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Quail   Listen
verb
Quail  v. i.  (past & past part. qualled; pres. part. qualling)  
1.
To die; to perish; hence, to wither; to fade. (Obs.)
2.
To become quelled; to become cast down; to sink under trial or apprehension of danger; to lose the spirit and power of resistance; to lose heart; to give way; to shrink; to cower. "The atheist power shall quail, and confess his fears. I. Taylor. Stouter hearts than a woman's have quailed in this terrible winter."
Synonyms: to cower; flinch; shrink; quake; tremble; blench; succumb; yield.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Quail" Quotes from Famous Books



... society has been made to bend to this, and even reason itself is often for the moment obscured, by means of its fascinations. Learning and intellect, riches, popularity, and power, have frequently been made to quail before it; and even virtue itself has for a time been deprived of its influence, when assailed by eloquence. Nay, even in more artificial communities, where Nature has been constrained and moulded anew to suit the tastes and caprices of selfish ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall

... began eating her quail without explaining herself further. Eric was nettled by her tone, for she was taking pains to let him see that she had not liked his play, perhaps even that she despised him for writing it. He half turned to Lady Poynter, but she was deep in conversation with her nephew. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna

... more likely. I'm told over here that the war fiction we've had wished on us by the ton resembles the real thing just about as much as maneuvers look like the first Battle of the Marne, say, when the Germans didn't know where they were at; went out quail hunting and struck a jungle full of tigers....Why not? When most of 'em were written by men of middle age snug beside a library fire with mattresses on the roof—in America not even a Zeppelin to warm up their blood. ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... of gentle nursing—even De Quincey's improvident travellers did not endure more, nor the children of Israel, to whose thirst the smitten rock yielded water, to whose hunger the heavens ministered with manna and the earth with quail, whose pursuing enemies were drowned in the sea that closed over their pathway, and whose confronting enemies in the land they entered to possess were overcome by the aid of unseen armies that were heard marching ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... necessary to apportion the role of "Mistress June" the Committee had unanimously agreed that it would be safest in Rhoda's hands. She would not quail at the critical moment, mumble her words, nor forget her duties; but, on the contrary, would rise to the occasion, and find the audience a ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... are wrong, Geoffrey; his name, on inquiry, proved to be Quail. But that was only half the problem solved. Why, I thought, should Leopold have been so puzzled? And then an idea struck me. I went back to the man on the bench and, with renewed apologies, asked him if he would mind telling me how he spelt his name. He put his hand into his pocket ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various

... they come down to timber-line; rarely to 8,000 feet. In winter they are white; in summer fulvous or dull grayish-buff, barred and spotted with black. This bird is colloquially called the "mountain quail." The brown-capped leucosticte is the only other Colorado species that ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... inhabit both hemispheres, and specimens of the different varieties are grouped in the cases. In the first case the visitor should notice the Currie partridge, from Nepal, the Cape and bare-necked partridges of Africa, and the sanguine pheasant; in the second case, the common European partridge and quail, the red European partridge, the Indian olive partridge, and the Andalusian quail; in the third and last partridge case, Californian and crested quails, and the Indian crowned partridge. Next in order are the Grouse, grouped in two cases (104, 105). In the first of these ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... tone causes him to quail. He had hoped that the surprise of his unexpected appearance—coupled with his knowledge of her clandestine appointment—would do something to subdue, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... bench in front of the garden-house, smoked and looked at the bats flying, just as with you two years ago, my darling, before we started on our trip. The trees stood so still and high near me, the air fragrant with linden blossoms; in the garden a quail whistled and partridges allured, and over beyond Arneburg lay the last pink border of the sunset. I was truly filled with gratitude to God, and there arose before my soul the quiet happiness of a family life filled with love, a peaceful ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... he heard a whistle, and he listened for it to be repeated. It was the whistle of the bobwhite. He knew that there were no quail in this region at this time of the year. He knew, too, that it was an Indian signal which Stella and Singing Bird had used between them. Could it be that Stella was outside, and that she was signaling the house, and ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... The note of the Quail so closely resembles that of the Whippoorwill, that I have thought it might be interesting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... off with souls, or tossing them with pitchforks into the flames. There were boiling cauldrons, red-hot gridirons, cataracts of fire, and innumerable other modes of torment. A walk along this infernal gallery was enough, one would have thought, to make the boldest purgatory-despiser quail. But no one who has a little spare cash, and is willing to part with it, need fear either purgatory or the devil. In the large marble house in the centre of the square one might buy at a reasonable rate an excision of some thousands of years from his appointed sojourn in that ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie

... plovers, partridge, herons, snipe, &c. Henry the Third, king of Castile (as Mariana the Jesuit reports of him, lib. 3. cap. 7.) was much affected [3236]"with catching of quails," and many gentlemen take a singular pleasure at morning and evening to go abroad with their quail-pipes, and will take any pains to satisfy their delight in that kind. The [3237]Italians have gardens fitted to such use, with nets, bushes, glades, sparing no cost or industry, and are very much affected with the sport. Tycho Brahe, that ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... Turkey, which is found in the heavy timber in the river bottoms; the Quail, which has become very abundant all over the State, within twenty years, following, it would seem, the march of civilization and settlement; the Ruffed Grouse, abundant in the timber, but never seen on the prairie; the Pinnated Grouse, or Prairie Hen, always found ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... supporting Cleburne's division, or, rather, "in echelon." Every few moments, a raking fire from the Yankee lines would be poured into our lines, tearing limbs off the trees, and throwing rocks and dirt in every direction; but I never saw a soldier quail, or even dodge. We had confidence in old Joe, and were ready to march right into the midst of battle at a moment's notice. While in this position, a bomb, loaded with shrapnel and grapeshot, came ripping and tearing through our ranks, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... the youthful champion might charge in the battle 25 Aiding his liegelord; his spirit was dauntless. Nor did kinsman's bequest quail at the battle: This the dragon discovered on their coming together. Wiglaf uttered many a right-saying, Said to his ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin

... corner of the heavens to the other. The earth quaked and rocked from side to side. All monstrous and deformed things shewed themselves, "Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire," enough to cause the stoutest heart to quail. Lastly, devils, whose name was legion, and to whose forms and distorted and menacing countenances superstition had annexed the most frightful ideas, crowded in countless multitudes upon the spectator, whose ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... tramp of hoofs upon the beaten course, Then came a sight that made the bravest quail: A phantom Friar on a spectre horse, Dragged by a creature decked with horns and tail. By the lone Mission, with the whirlwind's force, They madly swept, and left a sulphurous trail: And that was all,—enough ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte

... grinning broadly in amiable greeting. Two or three women, more bashful than the rest, scuttled into the depths of wigwams out of sight. A multitude of children concealed themselves craftily, like a covey of quail, and focussed their bright, bead-like eyes on the new-comers. The rest of the ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... by what had happened to him and the conclusions at which he had arrived, as he came across the deep grasses beside the fence where the pink of wild rose and the snow of alder commingled, where song sparrows trilled, and larks and quail were calling. He approached smiling in utter confidence. As he looked at the man, at his height, his strong open face, his grip on the plow, he realized why the world of the little woman revolved around Peter. ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... care how good old methods are, new ones are better, even if they're only just as good. That's not so Irish as it sounds. Doing the same thing in the same way year after year is like eating a quail a day for thirty days. Along toward the middle of the month a fellow begins to long for a broiled crow or a slice of ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... of Italy the peasants put out the eyes of a captured quail so that its cries may attract the flocks of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... because of a mild attack of delirium tremens. I brush the vipers away with a sweep of my hand, and go about my business. But I myself draw the line at roosters. A man who may laugh at snakes will quail before roosters. A fellow may shut his eyes to snakes, but he can't shut his ears to roosters. Well, well: it's all in a life-time. But, believe me, no good poetry, either in verse or in prose, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... brought. Don't mistake me, boy, it was some fun with Mercedes just now. I teased her, wouldn't give her the letter. You ought to have seen her eyes. If ever you see a black-and-white desert hawk swoop down upon a quail, then you'll know how Mercedes pounced upon her letter... Well, Casita is one hell of a place these days. I tried to get your baggage, and I think I made a mistake. We're going to see travel toward ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... beautiful scene of the setting sun notwithstanding. Eventually, however, I abandoned my belligerent position as to Milton's sonnets: the army of authorities I found ranged against the modest earth-works within which I had entrenched myself must of itself have made me quail. My utmost contention had been that Milton wrote the most impassioned sonnet (Avenge, O Lord), the two most nobly pathetic sonnets (When I consider and Methought I saw), and one of the poorest sonnets (Harry, whose tuneful, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... feathery plumes, and the stars looked down, and the nightingale sang. And wherever he wooed her, I think the grazing herds left sloping hill and peaceful vale, to listen to the wooing, and thence themselves, departed in pairs. The covies heard it and mated in the fields; the quail wooed his love in the wheat; the robin whistled to ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... voting down the words of the Declaration of Independence?... I rise simply to ask gentlemen to think well before, upon the free prairies of the West, in the summer of 1860, they dare to wince and quail before the assertions of the men in Philadelphia, in 1776—before they dare to shrink from repeating the words that these great men enunciated." "This was a strong appeal, and took the convention by storm," wrote a recording journalist. A new vote formally embodied this portion ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... things that haven't been done before, Are the tasks worth while to-day; Are you one of the flock that follows, or Are you one that shall lead the way? Are you one of the timid souls that quail At the jeers of a doubting crew, Or dare you, whether you win or fail, Strike out for a ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... is most interesting in humanity! The Universe is here assembled! O, Nature, how sublime, how exquisite is thy power! How tyrants must quail at the contemplation ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... him: "Art thou dainty, alien? Wouldst thou have flesh? Well, give me thy bow and an arrow or two, since thou art lazy- sick, and I will get thee a coney or a hare, or a quail maybe. Ah, I forgot; thou art dainty, and wilt not eat flesh as I do, blood and all together, but must needs half burn it in the fire, or mar it with hot water; as they say my Lady does: or as the Wretch, the Thing does; I know that, for I have seen ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... me, too. The shooting in our district is poor, however, as I had set up a dog, I got a gun, too. I took to sauntering round the neighbourhood with my Tresor: sometimes one would hit a hare (and didn't he go after that hare, upon my soul), sometimes a quail, or a duck. But the great thing was that Tresor was never a step away from me. Where I went, he went; I even took him to the bath with me, I did really! One lady actually tried to get me turned out of her drawing-room on account of Tresor, ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... iron will of one stout heart shall make a thousand quail; A feeble dwarf, dauntlessly resolved, will turn the tide of battle, And rally to a nobler strife the giants ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... profusion. Small gardens were cultivated where corn, beans, onions and a few other vegetables were raised, but families subsisted, for the most part, on game with which the forests abound, and the lakes and rivers were alive with fish. Wild geese, ducks, turkeys, quail and pigeons swept through the air with perfect freedom. Deer, antelope, moose, beaver, wolves, catamount and even grizzly bear often visited the scene of the settler's home, among whom ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... unconquerable terror seized upon me, from which I could no longer get free. I felt that a catastrophe was approaching before which the boldest spirit must quail. A dim, vague notion laid hold of my mind, but which was fast hardening into certainty. I tried to repel it, but it would return. I dared not express it in plain terms. Yet a few involuntary observations confirmed ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... saw a flock of quail in the apple orchard. Our baby quail got tangled in the long grass as he tried to scurry away and I picked him up. He was a jolly soft little brown ball with the brightest eyes. I would have liked to bring ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie

... crisis to make a very brave man quail. Bill Brown knew perfectly well why every one was running; there was going to be another explosion in a couple of minutes, maybe sooner, out of this hell in front of him. And the order had come for every man to save himself, and every man had done it except ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... forward, and with his eagle eye he glances keenly round the hall. That flashing eye has ere now bade monarchs quail; and those thin lips have uttered words which shall make the world ring till the last moment of the world shall come. The stately Eastern captive moves unawed through the assembly, till he makes a subject's salutation to ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... been a swordsman in my youth, and though the lank skeleton of my skill at fence is buried in disuse, it moves now in the grave of this right hand, that so long has wielded only the quiet quill. I do not bid you quail; not I,—but, by the angry devil of the duel, you answer me, either sword point to sword point; or from the pointing pistol, that shall speak both sharp and decisive, and the dotting bullet, perhaps, put a period to your proud life's scrawl. But no; I am grown too old to have recourse ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... sweet, free from the terrible alkali and stagnant taste that had been in almost every drop we had seen. Rogers leveled his shot gun at some birds and killed a beautiful one with a top knot on his head, and colors bright all down his neck. It was a California quail. We said birds always lived where human beings did, and we had great hopes born to us of a better land. I told John that if the folks were only there now I could kill game enough ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... with bears, wolves, foxes and catamounts, deer and moose, wild turkeys, pigeons, quail and partridges, and the waters with wild geese, ducks, herons and cranes. The river itself was alive with fish and every spring great quantities of shad and lamprey eels ascended it. Strawberries, blackberries ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport

... we lend assistance to lovers. How many handsome youths, who had sworn to remain insensible, have not been vanquished by our power and have yielded themselves to their lovers when almost at the end of their youth, being led away by the gift of a quail, a waterfowl, ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes

... love me: fear and grief, The winds may blow them to the sea; Who quail before the wintry chief Of Scythia's realm, is nought to me. What cloud o'er Tiridates lowers, I care not, I. O, nymph divine Of virgin springs, with sunniest flowers A chaplet for my Lamia twine, Pimplea sweet! my praise were vain Without thee. String this ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... a falcon, and when you have come to where they are you shall loose me, and I will strike down a quail. Then they will want to buy me. Sell me for three hundred dollars, no more, no less. But whatever you do take off my hood and keep it, or misfortune ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle

... passed along he heard a shout, and inquired the cause; and having learned that there was a gift-making to the people, he went in among them and gave money also. The multitude thereupon applauding him, and shouting, he was so transported at it, that he forgot a quail which he had under his robe, and the bird, being frightened at the noise, flew off; upon which the people made louder acclamations than before, and many of them started up to pursue the bird; and Antiochus, a pilot, caught it and restored it to him, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... it had been far more distant than the party had supposed, for the roar went on steadily increasing, but with no other suggestion of peril save the noise, though that was enough to make the stoutest-hearted there quail. ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... heavens with billow on billow of sail: Round that huge storm the waves like lava burn, The daylight withers, and the sea-winds fail! Seamen of England, what shall now avail Your naked arms? Before those blasts of doom The sun is quenched, the very sea-waves quail: High overhead their triumphing thousands loom, When hark! what low deep ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... garrison, a Swiss, betrayed the fort, and let the invaders into the walls by an unguarded entrance. It was Easter morning when this misfortune occurred, but the peaceful influence of the day did not avail. When Madame saw that she was betrayed, her spirits did not quail; she took refuge with her little band in a detached part of the fort, and there made such a bold show of defense, that De Charnise was obliged to agree to the terms of her surrender, which she dictated. No sooner ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... thee it is well, Here calling me in haunted dell, That thy heart has not quail'd, Nor thy courage fail'd, And that thou couldst brook The angry look Of Her ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... the wagon-shop And grew rich shoeing horses Sent me to the University of Montreal. I learned nothing and returned home, Roaming the fields with Bert Kessler, Hunting quail and snipe. At Thompson's Lake the trigger of my gun Caught in the side of the boat And a great hole was shot through my heart. Over me a fond father erected this marble shaft, On which stands the figure of a woman Carved by an Italian artist. They say the ashes ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... exactly her mother's tone of voice, her quick manner of speech, and her sharp intelligence. She had also her mother's eyes, large and round, and almost blue, full of life and full of courage, eyes which never seemed to quail, and her mother's dark brown hair, never long but very copious in its thickness. She was, however, taller than her mother, and very much more graceful in her movement. And she could already assume a personal dignity of manner which had never been ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... and den de quail, Nex' come de mule and den de quail, Nex' come de mule and den de quail, De ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... seated at the broad, flat-topped desk, his head bent at an angle which gave Mr. Grimston a view of the tips of shaggy eyebrows, a broad nose, and that peculiar kind of protruding lower lip before which timid people quail. As there was no response, Mr. Grimston looked round vaguely on the sombre, handsome furnishings, fixing his gaze at last on the lithographed portrait of Mr. van Tromp senior, the founder of the ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King

... quail recalls to most New England people a vision of breezy upland pastures and a mottled brown bird calling melodiously from the topmost slanting rail of an old sheep-fence. Farmers say he foretells the weather, calling, More-wet—much-more-wet! ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... not fear the canaille of the slums. It gives me a sickening impression, Mr. Merwyn, to see you rush in, almost force your way in, and disguised too, as if you sought safety by identifying yourself with those who would quail before a brave, armed man. Pardon me if I'm severe, but I feel that my father is in danger, and if I don't hear from him soon I shall take Mammy Borden as escort and go to his office. Whoever is abroad, they won't molest women, and ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... it. These people are generally those who have the greatest possible aversion to enduring oppression in their own persons, or who have themselves in their time been roughly handled. They love to see others quail before them, as they themselves would be ready to quail before those they hold in awe; and it is no small set-off against their own terrors to feel themselves in turn objects of terror to others. People of this sort are of course generally cowards and toadies, and in bullying they find ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... presence of his father—by himself, without a mediator and intercessor; wherefore, he sends to Joab to go to the king and make intercession for him. (2 Sam 13, 14:32,33) Also, Joab durst not go upon that errand himself, but by the mediation of another. Sin is a fearful thing, it will quash and quail the courage of a man, and make him afraid to approach the presence of him whom he has offended, though the offended is but a man. How much more, then, shall it discourage a man, when once loaden with ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... man?" he queried, and suddenly becoming theatrical again, added, "Speak on, let me hear the worst; I will not quail." ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... pinches out. No mortal knows why. A whole winter's toiling and moiling, and thousands of dollars put into the ground, haven't produced an ounce of gold above that claim or below No. 5. I tell you it's an awful gamble. Hunter Creek, Hoosier, Bear, Big Minook, I You, Quail, Alder, Mike Hess, Little Nell—the whole blessed country, rivers, creeks, pups, and all, staked for a radius of forty miles just because there's gold ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... not thus bestow. So harshly kind Shall Saladin not seem in thee. Thou art not Like the choked pipe, whence sullied and by spurts Flow the pure waters it absorbs in silence. Al-Hafi thinks and feels like me." So nicely The fowler whistled, that at last the quail Ran to his net. Cheated, and by a ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

... the grouse that the same rules apply to both. What is known as quail at the North is called partridge ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... one glad voice Let all thy sister States rejoice; Let Freedom, in whatever clime She waits with sleepless eye her time, Shouting from cave and mountain wood Make glad her desert solitude, While they who hunt her quail with fear; The New World's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... thus removed. The birds in fighting, follow the instinct which nature has implanted in them, and their marvellous courage and endurance surpass anything to be found in any other animals, human or otherwise, with which I am acquainted. Most birds fight more or less; from the little fierce quail, to the sucking doves which ignorant Europeans, before their illusions have been dispelled by a sojourn in the East, are accustomed to regard as the emblems of peace and purity; but no bird, or beast, or fish, or human being fights so well, or takes ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... and scared to death, Came little Jackie Bunny. And Twinkle Tail began to quail, And Featherhead felt funny. They thought the teacher standing there Gave them a cold and angry stare. Perhaps he did, but soon he went And o'er his platform table bent, While Featherhead and Twinkle Tail Slipped in their seats with faces pale. Then up stood stern Professor Crow ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory

... sharpened by his experience with the movies. Nielsen tried to lead, to coax, and to drive Don to step on the board walk. Don would not go. But suddenly he snorted, and jumped the space clear, to plunge and pound down upon the platform, scattering the crowd like quail. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... his battery on the students gathering below the crush, trying to find a way through the kicking, slipping mass on the narrow stairs. He scattered them as if they had been quail. Some ran out of range. Others dove for cover and tried to dodge. This dodging brought gleeful howls ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... off, Bel, I don't care what you have found. I wouldn't shoot anything to-day, unless the cupboard was bare and I was starvation hungry. In that case I think a man comes first, and I'd kill a squirrel or quail in season, but blest if I'd butcher a lot or do it often. Vegetables and bread are better anyway. You peel easier even than the willow. What jolly whistles ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... romance and adventure. Consequently, he visited a few traps on his way back which he had set for "jackass-rabbits" and wildcats,—the latter a vindictive reprisal for aggression upon an orphan brood of mountain quail which he had taken under his protection. For, while he nourished a keen love of sport, it was controlled by a boy's larger understanding of nature: a pantheistic sympathy with man and beast and plant, which made him keenly alive to the strange cruelties of creation, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... for, that it is difficult to recollect that they are actually fish. The first little one was mistaken for a dragon-fly, the first big one for a gray plover. The flight is almost exactly like that of a quail or partridge—flight, I must say; for, in spite of all that has been learnedly written to the contrary, it was too difficult as yet for the English sportsmen on board to believe that their motion was not a true flight, aided by the vibration of the wings, and not a mere impulse given (as in the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... birds right fairly Are singing ever early; The lark, the thrush, the nightingale, The make-sport cuckoo and the quail. These sing of Love! then why sleep ye? To love your ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... ways and habits of the foxes, the coons, the weasels, and the ring-tail cats that seemed compounded of cat and coon and weasel. He came to know the ground-nesting birds and the difference between the customs of the valley quail, the mountain quail, and the pheasants. The traits and lairs of the domestic cats gone wild he also learned, as did he learn the wild loves of mountain ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... is also an imbalsamatore and, as an example of his skill, gave me a stuffed bird which I was to take to London. He said it was a kind of quail, a bird that reposes near Messina when migrating. His niece, the studentessa, gave me as a ricordo a pin-cushion; on one side it has an advertisement of a shop in Messina and on the other a picture of a lady trying on a new garter, which ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... wild duck, quail on toast, rabbit stew, or great governor! wild turkey roasted?" he demanded, with the utmost confidence that Jack would fulfill at least ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel

... His scorn of wrong, his zeal for truth, And bards, who saw his features bold, When kindled by the tales of old, Said, were that youth to manhood grown, 560 Not long should Roderick Dhu's renown Be foremost voiced by mountain fame, But quail to that of ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... our determination to resist even to civil war." [41] The speech of Rhett of South Carolina, author of the convention's "Address", "frankly and boldly unfurled the flag of disunion". "If every Southern State should quail... South Carolina alone should make the issue." "The opinion of the [Nashville] address is, and I believe the opinion of a large portion of the Southern people is, that the Union cannot be made to endure", was delegate Barnwell's ...
— Webster's Seventh of March Speech, and the Secession Movement • Herbert Darling Foster

... for themselves, is astonishing to those unused to it. Another interesting feature about pheasants is the extraordinary difference in plumage between the sexes, a gap equalled only between the blackcock and greyhen and quite unknown in the partridge, quail and grouse. Yet every now and again, as if resentful of this inequality of wardrobe, an old hen pheasant will assume male plumage, and this epicene raiment indicates barrenness. Ungallant feminists have been known to cite the case of the "mule" pheasant as pointing a moral for ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... over broad mesas, down and out of deep canons, along the base of the mountain in the wildest parts of the territory. The cattle were winding leisurely toward the high country; the jack rabbits had disappeared; the quail lacked; we did not see a single ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... to water, while the knights themselves lounged in gayly-dressed groups about the doors of their pavilions, or rode out, with their falcons upon their wrists and their greyhounds behind them, in quest of quail or of leveret. ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... were founded in truth. The Boston newspapers gave insertion to a fictitious narrative of a defeat of a body of soldiers by the people of New York, and to a series of fictions which represented the English troops as a set of poltroons who would quail before the sons of liberty. While these reflections were fresh in the minds of the soldiers, one of them was involved in a quarrel, and was beaten by several Bostonians, who were rope-makers belonging to the establishment of Mr. John Gray. Incensed at the ill-treatment he had received, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... Huge gulls rose slowly, fluttering their wings in the light breeze and striking their webbed feet on the surface of the water for over half a mile before they could leave it. Hardly had the patter, patter died away when a flock of sea quail rose, and with whistling wings flew away to windward, where members of a large band of whales were disporting themselves, their blowings sounding like the exhaust of steam engines. The harsh, discordant cries of a sea-parrot grated unpleasantly on the ear, and set half a dozen alert in a small ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... wings, and with us have the Loves habitation; And manifold fair young folk that forswore love once, ere the bloom of them ended, Have the men that pursued and desired them subdued, by the help of us only befriended, With such baits as a quail, a flamingo, a goose, or a cock's comb ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... might be so made Vanderlyn's heart quail with anguish and horror, and yet, if such a thing were within the bounds of possibility, had he not better go to the Morgue alone and now, rather than later in the company of ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... for Pontiac. He stood there discovered, defeated. But he did not quail before the steady gaze of the English. His brow was only more ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney

... war without timidity, and successfully entered into suits of ejectment. These daring champions often braved the indignation even of the superior deities of their mythology, rather than allow that there existed any being before whom their boldness could quail. Such is the singular story how a young man of high courage, in crossing a desolate ridge of mountains, met with a huge waggon, in which the goddess, Freya (i.e., a gigantic idol formed to represent her), together with her shrine, and the wealthy offerings attached to it, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... understanding that you don't give away my man.... It's a compact? Thanks tremendously! And here comes the Manager to be congratulated upon the haunch. I never tasted better venison, Mr. Nixey, though, as you say, this is rather far North for koodoo. And the quail were beyond praise. Waiter, a glass for Mr. Nixey.... Port—and we're going to ask you to join ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... winter is over, The boughs will get new leaves, The quail come back to the clover, And the swallow back to ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous

... Paul became an excellent hunter, and was out with my papa nearly every day, bringing home plenty of quail and other game. He was a happy dog, taking great interest in garrison life, always attending retreat and tattoo with the officer of the day, and even going the rounds with him on his tour of inspection after ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... battles, a god who blesses righteousness, is familiar to us and intelligible; but when we read how Indra drank himself drunk and committed adulteries with Asura women, and got himself born from the same womb as a bull, and changed himself into a quail or a ram, and suffered from the most abject physical terror, and so forth, then we are among myths no longer readily intelligible; here, we feel, are IRRATIONAL stories, of which the original ideas, in their ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... "give him a good tea, and a little of that cold quail, and after tea I will come and have ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... blow, And my spirit shall not quail: I have fought with many a foe, I have weathered many a gale; And in this hour of death, Ere I yield my fleeting breath— Ere the fire now burning slow Shall come rushing from below, And this worn ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... savage horde with the steadfastness of a full understanding of the meaning of defeat. They were braced for the shock with the nerve of men who have bitterly learned the secret of survival in a land haunted with terror. No heart-quail showed in the wall of resistance. The secret emotions had no power before the realization of the horror which must follow on defeat. The shadow of mutilation, of torture, of unspeakable death ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... squeaking figures ogled the primeval passion in gesture and innuendo. From the arc of the upper circle convergent beams of light pierced through gloom and broke violently on this group of the half-clad lovely and the swathed grotesque. The group did not quail. In fullest publicity it was licensed to say that which in private could not be said where men and women meet, and that which could not be printed. It gave a voice to the silent appeal of pictures and posters and ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... snapped the bride. She didn't glance at the bridegroom, but the look she bestowed upon Emma made that doughty warrior quail. Emma conceived a mortal terror of Peter's wife. She took the place of ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... agony. Here, too, he read of men who, lying in their beds at dead of night, had been tempted (so they said) and led on, by their own bad thoughts, to such dreadful bloodshed as it made the flesh creep, and the limbs quail, to think of. The terrible descriptions were so real and vivid, that the sallow pages seemed to turn red with gore; and the words upon them, to be sounded in his ears, as if they were whispered, in hollow murmurs, by the spirits ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... Island, they would have the finest fresh-water fishing in the world. They would have thirty miles lake-shore for deer-shooting; and dense woods, forty miles back to Lake Michigan, where bears, and catamounts, and other wild animals are plentiful. Abundance of wild fowl, quail, and wood-cocks ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various

... my Lady holds her own With condescending grace, And fills her lofty place With an untroubled face As a queen may fill a throne. While I could hint a tale (But then I am her child) Would make her quail; Would set her in the dust, Lorn with no comforter, Her glorious hair defiled And ashes on her cheek: The decent world would thrust Its finger out at her, Not much displeased I think To make a nine days' ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... and left he sought the quail, Or the timid hare that crossed his trail, Rang out a wild "Ha! ha!" That might have turned the visage pale ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... Island, our sportsmen found little inland to recompense them for their trouble, except blue mountain parrots and quail; but along the shore, curlews, oystercatchers, and godwits, were plentiful. One day I killed a bustard (Otis australasiana) weighing 22 1/2 pounds; the goodness of its flesh was duly appreciated by my messmates. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... mountain streams where the burnished trout flashed swiftly back and forth in the clear water. They came to an upland park where the soft whistle of quail caused Polly to lift her rifle, but the whir of wings told of a flight. From jagged rents in the cliffs, through which the horses passed, their hoofs ringing echoes from the iron-veined rock, they came to sleepy hollows where the Quaker Aspens stood ghostlike as sentinels ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... giving the same popular folk names to different species! The Bob White, which is called quail in New England or wherever the ruffed grouse is known as partridge, is called partridge in the Middle and Southern States, where the ruffed grouse is known as pheasant. But as both these distributing agents, like most winter rovers, whether bird or beast, are ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... two men left of my religion, I will be one of the two. My houses and my revenues are seized, because I would not bow beneath the proclamation. I have my sword and my life left. Three stout hearts are better than thirty that quail." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... abundant game animals of forest regions are deer, elk, antelope and moose. Partridge, grouse, quail, wild turkeys and other game birds are plentiful in some regions. The best known of all the inhabitants of the woods are the squirrels. The presence of these many birds and animals adds greatly to the ...
— The School Book of Forestry • Charles Lathrop Pack

