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Tuft   /təft/   Listen
Tuft

noun
1.
A bunch of hair or feathers or growing grass.  Synonym: tussock.
2.
A bunch of feathers or hair.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Tuft" Quotes from Famous Books



... down among the rank gray grass and heather, while the moor cock called to his mate in an agony of pleading passion, the lapwing crooned upon a tuft of grass as she prepared a place for her eggs, the whaup wheepled and twirled and cried in eerie alarm, the plover sighed to a low white cloud wandering past; while the snipe and the lark, the "mossie," ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... long downy hairs, which render the fruits very light and readily carried by the wind. The name bulrush is more correctly applied to Scirpus lacustris, a member of a different family (Cyperaceae), a common plant in wet places, with tall spongy, usually leafless stems, bearing a tuft of many-flowered spikelets. The stems are used for matting, &c. The bulrush of Scripture, associated with the hiding of Moses, was the Papyrus (q.v.), also a member of the order Cyperaceae, which was abundant ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... by the hand; and all incline reverently to the laurel tree, which they encompass, singing of love, and dancing. Soon, preceded by a band of minstrels, out of the open field comes a lusty company of knights and ladies in green, crowned with chaplets of flowers; and they do reverence to a tuft of flowers in the middle of the meadow, while one of their number sings a bergerette in praise of the daisy. But now it is high noon; the sun waxes fervently hot; the flowers lose their beauty, and wither with the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... was younger. Now he has started, I am afraid he will repeat the experiment, he has had such a good time to-day. It just makes me want to whip him!" And Mrs. Adams glared out at the unconscious Job who was quietly cropping a tuft of green grass. ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray

... his lungs. Thoas came close up to him, pulled the spear out of his chest, and then drawing his sword, smote him in the middle of the belly so that he died; but he did not strip him of his armour, for his Thracian comrades, men who wear their hair in a tuft at the top of their heads, stood round the body and kept him off with their long spears for all his great stature and valour; so he was driven back. Thus the two corpses lay stretched on earth near to one another, the one captain of the Thracians and the other of ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... day, that the heart lies to the left. Thirdly, note that the pendent straws, which hang down from the rope at regular intervals, in tufts, like fringing, must be of different numbers according to the place of the tufts, beginning with the number three: so that the first tuft has three straws, the second live, the third seven, the fourth again three, the fifth five, and the sixth seven—and so on, the whole length of the rope. The origin of the pendent paper cuttings (gohei), which ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... and friend of poets, if thy glass Detects no flower in winter's tuft of grass, Let this slight token of the debt I owe Outlive for thee December's frozen day, And, like the arbutus budding under snow, Take bloom and fragrance from some morn of May When he who gives it shall have gone the way Where faith shall see ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... very strong, with ivory teeth and gills upon either side, which rose and fell whenever breath passed through them. The nose was like the beak of the vulture. A tuft of porcupine-quills made the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous

... twinkling blue eyes were still considering Rosamund somewhat searchingly, his fingers tugging thoughtfully at his short tuft of ashen-coloured beard. Then he turned to the door. "Come in, gentlemen," he said, "and bid ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... Quesnel had turned from the house when it was let, without any provision. Understanding that she lived in a cottage at no great distance, Emily walked thither, and, on approaching, was pleased to see, that her habitation was pleasantly situated on a green slope, sheltered by a tuft of oaks, and had an appearance of comfort and extreme neatness. She found the old woman within, picking vine-stalks, who, on perceiving her young mistress, was nearly overcome ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... lingering fast, With those who had fallen for that night's repast. And Alp knew by the turbans that rolled on the sand, The foremost of these were the best of his band. Crimson and green were the shawls of their wear, And each scalp had a single long tuft of hair, All the rest was shaven and bare. The scalps were in the wild dogs' maw, The hair was tangled round his jaw. But close by the shore on the edge of the gulf, There sat a vulture flapping a wolf, Who had stolen from the hills but kept away, Scared by the dogs from the ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... absent in epileptics. On the other hand, it is common in insane females and in normal women after the menopause. Degenerates of both sexes frequently manifest characteristics of the opposite sex in the distribution of hair on the body. A tuft of hair in the sacro-lumbar region, suggestive of the tail of the mythological faun, is frequently found in epileptics and idiots, and in some cases the back and breast are covered with thick down which makes ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero

... the prowess of the 'champions' and the 'striking and jovial personality' of Sir Morton Pippitt. And if the fact of that 'striking and jovial personality' were not properly insisted upon, Sir Morton went himself to see the editor of the 'Riversford Gazette,' an illiterate tuft-hunting little man,—and nearly frightened him into fits. He had asserted himself in this kind of autocratic fashion ever since he had purchased Badsworth, when he was still in his forties,—and it may be well imagined ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... they did, the little tuft of wild flowers pleased Christie better than the fairest bouquet of hothouse exotics could ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson

... Musical instruments and books of musical instruction were rare. I have told the deplorable condition of church music in "The Sabbath in Puritan New England." A feeling of revolt rose in ministers and congregation. In 1712 Rev. Mr. Tuft's music-book appeared. The first organ came to Boston about 1711. The first concert of which I have read was advertised thus in the New England Weekly Journal of December ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... handkerchief, prepared to mop her eyes. As she did so she was attracted by something that glittered not far off. She stretched out her hand and drew Miss Tredgold's thimble from where it had rolled under a tuft of dock-leaves. A sudden burst of pleasure escaped her lips as she glanced at the thimble. She had not seen it before. It certainly was the most beautiful thimble she had ever looked at. She put it on the tip of her second finger and turned it round and round. The thimble itself was made of ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade

... use the Mongol language among themselves. They dress like the Russians, or very nearly so, the most distinguishing feature being a sort of skull cap like that worn by the Chinese. Their hair is cut like a prize fighter's, excepting a little tuft on the crown. Out of doors they wore the Russian cap over their Mohammedan one—unconsciously symbolizing their ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... Navarre also was a true lover of the open. Born in a mountain town in the Pyrenees he would rather camp on a bed of pine needles in the forest than lie on a tuft of down. He preferred his beloved Bayonne ham, spiced with garlic, to a sumptuous dinner in Jarnet house, a famous Paris tavern of the day; and had rather quench his thirst with a quaff of the wine of Jurancon than the finest cru in ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... him from head to foot: "Now but for that little tuft on your chin I should take you for a girl; and by the finger-nails of St. Luke, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... hatchet you take in the whole situation at a glance. The little stream is gurgling downward in a half choked frozen way. There is a huge sodden hemlock lying across it. One clip of the hatchet shows it will peel. There is plenty of smaller timber standing around; long, slim poles, with a tuft of foliage on top. Five minutes suffice to drop one of these, cut a twelve-foot pole from it, sharpen the pole at each end, jam one end into the ground and the other into the rough back of a scraggy hemlock and ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears

... pebbles milky white, Poor Cynthia greeted him, and sooth'd her light Against his pallid face: he felt the charm To breathlessness, and suddenly a warm Of his heart's blood: 'twas very sweet; he stay'd His wandering steps, and half-entranced laid His head upon a tuft of straggling weeds, 110 To taste the gentle moon, and freshening beads, Lashed from the crystal roof by fishes' tails. And so he kept, until the rosy veils Mantling the east, by Aurora's peering hand Were lifted from the water's breast, ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... The days of Mr. Moore's follies are long since over; and, as he is a thorough gentleman, he must necessarily entertain the greatest contempt for such an under-bred person as Leigh Hunt. But Lord Byron! How must the haughty spirit of Lara and Harold contemn the subaltern sneaking of our modern tuft-hunter. The insult which he offered to Lord Byron in the dedication of Rimini,—in which he, a paltry cockney newspaper scribbler, had the assurance to address one of the most nobly-born of English Patricians, and one of the first ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... thawed, and went cheerfully ahead of us, as I was very glad to see. Dennis saw it too, but only to relapse into mischief. He held me back, as Alister strode in front, and putting out his thumb and finger, so close to a tuft of hay-coloured hair that stood cocked defiantly up on the Scotchman's crown that I was in all the agony he meant me to be for fear of detection, he chattered in my ear, "Jack, did ye ever study physiognomy, or any of the science of externals? Look at this independent tuft. Isn't the ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... preventing an inconvenient rush of literary tuft-hunters and sight-seers thither next summer, a fictitious name must be bestowed upon the town of the Ritualistic church. Let it stand in these pages as Bumsteadville. Possibly it was not known to the ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various

... such as poppy and candy-tuft, are early blooming, while others, such as aster and cosmos, bloom in late summer, hence a selection should be made that will yield a succession of bloom throughout ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, 60 With light loose hair, yet swarthy skin, No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great grandsire, Starting up at the Trump of Doom's tone, Had walked ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... quickly crawled back into the draw where the black mare patiently awaited him. Leading her, he started cautiously down, taking advantage of every tuft of cover until, arrived at the foot of the draw, he discovered that some oaks effectually screened his quarry from sight. Reasoning quite correctly that the same oaks as effectually screened him from his quarry, Pablo mounted and galloped ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... table and through a scattering huddle of newspaper reporters, stepping on the balls of his feet as lightly as a puss-cat, emerged Major Putnam Stone. His sleeves were turned back off his wrists and his vest flared open. His head was thrust forward so that the tuft of goatee on his chin stuck straight out ahead of him like a little burgee in a fair breeze. His face was all a clear, bright, glowing pink; and in his right hand he held one of the longest cavalry revolvers that ever was made, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... flowery hints foresay the berry, On spray of haw and tuft of brier, Then, wandering incendiary, You set the ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... TUFT HUNTER. A it anniversary parasite, one who courts the acquaintance of nobility, whose caps are adorned with a ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... should be tenderly hidden by those who are near. The bees kept very beesy all about us. To see one huge fellow, as big as three ordinary ones with pieces of red and yellow about him, as if he were the beadle of all bee-dom, and overgrown in consequence—to see him, I say, down in a little tuft of white clover, rolling about in it, hardly able to move for fatness, yet bumming away as if his business was to express the delight of the whole creation—was a sight! Then there were the butterflies, so light that ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... bank, but which is now nearly the centre of the stream. Our river in its present state has quite a noble breadth. The little hillock which formed the abutment of the old bridge is now an island with its tuft of trees. Along the hither shore a row of trees stand up to their knees, and the smaller ones to their middles, in the water; and afar off, on the surface of the stream, we see tufts of bushes emerging, thrusting up their heads, as it were, to breathe. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... first visit. The former Fraeulein, now Frau, Frederike presented him, once more addressing him as 'lieber Herr Jacob,' to her husband, who was all splendour from top to toe; his eyes, his black hair brushed up into a tuft, his forehead and his teeth, and his coat buttons, and the chain on his waistcoat, everything, down to the boots on his rather large, turned-out feet, shone brilliantly. Pasinkov pressed Herr Kniftus's hand, and wished him ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... gathered up into a top-knot, black flashing eyes, and a bold expressive mouth, slight of build, but muscular and supple. His dress was rustic, but simple almost to affectation; you would not have found a seal on his white bulging shirt, search as you might, and he wore his cap, with a tuft of meadow-sweet in it, as gallantly as ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... clearly into our heads. Fig. 2, A, is a little tuft of a common wood moss of Norway,[10] in its fruit season, of its real size; but at present I want to look at the central fibre and its leaves accurately, and understand ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... large, light, scantily furnished room, a man with a great silver star on the breast of his light-blue tunic sat at a table, bent over a map. He had rather sparse gray hair and a gray mustache and a little tuft of gray below the lower lip. His eyes were sunken and tired-looking, as though from lack of sleep, and his face and forehead were deeply lined, but he gave the impression, nevertheless, of possessing immense vitality and energy. He was a broad-shouldered, solidly built, ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... scarcely would be any snow remaining round Kolyutschin Bay. The illusions caused by the white fog illuminated by the sunlight were very astonishing. Every small spot of ground appeared as an extensive snow-free field, every tuft of grass as a bush, and a fox in our immediate neighbourhood was for a moment taken for a gigantic bear. Besides, during such a fog the action of the sunlight on the eyes was exceedingly painful even in the case of those who carried ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... most certain way of determining this fact is to pull out the center leaves of each pineapple that is chosen. As shown in Fig. 16, grasp the pineapple with one hand and then with the other pull out, one at a time, several of the center leaves of the tuft at the top. If the fruit is ripe a sharp jerk will usually remove each leaf readily, but the harder the leaves pull, the ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... one of them. Our first writers, it seems, were Lord Chesterfield, Lord Bath, Mr. W. Whithed, Sir Charles Williams, Mr. Soame Jenyns, Mr. Cambridge, Mr. Coventry. Of these seven personages, Whithed was the lowest in station, but was the most accomplished tuft-hunter of his time. Coventry was of a noble family. The other five had among them two seats in the House of Lords, two seats in the House of Commons, three seats in the Privy Council, a baronetcy, a blue riband, a red riband, about a hundred thousand pounds a year, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... with so rich and delicate a blush,—such superb hyacinths and such aromatic pinks,—and many others, some of which seemed to be of new shapes and colors. Two or three times, moreover, she could not help thinking that a tuft of most splendid flowers had suddenly sprouted out of the earth before her very eyes, as if on purpose to tempt her a few steps farther. Proserpina's apron was soon filled and brimming over with delightful blossoms. She was on the point of turning back in order to rejoin the sea-nymphs, ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... and stones, on sea-weeds or on floating logs, there may often be observed a growth of exquisitely delicate branches, looking at first sight more like a small bunch of moss than anything else. But gather such a mossy tuft and place it in a glass bowl filled with sea-water, and you will presently find that it is full of life and activity. Every branch of this miniature shrub terminates in a little club-shaped head, upon which are scattered a number of tentacles. They are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... shaped blossom of a rich scarlet. The sassafras is a beautiful shrub, and I cannot imagine why it has not been naturalized in England, for it has every appearance of being extremely hardy. The leaves grow in tufts, and every tuft contains leaves of five or six different forms. The fruit is singularly beautiful; it resembles in form a small acorn, and is jet black; the cup and stem looking as if they were made of red coral. The graceful ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... had quite spoiled my new clothes, having worn them nearly three weeks, I was suited afresh in a formal attire—a long coat of pepper and salt, yellow leather breeches tied at the knees, a worsted cap with a tuft on the top of it, stockings and shoes to match, and a large pewter plate upon my breast, marked with Number 63, which, as I was the last entered boy, indicated the sum total of the school. It was with regret that I left the abode of the Drummonds, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... man who had spoken removing his hat. Curly locks of dark hair, with now a sprinkle of silver in them, fell upon his brows. He had large brown eyes, a mouth firm and well modelled, a nose slightly aquiline, and wore a small, dark imperial—a mere tuft ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... successful and victorious knight, Prince Baldwin. First, she dazzles him in blue and silver, with a rich turban; then appears in purple satin, fringed and looped with gold, with white feathers in her hair; next, in green silk and emeralds; anon, in pale straw-color, with a tuft of flowers; next, in pink and silver, with varied plumes, white, carnation, and blue; then, in brown, with a splendid crescent. As the fortunate Prince beholds each transformation, he is bewildered (as well he may be) to choose which array becomes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... knew every foot of the mountains from long association. But Beppi was not to be seen, nor was Garibaldi. Lucia stopped, discouraged. Fear and helplessness were getting the better of her, and she would most likely have given way to the tears she so despised had her eye not caught sight of a tuft of fur on the ground. She seized upon it eagerly. It was without doubt part ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent

... contempt for the snobbishness of chasing a tuft that actuates their bosoms, I am no longer apprehensive that their affection for this present writer will be at all impaired by the revelation that he is merely a member of nature's nobility. ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... white, this last color forming a thin ring, running in a long line around the slope. And then? Nothing. Bare, brown, hard earth, glittering with grains of alkali, but otherwise dead and barren. Not a tuft of grass, not a stick of brushwood, not even a stone, but only the vast expanse ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... chair and rested her hands on its arms. From the garden below the night wind brought soft fragrance of lilacs and crepe-myrtle, of bleeding-heart and wall-flower, of cow-slips and candy-tuft, and as they blew in and out, like the touch of unseen hands, they stirred old memories—made that which was ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... mostly derived from her imagination, aided by a school geography, the ground was fairly honeycombed with entrances to the abodes of these reptiles, and I fully expected to find them festooning trees, bushes, and fences, lying in wait within every tuft of grass, and in fact making my life one hideous, ...
— Six Days on the Hurricane Deck of a Mule - An account of a journey made on mule back in Honduras, - C.A. in August, 1891 • Almira Stillwell Cole

... the oriole matters came, as come it must, and not long after the war-dance that has been described. The season was advanced and nesting time already begun. In fact, it was ended in several families; mocking-birds were about ready to fly, young chipping sparrows peeped from every tuft of grass, baby bluebirds were trying their wings at their doors, the yellow-throated warbler was stuffing her youngsters on the next tree, and the late kingbirds had nearly finished their nests. Whether a pitched ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... expressed in the lineaments of his face. How much the constant use of oatmeal could produce such an effect, was plainly visible in the countenances of McGibbet and his lady-love. Both had an unmistakable equine cast; McGibbet, wild, scraggy, and scrubby, with a tuft on his poll that would not have been out of place between the ears of a plough-horse, stared at us, just as such an animal would naturally over the top of a fence; while his gentle mate, who had more of the amiable draught-horse in her aspect, winked at us ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... she was walking through a great, great wood, she felt tired, and sat down on a mossy tuft and fell asleep. Then she dreamt that she went deeper and deeper into the wood, till she came to a little wooden hut, and there she found her brothers. Just then she awoke, and straight before her she saw a worn path in the green moss. This ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen

... work which lacks this universal element and expresses only something personal. All the personal and particular majesty of a portrait of Louis XIV. by Lebrun or by Rigaud shall be as nothing beside the simplicity of a tuft of grass shining clear ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various

