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Fuss   Listen
verb
Fuss  v. i.  (past & past part. fussed; pres. part. fussing)  To be overbusy or unduly anxious about trifles; to make a bustle or ado.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fuss" Quotes from Famous Books



... dat fuss is, en Brer Rabbit, he up'n 'spon' dat it's ole Miss Goose down at de spring. Den Brer Fox, he up'n ax w'at she doin', en Brer Rabbit, he say, sezee, dat she ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... master at walking. Once, for the sake of a joke, having put a pedometer in his vest pocket, he towards evening counted up twenty versts; which, taking into consideration the unusual length of his legs, equalled some twenty-five versts.[21] And he did have to run about quite a bit, because the fuss about Liubka's passport and the acquisition of household furnishings of a sort had eaten up all his accidental winnings at cards. He did try to take up playing again, on a small scale at first, but was soon convinced that his star ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... kill himself if he was compelled to follow Mr. K——. I glanced from the poor wretch to Mr. ——, who was standing, leaning against a table with his arms folded, occasionally uttering a few words of counsel to his slave to be quiet and not fret, and not make a fuss about what there was no help for. I retreated immediately from the horrid scene, breathless with surprise and dismay, and stood for some time in my own room, with my heart and temples throbbing to such a degree ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... Master Geoffrey—very handsomely done, it must be allowed! never did a bird quit a flock with less fuss, or more beautifully, than the Plantagenet has drawn out of the fleet. It must be admitted that Greenly knows how to ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... we duly saw the Muse and Lamp in the Museo, the Fra Angelicos, and all the Signorellis. One cannot help thinking that too much fuss is made nowadays about works of art—running after them for their own sakes, exaggerating their importance, and detaching them as objects of study, instead of taking them with sympathy and carelessness as pleasant or instructive adjuncts to our actual life. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... gets out the monthly bills and sets them all in front of Dad, She makes us children run away because she knows he may get mad; An' then she smiles a bit and says: "I hope you will not fuss and fret— There's nothing here except the things I absolutely had to get!" An' Pa he looks 'em over first. "The things you had to have!" says he; "I s'pose that we'd have died without ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest

... comported themselves throughout as became the daughters of a warrior race. Both gentlemen were emphatic to praise the unknown Britomart who had done such gallant service with Sir Meeson's ebony wand. He was beginning to fuss vociferously about the loss of the stick—a family stick, goldheaded, the family crest on it, priceless to the family—when Mrs. Kirby-Levellier handed it to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Parry, "and for my part, I can't see what you're all driving at. You seem to be making a great fuss about nothing." ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... said Mercer, in a tone she did not understand. "But, in the meantime, why should you turn your back upon the only friend you have at hand? It seems to me that you are making a fuss over nothing. You have been brought up to it, I daresay; but it isn't the fashion here. We are taught to take things as they come, and make the best of 'em. That's what you have got to do. It'll come ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... circulate worth a whoop in my system. But I think I could land Cayuse." He held no grudge against Culver now. Perhaps he regretted the fuss he had made on the day of Culver's death. "I'll take ten dollars a day," he added, "and see what I can do ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... going to pay you a visit without making much fuss about it. I shall be at Les Fresnes on the second of September, the day before the hunting season opens; I do not want to miss it, so that I may tease these gentlemen. You are very obliging, Aunt, and I would like you to allow them to ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... it, while he argued with the Art official. The Art official said the manners of the Science students were getting unbearable, and threatened to bring the matter before the refreshment-room committee. Lewisham said it was a pity to make such a fuss about a trivial thing, and proposed that the Art official should throw his lunch—steak and kidney pudding—across the room at him, Lewisham, and so get immediate satisfaction. He then apologised to the official and pointed out in extenuation that it ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... papers 'ad suddenly discovered that we were intended to be a sort of wild beast. The wonder to me is that 'e didn't go out 'unting chickens with a club, and bring 'em 'ome and eat 'em on the mat without any further fuss. For drink it would be boiling water that burnt my fingers merely 'andling the glass. Then some other crank came out with the information that every other crank was wrong—which, taken by itself, sounds natural enough—that meat was fatal to the 'uman system. ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... be asked, should not the palm be given to Mr. Darwin if he wanted it, and was at so much pains to get it? Why, if science is a kingdom not of this world, make so much fuss about settling who is entitled to what? At best such questions are of a sorry personal nature, that can have little bearing upon facts, and it is these that alone should concern us. The answer is, that if the question is so merely personal and unimportant, Mr. ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... we've got to cross, but not jest here-away, Cap'n Dick. She ain't making any fuss about it, but she's a-slipping along like greased lightning, deep and mighty powerful. I ain't saying we mought n't swim her and come out somewheres this side o' Dan'l Boone's country; but we'll make it a heap quicker by projec'ing 'round till we find the ford where ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... boots and buttons ever since he got his second pip, but he's quite a decent old stick taking him all round. He gets drunk every evening, so that he's generally too far gone to trouble about lights out. He doesn't make a fuss over our letters either—I believe he can only read a very plain hand and has to skip the longer words. A good job, too, for that's one thing I absolutely cannot stick, the way ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... was only a Yankee ship, any how, and that it is all "blarsted" nonsense to make a fuss ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various

