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Hob   Listen
noun
Hob  n.  
1.
A fairy; a sprite; an elf. (Obs.) "From elves, hobs, and fairies,... Defend us, good Heaven!"
2.
A countryman; a rustic; a clown. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hob" Quotes from Famous Books



... have joined; for the savour of the stew had floated from the cottage into the porch with such appetizing distinctness that the meat, the onions, the pepper, and the herbs could be severally recognized by his nose. But as sitting down to hob-and-nob there would have seemed to mark him too implicitly as the weather-caster's apostle, he declined, and went ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... a visor fore and aft matched his roomy knickerbockers, and canvas leggings encased his rounded calves. His hob-nailed shoes were the latest thing in "field boots," and his hunting coat was a credit to the sporting house that had turned it out. His cartridge belt was new and squeaky, and he had the last patents in waterproof match safes and skinning knives. That goneness at his stomach, and the strange ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... me," added the third boy; "but I don't believe that reservoir's goin' to play hob with things, like some people say. They're shaking in their shoes right now about it; but if the new rain that's aheadin' this way'd only get switched off the track I reckon we'd manage to pull through here in Carson without a terrible ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie

... neatness of Miss Dimpleton's humble home. Nothing could be gayer or better arranged than this little room. A gray paper, with green flowers, covered the walls; the red-waxed floor shone like a mirror; a saucepan of white earthenware was on the hob, where was also arranged a small quantity of wood, cut so fine and small that you could well compare each piece to a large match. Upon the stone mantelpiece, representing gray marble, were placed for ornament two common flower-pots, painted an emerald green; a little wooden ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... worry because there is no rent day, they have no tenants, their houses are idle. Others worry because their tenants are not to their liking, are destructive, careless, or neglect the flowers and the lawn, or allow the children to batter the furniture, walk in hob nails over the hardwood floors, or scratch the paint off the walls. Men in high position worry lest their superiors are not as fully appreciative of their efforts as they should be, and they in turn worry their subordinates lest they forget ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... as, for example, in the habit which arose of talking with warm-hearted familiarity of great eighteenth-century men, and parodying their conversation. It was easy enough to speak of Johnson as 'Grand Old Samuel,' and to hob-nob with Swift or Sterne, seeing that, like the lion's part in Pyramus and Thisbe, 'you can do it extempore, for ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... follow, for she told this tale like one inspired, "wanting guns, for there wasna twa grains o' pouder in the house, wi' nae mair weepons than their sticks into their hands, the fower o' them took the road. Only Hob, and that was the eldest, hunkered at the door-sill where the blood had rin, fyled his hand wi' it, and haddit it up to Heeven in the way o' the auld Border aith. 'Hell shall have her ain again this nicht!' he raired, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... house, finds that a tea-pot and some spoons which had been left in the room on the previous evening are gone,—the window is open, and you observe the mark of a dirty hand on the window-frame, and perhaps, in addition to that, you notice the impress of a hob-nailed shoe on the gravel outside. All these phenomena have struck your attention instantly, and before two minutes have passed you say, "Oh, somebody has broken open the window, entered the room, and ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... waiting for more, shaking with merriment like a jolly old fellow amused by a funny story, he took his departure, not forgetting, however, to set his great hob-nail boots on each of the compromising footprints which his ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc

... personality of Honey's. The whole world of creatures felt its charm. Dumb beasts fawned on him. Children clung to him. Old people lingered near as though they could light dead fires in the blaze of his radiant youth. Men hob-nobbed with him; his charm brushed off on to the dryest and dullest so that, temporarily, they too bloomed with personality. As for women—His appearance among them was the signal for a noiseless social cataclysm. They slipped and slid in his direction as helplessly as if an inclined plane had ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore

... they hoped would give no offence to anyone. It was a perfectly decent room, half parlour and half kitchen, but not at all a snug room. The tea-things were set upon the table, and the kettle was boiling on the hob. There was a chest of drawers with an escritoire top, for Uriah to read or write at of an evening; there was Uriah's blue bag lying down and vomiting papers; there was a company of Uriah's books commanded by Mr. Tidd; there was a corner cupboard: and there were the usual ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... "Why, thou hob thrust, no good can come where thy fingers are a-meddling; there is another jade besides mine own tied to the rack, not worth a groat. Dost let thy neighbours lift my oats and provender? Better turn my mill into a spital for horses, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... that it was a pleasure to look inside it. In the summer Rose-red took care of the house, and every morning laid a wreath of flowers by her mother's bed before she awoke, in which was a rose from each tree. In the winter Snow-white lit the fire and hung the kettle on the hob. The kettle was of brass and shone like gold, so brightly was it polished. In the evening, when the snowflakes fell, the mother said: 'Go, Snow-white, and bolt the door,' and then they sat round the hearth, and the mother took her spectacles and read aloud out of a large book, and the two girls ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm

... window on the ground floor was tightly closed and barred. There was no sign of life. He knocked at the door of the kitchen, but with no result. He tried it, and found it also locked. Determined not to be thwarted in his effort to see Mrs. Meath, he kicked vigourously against the door with his great hob-nailed boots. Unsuccessful in this, he detached a rail from the top of the fence and used it against the door as a battering-ram. At the first crash of timbers, the sash of a window in the second story, directly above the kitchen, was thrown open, and a dark-eyed, dark-haired, ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold

... announced. "I hope you've finished all that rubbishing talk. There's some tea in the tea-pot on the hob, if you want ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... I believe. He had a week's holiday, in which time he was going to make a big circular walk, something like the Englishman's. But he was accustomed to this mountain walking: he belonged to a Sportverein. Manfully he marched in his thick hob-nailed boots, earnestly he ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence

... be seen. It had been all raked over, and there, just out of the ground, growing up in mustard-and-cress letters as long as my arm, I saw 'This genteel residence to let, lately occupied by N. Swan, Esq.' I took my hob-nailed boots to them last words, and I promise you ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... envelope, she wondered what the wretched woman had to say. It occurred to her that the kettle was simmering on the hob in the kitchen, and that she might easily steam open the envelope and master its contents. However, her doing this would have in no way affected the course of the tragedy. And so the gods (being ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... lid on its back, the other a pair of wings;—not to speak of the distinction also of volition, which the philosophers may properly call merely a form or mode of force;—but then, to an artist, the form, or mode, is the gist of the business. The kettle chooses to sit still on the hob; the eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of the choice, not the equal degree of temperature in the fulfilment of it, which appears to us the more interesting circumstance;—though the other is very interesting too. Exceedingly so! Don't laugh, children; the philosophers ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... "Hob-nail boots. I find the imprint of the same boots in both places. One man apparently did all of this," was ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower

... old mares "in a chateau capable of accommodating a hundred seigniors with their suites." Here and there in the various memoirs we see these strange superannuated figures passing before the eye, for instance, in Burgundy, "gentlemen huntsmen wearing gaiters and hob-nailed shoes, carrying an old rusty sword under their arms dying with hunger and refusing to work."[1318] Elsewhere we encounter "M. de Perignan, with his red garments, wig and ginger face, having dry stone wails built on his domain, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... muffled in worsted. This embrace concluded, he sat down on the opposite side of her little table. There was a fire in the grate, as there had been night and day for fifteen years. There was a kettle on the hob, as there had been night and day for fifteen years. There was a little mound of damped ashes on the top of the fire, and another little mound swept together under the grate, as there had been night and day for fifteen years. There was a smell of black dye in the airless ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... vision dismounted, and peering within, 'Midst a rattle of glasses and knife and fork din, His victims beheld, tucking in calipash, While they hob-nobb'd and toasted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... So, taking the whole clause, we may paraphrase it by saying that the preparedness of spirit, the alacrity which comes from the possession of a Gospel that sheds a calm over the heart and brings a man into peace with God, is what the Apostle thinks is like the heavy hob-nailed boots that the legionaries wore, by which they could stand firm, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... little warm supper of a couple of sets of pettitoes and some toasted cheese. The cheese was simmering and browning away, most delightfully, in a little Dutch oven before the fire; the pettitoes were getting on deliciously in a little tin saucepan on the hob; and Mrs. Bardell and her two friends were getting on very well, also, in a little quiet conversation about and concerning all their particular friends and acquaintance; when Master Bardell came back from answering the door, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... were within doors the Minister placed his trembling companion in the old leathern chair in his little sanctum, made up the fire, and poured him out a glass of whisky with hot water from the kettle that was opportunely ready on the hob. ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease

... than myself, because most of what is written therein I knew already, and I wanted a secret which is not revealed. I wanted to know more about the working of the imagination which planted the little snow-white feet in the sally garden, and which heard the kettle on the hob sing peace into the breast, and was intimate with twilight and the creatures that move in the dusk and undergrowths, with weasel, heron, rabbit, hare, mouse and coney; which plucked the Flower of Immortality in the Island ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell

... old gentleman walked into the kitchen, and sat himself down on the hob, with the top of his cap accommodated up the chimney, for it was a great deal too high ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... always brief, and almost always gay, if not farcical. Audiences, which in the early days assembled before seven o'clock, had to be sent home happy. After the tragedy, the slap-stick or the loud guffaw; after "Romeo and Juliet," Cibber's "Hob in the Well"; after "King Lear," "The Irish Widow." (These two illustrations are taken at random from the programs of the Charleston theatre in 1773.) This custom persisted until comparatively recent times. The fathers and mothers of the ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various

... I accept any crotchet (pardon the word), however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion of ghosts and hob-goblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to my unfortunate house the evil is the same. What on earth can I ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... but it's for no good, you may be sure. If he isn't here he's hob-nobbing with those gipsy wretches who have a camp on Southberry Common. Mother Jael and he are ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... acting a few nights before in the Country Wake. The part of Hob was his own in every sense, he being the author of the farce, which afterwards was made into a very popular ballad opera called Flora, or ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool beside the fire; and while Bob compounded some hot mixture in a jug, and put it on the hob to simmer, Master Peter and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... inconsiderable cents. This abomination is termed "all sorts" by the publican and his indispensable sinner. It is the accumulation of the drainage of innumerable gone drinks,—fancy and otherwise. The exquisite in the "little goat-gloves" would not hob-nob with me in that execrable beverage; no more would I with him; and yet one of its components may be the aristocratic Champagne. In the social elements of a water-excursion-party may be found the "all sorts" of a particular kind of city-life,—the good of it and the bad of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... fire glowed brightly and cheerily; the lamps were lighted; the cloth had been laid for the frugal evening meal, and the kettle hummed musically upon the hob. The family of the Warings, with the exception of the father, whose business was in a distant city, were gathered together. Samuel Waring, the son, had returned from his labor, and with the two girls were seated around the hearth awaiting the return of the old gentleman and William, while ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton

... those cousins whom she had not seen for two or three years, and after supper preferred to stay close to her sister Celia and Ben, though her brothers were soon hob-nobbing with Allen and Ted, and were planning expeditions for the morrow. Ben told such a funny story about the lady by the willow tree, that Edna could never look at the picture again without laughing, but he had scarcely finished it before ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard

... fight against Sam you can't expect his friends to hob-nob with you when it comes to ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman

... velvety black wing starred with cream-coloured eyes, which we associate with the "jungle-cock wing" of salmon flies. The so-called "jungle-cock" in a "Jock Scott" fly is furnished by a bird found, I believe, only round Madras. An animal peculiar to this part of Assam is the pigmy hob, the smallest of the swine family. These little beasts, no larger than guinea-pigs, go about in droves of about fifty, and move through the grass with such incredible rapidity that the eye is unable to follow ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... old sailor, knocking the ashes from his pipe upon the hob; "you may try, but dash my timbers if you'll ever cross ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... his presence. Spencer banged into the elevator, astonished the attendant and two other occupants by the savagery of his command, "Au deuxieme, vite!" and paced through a long corridor with noisy clatter of hob-nailed boots. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... the steep stairs. Her mind could not tell what to do, but her heart cried out that she must do something for her king. Reaching the ground floor, she ran with wide-open eyes into the kitchen. The stew was on the hob, the old woman still held the spoon, but she had ceased to stir and ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... you What you, perhaps, forget befel you, By way of horary inspection, 985 Which some account our worst erection. With that he circles draws, and squares, With cyphers, astral characters; Then looks 'em o'er, to und'erstand 'em, Although set down hob-nab, at random. 990 Quoth he, This scheme of th' heavens set, Discovers how in fight you met At Kingston with a may-pole idol, And that y' were bang'd both back and side well; And though you overcame ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... fireside, footsteps were heard, and the wooden latch was suddenly lifted. Benedict knew by the hob-nailed shoes that it was Basil the blacksmith, and Evangeline knew by her beating heart that ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... thing," she shouted, bringing her clenched hand down on the table with such force that every dish rattled. "You ain't to repeat this night's performance! If you ain't got pride enough not to go hob-nobbin' with my enemies, I'll forbid it for good an' all—forbid it, do you hear? I ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett

... consideration; but he is a devil in private brawl: souls and bodies hath he divorc'd three; and his incensement at this moment is so implacable that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulchre. Hob, nob, is his word; ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... mysterious; one Friday he declared that it was harder for a camel to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a human being to thread the eye of a needle. Another time, telling them of the glory of the angels, he explained that angels had stars set in their heels instead of hob-nails. Good and simple teaching, well fitted for settlers in the wilds; the schoolmaster in the village would have laughed at it all, but Isak's boys found good use for it in their inner life. They were trained and taught for their own little world, and what could ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... like a nosegay!' said the malicious rogue. 'Wilt hob-nob with me, maiden? What do you say? Are we adepts at sacking a house? 'Twill give thee trouble to fill thy cellars again as we found them. Take heart, girl. If you will come to, and take kindly to your angling, and do the thing that's handsome by your wooers, you shall have an eatable dinner ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... events. Men and women are urged to bring their old clothes and wear them out here, or provide only khaki or corduroy, with short skirts, bloomers and leggings for the fair sex. Strong shoes are required; hob-nailed if one expects to do any climbing. Wraps for evening, and heavy underwear for an unusual day (storms sometimes come in Sierran regions unexpectedly), ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... hear!" "Well, I don't mind," says Giglio, louder still. The King and Queen luckily did not hear; for her Majesty was a little deaf, and the King thought so much about his own dinner, and, besides, made such a dreadful noise, hob-gobbling in eating it, that he heard nothing else. After dinner, his Majesty and the Queen went to ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... stops the client's pace; The crowd that follows crush his panting sides, And trip his heels; he walks not but he rides. One elbows him, one jostles in the shoal, A rafter breaks his head or chairman's pole; Stockinged with loads of fat town dirt he goes, And some rogue-soldier with his hob-nailed shoes Indents his legs behind in bloody rows. See, with what smoke our doles we celebrate! A hundred guests invited walk in state; A hundred hungry slaves with their Dutch-kitchens wait: Huge pans ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... believe it. These boots had a horseshoe of hob-nails on each heel. Look at the footprints in the morning ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower

... imprints of Joe Lorey's hob-nailed boots, quite as she suspected. Long before the sun had risen the young mountaineer, distressed by worries which had made his night an almost sleepless one, had risen and wandered from his little cabin, lonelier in ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... found to his dismay Every time he tried to play That the ball with sundry hoots Chased the hob-nails in his boots. Finally he had to use On his feet a pair of shoes Of a most peculiar shape ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various

... The castle had many rooms, large and lonely, but the little house had one room, small and very cozy. There was a chimney and a fireplace where a bright little fire sparkled and danced and chuckled to itself. A tea kettle hung over the hob and it was singing, as the water bubbled, the merriest song that the little Princess had ever heard. The table was set for tea. It was a very plain tea, only white bread and butter, and honey, and milk; but it made ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... pipe—for aw knaw tha'rt reight fond ov a rick,— An tha'll find a drop o' hooam-brew'd i' that pint up o'th' hob, aw dar say; An nah, wol tha'rt tooastin thi shins, just scale th' foir, an aw'll side thi owd stick, Then aw'll tell thi some things 'at's happen'd sin tha ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... next morning passed off uneventfully. Our knocker advertised no dun. Our lawn remained untrodden by hob-nailed boots. By lunch-time I had come to the conclusion that the expected Trouble would not occur that day, and I felt that I might well leave my post for the afternoon, while I went to the professor's to pay my respects. The professor was out when I arrived. Phyllis was in, and it was not ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse

... They grew louder. They were evidently approaching. They were the heavy, hob-nailed shoes of some laborer ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... this latter inconvenience, Mr Swiveller had been sitting for some time with his feet on the hob, in which attitude he now gave utterance to these apologetic observations, and slowly sipped the last ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... he shows, with great logical skill, as well as with some humour, how the man who, on rising in the morning, finds the parlour window open, the spoons and teapot gone, the mark of a dirty hand on the window-sill, and that of a hob-nailed boot outside, and comes to the conclusion that some one has broken open the window and stolen the plate, arrives at that hypothesis—for it is nothing more—by a long and complex train of inductions and deductions, of just the ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... scrambled up to the room, and threw open the door. Sure enough, there at a table, on which burned a light as blue as brimstone, sat the three guests from Gibbet-Island, with halters round their necks, and bobbing their cups together, as if they were hob-or-nobbing, and trolling the old Dutch freebooter's glee, since ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... had shaken his self-confidence terribly. The little company broke up with hand-shaking all around, Tobe saying: "Sister Buggone, I bears no ill-will. I'se gwine ter look inter my speritool frame, an' ef I cotch de debil playin' hob wid me he's gwine to be ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... Barfoot, knocking out his pipe on Betty Flanders's hob, and buttoning his coat. "It doubles the work, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... from floor to ceiling were covered with books. Not a square foot all over was vacant. Even the chimney-piece was absorbed, assimilated, turned into a book-shelf, and so obliterated. Mr. Simon's pipe lay on the hob; and there was not another spot where it could have lain. There was not a shelf, a cupboard to be seen. Books, books everywhere, and nothing but books! Even the door that led to the closet where he slept, was ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... yxka[c]ahol, quecha.—[c]a x[c]amar [c]a vave ri Caveki Totomay Xurcah qui bi xeboco.—Xavi [c]a x[c]amar vave ri Ahquehayi, Loch, Xet, quibi, xeboco;—xavi [c]a x[c]am ri ahPak, Telom, [c]oxahil, [c]obakil quibi xeboco; quere navipe ri Ikoma[t]i, xavi [c]a x[c]amar; he[c]a cah [c]hob ri [c]a xe[c]amar vave ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton

... knew what Would soon be its lot, When Frederick and Jenky set hob-nobbing,[1] And said to each other, "Suppose, dear brother, "We make this funny ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... intelligence and life, and an expression at once patient and hopeful. He had balanced his misshapen frame on the top of the old wall, over which one shriveled leg dangled, as if by the weight of a hob-nailed boot, that covered a foot ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... a dark oilcloth took up all the middle of the little room. There was a wicker cradle on the floor, a kettle spouting steam on the hob, and some child's linen lay drying on the fender. The room was warm, but the door opens right into the garden, as you ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... thought begat another, till at last his mind settled intensely, and yet half humorously, upon the image of Old Huckleberry, his mother's favorite old pillion horse; and, ere long, hearing a sudden scraping noise (some hob-shoe without, against the iron pailing), he insanely took it to be Old Huckleberry in his stall, hailing him (Israel) with his shod fore-foot clattering against the planks—his customary trick when hungry—and ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... Mumming Song Charms, "Nominies," and Popular Rhymes Wilful weaste maks weasome want A rollin' stone gethers no moss Than awn a crawin' hen Nowt bud ill-luck 'll fester where Meeat maks The Miller's Thumb Miller, miller, mooter-poke Down i' yon lum we have a mill, Hob-Trush Hob "Hob-Trush Hob, wheer is thoo?" Gin Hob mun hae nowt but a hardin' hamp, Nanny Button-Cap The New Moon A Setterday's mean I see t' mean an' t' mean sees me, New mean, new mean, I hail thee, Eevein' red an' mornin' gray Souther, wind, ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... tension with her usual chatter. "Tell us about some of the people you knew in Hungary, I mean important ones," she asked curiously. Her romantic imagination saw Veronica hob-nobbing with royalty and surrounded by splendors. "Did you ever see a real prince?" she ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey

... before eleven o'clock and never settled down to work before three o'clock. The interim was spent in puttering over the exchanges, gossiping with visitors, of whom he had a constant stream, quizzing every other member of the staff, meddling here, chaffing there, and playing hob generally with the orderly routine of affairs. He was a persistent, insistent, irrepressible disturber of everything but the good-fellowship of the office, to which he was the chief contributor. No interruption from ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... "friendship and admiration" for their German confreres never even suspected the huge conspiracy of which civilization has been the victim? Why did they accept the stars and crosses of Caligula-Attila? Why hob-nob with the docile creatures of his chancery, and spread at home and abroad the worship of Geist and Kultur? Are they fit to instruct us about politics, public law, and international relations, when they were so egregiously mistaken, so blind, so befooled, with regard to ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... he said when I had finished. "Began it as a joke on Rosie, and ended by picking up the broken china out of the road, knowing it would play hob with the tires of the car." Which shows how near one can come to the truth, ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... caused by such proceedings as shooting marbles at any object behind her, whistling, stamping, fighting, shrieking out 'Amen' in the middle of a prayer, and sometimes rising en masse and tearing like a troop of bisons in hob-nailed shoes down from the gallery, round the great schoolroom, and down the stairs, and into the street. These irrepressible outbreaks she bore with infinite ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... was ready for her guests, in her little parlour, with the most delicate and transparent china set out upon the little tea-table, and the smallest and brightest of copper kettles singing on the hob. ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt

... did not at all help to quiet my apprehensions. In one corner of the room into which we were shown, stood a bedstead. Implements of cookery were scattered negligently about the floor, and on a huge hob bubbled a huge saucepan. The presence of salt-herrings and other dried fish, the common Norwegian diet, could, by no art, be concealed. The ceiling was so low, that I could hardly stand upright with my hat on; and the floor being strewed ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross

... Death had made a brave harvest; and, like Samson, by pulling down one roof destroyed many a home. None who saw it can have forgotten the aspect of the gable: here it was plastered, there papered, according to the rooms; here the kettle still stood on the hob, high overhead; and there a cheap picture of the Queen was pasted over the chimney, So, by this disaster, you had a glimpse into the life of thirty families, all suddenly cut off from the revolving years. The land had fallen; and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

