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Halter   /hˈɔltər/   Listen
Halter

noun
1.
Rope or canvas headgear for a horse, with a rope for leading.  Synonym: hackamore.
2.
A rope that is used by a hangman to execute persons who have been condemned to death by hanging.  Synonyms: hangman's halter, hangman's rope, hemp, hempen necktie.
3.
A woman's top that fastens behind the back and neck leaving the back and arms uncovered.
4.
Either of the rudimentary hind wings of dipterous insects; used for maintaining equilibrium during flight.  Synonyms: balancer, haltere.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Halter" Quotes from Famous Books



... replied the negro. "The hope of being shown a mine of gold gives me courage to risk even my neck in a halter, if need be. Never fear, Costal. Speak ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... on foot. They stopped. I saw that, as usual, there hung from the pack-saddle of the camel a large skin water-flask, which seemed to be well filled. I steered my dromedary close up alongside of the mounted Bedouin, caused my beast to kneel down, then alighted, and keeping the end of the halter in my hand, went up to the mounted Bedouin without speaking, took hold of his water-flask, opened it, and drank long and deep from its leathern lips. Both of the Bedouins stood fast in amazement and mute horror; and really, if they had never happened to see an European before, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... sure of this, my friend, If we don't perish here at English hands, Nothing is left us but the halter-noose The Bourbons will provide! ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... opposition but indifference, to the daily working of the hands that had moulded me to this; and knowing that my marriage would at least prevent their hawking of me up and down; I suffered myself to be sold, as infamously as any woman with a halter round her neck is sold in ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... the men got off. One of the men took a halter out of the wagon and tied the horse to a tree, while the others ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins

... Hairy harajxa. Halberd halebardo. Halcyon alciono. Hale sana. Half duono. Hall vestiblo. Hallow sanktigi. Hall-porter pordisto. Hallucination halucinacio. Halt halti. Halting-place haltejo. Halter kolbrido. Halves, by duone. Ham sxinko. Hamlet vilagxeto. Hammer martelo. Hammer martelumi. Hammock pendlito. Hamper korbo. Hamper malhelpi. Hamstring subgenuo. Hand mano. Hand-barrow ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... was over two bands, namely, the blood-men that will sell a man's life for money, and those also that will betray their friend with a kiss: his standard-bearer bare the red colours, and his scutcheon was thirty pieces of silver and the halter. ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan

... doing this you elect to remain here. There is one chance that you may go free through all the dangers of your trade of blood; but there are ninety and nine chances that a violent death or the halter shall be ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... forward and forward; and realize much: for himself victual; for the world an additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of Economic Society. For me too had such a leading-string been provided; only that it proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, till I broke it off. Then, in the words of Ancient Pistol, did the world generally become mine oyster, which I, by strength or cunning, was to open, as I would and could. Almost had I deceased ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... wives are still occasionally led to the market by a halter around the neck to be sold by the husband to the ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... the universal and common tie to all national ties Premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty Prepare ourselves against the preparations of death Present Him such words as the memory suggests to the tongue Present himself with a halter about his neck to the people Presumptive knowledge by silence Pretending to find out the cause of every accident Priest shall on the wedding-day open the way to the bride Proceed so long as there shall be ink and paper in the world Profession of knowledge and ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne

... we left them, went about their sport after their own fashion, and brought us a fine buck antelope after breakfast. They have a bullock trained to go about the fields with them, led at a quick pace by a halter, with which the sportsman guides him, as he walks along with him by the side opposite to that facing the deer he is in pursuit of. He goes round the deer as he grazes in the field, shortening the distance at every circle till he comes within shot. At the signal given the bullock stands ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... of injured innocence. "I came round here 'bout midnight, anyways!" he protested. "I always do—jes' t' see 'f everythin's all right. That hawss was in then, I will swear—'cause I 'member his halter-shank'd come untied and I fixed it. Ev'rythin' in th' garden was lovely 'cep' fur that 'damned hobo sneakin' round. He was gettin' a drink at th' trough an' I chased him. But he beat it up inta th' loft an'—I'm that scared of ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... paniers, have never disdained. For these sufficient reasons the merca is practiced still in the old way in the Roman Campagna, and the victory of the man over the brute has to be achieved by main force and dexterity. The buttero has not so much as a lasso, or even a halter or a stick, to assist him in the struggle. There is the beast with his horns, and there is the man with his hands. Probably it might have been better to seize the creature instantly on his entry into the arena, while he was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... it. You may not know the reason, but you should have confidence in your mother, you should believe that she knows what is best, and that she would not inflict pain or cause you suffering unless she knew it was for your good. The young horse does not understand why a halter is put around its neck and is made to run around in a circle until it is tired. It would much rather enjoy itself in its own care-free, and happy way. And when finally a full set of harness is put on, and it is put into the shafts of a wagon and tied there, and made to pull it and its ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... spoke well enough! She placed twelve bottles on the board, They were with some enchantment stored; "Hey, presto!" and they disappear— A pair of bloody swords were there. She showed a purse unto a thief, His fingers closed on it in brief; "Hey, presto!" and—the treasure fled— He grasped a halter, noosed, instead. Ambition held a courtier's wand, It turned a hatchet in his hand. A box for charities, she drew; "Blow here!" and a churchwarden blew— "Hey, presto, open!" Opened, in her, For gold was a parochial dinner! Vice shook the dice, she smote ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... shoulders, and stretching out his hands; 'only consider. You've done what's a very pretty thing, and what I love you for doing; but what at the same time would put the cravat round your throat, that's so very easily tied and so very difficult to unloose—in plain English, the halter!' ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... left. Buffalo Bill was an adept at slaughtering game on horseback, and he won his great bet at killing the greatest number of buffaloes, by following the custom of the Indians and shooting to the left. The horse approaches the animal, his halter hanging loose upon his neck, bringing the rider within three or four paces of the game, when the arrow or rifle ball is sent with ease and certainty through ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... completely concealed amid the trees. Two horses, with their feet fettered, were fastened by a halter to the lower branches of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... that supposing rascal!—I can bear no more; and I am the Mufti. Now suppose yourselves my servants, and hold your hands: an anointed halter take ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... seemed to want to hide something from her. The Indian bent a falcon gaze on the distant slope, and Shefford did not like that intent, searching, steadfast watchfulness. Suddenly Nas Ta Bega stiffened and whipped the halter he held. ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... made the ill-tempered cook so jealous of the favours the poor boy received, that she began to use him more cruelly than ever, and constantly made game of him for sending his cat to sea, asking him if he thought it would sell for as much money as would buy a halter. ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... almost as hateful to myself, as I KNOW it is to you. But the above will have it so. Since, therefore, I must write, it shall be the truth; which is, that if I may be once more admitted to pay my duty to the most deserving and most injured of her sex, I will be content to do it with a halter about my neck; and, attended by a parson on my right hand, and the hangman on my left, be doomed, at her will, either to the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... your convictions, as you call them, are deluding you. Do you think Benedict Arnold's convictions, if he had any, would have saved his neck from the halter?" ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... Reformation. He said all honest men sided with Luther, and as an honest man his place would have been by Luther's side; but he was too great a coward. "If I should join Luther," said he, "I could only perish with him, and I do not mean to run my neck into the halter. Let popes and emperors settle matters."—"Your Holiness says, Come to Rome; you might as well tell a crab to fly. If I write calmly against Luther, I shall be called lukewarm; if I write as he does, I shall stir up a hornet's nest.... ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss

... her husband was coming up with a rough pony's halter in his hand. He was in haste to be off, lest a search for the lost child might extend to his abode, and his gloomy displeasure and ill-masked uneasiness reduced every-one to silence in ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... much of a feller that would cheat a man out of a jews-harp 'cause he liked to fool with it. Arter all, this sendin' the boy off is jest turnin' 'im out to pastur' to grow, an' takin' 'im in in the fall. He may git his head up so high t'we can't git the halter on 'im again, but he'll be worth more to somebody that can, nor if we kep 'im in the stable. I sh'll hate to say good-bye t' the little feller, but I sh'll vote to ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... with a rope halter. Bud was bareheaded and in his sock feet. His eyes were terribly blue and bright, and his face was flushed as a drunken man's. He glanced over to the bank where the women and children were watching. It seemed to him that one woman fluttered her handkerchief, and his ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... understand your explanation and your own very natural motives in the matter. But I'm afraid I haven't got the hang of everything yet. Granted that you wanted to vanish, was it necessary to put bogus bones in the cave, so as nearly to put a halter round the neck of Doctor Brown? And who put it there? The statement would appear perfectly maniacal; but so far as I can make head or tail out of anything, Doctor Brown seems to have ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton

... town as Bow, to vault from; or, a braver height, as Paul's; Or, if you affected to do it nearer home, and a shorter way, an excellent garret-window into the street; or, a beam in the said garret, with this halter [HE SHEWS HIM A HALTER.]— which they have sent, and desire, that you would sooner commit your grave head to this knot, than to the wedlock noose; or, take a little sublimate, and go out of the world like a rat; or a fly, as one said, with a straw ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... Paris in his lofty halls; But donn'd his armour, glitt'ring o'er with brass, And through the city pass'd with bounding steps. As some proud steed, at well-fill'd manger fed, His halter broken, neighing, scours the plain, And revels in the widely-flowing stream To bathe his sides; then tossing high his head, While o'er his shoulders streams his ample mane. Light borne on active limbs, ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... he had once received. They ran before him like a herd of frightened deer. They had no thought of continuing the fight or defending themselves, but of fleeing before that terrible man. Some dashed into the forest, but one stuck fast near the stream: him the Zmudzians strangled with a halter. Then a hunt as if after wild beasts began after the crowd of fugitives which sprang ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... can't help it. All his thoughts and talk and schemes are about something crooked. Can't you tell by the things he lets drop that he ought to be in the 'pen'? He's treacherous, ungrateful, a born thief. I saw him take Tubbs's halter, and there was the regular thief look in his eyes when he cut his own name on it. I saw him kick a dog, and he kicked it like a brute. He kicked it in the ribs with his toe. Men—decent men—kick a dog with the side of their foot. I saw his horse fall with him, and ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... change in my jailer's behaviour at this time. He offered to make better provision for my comfort, and as I had no doubt he was instigated by Mr. Falkland, I answered that he might tell his employer I would accept no favours from a man that held a halter about my neck. Then the idea of an escape occurred to me, and as I had some proficiency in carpentry, I decided to obtain tools by proposing to make some chairs for the jailer. My offer was accepted, and I gradually accumulated tools of various ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... absent from exercise' were 'to be tyed neck and heels on the Hoe half an hour'; while thirteen years later a sergeant, for taking 'coals and two poles' from the dockyard, was sentenced to 500 lashes, and to be 'drummed out with a halter round his neck,' after, of course, being reduced to ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... them to be very sore with the stripes that he had given them the day before, he told them, that since they were never like to come out of that place, their only way would be forthwith to make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison; for why, said he, should you choose to live, seeing it is attended with so much bitterness? But they desired him to let them go. With that he looked ugly upon them, and, rushing to them, ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... "may heaven give you life and health to enjoy it yourself!" At last, turning to poor Dick: "As for you, you have always been a sad dog; you'll never come to good; you'll never be rich; I leave you a shilling to buy a halter." "Ah, father!" cries Dick, without any emotion, "may heaven give you life and health to ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... say good-by. He explains that he's bein' shipped home. They'd got a job for him with an uncle out in the country somewhere. That must have been a year or so ago, and now it looked like he'd slipped his halter and had headed back ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... shalt not excel,'" he answered. "A man weak as any child, and as easily led astray. If he be your head, Avery, I would say it were scarce worth to turn out for the cause. You would have an halter round your neck in ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... the staircase into the street. Dunn followed with difficulty; when he reached the door he was confronted by his breathless companion. "She's gone off on a run, and I'll swear there was a man in the buggy!" He stopped and examined the halter-strap, still fastened to ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... officers captured that morning were confined in a small soldier's tent for two nights and nearly three days. It was raining nearly all the time. Sixty privates, also, had but one tent, while at Bedford the provost marshal, Cunningham, brought with him a negro with a halter, telling them the negro had already hung several, and he imagined he would hang some more. The negro and Cunningham also heaped abuse upon the prisoners, showing them the halter, and calling them rebels, scoundrels, robbers, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... where the trail crumbled away in some loose stones close to the edge of the dangerous cliff. The animal and the outfit were in danger of going down to the depths below. Phil, on his own horse, had caught hold of the other horse's halter and was trying to haul him to a safer footing. But the youth and his steed were losing ground ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer

... to you in glory like the blessed spirits in paradise. What radiance surrounds the forge! To guide the plough, to bind the sheaves, is joy. The bark at liberty in the wind, what delight! Do you, lazy idler, delve, drag on, roll, march! Drag your halter. You are a beast of burden in the team of hell! Ah! To do nothing is your object. Well, not a week, not a day, not an hour shall you have free from oppression. You will be able to lift nothing without anguish. Every minute that passes will make your muscles crack. What is a feather ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... four or five of the cabin passengers. "I will wait till just before the time to call the first mate. He would only bluster now, and betray all our plans. As to Waller, I doubt the fellow. If we could show him that he was running his head into a halter, he would side with us. If you can get hold of Tommy Bigg again, let him tell Spratt that I want him, quietly. The doctor will do best to rouse all the second-class passengers who can be trusted. There are four or five among them who would ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... are a Yankee spy," said the Sergeant. He searched Paul, but found nothing. He was commanding a cavalry foraging-party, and was a brutal, ignorant fellow, and had been drinking whiskey, and wanted to show that he had power. "Boys, bring a halter; I reckon I'll make this fellow confess that he ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin

... tied by his halter to the lee side of the wagon to prevent him from wandering under the trees and courting speedy destruction there. He stood with bent head and bunched hindquarters, as if in stolid resignation, although Ducky cried because he was too big to be taken into the shelter of the ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... you, Amy?" said I. "Nay, nay," says she, "let it be the devil or not the devil, if I thought she knew one tittle of your history, I would despatch her if she were my own daughter a thousand times." "And I," says I in a rage, "as well as I love you, would be the first that should put the halter about your neck, and see you hanged with more satisfaction than ever I saw you in my life; nay," says I, "you would not live to be hanged, I believe I should cut your throat with my own hand; I am almost ready to do it," said I, "as 'tis, for your ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... I know, if on a tree I see a corpse swinging from a halter, I can so grave and in runes depict, that the man shall ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... blessed first, and as he was himself the only genuine and original donkey, he was resolved not to yield his place at the corporate manger to the new animal. Thus matters remain at present—the old Mare resolutely refusing to take his head out of the halter until he is compelled ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... 1, 1861. And as to La' Davis, there seems to be documentary evidence that she meant to be "At Home" in the capital, bringing the first strawberries with her from Montgomery for her May-day soiree. Bah! one does not like to sneer at people who have their necks in the halter; but one happy result of this disturbance is that the disturbers have sent themselves to Coventry. The Lincoln party may be wanting in finish. Finish comes with use. A little roughness of manner, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... kneeling to him to receive their Charter. Dr. Scarborough took some of his friends, and I went with them, to see the body of a lusty fellow, a seaman, that was hanged for a robbery. It seems one Dillon, of a great family, was, after much endeavours to have saved him, hanged with a silken halter this Sessions, (of his own preparing,) not for honour only, but it being soft and sleek it do slip close and kills, that is, strangles presently: whereas, a stiff one do not come so close together, and so the party may live the longer before killed. But all the Doctors ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... scampered over these same moors on a half-wild Exmoor pony, bare-backed, and with a halter for ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... sore-ending affairs, as were the first lessons in equitation. Saddles and bridles were lacking as equipment for many weeks after the receipt of the horses. Mounted drill, riding bare-back, with nothing but a halter chain as a bridle, was the initiatory degree of Battery ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman

... with a high hand, my fine fellow!" observed Captain Blyth fiercely; "but I warn you at once that you are only preparing a halter with which to hang yourself. The fact that something is wrong on board here will infallibly be discovered by the first man- of-war which falls in with us, and your punishment will speedily follow. Hear me, men," he continued, raising his voice and addressing the crew generally; "I don't in ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... Parahyby and the Pomba, in trunks of trees hollowed out. For each of these wretched conveyances I was obliged to pay one milreis (2s. 2d.), and to incur great danger into the bargain; not so much on account of the stream and the small size of the craft, as of our mules, which, fastened by their halter, swam alongside, and frequently came so near that I was afraid that we ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... unchangeable truth is silent before a would-be truth. Thus it is, thus it ever was. What yesterday we counted a mortal sin, to-morrow we adore. What on this bank is just and meritorious, on the other side of a brook leads to the halter." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... with thy glib defence (Which thou'dst have made for Peter's Pence) Of Church-rates, worthy of a halter; Two pipes of port (old port, 'twas said By honest Newport)[3] bought and paid By Papists for the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... Withering up the scanty ranges, Leaving all the country bare. When he entered Colorado, Following still the barren plain Where for months the mocking heavens Never spared a drop of rain, Faithful Simon, weak and starving, Following feebly in the track Pulled upon his straining halter, Groaned and ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker

... truce! we're on dangerous ground, Who knows how the fashions may alter? The doctrine, to-day, that is loyalty sound, To-morrow may bring us a halter. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... East Anglia far exceeded that of our own authorities. The world has never seen a quicker blow struck; it has seldom seen a blow so crushingly severe; it has not often seen one so aggressively unjustifiable. And, be it noted, that down to the last halter and the least fragment of detail, the German Army was provided with every ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... happiness, had yet been deformed, sooner or later, by misfortune, as by the intrusion of a grim face at a banquet; of death-bed scenes, and what dark intimations might be gathered from the words of dying men; of suicide, and whether the more eligible mode were by halter, knife, poison, drowning, gradual starvation, or the fumes of charcoal. The majority of the guests, as is the custom with people thoroughly and profoundly sick at heart, were anxious to make their own woes the theme of discussion, ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... The beast gave a snort, a groan, lurched, fell over, kicked convulsively, closed his eyes, and lay to all appearance dead. The town below, which had been watching progress, came running up. We removed the halter; the animal lay quiet. The pity of the by-standers was maddening; their remarks exasperating. "Poor little mule, he dies;" they pointed to his rubbed sides,—"Ah, poor creature! What a heavy load! How thin he is." It is certain that the best mule ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... better than all known healing medicine, and, when water in which it had been dipped was given to man or beast to drink, it produced an effectual cure. Nails driven into an oak tree prevented toothache. A halter that had been used in suspending a criminal, when tied round the head, prevented headache. A dead man's hand dissipated tumours of the glands, by stroking the affected part nine times with it; but the hand ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... William. Sorry for you then; infernally sorry for you now, that I am! But you've run your head into the halter.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... full of fire," said Gigi, poking the donkey in the ribs to excite a show of animation. "You should see him gallop uphill with my brother on his back, and a good load into the bargain. Brrrr! Stand still, will you!" he cried, holding tight by the halter, though the animal did not seem anxious to ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... As soon as he had finished the manuscript he had in hand, he would give up all further thought of writing. "The quill and I are divorced," he wrote to Greenough in June, 1833, "and you cannot conceive the degree of freedom, I could almost say of happiness, I feel at having got my neck out of the halter." Longings for his old sea-life often came over him. "You must not be surprised," he wrote, half-jestingly, to the same friend, "if you hear of my sailing a sloop between Cape Cod and New York." But he had no definite plans marked out. The only thing about which ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... halters held by men riding beside them. The rope to which the horses are attached should be about an inch and a quarter in diameter, with loops or rings inserted at intervals sufficient to admit the horses without allowing them to kick each other, and the halter straps tied to these loops. The horses, on first starting, should have men by their sides, to accustom them to this manner of being led. The wagons should be so driven as to keep the rope continually stretched. Good drivers must be assigned ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... we ran, a monster-crowd Stopp'd us, uttering vengeance loud; Giving nobles to the halter, Cursing England's throne and altar, Brandishing their pikes and staves. "Love," said Jane, "are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... the halter on the horse and shut the stable door. He came splashing back through the water, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... signed a decree still stranger for a king who was a protector of letters; he ordered the abolition of printing, that means of propagating heresies, and "forbade the printing of any book on pain of the halter." Six weeks later, however, on the 26th of February, he became ashamed of such an act, and suspended its execution indefinitely. Punishments in abundance preceded and accompanied the edicts; from the 10th of November, 1534, to the 3d of May, 1535, twenty-four heretics were burned ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the bellows at him, and Jan sauntered away toward the pasture with Pier's halter ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... Femme Orchestre in the Eure, there was no reason why Hermia shouldn't fit into her reputation as comfortably as she fitted into her post-humous garments. Clarissa, too, jogged along without her bridle, and Markham found little use for the goad he had whittled to save the use of the halter. The people on the road looked at them curiously, passed a rough jest, and sent them on the merrier. Markham had destroyed his road map and now they followed the patteran, leaving their destiny to fortune. In the late afternoon, on their way through a forest, Clarissa ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... then they speak, like somnambulists, wondrous things in sleep, and their words become the seeds of freedom. No one can foresee the turn which things may take. The splenetic Briton, weary of his wife, may put a halter round her neck and sell her in Smithfield. The flattering Frenchman may perhaps be untrue to his beloved bride and abandon her, and, singing, dance after the Court dames (courtisanes) of his royal palace (palais ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... De Aquila would give it me?" I said. "If I had told him I had spent my night in your halter he would have burned the ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... who were sighing for the flesh-pots of Egypt, never ordered a young Israelite boy whose father and mother had been bitten by the fiery serpents and died in the wilderness, to clear out of camp for not putting a halter on ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... jogged home with all this gold chinking in my pockets, I did feel that I had thrust my head fairly into a halter, and no chance left of drawing it out. Look at it how I might, this business wore a most curst aspect, to be sure; nor could I regard myself as ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... turned a greenish yellow. She must be eighteen years old, Claude reckoned, as he polished off her round, heavy haunches. He and Ralph used to ride her over to the Yoeders' when they were barefoot youngsters, guiding her with a rope halter, and kicking at the leggy colt ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... for the pony," said May, in her bed. But there was nothing in the box except a little red-silk rope, like a halter. She did not know what to do with it that night, but she did the next morning; for just as she was dressed her brother ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... "You'd have to halter the mare," said Eugene, "and drag her half the way and stand from under, or she'd trample you down the other." Eugene, although his words were strong, spoke quite softly, lowering his sweet tenor. From where they stood they could see Madelon moving to and fro behind the ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... those two made a tremendous noise, but only singed a few French beards off. Except, indeed, that a fine old horse, with a white Roman nose and a bright chestnut mane, who was living in a flat-bottomed boat, broke his halter, and rushed up to the bows, and gave vent to his amazement, as if he had been gifted ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... which I have elsewhere given some examples; and we further read of the Milesian virgins, that by a frantic compact they hanged themselves one after another till the magistrate took order in it, enacting that the bodies of such as should be found so hanged should be drawn by the same halter stark naked through the city. When Therykion tried to persuade Cleomenes to despatch himself, by reason of the ill posture of his affairs, and, having missed a death of more honour in the battle he had lost, to accept of this the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... leisurely, hind legs first, stretched one, then the other, curling his tail tight on his back as he did so, shook the hay from the great antlers as though they were a bunch of twigs, and slowly followed Sveggum at the end of the tight halter. He was so sleepy and slow that Borgrevinck impatiently gave him a kick, and got for response a short snort from the Buk, and from Sveggum an earnest warning, both of which were somewhat scornfully received. The tinkling bells ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... bridle she had none, her sole harness consisting of a halter with a leather rein on the right side, and a rug upon her back hardly kept in place by a loose girth. It seemed that she was of the Al Hamsa, which, being translated, means being a direct descendant of one of the five great mares of the time of Mohammed; also she was a two-year-old ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest

... years ago mob violence belched out its wrath against the men who dared to arraign the slaveholder before the bar of conscience and Christendom. Instead of golden showers upon his head, he who garrisoned the front had a halter around his neck. Since, if I may borrow the idea, the nation has caught the old inspiration from his lips and written it in the new organic world. Less than twenty-five years ago slavery clasped hands with King Cotton, and said slavery fights and cotton ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... the duty of a horseman, as we think, to have his groom trained thoroughly in all that concerns the treatment of the horse. In the first place, then, the groom should know that he is never to knot the halter (1) at the point where the headstall is attached to the horse's head. By constantly rubbing his head against the manger, if the halter does not sit quite loose about his ears, the horse will be constantly injuring himself; (2) and with sores so set up, it ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon

... Presently, in walked Abu Nowas and was about to take his usual seat, when the Caliph cried to Masrur, the sworder, and bade him strip the poet of his clothes and bind an ass's packsaddle on his back and a halter about his head and a crupper under his rump and lead him round to all the lodgings of the slave-girls, —And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased saying ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... of bread, and a side of beef, and drinks one hundred draughts of beer, unto this day. He knows how to restore the head that is smitten off; he knows how to cause the lion to follow him trailing his halter on the ground; he knows the designs of the dwelling of Tahuti. The majesty of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Khufu, the blessed, has long sought for the designs of the dwelling of Tahuti, that he may make the like ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie

... and a hundred and twenty curses, lifted up Rozinante—who if he had had a tongue would have complained louder than Sancho himself—and after much trouble set Don Quixote on the ass. Then tying Rozinante to his tail, he led the ass by the halter, and proceeded as best he could to where the ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)

... tomorrow; and the horses must come too, or we shall lose them. Nothing could live here through the night." Hastily, as he spoke, he threw off the horses' already light loads, leaving everything but his beloved "little gun" on the top of the dune, and dragging the halter of the leading beast, he started down the slope. Instantly on entering the dense growth I felt the effect of the scent, which was now, although the sun had barely disappeared, ten times stronger than it had been in the sunlight. No faint sweetness ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... farther to detain me at Elvas, I proceeded to cross the frontier into Spain. My idiot guide was on his way back to Aldea Gallega; and, on the fifth of January, I mounted a sorry mule without bridle or stirrups, which I guided by a species of halter, and followed by a lad who was to attend me on another, I spurred down the hill of Elvas to the plain, eager to arrive in old chivalrous romantic Spain. But I soon found that I had no need to quicken the beast which bore me, for though covered ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... safe, for the Zulus had not seen them. Now, of course, they were our only means of locomotion, for the oxen had been sent away, and even had they been there we could not have found time to inspan them. I laid Tota down, caught my horse, undid his knee halter, and saddled up. As I was doing so a thought struck me, and I told Indaba-zimbi to run to the laager and see if he could find my double-barrelled gun and some powder and shot, for I had only my elephant "roer" and a few charges of powder and ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard

... I had made camp back in the woods of Pennsylvania, the doing of it now was new. For this was not play; it was the real thing, and it made the old camping seem tame. I took the saddle off Hal and tied him with my lasso, making as long a halter as possible. Slipping the pack from the pony was an easier task than the getting it back again was likely to prove. Next I broke open a box of cartridges and loaded the Winchester. My revolver was already loaded, and hung on my belt. ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... retorted Simon, "but I tremble at no such thing; only, as I have already remarked, I have no particular ambition for being honoured wi' the exaltation o' the halter; and, moreover, I see no cause why a man should die unnecessarily, or where death can be avoided. Sir Gideon," added he, "humble prisoner as I at this moment am, and in your power, I leave it to you if ever ye saw ony thing in my conduct in the field o' battle (and ye have seen me there) that could ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... horse property the average Tommy holds vague moral views. That cart had to be brought into camp by night, and there was only one way in which it could be done. I rode about for ten minutes, and found an old framework so thin and so dejected that I blushed when I put the halter on it; it had been abandoned on account of lameness, from which it had recovered, and had since been starving. They harnessed it up and it brought in the cart; and that night, being given a good feed of oats, it died from shock. Another skeleton was found in the morning to ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... Emperor of Rome until they are spent. For such a person to lose his money is to suffer the most shocking reverse, and fall from heaven to hell, from all to nothing, in a breath. And all the more if he has put his head in the halter for it; if he may be hanged to-morrow for that same purse so dearly earned, so foolishly departed! Villon stood and cursed; he threw the two whites into the street; he shook his fist at heaven; he stamped, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... eyes and looked about. I was not dangling in the air overhead, but standing on the threshing-floor, with a bit of broken halter about my neck. The rope had played traitor and given way without even chafing ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... plough graith and harrow teeth! and why not grates and fire prongs, and Culross girdles, and an ass to carry the merchandise through the country, and thou for another ass to lead it by the halter? Why, Catharine, girl, has sense altogether forsaken thee, or dost thou think that in these hard and iron days men will give ready silver for anything save that which can defend their own life, or enable them ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... founder of one of the longest-lived dynasties of Strassburg printers, who were issuing books from 1535 to 1639; their eighteen Marks have all the same subject, awinged figure of Sophrosyne, holding in one hand a rule, and in the other a bridle and halter. Of Thiebold Berger, who appears to have been in business from 1551-1584, very little is known, either of his books or his personality; his Mark is, however, pretty, and unique, so far as Strassburg is concerned. Lazarus Zetzner and his successors, whose works date ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts

... were bare in list slippers. And this was the groom in knee-britches with whom she had to be content! His work done, he did not come back again all day, for Charles on his return put up his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... think? they have got wires up now that run over the street to the police office, and Little can ring a bell in Ransome's room, and bring the bobbies across with a rush in a moment. It isn't as it was under the old chief constable; this one's not to be bought nor blinded. I must risk a halter." ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... and brightness of the Applegate road there emerged the large figure of a young man, who led a handsome grey mare by the halter. As he moved against the coloured screen of the leaves something of the beauty of the desolate landscape showed in his face—the look of almost autumnal sadness that one finds, occasionally, in the eyes of the imaginative rustic. He wore a pair of sheepskin leggins into which ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... foes: no, no— nothing can deliver me of this man but Death. And—and—" added Gawtrey, turning pale, "I cannot murder a man who eats my bread. There are stronger ties, my lad, than affection, that bind men, like galley-slaves, together. He who can hang you puts the halter round your neck and leads you ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... it! The halter is on me! It's no use squealing. If it's to be a red head on my pillow! . . . All right! I must only make the best of it. Anyhow I'll have a good time to-day, even if it must be ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... time a man of 66, named Dalissier, living at Congis, was ordered by the Germans to give up his purse to them. When he proved unable to give them any money, he was tied up with a halter and ruthlessly shot. The marks of about fifteen bullets were found on ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... shade; it was used as a race-course; and the three horses were going down to run a Carriera or race. Four horses were to run bare-backed, their riders being well used to dispense with saddles, and managing to guide them with a rope halter in lieu of bridle. The purse was four scudi, (four dollars.) Two horses were to run at a time, and the race was then to be run off by ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... beast of the plebeian breed, thick at every point where he should be thin, and thin at every point where he should be thick, is not one of those noble objects that bewitch the world. The best horsemen outside of the cities are the unshod country-boys, who ride "bare-backed," with only a halter round the horse's neck, digging their brown heels into his ribs, and slanting over backwards, but sticking on like leeches, and taking the hardest trot as if they loved it. This was a different sight on which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various



Words linked to "Halter" :   running noose, two-winged insects, harness, dipteran, gallows, hang, bound, rope, noose, headgear, wing, trammel, string up, dipterous insect, dipteron, throttle, slip noose, confine, top, restrict, restrain, limit



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