... fetch Gerty back and 'ave cheaper seats, but she 'ad gone inside with young Ted, and at last, arter making an awful fuss, he paid the rest o' the money and rushed in arter her, arf crazy at the idea ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs

... than family practice," Sommers jerked out. "You don't have to fuss with people, women especially. Then I like the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... telegraph Mr. Luddington that you are willing," announced Allison as he hung up the dish-towel. "He'll get it in the morning when he reaches Boston, and then he needn't fuss and fume any longer about what he's going to do with us. Besides, I like to have the bargain clinched somehow, and a telegram will do it." Allison slammed out of the house noisily to the extreme confusion of ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... my guru might fall into a doze with the naturalness of a child. There was no fuss about bedding. He often lay down, without even a pillow, on a narrow davenport which was the background for his ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... of penalties and pains, And marks his narrow code with legal rigor! Why shun, as worthless of affiliation, What men of all political persuasion Extol—and even use upon occasion— That Christian principle, Conciliation? But possibly the men who make such fuss With Sunday pippins and old Trots infirm, Attach some other meaning to the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... Harvester answered. Then a blue jay came chattering to ascertain what all the fuss was about, and the Harvester carried on a conversation that called up the remainder of the feathered tribe. A brilliant cardinal came tearing through the thicket, his beady black eyes snapping, and demanded to know if any one were harming his mate, brooding under a wild grape ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... are as canny, save possibly the Quakers. A bank-balance to a Christian Scientist is no barren ideality. It is like falsehood to a Jesuit—a very present help in time of trouble. Sin, to them, consists in making too much fuss about life and talking about death. Do what you want and forget it. Quit talking about ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... "asserting himself" in such a way as to produce as much general annoyance and discomfort as possible. During the war he had a brilliant career. He used to come over and express great surprise at the silly fuss made about the Constitution and secession, and profess an entire inability to discover what it was "all about." If they want to go, he always said, why don't you let 'em go? What is the use of fighting about the meaning of a word in the dictionary? ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... send them to the galleys at once?" said Vinet. "And all this fuss about a girl who was carrying on an intrigue with an apprentice to a cabinet-maker! If the case goes on in this way," he cried, insolently, "we shall demand other judges on the ground ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... Atlantic has not half the terrors of the Straits of Dover; comfort at sea being a question, not of the size of the waves, but of the proportion between the size of the waves and the size of the ship. Our imagination is still beguiled by the fuss the world made over Columbus, whose exploit was intellectually and morally rather than physically great. The map-makers, too, throw dust in our eyes by their absurd figment of two "hemispheres," as though Nature ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... stairs to listen. When she returned to the dressing-room her heart was bounding, and her eyes, as she saw them in the glass, seemed to be leaping out of her head. It was ridiculous! To think of all that fame, all that fuss about voices like those, about singing like that, while she—if she could only get ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... thought of you and those miserable Culm people, and how you were making a fool of yourself (as Ben T. said), I thought I'd like to—to—well, let pony go, and help you a bit. So here's the whole sum (if you get it safe), and you're just as welcome as you can be, and don't you make any fuss about it, for it's your own, and I can go without spending-money if you can, and am willing to too. And it's no great denial, either, for the pony'll come sometime, I'm quite sure. So don't you worry any more ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord

... have no recollection of anything. I am told I do make a great fuss, but I don't know it. ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... jammed. What am I to do?" the unknown asked in a calm tone, with no flurry or fuss. Indeed, Katherine wondered if he realized how great was ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... Yes, as I feared. There were several ordinary flies and at least one bluebottle exercising themselves on the meat. The choice cutlets were not isolated or decorated with garlands, or made a fuss of in any way. They just fraternised on terms of equality with the rest. The usual "young lady" in a smart blouse, with her bare pink neck served up in a ham-frill, sat behind the usual window, probably trying to work out the usual ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... nursed by the delighted mother, till his bruised little body forgot its hurts and his shaken little heart its fears. His cautious brother, too, came up with a wise look and sniffed at him patronizingly; but went away again with his nose in the air, as if to say that here was much fuss being made ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... in readiness. For a wonder the dogs were quiet, and allowed themselves to be harnessed with little or no fuss. With a final look around the fort, which held the treasure they had braved so much for, the small party set out, each one taking his ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster

... made a great fuss. He cried "Chink, chink!" over and over again, now fluttering into the grass, now bobbing into sight again. Johnnie ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... "the editing of a text" or "the deciphering of a Gothic parchment" is "the supreme effort of the human mind," and whether the intellectual ability implied by the practice of external criticism does or does not justify "all the fuss made over those who possess it." On this question, obviously devoid of importance, a controversy was held between M. Brunetiere, who recommended scholars to be modest, and M. Boucherie, who insisted on their reasons ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... considered it rather an unnecessary fuss," he said. "And it's rumored that they had their first quarrel of a lifetime on the way ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... youth. But Nancy, who grew accustomed to celebrating my birthdays when I was a little girl, never gets over the habit, and I don't try to cure her, because, after all, it's nice to have some one make a fuss over you. She brought me up my breakfast before I got up out of bed—a concession to my laziness that Nancy would scorn to make on any other day of the year. She had cooked everything I like best, and had decorated the ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... that that warfare of his is to fall upon the leaders of the Republican party. Almost every word he utters, and every distinction he makes, has its significance. He means for the Republicans who do not count themselves as leaders, to be his friends; he makes no fuss over them; it is the leaders that he is making war upon. He wants it understood that the mass of the Republican party are really his friends. It is only the leaders that are doing something that are intolerant, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... lady as she turned upon De Griers. "You infernal Frenchman, to think that you should advise! Away with you! Though you fuss and fuss, you don't even know ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... was lying on her couch, watched with admiring eyes the girl's straightforward walk, so alert and business-like, so free from fuss and consciousness, and held out her hand with a more cordial welcome than she was accustomed to ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... after the Disruption, a parish minister had left the manse and removed to about a mile's distance. His pony got loose one day, and galloped down the road in the direction of the old glebe. The minister's man in charge ran after the pony in a great fuss, and when passing a large farm-steading on the way, cried out to the farmer, who was sauntering about, but did not know what had taken place—"Oh, sir, did ye see the minister's shault?" "No, no," was the answer,—"but what's happened?" "Ou, sir, fat do ye think? ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... all three re-united, to the great disgust of Marie, who, with the high jurisprudence of women, made a great fuss with her good husband, but with her finger she indicated her heart in an artless manner to Lavalliere, as one who said, "This ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... time,' she replied; 'we are close to Easter now. I have so wanted to tell you how glad I was to hear about your honours at Cambridge. I once thought of sending you a message through your brother, but then I thought it might be making too much fuss, because I know nothing of mathematics, or of the value of a senior-wranglership; and you were sure to have so many congratulations ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... that item myself, and see if there is any foundation for all this fuss. And if there is, the author of it ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... bit, but she did not exclaim, nor as Jed would have said "make a fuss." She said, simply, "Thank you, I will remember," and that was the only reference she made to the ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... have any; and forthwith you will find everybody else wants it. And observe, the insuperable difficulty is this making it to please ourselves, while we are incapable of pleasure. Take, for instance, the simplest example, which we can all understand, in the art of dress. We have made a great fuss about the patterns of silk lately; wanting to vie with Lyons, and make a Paris of London. Well, we may try forever: so long as we don't really enjoy silk patterns, we shall never get any. And we don't enjoy them. Of course, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... a thought for the dying man? All this' fuss because a woman has fainted! Give her some brandy, that will ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... minder Kunst verrathen sollte. Der Maler wandte vieles ein; Der Kenner stritt mit ihm aus Grunden, Und konnt ihn doch nicht uberwinden. Gleich trat ein junger Geck herein, Und nahm das Bild in Augenschein. 'O,' rief er, 'bei dem ersten Blicke, Ihr Gotter, welch ein Meisterstucke! Ach, welcher Fuss! O, wie geschickt Sind nicht die Nagel ausgedruckt! Mars lebt durchaus in diesem Bilde. Wie viele Kunst, wie viele Pracht Ist in dem Helm und in dem Schilde, Und in der Rustung angebracht!' Der Maler ward beschamt geruhret, Und sah den Kenner klaglich an. 'Nun,' sprach er, 'bin ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... me feel like a young girl ag'in. To be sure I'll go. Daughter'll make a fuss, but I jest don't care if ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... right that we should make a little fuss over Mr. Brabazon; for though this work is slight, it is an accomplishment—he has indubitably achieved a something, however little that something may be; and when art is disappearing in the destroying waters of civilisation, we may catch at straws. Beyond ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore

... in a state forlorn; In fact, were ne'er so low: They make a fuss about the corn— My love, you're on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various

... moral of it one not easy for us, as a nation, to grasp, because our own faults are so deeply and dangerously in the other direction. To me, as an Englishman (personally steeped in the English optimism and the English dislike of severity), the whole thing seemed a fuss about nothing. It looked like turning out one of the best armies in Europe against ordinary people walking about the street. The cavalry charged us once or twice, more or less harmlessly. But, of course, it is hard to say how far ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton

... "be fair, Judy. You know you can't act well, you won't be a success like Genevieve. You don't want Catherine and the others to see you fail, and honestly, do you want to come out first for Daddy's sake or for your own? I really believe you don't think enough fuss has been made over you. You'd rather work at your literature and come first, perhaps, but you can memorize quickly and they need you. Which ought you to do?—never mind ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... to feel very kindly towards the cook, since it was entirely through her making such a fuss about a little foreign mud that the carpet had ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... and mouff, too. I nebber did see sich a deuced bug—he kick and he bite eberyting what cum near him. Massa Will cotch him fuss, but had for to let him go 'gin mighty quick, I tell you—den was de time he must ha' got de bite. I didn't like de look ob de bug mouff, myself, nohow, so I wouldn't take hold oh him wid my finger, but I cotch him wid a piece oh paper dat I found. I rap him up in de paper and stuff a piece of it ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... your own way, Thad, and drop in for me," said Hugh. "In the midst of all this fuss and feathers over that miserable hobo, we mustn't forget we promised to be on hand in the afternoon to play on the team against Mechanicsville; for you know there has been a switch, and the programme changed. That team is considered a strong aggregation from the mills over there, ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson

... anything of the sort," Darry protested. "Let us be mere spectators, or pupils, and have no fuss made over us. Instruct your men, if you'll be good enough, to omit salutes and to chat with us, if they have a chance, like comrades or pals. We want to see your real ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... drawers and dropped into a chair at the table. But, with the pad before him and pen in hand, he shook his head. A note would put Tim wise to what was happening and perhaps allow him to get to the station in time to make a fuss. No, it would be better to write to him later; perhaps from New York tonight, for Don was pretty sure that he wouldn't be able to get a through train before morning. So, with another glance at his watch, he began to pack again, throwing things in every which-way in his feverish desire to ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... many different people take care of the baby. Even members of the same family make a baby nervous if they fuss around him ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... "I ain't going to make any fuss over her at all. If I do, the whole crowd of her relations, uncles, aunts, and cousins, will come in to shake hands, and congratulate me with 'How, how,' expecting each one to have a pound of sugar. No, no, you don't ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle

... third thoughts, the withdrawing the small poems from The Corsair (even to add to Childe Harold) looks like shrinking and shuffling after the fuss made upon one of them by the Tories. Pray replace them in The Corsair's appendix. I am sorry that Childe Harold requires some and such abetments to make him move off; but, if you remember, I told you his popularity would not ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... feather tipped with red. The musicians, when there were any, followed the uniform of the company which they attended, with some slight differences, like turned-over plates and tasselled ends, to show that they were non-combatants. Altogether, as one looked at the "fuss and feathers," the broad lapels, and the bob-tailed coats, he might well recall Thoreau's description of the manner in which the salt cod are spread out on the fish-flakes to dry: "They were everywhere ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... little raft of a world. We are afraid that some meteoric iconoclast will some night smash it, and we want everything to revolve around it, and are disappointed when we find that it revolves around the sun instead of the sun revolving around it. What a fuss we make about this little bit of a world, its existence only a short time between two spasms, the paroxysm by which it was hurled from chaos into order, and ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... was a man so mean and cross that he never thought his wife did anything right in the house. So one evening in hay-making time he came home scolding and tearing, and showing his teeth and making a fuss. ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen

... against him, and the company gave you the position you wanted without making any fuss about it, and presented you with a splendid sword, and all those things made Randolph pretty middling mad, ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon

... fuss over this, but I have learned in my soldiering never to throw away chances, and how could I tell that he might not, when my back was turned, see how the matter really stood, and break in upon my plans? He was leaning ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... steps of the little hostelry and roared with laughter to see them shaking their fists first at each other, and then at our unoffending Finnish friends, while measuring the Gladstones or thumping the rugs. All this fuss was about three Gladstones, a small dress-basket, only the size of a suit case, a bundle of rugs, and ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... any one whose brain aint fur gone in a phthisis, Thet hail Columby's happy land is goin' thru a crisis, 30 An' 'twouldn't noways du to hev the people's mind distracted By bein' all to once by sev'ral pop'lar names attackted; 'Twould save holl haycartloads o' fuss an' three four months o' jaw, Ef some illustrous paytriot should back out an' withdraw; So, ez I aint a crooked stick, jest like—like ole (I swow, I dunno ez I know his name)—I'll go back to my plough. Wenever an Amerikin distinguished politishin Begins to try et wut they call ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Katy's heart, and she tried to comfort her, forgetting entirely whether what she said was proper or not, and impetuously letting out that even in houses like hers there was trouble. Not that she was unhappy in the least, for she was not; but, oh! the fuss it was to be fashionable and keep from doing anything to shock his folks, who were so particular about every little thing, even to the way she tied her bonnet and sat ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... was a mystery to myself. I was content to wait, and feel the light evening air in the garden wafting happiness over me. And all this had come from a kiss! I can call the time to mind when I used to wonder why people made such a fuss about kissing. ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... did suggest it the next morning, Hilary was quite of Pauline's opinion. "I shouldn't like it a bit, mother! It would be worse than home—duller, I mean; and Mrs. Boyd would fuss over me so," she ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs

... bit, wipes his fingers on the plantain leaf, puts his hand behind his back, as if to help himself to rise from the ground, snatches his revolver from under his jacket and plugs a bullet plumb centre into Mr. Antonio's chest. See what it is to have to do with a gentleman. No confounded fuss, and things done out of hand. But he might have tipped me a wink or something. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Scared ain't in it! I didn't even know who had fired. Everything had been so still just before that the ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... much there is, you will want a strong convoy to take it across to the railway, and it would not be safe even then. Of course, the bulk is nothing. I should say at any rate you had better get it in here with as little fuss as possible." ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... my teeth mortify me. He used to be engaged to Elizabeth Hamilton Carter, the niece of the lady at whose house I am boarding this summer, but he did something he ought not to have done, or he didn't do something he ought to have done, and they had a fuss. No one seems to know the cause of it, but it was probably from her wanting him to be blind to everything on earth but her, and a man isn't going to be blind when he wants to see, and then she got hurt. I'd rather live in a house with ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher

... hard, but necessary, if the West Point man is to be graduated as anything but a snob with an enlarged cranium. Laura, you remember what a fuss the 'Blade' made over me when I won my appointment? Now, almost every new man come to West Point with some such splurge made about him at home. He reaches here thinking he's one of the smartest fellows in creation. In ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock

... use of making a fuss, this time?" demanded Tom Reade good-humoredly. "For once we have so much meat that we could spare a hungry man two hundred pounds and not ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... passed since that day of lunacy. What a noise and a fuss and a chattering and an uproar there was! And what a welter of unseemliness and disorder and stupidity and bad manners! And I the cause of it all! Yet part of the scene was also ridiculous—at all events to myself it was so. I am not quite sure what was the matter with me—whether I was merely ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... brought her up for their own in the cunningest little moccasins. She could not speak a word of English except her own name which is Nina. She has blue eyes and all her second teeth. The ladies here made a great fuss about her and sent her flowers and worsted afgans, but they did not do anything else for her and left her ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various

... to care a lot about this dog," remarked Tignol. "I mean the candle girl. Such a fuss as she made when ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... unprecedented change, that does it at the last. Lady Mary was not accustomed to be ill, and did not bear it with her usual grace. She was a little impatient at first, and thought they were making an unnecessary fuss. But then there passed a few uncomfortable feverish days, when she began to look forward to the doctor's visit as the only thing there was any comfort in. Afterwards she passed a night of a very agitating kind. She dozed and ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... a great deal of fuss over ten dollars," said Harry, lightly, as he sauntered out ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet

... he came in, bending attentively over his tray, and, without a glance toward his young mistress, made some show of fuss and bustle, as he placed it upon a table near the window and drew up a chair for her so that she could sit with her ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... man loses a dollar, he makes a fuss about it. When he loses a thousand, he goes on a ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason

... would be for my wife, and after that for my daughter, if I had one. She also complained that Mr. Macfinlay had been so punctilious about preparing the deed of gift, and that it was a great pity the L100,000 could not just pass from her hands to mine without so much fuss. ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... matter was settled when Buster John cried out from the next room: "What fuss was that you were making in there ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris

... very early, Sammy Jay and I will make a great fuss near the edge of the Green Forest. Farmer Brown's boy has a lot of curiosity, and he will be sure to come over to see what it is all about. Then we will lead him to where Buster Bear is. If he runs away, I will be the first to admit that Buster Bear ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess

... at their little game! For of all hard things to bear and grin, The hardest is knowing you're taken in. Ah, well! as a general thing, we fret About the one we didn't get; But I think we needn't make a fuss, If the one we don't ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... fuss and fury were over, it seemed quite a silly exhibition she had made of herself. She almost wished that she ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... overlapping Cuffs and a ready-made Tie, he had a Rating, so a certain Promoter with an Office in Broad Street found it advisable to make a Fuss over him. ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade

... continued, 'why you have taken so unaccountable a fancy to and interest in these people, especially the child. One would think she belonged to royalty, the fuss you make over her. What are we to do with her to-night? ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... there now if I had not found a gold plate; I seized my great-grandfather—I mean the silver image of Menas, and hammered on it, and screamed Fire! Then Sebek heard me and fetched Orion, and he let me out, and made such a fuss over me and kissed me. But what is the good of that; my grandfather will be angry, for in my terror I beat his father's nose ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... there, you old duffer," said he, looking at me in a stupid, expressionless sort of a way, "you are not hurt yet. I'll give you something to cry about if you don't quit making such a fuss over nothing. You're the ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... "What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... must get you to look for long pistils and short pistils in the rarer species of Primula and in some allied Genera. It holds with P. Sinensis. You remember all the fuss I made on this subject last spring; well, the other day at last I had time to weigh the seeds, and by Jove the plants of primroses and cowslip with short pistils and large grained pollen (Thus the plants which he imagined to be tending towards a male condition ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... He's a nice boy. But Tracy makes too much fuss over him. I like Joe, but he and his partners are 'crabbing' my act, ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum

... mean?" exclaimed Cloud, as soon as surprise and awe enabled him to find his voice. "Fuss he little, den he big—fuss he great way, den he close by—what ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... Mrs. Easterfield to invite us to take our wedding trip with them. Dick had to stay at the college until the last minute almost, and so we didn't say anything about the wedding—and we were both afraid of—well, we don't like a fuss—and so we planned this. And when Dick came he brought the license and Mr. Faulkner. And now I don't see how Mr. Easterfield can ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... costume on, Walks by my side, an' looks into my face, An' makes creation one big pleasure-place Where golden sand basks in that golden weather— Yes! her an' me together! I do me bit, An' make no fuss of it; But for to-day I somehow want to be At ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett

... on to the men in the boat, and he handled the shotgun as if he knew how to use it. "I'll take you into custody on complaint of Mr. Swift for robbery. Now will you go quietly or are you going to make a fuss?" and Mr. Sharp shut his ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton

... the time." Sunny was a bit aggrieved to find such a fuss made over him. First Jimmie and now Juddy. "I haven't been ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White

... Norma laughed, glanced for a moment into far space, shook her head. And for a few minutes there was utter silence in the plain little bedroom. Then the baby began to fuss and grope, and to make little sneezing faces in his ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... by the genius of Carlyle. The original charm of Germany had been the charm of the child. The Teutons were never so great as when they were childish; in their religious art and popular imagery the Christ-Child is really a child, though the Christ is hardly a man. The self-conscious fuss of their pedagogy is half-redeemed by the unconscious grace which called a school not a seed-plot of citizens, but merely a garden of children. All the first and best forest-spirit is infancy, its wonder, its wilfulness, even its still innocent ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... began, "why it is women are always in a fuss? It's no good expecting them to sit still. That's not in their line. But running out morning or evening, that's what ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... Holland (Life of Duke of Devonshire, vol. ii, pp. 38, 39), suggests that the Hartington section had difficulty in reconciling Sir Charles's attitude on other Imperial matters with his Egyptian policy: "It would indeed be a farce, after all the fuss about the Cameroons and Angra Pequena, to allow Suakim, which is the port of Khartoum, and the Nile to pass into the hands of foreigners." The answer is, first, that Sir Charles would certainly never have consented to let any port in ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... the receipt all the same," said Terry. "I've never been paperless before, and there may be some fuss ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... a subject for a drama than a chapter from the Gospels or the Golden Legend. As long as I can remember anything, I can remember seeing myself wrapped in lace, being carried by a woman, and continually being made a fuss with, like children are who have been waited for for a long time, and who ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... with definite co-ordinated muscular movements, have become considerably more numerous. Thus the following are already correctly distinguished, being very rarely confounded: Uhr (clock), Ohr (ear); Schuh (shoe), Stuhl (chair), Schulter (shoulder), Fuss (foot); Stirn (forehead), Kinn (chin); Nase (nose), blasen (blow); Bart (beard), Haar (hair); ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... A great fuss was made over this robbery, and the Privy Council took the matter up. The chief robber was undoubtedly an officer, said M'Fadyen, and besides the large wart over his eye, there were other marks which made him noticeable—for example, "the little finger of his left hand bowed towards ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... July, 1842.—A letter at Providence would have been like manna in the wilderness. I came into the very midst of the fuss,[C] and, tedious as it was at the time, I am glad to have seen it. I shall in future be able to believe real, what I have read with a dim disbelief of such times and tendencies. There is, indeed, little good, little cheer, in what I have seen: a city ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... standing before the fireplace with his hands in his pockets, "if Sara dreamed that we even so much as contemplate making a fuss about Chal's will, she'd up and chuck the whole blooming legacy in our faces, and be glad to do it. She's got plenty of her own. She doesn't need the little that Challis left her. Then, what would we look ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... down to-morrow, Mis' Plumfield," said that personage, with her usual dry business tone, always a little on the wrong side of sweet;—"your brother has taken a notion to ask two young fellers from the Pool to supper, and they're grand folks I s'pose, and have got to have a fuss made for 'em. I don't know what Mr. Ringgan was thinkin' of, or whether he thinks I have got anything to do or not; but anyhow they're a comin', I s'pose, and must have something to eat; and I thought the best thing I could ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... alone. In ancient times, although there was no prosy system in Japan, there, were no popular disturbances, and the empire was peacefully ruled. It is because the Japanese were truly moral in their practice that they required no theory of morals, and the fuss made by the Chinese about theoretical morals is owing to their laxity in practice. It is not wonderful that students of Chinese literature should despise their own country for being without a system of morals, but that the Japanese, who were acquainted with their own ancient literature, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... "What a fuss they all do make over her! I'm sure she didn't seem anything particular," thought Stella as she accompanied Mrs. Steele up-stairs. Lucy had fallen asleep, but awoke on their entrance, and started up to arrange her disordered dress and hair ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... more evidence,' objected Mr. Jenkins. 'What did they want to make so much fuss about ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... dear. I've got my own ways, you see. I'm a fussy old fellow. And I've got my servant—my blackamoor. He'd frighten all the neighbours. And you'd fuss yourself, thinking I wasn't comfortable. I'll come up to-morrow afternoon and stay on to dinner, if you like. And just leave the boy to me a bit. Good night, all of you; ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth

... right. He's going. Old Fuss!" The policeman stood a brief moment longer. Then the foliage rustled again. He was gone. The girl sighed, happily. "Play that thing some more, will you? You're a wiz ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... kettles such bubbling and boiling over as took place inside the crowded Donald tenement that night? Had not they all been breaking their loving, anxious hearts about Bonny Laddie, and lo! here he was, safe in the old red cape, smiling and shining as usual, and rather mystified at having such a fuss made ...
— Harper's Young People, August 31, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... making all that fuss over a couple o' pounds," said Mr. Chalk, looking round. "He's very free, as ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... who had just had a hodful of bricks fall on his feet)—"Dropt 'em on yer toe! That's nothin'. Why, I seen a bloke get killed stone dead, an' 'e never made such a bloomin' fuss ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... on his wheel last night just after dark," she sobbed. "Yes! he came home after the baseball game, and he made a great fuss gettin' some paint and brushes and contrapshions fixed on his old bicycle, and then he went off. Oh, he usually goes off awhile every night. I can't seem to stop him. I've tried everything short of lockin' him out. I reckon if I did he'd never come back, an' I can't seem to bring ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... care," cried Lady Garvington recklessly, and rose to depart on some vague errand. "I'm only in the world to look after dinners and breakfasts. Clara Greeby's a cat making all this fuss about—" ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... told one," said Fanny, looking in at the window of Bacon, the mapseller, in the Strand—told one that it is no use making a fuss; this is life, they should have said, as Fanny said it now, looking at the large yellow globe marked with ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... in short, ambiguous, and paradoxical sentences, which apparently mean much more than they say,—of this kind of writing Schelling's treatises on natural philosophy are a splendid instance; or else they hold forth with a deluge of words and the most intolerable diffusiveness, as though no end of fuss were necessary to make the reader understand the deep meaning of their sentences, whereas it is some quite simple if not actually trivial idea,—examples of which may be found in plenty in the popular ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... man doesn't work, why, we drills 'im an' teaches 'im 'ow to behave; If a beggar can't march, why, we kills 'im an' rattles 'im into 'is grave. You've got to stand up to our business an' spring without snatchin' or fuss. D'you say that you sweat with the field-guns? By God, you must lather with us—'Tss! 'Tss! For you all love the screw-guns ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... to do it, and you needn't fuss, because you've got to go along. I expect we can study up—on goats." Her voice shook a little, for she was close ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... no! They'd all be sure that I stole them myself. I'm counting on you to get them back with as little fuss as possible. Do you think that was why Rivers was killed? After all, when a lot of valuable pistols disappear, and a crooked dealer is murdered, I'd expect there ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... to undergo a competitive examination. The bards, summoned by postcards, which had just then been introduced, repair to Parnassus and are shown to the Hall. Rossetti and Morris, however, make a fuss because the paper is not to their taste. Walt Whitman, already a great favourite of mine, "though spurning a jingle," is hailed as "the singer of songs for all time." Proteus (Wilfrid Blount) is mentioned, for my cult for him was already growing. Among other poets who appear, but who ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... of lazy luxury between cool linen sheets for Lucia, and she enjoyed her rest to its fullest extent. Every one in the convent, which was now a hospital, and running smoothly with capable American nurses, made a great fuss over her, and she had so much care that sometimes she was just the least bit bored. When the week was over, and she was feeling herself again, she grew restless and clamored to get up. Even the sheets, and the delicious things she had to eat, could not keep her contented. At last the ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent

... outside the door, and looked wistfully and anxiously across the plain, at the cattle now peacefully grazing on the salt-bush, and at the mocking mirage in the far distance. Never before, it seemed to her, had so much fuss been made about the cattle. The ghost trick had stood them in good stead for some time, and now apparently these ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt

... demanded of us—'What is the most exquisite of sublunary pleasures?' we should reply, without hesitation, the making a fuss, or in the classical words of a western friend, the 'kicking up a bobbery.' Never was a 'bobbery' more delightful than that which we have just succeeded in 'kicking up' all around about Boston Common. We never saw the Frogpondians so lively in ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... boy!' In short, notwithstanding all the affectionate interest I take in you, this is sometimes too much for me. In fact, I think I must be very fond of thee not to have grown positively to hate thee for all this fuss. There! In this last sentence, instead of saying you, I have said thee! That ought to gild the pill ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... carry your things into the dining-room now," he said. "And your bed covering. We can make up a sort of couch there, for you may as well be comfortable if you can. And you know, it's on the cards that all our fuss is in vain. Nothing ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... gather Labour decided upon and carried this out without consulting anybody. Streets were taken over without any warning, and certainly without any fuss. There seemed to be few police about, and there was no need for them. Labour took command of the show in the interest of its friend the Prince, and would ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... the end of a year he had become the Providence incarnate of that quarter of the town. He was a member of the Benevolent Committee and of the Charity Organization. Wherever any gratuitous services were needed he was ready, and did everything without fuss, like the man with the short cloak, who spends his life in carrying soup round the markets and other places where ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... disaster, which, as you may remember, had its gruesome celebrity. The wind would have prevented the loudest outcries from reaching the shore; there had been evidently no time for signals of distress. It was death without any sort of fuss. The Hamburg ship, filling all at once, capsized as she sank, and at daylight there was not even the end of a spar to be seen above water. She was missed, of course, and at first the Coastguardmen surmised that she had either dragged ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... answered, timidly. "Besides, with all this fearful tramping to war through the whole land, how can one feel like pleasure journeying? And then"—there was another little reason that peeped out last—"they would have been so sure to make a fuss ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... this human life come in consequence of the resistance of the souls of men to the law of progress which is always, and everywhere, laying hold of them to force them from the sod up to God. They squirm, and wriggle, and howl, and make no end of fuss, because the Lord calls upon them to awake from their animalism, and sloth, and arise, and seek ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... professedly alert and efficient, who looked at the mottled back of my passport and frowned at the recent visa, "A la Place de Calais, bon pour aller a Dunkerque, P.O. Le Chef d'Etat- Major," but let me by without questions or fuss, aroused visions of a frontier stone ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... nurse can endure any fuss about her work and her merits. Enthusiasts and devotees find immediately that they are altogether out of place in a hospital,—or, as we may now say, they would find this, if they were ever to enter a hospital: for, in fact, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... this Government that our fleet would go to the Mediterranean, I was instructed also to say that they mustn't trouble to welcome us—don't pay no 'tention to us! Well, that's what they live for in times of peace—ceremonies. We come along and say, "We're comin' but, hell! don't kick up no fuss over us, we're from Missouri, we are!" And the Briton shrugs his shoulders and says, "Boor!" These things are happening all the time. Of course no one nor a dozen nor a hundred count; but generations of 'em have counted ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... patriot army lay encamped the night before the expected battle. A trusty spy was sent to Tarleton, to say that the Americans had faced about, and were waiting to fight him sometime the next day. There was no fuss and feathers about Morgan. In the {117} evening, he went round among the various camp fires, and with fatherly words ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... him and he is worked up to a great pitch of energy. He wants to bestir himself, to fuss about, to make inquiries, to talk incessantly. At one minute he fumbles in his pockets and bundles and looks for some form. Then he thinks of something and cannot remember it; then takes out his pocketbook, and with no sort of object counts over his money. He bustles ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... without comment. But glory in death is even more a matter of luck than fame in life. At all events, Captain Bowring, as brave a gentleman as ever faced fire, had perished like so many other brave gentlemen of his kind, in a quiet way, without any fuss, beyond killing half a dozen or so of his assailants, and had left his widow the glory of receiving a small pension in return for his blood, and that was all. Some day, when the dead are reckoned, and the manner of their death noted, poor Bowring may count for more than some of his friends ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford

... all their fuss they presently incur some simple old-fashioned illness and die like ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock

... himself for me in so obliging a fashion. He had, I was aware, been too far off that night to know whether I had thrown away a paper-weight or a sand-bag. Moreover, the object had been swathed beyond recognition in the extra that was primarily responsible for all this fuss. "He is sorry for me," I decided. "He thinks the girl has made a fool of me." Instead of experiencing gratitude, I felt more galled and ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti



Words linked to "Fuss" :   fussy, agitation, bickering, trouble, overprotect, worry, hustle, fret, flurry, rumpus, run-in, ruckus, dustup, dither, tumult, hassle, pettifoggery, spat, perturbation, stir, wrangle, bustle, ruction, row



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