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Osier   Listen
noun
Osier  n.  (Bot.)
(a)
A kind of willow (Salix viminalis) growing in wet places in Europe and Asia, and introduced into North America. It is considered the best of the willows for basket work. The name is sometimes given to any kind of willow.
(b)
One of the long, pliable twigs of this plant, or of other similar plants. "The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream."
Osier bed, or Osier holt, a place where willows are grown for basket making. (Eng.)
Red osier.
(a)
A kind of willow with reddish twigs (Salix rubra).
(b)
An American shrub (Cornus stolonifera) which has slender red branches; also called osier cornel.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Osier" Quotes from Famous Books



... it so easy for those poor creatures to leave their homes, their working places! Some of them have been there thirty years. They are close to the two or three farms that employ them, close to the osier beds which give them extra earnings in the spring. If they were turned out there is nothing nearer than Murewell, and not a single cottage to be found there. I don't say it is a landlord's duty to provide more cottages than are wanted; but if the labour is wanted, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... made an effort, and accepted the Vice-Prefect's son's invitation to see the oil-making at a villa of theirs near the coast. The villa, or farm, is an old fortified, towered place, standing on a hillside among olive-trees and little osier-bushes, which look like a bright orange flame. The olives are squeezed in a tremendous black cellar, like a prison: you see, by the faint white daylight, and the smoky yellow flare of resin burning in pans, great white bullocks moving round a huge millstone; ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... and the din of men, His sinless pastime. Silver were his locks, His figure lank; his dark eye, like a hawk's, Glisten'd beneath his hat of whitest straw, Lightsome of wear, with flies and gut begirt: The osier creel, athwart his shoulders slung, Became full well his coat of velveteen, Square-tail'd, four-pocket'd, and worn for years, As told by weather stains. His quarter-boots, Lash'd with stout leather thongs, and ankles bare, Spoke the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... of willow on the river Thames and the Cam are well known. They are small islands planted entirely with willows, and are called osier-holts. ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... for that rod, master," said William. James was very busy stringing the fish through the gills upon a piece of osier. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... snow. Those long creeping lines on which the crystals sparkle are only brambles, and that big rosette of rusty red and fluffy white is the New Jersey tea. Those spreading, pointed fingers of coral with a background of dazzling white are the topmost twigs of the red osier dogwood. The strip of shrubs with graceful spray, now bowed in beauty by the river's brink, is a group of young red birches, and this bunch of downy brown twigs, two feet above the snow, sparkling with frost particles, is the downy viburnum. ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... these baskets, of a coarse kind, are made use of for gathering up potatoes, Indian corn, or turnips; the settlers finding them very good substitutes for the osier baskets used for such purposes in ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... wish to sing the dame Whom Windsor Forest sees a gliding stream; On silver feet, with annual osier crown'd, She runs for ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... fair distance toward the sky, come down again, scarcely so much from a doubt of their merits, as through affection to their native land. In summer they hang like a permanent shower of green to refresh the bright water; and in winter, like loose osier-work, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... of the English lady Kalliope shall serve her day and night, doing in all things the bidding of the Queen wherein if Kalliope fail by one hair's breadth of perfect service, I, Stephanos the elder, her grandsire, will beat her with pliant rods fresh cut from the osier trees until the blood of ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham

... the beginning of summer; everything in nature looked lovely and glad, and Poussin insensibly wandered on, until he found himself in a fresh green meadow on the banks of the Marne. He lay down under the shade of an osier thicket, and presently became aware of the presence of a young man about his own age, who was busily employed in fishing. Nicholas watched him for some time, and then said: 'May I remark, that the bait you are using does not appear ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... light coat over the tasselled silk night-shirt; and the dew drenched his feet as he swung along the pathway to the river. The old willow was full of small birds; they sat ruffling their feathers, and when Mike sprang into the boat they flew through the gray light, taking refuge in some osier-beds. And as he looked down stream he saw the night clouds dispersing in the wind. He pulled, making the boat shoot through the water for about a mile, then touched by the beauty of the landscape, paused to view it. Cattle lay in the long, moist meadows, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... even climbed over the wall on to the rubbish heap to rescue specimens, rusty or otherwise, that lay there unnoticed and unappropriated. Each can was furnished with four or five large pebbles inside, and was secured at the end with brown paper if the original lid was lost. They were packed in osier-plaited baskets, and hidden away in a corner of the barn ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... not call'd ev, with a different caracter, is no less absur'd than j consonant, not call'd ij, with a different figure, as mejer for measure, as the French also use it, as je vou remercy. So osier, [h]osier, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.

