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Brat   Listen
noun
Brat  n.  
1.
A coarse garment or cloak; also, coarse clothing, in general. (Obs.)
2.
A coarse kind of apron for keeping the clothes clean; a bib. (Prov. Eng. & Scot.)
3.
A child; an offspring; formerly used in a good sense, but now usually in a contemptuous sense. "This brat is none of mine." "A beggar's brat." "O Israel! O household of the Lord! O Abraham's brats! O brood of blessed seed!"
4.
The young of an animal. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Brat" Quotes from Famous Books



... Compton, "does this beggar's brat think that he is to govern gentlemen's sons, because Master Merton is so good as to keep company with him?" "If I were Master Merton," said a third, "I'd soon send the little impertinent jackanapes home to his own blackguard family." And Master Mash, who was ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... way—right in this very room, on a wild stormy night like this! I had come in to say good night to my father and mother, who were sitting before a fire as we are now. Just as I left the room, I heard my mother say to him, 'The old man is out to-night!' Unless you were a nervous, high-strung brat yourself, you can't imagine the effect of that on me. I crept off to bed shivering, and lay awake half the night. Every time the wind shook my windows, I pictured some monstrous, hoary-headed creature trying to get in and gobble ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... "The brat will never boast of his father," quoth Dion, rolling his eyes. "He left the world in a way, I wager five minae, the mother hopes she can hide from her darling, but the babe's of right good stock, an Alcmaeonid, and ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... them up from Gilbey, the florist's, this morning. I could have fallen down when I opened the door. And the wee brat of a boy tried to convey to me that he wasn't used to coming to such a place. He wore a look like a missionary in Darkest Africa. They were left for Miss Melville, mind you. Not for your poor old mother. And ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... her mother, sharply, "yo'n getten fine feelings wi' your larning fro t' good feythers, Dolly. Os ey said efore, ey wish t' brat ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... have neither chick nor child to take up their quarrel. They know nought about blood crying for blood! If King Edward caught that brat of Clifford he would make him know what 'tis to be born of ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... such a—brat? Say it right out, Delia! You mean it and you might as well say what you think," broke in ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... an ugly, ill-kempt little brat, dirty from head to foot, with the face of an idiot, and Marie-Louise was already like her mother—spoke like her, repeated her words, and even imitated her movements. She also asked him whether there was anything fresh at the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... as that of his late Majesty should have died off and decayed into old age with so few descendants! Prince George of Cumberland is, they say, a fine boy about nine years old—a bit of a pickle, swears and romps like a brat that has been bred in a barrack yard. This little lady is educated with much care, and watched so closely by the Duchess and the principal governess, that no busy maid has a moment to whisper, "You are ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... did he want with that? it seemed an insult to him to tell him. What did he care for the child, if it was a boy or not?—the wretched, undesirable brat of such parentage, born to perpetuate a name which was dishonoured. Altogether the telegram, as so many telegrams, but lighted fresh fires of anxiety in his mind. "Saved—as by a miracle!" Then he had been right in the dreadful fancies that ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant

... of experience, and in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, he will instil into his wide-eyed brat three bad things: the terror of public opinion, and, flowing from that as a fountain, the desire of wealth and applause. Besides these, or what might be deduced as corollaries from these, he will teach not much else of any effective value: ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... strange idea of the duties of a landlord," he remarked. "Do you seriously suppose that I am responsible for the future of every brat who grows up ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... calculate that if you only hold your tongue and look wise you'll get through life without your ignorance being found out. But where's the good of lies and pretence? What does it matter if you get laughed at by a cheeky brat or two for your awkward beginnings? What's the use of always thinking of how you're looking, when your sense might tell you that other people are thinking about their own looks and not about yours? A big boy doesn't look well on a lower form, certainly, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... City Bushman, where you read, in prose or verse, Of the awful 'city urchin who would greet you with a curse'. There are golden hearts in gutters, though their owners lack the fat, And we'll back a teamster's offspring to outswear a city brat. Do you think we're never jolly where the trams and buses rage? Did you hear the gods in chorus when 'Ri-tooral' held the stage? Did you catch a ring of sorrow in the city urchin's voice When he yelled ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson

... will I," replied the brat, in very decent English. "Then gang and tell your mammy, my man, there's twa Sassenach gentlemen come to ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... men, he both thought and said. Women, when they did not absorb, were only children to be shoo'd away. Merely in his character of connoisseur, however, Dandie glanced carelessly after his sister as she crossed the meadow. "The brat's no that bad!" he thought with surprise, for though he had just been paying her compliments, he had not really looked at her. "Hey! what's yon?" For the grey dress was cut with short sleeves and skirts, and displayed her trim strong legs clad in pink stockings of the same ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... brat of a singing gringo, that carrot top with a face like a skinned kid to be my grandson? . . ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... handcuffed with Pariahs in chain-gangs, to work on his knees in foul sewers? or choked to death with raw beefsteaks and the warm blood of cows? or swinged by stout Irish wenches with bridle-ends? or smitten on the mouth with kid gloves by English ladies, his turban trampled under foot by every Feringhee brat in Bengal?—Wanted, a poetical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... more interest in that putty-faced brat of hers than she does in me," he said to himself, angrily, and then, so swift were his changes of mood, he began to laugh. "Of course, she does," he said aloud. "Why shouldn't she? ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... little brat of yours last night," wrote Bean immediately thereafter. He didn't care. He would put the thing down ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... speaking of his own sensitiveness, on the subject of his deformed foot, he described the feeling of horror and humiliation that came over him, when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him "a lame brat." As all that he had felt strongly through life was, in some shape or other, reproduced in his poetry, it was not likely that an expression such as this should fail of being recorded. Accordingly we find, in the opening of his drama, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... time that I first saw little Angus since he had changed from a governess to a governor—or whatever they call the he-teacher of a millionaire's brat. He was home for the summer vacation. Naturally I'd been prejudiced against him not only by his mother's praise but by his father's steady coppering of the same. Judiciously comparing the two, I was led ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... introduce it into the world under the conduct of that prince, when he died it was left a hopeless brat, and had hardly any hand to own it, till the wreck-voyage before noted, performed so happily by Captain Phips, afterwards Sir William, whose strange performance set a great many heads on work to contrive something for themselves. He was immediately followed ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe

... therein; being, instead of a faithful vindication, no better than a burial of some of the most important attainments in reformation of this church and land. And they likewise reject, detest and abhor that spurious brat, stuffed with gross error, blasphemy and nonsense, most falsely and unjustly designated, "A testimony for the word of Christ's patience," by that sacrilegious usurper of the ministry, William Dunnet, who, being once plunged into the depths of enthusiasm, ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... come here, you born little divil," and he laid hold of the arm of the brat, who was trying to escape from him—"come and hold my horse for me—and I'll ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... incorrigible, that it bit me an hour before it died." Yet, in face of this and other evidence, Mr. W. Winwood Reade, writing to the "Athenaeum" (September 7, 1862), asserts that "the young gorilla in captivity is not savage." "Joe Gorilla," M. du Chaillu's brat, was notoriously fierce and unmanageable. The Rev. Mr. Walker, of Baraka, had a specimen, which he describes as a very tractable pupil; and my excellent friend Major Noeliy White, better known as "Governor White," of Corisco Island, brought to Fernando Po a baby Njina, which in its ways and manners ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... He dismounts from Billy the pig, and, insolent brat, screws an imaginary eyeglass into his eye, which he contrives to keep contorted, and assuming a supercilious expression and a languid manner, struts leisurely towards us, with his hands in his pockets, thereby giving what I am forced to admit is an imitation ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... I did Jacob Dobbin any harm?" asked James Courtenay, his face as pale as ashes; "I never laid a hand upon the brat." ...
— The One Moss-Rose • P. B. Power

... get down," she said angrily. "It's just what might be—Your little brat will bring no good to any ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... horsemen, "and the young brat is as slippery as an eel. He and this Coyote Pete, as they call him, escaped me once before in the Grizzly Pass. I have a debt to even up with ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... well for the piano, but he can't teach you to produce your voice. What does he know? That brat of a boy! I'll tell you what I'll do,' cried Leslie, suddenly confronting Kate: 'we're going to York next week. Well, I'll introduce you to a first-rate man. He'd do more with you in six lessons than Montgomery in fifty. And the week after we ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore

... did," nodded Sister. "And we weren't doing a thing 'cept watch her move in. Francis Rider stuck out his tongue at her, and she called him a 'brat.'" ...
— Brother and Sister • Josephine Lawrence

... It was the start, the commencement of the luck. From the evening I took those stones in my hands—great Heaven! I can see the place now, the sunset on the hill; the dirty brat playing in the dust!—the luck has stood by me. Everything I touched turned out right. I left the diamond business and went in for land: wherever I bought land towns sprang up and the land increased in value a thousandfold. Then ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice

... am!" cried Crevel, "when I myself allowed Heloise to keep her artist exactly as Henri IX. allowed Gabrielle her Bellegrade. Alas! old age, old age!—Good-morning, Celestine. How do, my jewel!—And the brat? Ah! here he comes; on my honor, he is beginning to be like me!—Good-day, Hulot—quite well? We shall soon be having another wedding ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... to maternity, my dearest mother. A brat learns his A B C a shade quicker than other children, or construes Qui fit Maecenas with tolerable correctness; and straightway the doting mother thinks her lad is an embryo Canning. You should never have hoped anything of ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... the village—green; Next babbling Folly told the growing ill, And busy Malice dropp'd it at the mill. "Go! to thy curse and mine," the Father said, "Strife and confusion stalk around thy bed; Want and a wailing brat thy portion be, Plague to thy fondness, as thy fault to me; - Where skulks the villain?" - "On the ocean wide My William seeks a portion for his bride." - "Vain be his search; but, till the traitor come, The higgler's cottage be thy future home; There with his ancient shrew and care abide, And hide ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe

... rumour of the lost heir, and be on the alert for her discomfiture! If only he had not yet made a later will! He must die one day: why not in time to make his death of use when his life was of none! No one would wonder he had preferred the offspring of her noble person to the lost brat ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... his hat pushed back from his dewy forehead, tip-toeing, protesting, extenuating to a slip of a lad in uniform. The positions of the odd pair were unaccountably reversed; Jack was better than his master, the deference was from the elder to the brat. The stoop of Fowkes's shoulder, the anxious angle of his head, his care to listen to the little he got—and how little that was I could not but observe—his frequent ejaculations of "God bless my soul!" his deep concern—and the boy's unconcern, curtly expressed, if expressed at all—all this ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... the poor queen, who was greatly disappointed at having brought into the world such a hideous brat. And indeed, no sooner did the child begin to speak than his sayings proved to be full of shrewdness, while all that he did was somehow so clever that ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault

... to contemn his son, if he has any defect, in the same manner we ought not [to contemn] our friend. The father calls his squinting boy a pretty leering rogue; and if any man has a little despicable brat, such as the abortive Sisyphus formerly was, he calls it a sweet moppet; this [child] with distorted legs, [the father] in a fondling voice calls one of the Vari; and another, who is club-footed, he calls a Scaurus. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... "At Cambridge Brat your scurrilous vein began, Where saucily you traduced a nobleman; Who for that crime rebuked you on the head, And you had been ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... says he, giving my arm a twist. "You'd best promise, or it will be the worse for you. Now say after me, 'I, Humphrey Bold, adopted brat of John Ellery'—Speak up now!" "Please let me go, Vetch," said I, wriggling ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... 'damned me for a b——, declared I had disturbed the peace of the family, and that he had sworn to his wife, never to take any more notice of me.' He left me; but, instantly returning, he told me that he should speak to his friend, a parish-officer, to get a nurse for the brat I laid to him; and advised me, if I wished to keep out of the house of correction, not to ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... line number): [1] Now every cobbler's son and beggar's brat turns writer, then Bishop, [7] and lords' sons crouch to ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... to know how to treat them. No humane C.O. wants to condemn a mischievous brat of a boy to Field Punishment No. 1. Most C.O.'s., even most sergeants, know that punishment of that kind, however necessary for a hardened evildoer of mature years, is totally unsuitable for a boy. At the same time if any sort of discipline is to be preserved, a boy, ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... instruct a brainy brat in Canine or colloquial Latin May be wise; But it's not an education As a fruitful speculation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 25, 1917 • Various

... anything, and he meant to amount to something, it would be all due to Tony and her Uncle Phil. The two of them had saved him in more ways than one, had faith in him when he wasn't much but a scarecrow, ignorant, profane, unmoral, miserable, a "gutter brat" as some one had once called him, a phrase he had never forgotten. It had seemed to brand him, set him apart from people like the Holidays forever. But Tony and Doctor Phil had shown him a different way ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... make him strangle his dirty brat! (Still excited.) I've worried myself to death all alone, with Peter's bones weighing on my mind! Let him feel it too! I'll not spare myself; I've said I'll ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... had drank the water clear, When I did drink the wine, Rather than my shepherd's brat Should be a ladye ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... that owns the island," said O'Shea. "And she's that down in the mouth, it's no comfort for me to have her; and she can take the baby and welcome. It's a fair sea." He looked to the south as he spoke. "I'd risk both her and the brat on it; and Skipper Pierre is getting ready to take the boat ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall

... I say?-'tis four, or I mistake; Let's count them well:-The GARD'NER first, we'll name; Then comes the ABBESS, whose declining frame Required a youth, her malady to cure A story thought, perhaps, not over pure; And, as to SISTER JANE, who'd got a brat, I cannot fancy we should alter that. These are the whole, and four's a number round; You'll probably remark, 'tis strange I've found Such pleasure in detailing convent scenes:— 'Tis not my whim, but TASTE, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... heavy; what of that? His heart is light, he heeds it not; His feet are cold and bare, poor brat! But this has always been his lot. He trudges on, or stops to steal Quick glances at the dainty meal; And then his purple lips do bless The heart ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various

... no fault in her in this respect; if it had not been so, if she had talked pleasantly with them and smiled when addressed by them, her life would have been made a burden to her. She would have been often asked who her brat's father was. The dreadful experience of that day, when she had been cast out and was alone in the world, when, burdened with her unborn child, she had walked over the downs in the hot August weather, in anguish of apprehension, had ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... you haven't. You have let me have my own way too much. You know the proverb: 'Good mothers make bad daughters.' Clodd's right; you've spoilt me, dad. Do you remember, dad, when I first came to you, seven years ago, a ragged little brat out of the streets, that didn't know itself whether 'twas a boy or a girl? Do you know what I thought to myself the moment I set eyes on you? 'Here's a soft old juggins; I'll be all right if I can get in here!' It makes you smart, ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... the phrase pettishly. "I haven't been up to anything. You talk as if I were a blessed brat. One must do something to amuse oneself. I'm fed-up—sick to death of this infernal life. It's just a question of killing time from hour to hour. I loathe getting up in the morning, I hate going to bed at night, I'm sick to death of the club and the fools you meet there. ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... power of Heaven's eternal majesty.— Theridamas, Techelles, and Casane, [206] Ransack the tents and the pavilions Of these proud Turks, and take their concubines, Making them bury this effeminate brat; For not a common soldier shall defile His manly fingers with so faint a boy: Then bring those Turkish harlots to my tent, And I'll dispose them as it likes me best.— Meanwhile, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe

... it, eh? Upon my soul-spoiling the brat like that! You'd no business to, my dear chap-a lovely baroque pearl—" he protested, with the half-apologetic tone of the rich man embarrassed by too costly a gift ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... the brains out of a brat— Thine if he were, I care not: had he been The first-born comfort of a royal king, And should have yall'd, when Doncaster cried peace, I would have done by him as then ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... on, 'after a year of striving and contriving and some little driving, De Aquila came to the valley, alone and without warning. I saw him first at the Lower Ford, with a swine-herd's brat on his saddle-bow. ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... he began; then recollecting, he muttered: "Oh, the Indian brat! I see! I wish you joy, Senora Ortegna, of your first child!" and with a mock bow, and cruel sneer, he staggered by, giving the cradle an angry thrust with his foot as ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... and rough on his friends; And he didn't have many, I'll let you know; He hated a dog and disgusted a cat, But he'd run off his legs for a motherless brat, And I guess there's many ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay

... day's work. Trhree swell families on the Avenue guv me all this to burry the brat. Burry it? Divil a bit. It's makin' me fortin'. Cud we ony git dead babbies enough we'd all be rich, Bridget, but here's enough to kape the pot bilin' for wakes to come, and guv us a good sup o' whiskey into the bargain. Here, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... so it was with Andrii. Old Taras paused and observed how he cleared a path before him, hewing away and dealing blows to the right and the left. Taras could not restrain himself, but shouted: "Your comrades! your comrades! you devil's brat, would you kill your own comrades?" But Andrii distinguished not who stood before him, comrades or strangers; he saw nothing. Curls, long curls, were what he saw; and a bosom like that of a river swan, and a snowy neck and shoulders, and all that is ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... imbecile—an awkward, ill-mannered brat who is only fit for a stable-boy! I know him, Silas, and I know he'll never amount to a hill of beans. Leave him my money? Not if I hadn't ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne

... want him, if not sooner. He thinks he's got a mighty soft thing here, and he isn't going to let it go. And there's that same d—d sullen dirty pride of his mother, for all he doesn't cotton to her. Wonder I didn't recognize it at first. And hoarding up that five dollars! That's Jane's brat, all over! And, of course," he added, bitterly, "nothing of ME in him. No; nothing! Well, well, what's the difference?" He turned towards the door, with a certain sullen defiance in his face so like the man he believed he did not resemble, that his foreman, coming upon him suddenly, might have ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... wandering gipsy. It appears that the gipsy was one day near Lochmore Castle, with a pretty little dark-haired swarthy-complexioned boy, her son, when she encountered Morrar-na-Shean in a towering passion—a state of mind in which he was often to be found. He ordered her and her "beggar bastard brat" to be off, or he would shoot them. The woman, instead of running away with her child or imploring mercy, knelt down and cursed him, and praying at the same time that he might never have an heir to carry ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... Frenchwoman, with a baby in her arms, came to the door of one of them, smiling, and looking pretty and happy. Her husband, a dark, black-haired, lively little fellow, caressed the child, laughing and singing to it; and there was a red-bearded Irishman, who likewise fondled the little brat. Then we could hear them within the hut, gabbling merrily, and could see them moving about briskly in the candlelight, through the window and open door. An old Irishwoman sat in the door of another hut, under the influence of an extra dose of rum,—she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... "Don't yell, yer brat!" said the older, clasping his hand over mouth, and drawing her brutally toward him. "Shut up, ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... showed him that, taking care, however, only to show him how they worked at their lowest speed. He kept me there with him until the ship had passed through the passage in the reef, and then he told me that I might take my 'brat' and go. I needed no second bidding, you may be sure, but snatched up the poor little thing and took her straight down into her own cabin, where—excepting for the few moments necessary to release Feodorovna from confinement in her cabin—nurse and I have been ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... lies." (Thud . . . thump . . . and a double tattoo.) He threw the instrument of castigation aside and spinning the hulk of flesh and sprawling legs erect, began applying the sole of his boot. "A'll no take m' fist t' y' as A wud t' a Man! A'll treat y' as A wud a dirty broth of a brat of a boy with the flat o' my hand an' sole leather; y' scum, y' runt, y' hoggish swinish whiskey soak o' bacon an' fat! 'Tis th' likes o' you are the curse o' this country, y' horse-thief sheriff, y' bribe-takin' blackguard guardian ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... jerked the lighter horse back into the plough, and something would break. Then Tom would blaspheme till he was refreshed, mend up things with wire and bits of clothes-line, fill his pockets with stones to throw at the team, and start again. Finally he hired a dummy's child to drive the horses. The brat did his best he tugged at the head of the team, prodded it behind, heaved rocks at it, cut a sapling, got up his enthusiasm, and wildly whacked the light horse whenever the other showed signs of moving—but he never succeeded in starting ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... said the steward, hastily. "I can't stop—I'm in a hurry home, where I wanted to leave this brat to-night; but he would follow me. Come, Billy; come this minute, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... dragged George toward the door. And George laughed at me. Laughed and laughed—till he saw my eyes. He didn't laugh then. Nor my mother. My mother screamed when she saw my eyes. 'Shut up, George!' she screamed. 'She's not Ned's girl now!' And George said, 'No, by God! She's your brat now, all right! She's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... returned it to her doubled. You men! you don't pay attention to things. When I heard that, I said to myself, 'Farewell baskets, the vintage is done!' A rich uncle doesn't behave that way to a little brat picked up in the ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... AEneas cursed brat, The boy wherein false destinie delights, The heire of furie, the fauorite of the face, That vgly impe that shall outweare my wrath, And wrong my deitie with high disgrace: But I will take another order now, And race th'eternall Register of time: Troy shall ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe

... all for?" he asked himself, bitterly. "Look at the handsome alien creature there, with four young around her, and the other with that unresponsive little brat. Any one of those children, from the looks of their faces, is capable, if left to its own unguided proclivities, of murdering the very parent who is now caressing him; any one of them is hardly capable of doing anything in life for his own good or happiness, or the good and happiness of the world, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... had finished the ballads, they went on to sing the "Supplementary Record;" but the Monitory Vision Fairy, perceiving the total absence of any interest in Pao-yue, heaved a sigh. "You silly brat!" she exclaimed. "What! haven't you, even now, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... louse on someone else, all right, but you can't see the tick on yourself. You're the only one that thinks we're so funny; look at your professor, he's older than you are, and we're good enough for him, but you're only a brat with the milk still in your nose and all you can prattle is 'ma' or 'mu,' you're only a clay pot, a piece of leather soaked in water, softer and slipperier, but none the better for that. You've got more coin ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... kept her at home, and very soon he tired of life abroad without her and came back. A committee of citizens went on a steamer down the river to meet him, the wife and child along, of course, and the story was told that, seated on the paternal knee curiously observant of every detail, the brat suddenly exclaimed, "Ah ha, pa! Now you've got on your store clothes. But when ma gets you up at Beech Grove you'll have to lay off your broadcloth and put on your jeans, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... lady, she curled her lip. "Mr. Riddle, don't be foolish," she said. "If we are to play, send your horse to the stables." Suddenly her eye lighted on me. "One more brat," she sighed. "Nick, take him to the nursery, or the stable. And both of you keep ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... have lived through this bout also and won a free pardon, you, your woman and your brat together. If the old war-horse who is set over us as a captain had listened to me you should have been burned at the stake, every one of you, but so it is. Farewell for a while, friend. I am away to Mexico to report these matters to the ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... terror to all the children in our vicinity, and it was his habit to walk on the neighboring roads clad in a dressing gown. More than once as I passed him he accosted me with the interrogative, "Are you Nancy Hazard's brat?"—a query that invariably prompted me to quicken my pace. Mr. Martin kept a fine herd of cattle, among which was an obstreperous bull whose stentorian tones were familiar to all the residents of the adjoining places. When the children of our household were turbulent my mother would ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose. Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only child to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned, among the ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... be the waur bestead, Thou's be as braw and bienly clad, And thy young years as nicely bred Wi' education, As ony brat o' wedlock's bed, In a' ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... true—that is, it is true that the story was told, the pretences were gone through, and the birth was actually believed by a good many people. Some of them were prodigiously enthusiastic about it, and called the invisible brat the New Motive Power, the Physical Savior, Heaven's Last Best Gift to Man, the New Creation, the Great Spiritual Revelation of the Age, the Philosopher's Stone, the Act of all Acts, and so ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... of my mind. The scoundrel knows his pitiful advantages, and insults me upon them without ceasing. He is my rival and my persecutor; and, at last, as if all this were not enough, he has found means to spread the pestilence in my own family. You, whom we took up out of charity, the chance-born brat of a stolen marriage! you must turn upon your benefactor, and wound me in the point that of all others I could least bear. If I were your enemy, should not I have reason? Could I ever inflict upon you such injuries as you have made me suffer? And who are you? The lives of fifty such cannot atone ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... browt me both sorra an' shame; Gronny, poor sowl, for a two month or more Hardly could feshion to lewk aat. o' t' door; T' neighbours called aat to me, "Dunnot stand that, Aat wi' that hussy an' aat wi' her brat." ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... we review the life of this man, "the lame brat" of his mother, as this mother called him, and behold the whirlwind of passion that swept him on, the fulsome praise, the shrill outcry of hypocritical prudes and pedants, the torrent of abuse, and the piling up of sins that he never committed (and God knows he committed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... said the Bacha, wrinkling his forehead, "I am able to handle such a little brat"—and he was. The first few days Ondrejko did not dare resist this big man in anything, and now he would not even dream of it. The boys did not know a more noble man in the whole world than Bacha Filina. He ...
— The Three Comrades • Kristina Roy

... smuggle brandy aboard when they got the chance, the brutes!" said the captain, referring to his recent crew. "Well, it don't matter. We've now the prospect of dyin' o' thirst before we die of starvation. For my part, I prefer to die o' starvation, so ye may put yourself an' your brat on full allowance ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne

... disgraced me—I will never forgive her!" said the woman. "Let her starve with her brat. It will be well ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce

... counting the niggers, and telling how many dollars they ought to sell for. He had a dreadful bad fever while he was down there, and I nursed him. He was out of his head half the time, and he was calling out: 'Going! going! How much for this likely nigger? Stop that wench's squalling for her brat! Carry the brat off!' It was dreadful ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... down and said he never seen the pin, nor knowed there was one; while she—wall, I swow, if she didn't start round lively for a woman with her leg bandaged up in vinegar and flannel. When I called the brat a thief and said I'd have him arrested, she made for the door and ordered me out—me, Joe Peterkin, of the 'Liza Ann! I'll make her smart, though, wus than the rheumatiz. I'll make her ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... am I concerned at the noble name of Bayes; that is a brat so like his own father, that he cannot be mistaken for any other body[27]. They might as reasonably have called Tom Sternhold, Virgil, and the resemblance ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... from to marry you. Tell him the grey suit of clothes reached the owner safely—remember, the grey suit of clothes. That will refresh his memory. Then I think he will come fast enough and let me have the truth concerning this brat. If he refuses, I shall take steps to see ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... the house, so there isn't a bug in a blanket left—you damned brat!" He was bellowing like a bull, chewing his red beard and muttering to himself. As he passed a table, he knocked the empty flask on the floor. It did not break, and he viciously stamped his feet on it, smashing it to pieces. ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... thing that you can do, you see, is to leave your family and come and live with me. At first we will go away from Paris; you can be confined in the country. We can put the child out to nurse; they will take care of the little brat, of course. And later, perhaps, my mother will soften and will understand that we must marry. No, truly, the more I think of it, the more I believe that that is the best way to do. Yes! I know very well it will be hard to leave your home, but what can you do, my darling? You can write ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... dear, I shall never forgit the night when Judith brought the poor cretur here,—you knows she had been some months in my house afore ever I see'd the urchin; and when she brought it, she looked so pale and ghostly that I had not the heart to say a word, so I stared at the brat, and it stretched out its wee little hands to me. And the mother frowned at it, and throwed ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Ellen cried all day to be carried back to prison. The instincts of childhood are true. She knew she was loved in the jail. Her screams and sobs annoyed Mrs. Flint. Before night she called one of the slaves, and said, "Here, Bill, carry this brat back to the jail. I can't stand her noise. If she would be quiet I should like to keep the little minx. She would make a handy waiting-maid for my daughter by and by. But if she staid here, with her white face, I suppose I should either kill her or spoil her. I hope the doctor will sell them as ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... mind is the apprehension of God as capricious, a hard Master, and of such a character that his {309} favour can be gained only by servile flattery or bribery or by spells of magic. Superstition is "a brat of darkness" born in a heart of fear and consternation. It produces invariably "a forced and jejune devotion"; it makes "forms of worship which are grievous and burdensome" to the life; it chills or destroys all free and joyous converse with God; ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... brat as I would an adder," said Denot, attempting to shake off the sergeant's hand. "There, take the dagger," and he dropped it on the ground, and rushing at the boy, got inside the swing of his stick, and made a grasp ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... called her 'Baby,' and the old woman, 'Brat.' And that is all I know of the first name the last is Kennedy. You may christen her what ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... of the string by which he was attached to a tent peg, roll head over heels, and walk in a contrary direction, when a similar somersault would be performed; and he whined and wailed just like a child; one might have mistaken it for the puling of some villager's brat. Milford was going to give it pure cows' milk when Fordham advised him not to do so, but to mix it with one half the quantity of water. 'The great mistake people make,' he said, 'who try to rear wild animals, is to ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... here." He drew a chair near his own. "I am not fond of the prattle of children," he continued; "for, old bachelor as I am, I have no pleasant associations connected with their lisp. It would be intolerable to me to pass a whole evening tete-a-tete with a brat. Don't draw that chair farther off, Miss Eyre; sit down exactly where I placed it—if you please, that is. Confound these civilities! I continually forget them. Nor do I particularly affect simple-minded old ladies. ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... out. Common people are gradually being left to the laws of Nature. If a workhouse were to catch on fire, no one would speak of those who escaped the flames as providentially saved. God does not look after the welfare of paupers; nor is it likely that he would pluck a charwoman's brat out of the fire if it tumbled in during her absence. Such interpositions are absurd. But with kings, queens, princes, princesses, and big nobs in general, the case is different. God looks after the quality. He stretches forth his hand to save them ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote

... faint with hunger. Why," she added, taking up a light, and holding it close to him, "you do look pale and famished; as if you had dined like a Portuguese beggar's brat,—on a crust, rubbed over with a sardinha, to give it a flavor. I cannot let you go away in this condition. If you starve yourself so, you will degenerate from a beef-eating red-coat, into ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... of their number saw me playing in the dirt and called out that there was more breeding in yonder brat than in the Prince Harmachis; and for a moment they wavered, thinking to slay me also, but in the end they passed on, bearing the head of my foster-brother, for they loved not to murder ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... dumpy motherly Mrs. James, who so often patted my curly head, and presented me with a welcome slice of bread and butter and a drink of milk, invariably repeating in her homely phrase, "a child and a chicken is al'ays a pickin'"—and declaring her belief, that the 'brat' got scarcely enough to "keep life and soul together"—the real truth of which my craving stomach ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... captains Hetha (Heid) and Wisna, with Hakon Cut-cheek came Tummi the Sailmaker. On these captains, who had the bodies of women, nature bestowed the souls of men. Webiorg was also inspired with the same spirit, and was attended by Bo (Bui) Bramason and Brat the Jute, thirsting for war. In the same throng came Orm of England, Ubbe the Frisian, Ari the One-eyed, and Alf Gotar. Next in the count came Dal the Fat and Duk the Sclav; Wisna, a woman, filled with sternness, and a skilled warrior, was guarded by a band of Sclavs: her chief followers were ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... a vain and pampered brat, but this passed all reason, and I said so, exploding at her. She looked at me as if I wasn't quite intelligent. "The Little Ones, my friend, notice things. You are quite enough of a roughneck, but if I, Nebran's priestess, walk through ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... Isoult, witch, and daughter of a witch, called by men Isoult la Desirous—and a gaunt, half-starved, loose-legged baggage she is," he went on; "reputed of vile conversation for all the slimness of her years—witch, and a witch's brat." ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... me, which I do not hope to find elsewhere. I like Bath very much; I have not been here since I was six years old, when I spent a year here in hopes of being bettered by my aunt, Mrs. Twiss. A most forlorn hope it was. I suppose in human annals there never existed a more troublesome little brat than I was for the few years after my first appearance on this ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... Lycabetta answered; "though she swears it less frightful than of old. She made no sign, but she bribed a child to follow the false friar, and the brat ran him to ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... Keith's to-morrow evening—I think I will go; but it is the first party invitation I have accepted this 'season,' as the learned Fletcher called it, when that youngest brat of Lady * *'s cut my eye and cheek open with a misdirected pebble—'Never mind, my Lord, the scar will be gone before the season;' as if one's eye was of no importance in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... "they settled who Was fittest to be sent Yet still to choose a brat like you, To haunt a man of forty-two, Was no ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll

... took a fancy to it, and, if invited to taste it, paid her the compliment of eating a good plateful of it, and said it was much better soup than the chateau produced, and, what is stranger, thought so: and, whenever some peevish little brat set up a yell in its cradle and the father naturally enough shook his fist at the destroyer of his peace, Madame Raynal's lovely face filled with concern not for the sufferer but the pest, and she flew to it and rocked it and coaxed it and ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... scamp Cyril! Cyril,' repeated Mrs Pansey, with a snort, 'the idea of a pauper like Mrs Jennings giving her brat such a fine name. Well, it was Cyril's night out on Sunday, and he did not come home till late, and then made his appearance very wet and dirty. He told me that he had been on Southberry Heath and had been almost knocked into a ditch by Mr Pendle galloping past. I asked him which Mr ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... begging from a burgess, but was as well furnished with limbs as other men when no burgess was in sight. There was a wretched woman violer, with her jackanapes, and with her husband, a hang-dog ruffian, she bearing the mark of his fist on her eye, and commonly trailing far behind him with her brat on her back. There was a blind man, with his staff, who might well enough answer to Keen-eye, that is, when no strangers were in sight. There was a layman, wearing cope and stole and selling indulgences, but our captain, Brother Thomas, soon banished him from our company, for that he ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... for Hugh Knox, he never ceased to whittle at the boy's ambition and point it toward a great place in modern letters. Had he been born with less sound sense and a less watchful mother, it is appalling to think what a brat he would have been; but as it was, the spoiling but fostered a self-confidence which was half ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... deprive me of sight, or take from me the art of love which thou hast given me, but grant that I may be yet more esteemed in the eyes of the fair. And if Phaedrus or I myself said anything rude in our first speeches, blame Lysias, who is the father of the brat, and let us have no more of his progeny; bid him study philosophy, like his brother Polemarchus; and then his lover Phaedrus will no longer halt between two opinions, but will dedicate himself wholly to ...
— Phaedrus • Plato

... sir; and my gal wouldn't never have done it, sir, but for the stories she told, fictious stories they was, I'm sure, that the child wasn't none of my lady's, only a brat picked up in foreign parts to put her brother out ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and they are just such as might have befallen any little truant of the High School, who had got down to Leith Sands, gone beyond the PRAWN-DUB, wet his hose and shoon, and, finally, had been carried home, in compassion, by some high-kilted fishwife, cursing all the while the trouble which the brat occasioned her. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... judge, you puppy?" he cried. "Who set you to watch me, or give your opinions on what I do or what I don't do? Who asked you whether you liked it or didn't like it, you sneaking little brat? I wonder I let you live to spit your dirty words in ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... nodded. "All that. But you ought to have seen her at eighteen. We were at the High-School, Kensington, together, I a brat of ten in the Juniors' Division, she a Head Girl, cramming for Girton. She carried everything before her there, and emerged with a B.A. Degree Certificate in the days when it was thought hardly proper ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... field in which women were digging potatoes when a small boy stumbled on them. They knew they had been seen the day before and chose this exposed spot rather than the near-by wood, thinking that it was there the hue and cry would run. But he was a crafty little brat and pretended that he had not seen them. They were not certain whether he had or not and hesitated to give their position ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson



Words linked to "Brat" :   monkey, army brat, little terror, scallywag, pork sausage, bratwurst, terror, bratty, scalawag, imp, holy terror, rapscallion



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