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Zebra   Listen
noun
Zebra  n.  (Zool.) Any member of three species of African wild horses remarkable for having the body white or yellowish white, and conspicuously marked with dark brown or brackish bands. Note: The true or mountain zebra (Equus zebra syn. Asinus zebra) is nearly white, and the bands which cover the body and legs are glossy black. Its tail has a tuft of black hair at the tip. It inhabits the mountains of Central and Southern Africa, and is noted for its wariness and wildness, as well as for its swiftness. The second species (Equus Burchellii syn. Asinus Burchellii or Equus quagga), known as Burchell's zebra, plains zebra, and dauw, is the most abundant, inhabiting the grassy plains of tropical and southern Africa, and differing from the preceding in not having dark bands on the legs, while those on the body are more irregular. It has a long tail, covered with long white flowing hair. Grevy's zebra (Equus grevyi) is distinct from the others in being placed in the subgenus Dolichohippus, whereas the plains and mountain zebras are placed in the subgenus Hippotigris.
Zebra caterpillar, the larva of an American noctuid moth (Mamestra picta). It is light yellow, with a broad black stripe on the back and one on each side; the lateral stripes are crossed with withe lines. It feeds on cabbages, beets, clover, and other cultivated plants.
Zebra opossum, the zebra wolf. See under Wolf.
Zebra parrakeet, an Australian grass parrakeet, often kept as a cage bird. Its upper parts are mostly pale greenish yellow, transversely barred with brownish black crescents; the under parts, rump, and upper tail coverts, are bright green; two central tail feathers and the cheek patches are blue. Called also canary parrot, scallop parrot, shell parrot, and undulated parrot.
Zebra poison (Bot.), a poisonous tree (Euphorbia arborea) of the Spurge family, found in South Africa. Its milky juice is so poisonous that zebras have been killed by drinking water in which its branches had been placed, and it is also used as an arrow poison.
Zebra shark. Same as Tiger shark, under Tiger.
Zebra spider, a hunting spider.
Zebra swallowtail, a very large North American swallow-tailed butterfly (Iphiclides ajax), in which the wings are yellow, barred with black; called also ajax.
Zebra wolf. See under Wolf.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Zebra" Quotes from Famous Books



... reaching from one side of the ring to the other. In the middle stood the elephant, with the summer house, as Billy called it, on his back; next him stood a camel; next the camel a giraffe; next the giraffe a horse; next the horse, a zebra, and last a little Shetland pony. On the other side of the elephant were more animals standing in ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery

... image now roams in my Thessaly groves, it is the same as of old; and among the droves of mixed beings and centaurs, you show like a zebra, banding with elks. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... and ash are applied. This tree is widely spread and forms a valuable export to European markets. Other first-class timbers are koko (Albizzia lebbek), white chuglam (Terminalia bialata), black chugiam (Myristica irya), marble or zebra wood (Diospyros kurzii) and satin-wood (Murraya exotica), which differs from the satin-wood of Ceylon (Chloroxylon swietenia.) All of these timbers are used for furniture and similar purposes. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... said. "You are not yourself. You are the victim of fixed laws. The zebra is striped rather than spotted because its forebears wore stripes. So with you. You are half murderess and half gutter-snipe. You are woven according to the pattern. You are moulded according to the mould. You are a prisoner of heredity. Deceive ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... I'll accept him as an adopted grandson, my dear. I think there'll be money enough for everybody. But about this scalawag of a man that fathered him. I'll have to know who he is. We have a suit of zebra clothing waiting ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... man can create anything. I knew a man once who drew a horse on a bit of paper to amuse the company and covered it all over with many parallel streaks as he drew. When he had done this, an aged priest (present upon that occasion) said, "You are pleased to draw a zebra." When the priest said this the man began to curse and to swear, and to protest that he had never seen or heard of a zebra. He said it was all done out of his own head, and he called heaven to witness, and his patron saint (for ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... settled the question entirely. In that year General Pitt-Rivers, a Fellow of the Royal Society and President of the Anthropological Institute, and J. F. Campbell, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of England, found implements not only in alluvial deposits, associated with the bones of the zebra, hyena, and other animals which have since retreated farther south, but, at Djebel Assas, near Thebes, they found implements of chipped flint in the hard, stratified gravel, from six and a half to ten feet below the surface; relics evidently, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... circumstance, related by Sir Everard Home: A young chestnut mare, seven-eighths Arabian, belonging to the Earl of Morton, was covered in 1815 by a Quagga, which is a species of wild ass from Africa, and marked somewhat in the style of a Zebra. The mare was covered but once by the Quagga, and after a pregnancy of eleven months and four days gave birth to a hybrid, which had, as was expected, distinct marks of the Quagga, in the shape of its head, black ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... dark-colored stripes similar to those on the zebra reappear, after a hundred or a thousand generations, on the legs and shoulders of horses, asses, and mules. Large birds on sea islands where there are no beasts to molest them lose the power ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... Tigers, and a Striped Zebra, and funny Monkeys and Goats, Dogs, Spotted Cows and many kinds of Rocking Horses. And even funny little Mice, that ran all around the floor ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope

