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Worm-eaten   Listen
adjective
Worm-eaten  adj.  
1.
Eaten, or eaten into, by a worm or by worms; as, worm-eaten timber. "Concave as a covered goblet, or a worm-eaten nut."
2.
Worn-out; old; worthless. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Worm-eaten" Quotes from Famous Books



... of horror is complete without the rats. In stories of ghosts and murderers they scamper through the echoing rooms, and the gnawing of their teeth is heard behind the wainscot, and their gleaming eyes peer through the holes in the worm-eaten tapestry, and they scream in shrill, unearthly notes in the dead of night, while the moaning wind sweeps, sobbing, round the ruined turret towers, and passes wailing like a woman through the chambers ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... Other matters occupied his mind, and besides he had neither seen nor heard anything. He contented himself by saying, "Oh!" absently, got a drink of water out of a pitcher standing there, and leaving Cornelius a prey to some inexplicable emotion—that made him embrace with both arms the worm-eaten rail of the verandah as if his legs had failed—went in again and lay down on his mat to think. By-and-by he heard stealthy footsteps. They stopped. A voice whispered tremulously through the wall, "Are you asleep?" "No! What is it?" he answered briskly, and there was an abrupt ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... are renewed a hundred times a day the most disgusting libations, close in a square space reserved for what they call the dancers. At the further end of this infected cave there is, supported by four worm-eaten pillars, a sort of alcove, constructed from broken-up ship timber, which is graced by the appearance of two or three rags of old tapestry. It is on this chicken coop that the music is perched: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various

... reddened. "There was no danger," he muttered wrathfully. "Madonna! I would lose the use of another limb rather than hurt a hair of her head. Is she not my good angel? Has she not drawn me back from the gate of hell? Risk her life! Are people saying that because a worm-eaten wheel went to pieces ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... directed to the good of mankind than in any other; that the courage of such a people is the aptest tinder to noble fire; that the genius of such a soil is that wherein the roots of good literature are least worm-eaten with pedantism, and where their fruits have ever come to the greatest maturity and highest relish, conceived such a loathing of their ambition and tyranny, who, usurping the liberty of their native countries, become slaves to themselves, inasmuch as (be it never so contrary ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... was, to take down from the shelves of a worm-eaten wardrobe a quantity of frouzy garments, one by one; to subject each to a careful and minute inspection by holding it up against the light, and after folding it with great exactness, to lay it on one or other of ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... herbs as fresh as possible; if you suspect they are not "morning gathered," they will be much refreshed by lying an hour or two in spring-water; then carefully wash and pick them, and trim off all the worm-eaten, slimy, cankered, dry leaves; and, after washing, let them remain a while in the colander to drain: lastly, swing them gently in a clean napkin: when properly picked and cut, arrange them in the salad dish, mix the sauce in a soup plate, and put it ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... gauze veil in place, tall and still in her arbour, sighing happily now and again and making her little sounds of affectionate raillery as the girls finished their coffee and jested and giggled together across their worm-eaten, green-painted tables. ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson

... to each other when their foe was gone, and laughed when they heard the cause of it. "Ha, ha, Wilson's the boy to diddle him!" And yet they looked queer when told that the famous stick had snapped in his grasp like a worm-eaten larch-twig. "Lord!" cried the baker in admiring awe, "did he break it with the ae chirt! It's been tried by scores of fellows for the last twenty years, and never a man of them was up till't! Lads, there's something splendid about Gourlay's wrath. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... carefully preserved the most valuable intellectual treasures which had been snatched from the wreck of the Byzantine empire. His agents were to be found everywhere, in the bazaars of the farthest East, in the monasteries of the farthest West, purchasing or copying worm-eaten parchments, on which were traced words worthy of immortality. Under his patronage were prepared accurate Latin versions of many precious remains of Greek poets and philosophers. But no department of literature owes so much to him as history. By him were introduced ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... forsake not these unprofitable by-courses, and that timely too. Name me a profest poet, that his poetry did ever afford him so much as a competency. Ay, your god of poets there, whom all of you admire and reverence so much, Homer, he whose worm-eaten statue must not be spewed against, but with hallow'd lips and groveling adoration, what ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... nights, and made the acquaintance of thousands of rats and other pests. There was only one staircase, by which some hundreds of troops had to find access and egress. A curious fact was that the fumes of the spirit had eaten so into the woodwork, which was generally worm-eaten and rotten, that to strike a light near it was to incur the danger of igniting it and burning the building down. But our boys found a walled-in yard in the background covered by a tarred roof which had no windows, and this they converted into a smoke-room. Roominess and ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey

... would have made a big armful, and when at last I toiled up to my attic, and dropped on my knees by the open window, I was shaking from head to foot with exhaustion. The dust was thick on my hands and arms, and as I turned them over eagerly by the red light of the sunset, the worm-eaten bindings left queer greenish stains on my fingers. Among a number of loose magazines called The Farmer's Friend, I found an illustrated, rather handsome copy of "Pilgrim's Progress," presented, as an inscription on the flyleaf testified, to one Jeremiah Wakefield as a reward ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... partitions. It is the female alone who accomplishes this task, connected with the function of perpetuating the race. She chooses an old tree-trunk, a pole, or the post of a fence, exposed to the sun and already worm-eaten, so that her labour may be lightened. She first attacks the wood perpendicularly to the surface, then suddenly turns and directs downwards the passage, the diameter of which is about equal to the size of the insect's body. The Xylocopa thus forms a tube about thirty centimetres in length. ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... a bandy-legg'd, high-shoulder'd, worm-eaten seat, With a creaking old back, and twisted old feet; But since the fair morning when Fanny sat there, I bless thee and love thee, ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... big azure dome of the sky is unclouded. The farms of Normandy, scattered over the plains and surrounded by a belt of tall beeches, look, from a distance, like little woods. On closer view, after lowering the worm-eaten wooden bars, you imagine yourself in an immense garden, for all the ancient apple-trees, as gnarled as the peasants themselves, are in bloom. The sweet scent of their blossoms mingles with the heavy smell of the earth and the penetrating odor of the stables. It ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... her party through several small rooms, scantily garnished with ancient furniture, in some of which were portraits of the family, until they at length entered a noble saloon, once the refectory of the abbey, and not deficient in splendour, though sadly soiled and worm-eaten. It was hung with tapestry representing the Cartoons of Raffael, and their still vivid colours contrasted with the faded hangings and the dingy damask of the chairs and sofas. A mass of Cromwellian armour was huddled together in a corner of a long monkish ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... proved that the upper rock yielded four, and the lower nine, per cent. of tolerably pure brimstone. The shortest cut from the dock-harbour lies up the southern Wady Ha'rr, with its strangely weathered sandstone rocks, soft modern grits that look worm-eaten. Amongst them is a ledge-like block with undermined base projecting from the left bank: both the upper and the lower parts are scattered over with Wasm, or Arab tribal marks. On our return from El-Wijh we found this sandstone tongue broken in two: the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... Natchalnik and another man. "This is new," said he; "I never knew them to be so wary and suspicious before." We now found ourselves within the walls of the fortress. A shabby wooden cafe was opposite to us; a mosque of the same material rose with its worm-eaten carpentry to our right. The cadi, a pompous vulgar old man, now met us, and signified that we might as well repose at his chardak, but from inhospitality or fanaticism, gave us neither pipes nor coffee. His worship was ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... WORM-EATEN, OR WORMED. The state of a plank or of a ship's bottom when perforated by a particular kind of boring mollusk, Teredo navalis, which abounds in ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... which a young girl of noble birth (whose sister was fond of eating chalk, cinnamon, and cloves) experienced extreme pleasure in smelling old books. It would appear, however, that in this case the fascination lay not so much in the odor of the leather as in the mouldy odor of worm-eaten books; "faetore veterum liborum, a blattis et tineis exesorum, situque prorsus corruptorum" ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... moved at the joints; and this he clothed with real draperies, from which he painted most beautiful things, being able to keep them in position as long as he pleased, until he had brought his work to perfection. This figure, worm-eaten and ruined as it is, is in our possession, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari

... aside the green window-blind, I saw all the stars twinkling; and the broad moon, a little worm-eaten about the upper edge, was flinging a pale light over the Forno glacier and the thick pines ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... cried, "for I must. A thing built on cruelty, cemented with blood, and worm-eaten with lies is hateful to me ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... Mr. Penrose ascended the pulpit. Never before was there such a congregation to greet him; and as the people rose to join in singing the old tune, Devizes, the worm-eaten galleries trembled and creaked beneath the mass of worshippers. Then followed prayer and the lessons, the ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather

... A small nightlight in a saucer of oil shed a sickly glare upon the worm-eaten old furniture, distorting the most innocent articles into ghastly shapes. A wilder gust than usual almost deprived her of the protection afforded by that poor light, and she lay listening fearfully to the creakings and other noises on the stairs, bitterly regretting ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs

... her eyes upon a busy silver clock that already marked the appointed hour. The room was large, wainscoted in dark paneling; a capacious fireplace jutted far out, and was made further conspicuous by two settees of worm-eaten oak. The chairs that backed along the walls were of stalwart pattern. A collection of English silver tankards was the chief decoration, save straight hangings of Cordova leather at the windows, and a Spanish embroidery, tarnished ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford

... cart, and apparently without the most distant perception of what he is swallowing, then bleats forth another unnatural set of tones by way of returning thanks, stalks out of the room, and immerses himself among a parcel of huge worm-eaten folios that are as uncouth as himself! I could endure the creature well enough had I anybody to laugh at him along with me; but Lucy Bertram, if I but verge on the border of a jest affecting this same Mr. Sampson (such is the horrid man's horrid name), looks ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... not I, an I might have been join'd patten with one of the seven wise masters for knowing him. He had so writhen himself into the habit of one of your poor infantry, your decayed; ruinous, worm-eaten gentlemen of the round; such as have vowed to sit on the skirts of the city, let your provost and his half-dozen of halberdiers do what they can; and have translated begging out of the old hackney-pace to a fine easy amble, and made it run as ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... surreptitiously picked up a good deal of musical knowledge apart from the art of singing, was at the age of sixteen turned out on the world. A compassionate barber, however, took him in, and Haydn dressed and powdered wigs down-stairs, while he worked away at a little worm-eaten harpsichord at night in his room. Unfortunate boy! he managed to get himself engaged to the barber's daughter, Anne Keller, who was for a good while the Xantippe of his gentle life, and he paid dearly for ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... all the Hotblouds, betweene, foureteene & fiue & thirtie, sometimes fashioning them like Pharaoes souldiours in the rechie painting, sometime like god Bels priests in the old Church window, sometime like the shauen Hercules in the smircht worm-eaten tapestrie, where his cod-peece seemes as massie ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... out of the question," said the Beech. "You know I am worm-eaten! Ask the Elm and ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc

... in first, my servant followed. A small, blank, dreary room without furniture; a few empty boxes and hampers in a corner; a small window; the shutters closed; not even a fireplace; no other door but that by which we had entered; no carpet on the floor, and the floor seemed very old, uneven, worm-eaten, mended here and there, as was shown by the whiter patches on the wood; but no living being, and no visible place in which a living being could have hidden. As we stood gazing round, the door by which we had entered closed as quietly as it had before ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... passage. He ran from room to room, upstairs and downstairs; and in that old dingy and worm-eaten house, he found himself alone. Only in one apartment, looking to the front, were there any traces of the late inhabitant: a bed that had been recently slept in and not made, a chest of drawers disordered by a hasty search, and on the floor a roll of crumpled paper. This he ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson

... water from her black locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Maggie's favorite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold; here she fretted out all her ill humors, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs; and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks; but was now entirely defaced ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... a collection of worm-eaten planks roughly bound together by cross-beams which resembled roughly hewn logs. It opened directly on a steep staircase of lofty steps, muddy, chalky, plaster-stained, dusty steps, of the same width as itself, which could be seen from the street, running straight up like a ladder ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... taste for poetry and good literature. "One of our keenest pleasures," writes one of the family, "was to go in a body to the old book-shops, and on Sunday morning to the 'Thieves Market', to rummage for treasures; and many were the Elzevirs and worm-eaten, vellum-bound volumes from the old convent libraries that fell into our hands. At that time we issued a home magazine called 'The Prophet', in honour of a large painting that we had acquired and chose to consider as the patron of our household. The magazine was supposed to appear ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... semiforbidden class, and rows of plays and poems by Congreve, Etheridge, Rochester, Dryden, and their contemporaries offered themselves to my study, as though by some furtive assignation. Among other wrecks of furniture with which the worm-eaten floors were encumbered was an old and battered rocking-horse, bestriding which I studied these secret volumes, and found in it an enchanted steed which would lift me into the air and convey me to ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... here seated himself also on an old worm-eaten Gothic chest, rumpling and chafing the golden or tinselled threads of the embroidered silk, so rare and so time-worn, flung over the Gothic chest, so ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... as well as politic—and a truck carrying our goods and chattels. As yet, they were modest in number and respectable in appearance. H.C. had not commenced his raid upon the old curiosity shops; had not yet encumbered himself with endless packages, from deal boxes containing old silver, to worm-eaten, fourteenth century carved-wood monks and madonnas, carefully wrapped in brown paper, and bound head, hand and foot (where these essentials were not missing) with cord. All this came in due time, but ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various

... cold air, thrilled with sunshine, filled her room. It was the "best room," furnished with a curious mingling of the ancient and the modern. The pretty chintz couch laughed at the oaken, high-backed chair, stiff with a century of worm-eaten state. On either side the fireplace hung two ancient engravings, of Mary Stuart and "bonnie Prince Charlie," both garnished with verses, at once remarkable for devoted loyalty and eccentric rhythm. Between the two was Sir William Ross's sweet, maidenly ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... you have enough courage," said the doctor; and Peter, looking very white, led the way to the foot of the ladder, went up, and the others followed him to the loft, and stood together on the old worm-eaten boards. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... without the walls of a factory, but also beyond the contamination of a large town.'[36] It may have surprised such people, but it does not surprise us who are surveying the industrial scene and beginning to apprehend the rottenness of that worm-eaten structure which under the misnomer of domestic industry marks the half-way ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... morning found him at his counter, still worrying his books as a ferret worries a rat. They were beginning to mean something to him, and he saw that the bank was a worm-eaten shell. When he discovered that Brownwell's notes were not made for bona fide loans, but that they were made to cover Barclay's overdrafts, he began to find the truth, and then when he found that Colonel Culpepper had lent the money back to the bank that ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... scorching under a midday sun when he came on deck. Its low, square houses were glaring white; here and there a splotch of vivid Cuban blue stood out; the rickety, worm-eaten piling of its water-front resembled rows of rotten, snaggly teeth smiling out of a chalky face mottled with unhealthy, artificial spots of color. Gusts of wind from the shore brought feverish odors, as if the city were sick and exhaled a tainted ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... I felt when, on returning to our own room, and hastily turning the pages, only an old, battered worm-eaten Latin work greeted my eyes! Without loss of time I retraced my steps. Just when I was about to replace the book I heard a noise in the corridor outside, and the sound of footsteps approaching. Fumblingly ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... chestnuts (noticing carefully if any are worm-eaten), and boil for half an hour in sufficient water to cover; remove the shells and skins and fry a few minutes in the butter, stir in the flour and salt and fry again, then pour in the milk and parsley and stir five minutes, add ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich

... seldom seen in Hugo's works...." Zanetti, surprised by the fine quality of the first proof, proposed to pass it off on Mariette in Paris as an original da Carpi print. He even stained it and cut holes in it to give the impression of aged worm-eaten paper. At the same time Jackson executed another chiaroscuro, also based on a Parmigianino drawing, the Woman Standing Holding Jar on her Head. ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen

... from some old Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud Which breaks to dust when once unrolled; Or shredded perfume, like a cloud From closet long to quiet vowed, With mothed and dropping arras hung, Mouldering her lute and books among, As when a ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... upper rooms, curious old rooms, which had been annexed one by one as the squire wanted them, and in which there was nothing at all—neither chair, nor table, nor carpet—but books only. All the doors leading from room to room had been taken off; the old worm-eaten boards had been roughly stained; a few old French engravings had been hung here and there where the encroaching books left an opening; but otherwise all was bare. There was a curious charm in the space and air of these empty rooms, with their latticed windows opening on to the hill; and letting ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... basked in sunlight and glittered with exceeding brilliancy of hue. A tiny white chapel stood in a corner of the enclosure. Two iron-grated windows let me see inside: it was a bare place, containing nothing but a wooden praying-desk, black and worm-eaten, an altar with its candles and no flowers, and above the altar a square picture brown with age. On the floor were scattered several pence, and in a vase above the holy-water vessel stood some withered hyacinths. As my sight became accustomed to the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... read it wrongly, that is all. The magpie simply came to give you my love—poor thing, she can't help having an ugly voice! And then the woodpecker—don't you see, it was just pecking out the worms from the timber—there must be no worm-eaten timber in his home! ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski

... morality. I know them, these indignant voices of the defenders of morality. They arise every time that we unveil the vilenesses, that we expose the gangrenes of our institutions; corrupt magistracy, vicious clergy, rotten army; tottering tripod which holds up that worm-eaten scaffolding ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... de Verneuil to a large and worm-eaten armchair placed beside the fireplace; Francine followed and stood behind her mistress, leaning on the back of that ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... little triangular cupboard of old worm-eaten walnut-wood fixed high in a corner of the room. Mrs. Lecount tried the door: it ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... and bad beans must not be mingled together. There are four sorts of cacao in every crop; the ripe and in good condition, the green but sound, the worm-eaten, and the rotten. The first quality is best, the second is not bad; but the two others should ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... the misused days when he had friends, and a position, and character; when he was a householder and vestryman, and even dreamt ambitiously of a churchwardenship. He could see distinctly his own pew, with the gray, worm-eaten panels, where he had sat many and many a warm afternoon, resisting sternly, as became a man of mark in the parish, treacherous inclinations to slumber. He saw the ponderous brown gallery—eyesore to archaeologists—which held the village choir: ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... Why do you not say that at the same time I commissioned large numbers of fishermen to secure for me at a price striped sea-shells from the shore, smooth pebbles, crabs' claws, sea-urchins' husks, the tentacles of cuttlefish, shingle, straws, cordage, not to mention[13] worm-eaten oyster-shells, moss, and seaweed, and all the flotsam of the sea that the winds drive, or the salt wave casts up, or the storm sweeps back, or the calm leaves high and dry all along our shores? For their names are no less suitable than those I mentioned above ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... get it off." He raised his heavily booted foot, as Frank drew back, and brought it down with a crash on the massive brasswork. With a rending and tearing of the worm-eaten wood the lock ripped loose and the lid, operated by some concealed ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... province to make researches relative to its history, arrived at the ancient chateau of Montaigne, in possession of a descendant of this great man. He inquired for the archives, if there had been any. He was shown an old worm-eaten coffer, which had long held papers untouched by the incurious generations of Montaigne. Stifled in clouds of dust, he drew out the original manuscript of the travels of Montaigne. Two-thirds of the work are in the handwriting of Montaigne, and the rest is written by a servant, who always speaks ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... very floors had given way; — the hangings were parted from the walls, and shaking in mouldy remnants; the glasses were dropping out of their frames; — the family-pictures were covered with dust. and all the chairs and tables worm-eaten and crazy. — There was not a bed in the house that could be used, except one old-fashioned machine, with a high gilt tester and fringed curtains of yellow mohair, which had been, for aught I know, two centuries in the family. ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... lawn and underwood. Old Tyson had bought the house as it stood from an impecunious nobleman, supplying its deficiencies according to his own very respectable fancy. The result was a little startling. Worm-eaten oak was flanked by mahogany veneer, brocade and tapestry were eked out with horse-hair and green rep, gules and azure from the stained-glass lozenge lattices were reflected in a hundred twinkling, dangling lusters; and you came upon lions rampant in a wilderness of ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... dear to each child's heart. Stones, sticks, anything that cannot be—explained." Sandy gave a low laugh. He was harking back to the old shed beside his father's cabin and the gay prints tacked to the worm-eaten boards. ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... glass-topped cases full of that collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat and was secured at the back of the pillar. ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... look at our hero as he stands for a moment in the golden evening light on the planks of the wooden structure which, supported by ricketty, worm-eaten piles, does duty as a wharf. Like a thorough seaman as he is, he is taking a last glance at the schooner before he leaves her, to see that everything is thoroughly "ship-shape and Bristol-fashion" on board her. She is a small and somewhat insignificant craft; but as George ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... various consumers, great and little, all of whom play their part in this world. If it is good that the blackbird should flute and rejoice in the burgeoning of the spring, then it is no bad thing that acorns should be worm-eaten. In the acorn the dessert of the blackbird is prepared; the Balaninus, the tasty mouthful that puts flesh upon his flanks and music ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... he said slowly and bitterly. "You think I care for the world? Then you read me wrongly at the very outset of our interview, and your once reputed skill as a Seer goes for naught! To me the world is a graveyard full of dead, worm-eaten things, and its supposititious Creator, whom you have so be praised in your orisons to-night, is the Sexton who entombs, and the Ghoul who devours his own hapless Creation! I myself am one of the tortured and dying, and I have sought you simply that you may trick me into a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... waste, is now over two hundred billion board feet;—some authorities place the amount as high as two hundred and seventy-five billion feet. This, however, probably includes firewood, one of the largest uses of wood, but taken very largely from worm-eaten wood that could not be cut into lumber. It also probably includes boughs, and other unsalable parts ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... a little, while thou art out of the prison of his company. What shall I do? by my troth, anatomise his purse in his absence. Plutus send there be jewels in it, that I may finely geld it of the stones—the best, sure, lies in the bottom; pox on't, here's nothing but a company of worm-eaten papers: what's this? Memorandum that Master Prodigo owes me four thousand pounds, and that his lands are in pawn for it. Memorandum that I owe. That he owes? 'Tis well the old slave hath some care of his credit; ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... the sky was blue to the verge of the horizon. The Norman farms scattered through the plain seemed at a distance like little woods inclosed each in a circle of thin beech-trees. Coming closer, on opening the worm-eaten stile, one fancied that he saw a giant garden, for all the old apple-trees, as knotted as the peasants, were in blossom. The weather-beaten black trunks, crooked, twisted, ranged along the inclosure, displayed ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... monk's faith that sees heaven laid open and beholds the angels, is something far below the power of the old monk who points them out to him. The ex-steward was like the old monk; he would have given his life to defend a worm-eaten shrine. ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... cotton velvet (Agricola's first present to his mother), a few rush bottomed chairs, and a worktable on which lay several bags of coarse, brown cloth, completed the furniture of this room, badly secured by a worm-eaten door. The adjoining closet contained a few kitchen ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... the mills, a Portuguese trader arrived with a quantity of worm-eaten logs of this cedar, which he had gathered from the floating timber in the current of the main Amazons. The tree producing this wood, which is named cedar on account of the similarity of its aroma to that of the true cedars, is not, of ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... a few leaves are wanting at the end. Polybius. Lat. 1473. Folio. The printers are Sweynheym and Pannartz. A large, fine copy; in the original binding of wood: but four leaves at the end, with a strong foxy tint at top, are worm-eaten in ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... old Fort Falconbridge. A worm-eaten gun or two, far more dangerous to those in rear than to those in front, rises en barbette. The affair would fall in half an hour before the mildest of gunboats. Yet by fortifying three points at an expense of some 6,000L ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... to the right, in a sharp curve, and Constans's heart bounded wildly; he had forgotten how close he must be to the crossing of the Swiftwater. Now the rotting and worm-eaten timbers of the open trestle-work were under his feet; mechanically, he avoided the numerous gaps, where a misstep meant destruction, and so at last gained the farther bank and sank down panting on ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... Babbalanja spied a heap of worm-eaten parchment covers, and many clippings and parings. And whereas the rolls of manuscripts did smell like unto old cheese; so these relics did marvelously resemble the rinds ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... nonessentials of every trifling incident. He is his own landscape-painter, and engraver too. His pastoral scenes seem pricked on paper in little dotted lines. He describes the interior of a cottage like a person sent there to distrain for rent. He has an eye to the number of arms in an old worm-eaten chair, and takes care to inform himself and the reader whether a joint-stool stands upon three legs or upon four. If a settle by the fire-side stands awry, it gives him as much disturbance as a tottering world; and he records ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... hooded, and half clad in a tattered and moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of its person, swung by me with a stately stride and disappeared in the gray gloom of the starlight. It had a broken and worm-eaten coffin on its shoulder and a bundle of something in its hand. I knew what the clack-clacking was then; it was this party's joints working together, and his elbows knocking against his sides as he walked. I may say I was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that lay on their shelves, and looked back at him wistfully, as if they would say,—'We also are like you, and wait to be completed,'—it seemed as if he heard a rustle of leaves. Then, one by one, the books came down from their places to the floor, as if shifted by invisible hands, opened their worm-eaten covers, and from between the pages of each the hunchback saw issue forth a curious throng of little people that danced here and there through the apartment. Each one of these little creatures was shaped so as to bear resemblance to some one of the letters of the alphabet. One tall, long-legged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... o'clock she went up to her bedroom at the top of the house. It had served as a nursery for many generations of Caresfoots; indeed, during the last three centuries, hundreds of little feet had pattered over the old worm-eaten boards. But the little feet had long since gone to dust, and the only signs of children's play and merriment left about the place were the numberless scratches, nicks, and letters cut in the old panelling, and even on the beams which supported the ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... said, "She is lucky for her health's sake." He shook his head, and at times read attentively a portion treating of heart-disease in Aviccunas, translated by Vossiscus Fortunatus, Louvain, 1650, an old worm-eaten book of his. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... platform! At his word, which at certain moments was as the thunder, prejudices, fictions, abuses, superstitions, fallacies, intolerance, ignorance, fiscal infamies, barbarous punishments, outworn authorities, worm-eaten magistracy, discrepit codes, rotten laws, everything that was doomed to perish, trembled, and the downfall of those things began. That formidable apparition has left a name in the memory of men; he should be called ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... southeast one was the chamber of the Nazarites, for there the Nazarites cooked their peace-offerings, and polled their hair, and cast it under the pot. The northeast was the chamber for the wood, and there the priests with blemishes gathered out the worm-eaten wood. And every stick in which a worm was found, was unlawful for the altar. The northwest was the chamber for the lepers. The southwest? Rabbi Eleazar, the son of Jacob, said, "I forget for what it served." Abashaul said, "there they put wine, and oil." It was called the chamber ...
— Hebrew Literature

