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Crocodile   Listen
noun
Crocodile  n.  
1.
(Zool.) A large reptile of the genus Crocodilus, of several species. They grow to the length of sixteen or eighteen feet, and inhabit the large rivers of Africa, Asia, and America. The eggs, laid in the sand, are hatched by the sun's heat. The best known species is that of the Nile (Crocodilus vulgaris, or Crocodilus Niloticus). The Florida crocodile (Crocodilus Americanus) is much less common than the alligator and has longer jaws. The name is also sometimes applied to the species of other related genera, as the gavial and the alligator.
2.
(Logic) A fallacious dilemma, mythically supposed to have been first used by a crocodile.
Crocodile bird (Zool.), an African plover (Pluvianus aegypticus) which alights upon the crocodile and devours its insect parasites, even entering its open mouth (according to reliable writers) in pursuit of files, etc.; called also Nile bird. It is the trochilos of ancient writers.
Crocodile tears, false or affected tears; hypocritical sorrow; derived from the fiction of old travelers, that crocodiles shed tears over their prey.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crocodile" Quotes from Famous Books



... Jane!" cried Millicent, coming in with uplifted hands. "That horrid creature. I'm certain sure he's a Roundhead! Robin has heard him speak such dreadful words! Do, I beseech you, madam, tell the Colonel that he is cherishing a crocodile in his bosom. We shall all be murdered in our beds ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt

... in the night, I shall divide them both into quarter-watches, and have one man on duty all the time; for we may be boarded by a huge crocodile or a boa-constrictor if we are not on the lookout. But Achang is a pilot for these rivers. Isn't that so, ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... He kept on saying, "Will it never come?" His heart was bound up in the fortunes of this beloved fairy play. While he waited with Potter, Frohman acted out the whole play, getting down on all-fours to illustrate the dog and crocodile. He told it as Wendy would have told it, for Wendy was one of his favorites. Finally at midnight the telephone-bell rang. Potter took down the receiver. Frohman jumped up from his chair, saying, eagerly, "What's the verdict?" Potter listened a moment, then turned, ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... other Nations, Villains, and Knaves; 'tis not the name contains him, But the obedience; when that's once forgotten, And Duty flung away, then welcome Devil. Photinus and Achillas, and this Vermine That's now become a natural Crocodile Must be ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... crocodiles lying on the mud-bank of a river in Bengal inspired confidence in the accuracy of early teachings, because they were so like the hideous monster in the picture hung on the nursery wall. A crocodile can see and breathe while the whole of its body is immersed in the water, because its eyes and nostrils are on a plane on the surface of the head. A person incautiously bathing, or dipping water out of the river, may be suddenly seized by a crocodile ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... addition to their present just demands, were to petition for the perpetual removal of the said Lord Hawkesbury from his Majesty's councils, I think the prayer of the petition should be instantly complied with. Canning's crocodile tears should not move me; the hoops of the Maids of Honour should not hide him. I would tear him from the banisters of the Back Stairs, and plunge him in the fishy fumes of the dirtiest of all ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... right, if it does ketch game," grinned Bandy-legs. "You see, I was readin' just last week about a crocodile hunter away off in Africa; and he used to set his traps about like the way I'm goin' to ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... heavy-stocked musket, made at Dieppe or Nantes, with a barrel four and a half feet long, and carrying sixteen balls to the pound,[6] lay over the shoulder, a calabash full of powder, with a wax stopper, was slung behind, and a belt of crocodile's skin, with four knives and a bayonet, went round the waist. These individuals, if the term is applicable to the phenomena in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... Wotan was waking up the dragon. At first the dragon said, 'I want to go to sleep'; but eventually he came out of his grotto. The dragon was represented by two men clothed in a green skin with some scales stuck about it. At one end of the skin they wagged a tail, and at the other end they opened a crocodile's mouth, out of which came fire. The dragon, which ought to have been a frightful beast—and perhaps he would have frightened children about five years old—said a few words in a bass voice. It was so ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... from the biceps to the knuckles with numerous fine longitudinal lines; a band of zigzag design encircles the arm just above the commencement of the longitudinal lines. The design on a man of the same tribe is given on page 73 [11], it resembles "a three-legged dog with a crocodile's head, one leg being turned over the back as if the animal was going to scratch its ear." The part of the body on which the design was tatued, is not specified and the sketch is rather inadequate, so that it is impossible to tell for certain whether the design was tatued in outline only or ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... book-bindings heretofore enumerated, some of the rarer and more singular styles. Thus, books have been bound in enamel, (richly variegated in color) in Persian silk, in seal-skin, in the skin of the rabbit, white-bear, crocodile, cat, dog, mole, tiger, otter, buffalo, wolf, and even rattle-snake. A favorite modern leather for purses and satchels, alligator-skin, has been also applied to the clothing of books. Many eccentric fancies have been exemplified in book-binding, but the acme of gruesome oddity has been reached ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... "Me! I won't——" but even as I spoke she had taken my arm, and the next thing I knew I was sitting with the thing on my knees and Miss Laura Hinkle opposite, grinning in my face like a flirtatious crocodile. ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... His views may have been more or less partial; Philip the Second may have deserved the pitying benevolence of poor Maximilian; Maurice may have wept as sincerely over the errors of Arminius as any one of "the crocodile crew that believe in election;" Barneveld and Grotius may have been on the road to Rome; none of these things seem probable, but if they were all proved true in opposition to his views, we should still have the long roll of glowing tapestry he has woven ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... without doubt we shall learn in time. If the crocodile is patient and silent the buck always drops into its ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... ridiculous CHILD!" said the duchess. "Leave off talking about my maids, and my neck, and your crocodile tears, and finish describing the portrait. What do I do, with ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... honours and carved its image on their monuments. I am prepared to admit that onions do not move in the atmosphere of sentiment and of poetry. Tears have been shed over onions, as every housewife knows. Shakespeare speaks of the tears that live in an onion. But, as Shakespeare implies, they are crocodile tears—without tenderness and without emotion. Old John Wolcott, the satirist, ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... du rebord de l'arcade gante, Un cavalier bless perdant son point d'appui, Un cheval effar tombait dans l'eau bante, Gueule de crocodile entr'ouverte ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... he is!" cried another, whose landing-net was full of fish, as an enormous head like that of a white crocodile appeared above the water. The whole head was white; in the open mouth were two rows of sharp teeth like those of an alligator, but with four fangs meeting like a tiger's—a formidable head indeed. They may well call him the king of the lake, for there is no ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... have attempted to give in India performances on European lines. They have purchased the necessary paraphernalia from London and have as much idea of using it to its best advantage as a crocodile has of arranging the flowers on a dinner table. Our Indian Jadoo-wallah usually gets himself into a very tight fitting third or fourth hand evening dress on these occasions, to show, I presume, how European he is. The ...
— Indian Conjuring • L. H. Branson