... threw a glance on his toilet. It did not escape his notice that it was slightly disordered; his stockings, originally purple, then pale pink, had become striped, zebra-fashion, with a number of green rays, since his journey in the forest; his coat was ornamented with various holes fancifully arranged, but the Gascon made this reflection aloud, if not very modest, at least very consoling: "Faith! Venus arose from the sea without ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... wonderful profusion of antelopes,—thirty-one species have been enumerated,—including such noble animals as the eland and koodoo, such beautiful ones as the springbok and klipspringer, such fierce ones as the blue wildebeest or gnu. There were two kinds of zebra, a quagga, and a buffalo, both huge and dangerous. Probably nowhere in the world could so great a variety of beautiful animals be seen or a larger variety ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... character, but from occurring in several species of the same genus, partly under domestication and partly under nature. It is a case apparently of reversion. The ass not rarely has very distinct transverse bars on its legs, like those on the legs of the zebra: it has been asserted that these are plainest in the foal, and from inquiries which I have made, I believe this to be true. It has also been asserted that the stripe on each shoulder is sometimes double. The shoulder-stripe is certainly very variable in length and outline. ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... have studied the wonderful forms of those tropical plants for ever, if it had not been for the crowds of people, and for a little awe of Lord Marchmont, who had given her his arm, and who did not seem to know or care much even for the dove orchis or the zebra-striped pitcher-plant. She wished she could turn him into Edmund, and looked at every plant which she fancied a native of the Cape, almost as kindly as if it had been a primrose ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... by means of sticks. The fat is then removed, and after being mixed with red ochre is rubbed over the body, which has previously been carefully denuded of hair, as is done in the ceremony of initiation. The legs and arms are covered with zebra-like stripes of red, white, and yellow, and the weapons of the dead man are laid across ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... The zebra was a sleek little animal and had a slender head, a stubby mane and a paint-brush tail—very like a donkey's. His neatly shaped white body was covered with regular bars of dark brown, and his hoofs were delicate as those ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... hand up to his eyes and rubbed them. Curious mechanisms the eyes.... That deer in line with the vision—not a zebra? A zebra after all these years? And yet ... curious, indeed, the eyes! ... a zebra.... Who ever heard of a deer with stripes? The big hand rose from the eyes and ran through the hair which he had always worn rather long. It ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... say much, but she watched one of Jim's big ears turn to violet and the other to rose, and wondered that his tail should be yellow and his body striped with blue and orange like the stripes of a zebra. Then she looked at Zeb, whose face was blue and whose hair was pink, and gave a little laugh that sounded a ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.

... her that night, for she passed unscathed through as savage and lion-ridden an area as there is in all Africa—a natural hunting ground which the white man has not yet discovered, where deer and antelope and zebra, giraffe and elephant, buffalo, rhinoceros, and the other herbivorous animals of central Africa abound unmolested by none but their natural enemies, the great cats which, lured here by easy prey and immunity from the rifles of ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of Zululand, was no Zany, but rode on a Zanzibar Zebra, resided in a Zing-Zag Zenana, Zealously studied Zanyism, Zealotism, Zoology, Zoonomy, Zoophytology, Zoolatry, Zymology, Zincography And many other 'isms, 'ologies, 'olatries, 'ographies, etc., out of the works she bought at Cole's ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... now of the deepest, most dingy shade of yellow-brown. It had a little band of brown ribbon round it, which ended neatly in a pair of strings; these were tied under Grannie's chin. Instead of her black cashmere shawl she wore one of very rough material and texture, and of a sort of zebra pattern, which she had picked up cheap many and many years ago from a traveling peddler. She wore no gloves on her hands, but the poor, swollen, painful right hand was wrapped in a corner of the zebra shawl. On her left arm she carried her ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... "If we take the highly decorated species—that is, animals marked by alternate dark or light bands or spots, such as the zebra, some deer, or the carnivora—we find, first, that the region of the spinal column is marked by a dark stripe; secondly, that the regions of the appendages, or limbs, are differently marked; thirdly, that ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas

... of compositions!" cried Harry; "they are the most hateful things. Just because I wrote in my last one, that 'a mule is a beast of burden which draws a rail-car shaped like a zebra, and is sometimes used for carts with two long ears and a miserable tail,' they all burst out laughing at me, and I very ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... features glowed a proud, fierce spirit that transformed them. His head was high but his eyes roved from right to left restlessly, never still save when they paused for a flickering instant to examine some gazelle, some distant herd of zebra or wildebeeste standing in the vista of the flat-topped trees. His nostrils slowly expanded and contracted with his breathing, as do those of a spirited horse. In contrast to the gait of the white man ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... no weapons wherewith to procure food, and I was obliged to live upon just what I could pick up, chiefly roots. But twice I was fortunate enough to come upon the partially devoured 'kill' of a lion—once it was a zebra, and the other time it was a giraffe—still comparatively fresh; and if it had not been for them I believe I should not have survived, for I was literally at the end of my tether when I came upon them. And I had no means of making a fire, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... Then she saw him smile; it made his face all eager, yet left it shy; and she decided that he was nice. Soon after, she had gone with the Ercotts to see his 'things'; for it was, of course, and especially in those days, quite an event to know a sculptor—rather like having a zebra in your park. The Colonel had been delighted and a little relieved to find that the 'things' were nearly all of beasts and birds. "Very interestin'" to one full of curious lore about such, having in his time killed many of them, and finding himself at the end of it with a curious ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the laughter and the exclamations, 'Charming! Ah, what a man Lavaux is!' etc., I asked Madame Ancelin, who was sitting near me, who Lavaux was, and what he did. The good lady was amazed. 'Lavaux? You don't know him? He is the Duchess's zebra.' Thereupon she departed in pursuit of Danjou, and left me much the wiser! Really Parisian society is a most extraordinary thing; its vocabulary alters every season. Zebra—a zebra—what can it possibly mean? But ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... being fine, we made excursions in the neighbourhood. At Sevres I saw two pieces of china; on one of them was a gnu, on the other a zebra. Somerville had told me that soon after his return from his African expedition, he had given the original drawings to M. Brongniart then director of ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... notes on the variation of the several species of the genus Equus and the results of their crossing. Taking most strictly analogous facts amongst the blessed pigeons for my guide, I believe I can plainly see the colouring and marks of the grandfather of the Ass, Horse, Quagga, Hemionus and Zebra, some millions of generations ago! Should not I [have] sneer[ed] at any one who made such a remark to me a few years ago; but my evidence seems to me so good that I shall publish my vision at the end of my ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... with stripes, but not so much as the zebra; a pretty animal to look at, but the flesh is very bad. At last he would give us nothing to eat but quaggas, the same as the Hottentots, while he and his family - for he had a wife and five children - lived upon mutton and the flesh of the antelope, which is very excellent eating. We ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat

... out, a curious circumstance occurred to the Zebra frigate, under command of the gallant Robert Faulknor. The Zebra, which had been separated from the rest of the squadron, saw one evening a ship on the horizon. All sail was made in chase, and the ship was discovered to be a twenty-eight gun frigate. All contrivances were adopted ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various

... the tropics develop with a rapidity equalled only by their violence. A second flash of lightning rent the darkness, and was followed by a score of others in quick succession. The sky was crossed and dotted, like the zebra's hide, with electric sparks, which danced and flickered beneath the great ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... seen the zebra. If you have, you must have noticed its stripes. The first horse-like creatures were probably striped in much the same way. These animals never ate hay and oats; and, at first, they did not eat much grass. There was little, if any, grass at that time. ...
— The Tree-Dwellers • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp

... Varieties of little staircases, and a garret gallery called Dick's haunted gallery; a blocked-up room called the King's room; then a modern dressing-room, with fine tables of Bullock's making, one of wood from Brazil—Zebra wood—and no more to be had of it for ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... snapped Mrs. Noah. "You are as timid as a zebra. During the Flood, we sailed days and days and days, going backward. It didn't make a particle of difference how we went—it was as safe one way as another, and we got just as far away in the end. Our main object now is to get away from the pirates, and that's what we are doing. Don't ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... zebra-wood with its golden stripes cannot exceed in quaint beauty the grain of unpainted chestnut, prepared simply with a coat or two of oil. The butternut has a rich golden brown, the very darling color of painters,—a shade ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... quit now. I was left behind to clean out the barracks an I hear the battery comin in from drill so I got to hussle. Tell Archie to cheer up about the war. When I come home hell be wearin so many wound stripes hell be lookin like a zebra. ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter

... Bud would shout, "yer ornery, unsanctified, muley, harebrained, contaminated son o' a zebra, git down on yer feet an' foller. Ye'll git all that's comin' ter yer when ther race starts. Save yer sweat ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor

... bothered Sir William in the siege of '45; but nevertheless, we could judge of the difficulty of reaching it with a hostile force, screened as it was by its waves and vapors. The lighthouse is striped with black and white bars, like a zebra, and we entered it. One cannot help but admire such order and neatness, for the lighthouse is a marvel of purity. We were everywhere—in the bed-rooms, in the great lantern with its glittering lamps, in the hall, the parlor, the kitchen; ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... only Frenchmen. A zebra is too jolly to let himself be tamed by a Frenchman. I'll break one in myself and go out with the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... originating of varieties in which the variegation did not assume this form, with other considerations, has done much to upset this theory. In the variegated leaved snowberry we have the center and border of the leaf green, separated the one from the other by an isolated white or yellow zone. In the zebra-leaved eulalia and the zebra-leaved juncus, from Japan, we have the variegation of the leaf transversely instead of longitudinally, so that according to the old theory we have the anomaly of a healthy portion of the leaf producing an unhealthy portion, ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various

... guess," says I. "By the way you're gawpin' at it, though, it might be a young zebra or a baby hippopotamus. But it's ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford

... appointments of a court, were kept by many of the princes. 'It belongs to the position of the great,' says Matarazzo, 'to keep horses, dogs, mules, falcons, and other birds, court-jesters, singers, and foreign animals.' The menagerie at Naples, in the time of Ferrante, contained even a giraffe and a zebra, presented, it seems, by the ruler of Baghdad. Filippo Maria Visconti possessed not only horses which cost him each 500 or 1,000 pieces of gold, and valuable English dogs, but a number of leopards brought from all parts of the East; the expense of his hunting birds, which were collected ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... look up the avenue, which the sun never penetrates except when it rises or when it sets, striping the road like a zebra with its oblique rays, my view was obstructed by an outline of rising ground; after that is passed, the long avenue is obstructed by a copse, within which the roads meet at a cross-ways, in the centre of which stands a stone obelisk, for all the world like an eternal exclamation ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... the floor, swearing in a steady monotone. He had been efficiently bound with his own blouse and trousers, which revealed his predilection for maroon shorts with zebra stripes. There was a lump on the back of his head, and a hammer lay close by. Ellen must have stolen the tool and come in here with the thing behind her back. The operator would have had no reason ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson

... in the same manner as is so conspicuous with grey horses. This fact does not throw any clear light on the colouring of the aboriginal horse, but is a case of analogous variation, for even asses are sometimes dappled, and I have seen, in the British Museum, a hybrid from the ass and zebra dappled on its hinder quarters. By the expression analogous variation (and it is one that I shall often have occasion to use) I mean a variation occurring in a species or variety which resembles a normal character in another and distinct species or variety. Analogous variations may arise, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... hopping awkwardly along with some bulky object concealed in her pouch met a Zebra, and desirous of keeping ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... Tree" brand indicated that he was of Spanish extraction. Intelligently ridden with a light rider he was First Choice on which to make this run. That was finally agreed to by all. There was no trouble selecting the rider for this horse with the zebra marks. The lightest weight was Billy Edwards. This qualification gave him ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... the explosion came. The English sloop Zebra was sent down into the Gulf of Paria to clear it of French privateers, manned by the defeated maroons and brigands of the French islands, who were paying respect to no flag, but pirating indiscriminately. Chacon ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... institution got up for the purpose of frightening the women and children, and keeping them in order. While the ordinary dances are going on, there suddenly stalks forth "an ugly apparition in the shape of a man, wearing a feather mantle on his back, reaching from the arm-pits down to the mid-thighs, zebra-painted on his breast and legs with black stripes, bear-skin shako on his head, and his arms stretched out at full length along a staff passing behind his neck. Accoutred in this harlequin rig, he dashes at the squaws, capering, dancing, whooping; and they and the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... Akut unearthed. Beyond the plain and across a low bluff they came upon water—brackish, ill-smelling stuff in a shallow water hole, the sides and bottom of which were trampled by the feet of many beasts. A herd of zebra ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of poisoned life will lash through the grass like a cast lance.* It scarcely breathes with its one lung (the other shriveled and abortive); it is passive to the sun and shade, and is cold or hot like a stone; yet "it can outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete, and crush the tiger."** It is a divine hieroglyph of the demoniac power of the earth, of the entire earthly nature. As the bird is the clothed power of the air, so this is the clothed power of the dust; as the bird is the symbol of the spirit of life, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... be On the Rozez where gozez The Zebra of Zee: Sleek, striped, and hairy, The steed of the Fairy Princess ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare

... have visited menageries have probably seen an animal shaped something like a horse, but beautifully adorned with black and tawny stripes, standing silent and sulky in its cage. This is the zebra, the wild horse of the great plains of Southern Africa. There it lives in great herds, and browses on the thin grass and low shrubs of the wilderness. It enjoys the widest liberty, and gallops and gambols ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... his mane was plaited with red flannel strips and fluttering plumes; his tail was even gaudier; around each eye was a great circle of white and another of black; his nose was crossbarred with black and red; his legs were painted in zebra stripes of yellow and black; the patches of white that were native to his coat were outlined with black and profusely decorated with red hands and horseshoes painted in vermilion; on his neck was a ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... a variety of ways—some by spinning their beautiful web, with which we are all familiar; others, as the Zebra spiders, catch flies by leaping suddenly upon them, and these may often be seen on window-sills watching some coveted insect, drawing slowly nearer to the victim, till, by a well-directed spring, it can be secured. There are nearly three hundred species of spiders in this country, ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen

... building. Young artists went to Venice to study the remains of Italian Gothic, and the results of their studies were seen in the surface treatment of many London facades, especially in the cusped window arches, and in the stripes of coloured bricks which give a zebra-like appearance to the architecture of the period. But, in general, working architects were rather contemptuous of Ruskin's fine-spun theories, which they ridiculed as fantastic, self-contradictory, and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... been wondering about the people in Casperton. Like Doc Welch. I used to see him in the street with his little black bag. I always thought it was full of pills and scalpels; but maybe it really had zebra's tails and toad's eyes in it. Maybe he's really a magician on his way to cast spells against demons. Maybe the people I used to see hurrying to catch the bus every morning weren't really going to the office. Maybe they go down into ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer

... five cents you can take your choice, and ride on a zebra or a lion or a big gold ostrich, or anything that's there. And once we chose a scrumptious boat, all blue and silver, and drawn by two ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley

... gordian shape of dazzling hue, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd; And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed Their lustres with the gloomier ...
— Lamia • John Keats

... Northumberland and Galloway, the unicorn from the regions of Nepaul or Thibet, the rhinoceros and the river-horse from Senegal, with the elephant of Ceylon or Siam. The ostrich and the cameleopard, the wild ass and the zebra, the chamois and the ibex of Angora,—all brought their tributes of beauty or deformity to these vast aceldamas of Rome: their savage voices ascended in tumultuous uproar to the chambers of the capitol: a million of spectators sat round them: standing ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... a Striped Iguanodon sounded softly in the darkness. The sentry, who was pacing to and fro before the camp-fire, halted, and peered into the night. As he peered, he uttered the plaintive note of a zebra ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... for two thousand years, she consented to accept as a seat a large gray animal, tasselled with red to keep off flies and evil eyes. "Won't you ride with me, Antoun Effendi?" she asked. "I'm afraid. This creature looks as large as an elephant and as wild as a zebra. I feel you could calm him." But Antoun Effendi was not going to ride. He had other fish to fry; and poor Cleopatra's luminous dark eyes were like overflowing lakes, when he had politely excused himself on the plea of a pressing engagement. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... France. But by and by when we had paraded about the chief parts of the city and were come near to the end of our course, we being now approaching the Archbishop's palace, one saw on the right, hard by the inn that is called the Zebra, a strange t—two men not kneeling but standing! Standing in the front rank of the kneelers; unconscious, transfixed, staring. Yes, and clothed in the coarse garb of the peasantry, these two. Two halberdiers sprang at them in a fury to teach them better manners; but just as they seized them Joan ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... variegation; colors, dichroism, trichroism; iridescence, play of colors, polychrome, maculation, spottiness, striae. spectrum, rainbow, iris, tulip, peacock, chameleon, butterfly, tortoise shell; mackerel, mackerel sky; zebra, leopard, cheetah, nacre, ocelot, ophite[obs3], mother-of-pearl, opal, marble. check, plaid, tartan, patchwork; marquetry-, parquetry; mosaic, tesserae[obs3], strigae[obs3]; chessboard, checkers, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... geog. sixty-eight) separating El-Wijh from the Jebel Hassni. Moreover, we caught amidships a fine lumpy sea, that threatened to roll the masts out of the stout old corvette. As the Sinnr, which always reminded me of her Majesty's steamship Zebra, is notably the steadiest ship in the Egyptian navy, the captain was asked about his ballast. He replied, "I have just taken command, but I don't think there is any; the engine (El-iddah) is our Saburra"—evidently he had never seen the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... apparently attracted by the interest which the boy showed in the proceedings. This warrior was fully six feet in height, magnificently formed, with long horse-hair like shreds hanging from his crown, which, like his face, was daubed with startling colors, giving him the appearance of a variegated zebra of the ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne

... the true horses and the asses, which latter also include the zebra and quagga. Apart from the decided external differences between the horse and ass, they have one marked divergence, viz. that the horse has corns or callosities on the inner side of both fore and hind limbs, whilst the ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... street, he saw men and women. The men were hideously painted—more hideously than usual. Among them moved a weird and grotesque figure, a tall figure that went upon the two legs of a man and yet had the head of a buffalo. A tail dangled to his ankles behind him, and in one hand he carried a zebra's tail while the other clutched ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... almost as a synonym of regularity of variation. Whatever changes or alternates according to a recognizable system is said to be rhythmic, to possess rhythm. In this sense, rhythm is one of the universal principles of nature. We find it in the stripes of the zebra, the indentation of leaves, the series of teeth or of crystals, the curves of the horizon; in the tides, the phases of the moon, the rising and setting of the sun, the recurrence of seasons, the revolutions of planets; in the vibrations of color, sound, and heat; in breathing, ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... to-morrow. Oh, those stupid humans, how they do stare! Have they never seen a gentleman eat his dinner before? They would open those silly round eyes a bit wider if these bars were not between us. I wish they could have seen me that day we caught the zebra. It was grand that!' (Lick, lick.) 'I had hunted all one night without getting even the whisk of a tail; and also during the day in the glaring, hot African sun, when I wanted to go to sleep; and I was very hungry. We, I and my wife, lay down ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... missed, a silver fox—the animal dressed by nature in the richest and rarest of all her furs. There were abundant tracks of bear and caribou. We caught sight once of a huge gray wolf, striped like a zebra. But none of these larger beasts fell to our guns. We could not have got at them even with hounds, so continuously far stretching and impenetrable the forest was, and the only thing we had to help us was Fox, the ship's ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... of domesticated mothers, seems to assert their descent from wild and free ancestors as they throw out their heels and toss up their heads with a shrill neigh, and fly against the wind with streaming manes and outstretched tails as the Kulan, the Tarpan, and the Zebra do in the wild ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... Scapins, and the Cassandras, and the Doctors, and the favourite Mezzetin "the big brown man with the laughing face" always in the foreground with his cap on the back of his head—striped all over like a zebra, proud as a god, and drunk as a Silenus! It is the Comedie Italienne that plays the guitar ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... adjacent sides of the house, would give him the command of the whole interior—for the former dwelling of the field-cornet comprised only a single apartment. During his residence there, there had been two, thanks to a partition of zebra-skins; but these had been removed, and all ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... over the heads of those on the lower steps of the veranda, and there on the sidewalk stood the dejected Hannington holding the bridle of what might have been a huge zebra gone wild on the colour scheme, or an ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... of horses are differently formed from those of the gnawing animals: at the back they are massive, and act like grindstones, crushing the grain which they eat. The Horse-family includes the patient Ass, and the beautifully marked Zebra of South Africa. I need not tell you that all these animals have only one toe, with that hard and strong toe-nail ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... opened, and Isaac Feinsilver entered, immaculately clothed in a suit of zebra-like design. He proceeded to the bookkeeper's office and kissed the blushing bride; then he ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass

... some of the animals, like the zebra and the tiger, haven't got any poetry, because they are so difficult to rhyme to. The Lamb knows quite well ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... my side, O'er the brown karroo, where the bleating cry Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively; And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh Is heard by the fountain at twilight gray; Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane. With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain; And the fleet-footed ostrich over the waste Speeds like a horseman who travels in haste, Hieing away to the home of her rest, Where she and her mate have scooped their nest, Far hid from ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... "Royal Box" (which was the corner with a shawl round it, and a cushion for her feet). She dressed him a little doll, who was master of the ring, and he had lots of animals in his procession. Two elephants and a bear on hind legs, and a bear on four legs, a zebra, a tiger, a big squirrel, some tin horses, and some lovely horses covered with real hair, a set of performing frogs, and oh! ...
— Humpty Dumpty's Little Son • Helen Reid Cross

