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Rip van Winkle   /rɪp væn wˈɪŋkəl/   Listen
Rip van Winkle

noun
1.
A person oblivious to social changes.
2.
A person who sleeps a lot.
3.
The title character in a story by Washington Irving about a man who sleeps for 20 years and doesn't recognize the world when he wakens.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Rip van Winkle" Quotes from Famous Books



... out of the fact that the people have a more healthy look, seem more polite, and that the buildings have a more substantial appearance than those he had formerly looked upon, he has only to imagine, as did Rip Van Winkle, that he has ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... Dutch lad—Rip Van Winkle, as I call him—who was wrecked with me, and our faithful dog Snarley. They set off this morning to bring in a couple of goats to be sacrificed for your entertainment. I saw you coming in last night, and I suspected that you were an English ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... good thing to give thanks unto the Lord. 5. We require clothing in the summer to protect the body from the heat of the sun. 6. Rip Van Winkle could not account for everything's having changed so. 7. This sentence is not too difficult for me to analyze. 8. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, 9. Conscience, her first law broken, wounded lies. 10. To be, or not to be,—that is the question. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... that the tale of Rip Van Winkle, given in the Sketch-Book, has been discovered by divers writers in magazines to have been founded on a little German tradition, and the matter has been revealed to the world as if it were a foul instance of plagiarism marvellously ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... broad, well-paved streets, Tom persisted in his Rip Van Winkle pose. The waterfront perplexed him. Where he had once anchored his sloop in a dozen feet of water, he found solid land and railroad yards, with wharves ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... president of the club, was in the chair. There was some fine speeches, and a splendid display of wit and repartee. On entering the room, my attention was attracted by the drop-scene on the stage representing the Catskill Mountains in America. The members had given a rendering of "Rip Van Winkle," previous to my leaving for England. The scene was a daub of colours with a hole cut in the sky, to which a piece of calico had been affixed at the back to represent either the sun or the moon, I forget which. On returning thanks ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... to tell you. We were on the island-the girls and I— and I got a little away from them when suddenly the wildest looking man rushed across the path. He had a beard like Rip Van Winkle and looked ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose

... dozen different ways for me to use in my stories. And whenever I read a story to her, she always laughs and cries in the right places; and that's such a comfort, for there are some people that think everything pitiable is so funny, and will burst out laughing when poor Rip Van Winkle—you've seen Mr. Jefferson, haven't you?—is breaking your heart for you if you have one. Sometimes she takes a poem I have written and reads it to me so beautifully, that I fall in love with it, and sometimes she sets my verses to music and sings ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... led up to my ultimately becoming a full-fledged secret service operator. Born in the green foot-hills of the Catskill Mountains (near where Rip Van Winkle dozed), I learned my "A B abs" in the little brown school house at Cornwallville. Father died when I was four years old. Mother traded the farm for some New York tenements, and we all located there, when I was ten years old. I attended the public schools where I was properly "hazed" and ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith

... Tom Tinkle, who went to sleep like Rip Van Winkle, and slept for thirty years; he woke the other day, and gazing around him on the sights amazing, his soul was filled ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... these tone pictures is entitled "In the Hall of the Mountain King." It relates to an episode in Peer Gynt's life when, in exploring the mountain, he came upon one of the original owners of the country, quite in the manner that happened later to Rip Van Winkle in the Catskills of New York. The gnome took him into the cavern in the mountain where his people had their home, and it is the queer and uncanny music of these humorous and prankish people that Grieg has brought out in this closing movement of the suite. It is a rapid, dance-like ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... histrionically rapt in his representation of an actor who had just taken a piece from a young dramatist. "If you can realize that part as you've sketched it to me," he said, finally, "I will play it exclusively, as Jefferson does Rip Van Winkle. There are immense capabilities in the piece. Yes, sir; that thing will ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... amiably. "He goes round holdin' Rip Van Winkle Keredec's hand when the ole man's cryin'; helpin' him sneak his trunks off t' Paris—playin' the hired man gener'ly. Oh, he thinks he's quite the boy, ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... most conspicuous of these was one invented by the Rev. Patrick Bell, of Scotland. Of the half a score or more and previous inventors in Great Britain—Boyce, Plunknett, Gladstone of Castle Douglass, Salmon of Waburn, Smith of Deanston in Perthshire, etc., etc.—none were waked up from their Rip Van Winkle slumbers; or if they were, the world is not advised of it. They all used revolving scythes, revolving cutters, or shears instead. Several trials were made with Bell's in 1828 or 1829; and a very full and minute description with plates, was published some ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various

... over; but as these pages are about an old-world land, a land that like Rip van Winkle has been sleeping, we may perhaps be allowed to predict that, having at last wakened from her long slumber, Suomi will rise to distinction, for this younger generation of Finlanders, as Ibsen says, is now "knocking at the door" of nations. Finnish ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... look on the venerable Mr. Tranto as a back number, and I suspect that Mr. Tranto in his turn regards me as prehistoric; and yet you are so behind the times as to imagine that the first duty of modern Governments is to govern! My dear Rip van Winkle, wake up. The first duty of a Government is to live. It has no right to be a Government at all unless it is convinced that if it fell the country would go to everlasting smash. Hence its first duty is to survive. In order to survive it ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett

... good of her that's got her in. And I believe you and Florence both would give your best boots to be there too, if it is behind. Behind the fixings and the fashions is where people live; 'dere's vat I za-ay!'" she ended, quoting herself and Rip Van Winkle. ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney



Words linked to "Rip van Winkle" :   diehard, traditionalist, fictional character, fictitious character, sleeper, character, slumberer



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