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Withers   Listen
noun
Withers  n. pl.  The ridge between the shoulder bones of a horse, at the base of the neck. "Let the galled jade wince; our withers are unwrung."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Withers" Quotes from Famous Books



... to the horse's bony withers with one hand, but he did not offer to help her mount. He watched her again as she rode away, and when she looked back he turned with a queer feeling into his shop. Two days ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox

... the man clung fast to his heaving sides and to his flying mane, silent, motionless, inexorable, letting him do what he would, but fixed as Fate upon his purpose. Over Hankley Down, through Thursley Marsh, with the reeds up to his mud-splashed withers, onward up the long slope of the Headland of the Hinds, down by the Nutcombe Gorge, slipping, blundering, bounding, but never slackening his fearful speed, on went the great yellow horse. The villagers of Shottermill heard the wild clatter of hoofs, but ere they could swing the ox-hide curtains ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... hidden forces the noble Erpingham gives the signal for the English archers to fire. Now like a storm the cloth-yard-long arrows sped by the strong bows of Spanish yew strike the French horses, stinging them like serpents through the withers. Every bowman stands to his place, not one deserting; every true English ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... a simple halter and a stick, yet sometimes travel, at least in the larger island, at a desperate gallop. As the horses usually have panniers, the rider sits sideways over the withers, and if the panniers are empty they go at full speed in this position without anything ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... receive life eternal and make immortality a fact. Obeying this spiritual life-force, the human monad is but an attribute, a reflection, of the Divine Ego, and if it fails to awake to a consciousness of this union, it withers and dies like a flower plucked from ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne

... the eye. This is shown in Figure 4, Sheet 24. A hollow cup-shaped vesicle from the brain grows out towards an at first hollow cellular ingrowth from the epidermis. The cavity within the wall of the cup derived from the brain is obliterated, [and the stalk withers,] the cup becomes the retina, and -its stalk- [thence fibres grow back to the brain to form] the optic nerve. The cellular ingrowth is the lens. The remainder of the eye-structures are of mesoblastic origin, except the superficial epithelium ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... as they wept, his hands he clasped, And 'Oh my children,' said he, 'from this day Ye have no more a father—all of me Withers away—the burden and the toil Of mine old age fall on ye nevermore. Sad travail have ye home for me, and yet Let one thought breathe a balm when I am gone— The thought that none upon the desolate world Loved you as I did; and in death I ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... that's exquisite! Feel it myself too. Good to rest once in a way. Wonder if it's bad to go with them then. Safe in one way. Turns milk, makes fiddlestrings snap. Something about withering plants I read in a garden. Besides they say if the flower withers she wears she's a flirt. All are. Daresay she felt 1. When you feel like that you often meet what you feel. Liked me or what? Dress they look at. Always know a fellow courting: collars and cuffs. Well cocks and lions do the same and stags. Same time might ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... is that one big heart-ache withers up all the little ones and the joy of years as well. With this terror upon me, even Sada's desperate trouble has faded and grown pale as the memory of a dream. Jack is ill and I must get to him, though my body is racked with the rough travel, and the ancient road holds the ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... for Poetry, and who will rear grapes when he shall be the sole eater? Perhaps if you encourage us to shew you what we may write, we may do something now and then before we absolutely forget the quantity of an English line for want of practice. The "Tobacco," being a little in the way of Withers (whom Southey so much likes) perhaps you will somehow convey it to him with my kind remembrances. Then, everybody will have seen it that I wish to see it: I have ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... feet, and lame in fingers, Crooked in back, with every tooth Rattling in my head, yet, 'sooth, I'm content, so life but lingers. Gnaw my withers, rack my bones, Life, mere life, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... gone, your Highness, that I may not grow over familiar like the boy with the pikestaff, for if it do not gall you it shall wring the withers of ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... organized bodies are subject to continual alteration. The changes of nutrition and growth, which are constantly taking place in the tissues render them at the same time the seat of repair and waste, of renovation and decomposition, of life and death. The plant germinates and blossoms, then withers and decays; animal life, in like manner, comes into being, grows to maturity, fades, and dies. It is, therefore, essential to the perpetuation of life, that new organisms be provided to take the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... at which majesty welks and shrivels, the king and soldier starts and cowers, and, armour and all, withers from ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... rooted in popular approval must, day by day, anxiously strive, act, and scheme in order to retain his reputation. For the populace is variable and inconstant, so that, if a reputation be not kept up, it quickly withers away. Everyone wishes to catch popular applause for himself, and readily represses the fame of others. The object of the strife being estimated as the greatest of all goods, each combatant is seized with a fierce desire to ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza

... breast-girth to prevent the roller going back under the flank. If the breast-girth is loose it falls below the breast and is burst by the legs of the horse in getting up. If it is tight it pulls the roller on to the rise of the withers. I have used, and I recommend a breastplate on the principle of a hunting breastplate. The bearing should be only from the top of the neck to the lower part of the roller; a long upper strap to prevent it falling forward when the head is down, should take off ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood

... distended, and sides moving in breathless agony, they can scarce, when unyoked, crawl to the stable. 'Tis true they are well fed; the interest of their owners secures that. They are over-well fed, in order that a supernatural energy may be exerted. The morrow comes when their galled withers are again to be wrung by the ill-cushioned collars, and the lumbering of the wheels. But we do not witness all the misery of the noble and the generous steed. When the shades of night impend, the reproaches ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various

... greens fur dinner that day, with the best corn-bread I ever eat anywheres, and buttermilk, and sweet potato pie. We got 'em at the house of a feller named Withers—Old Daddy Withers. Which if they was ever a nicer old man than him, or a nicer old woman than his wife, I never run ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... peculiar to every living creature; and so have I, perhaps. We are all perishable, and hence our feelings must be perishable also. Above all, love is a most precious, fragrant, and enchanting rose; but its life lasts but a day, and then it withers. Happy are those, therefore, who have improved this day and enjoyed the beauty of the rose, and passionately inhaled its fragrance. We did so, Marianne; and when we now look back to our day of blissful love, we may say, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... implying, if he does not absolutely assert (p. 173), that a "boldness of innovation" in matters linguistic, amounting to "absolute licentiousness," is more characteristic of England than of America. The suggestion leaves my British withers entirely unwrung, for I approve of bold innovation in language, trusting to the impermanence of the unfit to counteract the effects of licentiousness. If I could believe that we British were the bolder innovators, I should admit it without blenching; but observation and probability seem to me to ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... fierce-seeming stare with a salute, and Ali Partab dismounted instantly. He who holds a trust from such as Mahommed Gunga is polite in recognition of the trust. He leaned, then, against the horse's withers, wondering how far he ought to let politeness go and whether his honor bade him show contempt ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... attack any single organ of the human frame, but it withers all that is human—mind, body, and soul. It strikes our youth at the unhappy moment when they first cross the thresholds of vice. For them the spring has no more innocent freshness; their very friendships are polluted by foul suggestions and memories; they become strangers to all the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... of the camel with reference to the giraffe in Africa is analogous to that, say, of the Catskill conglomerate to the laminated sandstone that lies beneath it. They are kindred; one graduates into the other. Whence the long neck and high withers of the giraffe? The need of high feeding, say the selectionists, but other browsing animals must have felt the same need. Our moose is strictly a browsing animal, and, while his neck and shoulders are high, and his lips long, they do not approach those of the giraffe. The ostrich has a ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... in, the day's ride,—but a swamp! Ugh! the horrible treacherous thing, so green and innocent looking, with here and there a quicksand or a peaty morass, in which, without a moment's warning, your horse sank up to his withers! It was dreadful, and when we came to such a place Helen used to stop dead short, prick her pretty ears well forward, and, trembling with fear and excitement, put her nose close to the ground, smelling ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... it observed by a profound adept in human physiology, that if a woman waxes fat with the progress of years, her tenure of life is somewhat precarious, but if haply she withers as she grows old, she lives forever. Such promised to be the case with William the Testy, who grew tough in proportion as he dried. He had withered, in fact, not through the process of years, but through ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... banns and the priest; and I have often thought there should be a visitation of the sick for it, and a funeral service, and an extreme unction, and an abi in pace. It has its course, like all mortal things—its beginning, progress, and decay. It buds and it blooms out into sunshine, and it withers and ends. Strephon and Chloe languish apart; join in a rapture: and presently you hear that Chloe is crying, and Strephon has broken his crook across her back. Can you mend it so as to show no marks of rupture? Not all the priests of Hymen, not all the incantations to the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... who were young when Shakespeare, or when Byron, died, would not have been exactly in their dotage if, forty years later, they had extolled the literature of their nonage. One does not care to dwell long on such a point: but it may just be observed that the present writer's withers are hardly even pinched, let alone wrung, by the strictest application, to his case, of this rather idle notion. For some of what he is praising as the best novels were written before he was born; many while he was in the nursery; most before he had left ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... a strange madness To give up thought, ambition, liberty, And all the rooted custom of our days, Even life itself for one all pampering dream, That withers like those garlands at the door; And yet I have seen many excellent men Besotted thus, and some that bore till death, In the crook'd vision and embittered tongue, The effect of this strange poison, like a scar, An ineradicable hurt; but Fate, Who deals more wondrously in this disease ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman

... along the road. Far off on the hillside was a horse, ridden furiously on the downward road, and though dwarfed by the miles, she could see the rider flogging and his urgent crouch over the horse's withers. It was a picture of mad speed, of terror and violence, and struck her with a chill. Were the Kafirs risen? she queried. Was there war abroad? Was ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... his little, flea-bitten withers just to show how satisfied he felt; but his heart was not so light. Ever since he had drifted into India on a troop-ship, taken, with an old rifle, as part payment for a racing debt, The Maltese Cat had played and preached polo to the Skidars' team on the Skidars' ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... men partial to the name,—for Josephine bored them, and Adelaide taunted them, and Madeline snubbed them, and Mrs. Marmaduke pumped them, and the combined family confounded them. Only Mr. Philip Withers was the intimate and encouraged habitue of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... the thief in the gloaming; It comes, and none may foretell The place of the coming—the glaring; They live in a sleepless spell That wizens, and withers, and whitens; It ages the young, and the bloom Of the maiden is ashes of roses— The Swamp ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... 38 But if ye neglect the tree, and take no thought for its nourishment, behold it will not get any root; and when the heat of the sun cometh and scorcheth it, because it hath no root it withers away, and ye pluck it up ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... a decent sort of cuss," said another whom Carl knew,—a farmer named Withers,—"and I like him. I believe he means well; but he ain't one ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... is an iron chain and whose mercy is debility and chagrin; the blind fiend who would impose his own blindness; that unfruitful loin which curses fertility; that stony heart which would petrify the generations of man; before whom life withers away appalled and death would shudder again to its tomb. Repentance! they wiped the inadequate ooze from their eyes and danced joyfully for spite. They could do no more, so they fed the children lovingly ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

... after a brief silence. "O God, what a pity! Of course it is God's will; the world was not created by us, but yet it is a pity, brother. If a single tree withers away, or let us say a single cow dies, it makes one sorry, but what will it be, good man, if the whole world crumbles into dust? Such blessings, Lord Jesus! The sun, and the sky, and the forest, and the rivers, and the creatures—all these have been ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... among those whose desire (26) is for the body, there are not a few who blame, nay hate, the ways of their beloved ones. And even where attachment (26) clings to both, (27) even so the bloom of beauty after all does quickly reach its prime; the flower withers, and when that fails, the affection which was based upon it must also wither up and perish. But the soul, with every step she makes in her onward course towards deeper wisdom, grows ever worthier ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon

... my judgment, operates in every way to blight, to grind, and to oppress; blasts each roseate hope of an ameliorated, a less abject, estate: quenches each swelling aspiration after a higher and more tolerable destiny; withers each ennobling aim, cancels each creditable effort that would assure its eventuation; opposes each soul-stirring resolve to no longer rest under the galling, gangrenous ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... in these flaring London nights, Where midnight withers into morn, How quiet a rebuke it writes Across ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... makes marriage the most perfect union on earth,—the sweetest and most blessed companionship; but when it is a mere gust of fire, bright and fierce as the sudden leaping light of a volcano, then it withers everything at a touch,—faith, honor, truth,—and dies into dull ashes in which no spark remains to warm or inspire man's higher nature. Better death than such a love,—for it works misery on earth; but who can tell what horrors it ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... In the pictures which represent this god mounted on his usual vehicle—an elephant called Airavata—Matali is seen seated before him on the withers of the animal, acting as its driver. In the plays, however, Indra is generally represented borne in a chariot drawn by ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... boy! when he sees that young churl. The Squire's spoiled son, kick the poor crippled girl, He darts to the rescue as quick as he can, And dusts the hard road with the cruel young man; And when he is sought by the vengeful old Squire, He withers the latter with tongue-lashing ire; For the town might combine his young nerve to destroy, And never ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... a curve which had given the place the name of Tournevent. It seemed to have sought shelter in this ravine overgrown with grass and rushes, from the keen, salt sea wind—the ocean wind that devours and burns like fire, that drys up and withers like the sharpest frost of winter, just as birds seek shelter in the furrows of the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... care of their dress and horse equipments; they dash furiously past on wild steeds, astride of the high-pommelled saddles. A fancifully coloured cover, worked with beads or porcupine quills, making a flashy, striking appearance, extended from withers to rump of the horse, while the riders evinced an admirable daring, worthy of Amazons. Their dresses were made of buckskin, high at the neck, with short sleeves, or rather none at all, fitting loosely, and reaching obliquely to the knee, giving a Diana look to the costume; ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... days the beauty has disappeared. The seeds mature speedily and drop into the sand. A hot wind withers the stems and leaves and blows them away; drifting sands take the place of the rich carpet. How readily these plants have adapted themselves to the brief period in which ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks

... its shade. The juice, of which the camphire is made, exudes from a hole bored in the upper part of the tree, is received in a vessel, where it thickens to a consistency, and becomes what we call camphire; after the juice is thus drawn out, the tree withers and dies. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... to speak quite easily of "outfits" in all the nice shades of meaning which are attached to that hard-worked term. He could lay the saddle-blanket smooth and unwrinkled, slap the saddle on and cinch it without fixing it either upon the withers or upon the rump of his long-suffering mount. He could swing his quirt without damaging his own person, and he rode with his stirrups where they should be to accommodate the length of him—all of which speaks eloquently of the honest ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... Words: nape, cervical, scruff, atlas, axis, palea, dewlap, scrag, gula, nucha, auchenium, decollete, jugular, jugulum, wattle, wimple, wryneck, torticollis, Adam's apple, splenius, ruche, colliform, fichu, withers, gorget, carotid, goiter, retrocollic, cruels, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... for expansion lasted, the civilization grew in wealth and power. When it waned, disintegration set in. Changelessness seems to be impossible in a social group. A civilization either expands or withers, builds ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing

... funerals, and was placed upon the pile. Varro says, that it was used for the purpose of removing, by its own strong scent, the bad smell of the spot where the bodies were burnt, and also of the bodies themselves. It was also said to be so used, because, when once its bark is cut, it withers, and is consequently emblematical of the frail tenure of ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... with those who do not know us intimately; but there is all the difference between such superficial good manners and those which are real, that there is between the cut bouquet of flowers which delights for an hour or two and then withers away, and the living, growing plant which constantly delights us ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett

... is no grief so great that youth cannot outgrow it."—"No! no!" said he, clinching his teeth, and striking repeatedly, with the energy of despair, upon his bosom—"It is here—here—deep-rooted; draining my heart's blood. It grows and grows, while my heart withers and withers! I have a dreadful monitor that gives me no repose—that follows me step by step; and will follow me step by step, until it pushes ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... Ascot of The Desert. But I was never more disappointed. All that the Touaricks did with their camels was, they dressed them out most fantastically with various coloured leather harness, that is to say, the withers, neck, and head; they reined them up tightly like blood-horses; and then rode them a full trot in couples. This was the whole of the grand play with camels. Some, however, would not fall into this trot of couples, and grumbled ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... trumpet crack, And warsle time, on' lay him on his back! For us and for our stage should ony spier, "Whose aught thae chiels maks a' this bustle here!" My best leg foremost, I'll set up my brow, We have the honour to belong to you! We're your ain bairns, e'en guide us as ye like, But like good withers, shore before ye strike.— And gratefu' still I hope ye'll ever find us, For a' the patronage and meikle kindness We've got frae a' professions, sets, and ranks: God help us! we're but ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... fate, life was as surely if more slowly weighed down by the silent and ceaseless tide of change against which nothing stood fixed or permanent, and which swept the finest and most beautiful things away the soonest. The garland that blooms at night withers by morning; and the strength of man and the beauty of women are no longer-lived than the frail anemone, the lily and violet that flower and fall.[2] Sweetness is changed to bitterness; where the rose has spread her cup, one goes by and the brief beauty passes; ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... of Last's Holding. Bigger than Drumfire or Redbuck, he ranked next to El Rey himself in speed, for his slim legs, slapped smartly with the distinguishing finger marks on the outside of the knee, were long and shapely, his back short-coupled and strong, his withers low, his narrow hips high. Tharon bore hard on El Rey's bit, leaned her body to the left, and they swung in toward Bent and Golden in a beautiful sweeping curve that brought the cowboy up in his stirrups with his hat ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe

... though in few words, I had said before. Every thing that can be said on this subject has been said, and well said, not only by Mr. Pitman, but by a host of writers and lecturers, among whom I might mention Mr. Alexander J. Ellis, Dr. Latham, Professors Haldeman, Whitney, and Hadley, Mr. Withers, Mr. E. Jones, Dr. J. H. Gladstone, and many others. The whole matter is no longer a matter for argument; and the older I grow, the more I feel convinced that nothing vexes people so much, and hardens ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... the irresistible arguments of the postboy have prevailed upon them to proceed a mile or two, they will become callous to the first sensation; and being warm at the harness, as the said postboy may term it, proceed as if their withers were altogether unwrung. This simile so much corresponds with the state of Waverley's feelings in the course of this memorable evening, that I prefer it (especially as being, I trust, wholly original) to any more splendid illustration ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... moment came, when it seemed that even the above supposition, in the case of a woman who has been married, is shameful to her, a sin against her lover, and should be obliterated under floods of scarlet. For, if she has pride, she withers to think of pushing the most noble of men upon his generosity. And, further, if he is not delicately scrupulous, is there not something wanting in him? The very cold wave passed, leaving the sentence: better dream of being ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... monster, whose skin clings To his strong bones, strides o'er the groaning rocks: He withers all in silence, and in his hand Unclothes the earth, and freezes up ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... hours, and days, And years; it speaks not, yet, methinks, it says, To every human heart: so mortals pass On to their dark and silent grave! Alas For man! an exile upon earth he strays, Weary, and wandering through benighted ways; To-day in strength, to-morrow like the grass That withers at his feet!—Lift up thy head, Poor pilgrim, toiling in this vale of tears; That book declares whose blood for thee was shed, Who died to give thee life; and though thy years Pass like a shade, pointing to thy death-bed, Out of the deep thy cry an angel ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... adjoining gravel- walk, lawn, and flower-bed. These petioles vary from 2.5 to 4.5 inches in length, are rigid and of nearly uniform thickness, except close to the base where they thicken rather abruptly, being here about twice as thick as in any other part. The apex is somewhat pointed, but soon withers and is then easily broken off. Of these petioles, 314 were pulled out of burrows in the above specified sites; and it was found that 76 per cent. had been drawn in by their tips, and 24 per cent by their bases; so that those drawn in by the tip were a little more than thrice ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin

... in vain; Were death denied, to live would not be life; Were death denied, e'en fools would wish to die. Death wounds to cure: we fall; we rise; we reign; Spring from our fetters; hasten to the skies, Where blooming Eden withers in our sight. Death gives us more than was in Eden lost; The king of terrors is the ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... irrigation, and the watering of the plantation under an ardent sun. The vapor from the earth kills the fruit. If the rains are deficient for a time, and an excessive rain succeeds, the fruit of the cacao also withers. ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... excuse for letting pass the encounter with less eloquence than I, its narrator, might have made a fortune by reporting. For once Gunner Sobey's readiness failed him, under emotion too deep for words. He laid a hand on the mare's withers and heaved himself astride, choosing a seat well back towards the haunches, and so avoiding the more pronounced angles in her framework. Then leaning forward and patting her neck ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and proved that that which many physicians could not cure or remedy with their greatest and strongest medicines, the astronomer hath brought to pass with one simple herb, by observing the moving of the signs."—FABIAN WITHERS. ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... Alexis withers in the tomb, Untimely fades, nor sees a second bloom; Ye hills and groves no more your landscapes please, Nor give my soul one interval of ease; Delight and joy forever flee your shades,— And ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert

... more his own deficiency and the weight of his corruptible body, so as to say with the Apostle (Rom. 7:24): "Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Wherefore Gregory say (Hom. xiv in Ezech.): "When God is once known by desire and understanding, He withers all ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... ale, or viler liquors, 645 Did'st inspire WITHERS, PRYN , and VICKARS, And force them, tho' it was in spite Of nature and their stars, to write; Who, as we find in sullen writs, And cross-grain'd works of modern wits, 650 With vanity, opinion, want, The wonder of the ignorant, The praises of the author, penn'd B' himself, or ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... not scruple to enter the rightful kingdom of woman to rob, murder, and to destroy, and to lay in ruins all that before was bright and beautiful. The strong man is made helpless under its influence, all loveliness withers at its touch, the darkness of its shadow shuts out the sunlight, and its breath of death is over all. While this is true we ought surely to act as if we believed it to be true, and do all in our power to bar the ...
— Why and how: a hand-book for the use of the W.C.T. unions in Canada • Addie Chisholm

