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Sportsman   Listen
noun
Sportsman  n.  (pl. sportsmen)  One who pursues the sports of the field; one who hunts, fishes, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sportsman" Quotes from Famous Books



... where his duckstand was located, in order that flocks of migrating birds might fly over his grave every autumn. He did not have to die, to become a dead shot. A comrade once said of him: "Yes, B——- is a great sportsman. He has peppered everything from grouse in North Dakota to his best friend in ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... genial face of Sir Roger, but there is nothing in it inconsistent with the village squire of the Spectator, Indeed, Mr. Trollope says of the old squire, "He was a good man too, was old Adolphus Meetkerke; a good landlord, a kindly natured man, a good sportsman, an active magistrate, and a ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... trees and flowers, made rapidly for the door Lucy and David must pass. She found it wide open. She half shut it, and slipped behind it, listening like a hare and spying like a hawk through the hinges. And, strange as it may appear, she had an idea she should make a discovery. As the finished sportsman watches a narrow ride in the wood, not despairing by a snap-shot to bag his hare as she crosses it, though seen but for a moment, so the Bazalgette felt sure that, as the couple passed her ambush, something, either in ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... was the master who looked after the music of the school, a fine cricketer and keen sportsman. Had nothing gone wrong, he would have conducted at the ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... state of the Funds, the result of an election, or the downfall of a ministry. Horse-races do not seem to have possessed any interest for him, and, in fact, he scarcely knew one kind of horse from another. He was never an adept at field-sports, though very ambitious of being thought a sportsman. Once, when staying in the country, he went out with a friend's gamekeeper to shoot pheasants, and after wasting a vast amount of powder and shot upon the air, he was only rescued from ignominy by the sagacity of his companion, who, going ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... among the grass, an argol remarkable for its size and siccity, he felt at his heart a thrill of pleasure, a sudden emotion, that gave a moment's happiness. The delight caused by the discovery of a fine argol may be compared to that of a sportsman finding the trace of his game—of a child contemplating the long sought for bird's nest—of an angler, who sees a fish quivering at the end of his line; or, if we may be allowed to liken great things to small, we would compare ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... nothing to fear from the prostrate bodies which spat fire at other birds. The stillness of the marsh was absolute save for the voices of the water fowl mingled in the wild, sweet clamor so dear to the heart of every sportsman. As the day began to die, hung about with ducks and geese, we walked slowly back across the rice fields, to the yellow fires before our tents. It was our last camp for the year and, as if to bid us farewell as we journeyed toward the tropics, the peaks of the great ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews

... and football clubs up and down the county. He could not be expected to have cared very greatly for the Rev. Charles, who had been at no period of his life and in no possible sense of the word a sportsman. As he conducted the service his mind speculated as to the next vicar (the Rev. Tom knew an excellent fellow, stroke of the Cambridge boat in '12, who would be just the man) the possibility of the frost breaking ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... favoured us all with a long and minute disquisition upon the evils and dangers attendant upon damp feet, delivered with the most imperturbable gravity, amid the jeers and laughter of Mr. Huntingdon and my uncle, who, leaving the prudent sportsman to entertain the ladies with his medical discussions, sallied forth with their guns, bending their steps to the stables first, to have a look at the horses and ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... the people to listen to any details connected with Dr. Livingstone's death. Some return for their kindness was made by Farijala shooting three buffaloes near the town: meat and goodwill go together all over Africa, and the liberal sportsman scores points at many a turn. A cow was purchased here for some brass bracelets and calico, and on the twentieth day all were sufficiently strong on ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... a flock of aerial torpedoes, propelled by the explosion of one of their number, rose and scattered as if at the approach of a hostile sportsman. Another explosion blew what seemed to be a million rockets ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various

... cold enough to strike a chill into one's very marrow; yet this indefatigable sportsman had come more than a thousand miles from his native country to enjoy himself in this way. He was a genuine specimen of an English snob—self-sufficient, conceited, and unsociable; looking neither to the right nor the left, and terribly determined not to commit himself by making acquaintance ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... been told what jungles old NIMROD called his own, Or studied the "Sportsman's Record" he scratched on a shoulder-bone; I haven't heard what he shot with nor even what game he slew, But I know he was fore-forefather to fellows like me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various

