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Pitchfork   Listen
noun
Pitchfork  n.  A fork, or farming utensil, used in pitching hay, sheaves of grain, or the like.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pitchfork" Quotes from Famous Books



... of jumping from one bank to the other and scrambled through the willow trees, emerging, flushed and anxious-eyed, to confront a boy about fourteen years old in a torn straw hat and faded overalls and a tall, lean middle-aged man with a pitchfork in his hands. ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson

... my theory I should have modified it in accordance with them. I have also been very careful in regard to my authorities. The chief cause of the great confusion reigning in anthropological literature is that, as a rule, evidence is piled up with a pitchfork. Anyone who has been anywhere and expressed a globe-trotter's opinion is cited as a witness, with deplorable results. I have not only taken most of my multitudinous facts from the original sources, but I have critically examined the witnesses to see what right they have to parade as experts; as ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... his hay while the sun shone, and had collected hands from all parts of the neighbourhood. Lilac knew most of them, and passed along exchanging greetings, to where her uncle sat on his grey cob at the end of the field. He was talking to Peter, who stood by him with a wooden pitchfork ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... As for that Bridget Bishop, She has been tried before; some years ago A negro testified he saw her shape Sitting upon the rafters in a barn, And holding in its hand an egg; and while He went to fetch his pitchfork, she had vanished. And now be quiet, will you? I am tired, And want to sleep here on the grass ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... tried to kill it. The monster struck back like the cracking of a whip. She backed off and with her strong arm hit again and again, while Ida Mary ran with a pitchfork. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... gallantly cleft asunder, on the corner of the bran-bin, with its umber and chrome standing out boldly against a background of murky bitumen; and sometimes he placed it on the threshold of the barn door, with a rake or a pitchfork alongside, and other squashes (none too certain in their perspective) looming up from the ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... his father's farm in Stockbridge, New York, was haunted by the tales of adventure and fortune wafted across the continent from the new El Dorado. "I brooded over the difference," he says, "between tossing hay in the hot sun and digging gold by handfuls, until, one day, I threw down the pitchfork, went to the house, and told mother that I had quit ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... Flashed his pitchfork in air Sounding fresh keys to bear Out the Old Hundred. Swiftly he turned his back, Reached he his hat from rack, Then from the screaming pack, Himself he sundered. Tenors to right of him, Tenors to left of him, Discords behind ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... heard the sound of alarm-bells unceasingly ringing, And the approach of danger restrain'd not their violent fury. Soon into weapons were turn'd the implements peaceful of tillage, And with dripping blood the scythe and the pitchfork were cover'd. Every foeman without distinction was ruthlessly slaughter'd, Fury was ev'rywhere raging, and artful, cowardly weakness. May I never again see men in such wretched confusion! Even the raging wild beast is a ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... Teague, by way of condolence, "the man what's stabbed by a pitchfork hain't much better off 'n the man that walks bar'footed ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... calling fostered this weakness: after being turned into some neighbour's pasture, his animals would not require looking after until the owner of the soil turned them out again. Their guardian naturally devoted the interval to slumber. Nor was there danger of oversleeping: the pitchfork of the irate husbandman always roused ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... determined to keep his eye upon them both. "I swore it and I'll do it," said this honest fellow. "But I can't face her tongue; it goes through me like a pitchfork; but as for him"—and he clinched his fist most significantly; then he revolved one or two plans in his head, and rejected them each in turn. At last a thought struck him. "Mr. Levi! he 'twas that put me on my guard. I'll tell him." ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... Rigidly excluding all references to death and grief, it exhausts itself in supreme glorification of the Eternal and in supplication for peace upon the House of Israel. But its significance has been gradually transformed; human nature, driven away with a pitchfork, has avenged itself by regarding the prayer as a mass, not without purgatorial efficacy, and so the Jew is reluctant to die without leaving some one qualified to say Kaddish after him every day for ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... nocturnal dances with the ancient choruses of marriage-ripe maidens. The authority and magic circle kept by the broom are those of the hearth and floor in her primeval roundhut; and her distaff and pitchfork, her caldron, her cat and dog, are all in keeping with the role ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... contented," said Aunt, "never to leave the farm again. I can be happy there the rest of my born days in knowing that when I look at a cow it is not a stuffed cow, that the calf by her side can move; that the man on the barn floor with his pitchfork in the hay can really lift it over into the manger for the cattle. This mornin' I see a lady standin' on one of the stairs tryin' to tie her shoes. She was having a time of it, I knew, so I says, says I, 'leddy, let me ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... work. She was tall and very powerfully built, her features were coarse and swollen, and there was something repelling and yet fascinating to Biddy in her cunning, shifty glance. The way in which she strode along the road, too, swinging a rake, or hoe, or pitchfork in her hand, gave an impression of reckless strength which made the little nurse-girl shudder, and yet she felt unable to remove her gaze as long as the ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton

... run up to him as he was striding home in front of his loaded harvest wagon with his pitchfork over his shoulder. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... rushing down the road, with a pitchfork in one hand and a rope in the other. He ran up to the bull and slipped the rope over the animal's neck. Then he tied the creature ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer

... here? Mebbe a pound a month. In our city the girls get four pounds for doin' next to nothin'. An' to see the dhress an' the shtyle o' thim fine girls! Why, yez cudn't tell them from their own misthresses. What wud yez be doin' in New York, wid yer clothes thrun on yez be a pitchfork, an' lukkin' as if they were made in the ark? But if ye wor as smart as the lady that waits on the Queen, not wan fut will ye set in New York if Mrs. Dillon says no. Yez may go to Hartford or Newark, or some other little place, an' yez'll be mighty lucky if ye're not sint sthraight on to quarantine ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... wonders of the Sherman, Herman, and Verman collection. With the air of a proprietor he escorted Sam into the alley for a good look at Queenie (who seemed not to care for her increasing celebrity) and proceeded to a dramatic climax—the recital of the episode of the pitchfork and ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... of FRANK LOCKWOOD a former House was able to realise the figure presented by the present. Earl SPENCER, whilst still with us in the Commons, skipping along in the purity of a Monday morning smock, carrying in his right hand a garlanded pitchfork. What the present House, jaded with a succession of Budgets and the persistence of the Ulster question, would like to see is the entrance of those twin brethren, Lord CASTLEREAGH and Earl WINTERTON, walking arm-in-arm, arrayed in garb approaching as nearly as possible that which, thanks to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various

... however, and brought his odd little boat into still water, between the dunghill and the cow. After looking about him for a while, he threw out the boiler and the pitcher upon the dunghill, seized a pitchfork which was stuck upright in it, and, his craft being thus lightened, made for the ruins of ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau

... old barbarian tribe. His hair, which was as long and rank as the grass, hung down below his huge shoulders; and such clothes as clung about him were rags and tongues of red and yellow, so that he had the air of being dressed like an Indian in feathers or autumn leaves. The rake or pitchfork, or whatever it was, he used sometimes as an alpenstock, sometimes (I was told) as a weapon. I do not know why he should have used it as a weapon, for he had, and afterwards showed me, an excellent six-shooter in his pocket. 'But THAT,' ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... as long as the instrument by which it was inflicted is kept bright and clean, still prevails extensively among them. But a short time since, a boy in Cornwall was placed under the care of a medical man (who related the anecdote to me) for a wound in the back from a pitchfork; his relatives—cottagers of respectability—firmly believe that his cure was accelerated by the pains they took to keep the prongs of the pitchfork in a state of the highest polish, night and day, throughout the whole period of his illness, and down to the last hour of his complete restoration ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... fierce July. There was a wind, but it came dead from the south, and its passage across the hot, moist sands of the river had no cooling influence upon it. Johnnie mopped his brow and leant wearily upon a pitchfork whilst a maiden ran indoors for a flagon of cider. She came back, followed ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... used to be—but still it keeps things going. We throwed a dam across the coulee, up there next the hills, and there's some fair hay land we're putting water on. We have to winter-feed practically everything these days. The range just nicely keeps the stock from snow to snow. I've got pitchfork callouses on my hands I never will outgrow if I was to fall heir to a billion dollars and never use my hands again for fifty years except to feed myself. It takes work, believe me! And if there's anything on earth ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... part of Africa, the whole place reeked of fever. Every morning, as I trekked along down by the Oliphant River, I used to creep from the waggon at dawn and look out. But there was no river to be seen—only a long line of billows of what looked like the finest cotton wool tossed up lightly with a pitchfork. It was the fever mist. Out from among the scrub, too, came little spirals of vapour, as though there were hundreds of tiny fires alight in it—reek rising from thousands of tons of rotting vegetation. It was a beautiful place, but the beauty was the beauty of death; ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard

... and over the fence corner sprang Peter Apgar, a pitchfork in his hand. He had been gathering up the loose hay left along the edge of the field after the hayloader had gathered the ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm • Mabel C. Hawley

... of the men we saw our customer, the lightning-rod man, standing there holding his pitchfork in one hand and valise in the other. We were about to crowd in when we ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston

... glad enough to see me there when the battle was hot. Call me a dog again and I'll spit you like a rat on a pitchfork." ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry

... gratifying his base desire. Then he is free to go on so far as that vice is concerned. He has been purged from that evil without intervention of an angry deity or a conventional devil with hell's flames and pitchfork to administer punishment, but under the immutable law that as we sow so shall we reap, he has suffered exactly according to his vice. If his craving for drink was of a mild nature, he would scarcely miss the liquor which he cannot there obtain. If his desires were strong and he simply lived ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... mistress Valentine (Madame de Lansac) for "not knowing how to prefer him to her honour," though one would have said she had given ample proofs of this preference; and who finally appeases the reader by tumbling on the points of a pitchfork placed in his way by an (as it happens) unduly jealous husband, is a more offensive creature than any one in the earlier book.[179] One is, on the other hand, a little sorry for Valentine, while one is sorry for nobody in Indiana except perhaps for the husband, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... gate on that queer-lookin' creator' o' his. I watched him, 'n' he rid, very slow, all raoun' by the Institoot, 'n' acted as ef he was spyin' abaout. He looks to me like a man that's calc'latin' to do some kind of ill-turn to somebody. I should n't like to have him raoun' me, 'f there wa'n't a pitchfork or an eel-spear or some sech weep'n within reach. He may be all right; but I don't like his looks, 'n' I don't see what he's lurkin' raoun' the Institoot ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... a hit with me, Mr. Ricks. He applied to me for a job and I gave him his answer. Then he went to Captain Matt and was refused, so, just to demonstrate his bad taste, he went over our heads and induced you to pitchfork him into a job. He'll curse the day he was inspired ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne

... go out to my cage near by, and let my Boy Constructor loose! & ef he gits amung you, you'll think old Solferino has cum again and no mistake!" You ought to hev seen them scamper, Mr. Fair. They run ort as tho Satun hisself was arter them with a red hot ten pronged pitchfork. In five ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... got the pitchfork and punched him in the leg with the handle. He immediately raised up both hind legs at once, and that fork flew out of my hands, and went rattling up against the timbers above, and came down again in an instant, the end of the handle rapping me with such force on the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... "It's all right, old man," he continued, as he held out the rest of the piece of cake. "That's only his way of coming down. Whatcher frightened about? Oh, I see; it's that snake;" and catching up one of the spears which he had leaned up against the big door, he used it pitchfork fashion to the writhing reptile, and sent it flying upward on to the roof, for it to begin scuffling away amidst the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn

... great-great-grandsire, we would not have deigned to touch you. But thou, thou art but the heir of utter darkness, vile whelp, thou art hardly worth a night's lodging; and yet thou shalt have some nook to await the dawn." And at the word the impetuous monster pierces him with his pitchfork, and after whirling him thirty times through the fiery welkin, hurled him into a hole out of sight. "That is right enough for a half-blood squire," said the other, "but I hope ye will be better mannered towards a knight who has served the king in person; twelve earls ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... stop it? You might just as well try to stop the Irrawaddy with a pitchfork. And it's growing worse; there are some big people in it—the Hidden Hand Company—who keep out of sight, pay the money, employ the tools and collar the swag. They have agents all over this province, as well as India, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... every purpose, and this, with care, may be made to last two or three seasons. The drying was last season principally done on the bare ground, but there is much loss by shelling, as those dried are required to be turned; a pitchfork is used for that purpose. Brown building paper can be procured of city paper dealers in large rolls at four and a half cents per pound; according to the thickness, it will cost from one and three-quarters to three and a half cents per square yard. A thin, tough, waterproof paper ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... the bay after him in a chariot of fire. Said he could smell the brimstone and hear the trumpet callin' him to judgment. Likewise he hove in a lot of particulars concernin' the personal appearance of the Old Boy himself, who, he said, was standin' up wavin' a red-hot pitchfork. Some folks might have been flattered at bein' took for such a famous character; but I wa'n't; I'm retirin' by nature, and besides, Ez's description wa'n't cal'lated to bust a body's vanity b'iler. I was prouder of the consequences, the same ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... short, Nobodaddy could not have impersonated anybody if there had not been Somebodaddy to impersonate. We did not see the significance of the fact that on the last occasion on which God had been 'expelled with a pitchfork,' men so different as Voltaire and Robespierre had said, the one that if God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him, and the other that after an honest attempt to dispense with a Supreme Being in practical politics, some such hypothesis had been found quite indispensable, and could ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... by frequent tidings from homeward, that their enemy was strong enough to deal death to the aged and the innocent. Four blacks, who crossed the line, and hung upon its rear, inflicted terrible vengeance. One attacked a settler, who returned a mortal wound with a pitchfork. The survivors hovered about the place to avenge his death: they at length found a victim in an amiable young lady, Miss Peters; who was speared in the breast. She felt, from the first, that the wound was mortal, and calmly resigned herself to her destiny. Others, left by their friends and dependants, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... be witches and conjurers that make storms. 'Member once when we was crossin' the line, about twelve o'clock at night, there was an old man with a long white beard that shone like silver, came and stood at the masthead, and he had a pitchfork in one hand, and a lantern in the other, and there was great balls of fire as big as my fist came out all round in the rigging. And I'll tell you if we didn't get a blow that ar night! I thought to my soul we should all ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... wife. They were loading a haycock onto the cart not far from him. Ivan Parmenov was standing on the cart, taking, laying in place, and stamping down the huge bundles of hay, which his pretty young wife deftly handed up to him, at first in armfuls, and then on the pitchfork. The young wife worked easily, merrily, and dexterously. The close-packed hay did not once break away off her fork. First she gathered it together, stuck the fork into it, then with a rapid, supple movement ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... attacked a farmer, who defended himself with a pitchfork, and in doing so killed the dog. The owner was greatly distressed, and ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... said Wattie to Mattie, laughing. "Look at the size of us! I defy any man in the village, with an arm only the length of mine, to do more than I! Of course I can't measure myself with the neighbours. To handle Farmer Fairweather's pitchfork would break my back, and to hook a great perch, like Miller Mealy, in the mill-race, might be the capsizing of me. Still, what does that matter? I can catch little sprats for my little wife's dinner; I can dig in our patch of garden, and mend our tiny roof, so that we live as ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... no monopoly to court the seenoreetas; My folks to hum air full ez good ez hisn be, by golly!" An' so ez I wuz goin' by, not thinkin' wut would folly, The everlastin' cus he stuck his one-pronged pitchfork in me An' made a hole right thru my close ez ef I wuz an in'my. Wal, it beats all how big I felt hoorawin' in ole Funnel Wen Mister Bolles he gin the sword to our Leftenant Cunnle (It 's Mister Secondary Bolles,[8] ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... to the wagon and climbed aboard. Douglas dropped his pitchfork and walked deliberately toward the fence. As he climbed it, he said, "Judith, you aren't going. You keep your date with Maud." He dropped from the ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... of the Black Mountain thirty stout peasants had gathered to celebrate the ancient feast of the good St John. Among them was Kado the Striver, who stood there gravely leaning on his iron pitchfork. For a while he looked upon his comrades; then ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... there in his own travail Hilary sighted little foci of struggle, Earthmen with ax and pitchfork and spade battling valiantly in a sea of Mercutians. A swirl, an eddy, and all too often a sudden surge and flowing of gray warty faces, and smooth rippleless heads where an Earthman had gone ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner

... been in the field since sunrise, but not all of the long bright day had been given to labor. Early in the morning their father's pitchfork had uncovered a nest of field mice, and the Twins had made another nest, as much like the first as possible, to put the homeless field babies in, hoping that their mother would find them again and resume her ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... Boyd said. "It haunts me. It gets into my dreams. Now, look, Ken, I can't even see a pitchfork any more without thinking ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett

... a long time which was excusable as she was somewhat confused. First she seized a cord, then a pitchfork, then a chair. For an instant she thought of lowering the cow to the bottom of the well so that poor Ourson might have a drink of fresh warm milk. At last she found the ladder before her eyes, almost in her hands, but she ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur

... quickly into the field with my pitchfork on my shoulder to help Bill with the hay, I was startled to see, hanging upon a peach tree at the corner of the orchard, a complete suit of black clothes. Near it, with the arms waving gently in the breeze, was a white shirt and a black tie, and at the foot of the tree ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson

... Close by is the medieval piece of stage-property known as 'Hell-Mouth,' i.e. a red painted cave with a jaw-like opening into which a mountebank dressed in scarlet (CHEAT-THE-DEVIL) is poking 'Lost Souls' with a pitchfork. ...
— The Piper • Josephine Preston Peabody

... the figurehead to a third! At last I caught sight of what I made sure was it,—a fine large vessel just casting off her moorings. The tafferel was green. Three masts,—yes, that must be it,—and the gilt figure-head of Hercules. To be sure it had a three-pronged pitchfork in its hand instead of a club; but that might be my uncle's mistake; or perhaps Hercules sometimes varied his weapons. 'Cast off!' roared a voice from the quarter-deck. 'Hold on!' cried I, rushing frantically through the crowd. 'Hold on! hold on!' ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... to drive thickly. I seized the handle to essay another trial; when a young man without coat, and shouldering a pitchfork, appeared in the yard behind. He hailed me to follow him, and, after marching through a wash-house, and a paved area containing a coal-shed, pump, and pigeon-cot, we at length arrived in the huge, warm, cheerful apartment where I was formerly received. It glowed delightfully ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... rose higher, I began to meet people. A few labouring men came past me, one of them carrying a pitchfork. I noticed that they looked at me curiously. One of them spoke, and said, "You have been in the wars, master!" So I said, "Yes," and passed on, wondering what he meant. After I had passed, the man stopped to look back at me. I even heard him take a few steps towards me, ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... chlorine gas, which destroys all the color in the pulp. In half an hour it comes out, a mass of smoking fibers as white as a snow heap. The drainers into which it goes are large pens with perforated tile floors. The pulp remains in the drainers till it so dry it is handled with a pitchfork. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... the same crop, luckily at the other end of the field. They appeared only to be gleaning, but as it was quite likely this was preparatory to the carting, I resolved to keep a very sharp look-out to avoid being transfixed by a pitchfork and hoisted on to a cart. About breakfast-time a peculiar noise came from somewhere quite close, so, parting the corn carefully, I peered out in that direction. There, to my horror, were three men scything ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... tumbled him out of the wagon, into the dirt of the road. Though he was a year older and two inches taller than I was, while he had been clerking it in the store, I had been nursing my muscles with the shovel and the hoe, the pitchfork and the axe; and I was the stronger and tougher of the two. I could do more, and bear more, than he. A fight depends as much upon the ability to endure injury as it does to ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic

... again. The great sea suddenly lifts under his one good leg. And Tobias with his Bibles and his prayer books struggles in the dark of his Grand Avenue bedroom. The devil comes and sits on his window sill, a devil with long locks and bronze wings beside his ears and a three-pronged pitchfork in ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... Can ride the besom, the stick can ride, Can stride the pitchfork, the goat can stride; Who neither will ride to-night, nor can, Must be forever ...
— Faust • Goethe

... to you no power belongs To pitchfork me to Heaven upon the prongs Of a bad pen, whose disobedient sputter, With less of ink than incoherence fraught Befits the folly that it tries to utter. Brains, I observe, as well as tongues, can stutter: You suffer from impediment ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... dressed herself with a pitchfork; she had been growing more sensible than that for a long time, to say nothing of her quiet mourning; though for that matter, I have seen bombazine and crape so voluminously bundled and massed as to remind one of the slang phrase "piling ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... says Squar' Alexanders, an' he p'ints to where one is hangin' on the barroom wall. It gives a picture of the foul fiend, with pitchfork, spear-head tail an' all. "Whatever do you ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... I reared myself on my knees and peered about me this way and that. Immediately an irrepressible tremor ran through my system. Directly behind me, armed with a dangerous pitchfork and maintaining an attitude combining at once defence and attack, was a large, elderly, whiskered man, roughly dressed and of a most disagreeable cast ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... was hers Fly was to go with the message. Mick raked down a handful of soot from the chimney, and rubbed her face and hands till they were black, then dressed her in a pair of old bathing-drawers and a black fur cape. Patsy got the pitchfork from the stable for her to carry ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick

... name for you—Pitchfork Mix." Mr. Mix spread a thin smile over his lips. "Supposed ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall

... she never at mornings had missed her broom or pitchfork?—R. Once the broom was gone, but she had found it again behind the stove, and may be left ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... menacing head among the people of Paris, a terrible engine of despotic military autocracy, was attacked and taken by the mob. M. De Launay, its Governor, was killed by a bayonet thrust, and his head cut from his body and carried through the streets upon a pitchfork. "And in this bloody manner, into those dungeons where thousands had wasted away, often without trial and with no knowledge of the charges against them, liberty sent her first ray ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell

... Campbell, who is, it would appear, insane. Thomas Campbell, it appears, is a very powerful young man, about thirty years of age, and a native of the North road, Drogheda. At the lodge, in the Phoenix Park, he asked to see the Lord Lieutenant; but, being armed with a pitchfork and a hammer, he was not considered an eligible visitor, and after a desperate struggle with the guard, whom he kept at bay, he was knocked down and secured by ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... the tent and picked up another man at haphazard from the crowd which was staring at the great pictures in front, and tried to put this second man into his mouth. Being stopped by his Indian attendant with a pitchfork, he placed the man on the ground and stuck his tusk through an artery of the victim's arm. He then, amid unexampled excitement, suffered himself to be led away. He was conducted to the rear of the tent, just ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... stall to sleep in. In front of each is a box or manger. Frank climbs up the tall ladder to the loft, which is the second story of the barn, and throws down the hay. Then he takes his sharp pitchfork and tosses a lot of hay in each manger. You would never think cows could eat so much. One box of shredded-wheat would do for all the Green family and visitors too, but "Primrose" and "Daisy" and all the rest each eat enough hay ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson

... you can shake them all off at one time, rake them all up with the rake, take a pitchfork rake, carry them to the barn and throw them in storage in a dry place. You don't have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... its rights whenever it is as free from self-consciousness as was the life-radiating Annette in the heavenly clear waters of Bermuda. On the other hand, Neptune and his pasteboard diadem and wooden-pointed pitchfork, should have put on his dressing-gown and retired. As a toe dancer in an alleged court scene, on land, Annette was a mere simperer. Possibly Pavlowa as a swimmer in Bermuda waters would have been as much of a mistake. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... the prime of health actually on the point of wasting visibly away to a shadow of my former hardy self? It's a fact: I am. For the past two days I've had nothing to eat except railway sandwiches and coffee and the kind of fodder they pitchfork you at the Bigelow House. And I came here with a mind coloured with rosy anticipations of real old-fashioned ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... roll-call, a sergeant of another company, one Allien, a cooper by trade, taunted one of the men with having carried a pitchfork the day before, in disobedience to orders. He replied that the mayor had permitted him to carry it; Allien not believing this, proposed to some of the men to go with him to the mayor's and ask if it were true. When ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... munching and holding a crust of bread. At the feet of the woman are sundry articles, amongst which a bundle of rags, an iron pot, and a tin saucepan, are the most conspicuous. The man to whom she is talking is a tall, gaunt specimen of Irish poverty and famine. He holds a rake and pitchfork in his hand, and leans upon them for support. Gazing into his face is a rough, surly-looking youth, who seems cordially to agree ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... like a shot amid acclamations. To show that he did not consider the feat a tour de force, the artist turned the paper, and taking the same marks drew a devil in an entirely different attitude, the difficult point being reached by his pitchfork. This gave rise to a learned discussion as to whether the devil's emblematic pitchfork was not a descendant of Neptune's trident, which I did not stay to hear, as Afra whispered she wanted to present me to Monsieur ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... out of the house and down the path to the stables. A many-tined pitchfork rested against one of the sheds. It was one which William had used that morning in turning over sod for a new flower-bed. Priscilla in her hurried transit with David had marked the fork, and chosen it as her best weapon. Of all those cruel tines, ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase

... the never-furled riding-sail, rolled to and fro on the heaving deck in the moonlight; and the pile of fish by the stern shone like a dump of fluid silver. In the hold there were tramplings and rumblings where Disko Troop and Tom Platt moved among the salt-bins. Dan passed Harvey a pitchfork, and led him to the inboard end of the rough table, where Uncle Salters was drumming impatiently with a knife-haft. A tub of salt water lay ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... when he finds out that the King of the Tonga Islands picks his teeth with a pitchfork?" added Shuffles, contemptuously. "I don't intend that he shall find it out? and he ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic

... trolley car; box car, box wagon; horse car [U.S.]; bullet train, shinkansen [Jap.], cannonball, the Wabash cannonball, lightning express; luggage van; mail, mail car, mail van. shovel, spool, spatula, ladle, hod, hoe; spade, spaddle^, loy^; spud; pitchfork; post hole digger. [powered construction vehicles] tractor, steamshovel, backhoe, fork lift, earth mover, dump truck, bulldozer, grader, caterpillar, trench digger, steamroller; pile driver; crane, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... mind she started a little; but on looking round, she saw Kester's face pressed against the glass, and, reassured, she softly opened the door. There he stood in the dusk outer air, distinct against the gray darkness beyond, and in his hand something which she presently perceived was a pitchfork. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell

... strikes the bare neck, but the dull saber not doing its work, he takes a small black-handled knife from his pocket, and, "as in his capacity of cook he knows how to cut meat," he finishes the operation successfully. Then, placing the head on the end of a three-pronged pitchfork, and accompanied by over two hundred armed men, "not counting the mob," he marches along, and, in the Rue Saint-Honore, he has two inscriptions attached to the head, to indicate without mistake whose head it is.—They grow merry over it: after filing alongside of the Palais-Royal, the procession ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... is of the highest importance to the student of Mental Science. The great fact to be realized regarding Nature is that it is natural. We may pervert the order of Nature, but it will prevail in the long run, returning, as Horace says, by the back door even though we drive it out with a pitchfork; and the beginning, the middle, and the end of the law of Nature is the principle of growth from a vitality inherent in the entity itself. If we realize this from the outset we shall not undo our own work by endeavouring to force things to become that which by their own nature ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... gentleman, who looked as if he would be all the better for his bath when the time came, who carried a big sledge-hammer in his hand; and another fishy sort of person, who flourished about with a three-pronged pitchfork. A very cross-looking lady sat next to the gentleman at the head of the table. By the way she kept her eye upon him, contradicting every word he said, and snubbing him at every opportunity, she was evidently his wife. Another good-looking lady was ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... his limbs trembled, his walk was an uncertain shuffle. Clearly he was suffering from overwork. As I paused by the wayside to speak to him a wagon loaded with hay was passing. He fixed his eyes upon it with a hungry, wolfish glare, clutched a pitchfork and leaned eagerly forward, watching the vanishing wagon with breathless attention and heedless of my salutation. That night he was arrested, streaming with perspiration, in the unlawful act of unloading that hay and ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... the intense strain of that waiting. It must be full ten minutes before Tom's master could get to the house after that first blast, and if he did not hear that, must be too late; but Tom kept his place and my husband rushed by me, carrying the pitchfork with which he had been at work, and I saw no more until Tom was in his cage. Watch had dragged himself to his master's feet to die, and I went into the house and finished getting dinner, more than ever afraid ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... fading away toward noon when the moistness is dried out. But when one first issues from the house at breakfast time it is at its highest savor. Irresistibly it suggests worms and a tin can with the lid jaggedly bent back and a pitchfork turning up the earth behind the cow stable. Fishing was first invented when Adam smelt that odor in ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... to a fight which soon became general, and they began to bang one another right and left with anything that came to hand. Blood was flowing freely and the dragoman was in despair. He rushed into a stable and came out with a wooden pitchfork with which he drove them back, and restored order ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... useless posts, such as "Inspector of white labour", and inspector of goodness-knows-what (all of them carrying high emoluments), were created for political favourites, General Beyers's appointment caused no surprise, as the "pitchfork" had already become part of our Government machinery. But how such a man as Manie Maritz became a Colonel in the Colonial Defence Force is one of those things which, as Lord Dundreary would say, "no ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... Giant would soon be home. So the youth went out to clean the stable. First, he tried to do the work as any other boy would do it; but when he found that in a very short time he would not have room to stand, he quickly turned the pitchfork around and used the handle. In a few moments the stable was as clean as a stable could be. Then he went back to his room and wandered about it with his hands in his pockets, looking quite as innocent as if he had not raised the latch of a ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... paddock containing Farmer Giles's brindled bull, a savage animal, whose implacable viciousness was the talk of the place; not even the ploughman, with whom he was more familiar than anyone else, daring to approach him without the protection of a long-handled pitchfork. ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson

... ordure of Rabelais were to the taste of his time; his severer censures of Church and State were disguised by his buffoonery; flinging out his good sense and wise counsels with a liberal hand, he also wields vigorously the dunghill pitchfork. If he is gross beyond what can be described, he is not, apart from the evil of such grossness, a corrupter of morals, unless morals be corrupted by a belief in the goodness of the natural man. The graver ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... brain, The stomach, like a belt. like an auger. The pylorus, like a pitchfork. The worm-like excrescence, like The windpipe, like an oyster- a Christmas-box. knife. The membranes, like a monk's The throat, like a pincushion cowl. stuffed with oakum. The funnel, like a mason's chisel. The lungs, like a prebend's The fornix, like a casket. fur-gown. The glandula ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... The innkeeper rushed in, pitchfork in hands. Evidently he had been out at the barn. He was now shouting to find out what had happened. Joel, the stage-driver, was trying to quiet the men who had been robbed. The woman, wife of one of the men, had come in, and she had hysterics. The girls were still and white. The robber ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey

... With pitchfork, and with rake; Here's Molly, Liz, and Susan, Come here their hay to make. While sweet, jug, jug, jug! The nightingale doth sing, From morning unto ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... building leases; the farmer was converted into a steward: his brown hempen frock, which guarded the outside of his waistcoat, became white holland, edged with ruffles, and took its station within: the pitchfork was metamorphosed into a pen, and his ancient practice of breeding up sheep, was changed into that of dressing ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... were growing up. But when he thought of them they seemed remote, prattling youngsters whom Minnie was for ever worrying over and who seemed to have been always under the heels of his horse, or under the wheels of his wagon, or playing with the pitchfork, or wandering off into the sage while he and their distracted mother searched for them. For a long while—how many years Brit could not remember—they had been living in Los Angeles. Prospering, too, Brit understood. The girl, Lorraine—Minnie ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... be able to do that?" she asked again. "If you clean it out as other people do, ten pitchforksful will come in for every one you throw out. But I will teach you how to do it; you must turn your pitchfork upside down, and work with the handle, and then all will fly out ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... what he thinks of pledges and him and church doings, and it wasn't purty. And he says if he was as deep in eternal fire as what he now is in rain-water, and every fish that nibbles at his toes was a preacher with a red-hot pitchfork a-jabbing at him, they could jab till the hull hereafter turned into snow afore he'd ever sign nothing a man like Mr. Cartwright give him to sign. Hank was stubborner than any mule he ever nailed shoes onto, and proud of being that stubborn. That town was a awful religious town, and ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... as they would tell of the sights in grave-yards, and the spirits of tyrannical masters, walking at night, with their chains clanking and the, sights of hell, where some would be on gridirons, some hung up to baste and the devil with his pitchfork would toss the poor creatures hither and thither. They would say: "Carry, you must go to the house," and I would not go with one, but have two, one on each side of me. I remember seeing the negro men laugh at me, but the women would shake their heads and say: "You better quit skeering that chile." ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass. While grandmother took the pitchfork we found standing in one of the rows and dug potatoes, while I picked them up out of the soft brown earth and put them into the bag, I kept looking up at the hawks that were doing what ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... the doors as the carts, each chalked with the Government pitchfork, passed in the increasing twilight; and as they stood they looked at the confiscated property with a melancholy expression that told only too plainly the relation which ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... field, Father helped the children off. Then he drove along beside a haycock and stopped the horses. Hobson pitched the hay onto the rack with his pitchfork. Father placed the hay around, so the load would be even on both sides. Then he drove on and ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton

... appearance of Uncle Ben Dabney, not only as a peacemaker, but as Mr. Daubigny the bona fide purchaser and owner of the land. It was known and accepted with great hilarity that "old marm McKinstry" had defended the barn alone and unaided, with—as variously stated—a pitchfork, an old stable-broom, and a pail of dirty water, against Harrison, his party, and the entire able posse of the Sheriff of Tuolumne County, with no further damage than a scalp wound which the head of Seth Davis received while falling from the loft of the ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... the country, if they could only, like these sons and daughters of Dartmouth and Northampton, consent to serve. We wish some one would explain to us how a sewing machine is any more respectable than a churn, or a yard stick is better than a pitchfork. We want a new Declaration of Independence, signed by all the laboring classes. There is plenty of work for all kinds of people, if they were not too proud to do it. Though the country is covered with people who can find nothing to do, we would be willing to open a bureau to-morrow, ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... a map to explain it. The trails were like a pitchfork, with its prongs touching the hills of San Juan. The long handle of the pitchfork was the trail over which we had just come, the joining of the handle and the prongs were El Poso. El Caney lay half-way along ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