... needed no goading. He was in an ungrateful mood. Accustomed to food fresh from the soil and the farmyard, he sneered at hothouse asparagus, hothouse grapes, and cold-storage quail. At the music hall he was even more difficult. In front of him sat a stout lady who when she shook with laughter shed patchouli and a man who smoked American cigarettes. At these and the steam heat, the nostrils of Herrick, trained to the odor of balsam and the smoke of open wood fires, ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis

... her councillors but one; all officers twice or thrice; some bishops four times: only the uncertainty of succession gave hopes to foreigners to attempt fresh invasions and breed fears in many of her subjects of a new conquest. The only way then, said he, that is in policy left to quail those hopes and to assuage those fears, were to establish the succession... at last, insinuating as far as he durst the nearness of blood of our present sovereign, he said plainly, that the expectations and presages of all writers went northward, naming without ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... defends them on their remarkable powers of imagination. One has only to study Sexton Blake to discover the intricate psychology of that wondrous personality who can solve the foulest murder or unravel stories that the divorce courts would quail before. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke

... trader will quail Over ledgers unsquared—and accounts overdue: And his pen fain would tell all the sorrowful tale Which his heart, full of fear, has not courage to do! Had he all that is owing, how happy his heart; How buoyant ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... early days ammunition was very expensive for the farmer boys who loved to shoot. They found that dried peas were just as good as shot for prairie chicken, quail and pigeons, so always hunted them with these. The passenger pigeons were so plentiful that the branches of trees were broken by their numbers. They flew in such enormous flocks that they would often fly ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... tale. Witness the clear, sweet whistle of the Gray-Crested Titmouse,—the soft, nasal piping of the Nuthatch,—the amorous, vivacious warble of the Bluebird,—the long, rich note of the Meadow-Lark,—the whistle of the Quail,—the drumming of the Partridge,—the animation and loquacity of the Swallows, and the like. Even the Hen has a homely, contented carol; and I credit the Owls with a desire to fill the night with music. All birds are incipient or would-be songsters in the spring. I find corroborative ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... it," she vaunted, and she gathered the brandy under her blanket, and ran like a quail, while I went ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... it. I am not certain that I have not prompted the arising of certain jealousies, though I do my best to distribute myself fairly. I cannot as yet turn a heel but I have hopes. Some day I will make Daddy wear the things, when he puts on enormous boots and goes quail shooting, after we go South again. I shall select some day when he has been real mean to me, and be the blisters ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... all voluntary self-assertion, She could not determine that he was either. No look or word favoured the one or the other supposition. And Eleanor could not look at those keen eyes, without feeling that it was extremely unlikely they would quail before anybody or anything. Very different from those fine hazel irids that were flashing fun and gallantry into hers with every glance. Very different; but what was the difference? It was something deeper than colour and contour. Eleanor had no chance to make further discoveries; for her ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... protection generously long in duration will bring back their numbers. If the people of the United States so willed it, we could have wild white-tailed deer in every state and in every county (save city counties) between the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains. We could easily have one thousand bob white quail for every one now living. We could have squirrels in every grove, and songbirds by the million,—merely by protecting them from slaughter and molestation. From Ohio to the great plains, the pinnated grouse could be made far more common than crows ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... do. I can't always be tagging around after you while you are providing, you know; and we may as well begin to be civilized again. Just go a little way—not so far that you can't hear me call—and bring me some nice fat quail like those we ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... dumb Upon his charger; so with greenest leer He vented his impatience in a sneer. "Is this," he said, "the glorious Table Round, And is its glory naught but empty sound? Braggarts! I put your bluster to the test, And find you quail before a merry jest!" Then the great king himself stood up in ire, With clenched hand raised, and eyes that gleamed dark fire, And fronting the Green Knight he cried: "Forbear! For by my sword Excalibur ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis

... that the sweep of the wind through the tree-tops made constant music, and the odd, squalling bark of the black squirrel, the chatter of the red one, the drumming of the ruffed grouse, the pipe of the quail and the morning gobble of the wild turkey were familiar sounds. There were deer and bear in the depths of the green ocean, and an occasional wolverine. Sometimes at night a red fox would circle about the clearing and bark querulously, the cry contrasting oddly with the ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... children. Bevy is used of birds, and figuratively of any bright and lively group of women or children, but rarely of men. Flock is applied to birds and to some of the smaller animals; herd is confined to the larger animals; we speak of a bevy of quail, a covey of partridges, a flock of blackbirds, or a flock of sheep, a herd of cattle, horses, buffaloes, or elephants, a pack of wolves, a pack of hounds, a swarm of bees. A collection of animals driven or gathered for driving is ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... Council Bluffs, Iowa, is, but on the opposite side of the river, about twenty-five miles above Omaha—not far from Fort Calhoun. There was no Omaha then. I can remember my own self when Omaha was young. I used to shoot quail on the Elkhorn and the Papilion Creek, just above Omaha, and grand sport there was for quail and grouse and ducks ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough

... porch and told an edited story of his adventures to them. Before he had finished a young fellow rode up and dismounted. He had a bag of quail with him which he handed over to the Mexican cook. After he had unsaddled and turned his pony into a corral he joined the card players ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine

... commanding; his brow broad, massy, and armed with terrors like that of the Olympian Jove, to which indeed it was often compared. His voice loud, sonorous, and as rolling thunder in the distance, augmented the effect of his fierce and terrible invective. Few indeed were they who did not quail before his frown; fewer still who would abide his onset in debate. Perhaps no modern English statesman, in the House of Lords at least, was ever so much dreaded. In parliament, as at the bar, his speeches were home thrusts, conveying the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... came a long distance by rail from the river Murray, but were excellent nevertheless. The last thing which I can remember tasting (for one really could do little else) was a most exquisite morsel of pigeon—more like a quail than anything else in flavour. I am not a judge of wine, as you may imagine, therefore it is no unkindness to the owners of the beautiful vineyards which we saw the other day, to say that I do not like the Australian wines. Some of the gentlemen pronounced them to be excellent, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... stripping off the lilies, he tuned his harp and began to sing. The poet tells how he played for the mighty king; and what do you think it was? Just the tune all his sheep knew; always it brought them, one after one, to the pen door at evening. It was so strange and sweet a tune that quail on the corn lands would each leave its mate to fly after the player; and crickets—it made them so wild with delight they would fight one another. Then he played what sets the field mouse musing, and the cattle to deeper ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee

... Hamilton. "Joey Billings? Say, she's a good sort, Joey; bully fun, and always in for anything. You ought to see her shoot! Yes, Sir! Bring down quail with a choke-bore, or knock over a buck deer with a rifle. Plays billiards like a wizard, Joey does, and can swat a golf ball off the tee for two hundred yards. She's a star. Staying at Ferdie's, eh? Must be a great combination, ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... such a flutterin' in my life. Mother come runnin' to see what was the matter and when she seen it, she said, Son, that's a pheasant. Some day you'll be a good hunter. An' guess I was for I killed lots o' pheasants, quail, squir'ls and rabbits. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... most sensible persons, that the proposed arrangement would not have been an improvement. I find, however, in the preface to the third volume on birds that M. Gueneau de Montbeillard described all the birds from the ostrich to the quail, so the foregoing passage is perhaps his and not Buffon's. If so, the imitation is fair, but when we reflect upon it we feel uncertain whether it is or is not beneath ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... the nest of a Quail, Meadowlark, or Oven-bird, it is well not to approach it closely, because all over the country many night-prowling animals have the habit of following by scent the footsteps of any one who has lately gone along through the woods or across the fields. One afternoon by the rarest chance I found three ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... stately, rebuking the sordid life around it. Still come into it the Brinsmades to marriage and to death. Five and sixty years are gone since Mr. Calvin Brinsmade took his bride there. They sat on the porch in the morning light, harking to the whistle of the quail in the corn, and watching the frightened deer scamper across the open. Do you see the bride in her high-waisted gown, and Mr. Calvin in his stock and his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... seemings pain'd nay pride, My heart was laughing at the core; And sometimes, as the stream of song Bore me with eddying haste along, My father's spirit would arise, And speak strange meaning from these eyes, At which a conscious cheek would quail, A stern and lofty bearing fail: Then could a chieftain condescend In me to recognize his friend! Then could a warrior low incline His eye, when it encounter'd mine! A tone can make the guilty start! ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... daring and Oliver wise, Both of marvelous high emprise; On their chargers mounted and girt in mail, To the death in battle they will not quail." ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... nails, they desired nothing else, and paid for them with gold-dust. Some of them wear very neatly-made steel daggers, and they appear to be a polite and intelligent people. They use weights and measures. They gave our men deer, swine, poultry, quail, rice, millet, and bread made of dates—all in great abundance. The patache remained here for about thirty days, waiting for the other ships; but, as these did not come, they determined to return to Mexico. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair

... 43 "Quail"; to overpower. Well might the abettors of Antichrist wonder at the Christian's support under the most cruel tortures. While "looking unto Jesus" and the bright visions of eternal glory, like Stephen, he can pray of his enemies, and tranquilly ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan



Words linked to "Quail" :   retract, quail brush, mountain quail, partridge, funk, flinch, shrink, game bird, striped button quail, bobwhite quail, wildfowl, quail at, shrink back, cringe, bobwhite, bustard quail, phasianid, quail bush



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