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Punk   Listen
noun
Punk  n.  
1.
Wood so decayed as to be dry, crumbly, and useful for tinder; touchwood.
2.
A fungus (Polyporus fomentarius, etc.) sometimes dried for tinder; agaric.
3.
An artificial tinder. See Amadou, and Spunk.
4.
A prostitute; a strumpet. (Obsoles.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Punk" Quotes from Famous Books



... evergreens, succeeded at last in forming a temporary shelter. For a long time he despaired of getting a fire, till he at length found some dry cedar-bark, which he finally succeeded in igniting with a piece of punk,* which every backwoodsman carries with him for that purpose. Though the poor fellow had only taken with him provisions for a day's journey, he made a hearty supper, merely reserving a portion for his breakfast, not suspecting that he should fail in reaching his destination. He fully expected ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... shoes were full of feet. I says, "How's Ma?" She answers, "Going some." I doffed my lid and ventured to repeat The breeze had put the weather on the bum. Then she replied, not seeming sore or vexed, "It may not be so punk ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin

... night when Rand started home, strange incantations were going on in Sing's lean-to. In four china bowls punk was burning, and an old Chinaman was muttering weird invocations over the clothes of Digger Dan slowly smouldering in a coal-oil can in the middle of the floor. Hop Sing held one hand in the smoke, raised the other aloft and made a blood-curdling oath of ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... beard and burned Ilmarinen's hands dreadfully, and then it jumped out of their reach and rolled off over field and forest, burning everything in its course. Wainamoinen hastened after it, and at length caught it hidden in a mass of punk-wood. Then he took it and put it, wood and all, in a copper box and hastened off home. Thus ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind

... Flying Corps, Mr. Brown, because the Americans wouldn't have me," replied Thane tersely. "I tried to get in, but they wouldn't pass me. Said I had a weak heart and a whole lot of rubbish like that. It's no wonder the American Air Service was punk. I went over to Toronto and they took me like a shot in the Royal British. They weren't so blamed finicky and old womanish. All they asked for in an applicant was any kind of a heart at all so long as it was with the cause. I don't suppose I ought to say ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... said he, reflectively, "came what you might call talking close to real swells before. I've seen 'em, of course—at a distance. Some of 'em, taking 'em by and large, looked pretty punk, to me; some of 'em was middling, and a few looked as if they might have the goods. But none of 'em struck me as being real live breathing people, same as other folks. Why, parson, some of those dames'd throw ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... up a punk game. Never was much good at golf. But it will help get me back into the rut. Then I 'll sail about the first of August for New York and put a few ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... "Punk!" cut in the arab, dismissing the protest with a switch of his mutilated tail. "I won't take 'naw' fer a answer; an' dis here's de way fer to jump yer wealthy ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple

... the first of December, because that will of his daffy old uncle is to be read then; and the lawyer sent word that Jack Stormways was a big thing in the money that's left. And everybody that's mentioned has to be present when the will's read, or lose their share. That's a punk sort of a job, ain't ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... furnished and decorated, with a long and gaily appointed bar, while the mirrors, pictures, glass, and silverware excited surprise, and would rather have been expected in an older city. There were crowds at the counter, and crowds around the tables, and the air was heavy with the odor of Chinese punk, which was used for cigar-lights, The tinkle of silver coin was heard at the tables, though ounces of gold-dust were quite as commonly used in ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger

... love, and buy for your money. A delicate ballad o' the ferret and the coney. A preservative again' the punk's evil. Another goose-green starch, and the devil. A dozen of divine points, and the godly garter The fairing of good counsel, of an ell and three-quarters. What is't you buy? The windmill blown down by the witche's fart, Or Saint George, that, ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain

... point, with his Indian wife, and her squaw mother dressed in a blanket, and of course babies—the queerest little brown things you ever saw. One of them was tied into a hollow board, and buried to the chin in "punk," by way ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... Winthrop, gravely producing some short sticks of punk from another pocket; and lighting one, ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells

... of explanation, so he went on hastily: "You see, Jack, I somehow got a silly idea in my mind that p'raps this little professor was some sort of an animal trainer, and meant to come up here, just to have things quiet while he did his little stunts. But that was a punk notion for me, all right; there ain't any smell of animals about those boxes, not ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... of the finest twigs, which he rubs between his hands till they are reduced to a fine fibre and nearly dry. Rolling these into a rounded shape, resembling a bird's nest, click! goes his flint and steel—a piece of "punk" is ignited and slipped into the heart of the ball. This, held on high, and kept whirling around his head, is soon ablaze, when it is thrust in among the gathered heap of green plants. Green and wet as these are, they at once catch fire and flame up ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... chopping, and presently he came back with a flat piece of very dry Balsam Fir, a fifteen-inch pin of the same, a stick about three feet long, slightly bent, some dry Pine punk and some ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... "Okay, punk! You asked for it," yelled Wallace. He had been holding a length of chain and now he swung it at Roger. The cadet ducked easily, hopped over the fence, and before Wallace knew what was happening, jolted him with three straight lefts and a sharp right cross. ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell

... hooked. I saw that poor man's hair whiten in a few months. How would you feel, knowing that your daughter had been so degraded by a drug as to sell herself to anybody with enough money to buy her a fix? An innocent, playful sniff at a party, and some punk, probably an addict himself, had trapped her in order to finance his own habit. They talk about cures, but people on the inside know that permanent escape from the trap is as rare as portraits of Trotsky in Russia. Or integrity among ...
— Revenge • Arthur Porges

... I tumbled off the water cart— It was a peacherino of a drunk; I put the cocktail market on the punk And tore up all the sidewalks from the start. The package that I carried was a tart That beat Vesuvius out for sizz and spunk, And when they put me in my little bunk You couldn't tell ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... Jess, bearing a deal of the responsibility for the success of the piece on her young shoulders. "If we are punk, then nobody will come back to see the show a second time, or advise other folks to see it. And if we don't make a heap of money for the Red Cross, after all the advertising we've had, what ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison

... in a solution of nitre and then thoroughly dried. This string, when once lighted, burns very slowly and a piece one inch long is sufficient for the purpose. Some performers prefer a small piece of punk, as it requires no preparation. Still others use tinder made by burning linen rags, as our forefathers used to do. This will not flame, but merely smoulders until the breath blows it into a glow. The tinder is made by charring ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... bays; but most are now deserted and corner posts of old time houses alone are seen, and beds of stinging nettle cover ancient kitchen middens, and spirea and elderberry strive for space where once red strips of salmon hung in the smoke of punk-wood fires, and stillness reigns where once the Indians' mournful song ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael

... same General Character to various Periodicals. Sometimes he would get away by himself and read the Thing over again, and shake his Head and Remark: "Well, if they are Right, then I must be Wrong, but to me it is Punk." ...
— More Fables • George Ade

... our most gifted sires. The only way known to them was the primitive one of rubbing two sticks together and producing fire by friction—a somewhat tedious process—or with a flint, a heavy jackknife, and a bit of punk, a fungous growth, the best of which for this purpose is obtained from the beech. Gun flints were most generally used. One of these was placed on a bit of dry punk, and held firmly in the left hand, while the back of the closed blade of the knife thus brought into contact ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight

... first grew high, And men fell out they knew not why? When hard words, jealousies, and fears, Set folks together by the ears, And made them fight, like mad or drunk, 5 For Dame Religion, as for punk; Whose honesty they all durst swear for, Though not a man of them knew wherefore: When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded, 10 And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick, Was ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... young man. They had tried to inoculate him with a love of poetry at school, but it had not taken. Until he was thirty he had been satisfied to class all poetry (except that of Mr George Cohan) under the general heading of punk. Then he met Margaret, and the trouble began. On the day he first met her, at a picnic, she had looked so soulful, so aloof from this world, that he had felt instinctively that here was a girl who expected more from a man than a mere statement that the weather was great. It so chanced ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... "Punk. There's so much dust you can't make a track. What we need is rain, so we can get some good plain prints. That's the only way to teach a tenderfoot. Jeb says dust ought to be good enough, ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... Australians and Tasmanians, who employ, as we have just seen, the rotary process. There are women among these peoples whose special mission it is to carry day and night lighted torches or cones made of a substance that burns slowly like punk. When, through accident, the fire happens to get extinguished in a tribe, these people often prefer to undertake a long voyage in order to obtain another light from a neighboring tribe rather than have recourse to a direct ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various

