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Fosse   /fɑs/   Listen
Fosse

noun
1.
Ditch dug as a fortification and usually filled with water.  Synonym: moat.






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"Fosse" Quotes from Famous Books



... feet long. On the east side is a chapel, in the Early English style of architecture. The castle was built by Edward the First, soon after those of Conway and Caernarvon. It was surrounded by a deep fosse, which could be filled by water from the sea. It held out like that of Caernarvon, but was captured by the ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... peut supposer que les soldats detacherent le corps de la croix avant le soir et le mirent dans quelque fosse commune, ou l'on jetait pele-mele les restes des supplicies. Les conditions de sepulture furent telles qu'au bout de quelques jours il aurait ete impossible de reconnaitre la depouille du Sauveur, quand meme ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... damage, but it had not been driven quite far enough. Led by an officer of the staff named Mailly, the French rushed forward as soon as the mine exploded. They clambered down over the breach that had been made on the counterscarp, crossed the fosse by three ladders they had brought with them, and reached the foot of the breach. There was, however, too great a distance between the pile of rubbish at the foot of the wall and the great hole above it for them to ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty

... first mining extension of Indian Spring, which surrounded it like a fosse, she descended for one instant into one of its trenches, opened her parasol, removed her duster, hid it under a bowlder, and with a few shivers and cat-like strokes of her soft hands not only obliterated all material traces ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... mound and fosse, By narrow drawbridge, outworks strong, Through studded gates, and entrance long, To the main court they cross. It was a wide and stately square: Around were lodgings, fit and fair, And ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins

... into a new channel, so as to surround the town to the north, and fall into the harbour; that where the Paglion now runs to the westward of the city walls, there should be a deep ditch to be filled with sea-water; and that a fortress should be built to the westward of this fosse. These particulars might be executed at no very great expence; but, I apprehend, they would be ineffectual, as the town is commanded by every hill in the neighbourhood; and the exhalations from stagnating sea-water would infallibly render the air unwholesome. Notwithstanding the undoubted antiquity ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... son of Sweyn, "I foresaw from the first, that as our fate will be thine;—only round thee will be wall and fosse; unless, indeed, thou wilt lay aside thine own nature—it will give thee no ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the fashion; he was the successor of Verrio, and the rival of La Guerre, in the decorations of our palaces and public buildings. His demands for the painting of Greenwich Hall were contested; and though La Fosse received two thousand pounds for his works at Montague House, besides other allowances, Sir James, despite his dignity as Member of Parliament for his native town of Weymouth, could obtain but forty shillings a square yard for painting the cupola of St. Paul's! Thus the patronage afforded ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... upper window. Followed by her squire, D'Aulon, she galloped to the Burgundy Gate. They met wounded men. "Never do I see French blood but my hair stands up on my head," said Joan. She rode out of the gate to the English fort of St. Loup, which the Orleans men were attacking. Joan leaped into the fosse, under fire, holding her banner, and cheering on her men. St. Loup was taken by the French, in ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... a Tragedy from the French of M. La Fosse, 1715. When the earl of Portland was ambassador at the French court, this play was acted at Paris threescore nights running; the subject is related by Livy. This French author studied some time at Oxford, and, upon his return home, applied ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber

... hollow, one sees a faint blue tinge lying like bloom upon the misty twilight that nils the valley—a sharp contrast to the clear darkness of the evening sky. Countisbury Camp is not far from Oldbarrow, and in Lynton there are two more ancient 'castles,' each consisting of a single fosse and rampart, and other monuments. Several stone circles, 'over forty feet in diameter,' have been wickedly removed from the Valley of Rocks 'for the purpose of selling them as gate-posts!...' Spindle-wheels, or pixie ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... from Solomon's Great Road, we came to the wide fosse surrounding the kraal, which is at least a mile round, and fenced with a strong palisade of piles formed of the trunks of trees. At the gateway this fosse is spanned by a primitive drawbridge, which was let down by the guard to allow us to pass in. The kraal is exceedingly well ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... before he had begun to flush. For a few moments, using the idioms of Burns' love-lyrics, which were the only dignified and unobscene references to passion he had ever encountered, he thought of that night when he had persuaded little Isabella to linger in the fosse of shadow under the high wall in Canaan Lane and give up her mouth to his kisses, her tiny warm dove's body to his arms. Never in all the forty-five intervening years had he seen such a wall on such a night, its base in velvety darkness and its topmost half shining ghostly as plaster does ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... contemporary journals of occurrences given to the world under the titles of "Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris sous le regne de Francois Ier," "Cronique du Roy Francoys, premier de ce nom," "Journal d'un cure ligueur de Paris sous les trois derniers Valois (Jehan de la Fosse)," "Journal de Jean Glaumeau ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... Monet, chevalier de Lamarck, seigneur des Bazentin grand et petit et de haute et puissante Dame Marie Francoise de Fontaine demeurant en leur chateau de Bazentin le petit, son parrain a ete Messire Jean Baptiste de Fosse, pretre-chanoine de l'eglise collegiale de St. Farcy de Peronne, y demeurant, sa marraine Dame Antoinette Francoise de Bucy, niece de Messire Louis Joseph Michelet, chevalier, ancien commissaire de l'artillerie de France demeurante au chateau de Guillemont, qui ont ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... with the violence of this choler and the exacerbations of his valor, which were the more turbulent in their workings from the length of the body in which they were agitated. He forthwith proceeded to strengthen his redoubts, heighten his breastworks, deepen his fosse, and fortify his position with a double row of abattis; after which he dispatched a fresh courier with accounts ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... The wood was about 1-1/2 miles long, with a maximum depth of 1,400 yards, and its undergrowth, where not cut away, was densely intertwined with alder, hazel, ash, and blackthorn, with water standing in large pools on parts of its boggy surface. In one corner was the picturesque Fosse Labarre, a wide horseshoe moat enclosing a little garden, now a machine-gun emplacement, where grew the cumfrey, teazle and yellow flag. Everywhere the dog violet and blue veronica flourished in enormous clumps, and near the Strand was a great patch of Solomon's ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell

... emigres; his bravery, his enthusiasm, his generosity, all seemed to promise another hero to the heroic race of Conde. He was worthy of conquering in a cause not doomed, of dying sword in hand on the battle field, and not to fall, some years later, in the fosse at Vincennes, by the "lantern dimly burning," with no other friend than his dog, by the balls of a platoon of soldiers, ordered out at dead of night, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... the ling, and famous for a little pool where the martins alight to drink and star the mud with a maze of claw-tracks; and yet again, others, this year,[1] under the dry roof of the pines of Anstiebury, when the fosse of the old Briton settlement was dripping with wet, and the woods were dim with the smoke of rain, and the paths were red with the fallen bloom of the red chestnuts and white with the flourish of May and brown with the catkins of the oak, and the ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... last few minutes of the interview he had forgotten the cold, but now when he was led into the open air he felt it in his coatless condition more poignant than his apprehension at his position otherwise. He shivered as he walked along the fosse, through which blew a shrewd north wind, driving the first flakes of an approaching snowstorm. The fosse was wide and deep, girding the four-square castle, mantled on its outer walls by dense ivy, where a few ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... making these trackways, their conquerors only improving the roads as was their wont, and erecting military stations along the line. These roads were severally called "Watling Straete," which ran from the coast of Kent, through London, to the Welsh coast in county Cardigan; the "Fosse," leading from Cornwall to Lincoln; "Erminge Straete," running from St. David's to Southampton; and "Hikenilde Straete," leading through the centre of England, from St. David's to Tynemouth. Part of the latter road, known as Icknield ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... as a present, whereas we too often see these wider considerations ignored in favour of some exigency of the moment. A historic British town has recently furnished a striking object-lesson in this connection. The town possesses portions of an ancient city wall and fosse that were made at a time when the town was, for the moment, the most important in Great Britain. Yet the Town Council, a year ago, destroyed part of this wall and filled a section of the fosse for the purpose of providing ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes

... this lugubrious stone cage before. But the magic of his morning walk across the moor, the sight of the pagan tors, the songs of the last cuckoo, had unprepared him for that dreary building. He left the street, and, entering the fosse, began a circuit, scanning the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the garden; Set i' the pathless awe Where no star its breath can draw. Life, that is its warden, Sits behind the fosse of death. Mine eyes saw not, ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... weapons threaten still, Let no fond memories unnerve the arm, (15) No pious thought of father or of kin; But full in face of brother or of sire, Drive home the blade. Unless the slain be known Your foes account his slaughter as a crime; Spare not our camp, but lay the rampart low And fill the fosse with ruin; not a man But holds his post within the ranks to-day. And yonder tents, deserted by the foe, Shall give us shelter ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... Castle and Episcopal Palace of St. Andrews is now in ruins. It stands on a detached point of land to the north of the town, and is bounded on two sides by the sea. It entered from the south side by a drawbridge, across a deep fosse or ditch, which being now removed and filled up with rubbish, very much injures the picturesque appearance of the Castle. After its surrender, on the last of July 1547, the Castle was ordered by an Act of Council to be rased to the ground. The fortress and "block-houses" were no doubt partially ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... che quello, che minacciano, non fosse prima a danno loro.' So it is said in a letter of Sanga, April 1529, Lettere di diversi autori ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... portal, through which swept the howling wind. A step more, and I was in Spain. Glaciers slope away on each side of the wall; but all along the front of the Breche, on the French side, the glacier is scooped out into a deep fosse or cavity, by the action of the sun's rays pouring from the south through the opening. A wild world of mountains appeared to the south, those in the foreground covered with snow, and the more distant looming hazily over the plains ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various

... principio della venuta sua in Italia, cognominato dalla jattanza Spagnuola il Gran Capitano, per significare con questo titolo la suprema podesta sopra loro, merito per le preclare vittorie che ebbe dipoi, che per consentimento universale gli fosse confermato e perpetuate questo sopranome, per significazione di virtu grande, e di grande eccellenza nella disciplina militare." (Istoria, tom. i. p. 112.) According to Zurita, the title was not conferred till the Spanish general's appearance before Atella, and the first ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott

... delicate kidlet, 15 Worthier diligent watch than grape-bunch blackest and ripest) Suffers her sport as she please nor rates her even at hair's worth, Nowise 'stirring himself, but lying log-like as alder Felled and o'er floating the fosse of safe Ligurian woodsman, Feeling withal, as though such spouse he never had own'd; 20 So this marvel o' mine sees naught, and nothing can hear he, What he himself, an he be or not be, wholly unknowing. ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... Beaumont. Here, in spite of an avalanche of shells which was poured upon them, and of murderous attacks launched in their direction, they held out for quite a considerable period, and, having in turn retired upon the Bois de Fosse, were eventually compelled to fall back upon the plateau ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... from Penrith is the curious antique relic called Arthur's Round Table, already referred to. It is a circular area above twenty yards in diameter, surrounded by a fosse and mound. Six miles north-east of Penrith are the ancient remains, Long Meg and her Daughters. DACRE CASTLE is situated five miles west-south-west of Penrith. BROUGHAM HALL, the seat of Henry, Lord Brougham and Vaux, stands on an eminence near the river Lowther, a short distance ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... been found, besides these skeletons, stone axes and knives, and several ornaments, with holes through them, by means of which, with a cord passing through these perforations, they could be worn by their owners. On the south side of this tumulus, and not far from it, was a semicircular fosse, which, when I first saw it, was 6 feet deep. On opening it was discovered at the bottom a great quantity of human bones, which I am inclined to believe were the remains of those who had been slain in some great and destructive battle: first, because ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... take us long to reach the Gléra waterfall, which was very pretty, about a mile from the fjord, and formed by the river: trout can sometimes be caught in the pool beneath the fosse. ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... ditch is reached the lull reveals itself to be but the precursor of a storm. It begins with a heave of the whole atmosphere, like the sigh of a weary strong man on turning to re-commence unusual exertion, just as I stand here in the second fosse. That which now radiates from the sky upon the scene is not so ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... the white steel in his fist, and then sheathed the blade, and rode down soberly over the turf bridge across the ancient fosse, and so came on to the green road made many ages before by an ancient people, and so trotted south along ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... seen on the west of the river is St. Catherine's Hill, where the monks first began to build their Priory, and on it some traces of a small chapel have been found. Hengistbury Head is a wild and deserted spot, with remains of an ancient fosse cut between the Stour and the sea, possibly for defensive purposes, as there is a rampart on each side of the entrenchment, to which ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath

... 3d advance troops surged forward in pursuit, some by motor trucks, while the artillery pressed along the country roads close behind. The 1st Corps reached Authe and Chatillon-Sur-Bar, the 5th Corps, Fosse and Nouart, and the 3d Corps, Halles, penetrating the enemy's lines to a depth of twelve miles. Our large-caliber guns had advanced and were skilfully brought into position to fire upon the important lines at Montmedy, ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... grew red when she heard the porter's words, and she left the Palace and mounted the battlements, where she called across the fosse, 'Warrior, what ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... repentance; in which case he should receive assistance, though such assistance would give a colour to the imputation that there had always been an understanding between him and Rome. "Era si cattivo il concetto, che di lui avevasi in Roma, cioe che fosse stato autore di tutte le torbolenze d'Inghilterra, che era necessario dasse primo segni ben grandi del suo pentimento. Ed in tal caso sarebbe stato ajutato; sebene saria paruto che nelle sue passate resoluzioni se ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... that point ever rushed darkly and stormily along; the mount, though not steep, was full two miles in circumference, from base to brow occupied by the castle, which was erected in that massive yet irregular form peculiar to the architecture of the middle ages. A deep, broad moat or fosse, constantly supplied by the river, defended the castle wall, which ran round the mound, irregularly indeed, for there were indentations and sharp angles, occasioned by the uneven ground, each of which was guarded by a strong turret or tower, rising from the wall. The ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... place of extreme antiquity as a British town cannot be doubted; first, from the site and character of its venerable hill fortress; secondly, from the fact that the chief of the four great British and Roman roads, the Fosse-way, commenced there—"The ferthe of thisse is most of alle that tilleth from Toteneis ... From the south-west to north-east into Englonde's end;" and, thirdly, from the mention of it, and the antiquity assigned to it by our earliest annals and chronicles. Without entering into the question ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various

... men do not set out to follow, let us say, the Fosse-Way. There it runs right across Western England from the south-west to the north-east in a line direct yet sinuous, characters which are the very essence of a savage trail. It is a modern road for many miles, and you are tramping, let us say, along the Cotswold on ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... che suo dannaggio sogna, Che sognando disidera sognare, Si che quel ch'e, come non fosse, agogna; Tal mi fec'io non potendo parlare: Che disiava scusarmi e scusava Me tuttavia e not mi credea fare Maggior difetto men vergogna lava, Disse'l maestro, che'l tuo non e stato: Pero d'ogni tristizia ti disgrava; E fa ragion ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

... on the Quai La Fosse, where he put up his horse, and where he dined in the embrasure of a window that looked out over the tree-bordered quay and the broad bosom of the Loire, on which argosies of all nations rode at anchor. The sun had again broken through the clouds, and shed its pale ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... castle is very bold: it crowns the extremity of a ridge of chalk hills of considerable height, which commencing to the west of Dieppe, and terminating at this spot, have full command of the valley below. The fosse which surrounds the walls is wide and deep. The outline of the fortress is oval, but not regularly so; and it is varied by towers of uncertain shape, placed at unequal distances. The two entrance towers, and those nearest to them to the north and ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... thee are not without war Thy living ones, and one doth gnaw the other Of those whom one wall and one fosse shut in! ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante

... ragionare seco; tanto piu che trovers qui la Maesta del Re nostro sire, Che fra tre o quattro giorni vi si attende: e speriamo She S. M. lo rimetta. di mezza dozzina di buoni vascelli, e che tornera al viaggio. E se Francesco Carli nostro ci fosse tornato dal Cairo, advisate che alla ventura vorra andere seco a detto viaggio, e credo si conoschino al Cairo dove e stato piu anni; e non solo in Egitto ed Soria, ma quasi per tutto il cognito mondo; e di qua mediante sua virtu ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy

... railing, quickset hedge, park paling, circumvallation[obs3], enceinte, ring fence. barrier, barricade; gate, gateway; bent, dingle [U.S.]; door, hatch, cordon; prison &c. 752. dike, dyke, ditch, fosse[obs3], moat. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... November 26 the Battalion marched to Annequin, Fosse 9, and owing to the road being frequently shelled, orders were given that seventy-pace intervals should be kept between platoons east of Beuvry. To improve matters, it may be mentioned, there was a heavy fall of snow, and in the portion of the village south of La Basse the majority ...
— The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's) - A Record of its Services in the Great War, 1914-1919 • Fred W. Ward