... of his chamber to tary behynde, whose fidelitie he had at other times proued: and all that daye he ceased not to cherishe and make much of his wyfe. But the poore soule did not forsee, that they were the flatteries of the Crocodile, which reioyseth when he seeth one deceiued. When he had supped, he made a particuler remembraunce to his wife how the affaires of his house should be disposed in his absence: and then toke his leaue, giuing her a Iudas kisse. The lorde vnethes had ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter

... Manka—or otherwise Manka the Crocodile—Zoe, and Henrietta—all thirty years old, and, therefore, in the reckoning of Yama, already old prostitutes, who had seen everything, had grown inured to everything, grown indifferent to their trade, like white, fat circus ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... proportioned to the size of their countries. John-o'-Groat and his seven brothers took possession of their house, Turks paraded in the Mediterranean, and in the large empty space in the heart of Africa, Baron Munchausen caused the lion to leap down the crocodile's throat. ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Pox o' your Crocodile's Tears. Why, Sirrah, Sirrah, do you call my Daughter Whore? Hey, Swords and Daggers, Blunderbusses and Pistols, shall I bear this? Hark you, you my Friend, and no Friend, what a Kin do you take me to be to this ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris

... of France," "The Master of Ballantrae," "Micah Clarke," "The Raiders," "The Prisoner of Zenda," and the truly primeval or troglodyte imagination which, as we read of a fight between a knob-nosed Kaffir dwarf and a sacred crocodile, brings us in touch with the first hearers of Heracles's or Beowulf's or Grettir's deeds, "so strange that the jaws of the listeners fall apart." Thus we possess outlets for escape from ourselves and from to-day. We can still dwell now and then in the same air of pleasure as our fathers ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... had become somewhat dull, immediately began to sparkle. The comte advanced towards the king's table, and Louis rose at his approach. Everybody got up at the same time, including Porthos, who was just finishing an almond-cake capable of making the jaws of a crocodile stick ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... absolutely necessary for the leaving a posterity. Some creatures cast their eggs as chance directs them, and think of them no farther, as insects and several kinds of fish; others, of a nicer frame, find out proper beds to deposite them in, and there leave them; as the serpent, the crocodile, and ostrich: Others hatch their eggs, and tend the birth, till it is able to shift ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... Nile Thou hast ever held thy way, Where the embryo crocodile In the damp sedge lay; When the river monster's eye Kindled at thy passing by, And the pliant reeds were bending Where his blackened form was wending, And the basking serpent started Wildly ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

... this I'm seein' partner?" he yelped joyously. "A reg'lar engine or I'm a crocodile from the Nile! Why, this must be what they call an auxiliary craft, fitted to use canvas or hoss power, whichever fills the bill best. You c'n ditch me if this ain't what I'll call luck. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... Egyptian worshipped there the crocodile; There they of Nineveh the bull with wings; The Persian there with swart, sun-lifted smile Felt in his soul the writhing ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... lizards of India and Africa which have long held the regard of eastern nations, upon the slender report that they hiss upon the approach of a crocodile, and so warn the incautious traveller to retreat in time. The truth is, these sauria prey upon the crocodile's eggs, no doubt to the particular annoyance of the crocodile, who are, therefore, it is more than probable, no friends ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... "crocodile's tears" has passed into common use, and it therefore may be worth while noting the probable origin of this myth. Shakespeare, with that wide extent of knowledge which enabled him to draw similes from every department of human ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various

... recollected what that was like.... She was enduring ten thousand times more than that for ever. He should hear her shrieking in vain for a drop of water to cool her tongue.... He had never heard a human being shriek but once.... a boy bathing on the opposite Nile bank, whom a crocodile had dragged down.... and that scream, faint and distant as it came across the mighty tide, had rung intolerable in his ears for days.... and to think of all which echoed through those vaults of fire-for ever! Was the thought bearable!—was ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... the daughter of a clergyman, and the granddaughter of a clergyman, and I know what a clergyman is when he is brave and good, and gentle and merciful to all women, and when he is a man and a gentleman—not a Pharisee and a crocodile!" ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... of the Parisian scavenger who recently discovered a crocodile in a dustbin encourages me to write to you on a similar subject. I note with profound dismay the proposal to turn Hyde Park into a Zoological Garden. At least this is not an unfair deduction from the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various

