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Pomatum   Listen
noun
Pomatum  n.  A perfumed unguent or composition, chiefly used in dressing the hair; pomade.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pomatum" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the bedrooms (where they were capital at other times), and a surprising amount of packing took place, out of all proportion to the amount packed. Largess, in the form of odds and ends of cold cream and pomatum, and also of hairpins, was freely distributed among the attendants. On charges of inviolable secrecy, confidences were interchanged respecting golden youth of England expected to call, 'at home,' on the first ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... Fellow of 30 with four valises; a slim creature, with teeth which made his mouth look like a neglected churchyard. He had solidified hair—solidified with pomatum; it was all one shell. He smoked the most extraordinary cigarettes—made of some kind of manure, apparently. These and his hair made him smell like the very nation. He had a low-cut vest on, which exposed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... money; and it's for that I manage the owners. Don't you understand? You have got solid men behind you, so I'm not afraid, my good sir. Nowadays, business is all parcelled out in portions. A single enterprise requires a combination of capacities. Go in with us; don't potter with pomatum and perfumes,—rubbish! rubbish! Shave ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... operation was appalling. It was a fortnight since my salary had been raised, but so far I had not a penny saved. The extra money had gone, I couldn't exactly say how, in sundry "trifling expenditures," such as pomatum, a scarf-pin, and a steel chain for my waistcoat, all of which it had seemed no harm to indulge in, especially as they were very cheap, under ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... Tchistopluy, called the "travellers' room," that is kept exclusively for travellers, a tall, broad-shouldered man of forty was sitting at the big unpainted table. He was asleep with his elbows on the table and his head leaning on his fist. An end of tallow candle, stuck into an old pomatum pot, lighted up his light brown beard, his thick, broad nose, his sunburnt cheeks, and the thick, black eyebrows overhanging his closed eyes. . . . The nose and the cheeks and the eyebrows, all the features, each taken separately, ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... shudder when, on going the rounds, I would hear their voices as they sat jovially over the mess-table; my pride revolted at being obliged to plaster my hair with flour and candle-grease, instead of using the proper pomatum for a gentleman. Yes, my tastes have always been high and fashionable, and I loathed the horrid company in which I was fallen. What chances had I of promotion? None of my relatives had money to buy me a commission, and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... things late and air'; He ordered folk to stand at prayer (Although I canna just mind where He gave the warnin'), An' pit pomatum on their hair On ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... held himself upright as a steeple. His head was remarkable for the amount of powder and pomatum bestowed upon it; he looked almost like a postilion at a fancy ball. Underneath that felted covering, moulded to the top of the wearer's cranium, appeared an elderly profile, half-official, half-soldierly, with a comical ...
— A Man of Business • Honore de Balzac

... of Mareschale powder, my patent puff, and all my pomade divine had also vanished; and true enough, as Lucifer says, it so happened that from the delay in the arrival of the running ships, there was not an ounce of either powder or pomatum to be had in the whole town, so I have been driven in my extremity—oh most horrible declension!—to keep my tail on hog's lard and ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... without labels of any sort to describe the contents of the pots and bottles. He examined them one after another, and stopped at some recently invented French shaving-cream. "It smells lovely," he said, assuming it to be some rare pomatum. "Just what I want, it seems, for my head." He rubbed the shaving cream into his bristly iron-gray hair, until his arms ached. When he had next sprinkled his handkerchief and himself profusely, first with rose water, and then (to make quite sure) with eau-de-cologne ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins

... the Schneiderin round the corner puts into her gowns to cover the angular bones! She would look much more respectable,' said I, 'if she would brush her scanty grey locks back, and smooth them with pomatum as I do, and wear a black lace Muetze over them, instead of making herself the laughing-stock of Schleswig.' And away I walked. And the Professor ate no supper that night, and next day he left for his Ferienausflug, and never called to say good-bye to Fraeulein Meyer; ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson

... quitted. Articles of feminine attire, of the richest kind, were hung against the walls, or disposed on the chairs. On one side stood the toilette-table, with its small mirror then in vogue, and all its equipage of silver flasks, filligree cassets, japan patch-boxes, scent-bottles, and pomatum-pots. ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... blacksmiths' heads, and ribbons of the Legion of Honour supplied waistbands for prostitutes. Each person satisfied his or her caprice; some danced, others drank. In the queen's apartment a woman gave a gloss to her hair with pomatum. Behind a folding-screen two lovers were playing cards. Hussonnet pointed out to Frederick an individual who was smoking a dirty pipe with his elbows resting on a balcony; and the popular frenzy redoubled with a continuous crash of broken porcelain and pieces of crystal, ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... equal to those at Lichfield, where on one tree I recollect counting eighty-four within my own reach; it grew against the house of Doctor Darwin. Such a profusion of sweets made me enquire yesterday morning for some scented pomatum, and they brought me accordingly one pot impelling strong of garden mint, the other of rue ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... finds itself in a tight place asks him for one of his bears revised by his friends. This has been retouched and revamped every five years, so that it smells of the pomatum of each prevailing and then forgotten fashion. To Adolphe it becomes what the famous cap, which he was constantly staking, was to Corporal Trim, for during five years "Anything for a Woman" (the title decided upon) "will be one of the most entertaining ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... head-dress had fallen off, her linen was torn, her negligee had not a pin left in it, her petticoats she was obliged to hold on, and her shoes were perpetually slipping off. She was covered with dirt, weeds, and filth, and her face was really horrible; for the pomatum and powder from her head, and the dust from the road, were quite pasted on her skin by her tears, which, with her rouge, made so frightful a mixture, that ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... tenth part of his day was spent in the brushing of his teeth and the oiling of his hair, which was curling and brown, and which he did not like to conceal under a periwig, such as almost everybody of that time wore (we have the liberty of our hair back now, but powder and pomatum along with it. When, I wonder, will these monstrous poll-taxes of our age be withdrawn, and men allowed to carry their colours, black, red, or grey, as nature made them?) And, as he liked her to be well dressed, his lady spared no pains in that matter to please him; indeed, she ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... certain muscles, attended by constant pain. A little later, her feet might have been found restored to their right level; but, as if to make up for this, and allow no interval of misery, a tower of hair, pomatum, flour, pins, and pinners, had been reared on the head, such as an inquisitor might have considered himself very ingenious in devising, as a means of undoing the convictions of heretics, or bringing round ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various

... usually stood with his back to the fire, and unconsciously in the process of thought used to make his head vibrate, or rather, rub sidewise against the wall above the chimney-piece. His head being dressed, in the ordinary style of that period, with pomatum, could not fail to make a mark on ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... bargain! A tradesman can never learn to give. You want to stop for refreshments on the road of love—in the form of Government bonds! Bah! Shopman, pomatum seller! you put a price on everything!—Hector told me that the Duc d'Herouville gave Josepha a bond for thirty thousand francs a year in a packet of sugar almonds! And I am worth six ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... Where was Miriam's comb, and grenadine, and collar, and belt? Good gracious! where was her buckle? On the bureau, mantel, washstand, or under them? "Please move a moment, Anna!" In such a hurry, do! There was Anna, "Wait! I'm in a hurry, too! Where is that pomatum? You Malvina! if you don't help me, I'll—There! take that, Miss! Now fly around!" Malvina, with a faint, dingy pink suddenly brought out on her pale sea-green face, did fly around, while I, hushing my guitar in the tumult, watch each running over the other, in silent amazement, wondering ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... team afield, or sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, as though he should never be old,' and the same poor country lad, crimped, kidnapped, brought into town, made drunk at an alehouse, turned into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the finery ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... stately pace the carriage of the kind-hearted monarch of Great Britain approached. First came the body of Life Guards, their belts well whitened with pipeclay, and their heads plastered with pomatum and powder; and then followed the royal carriage, as fine as gold and paint ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston

... a taller man standing than he was long lying. There wasn't much clearance between his head and the ceiling of the porch. He stood before Taterleg glowing, his hat off, his short-cut hair glistening with pomatum, showing his teeth ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... trudged Miller Loveday shoulder to shoulder with the other substantial householders of the place and its neighbourhood, duly equipped with pouches, cross-belts, firelocks, flint-boxes, pickers, worms, magazines, priming-horns, heel- ball, and pomatum. There was nothing to be gained by further suppression of the truth, and briefly informing them that the danger was not so immediate as had been supposed, Festus galloped on. At the end of another mile he met a large number of pikemen, including Bob Loveday, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... she needs them now, eh? What do you think, my dear sir? For now she's got to keep up her appearance. It costs money, that smartness, that special smartness, you know? Do you understand? And there's pomatum, too, you see, she must have things; petticoats, starched ones, shoes, too, real jaunty ones to show off her foot when she has to step over a puddle. Do you understand, sir, do you understand what all that smartness means? And here ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... dreadful pomatum that she puts on her hair! Don't you notice it? She's hidden somewhere." Rose looked sharply about for a minute, then made a pounce, and from under the bed dragged a small kicking heap. It was the ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge

... can swear at you!" averred Rake, in his eloquence; and he was undoubtedly right for that matter; but then—the Zu-Zu was the rage, and if ever she should be sold up, great ladies would crowd to her sale and buy with eager curiosity at high prices her most trumpery pots of pomatum, her most flimsy ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... of gauze and silver spangles. The most glittering appearance is given to every thing, to paste, pomatum, billet-doux, and patches. Airs, languid airs, breathe around;—the atmosphere is perfumed with affectation. A toilette is described with the solemnity of an altar raised to the goddess of vanity, and the history of a silver bodkin is given with all ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... plaisterer's at Charing Cross that casts heads and bodies in plaister; and there I had my whole face done; but I was vexed first to be forced to daub all my face over with pomatum. Thus was the mold made; but when it came off there was little pleasure in it as it looks in the mold, nor any resemblance whatever there will be in the figure when I come to see it cast off. To White Hall, where I staid till the Duke of ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... for which there still continues to be an effective demand, are plain white tiles for dairies and for lining baths, pomatum pots, and a few jugs, and other similar articles of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various

... some flour and oil into a paste in this pomatum-pot, and spread it on this handkerchief; then bind it on to my arm, and hold your tongue. Can you do it, ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield

... saw a little soldier alight at the Rue de Rivoli gate—a little man whom you might mistake for a corporal of the guard—with a wild, coarse-featured Corsican (say, rather, Basque) face, his disordered chestnut hair darkened to black locks by the use of pomatum—a face selfish and false, but determined as fate. So this was the beginning of the Napoleon "legend"; and by-and-by this coarse head will be idealized into the Roman Emperor type, in which I myself might ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Newgate-street, there is a prodigious quantity prepared, which they sell to the distillers.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I believe they make a higher thing out of them than a spirit; they make what is called orange-butter, the oil of the orange inspissated, which they mix perhaps with common pomatum, and make it fragrant. The oil does not fly ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... treasures, and such prodigious riches, so diversified, that it is impossible for me to give an account of them; but as I was obliged to keep my right eye shut with my hand, and that tired me, I desired the dervish to apply some of the pomatum to ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... from the inside, and as soon as you take it off fling it into Conduit water, and if you see the second skin be clear, peel it and water it with the other: be sure it cools not out of the water: you must not let any of the flesh remain on it, for then the Pomatum will not keep. To one pound of this fat take two pound of Lambs caule, and put it to the other in the water and when you see it is cold, drain it from the water in a Napkin, and break it in little peices with your fingers, and take out all the little veins; then take eight ounces ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous

... were pulled and mauled and greased; in short, I wonder we had a whole hair left; but, after undergoing every thing you can imagine, I found myself on a pole in the shape of a gentleman's wig, covered with high-scented pomatum and powder. ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen

... Impetuous arrant toadstool; Thundering quince, Repentant dog-star, inessential Prince, Expound. Pre-Adamite eventful gun, Crush retribution, currant-jelly, pun, Oh! eligible Darkness, fender, sting, Heav'n-born Insanity, courageous thing. Intending, bending, scouring, piercing all, Death like pomatum, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... his veins, and tried to smooth out the frizziness of the thick black hair under his fez, with much pomatum, which ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... ruining himself and who is living truly or falsely—you or I. If you only knew how despicable and pitiable you, in your delusions, seem to me! When I picture to myself—in place of my hut, my forests, and my love—those drawing-rooms, those women with their pomatum-greased hair eked out with false curls, those unnaturally grimacing lips, those hidden, feeble, distorted limbs, and that chatter of obligatory drawing-room conversation which has no right to the name—I ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... dunces. These folks used to talk about the soap-grease, even in Dr. Parmlee's presence; but the Doctor quietly retorted that if Crawford's hands smelled of soap-grease, that was better than to have soap-grease inside his head and pomatum on the outside. They were a little more modest after this, but they could not forbear allusions that kept Dudley under fire. His mother, who was very proud of her son's independence, could not but feel sorry that he was subject to such persecutions. "Ah, mother," he would say, ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... civility, and then purchased an assortment of useless trifles such as ribbons, tobacco, buttons, candy, rings, pomatum, perfume, and Jew's harps. ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... fitted on a pair of dog-skin gloves; with his large bell-shaped top hat, and his great stature and bulk he looked too primeval for a Forsyte. His thick white hair, on which Adolf had bestowed a touch of pomatum, exhaled the fragrance of opoponax and cigars—the celebrated Swithin brand, for which he paid one hundred and forty shillings the hundred, and of which old Jolyon had unkindly said, he wouldn't smoke them as a gift; they wanted the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... nor cornucopias precisely; but which, opened like a scroll, would have resembled the one; and, spirally prolonged, the other. It was the careful culture of these which distracted the nose of Mrs. Tapping's monde, preoccupied by a flavour of chandled tallow, to a halo of pomatum. Mrs. Riley was also unchanged; she, however, had no alarming ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... glands are distributed where they are most needed,—in the eyelids, serving as lubricators; in the ear passages, to produce the cerumen, or wax, which prevents the intrusion of small insects; and in the scalp, to supply the hair with its natural pomatum. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... always loved to be at church a good while before the rest of the congregation. They punctually obeyed my directions; but when we were to assemble in the morning at breakfast, down came my wife and daughters, dressed out in all their former splendor—their hair plastered up with [v]pomatum, their faces [v]patched to taste, their trains bundled up in a heap behind and rustling at every motion. I could not help smiling at their vanity, particularly that of my wife, from whom I expected more discretion. In this [v]exigence, ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... get news of Diana, and it was a relief to find everything decorous and apparently serene at the house. We were informed by a band of footmen, hired with powder and pomatum inclusive, for the occasion, that the bride had arrived safely. There was no stare of consternation or half-hidden horror on any face. But in the flower-decked drawing-room, with its effective marble pillars (Di and Father had taken the house ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... waiting at the door to take them out. For Cleopatra had her galley again now, and Withers, no longer the-wan, stood upright in a pigeon-breasted jacket and military trousers, behind her wheel-less chair at dinner-time and butted no more. The hair of Withers was radiant with pomatum, in these days of down, and he wore kid gloves and smelt of the water ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... Wilson had a disorder which kept him two months to his couch. The mouses used to run up his back and eat the powder and pomatum from his hair. They used also to run up my knees when I went to see him. I remember they did so to Lord Glenbervie, who thought ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... shoulder as he passes fearlessly around them. If Nannie could see his devotion to the helpless and dumb it would awaken within her a far deeper regard than the combined results of curling-tongs and pomatum, or the outward flourish and glitter of his ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... gone a-hunting: and so, after I had done a little business there, I to my wife, and with her to the plaisterer's at Charing Cross, that casts heads and bodies in plaister: and there I had my whole face done; but I was vexed first to be forced to daub all my face over with pomatum: but it was pretty to feel how soft and easily it is done on the face, and by and by, by degrees, how hard it becomes, that you cannot break it, and sits so close, that you cannot pull it off, and yet so easy, that it is as soft as ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... atmosphere with the smoke of tobacco, and the fumes of beer, that the tallow candles burnt but dimly. A crowd of students were sitting at three long tables, in the large hall; a medley of fellows, known at German Universities under the cant names of Old-Ones, Mossy-Heads, Princes of Twilight, and Pomatum-Stallions. They were smoking, drinking, singing, screaming, and discussing the great Laws of the Broad-Stone and the Gutter. They had a great deal to say, likewise, about Besens, and Zobels, and Poussades; and, if they had been charged for the noise they made, as travellers ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... divided between admiration and embarrassment; but the admiration received a serious blow when Thomas Randulf swore that Romarino used pomatum ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland

... all awry was set right with a jerk; then the plaits of a false bosom were smoothed down; next the tie of a flowing silk cravat was settled; while, in other parts of the room, there was a stealthy display of private rolls of pomatum, and a desperate brushing of hair, sometimes refractory to anything ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... receipts follow, ending with: "The following is the best of all, acting for fallen hairs, when applied with oil or pomatum; acts also for falling off of eyelashes or for people getting bald all over. It is wonderful. Of domestic mice burnt, one part; of vine rag burnt, one part; of horse's teeth burnt, one part; of bear's ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw

... in white Rosewater, then shake it very well, and use it at your pleasure; when you at any time have washed with it, anoint your face with Pomatum, made with Spermaceti and oyl ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley

... one of half a dozen necklaces, a manuscript of the Gospels, gilt-edged and clasped with jewels; the lofty diadem of pearls on the head carried in front a large gold cross; while above and around it her hair, stiffened with pomatum, was frizzled out half a foot from a wilderness of plaits and curls, which must have cost some hapless slave-girl an hour's work, and perhaps more than ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... curiosity while he opened the lock, and, after hanging it on a nail, slowly raised the lid, and I looked in to see a strange assortment of odds and ends. What seemed to be dead birds were mixed up with tow, feathers, wire, a file, a pair of cutting pincers, and a flat pomatum pot, on which ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... was a human skyscraper, a giant, who had an immense pyramid of tousled hair—a Matterhorn of curls and pomatum—who gloried in its possession and scorned to wear hat, bonnet or cap. When it rained he went out to enjoy a good wetting, and came back a dripping bear. The sight made those of us who had but little hair ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it. Who would ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... mead To make a substitute for arrack Lemon cordial Ginger beer Spruce beer Molasses beer To keep lemon juice Sugar vinegar Honey vinegar Syrup of vinegar Aromatic vinegar Vinegar of the four thieves Lavender water Hungarian water To prepare cosmetic soap for washing the hands Cologne water Soft pomatum To make soap To make starch To dry herbs To clean silver utensils To make blacking To clean knives ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph

... up to the eyes, Which made her look prouder and prouder; His hair stood on end with surprise, And hers with pomatum and powder. The business was soon understood; The lady, who wish'd to be more rich, Cries, Sweet sir, my name is Milwood, And I lodge at the Gunner's in Shoreditch. ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... MOSCHATUS.—This plant is a native of Bengal. Its seeds were formerly mixed with hair powder, and are still used to perfume pomatum. The Arabs mix them with their coffee berries. In the West Indies the bruised seeds, steeped in rum, are used, both externally and internally, as a cure for ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders

... spots, to pluck the bleeding mandrake or scrape the flesh from dead men's bones, as choice ingredients for their spells; how, stealing by night to lonely places, they dug graves with their finger-nails, or anointed themselves before riding in the air, with a delicate pomatum made of the fat of infants newly boiled. These, and many other fabled practices of a no less agreeable nature, and all having some reference to the circumstances in which he was placed, passed and repassed in quick ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... would be this advantage in it, the disciples of Spurzheim would have no trouble of making a map of our bumps at sight; and then think what an immense saving it would be in combs and brushes, to say nothing of pomatum, which some so freely use. I rejoice sincerely to see the sudden rise in crops of hair, and most truly hope they will not have as rapid a fall. Shaving is artificial and injurious, exposing parts to cold that Nature never meant ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... wicked invention; but it required the officer to detect the officer. Privates do not wear such linen as this, which seemeth to me an unreasonably cool attire for the season; nor velvet stocks, with silver buckles; nor is there often the odorous flavor of sweet-scented pomatum to be discovered around their greasy locks. In short, thou art both ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Romeo, was seized with an involuntary fit of laughter, which subjected him to the severe rebuke of his auditors. It happened in the scene of Romeo and the apothecary, who, going for the phial of poison, found it broken; not to detain the scene, he snatched, in a hurry, a pot of soft pomatum. Quick was no sooner presented with it, than he fell into a convulsive fit of laughter. But, being soon recalled to a sense of his duty by the reproofs of the audience, he came forward and made the following whimsical apology:—"Ladies and gentlemen, I could not resist ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... grace of an Irving playing Cardinal Wolsey. Haggard, yes; pale, yes; tremulous, perhaps; but nevertheless glorious in a new cutaway coat, patent-leather shoes, green tie, a rosebud blushing from his lapel, his hair newly cut and laid down in beautiful little wavelets with pomatum, his figure erect, his chin in air, a book beneath his arm, his right hand waving in a delicate gesture of greeting; for Caput had taken O'Leary's suggestion seriously, and had purchased that widely known and authoritative work to which so many eminent ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... Lady Bountiful's sovereign remedy for an inward bruise, and other ever-failing nostrums,—Dr. Killemquick's wonder-working essence, and fallible elixir, which cures all manner of incurable maladies directly minute, Mrs. Notable's instructions how to make soft pomatum, that will soon make more hair grow upon thy head, "than Dobbin, thy thill-horse, hath upon his tail," and many others equally invaluable!!!—the proper appellation for which would be "a dangerous ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... of the letters. At first she hugged the rescued dolls and said nothing. But Papa gave her time to get used to him, and she soon did so. He was very kind and nice, and did not laugh at the children and call them names as Isabel had done, but felt Stella's pulse, recommended pomatum for the scorch on Imogene's forehead, and even produced a little out of his own dressing-case. Best of all, he led Lady Bird upstairs, unlocked a box and showed her a beautiful little Chinese lady in ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... and duellist in the state. Got all his clothes in Paris, and I can see him now, as plainly as if it were yesterday, when he used to come to church in a peachblow brocade waistcoat of a foreign fashion, and his hair shining with pomatum. Yes, he was a great duellist—that was the age of duels. Shot a man the first year he came back ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... chintz curtains lined with pink—he had a mignonette-box in his bedroom window, and the mere sight of his little exhibition of shiny boots, arranged in trim rows over his wardrobe, was a gratification to the beholder. He had a museum of scent, pomatum, and bear's-grease pots, quite curious to examine, too; and a choice selection of portraits of females, almost always in sadness and generally in disguise or deshabille, glittered round the neat walls of his elegant little bower of repose. Medora with dishevelled hair ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... used to sit down in the pit And see you flit like elf or fairy Across the stage, and I'll engage No moonbeam sprite were half so airy. Lo! everywhere about me there Were rivals reeking with pomatum, And if perchance they caught a glance In song or dance, how did I ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... pacing to and fro; professional beggars run shrieking after the stranger; and agents for horses, for inns, and for worse places still, follow him and insinuate the excellence of their goods. The houses where they are selling carpet-bags and pomatum were the palaces of the successors of the goodliest company of gallant knights the world ever heard tell of. It seems unromantic; but THESE were not the romantic Knights of St. John. The heroic ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... had prepared himself for this visit with the utmost care. He had oiled his curly auburn locks with a scented pomatum, and parted them rakishly in the middle. He wore his most aggressive necktie and his yellowest shoes, also his Sunday suit of clothes. With the exception of the necktie and the pomatum, he would not have attracted attention to himself anywhere, and so would ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... be used if the skin is broken. Sal ammoniac, two ounces; rum, one pint; camphor, two drachms. The affected part is wetted night and morning, and when dry is touched with a little simple ointment of any kind—cold cream or pomatum. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... best. We lighted some in a pomatum pot, it burned splendidly, it all burnt away leaving only a tiny ash. But that was only the paste, and if you rub it through ... but of course you know best, I don't know.... And Bulkin's father thrashed him on account of our powder, did you ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... their patriotism. This cap the king was bid to wear. He put it on; and it was matter of complaint against him afterwards by his aristocratic adherents, that he had worn the red cap for three hours. The fact was that he did not feel the cap on the top of his hair, matted with pomatum and powder as hair then was, and forgot it, till his family noticed it on his meeting them again. He declared himself thirsty, and a ragamuffin handing him a half-empty bottle, ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau

... paint—especially in their earlier days—strange fashions; and an extravagant, and fantastic, and meretricious air clings as a consequence to many of their pictures; for the Prince of Wales had then a grand head of hair (his own hair), which he delighted to pomatum, and powder, and frizzle; and, of course, the gentlemen of the day followed the mode; and then the folds and folds of white muslin that swathed the chins and necks of the sitters; and the coats, with fanciful collars and lapels; and ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... the word, ''Eave away, my 'earties;' and sure enough so they did, and pulled me out in a trice. And that's 'ow it was; and I lost a suit o' clo's, for nothing on 'arth would take the oil out, and I didn't need to use pomatum for six months after." ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... long-settled places of business, and which now change hands every week, but never change their character of being divided and sub-divided on the ground floor into mouldy dens of shops where an orange and half-a-dozen nuts, or a pomatum-pot, one cake of fancy soap, and a cigar box, are offered for sale and never sold, were most ruefully contemplated that evening, by the statue of Shakespeare, with the rain-drops coursing one another down its innocent nose. Those inscrutable pigeon-hole offices, with nothing in them ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... always loved to be at church a good while before the rest of the congregation. They punctually obeyed my directions; but when we were to assemble in the morning at breakfast, down came my wife and daughters, drest out in all their former splendour: their hair plaistered up with pomatum, their faces patched to taste, their trains bundled up into an heap behind, and rustling at every motion. I could not help smiling at their vanity, particularly that of my wife, from whom I expected more discretion. ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... when in tumble-down fishers' huts, after one of these good shipwrecks, valuable shawls, but little damaged by the sea, might be found employed as bed-hangings. Boots and shoes were smeared with the finest pomatum. If such things now reach their hands, they know better how to turn them into money. The Strand-commissioners are now on the watch; now it is said to be a real age ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen

... Englishmen,—all voyaging onward together, like the wise ones of Gotham in a bowl. I remember not a single annoyance, except, indeed, that a swarm of wasps came aboard of us and alighted on the head of one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the scent of the pomatum which he had been rubbing into his hair. He was the only victim, and his small trouble the one little flaw in our day's felicity, to put us in mind that we ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... she did not end her sentence and for a moment was worried at not being able to remember where she had put her fifty francs on changing her dress. But she recollected at last: they must be on the corner of her toilet table under an inverted pomatum pot. As she was in the act of rising the bell sounded for quite a long time. Capital! Another of them still! It would never end. The count and the marquis had both risen, too, and the ears of the latter seemed to be pricked ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... played the indispensable part of the handsome Jewess, and was thin, with high cheek bones, which were covered with rouge, and her black hair, which was always covered with pomatum, curled onto her forehead. Her eyes would have been handsome, if the right one had not had a speck in it. Her Roman nose came down over a square jaw, where two false upper teeth contrasted strangely with the bad color of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... carefully greased my prick with pomatum, and put some on her arse-hole; it was the work of a minute, not a word was said. She then stark naked, sat by the side of me on the sofa, began fondling and kissing me, took my hand in hers and rubbed my fingers on ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... prisoners, Mr Reynolds, Mr Moineau, and a lanky, sneaking, turnip-complexioned under-usher, who used to write execrable verses to the sickly housemaid, and borrow half-crowns of the simple wench, wherewith to buy pomatum to plaster his thin, lank hair. He was a known sneak, and a suspected tell-tale. The booby fell a-crying in a dark corner, and we took him with his handkerchief to his eyes. Out of the respect that we bore our French and Latin masters, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... Fleurs des Lys; Blanc de Ville Onctueux.—About 30 grammes of a kind of weak ointment contained in a small pomatum pot prettily ornamented. It is simply a salve made of wax oil, and possibly lard, mixed with a large proportion of zinc oxide, and smelling of inferior otto ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... Tag-rag, who imagined them not to be exactly suitable appendages for counter-jumpers. Thus will it be seen that the space shaved over on this occasion was somewhat circumscribed. This operation over, he took out of his trunk an old dirty-looking pomatum pot. A modicum of its contents, extracted on the tips of his two forefingers, he stroked carefully into his eyebrows; then spreading some on the palms of his hands, he rubbed it vigorously into ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... look," said Mr Burne; and he too focussed his glass. "Why, so it is!" he cried—"just such a one as we used to have upon the pomatum pots. Now, from what gardens can ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... part where trees grew, and the grass was longer, with an occasional weed in it, and where Nature didn't quite look as if an army of horticultural Truefitts were everlastingly clipping at her wild tresses with their scissors and rubbing pomatum and brilliantine on her green leaves. To that comparatively incult part they accordingly directed their steps, and found a pleasant resting-place on a green slope with great trees behind them and others but small and scattered before, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... accident, sure as fate, if you don't." Then in a gentler tone, "It's only a buggy, ma'am; there's plenty of room. There's no possible risk of a pedler's wagon. What on earth should a pedler be doing up here on the side of Cheyenne! Prairie-dogs don't use pomatum or tin-ware." ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge

... possibilities of her maturity. As for the bridegroom, he was a Hebrew of the florid type. His waistcoat was protuberant; he had a red face with red whiskers sprawling all over it; he wore flash jewellery; his hair shone with pomatum; there was that in his bearing which indicated that he followed some sordid calling, such as pawnbroking, or the backing of horses on commission. Yet one could see that these two unattractive persons were really attracted by each other. A great and beautiful miracle had been performed; and the ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... has often been discredited. Yet the substance of it is fairly adumbrated here in the passage beginning, "There are undoubtedly many marks of relaxation in the reins of French government," written fully six years previously. After a pleasing description of Grasse, "famous for its pomatum, gloves, wash-balls, perfumes, and toilette boxes lined with bergamot," the homeward traveller crossed the French frontier at Antibes, and in Letter XXXIX at Marseille, he compares the galley slaves of France with those of Savoy. At Bath where he had gone to set up ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... described. Here, a poor half-starved and almost frightened-to-death brat of a Chimney-sweeper, in haste to escape, had run against a lady whose garments were as white as snow—there, a Barber had run against a Parson, and falling along with him, had dropped a pot of pomatum from his apron-pocket on the reverend gentleman's eye, and left a mark in perfect unison with the colour of his garments before the disaster, but which were now of a piebald nature, neither black nor white. A barrow of nuts, overturned in one place, afforded ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... wild game, and to twenty different kinds of wine; on all of which he expatiates like an epicure. He speaks of the presents made to guests at feasts, the tablets of ivory and parchment, the dice-boxes, style-cases, toothpicks, golden hair-pins, combs, pomatum, parasols, oil-flasks, tooth-powder, balms and perfumes, slippers, dinner-couches, citron-tables, antique vases, gold-chased cups, snow-strainers, jeweled and crystal vases, rings, spoons, scarlet cloaks, table-covers, Cilician socks, pillows, girdles, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... sword-canes," are carried off. Every hole and corner is ransacked; they make the inmates open, or they force open, secretaries and clothes-presses in search of ammunition, the search extending "even to the ladies' toilette-tables". By way of precaution "they break sticks of pomatum in two, presuming that musket-balls are concealed in them, and they take away hair-powder under the pretext that it is either colored or masked gunpowder." Then, without disbanding, the troop betakes itself to the environs and into the country, where it operates ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... a bottle. Shake it before using, and apply it with a flannel. Camphor and borax, dissolved in boiling water and left to cool, make a very good wash for the hair; as also does rosemary water mixed with a little borax. After using any of these washes, when the hair becomes thoroughly dry, a little pomatum or oil should be rubbed in to make it smooth and glossy—that is, if one prefers ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... curate told me, with honeyed words, that in the profession to which I had devoted myself my thoughts ought to dwell upon the best means of being agreeable to God, and not on pleasing the world by my fine appearance. He condemned my elaborate curls, and the exquisite perfume of my pomatum. He said that the devil had got hold of me by the hair, that I would be excommunicated if I continued to take such care of it, and concluded by quoting for my benefit these words from an oecumenical council: 'clericus qui nutrit coman, anathema sit'. I answered him with the names of several ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... But she had proved flirtatious, and her father and mother had spent their later school outlays on her younger brothers and sisters. Daphne Jane had since then found sufficient and glad employ trying to pomatum the frizzles out of her hair, and lounging whole hours on her window-sill to show the result to her rivals and monopolize and cheer the passing toiler with the clatter of her perky wit and the perfumes of bergamot ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... still on his pro-consular throne; he smiles in dockets and demi-officials; he walks up and down his alabaster halls, and out into his gardens of asphodel, and snuffs the air. It is redolent with some rare effluvium; pomatum-laden winds breathe across the daffadown dillies from the warm chambers of the south. A cloud crosses His Honour's face, a summer cloud dissolving into sunshine. "It is the pomade of Saul:—but it is our own glorious David whose unctuous ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... that the Bubi is neglectful of his personal appearance. In his way he is quite a dandy. But his idea of decoration goes in the direction of a plaster of "tola" pomatum over his body, and above all a hat. This hat may be an antique European one, or a bound-round handkerchief, but it is more frequently a confection of native manufacture, and great taste and variety are displayed in ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... on the backs of the British gentry, and their wives wore cushions on their heads, over which they tied their own hair, and disguised it with powder and pomatum: when Ministers went in their stars and orders to the House of Commons, and the orators of the Opposition attacked nightly the noble lord in the blue ribbon: when Mr. Washington was heading the American rebels with a courage, it must be confessed, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... concocted in Gerard's day an ointment with the pulpe of Apples, and swine's grease, and rosewater, which was used to beautifie the face, and to take away the roughnesse of the skin, and which was called in the shops "pomatum," from the apples, "poma," whereof it was prepared. As varieties of the Apple, mention is made in documents of the twelfth century, of the pearmain, and the costard, from the latter of which has come the word costardmonger, as at first a dealer in this fruit, and now applied ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... stockings, and pumps fastened with silver buckles which covered at least half the foot from instep to toe. His small clothes were tied at the knees with ribbon of the same colour in double bows, the ends reaching down to the ancles. His hair in front was well loaded with pomatum, frizzled or craped and powdered. Behind, his natural hair was augmented by the addition of a large queue called vulgarly a false tail, which, enrolled in some yards of black ribbon, hung half-way down ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... full of books and little toys and those thousand trifling household gods which are accumulated in years, and which in their accumulation suit themselves to the taste of their owners. In Grosvenor Square there were no Lares;—no toys, no books, nothing but gold and grandeur, pomatum, powder and pride. The Longestaffe life had not been an easy, natural, or intellectual life; but the Melmotte life was hardly endurable even by a Longestaffe. She had, however, come prepared to suffer much, and was endowed with ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... reproduction, and food.—A singular uniformity of habits is observable amongst barbers. They all live in shops curiously adorned with play-bills and pomatum-pots, and use the same formulary of conversation to every new customer. All are politicians on both sides of every subject; and if there happen to be three sides to a question, they take a triangular ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 18, 1841 • Various