... varieties of one species, or even representatives of different species. Undoubtedly, these so-called "races" and "sports" of the horse tribe differ from each other in a much greater degree than do the zebra, the quagga, the mountain horse, and the other wild varieties of the horse, which every zoologist distinguishes as "bonae species." And yet all these artificial varieties, which man has designedly produced by selection, are descended from a single common parent-form, ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... species of ground squirrel—one the common hackee, or chipping squirrel; while the other was a new species, which we had caught on the desert plain above, among the roots of the artemisia plant. This last was a beautiful little creature, not much larger than a mouse, and striped like a little zebra. It has never—as far as I can tell—been described by naturalists; and on this account, as well as from its peculiar size and beauty, it was a general favourite with all of us, particularly with Luisa and Mary, in whose laps it soon learnt to sleep, ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... the entrance stairway and two men entered carrying something between them. Sweat had streaked through the charcoal coating on their faces leaving striped zebra-like countenances. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... chosen for this mission into two companies. Four they sent by sea and four by land; I was of the latter number. The four first were the more fortunate, who though they were detained some time by the Turkish bassa, were dismissed at the request of the emperor, who sent him a zebra, or wild ass, a creature of large size ...
— A Voyage to Abyssinia • Jerome Lobo

... snarls. "Bah! Now what the zebra-striped Zacharias do they send those things to me for? What good am I, anyway, except as a common carrier for all the blinkety blinked aches and pains that ever existed? A shivery, shaky old lump of clay streaked with cussedness, that's ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... and walked it toward where the dogs had disappeared, putting up a flock of the tiny zebra paroquets, which flew a little distance to ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... solidus, solid; ungula, a hoof). The group of Hoofed Quadrupeds comprising the Horse, Ass, and Zebra, in which each foot has only a single ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... my three subjects is the Zebra Halictus (H. zebrus, WALCK.), which is beautifully belted around her long abdomen with alternate black and pale-russet scarves. Her slender shape, her size, which equals that of the Common Wasp, her simple and pretty ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... door. The African zebra is a good student compared to him. It is a maxim of Walpole and North that all men ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... 1847 Punch proposed the use of umbrellas and house-fronts for advertising purposes, and the hint was promptly taken. In the previous year he foretold the use of the Thames Tunnel as a railway conduit; and his sketch of a zebra harnessed to a carriage in the streets of London was realised forty years later. The great "Missing Word Competition" of 1892 was forestalled by Punch by four-and-thirty years (p. 53, Vol. XXXV., ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... the hatchet, a number of beautiful little creatures poured forth on all sides. They resembled the kangaroos of our island, but were smaller, more elegant, and remarkable for the beauty of their skin, which was striped like that of the zebra. ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... and painted to resemble a zebra," muttered John. "The fellow has no property as respectable as the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... spring from the extraordinary custom generally called totemism. Mr. Swan, who was missionary for many years in the Congo Free State, thus describes the custom: 'If I were to ask the Yeke people why they do not eat zebra flesh, they would reply, 'Chijila,' i.e., 'It is a thing to which we have an antipathy;' or better, 'It is one of the things which our fathers taught us not to eat.' So it seems the word 'Bashilang' means 'the people who have an antipathy to the leopard;' the 'Bashilamba,' ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... a band of antelope was seen scudding away in the distance; here and there a zebra fled from before them, and once a pair of giraffes were discerned afar off over the plain. Though it was the beginning of winter, the tsetse fly bothered their stock a good deal, but the Boers cut branches from the trees and covered the animals with ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin

... a day in which to "red up" for me. I wanted to go at once—I'm so afraid this hotel might close with a snap, with me on the inside. At noon to-day I did not crave any of the ready-to-wear effects on the zebra menu card and asked the aloof young lady under the pompadour how long the chops would take. "'Bout fifteen minutes." "Very well, then," I said, "I'll take ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... gallops, and when alarmed gallops fast, but as he is not worth hunting, he has not a great dread of humanity, and families of kyang frequently grazed within two hundred and fifty yards of us. He is about as untamable as the zebra, and with his family affectionateness leads ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)