... him. I couldn't look round to see what became of him; I only saw him start. Half-way down the hill a policeman holla'd to me to stop. I heard him shouting out something about furious driving. Half-a-mile this side of Chesham we came upon a girls' school walking two and two—a 'crocodile' they call it, I think. I bet you those girls are still talking about it. It must have taken the old woman a good hour to ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... has nerved Life to the effort of organizing itself into the human being is not the need for higher life but for a more efficient engine of destruction. The plague, the famine, the earthquake, the tempest were too spasmodic in their action; the tiger and crocodile were too easily satiated and not cruel enough: something more constantly, more ruthlessly, more ingeniously destructive was needed; and that something was Man, the inventor of the rack, the stake, the gallows, and the ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... muttered. "Sobbing to herself as she went down the steps! Crocodile's tears, I know. These d—d women, Julien! Out with it. What did she ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... pictures, one of which was a lion devouring a crocodile, appeared the clown's head, grinning from ear to ear. He was so utterly grotesque that the ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... "Crocodile tears!" (with scorn.) "I don't know how she managed to squeeze them up. I never saw Ada Irvine weep before. As for apologizing, I won't, ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... grotesque, it is an exceedingly vivid and faithful reflection of the religious ideas of the age that produced it. What now appears grotesque was then sublime and awful. We smile at the barbaric imagination that placed here, at the door of hell, the head of a vast and hideous monster of the crocodile family, into whose gaping jaws the damned are being thrust by a pantomime devil; but eight centuries ago Christian people had too lively a faith in the materialistic horrors of the infernal kingdom to perceive anything extravagant ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... grilo. Crime krimo. Criminal krimulo. Criminally kriminale. Crimson rugxega. Cripple kripligi. Cripple kriplulo. Crippled kripla. Crisis krizo. Crisp friza. Critic kritikisto. Criticism kritiko. Croak bleki. Crockery fajenco. Crocodile krokodilo. Crooked hoka, malrekta. Crop (harvest) rikolto. Crosier episkopa bastono. Cross kruco. Cross krucigi. Cross (manner) malafabla. Cross-over transiri. Cross-out streki. Crossing krucigo. Crotchet kvarona noto. Croup krupo. Crow ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... boat shunted to one side, the crocodile swished away, and Frank fell headlong into the agitated waters of the little bay. Jack saw him going and tried to catch him, but did ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson

... Caledonians sewed up their dead in the skins of oxen before burying them. The Egyptians also embalmed the ibis, the ox, the cat, the crocodile, and other animals deified by them, and the bodies of these creatures were then placed in vast subterranean chambers, where they have been discovered in the present day in great numbers. The Guanches of Teneriffe, the last representatives of the Iberians, and ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... vast serene faces of the Pharaohs on the great rock-temple of Abou Simbel (Ipsambul) (No. 1, F. 307). It Is the sublimest of stereographs, as the temple of Kardasay, this loveliest of views on glass, is the most poetical. But here is the crocodile lying in wait for us on the sandy bank of the Nile, and we must ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... for once a piteous tale was read, How, when the murderous mother crocodile Was slain, her fierce brood famished, and lay dead, ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... house where were stored a number of cases containing stuffed creatures—birds and chipmunks and small furry things. Some larger animals were slung up under the beams of the loft to get them out of the way; there was a bear in one corner, and a great crocodile, and a shark; possessions of the previous owner of the Stuffed Animal House, stored here by her executor, pending the final ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland

... cila, nave ain vie, vie cocodri qui te gagnin Dans temps cela en avait un vieux, vieux crocodile qui avait gagne ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... compact body, long powerful hind limbs and three-toed feet of the bird. The skin was probably either naked or covered with horny scales as in lizards and snakes; at all events it was not armor-plated as in the crocodile.[4] They walked or ran upon the hind legs; in many of them the fore limbs are quite unfitted for support of the body and must have been used solely in ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... present. There are some seven species of monkeys, including two baboons and one colobus. The hippopotamus is found in the lakes and rivers, and all these sheets of water are infested with crocodiles, apparently belonging to but one species, the common Nile crocodile. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... a little of everything, gives it even specimens of its amusing barbarism. Europe possesses specimens of Asia and Africa on a small scale. The cat is a drawing-room tiger, the lizard is a pocket crocodile. The dancers at the opera are pink female savages. They do not eat men, they crunch them; or, magicians that they are, they transform them into oysters and swallow them. The Caribbeans leave only the bones, they leave only the shell. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... Buzzard" found in our Foreign Section. It was given to him by the Reverend J. E. Hatch of the South African General Mission. Along with this rhyme came the following in his kind and obliging letter: "We thought the story of how the Crocodile got its scaly skin might be of ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley

... partner—a fair lad of Scandinavian origin named Adolphus. All these orientals have extraordinary faith in the medicinal properties of the gall of out-of-the-way creatures. That of a wallaby is prized; of a "goanna" absolutely precious; while in respect of a crocodile, only a man who has leisure to be ill and is determined to doctor himself on the reckless principle of "blow the expense," could afford any such luxurious physic. It is reckoned next in virtue to a text from the Koran written on ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... Gulf of Carpentaria, and resume the survey of the North Coast at Wessel's Islands. Castlereagh Bay. Crocodile Islands. Discovery and examination of Liverpool River. Natives. Arrive at Goulburn Island. Complete wood and water. Attacked by the natives from the cliffs. Leave Goulburn Island, and pass round Cape Van Diemen. Resume the survey of the coast at Vernon's Islands in Clarence Strait. ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... fulfilment of human destinies, a life entertained by scientific gossip, in a cellar lighted by electric sparks, warmed by tubular inflation, drained by buried rivers, and fed, by the ministry of less learned and better provisioned races, with extract of beef, and potted crocodile. ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... of his cousin, punish the audacity of Don Clavijo, and in wrath at the contumacy of Antonomasia, left them both enchanted by his art on the grave itself; she being changed into an ape of brass, and he into a horrible crocodile of some unknown metal; while between the two there stands a pillar, also of metal, with certain characters in the Syriac language inscribed upon it, which, being translated into Kandian, and now into Castilian, contain the following sentence: 'These ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... bicker so long as human nerves are human nerves. The irritability lurks in the shades of boundless forests where men may starve for want of animal sustenance; it hovers over the broad bosoms of a hundred slow rivers haunted by the mysterious crocodile, the weird hippopotamus. It is everywhere, and by reason of it men quarrel about trifles and descend to brutal passion ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... nothing, from lapping up Eisel to killing a crocodile, that Paul would not have done, in the fulness of his wondering gratitude, for his dearest lady, he meekly attached the heart to his chain and put ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... Mark the Evangelist. His relics were carried to Venice from Constantinople in 1260, and his figure still stands on one of the columns in the Piazzetta of S. Mark, with the attribute of a dragon or a crocodile, symbolic of the ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... Bancroft, iii. 111. Compare stories of women who give birth to animals in Melusine, 1886, August-November. The Batavians believe that women, when delivered of a child, are frequently delivered at the same time of a young crocodile as a twin. Hawkesworth's Voyages, iii. 756. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles; and laid confounded with all unutterable slimy things, among reeds and Nilotic mud. . . . The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... of many interpretations and different meanings. Likewise they were wont to cast lots, as has been related in the first part of this history. They were so superstitious that if they commenced any voyage, and at its beginning happened to see a crocodile, lizard, or any other reptile, which they recognized as an ill omen, they discontinued their journey, whatever its importance, and returned home, saying that the sky was not propitious to that journey. The evangelical law, as above stated, has driven away all these ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair

... Yarrow's throat—and he lay gasping and done for. His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked down any man, would "drink up Esil, or eat a crocodile," for that part, if he had a chance: it was no use kicking the little dog; that would only make him hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and many cried for it who might have got it from the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... ever after it laments him as long as it lives[12]. The upper jaw of this beast is immovable when it eats, and the lower one alone moves. No other living creature has this peculiarity. The other beast of which I have told you (the water-serpent), which always lives in the water, hates the crocodile with a mortal hatred. When it sees the crocodile sleeping on the ground with its mouth wide open, it rolls itself in the slime and mud in order to become more slippery. Then it leaps into the throat of the crocodile ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... or regents of the world, often thus appealed to, are eight: Kubera, Isha, Indra, Agni, Yama, Niruti, Waruna, and Wayu: and they ride on a horse, a bull, an elephant, a ram, a buffalo, a man, a "crocodile," and ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain

... we ran away from them, and baffled them by constantly turning, which they were unable to do quickly, on account of their unwieldy make; and we went into the water after them, as natives, and put sharp pieces of timber down their throats; and in short we ran the whole crocodile gauntlet. I did, at least; but I had my doubts of Peggotty, who was thoughtfully sticking her needle into various parts of her face ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... nor Mark Tapley there Tom Pinch was lonely and welcomed the arrival of Martin, with whom he soon made friends. Mr. Pecksniff folded his new pupil to his breast, shed a crocodile tear and set him to work ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... bird flew overhead with a wailing cry; down in the moat a crocodile raised his horrible, fanged snout, then sank beneath the still water. Don Luiz turned his bloodshot eyes upon the town in jeopardy and the bland and mocking ocean, so guileless of those longed-for sails. The four ships in the river's mouth!—silently he cursed their every mast and spar, the ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... simoom in distance roar, Whilst the crushed shell upon the pebbly shore Crackled beneath the crocodile's huge coil. Westwards, like tiger's skin, each separate isle Spotted the surface of the yellow Nile; Gray obelisks shot ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... Rita. I forgive you. I thought you were free from all vulgar sentimentalism and that you had a more independent mind. I was mistaken in you, that's all.' With that he pretends to dash a tear from his eye-crocodile!—and goes out, leaving me in my fur by the blazing fire, my teeth going like castanets. . . Did you ever hear of anything so stupid as this affair?" she concluded in a tone of extreme candour and a profound unreadable stare that went far beyond us both. And the stillness of her lips was ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... food as he required, descended the tree towards the edge of the water, holding on to a branch with one of his powerful hands, while he stooped down to spoon out the water with the other. By an almost imperceptible motion the crocodile approached; but the mias, although he appeared to be only intent on quenching his thirst, had evidently a corner of his eye resting on the seemingly harmless log. The crocodile thought it was sure of its prey, and ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... Job have been puzzled to find out a meaning for Leviathan,—'tis a whale, say some; a crocodile, say others. In my simple conjecture, Leviathan is neither more nor less than the Lord Mayor of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... Cranly was in the porch of the library, proposing a problem to Dixon and her brother. A mother let her child fall into the Nile. Still harping on the mother. A crocodile seized the child. Mother asked it back. Crocodile said all right if she told him what he was going to do with the child, eat ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... shears. On hearing the general orders, he discharged a tempest of veteran, soldier-like oaths, and dunder and blixums—swore he would break any man's head who attempted to meddle with his tail—queued it stiffer than ever, and whisked it about the garrison as fiercely as the tail of a crocodile. ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... "A crocodile's a reptile," said Beth, "and a reptile is trouble and an enemy. You always dream nasty things; I expect it's ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... uttered a yell of terror such as seldom greets the ear, and rushed blindly forward. Repeating the roar, Disco plunged after him. Antonio tumbled over the fire, recovered himself, dashed on, and would certainly have plunged into the river, if not into the jaws of a crocodile, had not Jumbo caught him in his arms, in the midst of a chorus of laughter from ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... and on the west by British Bechuanaland. On the east lie Portuguese Territory and British Zululand, on the north Rhodesia, on the west British Bechuanaland, and on the south the Orange Free State and Natal. The important rivers are the Limpopo or Crocodile River, so named in compliment to its reptile inhabitants, and the Vaal, a tributary of the Orange River. This rises among the Drakenberg Mountains, and, curving, flows west as a boundary between the Orange Free State and ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... up and casting me to the ground, sat down on my breast. So I sought help of the Shaykh of the Pilgrims[FN129] and cried to him, "Protect me from this oppressor!" And indeed he had drawn a knife to cut my throat when, lo and behold! there came a mighty great crocodile forth of the river and snatching him up from off my breast plunged into the water, with him still hending knife in hand, even within the jaws of the beast: whilst I abode extolling Almighty Allah, and rendering thanks for my preservation to him who had delivered ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... imported to this country, who had the good fortune to serve the Doctor as a body servant in the interior of Africa, and he thus describes the manner of his master's death. The Doctor was accustomed to pass his nights in the stomach of an acquaintance-a crocodile about fifty feet long. Stepping out one evening to take an observation of one of the lunar eclipses peculiar to the country, he spoke to his host, saying that as he should not return, until after bedtime, he would not trouble him to sit up to let ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... suggested this triple epithet, obscure as to its meaning, but evidently formed on the principle of Cymric alliteration. In the same triad we have the enigmatic story of the horned oxen (ychain banog) of Hu the mighty, who drew out of Llyon-llion the avanc (beaver or crocodile?), in order that the lake should not overflow. The meaning of these enigmas could only be hoped from deciphering the chaos of barbaric monuments of the Welsh middle age; but meanwhile we cannot doubt that the Cymri possessed an ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... should hear from him the cause of her misfortunes, of which she was still totally ignorant, and that his love would invent some means or other to prevent a journey, which she flattered herself would be even more affecting to him than to herself; but she was expecting pity from a crocodile. ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... A small crocodile broke water into air which for him held no moisture, looked at the bats, then at us, and slipped back into the world of crocodiles. A cackle arose, so shrill and sudden, that it seemed to have been the cause of the shower of drops from the palm-fronds; ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... amid the apparatus and at its switches, gazing back at them. Those creatures were erect and roughly man-like in shape, but they were not human men. They were—the thought blasted to Randall's brain in that horror-filled moment—crocodile-men. ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... still, with a nip like crocodile's grip On one's caudal appendage? Ah, just so! I know 'tis a task that seems too much to ask. I'm reasonable,—or I trust so. But there is the Lobster, it's holding on fast. And—hang it! this ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various