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

... that stood upon the hob; she stamped out to the scullery and re-filled it at the tap. She returned, stamping, and set it with violence ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... had an eye gleaming with intelligence and life, and an expression at once patient and hopeful. He had balanced his misshapen frame on the top of the old wall, over which one shriveled leg dangled, as if by the weight of a hob-nailed boot that covered a foot ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... I hob and nob," said the first-lieutenant. They did so, and clicked their glasses together with such force as to break them both, and spill the wine upon the fine damask table-cloth. Jerry could contain himself no longer, but burst out into a roar of laughter, to the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... dollars which, under the terms of our deed of trust, we are required to pay in on July first of each year as a sinking fund toward the retirement of our bonds. By super-human efforts—by sacrificing a dozen cargoes, raising hob with the market, and getting ourselves disliked by our neighbours—we managed to meet half of it this year and procure an extension of six months on the ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... Master Landlord," he shouted; "you shall drink of your best at my expense, I promise you. We will hob-a-nob together, I tell you. Keep me your best bedroom, lavender-scented linen and all. I will take my ease here till I set up my Spanish castle on English earth, and in the mean time I swear I will never quarrel with your reckoning. I have lived so long ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... I tell you?" she cried, with a power of self-righteousness. "Wot did I tell you? You ain't got no right to git a hob-a-nobbin' with sech scum. They're all scallawags, every one of 'em. Men!—say, these yer hills is the muck-hole o' creation, an' the men is the muck. I orter know. Didn't I marry George D. Ransford, an' didn't I raise ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... distracted from classic lore, by the appearance of a very unclassic boy, clad in a suit of brown corduroys and wearing hob-nailed boots a couple of sizes too large for him, who, coming suddenly out from a box-tree alley behind the gabled corner of the rectory, shuffled to the extreme verge of the lawn and stopped there, pulling his cap off, and treading on his own toes from left to right, and from right ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... should see they were drinking. Even Worse himself would not have wished Madame Torvestad to find him hob-nobbing with the young man, and comprehending the position of affairs, he winked amiably at Lauritz, as he conducted Madame Torvestad to ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... felt grown-up, and, on the whole, notwithstanding the unsatisfied feeling at her heart, rather pleased with herself. She entered the room she called the nursery, and it looked cheerful and bright. Old nurse had had the fire lit, and was sitting by it. A kettle steamed on the hob, and nurse's cup and saucer and teapot, and some bread and butter and cakes, were spread on the table. But as Sibyl came in the sense of satisfaction which she had felt for a moment or two dropped away from her like a mantle, and she only knew that the ache at her heart was ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade

... heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool before the fire; and while Bob compounded some hot mixture in a jug and put it on the hob to simmer, Master Peter and the two young Crachits went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... speaking loud so as to be heard above the roar of the numerous planes around them, "because it might have played hob with the squadron, and even ruined the success of the ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... shout, Britons, shout, while the neighbouring crews Hob-nob, as the symbol of neighbouring nations; Whilst NEPTUNE at Home welcomes brave Brother Blues, And serves out the stingo to each in fair rations. Your spirits, ye sturdy old seadogs, might smile On ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various

... moral truths which Christianity has enforced. Something of the same kind can be traced in other heathen mysteries. But these heathen attempts at virtue invariably rotted out into aggravations of vice. No religion except Christianity ever contained the principle of improvement in it. Bugaboos and hob-goblins may serve for a time to frighten the ignorant into obedience; but if they get a chance to cheat the devil, they will be sure to do it. Nothing but the great doctrine of Christian love and brotherhood, and of a kind and paternal Divine government, has ever proved ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... vertebra. columella^, backbone; keystone; axle, axletree; axis; arch, mainstay. trunnion, pivot, rowlock^; peg &c (pendency) 214 [Obs.]; tiebeam &c (fastening) 45; thole pin^. board, ledge, shelf, hob, bracket, trevet^, trivet, arbor, rack; mantel, mantle piece [Fr.], mantleshelf^; slab, console; counter, dresser; flange, corbel; table, trestle; shoulder; perch; horse; easel, desk; clotheshorse, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... throne-room In our humorous town, Spoiling its hob-goblins, Laughing shadows down. Rank musicians torture Ragtime ballads vile, But we walk serenely Down the odorous aisle. We forgive the squalor And the boom and squeal For the Great Queen ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... Father Maguire was famous for, and exactly what we had come for. It was, in truth, rather a potent drink, consisting as it did of whisky, sugar, butter, and water, all boiled together in the little black kettle now singing away on the hob, and assisted materially in raising fresh difficulties round that already difficult path through ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt

... ceremony, took Clare by the arm, and hurried him up a marble staircase, through innumerable passages, and a maze of halls and corridors which quite bewildered the poor poet. The sound of his heavy hob-nailed shoes on the polished floor made him tremble, no less than the sight of his mud-bespattered garments among all the splendid upholstery, through which the gorgeous lackey was guiding his steps. At last, after a transit through ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... then? Why, no: they did not murder and rob; But give them a word, they returned a blow,—old Halbert as young Hob: Harsh and fierce of word, rough and savage of deed, Hated or feared the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... weeds of Babylon is a-goin' to choke it out, root and branch! We ain't got no chance to live a pure and Godly life any longer, with railroads coming in, and Gentiles with their fancy contraptions. It weakens the spirit, and it plays the very hob with the women. Soon as they git up there now, and see them new styles from St. Looey or Chicago, they git downright daft. No more homespun for 'em, no more valley tan, no more parched corn for coffee, nor beet molasses nor ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... Morano: he was not sure if Morano had behaved as a guest's servant should. But when he thought of the Professor's terrible spells, which had driven them to the awful crags of the sun, and might send them who knows where to hob-nob with who knows what, his second thoughts perceived that Morano was right to cut short those arts that the Slave of Orion loved, even by so extreme a step: and he praised Morano as ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany

... characteristically tried not to show it. "Well, now, ma'am," he drawled, "I'm afraid you ain't been to the post office much mail times. If you'd just drop in there some evenin' and hear Gabe Bearse and Bluey Batcheldor raise hob with the Kaiser you'd understand why the confidence of the Allies is unshaken, as the Herald gave ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... were most intimately associated. We temporarily constituted in our way a "soldiers three" of the newspaper world. For some years after we were more or less definitely in touch as a group, although later Peter and myself having drifted Eastward and hob-nobbing as a pair had been finding more and more in common and had more and more come to view Dick for what he was: a character of Dickensian, or perhaps still better, Cruikshankian, proportions and qualities. But in those days the three of us were all but inseparable; eating, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... something like admiration for the ingenuity of my elders in conjuring up spooks, hob-goblins, and bugaboos with which to scare me into submission. I conformed, of course, but I never gave them a high grade in veracity. I yielded simply to gain time, for I knew where there was a chipmunk in ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... Among the princes who hob-nobbed with their master at Damascus were the cowardly Ahaz and the traitorous Hoshea. But both were happy in that their countries escaped the awful havoc they witnessed in ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman

... them as on an inexhaustible store, while Will, whistling wonder at his taste, opined that since some one was there to look after the stove, and the iron pot on it, he might go out and have a turn at ball with Hob and Martin. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the pitch of the screw, which proved of the greatest importance in the economics of manufacture. Before his time, each mechanical engineer adopted a thread of his own; so that when a piece of work came under repair, the screw-hob had usually to be drilled out, and a new thread was introduced according to the usage which prevailed in the shop in which the work was executed. Mr. Clement saw a great waste of labour in this practice, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... was not afraid of Clinch; not really afraid of anybody. It had been the dogs that demoralised Quintana. He'd had no experience with hunting hounds, — did not know what to expect, — how to manoeuvre. If only he could have seen these beasts that filled the forest with their hob-goblin outcries — if he could have had a good look at the creatures who gave forth that weird, crazed, ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers

... sixty degrees instead of being over a hundred. All these women and girls were beautiful, all had charm, all were more or less ravishing—simply because for days we had been living in a harsh masculine world—a world of motor- lorries, razors, trousers, hob-nailed boots, maps, discipline, pure reason, and excessively few mirrors. An interesting item of the laundry was a glass-covered museum of lousy shirts, product of prolonged trench-life in the earlier part of ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett

... down and hob-a-nobbed; and while they did so, the murderer, who had been lying and whimpering in his berth, raised himself upon his elbow and looked at them ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson

... teapot, ready on the hob!" said Dot; as briskly busy as a child at play at keeping house. "And there's the cold knuckle of ham; and there's the butter; and there's the crusty loaf, and all! Here's a clothes basket for the small parcels, John, if you've got any there. Where are ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... we, too, are having the rare experience of a little sunshine in this dark, damp world of London. The constant confinement in the city and in the house (that's the worst of it—no outdoor life or fresh air) has played hob with my digestion. It's not bad, but it's troublesome, and for some time I've had the feeling of being one half well. It occurred to me the other day that I hadn't had leave from my work for four years, except my short visit home nearly two years ago. I asked for two ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... hopes some o' the dogs id come home and ketch the chap, and he was loath to stir hand or fut himself, afeared o' frightenin' away the fox, but by gor, he could hardly keep his timper at all at all, whin he seen the fox take his pipe aff o' the hob where he left it afore he wint to bed, and puttin' the bowl o' the pipe into the fire to kindle it (it's as thrue as I'm here), he began to smoke foreninst the fire, as nath'ral as any ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... gently on the hob. Every other knife and fork was silent; so was every tongue. Master Gammon ate and the kettle hummed. Twice Mrs. Sumfit sounded a despairing, "Oh, deary me!" but it was useless. No human power had ever yet driven Master Gammon ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the Brook (you know her habit) rose one rainy Autumn night And tore down sodden flitches of the bank to left and right. So, said William to his Bailiff as they rode their dripping rounds: 'Hob, what about that River-bit—the Brook's got up ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... in Hob's pound to cool, My boy Hobbie O? Because I bade the people pull The House ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... sky in the direction of Hinderwell, and everything is bathed in a glorious golden light, the ferryman will row you across the bay to Runswick, but a scramble over the rocks on the beach will be repaid by a closer view of the now half-filled-up Hob Hole. The fisher-folk believed this cave to be the home of a kindly-disposed fairy or hob, who seems to have been one of the slow-dying inhabitants of the world of mythology implicitly believed in by ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home

