned, and put everything to rights; for he swore he would never be able to get his papers in order again in a twelve-month. Upon this my wife ventured to ask him, what he did with so many books and papers? and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... time, while they were talking together, some black clouds gathered about the giant's middle, and burst into a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning, causing such a pother that Hercules found it impossible to distinguish a word. Only the giant's immeasurable legs were to be seen, standing up into the obscurity of the tempest; and, now and then, a momentary glimpse of his whole figure, mantled in a volume of mist. He seemed to be speaking, most of the time; but his ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... her hands airily. "What a pother!" she cried. "What does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams goes to a ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... when the crows perceive you; for the owl is sure to take a look around for the cause of their sudden alarm. If he sees nothing suspicious he will return to his shelter to eat his crow, or just to rest his sensitive ears after all the pother. A quarter-mile away the crows sit silent, watching you ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... A great pother has lately been made by Suffrage workers in New York because a bill was proposed prohibiting married women from teaching in the public schools. This has been the unwritten law in many places for years. The practice was adopted ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson

... the poke, Which out of it sent such a smoke, As ready was them all to choke, So grievous was the pother; So that the knights each other lost, And stood as still as any post; Tom Thumb nor Tomalin could boast Themselves of ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... masts, she smote and over-rode the waves, and, beating them down, maintained an unvarying, stubborn poise. But although she refused to vacillate or shuffle to the wooing efforts of the uneasy waters, she progressed not without noise and pother; foamed and fumed mightily at the bow and left behind her a wake, receding almost as far as the eyes might reach. Captain Macpherson looked after the bubbles, cast his glance aloft at the bulging patches of white, and then condescended to observe the agent ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... bolts were drawn, the bridge went down with a clatter, and Bertran de Born came out—a fine stout man, all in a pother, with a red, perplexed face, angry eyes, hair and beard cut in blocks, a body too big for his clothes—a man of hot blood, fumes and rages. Richard at sight of him, this unquiet sniffer of offences, this whirled about with stratagems, threw back his head and laughed long ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett



Words linked to "Pother" :   flap, agitation, agitate, fret, excite, dither, niggle, turn on, commove, fuss, tizzy, charge up



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