... fast, but not that fast. A couple of slugs jarred him as he came across the room, but before the punk could change his aim Ned had the gun in his hand. That was the end of that. He put on one of the sweetest hammer locks I have ever seen and neatly grabbed the gun when it dropped from the limp fingers. ...
— Arm of the Law • Harry Harrison

... mouth in a fine dust, absorbing all the moisture, so that I had to blow it out like flour. Nothing ever made me so thirsty in my life, and even after rinsing out my mouth I felt for a long time as if I were chewing punk or cotton. The fruit of the tamarind only added to my torments by setting all my teeth on edge. When we reached the next spring I fell off my horse for fear he would get all the water. Only after I had satisfied my thirst ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... The lectures, I understand, are given and may even be taken. But they are quite worthless and are not supposed to have anything much to do with the development of the student's mind. "The lectures here," said a Canadian student to me, "are punk." I appealed to another student to know if this was so. "I don't know whether I'd call them exactly punk," he answered, "but they're certainly rotten." Other judgments were that the lectures were of no importance: that nobody ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... fury first grew high, And men fell out, they knew not why; When hard words, jealousies, and fears Set folks together by the ears, And made them fight, like mad or drunk, For dame Religion as for Punk, Whose honesty they all durst swear for, Tho' not a man of them knew wherefore; When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded, And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick, Was beat with fist, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... it without trying,—accidentally and unwillingly,—that, of course, is a thing for which any fool is fit. You knock out the ashes from your pipe on a fallen log; you toss the end of a match into a patch of grass, green on top, but dry as punk underneath; you scatter the dead brands of an old fire among the moss,—a conflagration is under ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... appeal was not made to punk. A sermon is a collaboration between the pew and the pulpit; happy is the speaker with listeners who are satisfied with nothing but ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... about in the bush and twisting his head in pain. "There isn't any mud in Lancaster County now. The whole place is dry as punk!" ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... quite an earful," he continued. "Business for gents in my profession was very punk here on the Main Stem that season. By reason of the dishonest police it was mighty hard for an honest grafter to make a living. It certainly was depressing to trim an Ezra for his roll and then have to cut up the net proceeds with so many central-office guys that you had to go back and borrow car-fare ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... man cheated you in that cow. Why, she's the awfullest old beast that ever stood on four legs Dry as punk; hasn't got a drop of milk in her. That's a positive fact. I've been trying to milk her for three or four hours, and can't get a drop. Might as well attempt to ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... obtained. He showed him how it could be made, by rapid friction, with dry sticks. Another way he revealed to him was by the striking together of a flint stone and a piece of iron; sparks of fire could thus be produced which, caught in punk, would soon become a blaze. So now the Indians do not have to cover up the fires as they were formerly obliged to do; thanks to Nanahboozhoo's dreams, they can make it fresh whenever they ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young

... A {wannabee}; not hacker slang, but used among crackers, phreaks and {warez d00dz}. Not as negative as {lamer} or {leech}. Probably derives from a similar usage among punk-rockers and metalheads, putting down those who "talk the talk ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... mine, and on those occasions all the officers thoroughly enjoyed themselves for five minutes. The little marquis went into the drawing-room to get what he wanted, and he brought back a small, delicate china teapot, which he filled with gunpowder, and carefully introduced a piece of punk through the spout. This he lighted and took his infernal machine into the next room, but he came back immediately and shut the door. The Germans all stood expectant, their faces full of childish, smiling curiosity, and as soon as the explosion had shaken ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... Their songs and dances would break out soon enough. They piled fagot after fagot round Isaac's feet. The Indian warrior knelt on the ground the steel clicked on the flint; a little shower of sparks dropped on the pieces of punk and then—a tiny flame shot up, and slender little column of blue smoke floated ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey

... the blacksmith-shop and fumbled for a match. Just as he was about to strike it he heard the swish of oiled clothes passing, and waited for some time. Then, igniting his punk and hiding it under his coat, he opened the door to listen. The wind had died down now and the rain sang musically upon the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... Nelsen," said the job scout, getting impatient. "We handle just about everything lunar—except in the Tovie areas. Without us, you're just a lost, fresh punk!" ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... reflected, "and with my flint spearhead, I can make fire at any time. Wood is plenty, and there's lots of 'punk.' So the first step in reestablishing civilization is secure. With fire, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... a scene-prop, knocked down a stand of Indian-clubs, and got out into the alley. I was mad at her at first, but afterward I always respected her for snubbing me. I never saw her again, never saw her name again. As for the big electric lights, I was a punk prophet. But her name has stood out in electric lights in my—my memory. I suppose she left the stage soon after. She ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... tell you that I feel pretty punk now over the way I've treated your crowd, Jerry. This is mighty white in you, and that's what, to act as you have with me. I'm right sorry now I ever laid out to hurt you fellers. I ain't goin' to keep it up no longer, and that's dead certain. ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen

... salary—for breaking! Mary V thought that her father ought to be told about the way Johnny was spending all his time—writing silly poetry about Venus. It was the first she had ever known about his being a poet. Though it was pretty punk, in Mary V's opinion. She was glad and thankful that Johnny had refrained from writing any such doggerel about her. That would have been perfectly intolerable. That he should write poetry at all was intolerable. The ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... now—flaunted long, black arms in the gale; they creaked, they swished, they droned, they crackled with frost. It was coming on dusk. The deeper reaches of the forest were already dark. Horses and teamsters, sawyers, road-monkeys, axemen, swampers, punk-hunters and all, floundered from the bush, white with dry snow, icicled and frosted like a Christmas cake, to the roaring bunk-house fires, to a voracious employment at the cooks' long tables, and to an expanding festival jollity. Town? Sure! Swamp's End for Christmas—the lights ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan

... the river! I mout 'a' gin it a sort o' a cookin', ef I'd liked; for I hed my punk pouch on me, an' I ked 'a' got firin' from the dead bark o' the cyprus. But I war too hungry to wait, an' I ate it raw. The fish war a couple o' pound weight; an' I left nothin' o' it but ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... grew high, And men fell out they knew not why; When hard words, jealousies and fears, Set folks together by the ears, And made them fight like mad or drunk, For Dame Religion as for punk: Whose honesty they all durst swear for, Though not a man of them knew wherefore: When gospel-trumpeter surrounded With long-ear'd rout to battle sounded, And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, Was beat with ...
— English Satires • Various

... talked and they argued, some for and some against,— And they progressed no further than they were when they commenced. Until in a burst of eloquence a queer little piece of punk Arose in his place and said, "I think we ought to show some spunk. And I for one have decided, although I am no shirk, That to-day is a legal holiday and not ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells

... reduced to the slavery from which their forefathers had fled, but they were happiest in the dimness of the forest. The hunter's name was Toenne. His real work was to cultivate the earth, but he also could do other things. He collected herbs, boiled tar, dried punk, and often went hunting. The dancer was called Jofrid. Her father was a charcoal burner. She tied brooms, picked juniper berries and brewed ale of the white-flowering myrtle. They were ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... flip" of the country dance, and take a bowl of egg-nog at the banquet. It was a modern banquet for men only. Music flowed; wine sparkled; the night was far spent—it was in the wee sma' hours. The banquet was given by Col. Punk who was the promoter of a town boom, and who had persuaded the banqueters that "there were millions in it." He had purchased some old sedge fields on the outskirts of creation, from an old squatter ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... harlot, prostitute, strumpet, courtesan, wench, Cyprian, bawd, drab, punk, woman of ill ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... found the letters Ethie writ, one to me, and one to Dick, and Dick's was too much for him. He lies like a punk of wood, makin' a moanin' noise, and talkin' such queer things, that I guess you or somebody or'to come and see to him a little. I send to you because there's no nonsense about you, and you are made of the right ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... bilked bookseller, with a meagre terrified countenance, that looks as if he had written for himself, or were resolved to turn author, and bring the rest of his brethren into the same condition. And lastly, in the form of a worn-out punk, with verses in her hand, which her vanity had preferred to settlements, without a whole tatter to her tail, but as ragged as one of the muses; or as if she were carrying her linen to the paper-mill, to be converted into folio books of warning to all young maids, not to prefer poetry to good ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve

... six little Bunkers had! Daddy Bunker was up before any of them, to see that little fingers were not burned by pieces of punk or stray ends of fire-crackers, and before breakfast Russ and Laddie had made enough noise, their mother said, to last ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope

... grave, where Froude often found him murmuring: "If I had only known! If I had only known!" For all his supreme gifts and rare talents were marred by harshness. Intellectual brilliancy weighs light as punk against the gold of gentleness and character. Half Carlyle's books, weighted by a gentle, noble spirit, would have availed more for social progress than these many volumes with the bad taste they leave in the mouth. ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... Punk money I'm making. Thank heaven there will be one more good year of the game, 1912, but I don't know about 1913. Looks like the exhibition game would blow up then—nearly everybody that wants to has seen an aeroplane ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... in bed. You gotta sleep off a thing like that, or you feel punk next day," remarked Glenn, meditatively twirling the last drops of eau-de-vie around in his tumbler. Then he swallowed them and smacked his lips. "She'll come around all O. K. when she ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... dealer in merchandise but a specialist in adjusting the book to the human need. Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' book. A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error. A book that is good for me would very likely be punk for you. My pleasure is to prescribe books for such patients as drop in here and are willing to tell me their symptoms. Some people have let their reading faculties decay so that all I can do is hold a post mortem on them. But most are still open ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... said the colonel, with more vigour, "till I'm punk. I can't stand a knockdown blow. I couldn't stand your going away. I ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... to string a bow and twirl a stick in a hole punched into another stick. Next easiest way is to find a piece of flint, strike two pieces together to make sparks and hope one will set a wad of punk on fire. If no other way, rubbing two dry sticks together will do it if you can rub them fast enough, get them hot enough to make the powdered fibers burst into flame. Or if they'd had some of those quartz crystals from the top of the mountain ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... never sent me out from anywhere. I only saw your four turrets in the distance, and strayed in here by accident. I was born in an island in the Greek Archipelago; I am by profession an auctioneer, and my name is Punk." The king sat on his throne for seven long instants like a statue; and then there awoke in his mild and ancient eyes an awful thing; the complete conviction of untruth. Every one has felt it who has found a child obstinately false. He rose to his height and took down ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... But some poor punk's sure red in the face, I'll bet," the man-about-town said with a chuckle. "Those high-strung paramour types always raising a ruckus. They never do pass the interview. Don't know why they even ...
— The Perfectionists • Arnold Castle

... penceless poor and now and then a priest Who, lacking cunning or good common sense, Got caught in flagrante and out of pence. Then in high glee the Devil filled a cup And drank a brimming bumper to the pope: Then—"Here's to you," he said, "sober or drunk, In cowl or corsets, every monk's a punk. Whate'er they preach unto the common breed, At heart the priests and I are well agreed. Justice is blind we see, and deaf and old, But in her scales can hear the clink of gold. The convent is a harem in disguise, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... sank to her knees and arranged her fire-making apparatus, the bow, the socket and the drill. Then, while she drew the bow steadily and slowly, making the drill revolve in the socket which was full of punk, Bessie brought small, dry sticks and a few leaves, so that when the spark came in the punk, it would have fuel ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart

... by fire once, owing to the careless use, by a deck-hand, of a piece of punk on the night before the Fourth of July; this same deck-hand being nearly blown up early the very next morning by a bunch of fire-crackers which went off—by themselves—in his lap. He did not know, for a second ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton

... you sturve in the meanwhile. Cook the critter afore lettin' it kim to thet. Ye've got punk, an' may make a fire o' the sage-brush. I don't intend to run the risk o' sturvin' myself; an' as I mayn't find any thin' on the way, I'll jest take one o' these sweet-smellin' ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... see over the bow, he discovered the serpent, which was nearly six feet long, working slowly down a dead log towards the water. Springing to his feet on the bow, he struck down with his weapon, directing the fork at the neck of the reptile. The outside of the log was nothing but punk, or the operation would have been a failure. As it was, the two points of the implement sunk into the wood, and the snake was pinned in the opening at ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... immediately take them up and try again. Neither man had a tenth the deftness that is common to adults on the earth. In size and strength alone they were men; otherwise—it cannot too often be repeated—they were mere children. All told, it was over two hours before the punk began ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... fighting against another ship, he wore a strap over his shoulders to which were fastened large pistols. In those days, cannon were touched off by means of a slow match, a kind of cord that burns slowly like punk. When Blackbeard went into battle, he twisted some of these slow matches or cords round his head, and stuck some of them under his hat. The ends of these matches were burning, and they looked like fiery, hissing snakes. With his beard turned back ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston

... deerskin underwent before it was soft and pliable enough for making into garments, was the "smoking." This was effected by digging a round hole in the ground, and lighting in it an armful of rotten wood or punk; then sticks were planted around the hole, and their tops brought together and tied. The skins were placed on this frame, and all openings by which the smoke might escape being carefully stopped, in ten or twelve hours they were thoroughly cured ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... receive the tonsured monk, Let him take his pittance; And the parson with his punk, If he craves admittance; Masters with their bands of boys, Priests with high dominion; But the scholar who enjoys ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... threatening manner, but Roger did not move. "Listen," the spaceman snarled, "stay out of my way, you young punk, or I'll blast you." ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman

... from Concord and Lexington, was the return of Mr. Perkins to his home. A piece of burning punk lay in the road, and presently he stepped on that. The fleeing forces had doubled on their tracks, also, and a fire-cracker exploded near him. Then a torpedo. And there was no enemy in sight to take revenge ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... written on slips of paper and put into the hands of one of the greatest josses. These disappear and then the joss either nodded or shook his head in answer. On the altar, or altars, were several brass and copper vessels in which the worshiper left a sandalwood punk burning in such a position that the ashes would fall on the fine sand in the vessel. When one of these became full it was emptied into an immense bronze vase on the balcony, and this, in turn, was emptied into the ocean. The Chinese take good care of their living and never forget their dead. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... The Chinamen were already there, sitting on the edges of their bunks. On the floor, at the bottom of the ladder, punk-sticks were burning in an ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... logs was from six to eight inches in diameter and from eight to ten feet long; the other was from ten to twelve inches in diameter and about ten feet long. About midway across the larger log a cuneiform notch or cut about six inches deep was made, and in the wedge-shaped notch punk was placed. The other log was drawn rapidly to and fro in the cut by four strong men chosen for the purpose until the punk was ignited by the friction thus produced. Before and during the progress ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... kind, with lightish blotches among their darker green, like Georgia melons nowadays, and some almost striped in gray and green, and some were those big, round sugar melons, nearly black. They were all sizes, but most of them were large, and you need not "punk" them to see if they were ripe. Anybody could tell that they were ripe from looking at them, and the muskmelons, which were the old-fashioned long kind, were ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells

... I should not see it starve, for the mother's sake: For, if she were a punk, she was good-natured, I ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... him in headlong. I followed less hastily. It was as black as a setter's mouth within, the gun fire having snuffed the old man's candle out. But we had flint and steel and tinder-box, and when the punk was alight, Jennifer found the candle under foot and gave it me. It took fire with a fizzing like a rocket fuse, and was well blackened with gunpowder. When the flint had failed to bring the firing spark, the old man had set his piece off ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... suits you," he told Molly, "they's a chap over to Hereford who's a wolf on carvin'. My letterin's punk. When yore mines pay you c'ud have it ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... of the punk always at the folded feet of the idol was almost suffocating. The place had other odors less noxious and less sweet. Chinamen were lounging in the room as if it had been a place of rest. Three priests were on their knees before the joss swaying forward till their foreheads ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... warmed like wine, and her ready wit, repartee, and ability to thaw all social ice and lead conversation along any line, were accomplishments which perhaps have never been equaled. The women who "entertain" often only depress; they are so glowing that everybody else feels himself punk. And these people who are too clever are very numerous; they seem inwardly to fear rivals, and are intent on working while it ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... in the right, my venerable cropshin, they will indeed; the tongue of the oracle never twang'd truer. Your courtier cannot kiss his mistress's slippers in quiet for them; nor your white innocent gallant pawn his revelling suit to make his punk a supper. An honest decayed commander cannot skelder, cheat, nor be seen in a bawdy-house, but he shall be straight in one of their wormwood comedies. They are grown licentious, the rogues; libertines, flat libertines. They forget they are in the statute, the rascals; they are blazon'd there; ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson

... seemed commissioned the warmth of her zeal was not likely to work harm. What effect it had was in the main good. But the material in her hands was only combustible in a slow way; the plutocratic conscience is rarely inflammable—for the most part it smolders like punk. Nor was Mrs. Frankland herself in any danger of being carried by her enthusiasms into fanaticism of action. However her utterances might savor of ultraism, she was conservative enough in practical matters to keep a sort of "Truce of God" ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... [34] we do not know why, nor do the Chinese themselves give a very clear explanation of this popular pair. The pop of champagne corks, the rattle of glasses, laughter, cigar smoke, and that odor peculiar to a Chinese habitation—a mixture of punk, opium, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... Their brats cannot be any other; Great wits, and great braves, Have always a punk for ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... "I have been thinking it over for days. You cannot look me in the face, Comrade Brown, and say that there is a single feature which would not be better away. I mean in the paper, not in my face. Every one of these punk pages must disappear. Letters must be despatched at once, informing Julia Burdett Parslow and the others, and in particular B. Henderson Asher, who, on brief acquaintance, strikes me as an ideal candidate for a lethal ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... to a bit of punk, and then he blew at it, looking not unlike Aeolus as represented on those old Dutch charts that smell of schiedam and snuff, and give one mermaids and angels instead ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... down, candles lighted, and the room not only hot but full of cigarette smoke and smoke from about forty of these here punk sticks that smoldered away on different perches. It had the smell of a nice hot Chinese laundry on a busy winter's night. About eight or ten people was huddled round the couch, parties I could hardly ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... PISTOL. This punk is one of Cupid's carriers; Clap on more sails; pursue; up with your fights; Give fire; she is my prize, ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... raging haste, only to fail and die soon after; or not truly to die, he imagined, but to flee back unseen to its dancing, flickering source at the valley mouth. Other substances he found that it would consume slowly, but pertinaciously. While into yet others, such as dry turf and punk, it would eat its way and hide, maintaining therein for a long time a retired but potent existence, ready to leap into radiant life under certain provocation. His invention stimulated by these experiments, he had made himself ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... hast thou found a trick for him? if thou hast not, look, here's a line to direct thee. First draw him into bands[362] for money, then to dice for it; then take up stuff at the mercer's; straight to a punk with it; then mortgage his land, and be drunk with that; so with them and the rest, from an ancient gentleman make him ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... room came Long Sin attired in an elaborate silken robe. He advanced and kowtowed before the dais with its strange figure, and laid down an offering before it, consisting of punk sticks, little dishes of Chinese cakes, rice, a jar of oil, and some cooked chicken and pork. Then he ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... Carnegie Medal for Heroism is waiting for the Caller who has the immortal Rind to tell a poetical Pest that his output is Punk, the Author found himself smeared with Compliments after each ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... mean, he's a fresh young punk, that's all. He'll learn, O.K. He'll climb right up, once he's got the right attitude. Why, ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett

... it, den somebuddy gotter go off ter de next plantation sometime ter git live coals. Some er de mens could wuk de flints right good, but dat wuz er hard job. Dey jes rub dem flint rocks tergedder right fas' en let de sparks day makes drap down on er piece er punk wood, en dey gits er fire dat ...
— Slave Narratives, Administrative Files (A Folk History of - Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves) • Works Projects Administration

... leadership, this new venture continued for ten years and was indeed a school and a workshop. The workers had gardens, flowers, books. There were debates, classes, and much intellectual exercise that struck sparks from heads that were once punk. John Tyndall was one of the teachers and also a worker in this mill. Let the fact stand out that Owen discovered Tyndall—a great, divinely human nautilus—and sent him sailing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... lived a boy who has not experienced the feelings that must come to a rooster that has been in a hard battle and lost the greater part of his tail feathers, he is one who has never looked over his record and endeavored to rub out the punk spots. There are but few boys who have not an exaggerated ego, and it is well that they are so constituted, they will better battle with the rebuffs and the disappointments that ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... jogs to the Play-house and chats with the Masques, And thence to the Rose where he takes his three Flasks, There great as a Caesar he revels when drunk, And scours all he meets as he reels, as he reels to his Punk, And finds the dear Girl in his Arms when he wakes, What Life can compare to the jolly Town-Rakes, the ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... freezing of the ice-cream. He had been invited to stay to dinner and to see the fireworks in the evening, and when, after dinner, it grew so hot that Father Blossom declared the sun would certainly set fire to the sparklers without any punk, the jolly captain loaded "all hands" on board The Sarah and took them off for ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley

... punk players, one and all. Why make simpletons of yourselves tomorrow?" she inquired of Joan and Natalie. "You need at least a month's drill to put you in trim. Proffy Smarty Alec will chase ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... anythin g agin and Pink made me come back. We couldnt nether on us get hold of Will but now we got him I hope he l go straite, Miss Hildy Pink wanted to write this for me but I druther write myself you aint punk tuated it she says. She can punk tuate it herself better n I can I an ti ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

... times—once when a robber had tied him up and he'd have starved if we hadn't found him, and another time when he'd fallen down his cellar steps in the winter-time and his fire had gone out, and we had started a fire for him with punk, using the thick lenses of his reading glasses for a magnifying glass—which any boy can do if he can get some real dry punk and a magnifying glass.... First you focus the red hot light which shines from the sun through ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens

... Entail, which supplies the Aristophanes of Heaven and Gabriel many a quiet smile. The stork is certainly a bird that has no sense. Power that is earned is never ridiculous, but power in the hands of one who is strange to it is first funny, then fussy, and soon pathetic. Punk is a useful substance, and only serves as metaphor when it ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... does it again I'm going into the hall," said Morton disgustedly, wiping his damp countenance on the edge of Clint Thayer's bedspread. "You're a punk juggler, Larry." ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... one of the pleasure-houses we intruded upon a domestic hearth smelling of punk and pestilence. A child fled with a shrill scream at our approach. This was the hospital of the quarter. Nine cases of small-pox were once found within its narrow walls, and with no one to care for them. As we explored its cramped wards our path was obstructed ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... go," he commented philosophically and, lighting his pipe from one of the sticks of burning punk placed at intervals along the ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman



Words linked to "Punk" :   adolescent, sleazy, strong-armer, teen, rock-and-roll, felon, rock 'n' roll, cheap, punk rock, cheesy, tinder, toughie, rock music, malefactor, punk rocker, bully, teenager, crummy, chintzy, tough, lighter, goon, kindling, bum, crook, stripling, colloquialism, spunk, tinny



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