... place more quiet than perfect silence would have done, the child loitered from grave to grave, now stopping to replace with careful hands the bramble which had started from some green mound it helped to keep in shape, and now peeping through one of the low latticed windows into the church, with its worm-eaten books upon the desks, and baize of whitened-green mouldering from the pew sides and leaving the naked wood to view. There were the seats where the poor old people sat, worn spare, and yellow like themselves; the rugged font where children had their names, the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... would catch hold of me with when I hurt her. By Jove, if she had been a man, she would have made her mark in the world! She had a will and a way with her! If it hadn't been that she loved me—me, do you hear, you dog!—though there's nobody left to care a worm-eaten nut about me, it makes me proud as Lucifer merely to think of it! I don't care if there's never another to love me to all eternity! I have been loved as never man was loved! All for my own sake, mind you! In the way of money I was no great catch; ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... comic-opera coronets and her worm-eaten stage decorations, and her pomp and chivalry built on a morass of ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... grew redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and despatch-boxing, on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... an old, worm-eaten chair, in which John of Gaunt had sat; and I remember that while Lady de Brantefield expressed her just indignation against the worms, for having dared to attack this precious relique, I, kneeling to the chair, admired the curious fretwork, the ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... in any case, for people of thoughtful, imaginative temperament. Who has not loved a garret in the twilight days of childhood, with its endless stores of quaint, cast-off, suggestive antiquity,—old worm-eaten chests,—rickety chairs,—boxes and casks full of odd comminglings, out of which, with tiny, childish hands, we fished wonderful hoards of fairy treasure? What peep-holes, and hiding-places, and undiscoverable retreats we made to ourselves,—where we sat rejoicing in our security, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... old and worm-eaten, it will give way," sighed Elza, and she hastened resolutely toward Anthony Wallner, who was just calling again on the soldiers with cool intrepidity to surrender ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach

... days and nights, working by day on rock-pile or in field, sleeping by night in the corner of a friendly fence of worm-eaten rails, fanned by the delicate hair of the pale blue grasses, he came ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... dreamily about, touching with an almost reverent finger first one worm-eaten object and then another, as if by so doing she could make the imagined scene more real. Her eyes were downcast; the blood beneath her rich dark skin came and went in brilliant flushes on her cheeks; the bronze hair, piled in heavy coils on her small, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... those pitiless tour-writers who overwhelm their readers with dry architectural details, filling a page with a portico, and a chapter with a chapel—not letting one off a pane of a painted window or line of worm-eaten inscription however often those things may have been described already by previous travellers. M. Dumas prefers men to things as subjects for his pen; and the three chapters above named are filled with curious illustrations of Neapolitan ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... letters glisten from the red parchment leaves. We see ancient Icelandic manuscripts, from de la Gardie's refined French saloon, and Thauberg's Japanese manuscripts. By merely looking at these books, their bindings and names, one at last becomes, as it were, quite worm-eaten in spirit, and longs to be out in the free air—and we are there; by Upsala's ancient hills. Thither do thou lead us, remembrance's elf, out of the city, out on the far extended plain, where Denmark's church stands—the church that was erected from the booty which ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... squeamish and could eat most things now with a good appetite. Some of the houses he went to, in filthy courts off a dingy street, huddled against one another without light or air, were merely squalid; but others, unexpectedly, though dilapidated, with worm-eaten floors and leaking roofs, had the grand air: you found in them oak balusters exquisitely carved, and the walls had still their panelling. These were thickly inhabited. One family lived in each room, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... by the dozen—a cluster of Peruginos in her dining-room, a Giotto in her boudoir, an Andrea del Sarto over her drawing-room chimney-piece. Surrounded by these treasures, and by innumerable bronzes, mosaics, majolica dishes, and little worm-eaten diptychs covered with angular saints on gilded backgrounds, our hostess enjoyed the dignity of a sort of high-priestess of the arts. She always wore on her bosom a huge miniature copy of the Madonna della Seggiola. Gaining her ear quietly one evening, I ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... not I, an I might have been join'd patten with one of the nine worthies for knowing him. 'Sblood, man, he had so writhen himself into the habit of one of your poor Disparview's here, your decayed, ruinous, worm-eaten gentlemen of the round: such as have vowed to sit on the skirts of the city, let your Provost and his half dozen of halberdiers do what they can; and have translated begging out of the old hackney pace, to a fine easy amble, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson

... in the corner, like a misbehaving child, dozing as he stands and dreaming of the hay-fields! And the bowl and skittles there,—the trim-waisted skittles, shapely maids, whose orderly quadrilles Patou in his gambols clumsily upsets! The great worm-eaten bowl whose curved expanse some ant is always crossing, travelling with no less pride than famed explorers,—around her ball in 80 seconds!—Nothing, I tell you, is two instants quite the same!—And ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand

... relaxation creates a welcome break in my daily output of prose. By my express orders, the woodman has selected the oldest and most ravaged trunks in his stack. My tastes bring a smile to his lips; he wonders by what whimsy I prefer wood that is worm-eaten, chirouna, as he calls it, to sound wood, which burns so much better. I have my views on the subject; and the worthy man submits ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... his guest full liberty to investigate the personal annals of these pictured worthies, as well as all the rest of his progenitors; and ample materials were at hand in many chests of worm-eaten papers and yellow parchments, that had been gathering into larger and dustier piles ever since the dark ages. But, to confess the truth, the information afforded by these musty documents was so much more prosaic than what Kenyon acquired ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and fetched his tool-basket, and set to work. The partition was strong, of good sound pine, neither rotton nor worm-eaten—inch-boards matched with groove and tongue, not quite easy to break through. But having, with a centre-bit and brace, bored several holes near each other, he knocked out the pieces between, and introducing a saw, soon made ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... wide plateau just above Government House, where the best view in the whole island was to be obtained, above which towered the old battery on Richmond Hill, armed with obsolete and worm-eaten thirty-two pounders, once deemed sufficient protection for the Carenage or harbour below, which it commanded. Fort George, another fortification equally powerless nowadays either for attack or defence, lay on the right; and looking beyond, ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... to picking fruit before it is ripe! Allow me to remind you that very much fruit is never picked; some is nipped in the bud; some is worm-eaten and falls to the ground; some rots on the trees before it ripens; some, too slow in ripening, is bitten by the early frosts of autumn; while some rare, ripe apples hang until frozen and worthless on the leafless boughs! Really, Mr. Garfield, if after passing through the war of the rebellion and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... fruit; when in truth it was but an unnatural growth of leaves, with no fruit of the season, nor even an edible bulb held over from earlier years, for such as it had of former fruitage was dried to worthlessness and made repulsive in its worm-eaten decay. The religion of Israel had degenerated into an artificial religionism, which in pretentious show and empty profession outclassed the abominations of heathendom. As already pointed out in these pages, the fig tree was ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... Udolpho" it is a castle in the Apennines; in the "Romance of the Forest," a deserted abbey in the depth of the woods; in "The Italian," the cloister of the Black Penitents. The moldering battlements, the worm-eaten tapestries, the turret staircases, secret chambers, underground passages, long, dark corridors where the wind howls dismally, and distant doors which slam at midnight all derive from "Otranto." So do the supernatural fears which haunt these abodes of desolation; the strains of mysterious ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... subscription had been set on foot for it, a committee had been appointed to superintend its working, and now the glorious fancy was actually translated into fact. The procession was to be supplemented by artillery, and now here was a time-eaten old gun, mounted on a worm-eaten old carriage, and trailed in harness of rope by two stalwart Flemish horses. Here also was gunpowder enough to wreck the village, and the Janennois, who for a moral people have a most astounding love of noise, were out at earliest dawn of ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... pounds of grain were issued, viz three pounds of flour and five pounds of rice, the ration was far from being brought up to the standard established by the Treasury for the colony; five pounds of bad worm-eaten rice making a most inadequate substitute for the same quantity of good flour. In the article of meat the labouring man suffered still more; for in a given quantity of sixty pounds, which were issued on one serving day to two messes, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... dispensed with the necessity of curtains. The whitewashed walls presented to the eye fuliginous tones, due to the wood and peat burned by the pauper in his stove. On the fireplace were a broken water-pitcher, two bottles, and a cracked plate. A worm-eaten chest of drawers contained his linen and decent clothes. The rest of the furniture consisted of a night-table of the commonest description, another table, worth about forty sous, and two kitchen chairs with the straw seats almost gone. The extremely picturesque costume of the centenarian ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... Apartment next the great Orchard, and the Worm-eaten Gallery that opens to the River; which place for several Years no body has frequented; there all things shall be acted ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... wake of the porter, uncle and nephew went through the rooms on the ground floor. As happens in all untenanted houses, the damp had wrought terrible havoc. The flooring, worm-eaten, creaked under their feet, the carpets had large damp spots on them, the paper hung loose on the walls, while the furniture was covered with ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain

... encourage the saints to hope, and to rejoice in hope of the glory of God, notwithstanding present tribulations. This is our seed-time, our winter: afflictions are to try us of what mettle we are made; yea, and to shake off worm-eaten fruit, and such as are ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... horrid draught held to my lips, thirst telling me to drink, and disgust making me dash it on the ground—only to be back at my lips the next moment. Once I was a king sitting upon a great tarnished throne, dusty and worm-eaten, in a lofty room of state, the doors standing wide, and the spiders weaving webs across them, for nobody ever came in, and no sound shook the moat-filled air: on that throne I had to sit to all eternity, because ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... a good fire. The roof collapsed and with the incantations of the cowboys, the stout walls, worm-eaten and bullet-splintered, falling gradually, ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... love," says he, "and gloried in enlightening them down East, that they might keep their home-manufactured clergy at home, or give them some honorable employ, better suited to their genius than that of reading old musty and worm-eaten sermons." ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... that could be read: the rest, the characters being worm-eaten, were consigned to one of the Academicians, to find out their meaning by conjectures. We are informed he has done it, after many lucubrations and much pains, and that he designs to publish them, giving us hopes of ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Boece, then, "the nature of the seis" formed the chief element in the production of the geese, and our author proceeds to relate how "all treis (trees) that ar casein in the seis be proces of tyme apperis first wormeetin (worm-eaten), and in the small boris and hollis (holes) thairof growis small worms." Our author no doubt here alludes to the ravages of the Teredo, or ship-worm, which burrows into timber, and with which the barnacles themselves are thus confused. Then he continues, the "wormis" first "schaw ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... experts during the past forty or fifty years, and from the first they pronounced it a hopeless case, so that it was never restored. The interior, right down to the time of demolition, was like that of most country churches of a century ago, with the old black worm-eaten pews, in which the worshippers shut themselves up as if in their own houses or castles. On account of the damp we were haunted by toads. You smile, sir, but it was no smiling matter for me during my first year as vicar, when I discovered that it was the custom here to keep pet toads ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... half grown, and without Spots, for if they are spotted, they are commonly Worm-eaten; scald them in Water till the Skin will come off easily, then put them again into cold Water, and a small piece of Allum to green in a Brass Pan over the Fire; which they will soon do if they are kept ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley

... to the right of the high road, at the bottom of a ravine, close to the rivulet and village of Ghorodinia, in the habitation of a weaver, an old, crazy, filthy, wooden hut. Here he was half a league from Malo-Yaroslawetz, at the commencement of the bend of the Louja. It was in this worm-eaten dwelling, and in a dirty dark room, parted off into two by a cloth, that the fate of the army and of Europe was about ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... were visible; market-people, cloaked and furred, went by on the water or on the banks; the deep woods of the shores were black and gray and brown. Poor August could see nothing of a scene that would have delighted him; as the stove was now set, he could only see the old worm-eaten wood of the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... we should certainly have extended them to another dozen of people at least, had not a sudden shutting up and putting away of the worm-eaten old books, warned us that the time for closing the office had arrived; and thus deprived us of a pleasure, and spared our ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... take a fancy for one, he will know it in advance, and he will manage to make you pay double, triple, and more for it. And then we have to see so much, notably a cartoon of twelve designs by old masters, which Ardea did not even suspect he had, and which Fossati discovered—would you believe?—worm-eaten, in a cupboard in ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... manners by noon; but so far from clearing off at noon, the storm increased in violence, and as night set in the wind whistled in a spiteful falsetto key, and the rain lashed the old tavern as if it were a balky horse that refused to move on. The windows rattled in the worm-eaten frames, and the doors of remote rooms, where nobody ever went, slammed to in the maddest way. Now and then the tornado, sweeping down the side of Mount Agamenticus, bowled across the open country, and struck the ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... in time, the crew set to work to rip off the worm-eaten planks, and put on new, and to sheathe and tallow the ship's bottom. They also took on board her cargo, consisting of iron and lead, as also rice for the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... palms, and of at least two petrified trees distinctly marked as of exogenous growth both by annular structure and by knots. In ligneous character, one of these almost precisely resembles the grain of the extant beech, and this specimen was worm-eaten before it ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... of his malady, had long marked out this chamber for the scene of his operations; he had observed that the framework in which the bars were set seemed old and worm-eaten; that the window was but a few feet from the ground; that the noise made in the winter nights by the sighing branches of the old tree without would deaden the sound of the lone workman. Now, then, his hopes were ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VIII • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... blighted and worm-eaten apples likewise fall of themselves, so in this ease of execution the falsest work may agree with the best. That the similarity is purely specious needs not be urged; yet in practically distinguishing between the two there are not a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... father called her off. Martyn cannot bear to see his mother teased. He and his wife, with the young ones, made their way to Hollyford, where they found a primitive old church and a service to match, but were terribly late, and had to sit in worm-eaten pews near the door, amid scents of peppermint and southernwood. On the way back, Martyn fraternised with a Mr. Methuen, a Cambridge tutor with a reading party, who has, I am sorry to say, arrived at the house VIS-A-VIS ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the Lump, for want of tar to pay her bottom, was worm-eaten; but, being a serviceable boat, it was intended ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins



Words linked to "Worm-eaten" :   wormy



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