... or in the same degree. In the oldest tertiary beds a few living shells may still be found in the midst of a multitude of extinct forms. Falconer has given a striking instance of a similar fact, in an existing crocodile associated with many strange and lost mammals and reptiles in the sub-Himalayan deposits. The Silurian Lingula differs but little from the living species of this genus; whereas most of the other Silurian Molluscs and all the Crustaceans ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... lavishly, and such was the brilliancy produced by their combined effect, that night and day appeared the same; of Afrasiyab, strong as an elephant, whose shadow extended for miles, whose heart was bounteous as the ocean, and his hands like the clouds when rain falls to gladden the earth. The crocodile in the rolling stream had no safety from Afrasiyab. Yet when he came to fight against the generals of Kaus, he was but an insect in the grasp of Rustem, who seized him by the girdle, and dragged him from his horse. Rustem felt such anger at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... ABDUL HAMID once was fain To weep for the Armenian slain; As HAYNAU felt his eyelids drip When women cowered beneath his whip; As TORQUEMADA doubtless bled With sorrow for the tortured dead— So in his own peculiar style Weeps the Imperial Crocodile. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 16, 1914 • Various

... mournfully. "I am so small and weak. But it grows late—we should be going home; and as it is a long way round by the ford, let us go across the river. My friend, the crocodile, will ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... stream itself is shallow, uncharted, unbeaconed; its navigation requires constant attention, which it certainly got this day from our quartermaster, who remained on duty for ten consecutive hours. We had the ill-luck not to see a single crocodile, although the river is said to be full of them, all of ferocious temper. On the other hand, we did see the oddest possible ferry: a bundle or raft of bamboo, with chairs on top, towed across stream by a carabao regularly hitched up ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox

... now we'll have breakfast," cried Jack, who declared that he could eat a porcupine or a crocodile, outside and all, he was so hungry. What was his dismay, and that of all the party, when they found that no food was forthcoming, and that the boats were not to be found. Just then their hunger was most pressing, and they left the subject of what had become of the boats for after consideration. The ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... (ventricle) below, in which the pure and impure blood mingle. In the reptiles a partition begins to form in the lower chamber. In the turtle it is so nearly complete that the venous and the arterial blood are fairly separated; in the crocodile it is quite complete, though the arteries are imperfectly arranged. Thus the four-chambered heart of the bird and mammal is not a sudden and inexplicable development. Its advantage is enormous in a cold climate. The purer supply of blood increases ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... steadily all the year; strange, grotesque rocks and peaks that assumed all sorts of fantastic shapes to the overwrought fancy; in many places no water, no verdure, and scarcely a thing in motion; the crocodile and the bird lazily seeking their necessary food and stirring only as compelled; unbounded expanse in the wide star-lit heavens; unbroken quiet on the lonely mountains—a fit home for the hermit, a paradise to the lover of ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... Egyptian fish deity was the god Rem, whose name signifies "to weep"; he wept fertilizing tears, and corn was sown and reaped amidst lamentations. He may be identical with Remi, who was a phase of Sebek, the crocodile god, a developed attribute of Nu, the vague primitive Egyptian deity who symbolized the primordial deep. The connection between a fish god and a corn god is not necessarily remote when we consider that in Babylonia and Egypt the harvest was the gift ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... read. I was only nineteen. Had she commanded me to drink up eisel or eat a crocodile, I would have ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... They're like whisky, gran' at the time, but you sing sorry next day, an' fin' oot what a fool you hae been. They hing on to you like leeches, an' mak' a mess o' things at the en'. Though you had a face like a crocodile as long as you had plenty of cash, they'd lick your feet; when your money's done, they're awa' like swallows at the first nip ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... squawks from overhead could be heard for miles and chief among the offenders in this respect were the terns whose shrill voices and incessant clatter were like the cries of woe of demented souls. Below, the occasional bellow of a crocodile hidden in the reedy bed of a marsh or the high-pitched wail of the great brown wolf added its note to ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... seen me unveiled. But my heart is torn with anguish, and my spirit is tossed with desire, for I have heard of thy deeds of prowess, and how thou fearest neither Deev nor lion, neither leopard nor crocodile, and how thy hand is swift to strike, and how thou didst venture alone into Mazinderan, and how wild asses are devoured of thee, and how the earth groaneth under the tread of thy feet, and how men perish at thy blows, and how even the eagle dareth not swoop down upon her prey ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... is indian corn, or rice and beans, boiled in water, without fat or salt. To them nothing comes amiss. They will devour greedily racoon, opossum, squirrels, wood-rats, and even the crocodile; leaving to the white people the roebuck and rabbit, which they sell them when they kill ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... as chance directs them, and think of them no further, as insects, and several kinds of fish; others, of a nicer frame, find out proper beds to deposit them in, and there leave them, as the serpent, the crocodile, and ostrich; others hatch their eggs and tend the birth till it is able ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... main difficulties. The first is to understand why primitive Man should name his Tribe after an animal or object of nature at all; the second, to understand on what principle he selected the particular name (a lion, a crocodile, a lady bird, a certain tree); the third, why he should make of the said totem a divinity, and pay honor and worship to it. It may be worth while to pause for a ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... gold, silver, copper, steel, and iron; and a great variety of precious stones are found in the rivers and brooks of Madagascar. Civet is plentiful, and is taken from the civet cat; and the natives obtain musk from the crocodile, and call it tartave. Tananarievo, the capital, stands on the summit of a lofty hill, and commands an extensive prospect of the surrounding country. The principal houses are of wood, and the palace ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... the word Kahamatek was interdicted, and, in its stead, they were all commanded by the voice of a crier to say, Hegmalkam negerkata? The word nihirenak, a tiger, was exchanged for apanigehak; peu, a crocodile, for Kaeprhak, and Kaama, Spaniards, for Rikil, because these words bore some resemblance to the names of Abipones lately deceased. Hence it is that our vocabularies are so full of blots occasioned ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham

... worse for the work of the makers of to-day and for those of yesterday. But who says the ancients did not use it, or crocodile skin, or a cloth made in Venice, and somewhat after our emery cloth? or variously shaped files of different cuttings? At a time when sculpture and very chaste and highly finished woodwork would employ it largely, does any one mean to assert that the violin, not ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... that I give them nearly in the words of my informants, old Dyak chiefs, who had lived all their lives in the places where the animal is most abundant. The first of whom I inquired said: "No animal is strong enough to hurt the Mias, and the only creature he ever fights with is the crocodile. When there is no fruit in the jungle, he goes to seek food on the banks of the river where there are plenty of young shoots that he likes, and fruits that grow close to the water. Then the crocodile sometimes tries to seize him, but the Mias gets upon him, and beats him with ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... the boat broke the still surface into a tiny ripple, which continued plainly visible half a mile astern. I find it difficult to bring before the reader the thousand curious objects that met us on our way. The sullen crocodile basking in the sun, sank noiselessly; a splash would be heard, and a four feet albicore would fling himself madly into the air, striving vainly to elude the ominous black triangle that cut the water like a knife close in his rear. Small chance for the poor fugitive, with the ravenous shark following ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... escape!" and Henry lit a cigar. "However, as you know, a year after weeping crocodile tears for poor Maurice, she married young Layard of Balmayn. So all's well that ends well. She and Rose have never spoken since the scene when Violet read in the Scotsman ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... real," I confessed, "in the sense that they certainly were not crocodile tears; but I am somewhat at a loss to explain them from a sensible, American standpoint. Of course my Jacobitism is purely impersonal, though scarcely more so than yours, at this late day; at least it is merely a poetic sentiment, ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... fill, To some great river for it must you go, When a clear spring just at your feet does flow? Give me the spring which does to human use, Safe, easy, and untroubled stores produce; He who scorns these, and needs will drink at Nile, Must run the danger of the crocodile; And of the rapid stream itself which may, At unawares bear him perhaps away. In a full flood Tantalus stands, his skin Washed o'er in vain, for ever dry within; He catches at the stream with greedy lips, From his ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... the ford is just above the pool they call the 'Crocodile Hole.' Cross the ford, come back along the bank, and you'll find a trail leadin' to the three shacks ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

... great scare the first time they came upon an iguana, thinking that it was a crocodile. These great lizards are about five feet long, and are ferocious-looking, but very harmless unless attacked. Then they will defend themselves, and can inflict a sharp blow with their tails, or a severe bite ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty

... quite untranslatable; while the poems, being parodies on well-known English pieces, would have been pointless on the other side of the Channel. For instance, the lines beginning, "How doth the little crocodile" are a parody on "How doth the little busy bee," a song which a French child has, of course, never heard of. In this case Bue gave up the idea of translation altogether, and, instead, parodied La Fontaine's "Maitre Corbeau" ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... I suggest, that whether the notion of "drinking up a river," or "eating a crocodile," be the more "unmeaning" or "out of place," must after all be a mere matter of opinion, as the latter must remain a question of taste; since it seems to be his settled conviction that it is not "impossible," but only "extravagant." Archdeacon Nares thought ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various

... image I had seen of some Oriental god upon his throne. His eyes were scarcely opened, his breathing was almost imperceptible; a gross animal content appeared in him as of a full-fed, lethargic crocodile. Side by side, he and the gaunt, fierce-eyed old man presented no mean allegory of spirit and body. A table was before them, and in the middle of it a toy the like of which I had never seen in this house or elsewhere—a globe of crystal, perhaps the size of an orange, held up on a little bronze ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... suggested by watching the movements of wild horses. A curious adventure happened to that little foal, which is worthy of record. A year or two after this, the groom took him to the river to wash his legs, and as he turned to come out again, a crocodile bit him; he struggled for a moment and fell; this frightened the crocodile away, and the poor young horse was dragged from the water's edge; the formidable teeth of the reptile had nearly separated the foot from the leg, and it hung by one tendon. There ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee

... the undergrowth. In one the ugly snout of a small crocodile protruded from the muddy, noisome water, and the cold, unwinking eyes stared at elephant and man as they passed. The rank abundant foliage overhung the track and brushed or broke against Badshah's sides, as he shouldered his way ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... to be regarded individually and collectively as concrete expressions of the Water-god's powers. Thus the cow and the gazelle, the falcon and the eagle, the lion and the serpent, the fish and the crocodile became symbols of the life-giving and the life-destroying powers of water, and composite monsters or dragons were invented by combining parts of these various creatures to express the different manifestations of the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... summer of 1846, when every body in England was crazy with railway gambling, I was sojourning on the banks of the Rohan, a small stream in one of the northwestern provinces of India. Here I first became acquainted, with the Mugger, or Indian crocodile. I had often before leaving England, seen, in museums, stuffed specimens of the animal, and had read in "Voyages and Travels," all sorts of horrible and incredible stories concerning them. I had a lively recollection of Waterton riding close to the water's edge on ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... "Crocodile tears," some had exclaimed. "She is going to meet her son; and with what he has stolen they will live like princes in America." Rumor, which enlarges and misrepresents everything, had, indeed, absurdly exaggerated the affair at Madame d'Argeles's house. It was reported in the Rue d'Ulm that Pascal ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... fountain to the pasha, had not been aware of the precedent thus afforded by his highness's own creation for the introduction of living forms into Moslem sculpture and carving. They might have varied their huge present with advantage. Indeed, with the crocodile and the palm-tree, surely something more beautiful and not less characteristic than their metallic mausoleum might ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli

... been her lot to go to Prague? Would not she have drunk up Esil, or swallowed a crocodile against any she-Laertes that would have thought to rival and to parallel her great love? Would not she have piled up new Ossas, had the opportunity been given her? Womanlike she had gone to him in her trouble,—had burst through his prison doors, had thrown herself on his breast, and had ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... at a good stride we crossed the flat valley of Makata, and ascended the higher lands beyond, where we no sooner arrived than we met the last down trader from Unyamuezi, well known to all my men as the great Mamba or Crocodile. Mamba, dressed in a dirty Arab gown, with coronet of lion's nails decorating a thread-bare cutch cap, greeted us with all the dignity of a savage potentate surrounded by his staff of half-naked officials. As usual, he had been the last to leave the Unyamuezi, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... information; of boats whose business it is to fire as much and to splash about as aggressively as possible; and of other boats who avoid any sort of display—dumb boats watching and relieving watch, with their periscope just showing like a crocodile's eye, at the back of islands and the mouths of channels where something may some day move out in procession ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... my microscope, and trace the veinings of a leaf so delicately wrought in the painting not made with hands, that I can almost see its down and the green aphis that sucks its juices. I look into the eyes of the caged tiger, and on the scaly train of the crocodile, stretched on the sands of the river that has mirrored a hundred dynasties. I stroll through Rhenish vineyards, I sit under Roman arches, I walk the streets of once buried cities, I look into the chasms of Alpine glaciers, and on the rush of wasteful cataracts. I pass, in a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... strapping young fellow of twenty-three, and was doing as well on the Newanga as any. Since the day he had snatched Billjim (then a wee mite) from the jaws of an alligator, as Queensland folk will insist upon calling their crocodile, he had been l'ami de la maison at the Bensons', and Billjim thought there was no one in the world like him. He in return would do any mortal thing which that rather ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... butter, like some of her sex; far from it: but neither was she wood—indeed, she was not old enough for that—so this crocodile tear won her for the time being. "There—there," said she; "don't be a baby. I'll be on your side tonight; only, if you care for her, come and look after her yourself. Beautiful women with money won't stand neglect, Mr. Severne; and ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... so, too, was the piazzetta with the Ducal Palace with the golden staircase and the two columns, the one surmounted by the winged lion of St. Mark, the other by St. Theodore, standing on a crocodile. ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard

... shed diplomatic tears over the transaction. They cannot be called crocodile tears, insomuch that they were in a measure sincere. They arose from a vivid perception that Austria's allotted share of the spoil could never compensate her for the accession of strength and territory to the other two Powers. Austria did not really want an extension of territory ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... capturing them, which I, however, never personally witnessed, consists of a light raft of bamboo, with a stage, on which, several feet above the water, a dog or a cat is bound. Alongside the animal is placed a strong iron hook, which is fastened to the swimming bamboo by means of fibers of abaca. The crocodile, when it has swallowed the bait and the hook at the same time, endeavors in vain to get away, for the pliability of the raft prevents its being torn to pieces, and the peculiar elasticity of the bundle of fibers prevents its being bitten through. The raft serves ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... tedious. Isaaco, the guide, exerted himself much, endeavouring to drive six of the asses through a little below where the party crossed, as the stream was there not so deep. He had reached the middle of the river, when a crocodile rose, seized him by the left thigh, and dragged him under water. With wonderful presence of mind, however, he felt the head of the animal, and thrust his finger into its eye. The monster quitted its hold for a moment, but then ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... conventional, without a trace of portraiture. Horus of Edfu, the enemy of the crocodiles and hippopotami of Set, appears sometimes as the consort of Hathor of Dendera. The skill displayed by the Tentyrites in capturing the crocodile is referred to by Strabo and other Greek writers. Juvenal, in his seventeenth satire, takes as his text a religious riot between the Tentyrites and the neighbouring Ombites, in the course of which an unlucky Ombite was torn to pieces and devoured by the opposite party. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... against yourself. Neither argument nor reasoning, not even my pity will save you; for the whiter, the more perfect and angelic you prove yourself, the more I shall love you, and the more I love, the more desirable you will be to me. I have nothing but crocodile tears for you, which will only sharpen my rapacity. Such is the mazy circle of love. At the sight of Aniela I felt myself drawn into that circle. In the afternoon, that same day, when Pani Celina had fallen asleep ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... the startled boy. He had disturbed one of the sleeping monsters! Piang's heart beat very fast, and a shudder passed through him as he felt something bump the bottom of the boat. The crocodile was just beneath him and if it rose suddenly, it would upset him. One, two, three seconds he waited, but they were the longest seconds Piang had ever known. There was a slight movement astern; the boat tipped forward, swerved, and before Piang could right himself, ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... is applied in the Old Testament to some huge water animal. In some cases it appears to mean the crocodile, but in others the whale or ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... flowers cover the meadows and cluster along the shallow water-courses. No venomous reptiles lurk in these fragrant places: the seed-tick, mosquito, and a spiteful little fly are the greatest annoyances. The horned lizard, which the Indians esteemed so delicate, and the ferocious crocodile, or caiman, haunt the secluded sands and large streams, and the lagoons which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various

