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Clout   Listen
verb
Clout  v. t.  (past & past part. clouted; pres. part. clouting)  
1.
To cover with cloth, leather, or other material; to bandage; patch, or mend, with a clout. "And old shoes and clouted upon their feet." "Paul, yea, and Peter, too, had more skill in... clouting an old tent than to teach lawyers."
2.
To join or patch clumsily. "If fond Bavius vent his clouted song."
3.
To quard with an iron plate, as an axletree.
4.
To give a blow to; to strike. (Low) "The... queen of Spain took off one of her chopines and clouted Olivarez about the noddle with it."
5.
To stud with nails, as a timber, or a boot sole.
Clouted cream, clotted cream, i. e., cream obtained by warming new milk. Note: "Clouted brogues" in Shakespeare and "clouted shoon" in Milton have been understood by some to mean shoes armed with nails; by others, patched shoes.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Clout" Quotes from Famous Books



... things, he took with him no offerings or sacrifices other than symbolic objects, such as paints and tobacco. Wishing to appear before Him in all humility, he wore no clothing save his moccasins and breech-clout. At the solemn hour of sunrise or sunset he took up his position, overlooking the glories of earth and facing the "Great Mystery," and there he remained, naked, erect, silent, and motionless, exposed to ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... His features, although somewhat flat and broad, created a favourable impression at first; upon closer scrutiny, however, the eyes modified that impression. They were small, and their look piercing rather than bright. His costume was limited to a tattered breech-clout of buckskin. A collar of small white shells encircled the neck, and from this necklace dangled a triangular piece of alabaster, flat, and with a carving on it suggesting the shape of a dragon-fly. His hair streamed loose over the left ear, where ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... day they checked their speed, and a lithe young Indian whom Henry heard called Thraintonto, which means in Wyandot The Fox, stripped himself of his breech clout, gave his long and defiant scalp lock a somewhat fiercer curl, and darted ahead of ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... chapter xii 21 BIOGRAPHICAL > Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are. When a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green sapling; even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul, lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... divisions were off, Speug addressed his faithful band. "MacFarlane, take six birkies, climb up the waterspout, and clean the richt-hand shed, couping the Pennies into the street. Mackenzie, ye're no bad at the fightin'; tak' anither sax and empty the roof o' the left-hand shed, and 'gin ye can clout that Penny that's sittin' on the riggin' it'll teach him to keep in the ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... they give me the good red gold, And some they give me the white money, And some they give me a clout o' meal, For they be people o' ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling

... their full regulation uniform. They had been furnished a regular cavalry uniform and on this parade some of them had their heavy overcoats on, others their large black hats, with all the brass accoutrements attached; some of them were minus pantaloons and only wore a breech-clout. Others wore regulation pantaloons but no shirts, and were bareheaded; others again had the seat of their pantaloons cut out, leaving only leggings; some of them wore brass spurs, though without boots or moccasins; but for all ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... to stand upon his own legs; and then it comes out, with a great many grieving aggravations to a parent to find himself tricked and defeated in the expectations of his son's marrying handsomely, and to his advantage; instead of which, he is obliged to receive a dish-clout for a daughter-in-law, and see his family propagated by a race of beggars, and yet perhaps as haughty, as insolent, and as expensive, as if she had blessed the family with a lady of fortune, and brought a fund with her to have supported ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... belonging to our corps of runners, scouts, and guides, for all were shaved, oiled, and painted for war, and, under their loosened blankets, I could see their lean and supple bodies, stark naked, except for clout and ankle moccasin. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... curling locks of his hair down droop to his bare, brawny shoulders, And his face wears a smile debonair, as he tightens his red sash around him; But stripped to the moccasins bare, save the belt and the breech-clout of buckskin, Stands the haughty Tamdoka aware that the eyes of the warriors admire him; For his arms are the arms of a bear and his legs are ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... my ears fell off. Wherat all the people wondred greatly, and laughed me to scorne: but I beeing strucken in a cold sweat, crept between their legs for shame and escaped away. So I disfigured returned home againe, and covered the losse of myne ears with my long hair, and glewed this clout to my face to hide my shame. As soon as Bellephoron had told his tale, they which sate at the table replenished with wine, laughed heartily. And while they drank one to another, Byrrhena spake to me and said, from the first foundation ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... of rage, of tempest, she is frozen wiz a repose. Do you, hein? sink it will come out,"—Pericles eyed Merthyr with a subtle smile askew,—"I have sot so;—it will come out when she is one day in a terrible scene . . . Mon Dieu! it was a terrible scene for me when I looked on ze clout zat washed ze blood of ze terrible assassination. So goes out a voice, possibly! Divine, you say? We are a machine. Now, you behold, she has faints. It may happen at my concert where she sings to-morrow night. You saw me in my carriage speaking to a man. He is my spy—my dog wiz a nose. I have set ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... began to write his masterpiece The Faery Queen. Raleigh, to whom the first three books were read, was so impressed by the beauty of the work that he hurried the poet off to London, and gained for him the royal favor. In the poem "Colin Clout's Come Home Again" we may read Spenser's account of how the court impressed him after his sojourn ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... that I noticed, as I drove away, that the scat of the vehicle was so sharply aslant and slippery that for me to retain my position behind Kuzma was impossible; also that he seemed to have turned all flabby, and to be waving about like a dish clout. But what I remember best is that throughout the whole of that evening I never ceased to feel that I was acting with excessive stupidity in pretending to be enjoying myself, to like drinking a great deal, and to be in no way drunk, as well as that every one else present ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... The published extracts from his Swiss journal contain many beautiful and touching allusions. Amid references to the tints of the Jungfrau, the blue rifts of the glaciers, and the noble Niesen towering over the Lake of Thun, we come upon the charming little scrap which I have elsewhere quoted: 'Clout-nail making goes on here rather considerably, and is a very neat and pretty operation to observe. I love a smith's shop and anything relating to smithery. My father was a smith.' This is from his journal; but he is unconsciously speaking ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... him in one hit. If he don't pay as a canvasser I'll take him to town and back him to fight Les Darcy. Look out for yourself; don't you handle him!" he continued as the other approached the figure. "Leave him to me. As like as not, if you get fooling about him, he'll give you a clout ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... first heyre" of Shakespeare's "invention," his first published poem. In 1594 Shakespeare also dedicated to Southampton his Lucrece, in terms of greater intimacy, though no less respect. On December 27, 1595, Edmund Spenser's Colin Clout's Come Home Againe contained a reference which is now generally believed to ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... leaf when he bound her hands and feet; and when he was about to bind over her sweet eyes a nasty old filthy clout wherein my maid had seen him carry fish but the day before, and which was still all over shining scales, I perceived it, and pulled off my silken neckerchief, begging him to use that instead, which he did. Hereupon the thumb-screw was put on her, and she was once more asked whether she ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold

... several hectic minutes the air was thick with buns, It was almost as bad, so he told me, as the shelling of the Huns, But our gallant Tennysonian held on until a clout In the eye from a metal teapot ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various

... patriot as the one hope of the Empire's overthrow, and did not propose to have him taken. Scouts, spies, the entire French secret service, delved, gestured, and sweated. But they laid bare next to nothing. At the Palacio Municipal a number of functionaries told of a peon in breech clout, a wretch coated with alkali dust till the muscles of his legs looked like grayish ropes, who had emerged from the cacti plain ten days before and come running into Chihuahua. The peon had made direct for the Palacio, where, in some way, he had ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... what in creation he's kickin' me for; an' if he couldn't wake me without killin' me. Old-pot-head's son yells back that he hasn't touched me. Then you bet I was scared; for the thing hauls off agen an' gives me a clout that knocks the wind plum' ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... of, for sums of money large enough to tempt gentry of that ilk seldom passed over those isolated trails; but here and there stray parties of Stonies and Blackfeet, young bucks in war-paint and breech-clout, hot on the trail of their first medicine, skulked warily among the coulee-scarred ridges, keeping in touch with the drifting buffalo-herds and alert for a chance to ambush a straggling white man and lift his hair. They ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... an old clout," he continued, "and slashed it across my face, saying, 'Take that, pale face! Take that, man with a woman's skirts on!' and 'Take that!' howled a young buck, fetching the flat of his dagger across me forehead, close-cropped hair giving no grip for scalping, not to mention a pate as bald as mine," ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... him for breaking the head on me with the clout of a loy. (He takes off a big hat, and shows his head in a mass of bandages and plaster, with some pride.) It was he did that, and amn't I a great wonder to think I've traced him ten days with that rent in ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge

... firmament, your adrop, Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heutarit, And then your red man, and your white woman, With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials, Of lye and egg-shells, women's terms, man's blood, Hair o' the head, burnt clout, chalk, merds, and clay, Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass, And moulds of other strange ingredients, Would burst a man ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir

... A staggering clout from a heavy hand hurled him against a side wall like a battering-ram. The breath was driven out of his lungs. Dizzily he plunged forward to his hands and knees among the debris on ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... over, the two candidates had hurried off to prepare for the long journey. Cumbersome garments were discarded, and Piang was clothed in the easy costume of the jungle traveler; breech-clout, head-cloth, a sarong, flung carelessly over one shoulder, and a panuelo (handkerchief) with a few necessary articles tied securely in it. His weapons were a bolo, a creese, and a bow and arrow. Piang's bare limbs, bronze and powerful, glistened in the brilliant ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... illustration it affords of the rigidity with which every class or grade in civilization treats its own social conventions, whatever they may be, as final, and as having some subtle but necessary connection with morals. When the Indian squats round the tribal pot in his breech-clout, and eats his dinner with his dirty paw, he is fully satisfied that he is as well equipped, both as regards dress and manners, not only as a man need be, but as a man ought to be. The toilet, the chamber, and the dinner-table of a plain New England farmer he treats as wasteful ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... seemed to be—and call them all by their right names with a resentful emphasis. He achieved the naked sincerity of a Hottentot—nay, he even went beyond it in rejecting the feeble compromise of the breech-clout. Not only would he be naked and not ashamed, but everybody else should be so with a blush of conscious exposure, and human nature should be stripped of the hypocritical fig-leaves that betrayed by attempting ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... goodness! My heart turns to water at the nude recollection of such an unparalleled predicament, for the now unrestrained bicycle vires acquirit eundo, and in seven-league boots! While I, wet as a clout with anxiety and perspiration, did grasp the handles like the horns of a dilemma, calling out in agonised accents to the bystanders,—"Help! I am running away with myself! Half a rupee ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... were cooking up something. They've got some Indians in it too. Saw them rehearsing old Thunder Mountain the other day in nothing but a breech-clout." ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... give me room to chafe in Mine own room, and my liberty: why Maid there, Open I say, and do not anger me, I am subject to much fury: when, ye Dish-clout? When do ye come? asleep ye lazie Hell-hound? Nothing intended, but your ease, and eating? No body here? why Wife, why Wife? why Jewel? No tongue to answer me? pre'thee, good Pupil, Dispense a little with thy careful study, And step to th' door, and let me in; nor he neither? ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... Captain shouted; "all aboord, aboord, my lads! The more 'ee bide ashore, the wuss 'ee be. See to Master Cheeseman's craft! Got a good hour afront of us. Dannel, what be mooning at? Fetch 'un a clout on his head, Harry Shanks; or Tim, you run up and do it. Doubt the young hosebird were struck last moon, and his brains put to salt in a herring-tub. Home with you, wife! And take Dan, if you will. He'd do more good at ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... am I to get bread for him? What claim has he? Am I a millionaire to feed every drunkard that passes? They are half-blind with spite. . . . They have no cross on them, the devils . . . . They'll give you a clout on the ear and not think twice about it: 'Give us bread!' Well, one gives it. . . . One is not going to fight with them, the idols! Some of them are two yards across the shoulders, and a great fist as big as ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... as the night increased and the weatherwise poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder and in a brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the smoking shower, the men making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to Holles street a swash of water flowing that was before bonedry and not one chair or coach or fiacre ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... the palace On a white and downy bed, And some are in the garret With a clout beneath their head, And some are on the cold hard earth, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... and politics. His Daphnaida was also published about the same time. On his return to Ireland he gave a charming picture of life at Kilcolman Castle, with an account of his visit to the court, in Colin Clout's Come Home Again. The story of the long and desperate courtship of his second love, Elizabeth, whom he wedded in 1594, is told in the Amoretti, a sonnet sequence full of passion and tenderness. His rapturous wedding ode, the ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser

... reckon," he said, "we'll pay 'em hard cash with a clout on the skull, cap'n; come right along, boys, and bring your shootin' irons. Oh, I guess we'll pay 'em, money down, ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... too much eloquence! Rail on her husband, his misusing her, And make that serve thee as an argument, That she may sooner yield to do him wrong. Were it my case, my love and I to plead, I have't at fingers' ends: who could miss the clout, Having so fair a white, such steady aim. This is the upshot: ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... The Indians had two tom-toms, and the squaws beat on them while the Indians, all painted hideously, jumped stiff legged, cut themselves until they were covered with blood and sweat and yowled their hideous war whoop. They were naked excepting their breech clout. Sargeant Jones had control of all the guns at the fort, and unknown to us, the cannon were all trained on the dancers. We could not understand why the soldiers were so near us, but later in the day learned that there was a soldier for ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... the clout! you have hit the very white," said the damsel, suppressing a great inclination ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... to speak, and so solved the mystery. Her first thought was to snatch the kettle out of the blaze, but remembering who had put it there, she dared not. She sidled toward the hearth instead, and saying craftily, "Ay, here it is; it's a clout among the peats," softly laid the kettle on the earthen floor. It was still red with sparks, however, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... subjected, render it very probable that it may have occurred as narrated. When Gipsies were hung and transported merely for being Gipsies, it is not unlikely that a persecution to death may have originated in even such a trifle as the alleged theft of a dish-clout. ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... end was beautiful: one sigh. She jumped a foot when it was nigh. A lily in a linen clout She looked when they had laid her out. It is a lily-light she bears ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Christmas Day, or Christmas Eve, you hang a wash-clout on a hedge, and then groom the horses with ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... a forced smile. The native saw it, and looked admiringly at the beautiful handle. He turned it around and viewed it from every side, and then deftly drew a strand of material from his clout and, winding it around the knife, threw the loop of the ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay

... think. Oh, I remember—the 'Stowmarket Mystery'—and he stayed at the hotel where Flossie was engaged. How she ever came to take notice of him, I can't imagine. She was a queer sort of girl—used to wear bloomers, and get off her bike to clout the small boys ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy

... clout, She is quite shut out! She might call and shout, But no one about Would ever call back, "Who's there?" There is never a hut, Not a door to shut, Not a footpath or rut, Long road or ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald

... 'Nor I,' rejoined his fellow; 'let Andreuccio enter.' 'That will I not,' said the latter; whereupon the two rogues turned upon him and said, 'How! Thou wilt not? Cock's faith, an thou enter not, we will clout thee over the costard with one of these iron bars ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... the innocent conceits That like a needless eyeglass or black patch Give those who wear them harmless happiness; The twists and cracks in our poor earthenware, That touch me to more conscious fellowship (I am not myself the finest Parian) With my coevals. So poor Colin Clout, To whom raw onions give prospective zest, Consoling hours of dampest wintry work, Could hardly fancy any regal joys Quite unimpregnate with the onion's scent: Perhaps his highest hopes are not all clear Of waftings from that energetic bulb: ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... was cast out I was a child.... If I did weave some clout Of raiment, would he keep the vesture now He wore in childhood? Should my weaving grow As his limbs grew?... 'Tis lost long since. No more! O, either 'twas some stranger passed, and shore His locks for very ruth before that tomb: Or, ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides

... was about eleven o'clock at the time, I thought I had better hurry in case there was another Flushing-bound train. So I scuttled towards the door only to receive another heavy clout from the sentry's rifle. What the interpreter really said was "Ah! No, you can't go!" As I rubbed my bruised head I treated that interpreter to a candid opinion of his English speaking qualifications, but he did not understand half what ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... Calidore, seeking Pastorella, catches a glimpse of the Graces dancing in the forest to the piping of Colin Clout (a personification of Spenser). Shortly after, Calidore has the good fortune to rescue Pastorella from a tiger, just after Coridon has deserted her ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... then the others would tease her with, "Aw, Jennie!" knowing who it was she had named the apple for, Wes. Rinehart, or 'Lonzo Curl, or whoever. And you'd be standing there by the stove, kind of grinning and not thinking of anything in particular when somebody would hit you a clout on your back that just about broke you in two, and would tell you "to pass it on," and you'd pass it on, and the next thing was you'd think the house was coming down. Such a chasing around and over benches, and upsetting the water-bucket, and tearing up Jack generally that teacher would say, ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... [His compliment with his neighbour is a good thump on the back, and his salutation commonly some blunt curse.] He thinks nothing to be vices, but pride and ill husbandry, from which he will gravely dissuade the youth, and has some thrifty hob-nail proverbs to clout his discourse. He is a niggard all the week, except only market-day, where, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk with a good conscience. His feet never stink so unbecomingly as when he trots after a lawyer in Westminster-hall, and even cleaves the ground with hard ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... whether or not of actual age, always carry one straight into antiquity, was a further retrogression to the obscure depths of time. So, too, one's glance would often sweep in a twinkling from a European clothed in garments of the latest mode to a Hindu whose sole covering was his dhotee, or clout about the loins, taking in between these two extremes a number of distinct stages in the process of evolution through which our clothes have gone. In the evening we visited the Sangam, where the small streams of the Moola and the Moota ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... finished partaking of the food (and great good it did us) when Agnes Anne heard a sound that sent her suddenly back to her corner with a face as white as a linen clout. She was always quicker of hearing than I, but certain it is that after a while I did hear something like the trampling of horses, and especially, repeated more than once, the sharp jingle which the head of a caparisoned horse makes ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... Spenser's pastoral Colin Clout's Come Home Again, was the countess of Derby. Her name was Alice, and she was the youngest of the six daughters of sir John Spenser, of Althorpe, ancestor of the noble houses of Spenser and Marlborough. After the death of the earl, the widow married sir Thomas Egerton, keeper of the Great ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... mendicants go almost naked, usually with nothing but the smallest possible breech clout around their loins, which the police require them to wear; they plaster their bodies with mud, ashes and filth; they rub clay, gum and other substances into their hair to give it an uncouth appearance. Sometimes they wear their hair in long braids ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... to speak to her very particularly about General Mitchener. (To Mitchener.) Dont you be afeard: I know youre sane enough when youre not talkin about the Germans. (Into the telephone.) Is that you, Eliza? (She listens for the answer.) Dye remember me givin you a clout on the side of the head for tellin me that if I only knew how to play me cards I could marry any general on the staff instead o disgracin you be bein a charwoman? (She listens for the answer.) Well, I can have General Mitchener without playing any ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw

... out, but there was no one near to help us; and as I was offering to bid 'em keep the peace, Psyche fell a nipping and pricking me with her bodkin: on the other side also, the young wench half stifled Ascyltos with a dish-clout she had rubb'd in ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... but they by no means helped her to get on with her work, for when I finished a chapter I bounded downstairs to read it to her, and so short were the chapters, so ready was the pen, that I was back with new manuscript before another clout had been added to the rug. Authorship seemed, like her bannock-baking, to consist of running between two points. They were all tales of adventure (happiest is he who writes of adventure), no characters were allowed within ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie

... bareback rider, a sort of jockey, used especially to please me on account of his handsome legs, which were clothed in fleshlings up to his waist, leaving his beautiful loins uncovered by a breech-clout. There was nothing consciously sensual about these reveries, because at the time I had no sensual feelings or knowledge. Curiously enough, the women-actors repelled me then (as they do to this day) quite as strongly as I was attracted ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... "Swell chance I've got to retire! I'll die in the harness whether I want to or not. Tut, tut, my boy! Don't be afraid to put me in as a pinch hitter for this organization. The worst I can do is to single—and I might clout a home run." ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... whistle is heard in the outer darkness, and a dozen forms, lithe and lean, dressed only with the narrow white breech-clout and mocassins, and daubed with white earth until they seem a group of living marbles, come bounding through the entrance, yelping like wolves, and slowly moving round the fire. As they advance, in single file, they throw their bodies into diverse attitudes, some graceful, some strained, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... to be out a' day, and frighted—na, I winna say that neither but mistrysted wi' bogles in the hame-coming, an' then to hae to flyte wi' a wheen women that hae been doing naething a' the live-lang day, but whirling a bit stick, wi' a thread trailing at it, or boring at a clout." ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... on entering the ward, to the bedside of his puzzling patient, who still lay limp as a dish-clout and drowsy as a sloth. He tested—as he had done almost daily—his nervous and respiratory powers with the exact instruments adapted for the purpose, and then, still unenlightened, he questioned him closely ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban

... his hemmed cravat,' said one fellow; 'it's Gil Hobson, the souple tailor frae Burgh. Ye are welcome to Scotland, ye prick-the-clout loon,' he said, thrusting forth a paw; much the colour of a badger's back, and of most ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... feet, with his lips set and his eye abstracted. If his face hadn't been burned black by weather it would have been pale as a dish-clout. A man like him doesn't make up his mind for death and then be given his life again without being wrenched out of his bearings. I thought he didn't understand what had happened, so I beat him ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... liking to me, a fine jolly dame, as plump as a partridge. She has a well-furnished house, a brisk trade, and a good deal of the ready. I may have her for the asking. She told a friend of mine, a brother footman, that she would take me out of a stinking clout. But I refused to give my final answer, till I knew your opinion of the matter." I congratulated Monsieur d'Estrapes upon his conquest, and approved of the scheme, provided he could be assured of those circumstances of her fortune; but advised him to do nothing rashly, and give me an opportunity ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... we borrow a clout from the Boer—to plaster anew with dirt? An Irish liar's bandage, ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... reached the North Sea, and came to La Sounds Key, according to the prophecy of an Indian wizard. Here they found Dampier's sloop, and rejoined their comrades, to the great delight of all hands. "Mr Wafer wore a clout about him, and was painted like an Indian," so that "'twas the better Part of an Hour, before one of the Crew cry'd out Here's our Doctor." There was a great feast that night at La Sounds Key, much drinking of rum and ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... their Greek prototypes, first invoked the favor of the gods, and offered sacrifices when victorious. The palestra was on a lawn by the sea, and in formal contests district champions met those of other districts, and islands competed for supremacy with other islands. The maona wore a breech-clout and a coat of cocoanut oil freshly laid on, but not sand, as in the Olympiads. When one was thrown, the victor's friends shouted in triumph and sang and danced about him to the music of tom-toms, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... to go to Bursley Station, that is," said Amy, observing that Constance was descending King Street instead of crossing it into Wedgwood Street. And she caught Spot 'a fair clout on the head,' to indicate to him that she had him alone in the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... transcendent love, devouring ambition, but rather the half relaxed or gently restrained moods of human creatures. It gives also our idiosyncrasies. It is gossip in extremis. It is apt to chronicle our petty little skirmishes, rather than our feuds. In it Colin Clout and his comrades return. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... increased their durability, and were often ornamented over the instep or toes with a three-pronged figure, worked in porcupine quills or beads, the three prongs representing, it is said, the three divisions or tribes of the nation. The men wore a shirt, breech-clout, leggings which reached to the thighs, and moccasins. In winter both men and women wore a robe of tanned buffalo skin, and sometimes of beaver. In summer a lighter robe was worn, made of cowskin or buckskin, from which the hair had ...
— Blackfoot Lodge Tales • George Bird Grinnell

... darkness amidships: "You don't deserve a kindness. I've been drying them for you, and now you complain about the holes—and you swear, too! Right in front of me! If I hadn't been a Christian—which you ain't, you young ruffian—I would give you a clout on the head.... Go away!" Men in couples or threes stood pensive or moved silently along the bulwarks in the waist. The first busy day of a homeward passage was sinking into the dull peace of resumed routine. Aft, on the high poop, Mr. Baker ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... a Hubert!' shouted the populace, more interested in a known person than in a stranger. 'In the clout!—in ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... first by a dish-clout, rolled tightly up and well aimed, and afterwards by his active-limbed superior. Both reached the region of smells, cruets, and crockery at the same moment, and each set energetically to ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... work in brass, A tinkler is my station: I've travell'd round all Christian ground In this my occupation; I've taen the gold, an' been enrolled In many a noble squadron; But vain they search'd when off I march'd To go an' clout the cauldron. I've taen the ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... my Friends, we are (in Yorick Sterne's words) but as "turkeys driven with a stick and red clout, to the market": or if some drivers, as they do in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the rattle thereof ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... "after dinner you may overlooke him to keepe you from sleepe, or if you be heavie, to bring you to sleepe ... it were better to hold Euphues in your hands though you let him fall, when you be willing to winke, then to sowe in a clout, and pricke your fingers when you begin to nod[91]." "With Euphues," remarks M. Jusserand, "commences in England the literature of the drawing-room[92]"; and the literature of the drawing-room is to all intents and ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... in the London Magazine, came "by Lord Brooke." Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, wrote Sidney's Life, published in 1652. After Sidney's death appeared many elegies upon him, eight of which were printed at the end of Spenser's Colin Clout's Come Home Again, in 1595. That which Lamb quotes is by Matthew Roydon, Stanzas 15 to 18 and 26 and 27. The poem beginning "Silence augmenteth grief" is attributed to Brooke, chiefly on Lamb's authority, in Ward's English Poets. This ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... up and down, threatening the flames; A clout upon that head Where late the diadem stood; and, for a robe, A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up; Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd, 'Gainst fortune's state would treason ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... promptly clipped him behind the ear with a fist full of money, and down he went. Oscar, who must have eyes in the back of his head, turned and grabbed the hose out of his hand before he dropped it, using it to clout somebody in front of him. Somebody else came pushing toward us, and I was about to clip him, too, when he yelled, "Watch it, Walt; I'm with it!" It was Cesario Vieira, another Javelin man; he's engaged to Linda Kivelson, Joe's daughter ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... a shrill voice, as the door opened and admitted a buxom woman of forty or thereabouts. "I have found you at last; come out with you," and she emphasised the command by a smart clout on ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... for fifty year," cried honest Roger Clout, "yet never have I seen the mate to yonder little maid, nor heard the like o' such a tale! Wife, wife!" he cried, in a voice as round and full of hearty cheer as one who calls his own cattle home across his own fat fields. ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... thought an inspiration came to him like a ray of sunlight piercing the blackness of a dungeon. He felt among the inner folds of his ragged blanket, withdrew a small object and thrust it into his mouth. A second later the blanket was snatched from his body leaving him clad only in a breech clout, and he was given a push into the lane as a hint that his time for ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... clothes." He grinned again. "We'll want a breech clout, at least. I propose that we get the sheerest silk gauze we can find, and cut an eighth-inch square apiece to tie about our middles ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst

... every bricklayer should survive and succeed. It sought to rebuild the ruins of any bricklayer, and to give any faded whitewasher a new white coat. It was the whole aim of the Guilds to cobble their cobblers like their shoes and clout their clothiers with their clothes; to strengthen the weakest link, or go after the hundredth sheep; in short to keep the row of little shops unbroken ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... "Outrageous indeed!" Another clout. "Nothing but wallopping will be effective on you scheming guys." The remark was followed by a shower of blows. I soaked Clown at the same time, and made him think he saw the way to the Kingdom-Come. Finally the two crawled and crouched ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri

... "She will clout thee blind, Jack, as she clouted the Chaplain," cried one of the company. "No man that lives can tame her. She is the fiercest shrew in England, as she is the ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... had achieved, without any treaty at all, a stage of civilization distinctly in advance of many of our treaty Indians to the south after twenty-five years of education. Instead of paint and feathers, the scalp-lock, the breech-clout, and the buffalo-robe, there presented itself a body of respectable-looking men, as well dressed and evidently quite as independent in their feelings as any like number of average pioneers in the East. Indeed, I had seen there, in my youth, many a time, crowds ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... was devilish cold. His wretched body was beginning to cry out with discomfort. A loop of his hat was broken and the loose flap was a conduit for the rain down his back. His old ridingcoat was like a dish-clout, and he felt icy about the middle. Separate streams of water entered the tops of his ridingboots—they were a borrowed pair and too big for him—and his feet were in puddles. It was only by degrees that he realised this misery. Then in the boggy track his horse ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... restless nature something of the placid serenity of the white-haired stranger. He regarded the man more closely, saw there was an alien look about him that marked him as different and apart from the men of Earth. His sole garment was a wide breech clout of silvery stuff that glinted with changing colors—hues foreign to nature on Earth. His was a superhuman perfection of muscular development, and there was an indescribable mingling of gentleness and sternness in his demeanor. With a start, Bert noted that his fingers ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent

... and Abiram. Not the most despised of the habits or the feeblest of the three-year-olds had been left behind to give a hint of their course; but the hoof-marks showed black on a marshy down-grade of grass, and with an angry clout of her crop on Pilot's unaccustomed ribs, she set off again. A narrow road cut across the hills at the end of the field. The latter was divided from it by a low, thin wall of sharp slaty stones, and on the further side there was a wide and boggy drain. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... was displayed in their giving a stifled utterance to howls of anguish, which were repeated ad libitum throughout the hymn; but as this was a customary proceeding it attracted no attention, unless a dog expressed his sufferings more loudly than was wont, when he received a clout from his master's staff that silenced him, and sent him under the pew-seat, as to a species of ecclesiastical ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede

... he engaged one of the numerous small boats awaiting a passenger, and directed the clout-wearing boatman to ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... Indian treachery and in spite of the warnings of Antoine, offering no obstruction to their approach, has allowed them to enter the camp. What madness! They have divested themselves of their buffalo-robes, and appear naked to the breech-clout and armed with bows and arrows, tomahawks, and scalping knives. Six or seven only come in at first, but others quickly follow, dropping in by twos and threes until a score or more are collected around ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... sending the guide ahead with the horses, I walked over to the shore with the lady and children who were my companions. There we saw a sight characteristic of these islands. Three women decently clothed in a garment which covered them from head to foot, and a man with only a breech-clout on, were dashing into the surf, picking up sea-moss, and a little univalve shell, a limpet, which they flung into small baskets which hung from their shoulders. They were, in fact, getting their suppers, and they were quite as much surprised ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... worthy woman at Lyndhurst, who will now have the use of them. I have thirteen arrows yet, and if one of them fly unfleshed, then, by the twang of string! I shall deserve my doom. First at him who flaunts with my lady's silken frock. Clap in the clout, by God! though a hand's-breadth lower than I had meant. Now for the rogue with the head upon his pike. Ha! to the inch, John. When my eye is true, I am better at rovers than at long-butts or hoyles. A good shoot for you also, John! The ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... by the way Weeping for sorrow, I saw a simple man me by, Upon the plow hanging. His coat was of a clout That cary[8] was called; His hood was full of holes, And his hair out; With his knopped[9] shoon Clouted full thick; His toes totedun[10] out As he the land treaded; His hosen overhung his hockshins On every side, All beslomered in fen[11] As he the plow followed. Two mittens ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... his wife frequently appeared at church with red eyes after her lord and master had held his usual Sunday forenoon inspection of the house, and had discovered a cockroach in the kitchen or a dish-clout in the scullery, while it was true that he permitted his three children to wear good conduct badges, each carrying with them the sum of 1d. per week, after three months' exemplary behaviour. But only one of them, Tony, aged 18 months, had ever worn a ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling

... the pampas of the great Thames valley, and furnished forth abundant food for man as well as the wild beasts, when they could capture him. His skin, though, was not counted of much worth. Its short hair afforded little warmth in cloak or breech-clout, and the tanned pelt became hard and uncomfortable when it dried after a wetting. Still, there were various uses for this horse's hide. It made fine strings and thongs, and the beast's flesh, as has been said, was a staple of the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... colossus of Rhodes, and when a king of Kahiki, who was keeper of the sun, undertook to deprive the people of it, because of some slight, Kana waded across the sea and forced that king to behave himself instanter; then, having seen the light properly placed in the sky, he spread his breech-clout over a few acres of volcano to dry, and took a nap on a mile or so of lava bed. This deity had the power of compressing himself into a small space, and likewise of pulling himself out to any desired length, like an accordion, so that there was not water in ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... of Indians, whose chief dress was a breach clout and deerskin leggings, formidable in their war-paint and war plumes, with scalping-knives and tomahawks, were only partially held in hand by Chief Brant, conspicuous by his height, his wampum fillet and eagle plumes, and his King George's medal ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... were white as onny clout, An' they said niver a word, T'hey couldn't tell what the ghost was like, Whether 'twas a ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... Judge Kelly, a bluidy Fenian, wha'll gie 'm 'ten dollars or fourteen days' fur bein' a British sailorman alane. Pluggin' a Dutchman 's naethin'; it's th' 'Rid Rag' that Kelly's doon oan. Ah ken the swine; he touched me twinty dollars fur gie'n a winchman a clout i' the lug—an ill-faured Dago wi' a haun' on 's knife. Ah guess there's nae chance for a lime-juicer up-bye, an' ye may take it that yer man 'll be fined. Noo, withoot sayin' ony mair aboot it, ye ken fine that yer Captain 's no' gaun tae pey 't. Wi' nae sicht o' a charter ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... would. Your way of fighting is no just the canniest, but I like you no the worse for it. You might have got off without thon bloody clout on the top of your head if ye'd just clodded stones and then run like the rest of them. But that's no your way of fightin'. Did ye ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... ells long and each 200 reis; others describe them as fine linen each piece worth 7s. 6d. to 8s. The bank-note was the "Indian piece or Mulech, a young black about twenty years of age, worth 20 Mil Keys (dollars) each." (Carli.) In the Barbots' day each "coin-clout") was equivalent to 2d.; some were unmarked, whilst others bore the Portuguese arms single or double. The wilder Kru-men still keep up their "buyapart" ( 25 cents), a cloth 4 inches square and thickly sewn over ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... knew The valor of the gen'ral and his troops; And seeing this affair must end in blood, I brought a clout, ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer

... and low; their mouths and lips middle-sized, with white teeth; and their hair is thick, black, and lank, which they cut short. Their complexion is of a dark copper colour, and they go all bare-headed, having for the most part no clothes, except a clout about the middle, though some have jackets of plantain leaves, as rough as a bear-skin. The women have a short petticoat of coarse calico, reaching a little below the knees, and both sexes wear ear-rings of a yellow metal dug from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... privateer possibly talk with the farmer about the introduction of that new esculent, the potato? Did they talk tobacco? Did Colin Clout have any observations to make upon the rot in sheep, or upon the probable "clip" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... beheld in her mind's sight the hard features, the bold eyes, the slight smile, the coarse face of Haze Ruff. She had forgotten him. But he now returned. And with memory of him flashed a revelation as to his meaning in her life. He had appeared merely a clout, a ruffian, an animal with man's shape and intelligence. But he was the embodiment of the raw, crude violence of the West. He was the eyes of the natural primitive man, believing what he saw. He had seen in Carley Burch the paraded charm, the unashamed and serene front, ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... Touchwood, who, when not occupied with business of real importance, had the art, as the reader may have observed, to make a prodigious fuss about nothing at all. Upon the present occasion, he bustled in and out of the kitchen, till Mrs. Dods lost patience, and threatened to pin the dish-clout to his tail; a menace which he pardoned, in consideration, that in all the countries which he had visited, which are sufficiently civilized to boast of cooks, these artists, toiling in their fiery element, have a privilege to be testy and impatient. He therefore retreated ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... tall, grave man, clad in comic-picture clothes. A battered high hat surmounted his block of midnight hair, and a cutaway coat, built for a man much smaller around the chest, held his torso in bondage. As it was warm on the day he arrived, he had discarded his trousers—a breech-clout was plenty leg-gear, he thought. He bore a letter of recommendation ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... In clout shooting and target practice, one must take wind into consideration. In hunting we only consider it when approaching game, as a carrier of scent, because our hunting ranges are well under a hundred yards and our heavy hunting shafts tack into the wind ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... lively a manner, setting forth the cruel murder of the feeble old king, with the destruction of his people and city by fire, and the mad grief of the old queen, running barefoot up and down the palace, with a poor clout upon that head where a crown had been, and with nothing but a blanket upon her loins, snatched up in haste, where she had worn a royal robe; that not only it drew tears from all that stood by, who thought they saw the real scene, so lively was it represented, but ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb

... the old advice Which we so oft despise, "Cast not a clout Till May goes out." May like a ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... you are wide of the clout," the bowman said gravely. "By my hilt! I have seen a stronger fortalice carried in a summer evening. I remember such a one in Picardy, with a name as long as a Gascon's pedigree. It was when I served under Sir Robert Knolles, before the days of the Company; ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... had passed, and I could again see clearly, the warrior was standing upon the Stone of Sacrifice—naked save for his breech-clout, and armed with a round shield and a maccahuitl of hardened gold. The monk still wore his flowing habit, whence the hood had fallen back, so that his head was bare; in one hand he held his crucifix, and with the other he was ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... the barley Out of the baker's shop; The baker came out, and gave him a clout, And made that ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries, expounders, and commentators. Every thing unintelligible was prophetical, and every thing insignificant was typical. A blunder would have served for a prophecy; and a dish-clout for a type. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... the belts that girt in their gaunt waists: the heroic youthful sinew of the old border folk. One among them, larger and handsomer than the others, had pleased his fancy by donning more nearly the Indian dress. His breech-clout was of dappled fawn-skin; his long thigh boots of thin deer-hide were open at the hips, leaving exposed the clear whiteness of his flesh; below the knees they were ornamented by a scarlet fringe tipped with the hoofs of fawns ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen

... interrupted, and a crowded audience of at least twenty-five pounds kept waiting, because the actors had hid away the breeches of Rosalind, and have known Hamlet stalk solemnly on to deliver his soliloquy, with a dish-clout pinned to his skirts. Such are the baleful consequences of a manager's getting a ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... trust, can do nae gude ava. They are feared for this, and they are scrupulous about that, and they arena free to tell a lie, though it may be for the benefit of the city; and they dinna like to be out at irregular hours, and in a dark cauld night, and they like a clout ower the crown far waur; and sae between the fear o' God, and the fear o' man, and the fear o' getting a sair throat, or sair banes, there's a dozen o' our city-folk, baith waiters, and officers, and constables, that can find out naething but a wee bit skulduddery for ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... wind will scarce turn a well-drawn shaft," said a third. "Shoot dead upon him and you will be clap in the clout." ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 'If AEolus with his blasts, or Neptune with his storms, chance to hit upon the crazy barque of their bruised ruffs, then they goeth flip-flap in the wind, like rags that flew abroad, lying upon their shoulders like the dish-clout of a slut.' Having thus, with great exultation, described these reproofs to human pride, he mentions how 'the devil, as he, in the fulness of his malice, first invented these great ruffs, so hath he now found out also two great pillars to bear up and maintain this his kingdom of great ruffs—for ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various

... Girdhari wanted to have the cane cut down as near as he could to the ground, while the boy, to save himself the trouble of stooping, would persist in cutting it a good deal too high up. After admonishing him several times, the shopkeeper gave him a smart clout on the head. The boy, to prevent a repetition, called out, "Murder! Girdhari has killed me—Girdhari has killed me!" His old father, who was at work carrying away the cane at a little distance out of sight, ran ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... first test. At a distance of five score yards was set a little "clout," or target, of white wood, not more than two feet square. This clout had a red mark, or eye, three inches across, painted in its centre, and stood not very ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... parishes, threatened, grossly insulted, ducked in horse-ponds. At Caltanisetta the golden wings of St. Michael the Archangel were torn from his shoulders and replaced with wings of pasteboard; his purple mantle was taken away and a clout wrapt about him instead. At Licata the patron saint, St. Angelo, fared even worse, for he was left without any garments at all; he was reviled, he was put in irons, he was threatened with drowning or hanging. "Rain or the rope!" roared the angry people at him, as they ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... and are accustomed to tattoo their bodies, arms, legs, and even their faces, where a beard should grow, with very carefully-drawn and handsome figures. The greater the chief, or the more valiant he is, the more he tattoos himself, leaving untattooed only the parts covered by the breech clout—the [clothing or] dress worn by them, and which covers only the privy parts. Both men and women suffer no hair to grow on their bodies except on the head. They wear the hair long and take good care of it so that it will grow. The men bind their hair on the crown of the head with a small piece ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair

... pagan eyes staring a moment at me on my sack of grain, and a grunt when his purchase was set in his hands, each black-haired desert figure turned away, the bare feet moving silent, and the copper body, stark naked except the breech-clout, receding to dimness in the thorn-bush. But I lay incurious at this new vision of what our wide continent holds in fee under the single title United States, until breakfast came. This helped me, and I livened somewhat at finding the driver and the breakfast ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... leap towards her. "You jist say that again, Lizzie Gordon, and I'll give you a clout over the head that'll make ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

... moment he saw him. "Just you wait a bit. I'll teach you to dance: with the clogs on your hands and your head downwards, damn it! Here, take this to go on with!" continued Pa, fetching him a clout on the shoulder. "And get to the bikes and hurry up, or I'll smash your ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne



Words linked to "Clout" :   nail, boxing, pugilism, lick, biff, advantage, slug, knockout punch, mark, haymaker, parry, hook, Sunday punch, blow, pull, strike, counter



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