... vapid, swarthy creature in the widow's cap, who looked as though her clothes had been stuck on her back with a pitchfork!" The signora never allowed any ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... tangle of hoof- and wheel-tracks that crossed and re-crossed each other, yet led, one and all, to the distant bridge that spanned the stream, and thence bore away northward like the tines of a pitchfork, the one to the right going over the hills a three days' march to the Indian agencies up along the "Wakpa Schicha," the other leading more to the west around a rugged shoulder of bluff, and then stretching away due north for the head-waters of the Niobrara and the shelter ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King

... came out of it an Ifrit blind of an eye, humpbacked and scurvy-skinned, with eye-orbits slit up and down his face.[FN259] On his head were seven horns and four locks of hair fell to his heels; his hands were pitchfork-like and his legs mast-like and he had nails as the claws of a lion, and feet as the hoofs of the wild ass.[FN260] When that If rit rose out of the earth and sighted Maymunah, he kissed the ground before her and, standing with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... and dark, but John Biggs, the blacksmith, and George Kettle walked in first and the others follered, keeping so close together that Sam Jones 'ad a few words over his shoulder with Bill Chambers about the way 'e was carrying 'is pitchfork. ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... sewing during the past season. "What is the matter with this thing, anyhow? I believe I've gone and put a sleeve in the neck. Everybody knows I could never sew. Mr. Tate knew it when I married him, for I told him I'd rather handle a pitchfork than a needle. I might hold a pitchfork, but a needle I can't. What 'd I tell you! ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher

... the early morning of the day after Malloring went back to town, he crossed the road to a field where the farmer, aided by his family and one of Malloring's gardeners, was already carrying the hay; and, taking up a pitchfork, without a word to anybody, he joined in the work. The action was deeper revelation of his feeling than any expostulation, and the young people watched it ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... not amount to more than 300. The arms, at least were wretched, consisted of culverins, which went off with an enormous report, and matchlocks with short rests, like the end of a pitchfork. The bows were long and good. The helmets were worn on the head when going and coming, but were allowed to sling on the back while resting here; they are rude iron things, like bowls, but covered for some way up the sides with cloth in a most unbecoming way. Dirt and noise ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... as their shoes are called, may still be seen on the walls of a smithy here and there. Shoeing oxen is no joke, since to protect the smith from their horns they have to be thrown down; their necks are held by a pitchfork, and their feet ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... certain scenes in the lives of John the Baptist, and John the Evangelist, though only two of the stories depicted belong to the Bible. One of them, next to the "Majesty," shows the Evangelist seated in a caldron of boiling oil, in which he is being held by a hideous tormentor with a pitchfork, while a seated figure of Christ confers protection upon the Saint. In another medallion the Evangelist is seen raising to life the dead Drusiana, a lady of Ephesus who died just before the Apostle came to the city; he is also shown turning ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... research in positive science they are magnificently laborious and accurate. But most of them have no notion of style, and seem to compose their books with a pitchfork. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... them in," I declared stubbornly, "with a pitchfork. I couldn't have persuaded them to make a search if I had prayed them on my bended knees. Their one idea was to help the fellow in what the best criminal circles call a getaway; and when I think how I must have been ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... ginger has been drunk by some of England's proudest heroes,' Mrs. Chuff would exclaim. 'Admiral Lord Exmouth tasted and praised it, sir, on board Captain Chuff's ship, the "Nebuchadnezzar," 74, at Algiers; and he had three dozen with turn in the "Pitchfork" frigate, a part of which was served out to the men before he went into his immortal action with the "Furibonde," Captain Choufleur, in the Gulf ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a horse he will be!" he thought with a smile, and holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork in hand, was clearing manure from the cowhouse, looked out, and his face immediately brightened on seeing Rostov. "Schon gut Morgen! Schon gut Morgen!" * he said winking with a merry smile, evidently pleased to greet the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... they'd a' kep away from the whelps. My gals is all in titters about it; and Beck Teezle, says she, 'I wonder, says she, if Des and Luce Faddle, says she, will feel above us now?' They couldn't git me to dew their dirty Work, with all their ile and palaver. I bought a pitchfork on 'em, once in hayin', and got a platter there when Josephyne was married, and I paid 'em tew in mink skins; and that's all I had to dew with 'em. You lost a good 'eal by 'em, didn't ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... horns flare out like a pitchfork? Do you s'pose he knows how easy he could toss folks right ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May



Words linked to "Pitchfork" :   fork, lift, tine, hand tool



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