... is troubled with a loathing for meat and a greedy longing for things contrary to nutriment, as coals, rubbish, chalk, etc., which desire often occasions abortion and miscarriage. Some women have been so extravagant as to long for hob nails, leather, horse-flesh, man's flesh, and other unnatural as well as unwholesome food, for want of which thing they have either miscarried or the child has continued dead in the womb for many days, to ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... together, laughing. Grimshaw was wearing his conspicuous climbing clothes—tweed jacket, yellow suede waistcoat, knickerbockers, and high-laced boots with hob-nailed soles. His green felt hat, tipped at an angle, was ornamented with a little orange feather. He was in tremendous spirits. He bellowed, made faces at scared peasant children in the village, swung his ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... ended—"all but ended," Miss Sandys repeated with a little sigh of relief, and an inclination to moralize on that weariness which is the result of pleasure. When Miss West came down in the morning the kettle was steaming on the hob, the teapot under its cosie, and the couple of rolls and the dish of sausages were set in their places. Miss Sandys—her working apron lying ready to take up on the side-table behind her—was bent to the last on buns and pork pies, though she ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... heart: but he was not a demonstrative man, and he rarely answered one directly as one might have wished. On this occasion, I remember, he went about his work for a little while before he spoke again; and it was not until the coffee was boiling on the hob that he came across to me and, seating himself on the arm of my chair, ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... heated the coffee myself over the parlour fire. It was already bubbling on the hob. Directly she had left I went to the kitchen, and got a second cup. I felt much better since I had had supper. And as I took the cup from the shelf the fantastic idea came into my mind to ask my protegee to come in and drink her coffee by the fire in the parlour. I must frankly own it was foolhardy; ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... as well as for any of them? And this in Latine, besides Hedera Seguace, Harpia Subata, Humore Superbo, Hipocrito Simulatore in Italian. And in English world without end. Huffe Snuffe, Horse Stealer, Hob Sowter, Hugh Sot, Humphrey Swineshead, Hodge Sowgelder. Now Master H.S. if this do gaule you, forbeare kicking hereafter, and in the meane time you may make a plaister of your dried Marjoram. I have seene in my daies an inscription, harder to finde out the meaning, ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson

... always unselfish, be he old or young, rested or weary; and such being the case, the foreign day-laborer, in blue blouse and hob-nailed boots, who rises and gives a lady his place in car or omnibus, is the superior of the several-times-a-millionaire, in finest broadcloth, spotless linen, patent leathers and silk hat, who sits still, taking refuge ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... to any companionable nothing, your uncompanionable friend, Coonskins, is, by pure contrast, brought to recollection. If he were but here now, he would see how much of real heart-joy he denies himself by not hob-a-nobbing with his kind." ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... unchangeable is its stability. It was as true to Moro that a spade is worth more than a club, as that falling bodies represent a movement uniformly accelerated. And there, in the dark corner of the room, the celebrated Manin was sleeping in the same armchair, with his short breeches, green jacket, and hob-nailed boots. His hair was grey, almost white, but that was not the worst of it, for the sad part was, that he was no longer regarded in the place as a fierce hunter, grown grey in contending with the bears of the mountains. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... impressionable than either of the three would have wished. Her heart seemed not easy to reach; her impulses were not inflammable. Young Milbrey early confided to his family a suspicion that she was singularly hard-headed, and the definite information that she had "a hob-nailed Western way" of ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... the wassail bowl, there stood near the fire a small round table, covered with a snow—white cloth, upon which shone in unrivalled brightness a very handsome tea equipage—the hissing kettle on one hob was vis a vis'd by a gridiron with three newly taken trout, frying under the reverential care of Father Malachi himself—a heap of eggs ranged like shot in an ordnance yard, stood in the middled of the table, while a formidable pile of buttered toast browned before the grate—the morning ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever

... boatman, they reached toward the roof of the cavern hastily. There was no hesitation on their part. Although Copley was alone, his unwavering attitude and the threat of the automatic pistol, played hob with such shreds of ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson

... genial and kind, a little masculine," say my informants; but of strangers she was exceedingly timid, and if the butcher's boy or the baker's man came to the kitchen door she would be off like a bird into the hall or the parlour till she heard their hob-nails clumping down the path. No easy getting sight of that rare bird. Therefore, it may be, the Haworth people thought more of her powers than of those of Anne or Charlotte, who might be seen at school any Sunday. They say: "A deal o' folk thout her th' clever'st ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... deal of money, a kind heart and scarcely any brains. He was an ideal choice, everybody was agreed upon that. The fellow that Constance was really in love with at the time, Jimmy Gordon, was a friend of your father's. Well, the gentle Arthur went to pieces financially a good many years ago. He played hob with all the calculations, and so we find Constance, his wife, lamenting in the graveyard of her hopes and cursing Jimmy Gordon for his unfaithfulness in marrying before he was in a position to do so. If Jimmy ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon

... is so great that he is always meddling in other people's affairs. He pokes his red face into every cottage for miles around. Imagine the King of England going about in his old wig, shovel-hat, and Windsor uniform, hob-nobbing with pig-boys, and old women making apple dumplings, and hurrahing with lazy louts early in the morning! That is the great King of England! How proud you must be of such ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody

... up thi pipe— for aw knaw tha'rt reight fond ov a rick,— An' tha'll find a drop o' hooarm-brew'd i' that pint up o'th' hob, aw dar say; An' nah, wol tha'rt toastin thi shins, just scale th' foir, an' aw'll side thi owd stick, Then aw'll tell thi some things 'ats happen'd sin tha ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley

... cannot imagine the influence of a woman to have been ennobling who could act as Mrs. Godwin did at an early period of her married life; who, when one of her husband's friends, whom she did not care about, called to see Godwin, explained that it was impossible, as the kettle had just fallen off the hob and scalded both his legs. When the same friend met Godwin the next day in the street, and was surprised at his speedy recovery, the philosopher replied that it was only an invention of his wife. The ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti

... essentially a man's room, rugged, uncouth, virile, full of the odours of tobacco, of leather, of rusty iron; the bare floor hollowed by the grind of hob-nailed boots, the walls marred by the friction of heavy things of metal. Strangely enough, Annixter's clothes were disposed of on the single chair with the precision of an old maid. Thus he had placed them the night before; the boots set carefully side by side, the trousers, with the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... hour passed away, but no well-known footstep, or dearly loved voice, disturbed our lonely vigil. The kettle simmered drowsily on the hob; Mrs. Arthur, tired out with impatient fretting at her son's delay, had thrown her apron over her head, and was sobbing bitterly. I began to feel alarmed; a strange fear seemed growing upon my heart, which almost led me to doubt the evidence of my senses—to fancy, in fact, that what I ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... having something about it before their sense of sight. Having got that, they were considering the case, wondering how the devil they had come into that power. I saw one man in a smock frock lose the said power the moment he turned away, and bring his hob-nails back again." ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... the ax-helve warms at the chimney-jamb! And hob-nailed boots on the hearth below, And the house cat curls in a slumber calm, And the eight-day clock ticks loud and slow; When the harsh broom-handle jabs the ceil 'Neath the kitchen-loft, and the drowsy brain Sniffs the breath of the morning meal— O then is the time ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye

... two solutions, a precipitate of iodide of silver is formed. Place the bottle containing this mixture in a saucepan of hot water, keep it on the hob for about twelve hours, shake it occasionally, now and then removing the stopper. The bath is now perfectly saturated with iodide of silver; when cold, filter through white ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various

... would almost, rather kill myself than write this). As I got older my terror was less, but my melancholy greater, until I would be only half conscious of what I was allowing myself to do. I seemed to have engendered within myself a hob-goblin. Once—it was only last winter—I saw a nasty word written on a fence, and it sent a shudder through me, for I knew it would follow me and make me think of other things like it. I felt, since thoughts have such power to terrorize ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... make the child nervous by filling his mind with stories of hob-goblins and were-wolves, for there is always the risk that timidity contracted in ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue

... the Brew of the Little Pot beside me, for though I am ragged and empty, my forbears were well clothed and full until their house was burnt and their cattle harried seven centuries ago by the Dillons, whom I shall yet see on the hob of hell, and they screeching'; and while he spoke the little eyes gleamed and the thin ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats

... doctor, smiling at his patient, as if after a long search he had found the ill which troubled him, and pulled it up by the roots. "Take that chair, my dear Poynter," he continued, pointing to one by the fire, where a bright copper kettle was on the hob, and closing the door, while his patient took off his hat, glanced round the room, and blew the dust off the top of a side table before depositing ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn

... For a starved grate, and a scanty firing, that is not enough to keep alive the natural heat in the fingers of so many shivering children with their mother, he finds in the depth of winter always a blazing hearth, and a hob to warm his pittance of beer by. Instead of the clamours of a wife, made gaunt by famishing, he meets with a cheerful attendance beyond the merits of the trifle which he can afford to spend. He has companions which his home denies ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... excellent time of it, and, to use a fashionable phrase, 'do themselves very well indeed.' They move freely in society; their books lie on every table; they hob-a-nob with Bishops; and when they come to die, their orthodox relations gather round them, and lay them in the earth 'in the sure and certain hope'—so, at least, priestly lips are found willing to assert—'of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ.' And yet there ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... hob, my dear, and a basin over it. Matilda, my love, you know my maxim—'Duty first, dinner afterward.' Cadman, I will come ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... Sullivan, as she sat at her own hearth, quite alone, engaged as we have represented her. What she may have been meditating on, we cannot pretend to ascertain; but after some time, she looked sharply into the "backstone," or hob, with an air of anxiety and alarm. By and by she suspended her knitting, and listened with much earnestness, leaning her right ear over to the hob, from whence the sounds to which she paid such deep attention proceeded. At length she crossed herself devoutly, and exclaimed, "Queen ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... this boyish impertinence, but he was too proud a man to notice it otherwise than by quietly incorporating the offender into his satire. "But the enigma is why you read them with a stripling, of whose breeding we have just had a specimen—mathematics with a hob-ba-de-hoy? Grand Dieu! Do pray tell us, Mr. Dodd, why you come to Font Abbey every day; is it really to teach ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... a sharp but wholesome lesson to my vanity and pride, to find myself, so soon as deprived of my factitious advantage of inherited wealth, less able to provide for my commonest wants than the fustian-coated mechanic and hob-nailed labourer, whom I had been wont to splash with my carriage-wheel and despise as an inferior race of beings. Bitter were my reflections, great was my perplexity, during the month succeeding my sudden change of fortune. I passed whole days lying upon the bed in my melancholy ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... sky, and the Chinese lanterns were beginning to glow in the gathering twilight. It was certainly a varied crowd; all centuries had met together. A Japanese damsel walked arm-in-arm with a Lancashire witch; an Italian peasant hob-a-nobbed with "The Queen of Sheba," a Spanish lady was talking to "Old Mother Hubbard," while such characters as "A Medicine Bottle," or "An Aeroplane" rubbed shoulders with an "Egyptian Princess" ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... who, without being the least like her mistress, yet resembled her excessively. She helped him to carry his boxes up-stairs; and when he reached his room, he found a fire burning cheerily, a muffin down before it, a tea-kettle singing on the hob, and the tea-tray set upon a nice white cloth on a table right in front of the fire, with an old-fashioned high-backed easy-chair by its side — the very chair to go to sleep in over a novel. The old lady soon made her appearance, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... interest for me. No, my dear friend, the world is not yet turned into a farm-yard; there are other things to tell of besides the mud pies of the Speller children and the marks of little Billy Saltmarsh's hob-nailed shoes in the grass where he set the snare. The Turks say that a fool has three points in common with an ass,—he eats, he drinks, and he brays at other asses. I must fain eat and drink; let me at ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford



Words linked to "Hob" :   cut, folklore, leprechaun, sprite, fairy, evil spirit, faerie, faery, hobgoblin, sandman, imp, elf, pixie, goblin, edge tool, pixy, gremlin



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