... watchers. They made no noise, but I could have sworn to the truth of my notion. Ringan, whose senses were keener than mine, would stop every now and again and raise his hand as if in signal. At one place we halted dead for five minutes, and at another he dismounted and cut a tuft of sumach, which he laid over his saddle. Then at the edge of a thicket he stopped again, and held up both hands above his head. Instantly a tall Indian stepped from the cover, saluted, and walked by our side. In five minutes more we rounded ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... had a gravelly bottom; all of them except Elsa, who remained on the boat to keep watch. Following otter-paths through the thick rushes they came to the centre of the islet, some thirty yards away. Here, at a spot which Martha ascertained by a few hurried pacings, grew a dense tuft of reeds. In the midst of these reeds was a duck's nest with the young just hatching out, off which the old ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf; it clung convulsively, and it called—but nobody seemed to hear. Then the roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over, its two little hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... Greek name, Daucus Carota, but it once had a prettier name. The Anglo-Saxons called it "bird's-nest," and Gerard gives us the reason, and it is a reason that shows they were more observant of the habits of plants than we generally give them credit for: "The whole tuft (of flowers) is drawn together when the seed is ripe, resembling a bird's nest; whereupon it hath been named of ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... painted the picture of a bony mule eating a tuft of hay. That picture sold in Petersburg, Russia, for fifteen thousand dollars, while the original mule sold for one dollar and thirty cents. If the painting of Schriner made in the price of that mule, ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... reefing the mainsail and sweating it up—probably not more than fifteen minutes; but the felucca had in the meantime so shortened the distance between us that I now saw the tuft of hair on the heads of the crew,—by which, it is said, Mohammed will pull the villains up into heaven,—and they were coming on like the wind. From what I could clearly make out now, I felt them to be ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... from factories and steam vessels overhangs the busy town and port of Drogheda. On the Meath side of the Boyne, the ground, still all corn, grass, flowers, and foliage, rises with a gentle swell to an eminence surmounted by a conspicuous tuft of ash trees which overshades the ruined church and desolate ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... notice the golden oats; but doubtless he recollects the anecdote of the horse mistaking a lady's hat with a tuft of oats for a moving manger stocked ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various

... writers who depict boys as worshipers of wealth, and many pictures have been drawn of the slights and indignities to which boys, whose means are inferior to those of their schoolfellows, are subject. I am happy to believe that this is a libel. There are, it is true, toadies and tuft hunters among boys as among men. That odious creature, the parasite of the Greek and Latin plays, exists still, but I do not believe that a boy is one whit the less liked, or is ever taunted with his poverty, provided he is a good fellow. ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... further, a drove of wild red cattle, which were first taken for deer, were seen bounding to the westward. They were what the Arabs called, bugra hammar wahash (red cow wild.) They appeared to partake of the bullock and buffalo, with a tuft ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... night full of danger and lonely horror. Everywhere stood piles of peats set up to dry, with many openings through and through, windy drains to gather and remove their moisture. Here and there was a tuft of dry grass, a bush of heather, or a few slender-stalked, hoary heads of CANNACH or cotton-grass; it was a land of devoted desolation, doing nothing for itself, this bountiful store of life and warmth for the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... smooth, being usually thickly covered with fibrous matter known as raw cotton. As is well known, the wind performs a very important function in the dispersal of seeds. It is clear that when a seed is ready to be set free, and is provided by a tuft of hair, such as is seen on the cotton seed, dandelion and willow herb, it becomes a very easy matter for it to be carried ever so far, when a good breeze is blowing. Most of us have blown, when children, at the crown of white feathery matter in the dandelion, ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... A tuft o' the broom was knotted wi' tow, An' a rag on't fluttered free, While he shook his heid owre some ferlies there, That I'm bathered if I could see, Though I kent my soul was sib to his ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie

... their shallow orbits like an adder's, looked about and all around the place, as he stroked the dense brake of black-brown beard that cleverly filled in the interval between Mr. Van Busch's luxuriant whiskers. Presently he stooped and picked up a little tan-leather glove, lying in a tuft of pink flowers. The daintiness of the little glove brought home to Bough more forcibly than anything else, that the Kid ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... small, dense tuft of hair: the bristles or stiff hairs covering the inner side of basal joint on ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... Local Government Board had been rather suspected of tuft-hunting recently, and his appearance in the stump orator's role, and in the cause of disarmament, was wonderfully popular. In his long career as Labour agitator, Socialist, and Radical, he had learned to know the popular pulse remarkably ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... arm of his chair; the thick white hair on his massive head glistened in the light from a green-shaded lamp. He was not asleep, for every now and then his sanguine cheeks filled, and a sound, half sigh, half grunt, escaped his thick lips between a white moustache and the tiny tuft of white hairs above his cleft chin. Sunk in the chair, that square thick trunk of a body in short black-braided coat seemed divested ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... awe by a sort of austere decision of mien; me, she still watched, still tried by the most ingenious tests—she roved round me, baffled, yet persevering; I believe she thought I was like a smooth and bare precipice, which offered neither jutting stone nor tree-root, nor tuft of grass to aid the climber. Now she flattered with exquisite tact, now she moralized, now she tried how far I was accessible to mercenary motives, then she disported on the brink of affection—knowing ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... sat on a tuft of grass, eating something that looked very nice; but, all of a sudden, she dropped her bowl, and ran away, looking very ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... with feathers, as we see with the laced and frizzled breeds both of fowls and pigeons. In the common cock the feathers on the neck and loins are always of a particular shape, called hackles: now in the Polish breed, both sexes are characterised by a tuft of feathers on the head; but through correlation these feathers in the male always assume the form of hackles. The wing and tail-feathers, though arising from parts not homologous, vary in length together; so that long or short winged pigeons generally have ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... it first in the slanting light of a redly setting August sun; the little tuft of green shrubbery that crests its summit was black against the crimson of sea and sky, and its colossal base of grey stone gleamed like ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... perhaps a puppy. I sat down on a chair, and the old woman stood up directly facing me. Her face was yellow, half-transparent like wax; her lips were so fallen in that they formed a single straight line in the midst of a multitude of wrinkles; a tuft of white hair stuck out from below the kerchief on her head, but the sunken grey eyes peered out alertly and cleverly from under the bony overhanging brow; and the sharp nose fairly stuck out like a spindle, fairly sniffed the air as if it would say: I'm a smart one! 'Well, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... that nightmare with a sergeant who had returned from the service in India." This friend amongst other things had mentioned that whenever they were about to bivouac they had to search every hole under a stone and every tuft of grass to see that there were no snakes there. This, which had been received as an ordinary item of information, had been the stimulus which had set his memory mechanism into action and the nightmare between two and three o'clock in the ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... eddied past, dark and heavy, sweeping over bulwark and bank. The low-stemmed alders that rose on islet and mound seemed shorn of half their trunks in the tide; here and there an elastic branch bent to the current, and rose and bent again; and now a tuft of withered heath came floating down, and now a soiled wreath of foam. How vividly the past rose up before me!—boyish day-dreams forgotten for twenty years,—the fossils of an early formation of mind, produced at a period when the atmosphere of feeling was warmer ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... and the plainness of his accoutrements, would have denoted to a careless eye. He rode very slowly; and his steed, with the licence of a spoiled favourite, often halted lazily in his sultry path, as a tuft of herbage, or the bough of some overhanging tree, offered its temptation. At length, as he thus paused, a noise was heard in a copse that clothed the descent of a steep mountain; and the horse started suddenly back, forcing the traveller from his reverie. He looked ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... refreshment for the body. He was a tall, thin, young man, with long straggling hair, a fierce eye, very thick lips, and a flat nose,—a nose which seemed to be all nostril;—and then, below his mouth was a tuft of beard, which he called an imperial. It was the glory of Ontario Moggs to be a politician;—it was his ambition to be a poet;—it was his nature to be a lover;—it was his disgrace to be a bootmaker. Dependent ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... the point where the scouts were leaving, I decided to follow close behind them, on the chance of getting some good scenes. Strapping my camera on my back, and pushing a tuft of grass under the strap, to disguise it as much as possible if viewed from the front, I crawled after them. One may think that crawling on the sand is easy; well, all I can say to those who think so is, "Try it." I soon found it was not so easy as it looked, especially under conditions where ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... in her barouche, and we were glad that she wore one of her handsome black silks instead of her sensible short costume. There was a good deal of jet about the waist, and her bonnet was all made of jet, with a beautiful tuft of pink roses on the front, and she glittered resplendently as she rode past, sitting up very straight, as befitted the dignity ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... thoughts concerning her future, she mechanically stretched out her hand to pluck a bunch of phlox and of lemon-hued primroses that were nodding in the sunshine close to her feet; but, as she touched the stems, a large copper-colored snake slowly uncoiled from the tuft of grass where they nestled and, gliding into the water, disappeared in the ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... to grow dark, and I experienced a fearful anguish in discovering on the crest of a little rock two enormous eyes, which looked fixedly at me. Then a little farther, near a tuft of seaweed, two more of these fixed eyes. I saw no body to these beings—nothing but the eyes. I thought for a minute that I was losing my senses, and I bit my tongue till the blood came; then I pulled violently at the rope, as I had agreed to ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... was early astir, oiling his limbs and enameling his breast and arms with red and blue, resembling the plumage in which he had first appeared to Minda. Upon his brow he placed a tuft of feathers of ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews

... (calpulli) had an official head, or sachem, called the calpullec; and also a military commander called the ahcacautin, or "elder brother." The ahcacautin was also a kind of peace officer, or constable, for the precinct occupied by the clan, and carried about with him a staff of office; a tuft of white feathers attached to this staff betokened that his errand was one of death. The clan elected its calpullec and ahcacautin, and could depose them ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... Francisco, and a regular habitue of all its public places. In person he was stout, full-chested, though slightly stooped, with a large head heavily coated with bushy black hair, an aquiline nose, and dark gray eyes, whose mild expression added to the benignity of his face. On the end of his nose grew a tuft of long hairs, which he seemed to prize as a natural mark of royalty, or chieftainship. Indeed, there was a popular legend afloat that he was of true royal blood—a stray Bourbon, or something of the sort. His speech was singularly fluent and elegant. The Emperor was one of the celebrities ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... big joints of his knees, elbows and wrists. His attitudes were grotesque and his gestures awkward. Light, curly hair covered his head; his nose was long and inquisitive; his eyes, big, blue and good-humored; his mouth, incredibly wide, with shrewd, mobile lips, which habitually smiled. A tuft of yellow beard on the end of his sharp chin, gave his face a comical expression resembling that which caricature bestows on Uncle Sam. His voice was pitched in a high key, and was modified by that nasal twang supposed to indicate Yankee origin; ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... parties. With the Literary notabilities I think he had no acquaintance; his thoughts indeed still tended rather towards a certain class of the Clerical; but neither had he much to do with these; for he was at no time the least of a tuft-hunter, but rather had a marked natural ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... what is more, I never heard of anybody else doing it. Naturally I was considerably pleased with myself, and having again loaded up, I went on to look for the black-maned beauty who had killed Kaptein. Slowly, and with the greatest care, I proceeded up the kloof, searching every bush and tuft of grass as I went. It was wonderfully exciting, work, for I never was sure from one moment to another but that he would be on me. I took comfort, however, from the reflection that a lion rarely attacks a man—rarely, I say; sometimes he does, as ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard

... knew no distinctions, received my nautical friend as if he had been an admiral instead of a common forecastle-hand. Sailor Ben pulled an imaginary tuft of hair on his forehead, and bowed clumsily. Sailors have a way of using their forelock as a sort ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Vedic statements, are generally known to be sensible pleasure and pain, which make themselves felt to body, speech, and mind only, are produced by the contact of the organs of sense with the objects, and affect all animate beings from Brahman down to a tuft of grass. Scripture, agreeing with observation, states that there are differences in the degree of pleasure of all embodied creatures from men upward to Brahman. From those differences it is inferred that there are differences in the degrees of the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... one was a veritable giant, swarthy of skin, hairy-chested. His great hands were extended to grasp or to parry—his head lowered with a ferocious scowl—and across his forehead swayed a tuft of black, shaggy hair. He might have stood for one of those northern barbarians whom the Romans loved to pit against their native champions in the arena. He was the greater because of the opponent he ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand

... Lilies-of-the-valley for you, pink tulips for you, Mrs. Evan,—they will soon close, and look like pointed rosebuds,—yellow daffies to match my gown, and you must choose for the two men I do not know. I'll take a tuft of these primroses for Mr. Bradford, and play they grew wild. We always joked him about these flowers at college until 'The Primrose' came to be his nickname ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... of that narrow ribbon by dying there. But the grass of those old paddocks grows unkempt like a shock head of hair. And it has covered with a kindly mantle most of the terrible relics of the past. A tuft, perhaps thicker than the rest, is all that marks where last year lay a British soldier whose death represented the latest effort of the world to cross the line the ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean

... Nothing but his ingenuous ways, and his soft baby-cry "chr-er-er" revealed his tender age. His curiosity when he found himself in an unfamiliar place or on a strange tree was amusing. He looked up and down, stretching his neck in his desire to see everything; he critically examined the tuft of leaves near him; he peered over and under a neighboring branch, and then gazed gravely around on the prospect before him. He flew with ease, and alighted with the grace of his family, on the bare trunk of a tree, ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... though somewhat sticky consistency, its surface, moreover, beautifully ridged from base to summit in parallel rounded flutings, which meet and interfold like a braid along the summit. If with a sharp knife we now cut downward through and across the mass, we find our tuft to be a mere frothy shell containing two hollow compartments, with a thin central partition extending through the whole length of the cavity. But there is no sign of an egg or other life to be disclosed anywhere, either in its substance or its concealment. ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... care, however, not to break or bend a feathery fern or crush a tuft of moss, as he hastened within ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... tuft-hunting, toad-eating, and other manifestations of accursed gentility—to say nothing of the Lord knows who's defiances of the proven truth before six hundred and fifty men—ARE expressing themselves every day. So, every day, the disgusted ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... let him interrupt me. And, Donnellan, you will altogether lose the day if you stay any longer." Whereupon the captain, seeing that in very truth he was not wanted, did take himself off, casting as he went one farewell look on Aby as he lay groaning on the turf on the far side of the tuft of bushes. ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... above him Sang the Mama, the woodpecker: "Aim your arrows, Hiawatha, At the head of Megissogwon, Strike the tuft of hair upon it, 210 At their roots the long black tresses; There alone can he be wounded!" Winged with feathers, tipped with jasper, Swift flew Hiawatha's arrow, Just as Megissogwon, stooping, 215 Raised a ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... result of a tubercular decay of the bone. He was a peasant, a potato-grower, and his forefathers had grown potatoes before him. He was now on his own, after having been in two situations; had been married for three years and had a baby son with a tuft of flaxen hair. Then suddenly, from no cause that he could tell, his knee had pained him, and small ulcers had formed. He had afforded himself a carriage to the town, and there he had been handed over to the hospital at the expense ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... member of the natural order Liliaceae, a native of the Cape of Good Hope, whence it was introduced at the close of the 17th century. It is a handsome greenhouse plant, which is hardy in the south of England and Ireland if protected from severe frosts. It has a short stem bearing a tuft of long, narrow, arching leaves, 1/2 to 2 ft. long, and a central flower-stalk, 2 to 3 ft. high, ending in an umbel of bright blue, funnel-shaped flowers. The plants are easy to cultivate, and are generally grown in large ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... the flame of the wave she was gleaming All white in the wane of the twilight— And that one was no hideous blemish. So highborn, so haughty a lady —I should have such a dame to befriend me: But she trows me uncouth for a trifle, For a tuft in ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown

... something aristocratic and supercilious. He looks upon this crumb-scattering as a duty society owes him, and determines generously to leave for the others all he can not eat up himself. But I think I see a tuft on his ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... and the fox yonder shall be the umpire of the race." The Hare agreed; and away they both started together. But the Hare, by reason of her exceeding swiftness, outran the Tortoise to such a degree, that she made a jest of the matter; and thinking herself sure of the race, squatted in a tuft of fern that grew by the way, and took a nap, thinking that, if the Tortoise went by, she could at any time overtake him with all the ease imaginable. In the meanwhile the Tortoise came jogging on with slow but continued motion; and the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin, But lips where smile went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin: And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as my great-grandsire, Starting up at the ...
— The Pied Piper of Hamelin • Robert Browning

... to a little man, with a high tuft of hair on his forehead and moustaches, in a cinnamon-coloured frock-coat and striped cravat. His yellow, mobile features were certainly full of cleverness and sarcasm. His lips were perpetually curved in a flitting ironical smile; little black eyes, screwed up with an impudent expression, looked ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev

... tuft of down was wafted up into the air, quite high above the lamp, and then it sailed slowly away, and fell down ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott

... another little wanderer from the land pitched on the ship, and was so worn out with fatigue, that it suffered itself to be taken immediately, and died a few hours afterward. It was not bigger than a wren, had a tuft of yellow feathers on its head, and the rest of its plumage like that of the linnet. The sparrow, being stronger, lived a long time. These birds plainly indicating, that we could not be at any great distance from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... museum at La Plata; it is said the custom may have been borrowed from the Patagonians; these instruments, called geskels, are made by the women and the workmanship is very delicate. (Lehmann-Nitsche, Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie, 1900, ht. 6, p. 491.) It is noteworthy that a somewhat similar tuft of horsehair is also worn in Borneo. (Breitenstein, 21 Jahre in India, 1899, pt. i, p. 227.) Most of the accounts state that the women attach great importance to the gratification afforded by such instruments. In ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... part of it were occasionally as naked as they were born. The very loins of the brave men who fought at Eutaw Springs were galled by their cartouch-boxes, while their shoulders were protected only by a piece of rug or a tuft of moss. In writing to congress, Greene remarked: "The troops have received no pay for two years; they are nearly naked, and often without meat or bread; and the sick and wounded are perishing for ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... thin man, clean shaven, but for a tuft on chin, dressed in black, with broad-brimmed straw hat. He is seated on a low rocking-chair, with his legs resting on the back of another chair. He holds a wooden stick, which he is whittling with ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger

... species, is an herb with three-partite leaves, notched at the edge with a pair of largo membraneous stipules at their base. When growing, this plant throws out two kinds of shoots—one called runners, which lie prostrate on the ground, and end in a tuft of leaves—these root into the soil, and then form new plants—and another growing nearly upright, and bearing at the end a tuft of flowers which produce the fruit. The calyx, which is flat, green, and hairy, is divided into ten ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... considerable height above the ground, and at the same time too large to be grasped with arms and legs in climbing; while others were not favorably situated for clear views. After cautiously casting about, I made choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that were growing close together like a tuft of grass, no one of which seemed likely to fall unless all the rest fell with it. Though comparatively young, they were about a hundred feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were rocking and swirling in wild ecstasy. Being accustomed ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... delay on the part of our freakish visitor, they set forth together, old Moodie keeping a step or two behind Hollingsworth, so that the latter could not very conveniently look him in the face. I remained under the tuft of maples, doing my utmost to draw an inference from the scene that had just passed. In spite of Hollingsworth's off-hand explanation, it did not strike me that our strange guest was really beside himself, but only that his mind needed screwing up, like an instrument ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... when a tuft of Juncus bufonius grows very near the edge of the water in a ditch or marsh this rush then pushes out filiform stems which lie in the water, are there deformed, becoming disturbed (tracantes), ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... that there is not a man in the world who could give account of the Moors whom he brought. And there came with him thirty and six Kings, and one Moorish Queen, who was a negress, and she brought with her two hundred horsewomen, all negresses like herself, all having their hair shorn save a tuft on the top, and this was in token that they came as if upon a pilgrimage, and to obtain the remission of their sins; and they were all armed in coats of mail and with Turkish bows. King Bucar ordered his tents to be pitched round about Valencia, and Abenalfarax who wrote this history ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... sensual; a sort of meltedness, an infinite warmth, a desire to grip the little creature right into her—which, of course, one must not do. And yet, neither her sense of humour nor her sense of beauty were deceived. It was a queer little affair with a tuft of black hair, in grace greatly inferior to a kitten. Its tiny, pink, crisped fingers with their infinitesimal nails, its microscopic curly toes, and solemn black eyes—when they showed, its inimitable stillness when it slept, its incredible vigour when ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... left, he went with me to Yarmouth, to see a little tablet I had put up in the churchyard to the memory of Ham. While I was copying the plain inscription for him at his request, I saw him stoop, and gather a tuft of grass from the grave ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... rock-plants, that had been swept off the cliffs by the waves; some were fresh-water plants; and others, recently torn from their roots, were still full of sap. One of them carried a live crab,—a little sailor afloat on a tuft of grass. These plants and living things could not have passed many days in the water without fading and dying. And all encouraged the sailors to believe ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott

... cast in the wings and tail; his crown, which he erects at pleasure, consists of black in the centre, surrounded with lovely blue of two different shades; he has a triangular black spot, edged with blue, behind the eye extending to the ear, and on his breast a sable tuft consisting of nine feathers edged also with blue. This bird seems to suppose that its beauty can be increased by trimming the tail, which undergoes the same operation as our hair in a barber's shop, only with this difference, that it uses its own beak, which is serrated, in lieu ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... Rakshasa of the name of Charvaka, who had disguised himself as a Brahmana, addressed the king. He was a friend of Duryodhana and stood there in the garb of a religious mendicant. With a rosary, with a tuft of hair on his head, and with the triple staff in his hand, he stood proudly and fearlessly in the midst of all those Brahmanas that had come there for pronouncing benedictions (upon the king), numbering by thousands, O king, and all of whom were devoted to ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... many tufts of Thrift growing among the rocks; and each tuft has a number of pink flowers. In some places you could step from one tuft to another for several miles. Bare and ugly stretches of coast are made into a gay garden ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith

... when Sigurd smote upon the anvil the keen steel clove into the metal right up to the hilt, and he pulled it out unhurt. Then he went to the river and flung up-stream a tuft of wool, and when the tide carried the wool against the edge of the sword it was cut in two. And then was Sigurd satisfied and his ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... broadens out into a thin plate, or breaks up into a tuft of very fine branches ( the "end-brush"), and by this means makes close contact with the muscle, the sense organ, or the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... daisies gleam; And here the sunflower[6] of the spring Burns bright in morning's beam. To mountain winds the famish'd fox Complains that Sol is slow, O'er headlong steeps and gushing rocks His royal robe to throw. But here the lizard seeks the sun Here coils, in light, the snake; And here the fire-tuft[7] hath begun Its beauteous nest to make. Oh! then, while hums the earliest bee Where verdure fires the plain, Walk thou with me, and stoop to see The glories of the lane! For, oh! I love these banks of rock, This roof of sky and tree, These tufts, where sleeps the gloaming ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... closed his eyes and lost Canton and all else in delicate thoughts of Mian, to look up. That which met his attention on doing so filled him with an intelligent wonder, for the person before him held in his hand what had the appearance of a tuft of bright yellow hair, which shone in the light of the sun with a most engaging splendour, but which he nevertheless regarded with a most undignified expression of confusion ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... the sandy plain, he had to climb a great steep, jagged rock. When he got to the top of the rock he saw spread out before him a stony waste without a tuft or blade of grass. At some distance in front of him he noticed a large dark object, which he took to be a rock, but on looking at it more closely he saw that it was a huge, misshapen, swollen mass, apparently ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... been a husbandman long enough to be swift to notice the garb of all growing, living things, whether they were flowers or dames. Truly the hat was marvellous, of a bright purple satin, and crowned with such a tuft of tall feathers that the wearer's face could scarcely be seen beneath its shade. Dressed all in gaudy style was this fine Madam; and, as she passed Miles, she tilted up her head and drew her skirts disdainfully together, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... sticks, but fearing the bird was not telling the truth, he rubbed its head with one of the sticks until a drop of blood trickled out, staining the tuft of feathers on its crest. But the bird persisted in this statement, so Maui began rubbing the sticks together. Little sparks appeared and caught fire to the dead leaves on which ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai

... a trying thing to deal with the rich and great. If you treat them as the rest of the world does, you are a tuft-hunter; if you treat them as the rest of the world pretends to, you are a hypocrite; whereas, if you deal with them truly, it is hard not to seem, even to yourself, a bumptious person. I remember trying to ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... said a voice, and a large frog heaved himself out of the water and sat down on a tuft of grass on the opposite bank. 'I ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... darting to and fro with the quickness of a hare. He was always of an ingratiating humorousness and endeared himself by an apparent readiness to enter into any joke that was going, especially that of startling the pedestrian by his own sudden apparition from behind a tuft of grass or withered stalk. I will not be sure, but I think we began to see his kind as soon as we got out of Yalladolid, when we began running through a country wooded with heavy, low-crowned pines that looked like the stone-pines of Italy, but were probably not the ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... a bright magenta color inside, but I never yet saw a flower open naturally on this plant. Just as the sepals open at the tips, and you think they are about to expand, they shrivel and fall away, leaving a tuft of greenish yellow stamens in the center. Is it A. Hudsoni? Another species not often seen, but well worth culture, is A. coerulea, a kind with finely cut leaves and purplish blue flowers. Then A. coronaria, The Bride, a pure creamy white kind, with flowers 3 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... words of true poems, The words of true poems do not merely please, The true poets are not followers of beauty, but the august masters of beauty; The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers and fathers, The words of true poems are the tuft and final ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs

... tuft of hair. The pileus is two to three inches broad, fleshy, then tough, coriaceous; plane, then funnel-shaped, or dimidiate; even; smooth; almost flesh color, varying to reddish-livid, sometimes ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... ancient in date and quaint in architecture, of a continental city; where new life had awaited her, still in connexion with the misshapen scholar: a new life, but feeding itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude market-place of the Puritan, settlement, with all the townspeople assembled, and levelling their stern regards at Hester Prynne—yes, at herself—who stood ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... idly, strolling. Snick'er, to laugh in a half-suppressed manner. 4. Crest, a tuft growing on an animal's head. 5. Di-vine'ly, in a supreme degree. 6. Mor'al, the practical lesson which ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... five brothers. One of the daughters, eighteen years of age, was beautiful in form and countenance, and though destitute of clothing, was of modest demeanour. In the prow stood the standard-bearer, clad in a mantle of variegated feathers, with a tuft of gay plumes on his head, while he bore in his hand a fluttering white banner. Two Indians, with caps of feathers, their faces painted, beat upon drums, while two others, with caps of green feathers, blew their trumpets of black wood ingeniously ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... this rough down country. Your delicate Nisaeans are all very well for a few minutes over those flat sands of Egypt: but here you need a horse who will go forty miles a day over rough and smooth, and dine thankfully off thistles at night. Aha, poor little man!'—as a jerboa sprang up from a tuft of bushes at his feet—'I fear you must help to fill our soup-kettle ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... the hole. I was not much scared at the moment; but the next day, taking my father to the scene of the accident, he remarked that had I fallen in I never could have got out again; upon which I conceived a horror of the well which haunts me in my dreams even to this day. Only a tuft of grass between me and such a fate! I was, therefore, far from comfortable beside the oubliette, and was glad to emerge again ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... inch by inch out of the grass rose up the head and spread hood of Nag, the big black cobra, and he was five feet long from tongue to tail. When he had lifted one-third of himself clear of the ground, he stayed balancing to and fro exactly as a dandelion-tuft balances in the wind, and he looked at Rikki-tikki with the wicked snake's eyes that never change their expression, whatever the snake may be ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... He resolves to become intelligible, at least to himself, since there is no help else; The Trial by Existence and to know definitely what he thinks about the soul; In Equal Sacrifice about love; The Tuft of Flowers about fellowship; Spoils of the Dead about death; Pan with Us about art (his own); The ...
— A Boy's Will • Robert Frost

... believe that this estimate was too low. In some colonies the Loyalists were clearly in the majority. In all they were a menacing element, made up of the conservative, the prosperous, the well-educated, with a mixture, of course, of mere placemen and tuft-hunters. They composed weighty pamphlets, eloquent sermons, and sparkling satire in praise of the old order of things. When their cause was lost forever, they wrote gossipy letters from their exile in London ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... the shells for caliphs and weseers, genii, and enchanted damsels. I acted all the well-known old fairy tales, as well (or better) known in my childish days as now: Cinderella and dear Beauty and Riquet with the tuft. There was one brown shell with a little hump on its back which did splendidly for Riquet. Then for a change to more sober life I dramatised The Fairchild Family and Jemima Placid, taking for my model a little book of plays for children, ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... aquiline, just enough to give character to his countenance, the hair which was rather scant, was dark like the mustache and the small tuft on his chin. He wore fine, high cavalry boots, reaching above the knees, a sword and like the captain was armed ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... Calvinists.) "Three cheers for the white cockade! Before we are done, it will be red with the blood of the Protestants!" However, on the 5th of May they ceased to wear it, replacing it by a scarlet tuft, which in their patois they called the red pouf, which was immediately adopted as the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... her feet, gazing up at her with eyes that squinted horribly, and roaring in an imperative voice some Arab formula in which the words "Allah-el-Akbar" continually recurred. A tall negro, with a long tuft of hair hanging from his shaven head, followed hard upon her heels, rolling his bulging eyes, in which two yellow flames were caught, and trying to engage her attention, though with what object she could not imagine. From all directions ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin, But lips where smiles went out and in; There was no guessing his kith and kin! And nobody could enough admire The tall man and his quaint attire. Quoth one: "It's as if my great-grandsire, Starting up at the trump of Doom's ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... the latter, when new, is generally very white, but is used until it gets perfectly dark and disgustingly greasy. They sometimes shave a portion of their head, or else they comb one half of their hair back, the other half front. They occasionally tie up a tuft of hair very tight on the top of the head, rising towards the skies. At other times some allow a long tress of hair to fall over their face: it interferes with their eating, but it has to be put up with. They smear their ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine



Words linked to "Tuft" :   witches' broom, clustering, hexenbesen, crest, cluster, wisp, coma, bunch, staghead, witch broom, tussock, clump



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