... potion. The chastity of knight and damsel is determined by the magic horn, whose liquor the innocent drink, but the guilty spill; and by the enchanted garland, which blooms on the brow of the chaste, but withers on that of the faithless. Inventions such as these were regarded as facts, or at least as possible occurrences, by the readers of romantic fiction. Men believed what they were told, and to doubt, to inquire were intellectual efforts ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... younger man, whose dry, ironic voice, like his smile, seemed defending the fervid spirit in his eyes; "all you say only amounts, you see, to a defence of the so-called Liberal spirit; and, forgive my candour, that spirit, being an importation from the realms of philosophy and art, withers the moment it touches ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... hundred men could shelter under one of them with ease. The sap flows from an incision made high up in the tree into a vessel hung there to receive it, and soon hardens into the substance called camphor, but the tree itself withers up and dies when ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... Ben. Hill sat leaning back in his chair apparently rather dejected, but his countenance lighted up as he gave Edmunds a cordial greeting. Senators Lamar and Butler, and Ransom and Hampton, were all in their seats, and on the sofa behind them were ex-Senators Gordon and Withers, and a ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... sensation of freshness, with which we turn to those plays of Shakspeare which have escaped being performed, and to those passages in the acting plays of the same writer which have happily been left out in the performance. How far the very custom of hearing anything spouted, withers and blows upon a fine passage, may be seen in those speeches from Henry the Fifth, &c., which are current in the mouths of school-boys, from their being to be found in Enfield's Speaker, and such kind of books! I confess ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... bolts the piece of beef an' lopes off mebby five miles before ever he succumbs. With this yere augur hole play it's different. The wolf has to lick the arsenic-tallow out with his tongue an' the p'isen has time an' gets in its work. That wolf sort o' withers right thar in his tracks. At the most he ain't further away than the nearest water; arsenic makin' 'em plenty thirsty, as ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... rear of the Union line concealed by the woods; they march right up to the ranks where the red-barred flag is flying! What can it mean? Neither side fires. There must surely be some mistake. Hark! now the blue line discovers—too late—that the mass is the enemy, and half the line withers in the point-blank discharge. They are swept from the ground. Jack is trembling—demoniac. The gray mass springs forward; they have seized the guns—four of them—and turn them upon the disappearing blue. Then a hoarse shout of delirious triumph. The guns are lost; the day is lost, for now there ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... he had bought with his own savings. A step stove it was, two caps below and two higher up. The Burwells had seen to it that their daughter did not go empty-handed to her man. She had a flock tick, quilts, coverlids, and a cow. But, old Granny Withers, a midwife from Caney Creek, sitting in the chimney corner sucking her pipe the night of the wedding, vowed that all would not be well with the pair. Hadn't a bat flitted into the room right over Talithie's head when the elder ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... more death the more millions. The more horror and devastation the heavier will be our coffers. The more the people groan the more we will shout. The more they die the more we will live. The more the flag is torn the more our damask curtains will flutter. The more liberty perishes and withers from the earth the more we shall plant ourselves and flourish and rule and reign over a nation that we have destroyed and a people whom we have enslaved. If Mr. Clews wishes any further outline of the history of Wall Street during our Civil War we shall be glad to contribute such a sketch ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... constructing flat roofs covered with earth, on which grass readily springs up; (2) to the division of the year into two seasons, the rainy and the dry, upon the commencement of which latter such grass speedily withers. Another reference to the same oriental roofs we have in the words of Solomon: "The contentions of a wife are a continual dropping;" "a continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike" (chaps. 19:13; 27:15), where we are to understand ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... withers of the barasingh with his right hand, held the torch away with his left, and stepped out of the shrine into the desperate night. There was no breath of wind, but the rain nearly drowned the flare as the great deer hurried ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... everybody worth knowing is related to them, by marriage or otherwise, in this or some other century; as men of the world, they are ready to talk upon any subject with tolerance, geniality and a pleasingly personal note that withers up the commonplace, smoking, meanwhile, innumerable cigarettes out of mouthpieces which display a complex escutcheon contrived in gold and rubies upon the amber surface. Yes, his choice was good: Poles are gentlemen. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... a long ride. Folded in the slicker that was strapped to the cantle of his saddle was food; he carried his rifle in the saddle sheath, and a water-bag bulged above the horse's withers. ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... him. So she sat alone till dinner-time planning how she would do this. She had sat alone for hours in the same way planning how she would tell her story to Sir Peregrine; and again as to her second story for Mr. Furnival. Those whose withers are unwrung can hardly guess how absolutely a sore under the collar will embitter every hour for the poor jade who ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope

... would." At that moment, just over his horse's withers, she saw the face of Guss Mildmay who was leaning on her father's arm. Guss bowed to her, and she was obliged to return the salute. Jack De Baron turned his face to the path and seeing the lady raised his hat. "Are you two friends?" ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... the mules. The loose bullocks furnished us abundance of fresh beef, although, as was inevitable under the circumstances, of a decidedly tough quality. One of the biggest of the bullocks was attacked one night by a vampire bat, and next morning his withers were literally bathed ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt

... my modesty," said Arthur, "can't I mention myself as one of the brighter spots? But for you I would never have raised a finger for my mother's land. Now, I am enlisted, not only in the cause of Erin, but pledged to do what I can for any race that withers like yours under the rule of the slave-master. And that means my money, my time and thought and labor, ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... represented as a mere broad band passing round the neck, not of the withers (as with ourselves). but considerably higher up, almost midway between the withers and the cheek-bone. Sometimes it is of uniform width while often it narrows greatly as it approaches the back of the neck. It is generally patterned, and appears to have been a mere flat leathern band. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... Persons who came thither were chaste or not;" and that they caused, as might be expected, immense trouble. The test-article becomes in the Tuti-nameh the Tank of Trial at Agra; also a nosegay which remains fresh or withers; in the Katha Sarit Sagara, the red lotus of Shiva; a shirt in Story lxix. Gesta Romanorum; a cup in Ariosto; a rose-garland in "The Wright's Chaste WIfe," edited by Mr. Furnival for the Early English Text Society; a magic picture in Bandello, Part I., ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... inflicts upon his chin, bleed with particular freedom. The Desmodonts, as these true Vampires are called, will attack horses, mules, and cattle, which they generally wound on the back, near the spine, often in the region of the withers; and they also bite the combs of domestic fowls, and any part of the human body that they can get at. In the case of man, however, according to most authorities, the extremity of the great toe is the favorite part; and some writers, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... taller than any Esquimaux dog we have seen; but those met with in 1818, in the latitude of 76°, appear to come nearest to it in that respect. The tallest dog at Igloolik stood two feet one inch from the ground, measured at the withers; the average height was about two inches ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry

... his own country's successes, some time ago. They were gallant and conspicuous victories of the American frigates; we do not grudge them. A fair fight should leave no rancour, above all in the victors, and Dr. Holmes's withers would have been unwrung ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... costly feast, With all the inventive arts, that nursed the soul To forms of beauty, and by sensual wants Unsensualised the mind, which in the means 210 Learnt to forget the grossness of the end, Best pleasured with its own activity. And hence Disease that withers manhood's arm, The daggered Envy, spirit-quenching Want, Warriors, and Lords, and Priests—all the sore ills[117:1] 215 That vex and desolate our mortal life. Wide-wasting ills! yet each the immediate source Of mightier good. Their keen necessities To ceaseless action goading human thought ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... prescriptions, a point will be reached by the patient where the restoration of his millions of small rootlets, or organic feeders, will be impossible, and like a decaying plant in unfavorable soil he gradually decays or withers, here and there, until finally he topples over before he knows it, probably long before maturity has ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... fir withers That stands on a fenced field; Neither bark nor foliage shelters it; Thus is a man Whom no one loves; Why should he live ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... as she was removed, Jane Withers was called. She deposed that three days previously, as she was, just before dusk, arranging some linen in a room a few yards distant from the bedroom of her late mistress, she was surprised at hearing a noise just outside the door, as of persons struggling and speaking in low but earnest ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren

... are hid, The orb that waits my search is hid with them. Patience! Why grudge an hour, a month, a year, To plant my ladder and to gain the round That leads my footsteps to the heaven of fame, Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won? Not the stained laurel such as heroes wear That withers when some stronger conqueror's heel Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust; But the fair garland whose undying green Not time can change, nor wrath ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... branches crown'd, (Fell'd by some artist with his shining steel, To shape the circle of the bending wheel,) Cut down it lies, tall, smooth, and largely spread, With all its beauteous honours on its head There, left a subject to the wind and rain, And scorch'd by suns, it withers on the plain Thus pierced by Ajax, Simoisius lies Stretch'd on the shore, and thus ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... Catarina Cornaro spent her girlhood is now a pawnbroker's shop. The last living representative of the haughty house of Lusignan—Kings, in their day, of Cyprus, of Jerusalem, and of Armenia—is said to be a waiter in a French cafe. So royalty withers and power fades. There is no title to nobility save character, and no family pride so unfading as a spotless name. But, though palace and family have both decayed, the beautiful girl who was once the glory of Venice and whom great artists loved to paint, sends us ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... the self is all that man can know Of Beauty, all the wonder, all the power, All the unearthly colour, all the glow, Here in the self which withers like a flower; Here in the self which fades as hours pass, And droops and dies and rots and is forgotten Sooner, by ages, than the mirroring glass In which it sees its glory still unrotten. Here in the flesh, within the flesh, behind, Swift in the blood and throbbing on the bone, Beauty herself, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various



Words linked to "Withers" :   Equus caballus, deer, horse, sheep



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