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Mouldy   Listen
adjective
Mouldy  adj.  See Moldy.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mouldy" Quotes from Famous Books



... their mouldy moods Caged in musty solitudes; Men beneath the breezy sky March to conquer or ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... he girt his young life up in gilded mail And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. The heart within him was ashes and dust; He parted in twain his single crust, He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, And gave the leper to eat and drink, 'Twas a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 'Twas water out of a wooden bowl,— Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, And 'twas red wine he drank ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine

... till to-day how it would hurt other people. Even if he grew tired of me—and I had faced that—there would have been some awfully happy months ... and so long as it was only me, it didn't seem to matter. And when you've had rather a mouldy life...." ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... Sirdar was about to cut the communications with Agpur, and in the society of James Antony and his intimates these were the topics that everybody discussed. But spending the mid-day hours in the damp heat of the drawing-room, where paper grew mouldy and the covers peeled off books, under the influence of the rains, with Mrs Antony occupied at a discreet distance with reading or letter-writing, Gerrard endured what would have been martyrdom but for the bitter-sweet sense of ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... he entered the dark, mouldy cabin and could himself hardly repress a start as he found himself facing a man who must have been of gigantic stature. The dead sea rover was seated at a rough oak table with his head resting on his hand as if in deep thought. He had a mighty yellow ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... place of Tom's. He says—him as was here just now—'When Tom shut up the house, mate, to go to rack, the beds was left, all made, like as if somebody was a-going to sleep in every bed. And if you was to walk through the bedrooms now, you'd see the ragged mouldy bedclothes a heaving and a heaving like seas. And a heaving and a heaving with what?' he says. 'Why, with the ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens

... St. Paul, Kansas City and Omaha? Was it because they were blest with a bluer sky or a more genial sun? Not by any means. While Babylon lived upon what she had been and neglected to advertise, other towns with no history extending back into the mouldy past, whooped with an exceeding great whoop and tore up the ground and shed printers' ink and showed marked signs of vitality. That is the reason that ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... Kant, Darwin, all the wonder-workers. How masterful each had been in his time. How complacent of praise; how critical of the past! But here now they all stood gathering dust, and I thought: so will the unborn philosophers of the next century fold me up and put me away beside the other mouldy ones—curious but no longer useful. My book will be but an empty shell on the reef of human history. Of such cruelty are ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... hospitable carpets are taken up; and window-blinds are pitilessly papered with the MORNING HERALD; and mansions once inhabited by cheerful owners are now consigned to the care of the housekeeper's dreary LOCUM TENENS—some mouldy old woman, who, in reply to the hopeless clanging of the bell, peers at you for a moment from the area, and then slowly unbolting the great hall-door, informs you my lady has left town, or that 'the family's in the country,' ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... talk. He leaned his elbows on the primitive table, held his head between his hands, and kept silent. His eyes wandered about the dark, mouldy den, filled with the stench of a smoking little kerosene lamp. He saw the mildewed straw in the corner, the disconnected telephone at the entrance, an empty box of tinned food on which a crumpled map was spread out. He saw a mountain of rifles, ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... straight and altruistic and high-principled as she is, there'd really be no more bother about morals in the world. Native good sense would decide. Even as it is, the native good sense of mankind is deciding certain questions and will presently push the lawyers into codifying their mouldy laws, and then give reason a chance to cleanse the whole archaic lump of them; but as it is, Estelle—Take Marriage, for example. I agree with her all the way—in theory. But when you come to view the situation in practice—you're up against things as they ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... through what had been an important German depot. There was one tremendous dump of eight-gallon, basket-covered wine bottles—empty naturally; a street of stables and dwelling-huts; a small mountain of mouldy hay; and several vast barns that had been used for storing clothing and material. Each building was protected from our bombers by rubble revetments, fashioned with the usual German carefulness. "They shell here pretty consistently," added the major encouragingly, and we made for more ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... his own provision shall furnish his board with an insensible cost, and when his guests are parted, talks how much every man devoured, and how many cups were emptied, and feeds his family with the mouldy remnants a month after. If his servant break but an earthen dish for want of light, he abates it out of his quarter's wages. He chips his bread, and sends it back to exchange for staler. He lets money, and sells time for a price, and will not be importuned ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... the implacability of this man, and my death meant the death of the Countess,—death in the dark, mouldy basement of the tower, death by stifling and starvation while she waited in vain for me, a slow and solitary death, rendered the more agonizing to her mind by suspense and fears. And this horrible fate must needs be hers just when the cause of her sorrows and dangers had been removed! ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens

... is elevated above the principal door. The Great White Horse is famous in the neighbourhood in the same degree as a prize ox, a county paper chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig, for its enormous size. Never were such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or sleeping in, beneath any one roof as are collected together between the four walls of the Great White Horse of Ipswich.' This was the great hotel of the Ipswich of my youth. ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... how to get rid of this applicant, and feeling the more embarrassed because his manner and appearance claimed a delicacy in which the worthy Mr. Boffin feared he himself might be deficient, that gentleman glanced into the mouldy little plantation or cat preserve, of Clifford's Inn, as it was that day, in search of a suggestion. Sparrows were there, dry-rot and wet-rot were there, but it was ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... started on their pet topics. It was a dismal day, the rain was pattering down on the tent and dripping from the leaves of the big oak trees in the camp, while inside the tent everything was damp and mouldy and didn't smell good either. "Jim," says one, "I wish I could jest be down on Coon crick today, and take dinner with old Bill Williams; I'll tell you what I'd have: first, a great big slice of fried ham, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... railroad station through a long, lonely suburb, with dusty rows of stunted trees on either side, and some few miserable beggars, idle boys, and ragged old women under them. Behind the trees are gaunt, mouldy houses; palaces once, where (in the days of the unbought grace of life) the cheap defence of nations gambled, ogled, swindled, intrigued; whence high-born duchesses used to issue, in old times, to act as chambermaids to lovely Du Barri; and mighty princes rolled away, in ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to the prison next the Bridge of Sighs and locked her up in one of the mouldy cells below the water line—dark, dismal pockets where, in the old ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... some damaged bread at one quarter the usual price. It was all mouldy, you know," said Potts, trying to make Brandon see the joke. "I declare Clark and I roared over it for a couple of months, thinking how surprised they must have been when they sat down to ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... against its closed gateways. Repulsed, they have retired only to form again for the attack, but are as far away to-day from planting their flag in that citadel as when they first began. It does not matter to them what is inside; there may be (as in this case) only mouldy old halls and a group of people with antiquated ideas and ways. It is enough for a certain type of woman to know that she is not wanted in an exclusive circle, to be ready to die in the attempt to get there. This point of view reminds one of Mrs. Snob's saying about ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... book those Essays of his make, to lie down with under trees! It is the honest, lovable simplicity of his nature that makes the keeping good. He is the Izaak Walton of London streets,—of print-shops, of pastry-shops, of mouldy book-stalls; the chime of Bow-bells strikes upon his ear like the chorus of a milkmaid's song ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... lower extremity in the hot embers of the wood fire, by which means the liquid was speedily warmed up, and also thickened with unnecessary ashes. When served—in the same dusty pitcher—it had a green and mouldy taste, combined with a sour bitterness which made it utterly impossible as an article of food, and so the breakfast was confined to the rejected fragments of the loaf ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... in the affirmative; and you will have made, what I am sure has never yet been made, a good defence of the Established Church of Ireland. But it is mere mockery to bring us quotations from forgotten speeches, and from mouldy petitions presented to George the Second at a time when the penal laws ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... them old grandfathers and aunts you brag of; a set of poor souls you won't let rest in their coffins; mere clay and dirt! fine things to be proud of! a parcel of old mouldy rubbish quite departed this life! raking up bones and dust, nobody knows for what! ought to be ashamed; who cares for dead carcases? nothing but [carrion]. My little Tom's worth forty ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... hovering in the air, waiting till the new bodies which they were to animate were made ready for their reception. The spirits of those that had been foully slain wandered about with gashed limbs; and skeletons, whose mouldy bones were held together by bits of blackened sinew, followed them as the murderer does his victim. Malignant witches with shriveled skins, horrid eyes and distorted forms, crawled and crouched over the earth; whilst spectres and goblins now stood motionless, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... through the Porte d'Orleans and the Porte de Versailles; the Paris of Diderot and Voltaire and Jean-Jacques, with its muddy streets and its ordinaries where one ate bisques and larded pullets and souffles; a Paris full of mouldy gilt magnificence, full of pompous ennui of the past and insane hope of ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos

... pitch; and this mask, which appeared viscous and sticky, varied its aspect with the night shadows. The child saw the mouth, which was a hole; the nose, which was a hole; the eyes, which were holes. The body was wrapped, and apparently corded up, in coarse canvas, soaked in naphtha. The canvas was mouldy and torn. A knee protruded through it. A rent disclosed the ribs—partly corpse, partly skeleton. The face was the colour of earth; slugs, wandering over it, had traced across it vague ribbons of silver. The canvas, glued to the bones, showed in reliefs like the robe of ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... musty flowers! Who would believe you ever danced in the wind, drank in the evening dews, and spread sweet fragrance on the air? A touch now breaks your brittle leaves. Your odors are like attic herbs, or green tea, or mouldy books. Your forms are bent and flattened into every ugly and distorted shape. Your lovely colors are faded,—white changed to black, yellow to dirty white, gorgeous scarlet to brick color, purple to muddy brown. Poor things! Who drew you from your native woods and brooks, to press you flat, ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... for a week.' I was too astonished to speak, and Henry, he chuckled. 'To see you coming in here,' says he, 'with your face as solemn as a tombstone and sitting down there with your hands clasped over your stomach, and passing me out a blue-mouldy old item of news like that! It'd make a cat laugh, Jim Boyd,' says he. 'Who told you?' says I, stupid like. 'Nobody,' says he. 'A week ago Tuesday night I was lying here awake—and I jest knew. I'd suspicioned it ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... quite mouldy, when we emerged from our dusky dark caverns. But the weather was so delicious, so cool and refreshing; everything was so green and beautiful that we soon revived. I thought it necessary to take an inventory of all our possessions, that we might husband them as much as possible. We also ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... he put on a pair of soft felt slippers, and then, with candle in his hand, a box of matches and a revolver in his pocket, entered the closet, and opened the scuttle in the floor. A mouldy smell rose upon the air, and Henley recoiled at the thought of what might be in waiting below. He had not the slightest idea of how he should open the door at the bottom, but would make a careful study of the situation, ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale

... church with a front so modest that you hardly recognise it till you see the leather curtain. I never see a leather curtain without lifting it; it is sure to cover a constituted scene of some sort—good, bad or indifferent. The scene this time was meagre—whitewash and tarnished candlesticks and mouldy muslin flowers being its principal features. I shouldn't have remained if I hadn't been struck with the attitude of the single worshipper—a young priest kneeling before one of the sidealtars, who, as I entered, lifted his head and gave me a sidelong ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... the pages. The faint perfume of mouldy lore ascended and I remembered the smell of the "Histoire des ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... youngest of three sisters, who live a mouldy old house, near Middlesex Hospital, where they have lived for I don't know how many score of years; but this is certain: the eldest Miss Meggot saw the Gordon Riots out of that same parlor window, and tells the story how her father (physician to George III.) was robbed of his queue in the streets ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Schlemihl, that you so capriciously push away the favours which are presented to you; but I may be more fortunate another time. Farewell, till our speedy meeting! By the way, you will allow me to mention, that I do not by any means permit my purchases to get mouldy; I hold them in special regard, and take the best possible care of them." With this he took my shadow out of his pocket, and with a dexterous fling it was unrolled and spread out on the heath on the sunny ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso

... instant the earth closed upon them both, and, after falling in the dark down a steep abyss, they found themselves, not at all the worse, standing in a dimly lighted cave with a large table in it piled with mouldy books. Behind the table was a smooth and perfectly round hole in the wall about the size ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow

... the perennial shade, as though they care nothing for the bright sunshine which is playing on the leaves of the apple-trees above them. In this density there is always moisture—always a smell of confined, perpetual shade, of cobwebs, fallen apples (turning black where they roll on the mouldy sod), raspberries, and earwigs of the kind which impel one to reach hastily for more fruit when one has inadvertently swallowed a member of that insect tribe with the last berry. At every step one's movements keep flushing the sparrows which ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy

... aired; the deck-tub filled with water; and a grand washing begun of all the clothes which were brought up. Shirts, frocks, drawers, trowsers, jackets, stockings, of every shape and color, wet and dirty—many of them mouldy from having been lying a long time wet in a foul corner—these were all washed and scrubbed out, and finally towed overboard for half an hour; and then made fast in the rigging to dry. Wet boots and shoes were spread out to dry ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... was all damp and mouldy in the attic that was her bower. She made it meet as best she could, and indeed she had had so little fat living, sitting at the head of her table with a whip for unruly hinds and louts before her—so little fat living that she could well get into her wedding-gown of yellow ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... sixteen days from the steep to the kiln, and is often more successfully effected in twelve or thirteen days. The common practice of maltsters is to allow twenty one days, which generally brings the green malt in a mouldy state to the kiln, to the great injury of flavour and preservation in beer brewed from such malts; whereas, the grain should be brought as sweet and dry as circumstances will allow of to this last and important operation of malting, every part of which requires ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger

... approached the gateway, and although he could not ascend it, as the doors were locked and guarded, he cast on to its roof so cleverly, that it fell almost at Miriam's feet, a linen bag in which was a leathern bottle containing wine and water, and with it a mouldy crust of bread, doubtless all that he could find, or buy, or steal. Kneeling down, Miriam loosed the string of the bag with her teeth and devoured the crust of bread, again returning thanks that Caleb had been moved to this ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... closely. They dropped to their knees and examined the deposit of dust. They walked over to the fireplace and inspected the ash surrounding the little blaze, which had been started less than an hour before, as far as they could decide. Below was a heap of mouldy ash that had been beaten down by winter snows and summer rains falling through the broken chimney. The others watched the two inquisitors curiously ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... impression upon the dreamer. Every line traced by the "lean annuitant" was as familiar to Tom Folio as if he had written it himself. Stray scraps, which had escaped the vigilance of able editors, were known to him, and it was his to unearth amid a heap of mouldy, worm-eaten magazines, a handful of leaves hitherto forgotten of all men. Trifles, yes—but Charles Lamb's! "The king's chaff is as good as other people's corn," ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... color, thin as paper, cheap as dishonest contractor and bad labor could make them, were bulging and lopping at every angle. Built by the half mile for a day's smartness, they were going to pieces rapidly. Here was no uniformity of cheapness, however, for every now and then little squat cottages with mouldy earth plots broke the line of more pretentious ugliness. The saloons, the shops, the sidewalks, were coated with soot and ancient grime. From the cross streets savage gusts of the fierce west wind dashed down the avenue ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... or myth, that had mixed itself up with their mouldy genealogy, interested the sculptor by its wild, and perhaps grotesque, yet not unfascinating peculiarity. He caught at it the more eagerly, as it afforded a shadowy and whimsical semblance of explanation for the likeness which he, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... departed, she ran eagerly up to the tiny attic where she slept. In this attic was an old box without a lock. Sue opened it in some perturbation. There were several articles of wearing apparel in this box, all of a mothy and mouldy character. One by one Cinderella pulled them out. First there was a purple silk dress. She gazed at it with admiration. Yes; no one would ever recognize Sue in silk. It would be delightful to put it ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade

... party, Mr. Dormer Colville, had asked Mrs. Clopton whether it was true that there was claret in the cellars of "The Black Sailor." And any one having doubts could satisfy himself with a sight of the empty bottles, all mouldy, standing in the back ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... White and several kinds of hairy mouldy spots, which are observable upon divers kinds of putrify'd bodies, whether Animal substances, or Vegetable, such as the skin, raw or dress'd, flesh, bloud, humours, milk, green Cheese, &c. or rotten sappy Wood, or Herbs, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... From a pile of mouldy hay across the barn the youth, heavy eyed but sleepless, watched the two through half closed lids. A qualm of disgust sent a sudden shudder through his slight frame. For the first time he almost regretted having embarked upon a life ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... heart of a bustling, indifferent city, seen from the windows of a gloomy-looking inn, is at no time an object of enlivening suggestion; and the spectacle is not at its best when the mouldy tombstones and funereal umbrage have received the ineffectual refreshment of a dull, moist snow-fall. If, while the air is thickened by this frosty drizzle, the calendar should happen to indicate ...
— The Europeans • Henry James

... rousin' I want, sor! The ould barquey's that lively that she'd wake a man who'd been d'id for a wake, sure! I've been so rowled about in me burth and banged agin' the bulkheads that my bones fell loike jelly and I'm blue-mouldy all over. But what d'ye want, cap'en? Sure, I'm helping the ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... which has been allowed to stand until it is spoiled, or has become stale, musty, or mouldy, such as mouldy bread or fruit, or tainted meat, is unfit to be eaten, and is often a cause of very severe sickness. Canned fish or other meats spoil very quickly after the cans are opened, and should be eaten ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg

... his persuasive guest, the Count descended to the vaults, where the wines of Rheineck had been stored for ages. Dark and dreary did they seem to him. A chill fell on his soul as he strode over the mouldy floor. ...
— Folk-lore and Legends: German • Anonymous

... by this time past three o'clock. Feeling hungry, for they had eaten nothing since early morning, Maskull went downstairs to forage, but without much hope of finding anything in the shape of food. In a safe in the kitchen he discovered a bag of mouldy oatmeal, which was untouchable, a quantity of quite good tea in an airtight caddy, and an unopened can of ox tongue. Best of all, in the dining-room cupboard he came across an uncorked bottle of first-class ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... was Brigade-Commander, and herewith appended. I also call attention to the report of my own Quartermaster. Usually we received full rations of bacon and hardtack. The hardtack, however, was often mouldy, so that parts of cases, and even whole cases, could not be used. The bacon was usually good. But bacon and hardtack make poor food for men toiling and fighting in trenches under the midsummer ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt

... I turned to the left, and passed round to the back of the building, where I found the remains of what had been a small flower-garden, with a grass-plot; and beyond it, divided by a wall, a court surrounded by mouldy-looking stabling: but, what was much more interesting, I discovered an open door leading into the house. Somebody, therefore, must surely be within; so I knocked with my parasol against the panel, but nobody came; and having repeated my ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... he, Thwarted by one of these old father-fools, Had rioted his life out, and made an end. He would not do it! her sweet face and faith Held him from that: but he had powers, he knew it: Back would he to his studies, make a name, Name, fortune too: the world should ring of him To shame these mouldy Aylmers in their graves: Chancellor, or what is greatest would he be— 'O brother, I am grieved to learn your grief— Give me my fling, and let me say ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson

... with many a crack, All black and bare, I ween; Jet-black and bare, save where with rust Of mouldy damps and charnel crust They're patch'd with ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... brown produced a striking picture of sweet poetic beauty. I stood in contemplative admiration meditating, as I waited for my coolies, who sat moodily under a dilapidated roadside awning, nonchalantly picking out mouldy monkey-nuts from some coarse sweetmeat sold by a frowsy female. Then upwards we toiled in the dark, the weird groans of my exhausted men and the falling of the gravel beneath their sandalled feet alone breaking the hollow's gloom. Uncanny ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... the troubles for which men go slouching in prayer to God are caused by their intolerable pride. Many of our cares are but a morbid way of looking at our privileges. We let our blessings get mouldy, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... a battered spoon, a knife, and a small measure of thin-looking wine. A brass lamp with three wicks, one of which only was burning, shed a feeble light through the poor apartment. Against the wall stood a rough table with an inkstand and three or four mouldy books. Above this hung a little black cross bearing a brass Christ, and above this again a coloured print of San Bernardino of Siena. The walls were whitewashed, and perfectly clean,—as indeed was everything else in the room,—and there was a sweet smell of flowers from a huge pot of pinks ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... sulky because they have nothing to eat but rancid ham, and biscuit dust which has been so often soaked that it is mouldy and sour. They are a dainty lot! Samson and I left camp early with the hopes of getting meat. While he was shooting prairie dogs his horse made off, and cost me nearly an hour's riding to catch. Then, accidentally letting ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... letter; some lines of the faded old postmarks were still visible on the back. The first page looked as if it had been written over with some sort of sympathetic ink; but not a word could be deciphered. Folded in a small piece of the thinnest of paper was a mouldy and crumbling flower, of a dull-brown color; on the paper was written,—"Pomegranate blossom, from Jaffa," and a few lines of poetry, of which we could make out only here ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... husband, who had not yet finished his toilet, a poor, wretched-looking object appeared at the window, tearing her hair and wringing her hands; her husband had that morning been dragged to prison, and her seven children had fought for the last mouldy crust. Prompted by me, Fanny, without inquiring further into the matter, drew from her silken purse a five-pound note, and gave it to the beggar, who departed more amazed than grateful. Soon after, the lieutenant appeared. 'What the devil, another bill!' muttered he, as he tore the yellow ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the kingdom of the Father; his rags are gone, his sores healed, and his soul filled with joy unspeakable, and full of glory; the one carried not his costly fare, and his gorgeous apparel with him into hell; nor the other his coarse diet, mouldy bread, filthy rags, and ulcerous body into heaven; but the happiness of the one, and the misery of the other, took their leaves at the grave; the worldly man's portion was but for his life, and the godly man's afflictions lasted no longer; 'For mark the perfect, and behold the upright, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... about as important as the surplus stock of false antiquities kept in a vendor's back chamber, having first got this adorable young creature to marry him, and then passing his honeymoon away from her, groping after his mouldy futilities (Will was given to hyperbole)—this sudden picture stirred him with a sort of comic disgust: he was divided between the impulse to laugh aloud and the equally unseasonable impulse to burst into ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... to the jetty gradual she was hauled: Then one the tiller took, And chewed, and spat upon his hand, and bawled; And one the canvas shook Forth like a mouldy bat; and one, with nods And smiles, lay on the bowsprit end, and called And cursed the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... enough, and the result is what it always is in such, alas! rare cases, whether the lips were polluted or not. In Delphine there is a desperate pother to strike some sort of light and get some sort of heat; but the steel is naught, the flint is clay, the tinder is mouldy, and the wood is damp and rotten. No glow of brand or charcoal follows, and the lips, untouched by it, utter nothing but rhetoric and fustian and, as the Sydneian ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... no longer quite comfortable, to begin with. The garden, shadowed heavily by buildings on both sides, was undeniably damp, and the fascinating railing of the little balconies was undeniably mouldy. The bath-room, despite its delightful size, and the ivy that rapped outside its window, was not a modern bath-room. The backyard, once sacred to geraniums and grass, and odd pots of shrubs, was ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... as I said, and was sitting very disconsolately over a platter of rancid bacon and mouldy biscuit, which was served to us at mess, when it came to my turn to be helped to drink, and I was served, like the rest, with a dirty tin noggin, containing somewhat more than half a pint of rum-and-water. The beaker was so greasy and filthy that I could not help turning round to the messman ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... lifted Tania, still wrapped in her blanket, in his arms and carried her inside a house. The child first saw the light in an old room, up several flights of steps, which was drearier and more miserable than anything she had ever beheld in her life in the tenements. It was big and mouldy, and dark with cobwebs swinging like dusty curtains over the windows that had not been washed for years. The windows looked out over a swamp that was thick ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers

... descent; my name Is Achaemenides, my country Greece; Ulysses' sad compeer, who, whilst he fled The raging Cyclops, left me here behind, Disconsolate, forlorn; within the cave He left me, giant Polypheme's dark cave; A dungeon wide and horrible, the walls On all sides furred with mouldy damps, and hung With clots of ropy gore, and human limbs, His dire repast: himself of mighty size, 70 Hoarse in his voice, and in his visage grim, Intractable, that riots on the flesh Of mortal men, and swills the vital blood. Him ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... writing consisted in painting with different kinds of ink. This novel mode of writing occasioned them to invent other materials proper to receive their writing; the thin bark of certain trees and plants, or linen; and at length, when this was found apt to become mouldy, they prepared the skins of animals; on the dried skins of serpents were once written the Iliad and Odyssey. The first place where they began to dress these skins was Pergamus, in Asia; whence the Latin name is derived of Pergamenoe or parchment. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... forehead, and he apologized for it by the fact that he had been on a long tramp from Melrose Abbey to Kenilworth Castle. But I think as thrilling an evening as we had this winter was with a man who walked in with a prison-jacket, his shoes mouldy, and his cheek pallid for the want of the sunlight. He was so tired that he went immediately to sleep. He would not take the sofa, saying he was not used to that, but he stretched himself on the floor and put his head on an ottoman. At first he snored dreadfully, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... is no hope of anything better this side of a pauper's grave. Don't blame these old people for not keeping their den clean. Nobody could keep it clean. There is no sunshine, and only a little while in the day any light at all. It is necessarily damp and mouldy. We talk with the old man. He goes fishing and does such odd jobs as he is able. He says one of the worst things with which they have to contend is the rats; and then he points out places in the wall, down next to the ground, that he has filled with little billets of wood, stuck ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks

... the top with the mark of a goblet, about which was written in Etrurian letters Hic Bibitur, they found nine flagons set in such order as they use to rank their kyles in Gascony, of which that which was placed in the middle had under it a big, fat, great, grey, pretty, small, mouldy, little pamphlet, smelling stronger, but no better than roses. In that book the said genealogy was found written all at length, in a chancery hand, not in paper, not in parchment, nor in wax, but in the bark of an elm-tree, yet so worn ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... another, every man so deadly in earnest, calm, obedient, orderly, with empty stomach, soaked clothes, wet camp, little sleep, shoe-soles dropping off, kindly to all, no sacking or burning, paying what they can and eating mouldy bread. There must surely be a solid basis of fear of God in the common soldier of our army, or all this could not be. News of our friends is hard to get; we lie miles apart from one another, none knowing where the other is, and nobody ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... they had, in starting from the coast of Ireland, one barrel sound bread, one barrel mouldy bread, one rice, pork 6 lbs., one box fish, one barrel of beef, one bushel of beans, two quarts of molasses, one-half lb. sugar, tea and coffee in sufficient quantities, one-third rations of water. They ran out of everything ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown

... a beginning. Try "Blenheim House" (all the houses here either bear ducal, naval, or frankly plebeian names, I observe). Ring: startling effect—grey-mouldy old person, with skeleton hands folded on woollen tippet, glides in a ghastly manner down passage. They really ought to put up a warning to people with nerves, as M. VAN BEERS does at his Salon Parisien. Feel as if I had raised ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various

... Master Burr junior! Aren't he hard on a pore fellow, who was always doing him kindnesses? Look at the times I've sat up o' nights to ketch him rats and mice or mouldy-warps. Didn't I climb and get you two squirls, and dig out the snake from the ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... Baldassare, from the corner. "Never! What a ghastly idea! Tombs and a mouldy old church! You may find satisfaction, Signore Trenta, in the contemplation of your tomb, but the signorina is not eighty, nor am I, nor is the count. I propose that after being shut up so many years the Guinigi Palace ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... previously-mentioned disorders still greater. And if these bodily affections be severe, still worse are the prior disorders; as when the bone itself, by reason of the density of the flesh, does not obtain sufficient air, but becomes mouldy and hot and gangrened and receives no nutriment, and the natural process is inverted, and the bone crumbling passes into the food, and the food into the flesh, and the flesh again falling into the blood makes all maladies that may occur more virulent than those already mentioned. But ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... setting.} I vse in the setting to be sure, that the earth be mouldy, (and somewhat moist) that it may runne among the small tangles without straining or bruising: and as I fill in earth to his root, I shake the Set easily to and fro, to make the earth settle the better ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson

... wonder in these days!); nephew Stephen, with an unwholesome hankering after power and a complete inability to see the obvious; nephew Hugh, lieutenant lately gazetted, with much more wholesome and intelligent hankering after Helen Bransby; Clerk, mouldy, faithful, one who discovers deficit in the West African ledger to the extent of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various

... deep lane So overshadow'd, it might seem one bower— The damp clay-banks were furr'd with mouldy moss. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... this story, Hamlet, the moody moraliser upon charnel-houses and mouldy bones, is identified with the jolly companion of the Mermaid, the wine-bibbing joker of the Falcon, and the Apollo saloon? It is because Hamlet is the most elaborately-painted character in literature. It is because the springs of his actions are so profoundly touched, the workings of his soul ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... unequal heights up to the edge of the pale sky; or else they walked on to the end of the avenue into a summer-house whose only furniture was a couch of grey canvas. Black specks stained the glass; the walls exhaled a mouldy smell; and they remained there chatting freely about all sorts of topics—anything that happened to arise—in a spirit of hilarity. Sometimes the rays of the sun, passing through the Venetian blind, extended from the ceiling down to the flagstones ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... gilded mail And set forth in search of the Holy Grail, The heart within him was ashes and dust; He parted in twain his single crust, 295 He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, And gave the leper to eat and drink; 'T was a mouldy crust of coarse brown bread, 'T was water out of a wooden bowl,— Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 300 And 't was red wine he drank ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson

... nodded his assent. He also added, gratuitously, that he had before now been obliged to reclaim on casks of mouldy mess-pork. At which Ocock ceased coddling his chin to point a straight forefinger at him, with a triumphant: "You see!"—But Purdy who, sick and tired of the discussion, had withdrawn to the window to watch the rain zig-zag in runlets down the dusty panes, and ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... its sordid line longer than the rest, is proudly called Gasometer Street. Some of the streets that are denied the gasometer cluster narrow and dark, hardly built twenty years perhaps, yet long since drearily old,—with the unattractive antiquity of old iron and old clothes,—round a mouldy little chapel, in what we can only describe as the Wesleyan Methodist style of architecture. Cased in weather-stained and decaying stucco, it bears upon its front the words "New Zion," and the streets about it are named accordingly: Zion Passage, Zion Alley, Zion Walk, Zion Street. There ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne

... consistence of thick cream; add the remainder of the water, and boil for a few minutes in a saucepan. Turn out into a jam-pot, and when nearly cold stir in the essence of cloves; this latter gives an agreeable odour to the paste, is not poisonous, and preserves the paste indefinitely from turning mouldy. A few drops of carbolic acid may be used instead of the cloves; but in this case the pot must ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... what they saw daily before them, is as remote as possible from the elaborate pictures extracted by a modern imitator from black-letter books, and coloured, not from the life, but from learned theories, or at best from mouldy monkish illuminations, and ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... Well, all I can say, then, is that the other New York hotels must be pretty mouldy, if this is the best of the lot! I took a room here last night," said Archie quivering with self-pity, "and there was a beastly tap outside somewhere which went drip-drip-drip all ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... the water stood knee deep on the gun-platforms, and the gunners worked at their guns until their shoes, soaked for days and days, fairly fell from their feet. For bed and bedding they had the wet earth, for rations raw meat and mouldy bread. If there were glory and victory for the Union sailors, let there at least be honor and credit granted the soldiers of the gray for the dogged courage with which they bore the terrible bombardment ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... you mouldy old citron," he said. "I start a little experiment in tirage de jambe, and you put your heavy hoof in and spoil the whole business. You know jolly well that Le Glaxo was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various

... pretty damsel Should but make eyes at you, You'd forget your mouldy classics, And run ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica

... moment the footman opened the door and the little family prince bounded in. It was a pale little mouldy sort of flower, with red eyes and a cornerless mouth like a carp, but with the authentic family nose and the appurtenances thereof, which took up so much room as to seriously imperil the prospects of the rest of ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... tubers carefully. A little neglect will often result in failure, as mould, once given a chance to secure a foothold, is rapid in its action, and your tubers may be beyond help before you discover that there is anything the matter with them. As soon as you find a mouldy root, throw it out. If left it will speedily communicate its disease to every plant with which it comes in contact. Some persons tell me that they succeed in wintering their Dahlia tubers best by packing them in boxes of perfectly dry sand. If this is done, be sure to elevate ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford

... number boundless as the blooms of Spring, Behold their glaring idols, empty shades By Fancy gilded o'er, and then set up For adoration. Some in Learning's garb, With formal band, and sable-cinctured gown, And rags of mouldy volumes. Some elate With martial splendour, steely pikes and swords Of costly frame, and gay Phoenician robes 100 Inwrought with flowery gold, assume the port Of stately Valour: listening by his side There stands a female form; to her, with looks ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... how long he did not know. Suddenly his pick struck an obstacle again. He hacked at it. It gave slightly. A third time he struck it, and it seemed to recede. An odour of mouldy air filled his nostrils. In that little aperture his pick touched nothing now! He heard something fall! Then he knew! There was a hollow place in front of them! The abandoned ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... same as if a lover should dig up the buried form of his mistress, and gaze upon relics which are any thing but herself, to wander among a few mouldy ruins, that are only imperfect indexes to lost volumes of glory, and meet at every step the more melancholy ruins of human nature—a degenerate race of stupid and shrivelled slaves, grovelling in the lowest depths of servility ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... view, he issued forth to a place hard by, where sea-stores were sold, purchased a second-hand hammock, and had it slung in seamanlike fashion from the ceiling of the counting-house. He also caused to be erected, in the same mouldy cabin, an old ship's stove with a rusty funnel to carry the smoke through the roof; and these arrangements completed, surveyed ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... the development and illustration of the principles by which we are governed in applying those words to their legitimate purpose, namely, that of forming a correct and convenient medium by means of which we can communicate our thoughts? Does philosophy consist in ransacking the mouldy records of antiquity, in order to guess at the ancient construction and signification of single words? or have such investigations, in reality, any thing ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... across the broad circle, and each breath of wind set them dancing over the mounds where many an hundred skeletons crouched side by side, under the grass-grown heaps of earth, their rusted knives and hatchets and their mouldy blankets by their sides. No man came here, save when a new heap of yellow earth lay fresh-turned in the sun, and a long line of dancing, wailing redmen, led by their howling doctors, followed some body that had come to claim its seat ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin

... perspective I make of it!—leading from Peggotty's kitchen to the front door. A dark store-room opens out of it, and that is a place to be run past at night; for I don't know what may be among those tubs and jars and old tea-chests, when there is nobody in there with a dimly-burning light, letting a mouldy air come out of the door, in which there is the smell of soap, pickles, pepper, candles, and coffee, all at one whiff. Then there are the two parlours: the parlour in which we sit of an evening, my mother and I and Peggotty—for Peggotty is quite our companion, when her work ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... the reign of George III., his beloved master, and not much more cheerful now than a family vault. They are awfully funereal, those ornaments of the close of the last century—tall gloomy horse-hair chairs, mouldy Turkey carpets with wretched druggets to guard them, little cracked sticking-plaster miniatures of people in tours and pigtails over high-shouldered mantelpieces, two dismal urns on each side of a lanky sideboard, and in the midst a queer twisted receptacle for worn-out knives with ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... screen which separated this mouldy portion of the church from the rest, stood an old monument of carved wood, once brilliantly painted in the portions that bore the arms of the family over whose vault it stood, but now all bare and worn, itself gently flowing ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... our church service here on Sundays, too, when the weather is fine. Our religion has been too stuffy, too mouldy, too damp, too narrow. It needs the sunshine and the clear air of heaven to sweeten it and revive it. I feel it today, that God is in the sunshine more than in the narrow limits we have tried to set ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... relations in a broken-down family. But children love this yard. They come, hand in hand, with a timid confidence in their right, and ask at the back door for the privilege of playing in it. They take long, entrancing journeys in the mouldy old chaise; they endure Siberian nights of sleighing, and throw out their helpless dolls to the pursuing wolves; or the more mercantile-minded among the boys mount a three-wheeled express wagon, and drive noisily away to traffic upon the road. This, in its dramatic possibilities, ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... father's character, and at the long lapse of time since the loss of the chest, and at the hiding of it in some 'bank,'—whether underground or at a banker's did not appear. The medium's 'attendant spirit'—one 'Daisy, an Indian papoose'—says it is 'in a dark place, like a vault, and mouldy.' I am urged to inquire further. Miss Hudson, a common-looking but respectable woman of about thirty,—living in a lodging near Bloomsbury Square,—utterly ignorant who I was and all about me,—said (in her spirit voice) that I was a writer ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... you 'll hev to rattle On them kittle drums o' yourn,— 'Taint a knowin' kind o' cattle Thet is ketched with mouldy corn; Put in stiff, you fifer feller, Let folks see how spry you be,— Guess you 'll toot till you are yeller 'Fore ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... while searching in the lumber-room for something for Mrs Forbes, she came upon a little book lying behind a box. It was damp and swollen and mouldy, and the binding was decayed and broken. The inside was dingy and spotted with brown spots, and had too many f's in it, as she thought. Yet the first glance fascinated her. It had opened in the middle of L'Allegro. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... "If there's anything in the world I thoroughly despise, it's old, mouldy, dead men's shoes. If I were you, I'd write and tell Kit that she could come home at the Christmas vacation if she ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... by St Paul's and went down, at a long angle, almost to the water's edge, through some of the crooked and descending streets which lie (and lay more crookedly and closely then) between the river and Cheapside. Passing, now the mouldy hall of some obsolete Worshipful Company, now the illuminated windows of a Congregationless Church that seemed to be waiting for some adventurous Belzoni to dig it out and discover its history; passing silent warehouses and wharves, and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... needs must say't o't, The Lord be thankit that we've tint the gate o't! Gaunt, ghastly, ghaist-alluring edifices, Hanging with threat'ning jut, like precipices; O'er-arching, mouldy, gloom-inspiring coves, Supporting roofs, fantastic, stony groves; Windows and doors in nameless sculptures drest With order, symmetry, or taste unblest; Forms like some bedlam Statuary's dream, The craz'd creations of misguided ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... wrote to me that the granaries we had at our country seat had been secured by the revolutionary party, as well as every article of food in our town house. My mother and my younger brother were only allowed the scanty pittance of a peck of mouldy horse-beans per week. My dear father was shut up in prison, with an equally scanty allowance. But it was before I was acquainted with the sufferings of my beloved parents, that the consideration of the general scarcity prevailing in the country led me to think how wrong it was for me to ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... "Mouldy old things!" exclaimed Alexia, who had small reverence for such things. "I should be ashamed of them, if I were Mr. John Clemcy and his sister. They don't look as if they knew anything to begin with; and such arms and hands, and impossible necks! Oh my! It quite gives me ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney

... the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it—I defy him—if he finds me going there, in good temper, year after year, and saying, ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... find that difficult," replied Crevel. "Valerie is a masterpiece in her way. My good mother, twenty-five years of virtue are always repellent, like a badly treated disease. And your virtue has grown very mouldy, my dear child. But you shall see how much I love you. I will manage to get you ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... the slate-roofed tower of Braine-l'Alleud, which has the form of a reversed vase. He had just left behind a wood upon an eminence; and at the angle of the cross-road, by the side of a sort of mouldy gibbet bearing the inscription Ancient Barrier No. 4, a public house, bearing on its front this sign: At the Four Winds (Aux Quatre Vents). Echabeau, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... in this forest I interviewed many patriarchs, had stories from saplings, examined the mouldy, musty records of many a family tree, and dug up some buried history. The geologist wanted in story form a synopsis of what the records said and what the trees told me, so I gave him ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills

... New England on the shelves of old libraries, in the collections of antiquaries, or in the attics of old farm-houses, hidden in ancient hair-trunks or painted sea-chests or among a pile of dusty books in a barrel,—there are found dingy, mouldy, tattered psalm-books of other versions than the ones which we know were commonly used in the New England churches. Perhaps these books were never employed in public worship in the new land; they may have been brought over by some colonist, in affectionate remembrance ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... is one of the irregular, old-fashioned, stuffy taverns, with low rooms, chintz-covered lounges, and fat-cushioned rocking-chairs, the decay and untidiness of which are not offensive to the traveler. It has a low back porch looking towards the water and over a mouldy garden, damp and unseemly. Time was, no doubt, before the rush of travel rubbed off the bloom of its ancient hospitality and set a vigilant man at the door of the dining-room to collect pay for meals, that this was an abode ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... so could, that for want of clothing I was nearly blue-mouldy with the frost in the nights, until I could stand it no longer; but none ov the chaps had any duds to spare, an' I was clane out of me head ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson



Words linked to "Mouldy" :   mould, musty, stale



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