... the rushy-fringed bank, 890 Where grows the Willow and the Osier dank, My sliding Chariot stayes, Thick set with Agat, and the azurn sheen Of Turkis blew, and Emrauld green That in the channell strayes, Whilst from off the waters fleet Thus I set my printless feet O're the Cowslips Velvet head, That bends not as I tread, Gentle swain at thy request ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... ancient temple and the ashplant on which he leaned wearily of the curved stick of an augur. A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawk-like man whose name he bore soaring out of his captivity on osier-woven wings, of Thoth, the god of writers, writing with a reed upon a tablet and bearing on his narrow ibis head the ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... observing that the fish would no longer rise, he wound up his line, and again took to his oars. They soon reached the shore. Norman begged that he might be allowed to carry the fish, which the laird had strung through the gills with a piece of osier which ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston

... divided into two portions, about eighty yards apart, being inhabited by two distinct bands. The whole extended about three-quarters of a mile along the river bank, and was composed of conical lodges, that looked like so many small hillocks, being wooden frames intertwined with osier, and covered with earth. The plain beyond the village swept up into hills of considerable height, but the whole country was nearly destitute of trees. While they were regarding the village, they beheld a singular fleet coming down the river. It consisted of a number of canoes, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... elm-tree copse, Winding by the stream, light-hearted, Where the osier pathway leads— Past the boughs she stoops and stops: Lo! the wild swan had deserted, And a ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... they be in it or without; And for this shade, which therein shines Narcissus-like, the sun too pines. Oh! what a pleasure 't is to hedge My temples here in heavy sedge; Abandoning my lazy side, Stretched as a bank unto the tide; Or, to suspend my sliding foot On the osier's undermining root, And in its branches tough to hang, While at ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... blue swoln face before her stand, And, shivering cold, these piteous accents speak: "Pursue, dear wife, thy daily toils pursue, At dawn or dusk, industrious as before; Nor e'er of me one helpless thought renew, 135 While I lie weltering on the osier'd shore, Drown'd by the Kelpie's[47] wrath, nor e'er ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... patrol. In front of Essarts the lines were so far apart that there was plenty of room for a small pitched battle, and night after night Lieuts. Pearson, Creed, Poynor, and others visited such familiar haunts as the "Osier Bed," "Thistle Patch," "Lonely Tree," and other well-known places. The first to meet the enemy was Lieut. Pearson, who came upon a small party in the "Thistle Patch," who made off rapidly back to their lines. Our patrol used their rifles, ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... scrambling with Philip for what remained of the contents." I inquired for the eldest; and she had scarcely time to tell me that he was driving a couple of geese home from the meadow, when he ran up, and handed Philip an osier-twig. I talked a little longer with the woman, and found that she was the daughter of the schoolmaster, and that her husband was gone on a journey into Switzerland for some money a relation had left him. "They wanted to cheat him," she said, "and would not answer his letters; so he is gone there ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... down on beds of rushes; and Goldilocks, soothed by the lullaby, fell asleep; but soon awoke, and saw her brother leaning, on tiptoe, over the osier basket. The baby's face looked, in the moonlight, white and pinched; and its sick hands were pressed together like ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May

... shows the dark and gloomy spirit of their faith. They worshipped the God of the thunder-storm, not the God of peace; and it was amidst the thunder-storm that their horrid rites appeared most horrid. When, illuminated by the lurid glare of the lightning, the gigantic osier figure filled with human beings sank into the flames—when the shouts of the multitude who stood in a dense circle around the spot, the frenzied chants of the druids, and the despairing shrieks of the dying victims, were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... must have espied the dark form of the fugitive; hence, the route taken by Thenardier still remains rather inexplicable. In two manners, flight was impossible. Had Thenardier, spurred on by that thirst for liberty which changes precipices into ditches, iron bars into wattles of osier, a legless man into an athlete, a gouty man into a bird, stupidity into instinct, instinct into intelligence, and intelligence into genius, had Thenardier invented a third mode? No one ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... a young man he and a railroad brakeman got busted at Topeka, and they had an order book printed, and went all over Kansas taking orders for Osier willows, which they warranted to grow so high in two years they would make fences for the farms that no animals or blizzards could get over or through, and make shade for the houses and the whole farm. It was the year when the Osier willow craze was on and every farmer on the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... hearing, as I lay at ease along, Your swains contending for the prize of song! I also dared attempt (and, as it seems Not much displeas'd attempting) various themes, For even I can presents boast from you, The shepherd's pipe and osier basket too, And Dati and Francini both have made My name familiar to the beechen shade, 190 And they are learn'd, and each in ev'ry place Renown'd for song, and both of Lydian Race. Go, go, my lambs, untended homeward fare, My thoughts are all ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton

... ordeno. ore : minajxo, mineralo, metalo. organ : organo, -ilo; (music) orgeno. organic : organika. organise : organizi. origin : deveno, origino. original : original'a, -o. ornament : ornamo; garnituro. orphan : orf'o, -ino. oscillate : balancigxi, pendoli. osier : salikajxo. ostentation : fanfaronade, parado. ostrich : struto. other : alia, cetera. ought : devus. ounce : unco. outlaw : proskripcii. outlay : elspezo. outlet : defluejo, elirejo. outline : konturo, skizo. outrage : perfort'ajxo, -i. oval : ovalo, ovoforma. oven : forno. overall : kitelo, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... at the scene exhibited, a group of savage women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning, sleeping amid a swarm of infants (there must have been quite a score of them) outside some primitive shanties of osier. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... days the lazy waters of the Loire flowed midst osier-beds and birchen thickets, since removed for purposes of navigation. Two and a half miles east of Orleans, on the height of Checy, l'Ile aux Bourdons was separated from the Sologne bank by a thin arm ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... fury of his blows, rendered all their skill of fence useless. With his huge weapon and powerful arm, both of which he plied with a rapidity and force which there was no resisting, he broke through their guards as easily as he would have beat down so many osier wands, and wounded severely at every blow. It was in vain that Donald's assailants kept retiring before him, in the hope of getting him at a disadvantage—of finding an opportunity of having a cut or a thrust at him. No time was allowed them for any such ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton

... off their black-and-white blankets, and each in turn planted branches of yellow willow, green willow, red osier, samphire, witch-hazel, spice-bush, and silver birch along the edge of the silent ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers

... with lips all ashen, He prayed—till back, with ghastlier rage and roar, The demon rout rushed, strung to fiercer passion, And crashed his osier door. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... the Cyclop, was not of a wit so gross to be caught by that palpable device. But casting about in his mind all the ways which he could contrive for escape (no less than all their lives depending on the success), at last he thought of this expedient. He made knots of the osier twigs upon which the Cyclop commonly slept; with which he tied the fattest and fleeciest of the rams together, three in a rank, and under the belly of the middle ram he tied a man, and himself last, wrapping himself fast ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... Sir William Osier, Canadian, and world-renowned physician, is my guide, an old friend in Baltimore, now Regius Professor of Medicine ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... The RED-OSIER CORNEL or DOGWOOD (C. stolonifera), which has spread, with the help of running shoots, through the soft soil of its moist retreats, over the British Possessions north of us and throughout the United States from ocean to ocean, except at the extreme south, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... Make our bodies swelter, To an osier hedge we get, For a friendly shelter; Where, in a dike, Perch or pike, Roach or dace, We do chase, Bleak or gudgeon, Without ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... habits, Carabi,[1] Cetoniae, Buprestes, Chrysomelae,[2] rival and even surpass the magnificent Dung-beetles in the matter of jewellery. At times we encounter splendours which the imagination of a lapidary would not venture to depict. The Azure Hoplia,[3] the inmate of the osier-beds and elders by the banks of the mountain streams, is a wonderful blue, tenderer and softer to the eye than the azure of the heavens. You could not find an ornament to match it save on the throats ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... O youths, I protect, nor less this turf-builded cottage, Roofed with its osier-twigs and thatched with its bundles of sedges; I from the dried oak hewn and fashioned with rustical hatchet, Guarding them year by year while more are they evermore thriving. For here be owners twain who greet and worship my Godship, ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... leads me by the winding of the river Ouse. Far on every side stretches a homely landscape, tilth and pasture, hedgerow and clustered trees, to where the sky rests upon the gentle hills. Slow, silent, the river lapses between its daisied banks, its grey-green osier beds. Yonder is the little town of St. Neots. In all England no simpler bit of rural scenery; in all the world nothing of its kind more beautiful. Cattle are lowing amid the rich meadows. Here one may loiter and dream in utter restfulness, whilst the great white clouds mirror ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... country-side, did not know this miracle of beauty. The child, who was half naked, wore a forlorn little petticoat of coarse woollen stuff, woven in alternate strips of brown and white, full of holes and very ragged. A sheet of rough writing paper, tied on by a shred of osier, served her for a hat. Beneath this paper—covered with pot-hooks and round O's, from which it derived the name of "schoolpaper"—the loveliest mass of blonde hair that ever a daughter of Eve could have desired, was twisted up, and held in place by a species of comb made to comb ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... gleaming paths and avenues of silvery water that wind between them glide the little boats. The young Britons take to the element like young ducks. Many a "tall admiral" has commenced his "march over the mountain wave" among these water-lilies and hedges of osier. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... writing on Nov. 4, 1767, after mentioning that he had seen swallows roosting in osier-beds by the river, says:—'This seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring under water.' White's Selborne, Letter xii. See also post, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... waxed fainter in his cheek. He had fallen to the ground outright, For rugged and dim was his onward track, But there came a spotted toad in sight, And he laughed as he jumped upon her back; He bridled her mouth with a silk-weed twist; He lashed her sides with an osier thong; And now through evening's dewy mist, With leap and spring they bound along, Till the mountain's magic verge is past, And the beach of sand ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... Now the ruddy clusters teem, In osier baskets borne along By all the festal vintage throng Of rosy youths and virgins fair, Ripe as the melting fruits they bear. Now, now they press the pregnant grapes, And now the captive stream escapes, In fervid tide of nectar gushing. And for its bondage proudly blushing While, round the vat's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... vines from which the green leaves are just pushing out. The elder has made a great start; the yellowish-green shoots from the stems and from the roots are already more than six inches long. The panicled dogwood and the red-osier dogwood (no, not the flowering dogwood) as yet show no signs of foliage, but the fine white lines in the bark of the bladdernut, which have been so attractive all winter, are now enhanced by the soft myrtle green of the tender young leaves. The shrubby red cedar is twice as fresh and green ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... quality. Is she less gifted with strength of intellect, with calmness, or comprehensive understanding than man, employ the greater efforts to supply this defect. Let the solid preponderate over the merely ornamental. Plant not the pliant osier, but the firmer elm. Instil principles of severe reasoning, and form habits of connected thought. Is she rich in imagination? Madam de Stael tells us she is, that this is the chief of her faculties, and that "her sentiments are troubled by her fancies, and her actions ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... sweeping she carefully sorted the scraps, and put them into boxes under the counter; then she neatly rolled up the brown-paper curtains, which had been let down to exclude the afternoon sun; shook the old patchwork cushions in the osier-bottomed chairs; watered the rose-geranium and the monthly rose, which flourished wonderfully in that fluffy atmosphere; set every pin and needle in its place, and shut the door, which was opened again at sunrise. Of late years, Grand'ther's occupation had declined. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... to be giving himself any extra worry on account of this thing. On Sunday afternoon he sat huddled together in a big, fluffy osier-bush, down by the lake, and blew on a reed-pipe. All around him there sat as many finches and bullfinches and starlings as the bush could well hold—who sang songs which he tried to teach himself to play. But the boy was not ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... gayest and most sparkling manner, until they stopped to dine in some ever- lastingly-green garden, needing no matter-of-fact identification here; and then the tide obligingly turned—being devoted to that party alone for that day; and as they floated idly among some osier-beds, Rosa tried what she could do in the rowing way, and came off splendidly, being much assisted; and Mr. Grewgious tried what he could do, and came off on his back, doubled up with an oar under his chin, being not assisted at all. Then there was an interval of rest under boughs (such rest!) ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... stately-sailing swan Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale; And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet Rears forward fierce, and guards his osier isle, Protective of his young. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... osier trap has more chance of freedom," said Wulf gloomily. "Let us at least be thankful that we are caged together—for ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard

... and tooth-nipt even it ever 315 Onward moved; still clung on wan lips, sodden as ashes, Shreds all woolly from out that soft smooth surface arisen. Lastly before their feet lay fells, white, fleecy, refulgent, Warily guarded they in baskets woven of osier. They, as on each light tuft their voice smote louder approaching, 320 Pour'd grave inspiration, a prophet chant to the future, Chant which an after-time ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus

... familiar to most readers. The house stands looking southward, on the rocky side of Nab Scar above Rydal Lake. The garden is terraced, and was full of flowering alleys in the poet's time. There was a tall ash-tree in which the thrushes always sung, and a laburnum in which the osier cage of the doves was hung. There were stone steps, in which poppies and wild geraniums filled the interstices; and rustic seats here and there, where they all sat all day during the pleasant weather. The poet spent very little time ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... Halles. Whilst the city sleeps and its butchers are getting all ready for its daily attack of indigestion, a trade in poetry is plied in dark, dank corners. When the sun rises the bright red meat will be displayed in trim, carefully dressed joints, and the violets, mounted on bits of osier, will gleam softly within their elegant collars of green leaves. But when they arrive, in the dark night, the bullocks, already ripped open, discharge black blood, and the trodden flowers lie prone upon the footways. . . . I noticed just in front ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... provided at its extremities with a winged nut and jam nut for passing them up close to one another. The plates, properly so called, are held apart by rubber bauds. The glass vessels are placed in osier baskets.—La Lumiere Electrique. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... ride was in order; first around the Fort among the men—Captain Wayne, Osier Mike, Scout Al Rennie—then out over the sagebrush flat. "Here's the old battle ground of the horses; here's where you chased the coyote, and here's where Blazing Star took you over the single stringer bridge on that black night." It was less than a year he ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... greyness of the morning seemed to be lit up by the huge blotches of yellow lichen that covered the slated roofs of barns and dwelling—the roofs were all new, having only for a year or two superseded the old roofs of osier thatch, but that queer golden rust had almost hidden their substance, covering them as it covered everything that was left exposed ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith

... Niewiazy where they crossed the river, some on horseback, some upon bundles of osier. Everything went with such dispatch that Macko, Zbyszko, Hlawa and the Mazovian volunteers were astonished at the skilfulness of the people; only then they understood why neither woods, nor swamps, nor rivers could prevent Lithuanian expeditions. ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... of them about Bemarton, &c. near Salisbury, where the osier beds doe yield four pounds ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey

... larger than the others. These little grubs live in family communities, their presence leading to some deformation of the plant that serves to shelter them. A shrivelled fruit or an arrested and swollen shoot, such as may be due respectively to the Pear-midge (Diplosis pyrivora) or the Osier-midge (Rhabdophaga heterobia), is a frequent result of the irritation set up by these little grubs. In a larva of the crane-fly family (Tipulidae, fig. 20) living underground and eating plant-roots, like the well-known 'leather-jacket' grubs of the large 'Daddy-long-legs' ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter

... hold. Many a day I did not even fire a shot, when I had food enough in the hut—only wandered about in my freedom, and let the time pass. Whichever way I turned, there was always just as much to see and hear—all things changing a little every day. Even the osier thickets and the juniper stood waiting for the spring. One day I went out to the mill; it was still icebound, but the earth around it had been trampled through many and many a year, showing how men and more men had come that way with sacks of corn on their shoulders, to be ground. It was ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun

... I stuck all the ground without my wall, for a great length every way, as full with stakes or sticks of the osier-like wood, which I found so apt to grow, as they could well stand; insomuch that I believe I might set in near twenty thousand of them, leaving a pretty large space between them and my wall, that I might have room to see an enemy, and they might have no shelter ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... in the whole world. But every night this shepherd used to pen them up in a fold. Do you know what a sheepfold is? Well, I will tell you. It is a place like the court; but instead of pales there are hurdles, which are made of sticks that will bend, such as osier twigs; and they are twisted and made very fast, so that nothing can creep in, and nothing can get out. Well, and so every night, when it grew dark and cold, the shepherd called all his flock, sheep and lambs, together, and drove ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous

... low on the hills, and every living thing will be laughing in its light. The great trees will have grown strong in it, the flowers will have brightened, and the river there, Leone, will be running so deep and clear, kissing the green banks and the osier beds, carrying with it the leaves and flowers that will fall on its bosom, and the garden will be filled with the flowers we love the best. You see that picture, too, ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay

... Seem'd bundles of lances which garlands had bound. * * * * * The moon on the east oriel shone, Through slender shafts of shapely stone, By foliated tracery combined; Thou would'st have thought some fairy's hand 'Twixt poplars straight the osier wand In many a freakish knot had twined; Then framed a spell, when the work was done, And ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various

... of the osier grove! Wake, trembling, stainless, virgin dove! Wake, nestling of a parent's love! Let Moran see ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 362, Saturday, March 21, 1829 • Various

... was beautiful. In the blue sky, not a cloud; on earth, all the charming, graceful things the soil offers in the month of May. The trees planted ten years earlier on the banks—weeping willows, osier, alder, ash, the aspen of Holland, the poplars of Italy and Virginia, hawthorns and roses, acacias, birches, all choice growths arranged as their nature and the lay of the land made suitable—held amid their foliage a few fleecy vapors, born of the waters, which rose ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... my teeth with rage, I made desperate efforts to resist. Patience, with hideous calmness, bound me to a tree with an osier shoot. At the touch of his great horny hand I bent like a reed; and yet I was remarkably strong for my age. He fixed the owl to a branch above my head, and the bird's blood, as it fell on me drop by drop, caused me unspeakable horror; for though this was only the correction ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... the apparent distance of objects, or for lengthening the perspective of an avenue by widening it in the foreground and planting it there with dark-foliaged trees, like yews and firs, "then with trees more and more fady, till they end in the almond-willow or silver osier." To have Lord Lyttelton bring in a party at the small, or willow end of such a walk, and thereby spoil the whole trick, must indeed have been provoking. Johnson asserts that Shenstone's house was ruinous and that "nothing raised ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... to the willow and the streams of Babylon, where the Hebrews remembered Zion so mournfully, Sir Robert Ker Porter states, that 'the banks of the Euphrates were hoary with reeds, and the grey osier willows were yet there on which the captives of Israel hung their harps,' and wept in the land of the stranger. The salix babylonica, or the weeping willow, in its geographical range, sweeps through the plains of Judea, and by the ruins of Babylon, from the verge of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various

... cook. Our next care had been to arrange our sleeping places. For this purpose we cut a quantity of willows which grew on the banks of the stream hard by, and we each formed a semi-circular hut, by sticking the extremities of the osier twigs into the ground, and bending them over so as to form a succession of arches. These were further secured by weaving a few flexible twigs along the top and sides of the framework, thus giving it sufficient stability to support ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston

... with the majority of the field, having effected the descent of the hills, were now trotting on in the valley below, sufficiently near, however, to allow our hill party full view of their proceedings. After drawing a couple of osier-beds blank, they assumed a line parallel to the hills, and moved on to a wood of about ten acres, the west end of which terminated in a natural gorse. "They'll find there to a certainty," said Mr. ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... Cloudes with streaks of light: And fleckled darknesse like a drunkard reeles, From forth daies path, and Titans burning wheeles: Now ere the Sun aduance his burning eye, The day to cheere, and nights danke dew to dry, I must vpfill this Osier Cage of ours, With balefull weedes, and precious Iuiced flowers, The earth that's Natures mother, is her Tombe, What is her burying graue that is her wombe: And from her wombe children of diuers kind We sucking on her ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... with a view of rendering her as safe as the limited means in our possession would admit. The body of the boat was of no better material than bark—the bark of a tree unknown. The ribs were of a tough osier, well adapted to the purpose for which it was used. We had fifty feet room from stem to stern, from four to six in breadth, and in depth throughout four feet and a half-the boats thus differing vastly in shape from those of any other ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... form an adequate conception of the arrangement and aspect of the combs. Let them imagine—we will take a peasant's hive, where the bee is left entirely to its own resources—let them imagine a dome of straw or osier, divided from top to bottom by five, six, eight, sometimes ten, strips of wax, resembling somewhat great slices of bread, that run in strictly parallel lines from the top of the dome to the floor, espousing ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... "I was up so early, while you were all in bed, finding May-roses for you, with the May-dew on them. And if your father and mother will let us go, I'll take you up the river to the osier island; or you shall ride my Ruby, and we'll go off a long, long way into the country, us three, and have dinner in a new place, where you have never ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... certainly something more affecting in these prompt and spontaneous offerings of Nature than in the most costly monuments of art; the hand strews the flower while the heart is warm, and the tear falls on the grave as affection is binding the osier round the sod; but pathos expires under the slow labor of the chisel, and is chilled among the cold conceits of ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... Stromovka. Here weeping willows trailed their weeds of daintiest green; here vigorous chestnut buds threw out their strong scent; here osier-beds were a living tangle of gold and crimson reflected brokenly in the lake where frogs made merry, the frogs being about the only wild animals left in the Stromovka. Things were very different in ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker

... I could not render him any assistance, having a muzzle on my mouth, which he made me wear by day and took off at night. I was amazed at his intrepidity and headlong valour. He dashed in and out between the six swords of the ruffians, and made as light of them as if they were so many osier wands. It was wonderful to behold the agility with which he assaulted, his thrusts and parries, and with what judgment and quickness of eye he prevented his enemies from attacking him from behind. In short, in my opinion and that of all the ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... the rod, the line, the reel! Bring, oh, bring the osier creel! Bring me flies of fifty kinds, Bring me showers, and clouds, and winds, All things right and tight, All things well and proper, Trailer red and bright, Dark and wily dropper; Casts of midges bring, Made of plover hackle, With a gaudy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... standing out on a marsh eating raspberries. When he glanced up, a big black bear stood beside him. Robber Father broke off an osier twig and struck the bear on the nose. "Keep to your own ground, you!" he said; "this is my turf." Then the huge bear turned around and lumbered off ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... lifted a cover, and exclaimed with pleasure, though it was the simplest present she had received that day. Only an osier basket, graceful in design and shape, lined with moss, and filled with holly sprays, the scarlet berries glowing beautifully among the polished green. No note, no card, no hint of its donor anywhere appeared, for none of them recognized the boldly written address. Presently ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... passed rapidly alongside the raft sweeping the frothing water from under her paddle wheels. The planks tossed up and down in the wash, and the osier branches fastening them together, groaned and scraped ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... to the edge of the marsh and halted for a moment. In front of us lay a dark pool, still as death and fringed with long grass and osier beds. A mournful breeze blew across the place, raising a (p. 134) plaintive croon, half of resignation and half of protest from the osiers and grasses as it passed. A little distance away the skeleton of a house stood up naked ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... from its labours. The waves transmitted from one to another the floating bottle. The shelving rocks had shunned the brittle glass; no crack had yawned in the flask; no friction had displaced the cork; the sea-weeds had not rotted the osier; the shells had not eaten out the word "Hardquanonne;" the water had not penetrated into the waif; the mould had not rotted the parchment; the wet had hot effaced the writing. What trouble the abyss must have taken! Thus that which Gernardus had flung into darkness, darkness ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... still could write. They knew nothing but what their priests and politicians told them to believe. They went to their beds with the poultry, and rose as the cock crew: they went to mass, as their ducks to the osier and weed ponds; and to the conscription as their lambs to the slaughter. They understood that there was a world beyond them, but they remembered it only as the best market for their fruit, their fowls, their lace, their skins. Their brains were as dim as were their oil-lit ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... the young and the old: the wood rangers and hunters from the forests of Newenham, where Herstan had right of wood cutting; the men who wove baskets and hurdles of osier work from the river banks; the theows who cultivated the home farm; the ceorls who rented a hide of land here and a hide there—all, the grandfather and the grandson, accepted the invitation to feast. The rich and the poor met together, for ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... old unspoilt village, not on but near the sea, divided from it by half a mile of meadowland where all sorts of meadow and water plants flourish, and where there are extensive reed and osier beds, the roosting-place in autumn and winter of innumerable starlings. I am always delighted to come on one of these places where starlings congregate, to watch them coming in at day's decline and listen to their marvellous hubbub, and finally to see their aerial ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... branches of the old elms. Afar, too, many would have said there was not a sound; but there was, and Ian's ear was attuned to catch it. The immense inarticulate whisper of night came to him. It came to him from the deserted parks, from the distant Cherwell flowing through its willow-roots and osier-islands, from the flat meadow-country beyond, stretching away to the coppices of the low boundary hills. It was a voice made up of many whispers, each imperceptible, or almost imperceptible in itself; whisper of water and dry reeds, of broken twigs and dry ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... was abroad on wrathful seas, Or often journeying landward; for in truth Enoch's white horse, and Enoch's ocean spoil In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, Rough-redden'd with a thousand winter gales, Not only to the market-cross were known, But in the leafy lanes behind the down, Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp, And peacock yew-tree of the lonely Hall, Whose Friday fare was ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... ether in which they range: the green, sappy stem, the dew-bead that hung on it, the shape of a ripple were the same now as when Nineveh was a queen of civilization and men's flesh was reddening alive in osier cages over altar fires on Wiltshire downs. And all the sweetness, all the romance of an English midsummer night seized the heart of Lawrence, a nomad, a returned exile, and a man in love—as if he had ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... help being much amused with those myriads of the swallow kind which assemble in those parts. But what struck me most was, that, from the time they began to congregate, forsaking the chimnies and houses, they roosted every night in the osier-beds of the sits of that river. Now this resorting towards that element, at that season of the year, seems to give some countenance to the northern opinion (strange as it is) of their retiring under water. A Swedish naturalist is so much persuaded ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... more and more serious. Should the raft be stopped, not only would the fugitives not reach Irkutsk, but they would be obliged to leave their floating platform, for it would be very soon smashed to pieces in the ice. The osier ropes would break, the fir trunks torn asunder would drift under the hard crust, and the unhappy people would have no refuge but the ice blocks themselves. Then, when day came, they would be seen by the Tartars, and massacred ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... toward that town, wherefore he went along that way with intent to view the place more near by. So he conveyed by that road for some time without meeting any soul upon the way. But at last he came of a sudden upon an archer hiding behind an osier tree with intent to shoot the water-fowl that came to a pond that was there—for he had several such fowl hanging at his girdle. To him Sir Launcelot said: "Good fellow, what town is that yonderway?" "Sir," ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle

... trappers and Indians made Kil-i-ki-nic, or Kinnikinick, by mixing tobacco with the inside bark of red willow, which is the common name for the red osier of the ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... Apollo twisted strong withes with his hands meaning to bind Hermes with firm bands; but the bands would not hold him, and the withes of osier fell far from him and began to grow at once from the ground beneath their feet in that very place. And intertwining with one another, they quickly grew and covered all the wild-roving cattle by the will of thievish Hermes, so that Apollo ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... acute, but it had seemed to her that her dislike for his friend must be more than apparent to any one. They had reached the edge of the ice now, and Sylvia's hands were still in Jerry's, although they were not skating, but stood facing each other. A bush of osier, frozen into the ice, lifted its red twigs near them. Sylvia looked down at it, hesitating how to express her utter denial of any liking for the hilarious young man. Jerry misunderstood her pause and cried out: "Good God! ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... Ferdinand, after skilful shoving and advancing, some forty or fifty miles, on his new or French side of the Rhine, finds the French drawn up at Crefeld (June 23d); 47,000 of them VERSUS 33,000: in altogether intricate ground; canal-ditches, osier-thickets, farm-villages, peat-bogs. Ground defensible against the world, had the 47,000 had a Captain; but reasonably safe to attack, with nothing but a Clermont acting that character. Ferdinand, I can perceive, knew ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... passing in front of me and taking the lead; and we all filed after him through the open forest, moving rapidly, almost on a run, for half a mile, then swung sharply out to the right, where the trees grew slimmer and thinner, and plunged into a thicket of hazel and osier. ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... out. avio preparation, provision, apparatus. avisado sagacious. avisar to inform, notify. ay alas! ayer yesterday. ayuda aid, help. ayudar to aid. ayuno fast, abstinence. ayuntamiento town council. azafate m. flat (osier) basket. azotea platform on roof. azul blue. azulejo ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon

... them forth; the horses were quietly saddled and bridled. No watch was kept; who could dread a foe at such a time and season? She opened the gateway in an outer defence of osier work and ditch which encompassed ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... Thorn employed a woman to follow him about all day with a pail of water, assuring her that one drop (a purely homoeopathic remedy, the section would observe), placed upon his tongue, after death, would restore him. What was the obvious inference? That Thorn, who was marching and countermarching in osier beds, and other swampy places, was impressed with a presentiment that he should be drowned; in which case, had his instructions been complied with, he could not fail to have been brought to life again instantly by his own prescription. As it was, if this woman, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... was familiar to him, every one called up some story or recollection. Alternating with these, came richer presents,—books and vases and silver; then from the poor people in and about Pattaquasset, a couple of corn husk mats, a nest of osier baskets. The children brought wild flowers and wild strawberries, the fishermen brought fish, till Mrs. Derrick said, "Child, we might as well begin ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... complain of at all—I'll be watching her growing up, year by year, same as if she was under my eye constant. 'She's in pinafores now' thinks I. 'Now she's in long frocks, and is doing up her hair.' 'She's as straight as an osier now, and red as a rose, and the best looking girl in the island, and the spitting picture of what her mother used to be.' Aw, I'll be seeing her in my mind's eye, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... Millau I strolled into the little square where the great crucifix stands. I found it densely crowded. Three or four hundred men were there, each wearing a blouse and carrying a sickle with a bit of osier laid upon the sharp edge of the blade along its whole length, and firmly tied. All these harvesters were waiting to be hired for the following week. They belonged to a class much less numerous in France than in England—the agricultural labourers who have no direct interest in the soil that ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... upon it at the sound of the music, as flies flock to the osier blossom. They went in, as the blessed to Paradise. The canvas began to sway and billow in the wind of the dancing. Hazel felt that life was going on gaily without her—she shut away in the dark. ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... evidently sickly, that they looked like orphan fruit-trees that were being brought up in a Poor Law orchard. Among them stood two or three raw-boned bungalows painted those colours which are liked by plumbers. But the floor of the valley was an osier-bed, and the burst of sunshine had set alight the coarse orange hair of ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... it need be no harm to make just one, now you've spoken of it," said Theodora. So the knife being opened, I was instructed how to cut a stick of green osier, or maple, shape the end, cut and loosen the bark; and having slipped the bark off, how further to make the requisite notches, so that the hollow cylinder of bark being replaced, there would be a whistle of ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... and repairing, furniture making, turning, polishing, painting, staining and general wood working and finishing, pattern making, broom and brush making, a factory for spinning rope and cordage, basket and all kinds of osier weaving, brick making, pottery and all kinds of clay or porcelain work; together with many other things that would suggest themselves as time passed and the capacity of the farm was increased by the invention of better ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... to feast down in the city, Philotherus, but in the country, delighting myself with the breath of the west wind; sufficient couch for me is a strewing of boughs under my side, for at hand is a bed of native willow and osier, the ancient garland of the Carians; but let wine be brought, and the delightful lyre of the Muses, that drinking at our will we may sing the renowned bride of Zeus, lady of ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... lay St. Amand, with its outlying hamlets. All was bathed in the shimmering, sultry heat of midsummer, the harbinger, as it proved, of a violent thunderstorm. The Prussian position was really stronger than it seemed. Napoleon could not fully see either the osier beds that fringed the Ligny brook, or its steep banks, or the many strong buildings of Ligny itself. He saw the Prussians on the slope behind the village, and was at first puzzled by their exposed position. "The old fox keeps to earth," he was heard to mutter. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... when we used to "snatch a fearful joy" by surreptitious visits to the mill stream, and when, with a little hazel rod, length of whipcord, and rude hooks whipped to twisted horsehair, we would hurry home to breakfast with a dozen roach strung through the gills upon a twig of osier. They ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... save perhaps in their mode of government. They could erect enormous time-defying buildings, but they knew of no way to roof them except by thatching them. Their roads were marvels of engineering construction, but they could not build bridges except frail ones made out of osier cables. No wheels ran along the smooth, well-paved, magnificent highways. They could refine gold and silver and make weapons of tempered copper, but they were entirely ignorant of the use of iron. The greatest human development has depended upon that last metal. The great nations are those ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... longer do otherwise; then he would hurriedly plait a dozen baskets and go and sell them in the market. As long as the money lasted he lounged about, visiting all the taverns and digesting his drink in the sunshine. Then, when he had fasted a whole day, he would once more take up his osier with a low growl and revile the wealthy who lived in idleness. The trade of a basket-maker, when followed in such a manner, is a thankless one. Antoine's work would not have sufficed to pay for his drinking bouts if he had not contrived ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... too, and grew the warmer at being unable to find a wisp of osier or a roll of packthread in the house. Barely had I begun with my garter, when in came the Bishop of Grasse, my old friend Godeau, and another lord, whose name he mentioned, and they both interceded for her so long and so touchingly, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... services. Ralph was a great amateur in fowls and eggs. No sooner did a hen cackle, but he resorted to the nest, and, with his lead-pencil, wrote the day of the month upon the egg. The lady rung her table-bell, and called him to her, telling him to bring his egg-basket. He brought in an openwork, red osier basket, with a dozen and a half of eggs in it, laid on cotton batting, each egg as duly inscribed as the specimens of a mineralogist. ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams

... displayed themselves, at ease, as his limbs in a bath. He felt himself so powerless against her, that he never essayed to struggle. She possessed him. Once or twice he attempted to firmly oppose her ruinous caprices; but she had made him pliable as the osier. Under the dark glances of this girl, his strongest resolutions melted more quickly than snow beneath an April sun. She tortured him; but she had also the power to make him forget all by a smile, a tear, or a kiss. Away from the enchantress, reason returned at intervals, and, in his lucid moments, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... book of agriculture and domestic economy; its object is utility, not science: it serves the purpose of a farmer's and gardener's manual, a domestic medicine, herbal, and cookery book. Cato teaches his readers, for example, how to plant osier beds, to cultivate vegetables, to preserve the health of cattle, to pickle pork, and to ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... that day a month earlier, when they had crossed the bridges going northward, the broad shallow river ran its course in the sunshine, its turbid currents gleaming and flashing about the sandbanks and osier-beds. To the eye, the landscape, save that the vintage was farther advanced and the harvest in part gathered in, was the same. But how changed were their relations, their prospects, their hopes, who had then crossed the river hand-in-hand, planning a ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... throne, the young King of the Danes was bending in scowling meditation over an open scroll. Against the mud-plastered walls, the crimson splendor of his cloak and the glitter of his gold embroideries gave him the look of a tropical bird in an osier cage; while the fiery beauty of his face shone like a star in the dusk of the windowless cell. Days in the saddle and nights in the council had pared away every superfluous curve from cheek and chin, until there was not one line left that did not tell of impatient energy; and every spark of his ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz



Words linked to "Osier" :   purple willow, willow tree, genus Salix, willow, Salix viminalis, velvet osier, golden willow, Salix vitellina, common osier, Salix amygdalina, withy, Salix purpurea, purple osier, Salix, hemp willow, Salix triandra, Salix alba vitellina, black Hollander, red osier, red willow, withe



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