... S. I have lately got the ingenious Authors of Blacking for Shoes, Powder for colouring the Hair, Pomatum for the Hands, Cosmetick for the Face, to be your constant Customers; so that your Advertisements will as much adorn the outward Man, as your Paper ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... other place for them. Her desk and workbox she was fain to place on the floor, for the small dressing-table would accommodate no more than her dressing-case, devotional books, brushes and combs, pomatum-pots, and pinboxes. ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... its being tied, are chiefly illustrated by vase-paintings. At the present day the Greek women of Thessaly and the Isle of Chios wear a head-dress exactly resembling the antique sakkos. The acquaintance of the Greeks with the curling-iron and cosmetic mysteries, such as oil and pomatum, can be proved both by written evidence and pictures. It quite tallied with the aesthetical notions of the Greeks to shorten the forehead by dropping the hair over it, many examples of which, in pictures of both men and women, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... brittle, odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... his limb's symmetry. With regard to Othello's complexion, there is what the Cookery Books call "another way." Chetwood, in his "History of the Stage," 1749, writes: "The composition for blackening the face are (sic) ivory-black and pomatum; which is with some pains cleaned with fresh butter." The information is given in reference to a performance of Othello by the great actor Barton Booth. It was hot weather, and his complexion in ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... this was guarded with gold lace and yellow feathers. She had a white laced apron, purple velvet slippers with red heels, and her lace ruffles were something to look at! And wasn't she patched! and hadn't she powdered her hair, and made it as stiff with pomatum as if it had been starched! Then on the top of this head went a lace cap—it was not a hood—just a little, light, fly-away cap, with purple ribbons and gold embroidery, and in the middle of the front ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt



Words linked to "Pomatum" :   hair tonic, hair grease, brilliantine



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