... soul of the student must have rest and diversion, I saw volumes of songs and music loved by lovers in every land, and drawings of mosques, churches and palaces, masterpieces of Indian and Saracenic genius; and of gardens there was the Zebra, created by Abderrahman for the best loved of his Sultanas. Of poetry, O Princess, I saw many books, the lord of them a copy of Homer in Arabic, executed on ivory from the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... you notice," replied Swinton; "but I do not think that there are many lions in the country we have traversed; it is too populous. On the other side of the mountains, if we return that way, we shall find them in plenty. Wherever the antelopes are in herds, wherever you find the wild horse, zebra, and giraffe, you will as certainly find the lion, ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... taken a dead girl with wild huggings to my bosom; and I have touched the corrupted lip, and spat upon her face, and tossed her down, and crushed her teeth with my heel, and jumped and jumped upon her breast, like the snake-stamping zebra, mad, mad...! ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... must meet now! Curbing his impatience, as he best can, he continues to watch the mutually approaching parties. At the head of the colonists he now sees Sime Woodley, recognises him by his horse—a brindled "clay-bank," with stripes like a zebra. Would that he could communicate with his old comrade, and give him word, or sign of warning. He dares not do either. To stir an inch from behind the rock, would expose him to the view of the robbers, who might still turn ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... n. aboriginal name for the bird called by Gould the Warbling Grass-parrakeet; called also Shell-parrot and Zebra- Grass-parrakeet. In the Port Jackson dialect budgeri, or boodgeri, means good, excellent. In 'Collins' Vocabulary' (1798), boodjer-re good. In New South Wales gar is common as first syllable of the name for the white cockatoo, as garaweh. See Galah. In the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... very imperfect account of the Zebra, which exactly resembles the ass, except in colour, and is by no means larger. One died lately in Edinburgh, after being exhibited as a show, which was as quiet and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... Polyphemus, and Ardent, ships of the line; the Amazon, Desiree, Blanche, and Alcmene, frigates; the Dart, Arrow, Cruiser, and Harpy, sloops; the Zephyr, and Otter, fire-ships; the Discovery, Sulphur, Hecla, Explosion, Zebra, Terror, and Volcano, bombs; with eight gun-brigs]—which you did me the honour to place under my command, I beg leave to inform you that, having by the assistance of that able officer Captain Riou, and the unremitting exertions ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... an honest old seafaring man like myself," he continued, in a confidential voice, "it's different. Why, if I should wear all the hash marks I rate I'd look like a zebra. So I just don't wear any. You know how it is. But when I like a girl I stick to her. Now from the very first moment I ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.

... Moggridges few. But even a very slight study of these most versatile and accomplished of nature's children gives rise to some interesting reflections. One fact that strikes the mind very forcibly is the world-wide distribution of groups of species possessing highly developed instincts. One is the zebra-striped Salticus, with its unique strategy—that is to say, unique amongst spiders. It is said that the Australian savage approaches a kangaroo in the open by getting up in sight of its prey and standing perfectly motionless till he is regarded as an ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... connection with hunting. Lion and tiger fighting over prey; two tigers fighting for possession of a deer; head and paws of lion or tiger peeping over a rock; tiger crouching for a spring on some feeding animal; lion and zebra; panther or jaguar crouching on an overhanging tree-trunk; leopard killed by a gemsbok antelope; polar bear killing seal on ice; lynx creeping over snow upon grouse; wolf leaping with fore-legs in air on receiving ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... on the other group of facts, those of the order of their having been always so perfectly pink and white, so perfectly possessed of clothes, so perfectly splendid, so perfectly idiotic. These things had been the "points" of antelope and zebra; putting Mrs. Connery for the zebra, as the more remarkably striped or spotted. Such were the data Basil French's inquiry would elicit: her own six engagements and her mother's three nullified marriages—nine ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... is no animal so beautiful, and that possesses so much ability for being serviceable to man, that is nevertheless so useless, except for its beauty, as the zebra. One would suppose, to look at the fellow—and doubtless this is the fact—that he could perform much of the labor of the horse. But he is generally quite indisposed to any such routine of employment. He is very fond of his own way—so fond ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... fired in the air, and ridden fourteen miles on end, at the bare sight of a lion's cub; but, to compensate that one reserve, plunged into a raging torrent and saved a drowning woman by her long hair, which he caught in his teeth; he rode a race on an ostrich against a friend on a zebra, which went faster, but threw his rider, and screamed with rage at not being able to eat him; he, Falcon, having declined to run unless his friend's zebra was muzzled. He fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and shot a wild elephant in the eye; and all this he enlivened ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade



Words linked to "Zebra" :   Equus zebra zebra, Equus, grevy's zebra, zebra finch, Burchell's zebra, Equus Burchelli, Equus grevyi, genus Equus



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