... duke. "Oh, I know those tears of Fraulein Goechhausen; I could relate stories of her crocodile nature. Mother, how can you have such a monster in your society? Why not make the cornes, that the little devils ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... the crazy ancestress of an accountably fallen descendant. She bustles prodigiously and is punctually smart in her speech, always in a fluster to escape from Dulness, as they say the dogs on the Nile-banks drink at the river running to avoid the crocodile. If the monster catches her, as at times he does, she whips him to a froth, so that those who know Dulness only as a thing of ponderousness, shall fail to recognise him in that light ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of their aquatic habits. He may have seen only a mutilated specimen. But there is no mistaking the hideous ferocity of the countenance, and the "eyes bigger than a fourpenny loaf," as Ramusio has it. Though the actual eye of the crocodile does not bear this comparison, the prominent orbits do, especially in the case of the Ghariyal of the Ganges, and form one of the most repulsive features of the reptile's physiognomy. In fact, its presence ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... of that terrific struggle for existence where beast hunts beast, which have been depicted by Barye's genius, are here. Here is the "Tiger devouring a Crocodile" (with which Barye made his first appearance at the Salon, in 1831); the "Jaguar devouring a Hare"; the "Lion devouring a Doe," the "Crocodile devouring an Antelope," the "Python swallowing a Doe," the "Tiger devouring a Gazelle," ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... and Alligators belong to that order of reptiles known as Crocodilia. The Alligator's head is broad and blunt; the Crocodile's is narrow and sharp. ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas

... that it is used in Genesis in connection with the epithet large, and is therefore not improperly rendered "great whales." Hence it has been concluded, that the word tannin may comprehend the class of lizards from the eft to the crocodile, provided they be amphibious; also the seal, the manati, the morse, and even the whale, if he came ashore; but as whales remain constantly in the deep, they seem to be more correctly ascribed to the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... forehead—she, too, is in decollete, but her skin is red and in goose-pimples; Nina, the very newest one, pug-nosed and clumsy, in a dress the colour of a green parrot; another Manka—Big Manka, or Manka the Crocodile, as they call her, and—the last—Sonka the Rudder, a Jewess, with an ugly dark face and an extraordinarily large nose, precisely for which she has received her nickname, but with such magnificent large eyes, ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... my St. Julian to start up in array before me. Hence remorse, and all her kindred passions! I am cruel, obdurate, and unrelenting. Yes, most amiable of men, you might as well address your cries to the senseless rocks. You might as well hope with your eloquent and soft complainings to persuade the crocodile that was ready to devour you. I have passed the Rubicon. I have taken the irrevocable step. It is too late, ah, much ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... thence in a north by easterly direction to Pokioens Kop, situated on the north side of the Olifant's River, where it passes through the ridges; thence about north north-west to the nearest point of Serra di Chicundo; and thence to the junction of the Pafori River with the Limpopo or Crocodile River; thence up the course of the Limpopo River to the point where the Marique River falls into it. Thence up the course of the Marique River to "Derde Poort," where it passes through a low range of hills, called Sikwane, a beacon (No. 10) being erected on the spur of said range ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz

... hawk-headed god, Horus, who once held up some object, probably a vase for libations. Egyptian divinities are often represented with the heads of animals— Anubis with the head of a jackal, Hathor with that of a cow, Sebek with that of a crocodile, and so on. This in itself shows a lack of nobility in the popular theology. Moreover it is clear that the best talents of sculptors were engaged upon portraits of kings and queens and other human beings, not upon figures of the gods. The latter exist by the thousand, to be ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... absorbed into the unity of all things (a loathsome fancy)—but delighting in the difference of all things. At the moment when a man really knows he is a man he will feel, however faintly, a kind of fairy-tale pleasure in the fact that a crocodile is a crocodile. All the more will he exult in the things that are more evidently beautiful than crocodiles, such as flowers and birds and eats—which are more beautiful than either. But it does not follow that he will wish to pick all the flowers or to cage all the birds or to ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... scene ere night descends! Hark to the shout that heaven's high concave rends! Hark to that dying cry! Whilst, louder yet, the cannon's roar Resounds along the Nile's affrighted shore, Where, from his oozy bed, The cowering crocodile hath raised his head! What bursting flame Lightens the long track of the gleamy brine! 110 From yon proud ship it came, That towered the leader of the hostile line! Now loud explosion rends the midnight air! Heard ye the last deep groaning of despair? Heaven's fiery cope unwonted ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... Handbook of Northern Italy, mention is made, in the account of the church of St. Maria delle Grazie, near Mantua, of a stuffed lizard, crocodile, or other reptile, which is preserved suspended in the church. This is said to have been killed in the adjacent swamps, about the year 1406. It is stated to be six ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various

... snapped Demetrius; "I'm not one of those crocodile-headed Egyptian gods that they grovel before in the Nile country. My cousin Agias here says he knows you. Now ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... the Gayake, who stalk their prey behind a bullock; the Gosain Pardhis, who dress like religious mendicants in ochre-coloured clothes and do not kill deer, but only hares, jackals and foxes; the Shishi ke Telwale, who sell crocodile's oil; and the Bandarwale who go about with performing monkeys. The Bahelias have a subcaste known as Karijat, the members of which only kill birds of a black colour. Their exogamous groups are nearly all those of Rajput ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... our Divinity. A peculiar taste of this kind, like smoking tobacco or drinking whiskey, cannot be given up all at once. The ancient Egyptians, for many years after they had lost every trace of the intellectual character of their religion, yet worshipped and adored the ox, the bull, and the crocodile. They had not discovered the art, as we Catholics have done, of making a God out of bread, and of adoring and eating him at one and the same moment. This latter piece of sublimity or religious cookery ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... filthy hue of the water would be sufficient to debar its use; but the very name of the Ganges sanctifies everything with these mentally blind creatures. Sometimes, though this is not a frequent occurrence, a crocodile takes away a bather; but such persons are rather envied than regretted, since to die in those waters is in their estimation simply to be at once wafted to the elysian fields ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou



Words linked to "Crocodile" :   Asian crocodile, crocodile bird, Nile crocodile, Morlett's crocodile, Crocodilus, crocodile tears, genus Crocodilus, crocodilian, Crocodile River, Crocodylus niloticus, genus Crocodylus, Crocodylus, Crocodylus porosus, crocodilian reptile



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