... downland through great beech-woods to my quarters for the night. In the first part I was in an infamous temper; in the second I was worried and mystified; but the cool twilight of the third stage calmed and heartened me, and I reached the gates of Fosse Manor with a mighty appetite and a ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... peninsula, to the west of the isthmus, may be traced the British lines and the broad deep fosse which, filled by the tide, insulated the city these were projected to defend: their remains testify to the care and ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... of Romney Marsh, which is not normally marshy, offered the maximum of attractions to an invader, who, after beaching his boats and entrenching himself behind a fosse, would find few, if any, physical obstacles to his advance into the level tract between Ashford and Tonbridge. As this route was undefended, Pitt and Camden, by the month of October 1804, decided on the construction of the Hythe Military Canal. On 24th October Pitt attended ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... eastern side consisting first of a concentric break or slope from the plain, the soil not being clay as usual, but a dry red sand; and then arose the green bank of black earth, leaving a concentric fosse or hollow between. A belt of yarra trees grew around the edge of this singular hollow which was so dry and firm that the carts, in the track of which I was riding, had traversed it without difficulty. I learnt from Mr. Stapylton, on reaching ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... in front of us, are of French extraction—"and so over the parapet. There we extend, as arranged, into lines of half-companies, and go at 'em, making Douvrin our objective, and keeping the Hohenzollern and Fosse Eight ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... members of religious orders are (p. 534) 'ministri de satanasso ... soldati del gran diavolo: (p. 25) 'piu facilmente tra cento soldati se ne trovarebbero la meta buoni, che tra tutto un capitolo de frati ne fosse uno senza bruttissima macchia.' It is perilous to hold any communication with them (p. 39): 'Con loro non altri che usurai, fornicatori, e omini di mala sorte conversare si vedeno.' Their sins against nature (p. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... Shorty contemplated with interest a shell bursting on the derelict fosse in the next village of Annequin, and turned thoughtfully to the speaker. "An' what did ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... pas reprendre mon coeur en ceste sorte: meurs de honte, aveugle, impudent, traistre et desloyal a ton Dieu, et sembables choses; mais je voudrois le corriger par voye de compassion. Or sus, mon pauvre coeur, nous voila tombez dans la fosse, laquelle nous avions tant resolu d' eschapper. Ah! relevons-nous, et quittons-la pour jamais, reclamons la misericorde de Dieu, et esperons en elle qu'elle nous assistera pour desormais estre plus fermes; et remettons-nous au chemin ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... would be necessary to avoid disembarking troops on the right side of the entrance, on account of the arm of the sea of which I have already spoken.* (* Middle Harbour.) That indentation presents as an obstacle a great fosse, defended by a battery of ten or twelve guns, firing from eighteen to twenty-four-pound balls. The left shore of the harbour is undefended, and is at the same time more accessible. The town is dominated by its outlying portions to such an extent, that it might be hoped to reduce the barracks in ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... of the Tourelles "with light hearts and heavy hands." But Gladsdale's men, encouraged by their bold and skilful leader, made a resolute and able defence. The Maid planted her banner on the edge of the fosse, and then, springing down into the ditch, she placed the first ladder against the wall and began to mount. An English archer sent an arrow at her, which pierced her corselet and wounded her severely between the neck and shoulder. She fell bleeding from the ladder; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... Watling Street, ran by St Albans Wall near Lichfield (Letocetum), to Wroxeter and Chester. It also gave access by a branch to Leicester and Lincoln. A fourth served Colchester, the eastern counties, Lincoln and York. The fifth is that known to the English as the Fosse, which joins Lincoln and Leicester with Cirencester, Bath and Exeter. Besides these five groups, an obscure road, called by the Saxons Akeman Street, gave alternative access from London through Alchester (outside of Bicester) to Bath, while another obscure road winds south ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... foot of which was a door, and a draw-bridge, which crossed a long, deep chasm, neatly faced with freestone; then another door leading to several small rooms, all, probably, places of confinement; and those hollows, now fringed with timber trees, in those days constituted a broad, deep fosse. ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook

... of the pillar till they had passed by, and then took she farewell of Aucassin, and so fared till she came unto the castle wall. Now that wall was wasted and broken, and some deal mended, so she clomb thereon till she came between wall and fosse, and so looked down, and saw that the fosse was deep and steep, ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang

... lily, the Nymphaea rubra, with small red flowers, and of great beauty, is common in the ponds near Jaffna and in the Wanny; and I found in the fosse, near the fort of Moeletivoe, the beautiful blue lotus, N. stellata, with lilac petals, approaching to purple in the centre, which had not previously been supposed to be a native of ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... tone of his spirits. Every feature of the edifice, distinguished by an air of heavy grandeur, appeared successively between the branches of the trees—the broad turret, the arched gate-way that led into the courts, the drawbridge, and the dry fosse ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... were placed thickly together; there were, he thought, six or seven times as many as he had previously seen, and they were thatched or shingled, like those in his own country. It stood in the midst of the fields, and the corn came up to the fosse; there were many people at work, but, as he noticed, most of them were old men, bowed and feeble. A little way farther he saw a second boathouse; he hastened thither, and the ferrywoman, for the boat ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... animali in poi, che ella nei primi giorni del mondo produsse per comandemento del sovrano ed omnipotente Fattore, non abbia mai piu prodotto da se medesima ne erba ne albero, ne animale alcuno perfetto o imperfetto che ei se fosse; e che tutto quello, che ne' tempi trapassati e nato e che ora nascere in lei, o da lei veggiamo, venga tutto dalla semenza reale e vera delle piante, e degli animali stessi, i quali col mezzo del proprio seme la loro spezie conservano. E se bene tutto giorno ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... fosse l'ultima ora del nostro amor, come se fosse l'ultima, l'ultima ora, ora del nostro amor, del nostro amor? Oh, qual presagio m'assale, come se fosse l'ultima ora del nostro amor, se fosse l'ultima ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... With entire lack of morality, but with picturesque imagination, Aristide plunged into a description of that non-existent baronial hall. Fosse, drawbridge, Gothic chapel were but insignificant features. It had tourelles, emblazoned gateways, bastions, donjons, barbicans; it had innumerable rooms; in the salle des chevaliers two hundred men-at-arms had his ancestors fed at a sitting. There ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke

... Danes covered themselves with their shields and rushed forward with the greatest determination, pouring through the gap in the outer bank in a solid mass, and then turned along the fosse towards the inner gate. Closely packed together, with their shields above their heads forming a sort of testudo or roof which protected them against the Saxons' arrows, they pressed forward in spite of the shower of ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... one of the chiefs of the Trinobantes was asked first to give a minute description of the Roman camp. The works were formidable. Surrounding it was a broad and deep fosse, into which a stream was turned. Beyond this there was a double vallum or wall of earth so steep as to be climbed with great difficulty. In the hollow between the two walls sharp stakes were set thickly together. The second wall was higher than the first, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... as determined as ever, he pushed on, and presently stood on the summit, on the edge of the fosse. He looked down; the waggon seemed under his feet; the plain, the hills beyond, the blue distant valley on one side, on the other the ridge he had mounted stretched away, and beyond it still more ridges, till ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... Morena's dusky height[74] Sustains aloft the battery's iron load; And, far as mortal eye can compass sight, The mountain-howitzer, the broken road, The bristling palisade, the fosse o'erflowed, The stationed bands, the never-vacant watch,[co] The magazine in rocky durance stowed, The bolstered steed beneath the shed of thatch, The ball-piled pyramid, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... all ways. The dug-outs are filled to the brim with earth and with—no one knows what. It is all like the dried bed of a river, smashed, extended, slimy, that both water and men have abandoned. In one place the trench has been simply wiped out by the guns. The wide fosse is blocked, and remains no more than a field of new-turned earth, made of holes symmetrically bored side by side, in length and ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... days before at Vincennes. They accordingly fought, before S— had time even to shave himself or eat his breakfast; he having only just arrived in his coupe from Paris. The meeting took place in the fosse of the fortress, and the first shot from S—'s pistol killed the French officer, who had actually travelled in the diligence from Paris for the purpose, as he boasted to his fellow-travellers, of ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... desiderato Un damo aver che fosse sonatore! Eccolo qua che Dio me l'ha mandato Tutto coperto di rose e viole; Eccolo qua che vien pianin pianino, A capo basso, e suona ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... of wild thyme once again calls up a vision of the Downs; it is not so thick and strong, and it lacks that cushion of herbage which so often marks the site of its growth on the noble slopes of the hills, and along the sward-grown fosse of ancient earthworks, but it is wild thyme, and that is enough. From this bed of varieties of thyme there rises up a pleasant odour which attracts the bees. Bees and humble-bees, indeed, buzz everywhere, but they are much too busily occupied ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... the country, which still retains the name of Saxonbury Hill. It is on the high ground to the right, as the traveller passes from Frant to Mayfield. On the summit of this hill (from whence the cliffs of Dover may be seen) are to be traced the remains of an ancient fortification; the fosse is still plainly discernible, enclosing an area of about two acres, from whence there is but one outlet. The apex of the hill within is formed of a strong compact body of stone, brought hither from a distance, on which doubtless ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... the lady-bells Of the nunnery by the Fosse:— Say the hinds their silver music swells 'Like the blessed angels' syllables, At His birth who ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... Seventh(1448) was so sumptuously banqueted, and imposed that villainous fine for his entertainment, is now shrunk to one vast curious tower, that stands on a spacious mount raised on a high hill with a large fosse. It commands a fine prospect, and belongs to Mr. Ashurst, a rich citizen, who has built a trumpery new house close to it. In the parish church is a fine square monument of black marble of one of the Earls; and there are three more tombs of the family ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... wide Calle de San Ignacio to the drawbridges across the double fosse, where the rope-makers are always at work, walking backwards with an ever decreasing bundle of hemp at their waists and one eye cocked upwards towards the roadway so that they know all who come and go better even than the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman

... [Footnote: Sansovino is more explicit than usual in his reference to this decree: "For it having appeared that the place (the first Council Chamber) is not capacious enough, the saloon on the Grand Canal was ordered." "Per cio parendo che il luogo non fosse capace, fu ordinata la Sala ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... and a strong bridgehead near by. On the western leg of the German salient, whose apex was at Fort Conde on the Aisne, the French struck another decisive blow which gave them the village of Nanteuil-le-Fosse, and endangered the Germans in the fort, who were now in the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... the 28th September the Battalion moved back to Mazingarbe, as the men thought, for a rest. They were soon disappointed. At 7 p.m. on the same day orders were received to take up a position at the Slag Heap or Fosse at Loos, known as London Bridge. At 9-0 p.m. the Battalion left its billets in a deluge of rain and marched back to the line in splendid spirits in spite of the fatigue resulting from the recent ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts

... veggio, che il ver dicevano que valenti uomini in Capsa, che il servire a Dio era cosi dolce cosa, e per certo io non mi ricordo, che mai alcuna altra ne facessi, che di tanto diletto, e piacere mi fosse, quanto e il rimettere il diavolo in inferno; e percio giudico ogn' altra persona, che ad altro che a servire a Dio attende, essere una bestia. Per la qual cosa essa spesse volte andava a Rustico, e gli diceva. Padre mio, io son qui venuta per servire a Dio, e non per istare oziosa; andiamo a ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... evenings?'—'Always, except when Francois has to go to Vaugirard at four o'clock: then he must go to bed earlier. Perhaps you do not know that our burying ground is at Vaugirard: as that burying ground is not much in fashion, we have been allowed to retain our privilege of having a fosse to ourselves.' ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various

... Fosse.] The first of these foure waies is named Fosse, and stretcheth from the south into the north, beginning at the corner of Totnesse in Cornewall, and so passing foorth by Deuonshire, and Somersetshire, by Tutherie, on Cotteswold, and then forward beside Couentrie vnto Leicester, and from thence ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (3 of 8) • Raphael Holinshed

... imposing; they are constructed of carefully-squared stone joined with cement of such extreme hardness that the weather has had no destructive effect. The perimeter of the fortress is about 4000 yards; the shape is nearly a parallelogram. The fosse varies in depth and width, but the minimum of the former is twenty-five feet, and of the width eighty feet, but in some places it exceeds one hundred and forty. This formidable ditch is cut out of the solid rock, which is the usual calcareous sedimentary limestone, and ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... laced them in their mail. They made the wild fire ready and caused men to cast timber in the moat, till the deep fosse was filled. When this was done they flung wild fire from their engines upon the castle. The fire laid hold upon the castle, it spread to the tower, and to all the houses that stood about. The castle flared like a torch; the flames leaped in the sky; the houses tumbled ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... cleared till, sudden, a bar Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the way. Right! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure across: "Where I could enter, there I depart by! Night in the fosse? Athens to aid? Tho' the dive were thro' Erebos, thus I obey— Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise! No bridge Better!"—when—ha! what was it I came on, of ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various

... each gave orders to his own charioteer to hold there his horses in good order by the fosse; whilst they themselves on foot[364], arrayed with their armour, rushed forth; and an inextinguishable clamour arose before morning. And they[365] were marshalled in the foreground with the cavalry at the trench; ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... of the sand-hills, and close beside the high road on the last rise before it dips to the coast, stands a turfed embankment surrounded by a shallow fosse. This is none of our ancient camps ('castles' we call them in Cornwall), as you perceive upon stepping within the enclosure, which rises in a complete circle save for two entrances cut through the bank and facing one another. You are standing in a perfectly level area a hundred ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch



Words linked to "Fosse" :   trench



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