... very Hordwell Cliffs, for exploring which there is now established a society of subscribers and correspondents. They can remember, too, when, on the first appearance of Bewick's "British Birds," the excellent sportsman who brought it down to the Forest was asked, Why on earth he had bought a book about "cock sparrows"? and had to justify himself again and again, simply by lending the book to his brother sportsmen, to convince them that there were rather more than a dozen sorts of birds (as they then held) indigenous ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... "Hullo!" said Betty's fellow-sportsman, making his appearance some time later. "Getting on for grub-time, eh? How have you got on? Why, I thought you came out to fish, and not to talk! ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... shooting themselves or cutting their throats. Marcus, who shot himself in the gun-room, was an exception to both rules; he never minded blood; he could cut up a deer. But Hugo refused to be a doctor, because he could not stand the sight of an operation; and even as a sportsman he never liked to pick up or handle the game he had shot himself; he said it sickened him. He rushed from that room last night, I feel sure, in a physical horror at the deed he had done; and by now he is as far as he can get from London. The sight of his act drove him away; not craven fear of ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... broken-down cab-horses,—so the mug tells us—than birds. Well, they're more in his line very likely; that means, in his own chosen words, He's more fit for a hammytoor knacker than for that great boast of our land, A true British Sportsman! Great Scott! It's a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various

... three hours passed in fruitless search Cuffe determined to return to his ship. He was a keen sportsman and had brought a fowling-piece with him in his gig, with a half-formed design of landing and whiling away the time, until the westerly wind came, among some marshes that he saw near the shore, but had been persuaded ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... seemed a kind of Admirable Crichton. He was said to be wonderfully handsome, a great scholar—he had taken a double first at college; a great athlete—he had been captain of the Oxford boat at the University race; a very promising speaker who had already made his mark in the House of Lords; a sportsman who had shot tigers and other large game in India; a poet who had published a successful volume of verse under a pseudonym; a good solider until he left the Service; and lastly, a man of enormous wealth, owning, in addition to his estates, several coal mines and an entire ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... requires, however, five or six hours to partially see its curiosities, and of course would take far more time to investigate it properly. The only living creatures met within it, appear to be bats, which are not very numerous. Should a sportsman visit the place for several days, his gun will generally procure him some venison and wild pig to feast upon, or to present to the village priest, or to forward to his Mariquina or Manilla acquaintances. At Boroboso, also, some distance from Mariquina, he is sure of finding similar game, and in greater ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... statesman and sportsman, a member of the Portland family; entered Parliament as a Whig, turned Conservative on the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832; served under Sir Robert Peel; assumed the leadership of the party as a Protectionist when Sir Robert Peel became a Free-trader, towards ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... importance by Turgenev, A Sportsman's Sketches, dealt with the question of serfdom, and it wielded tremendous influence in bringing about its abolition. Almost every succeeding book of his, from Rudin through Fathers and Sons to Virgin Soil, presented vivid pictures of contemporary ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... possessed, in addition, many characteristics less common, perhaps, but more generally attractive, he could hardly have executed it with the same facility and completeness, still less have found in it matter for this thoroughly entertaining narrative. His ardor as a sportsman and a naturalist seems to have sprung from a stronger, independent love of "wild life," an instinctive preference for the haunts and habits of uncivilized races, apart from the pursuits for which they give scope. This may ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various

... Strand. This morning Godfrey's room was empty, his bed had never been slept in, and his things were all just as I had seen them the night before. He had gone off at a moment's notice with this stranger, and no word has come from him since. I don't believe he will ever come back. He was a sportsman, was Godfrey, down to his marrow, and he wouldn't have stopped his training and let in his skipper if it were not for some cause that was too strong for him. No: I feel as if he were gone for good, and we should never see ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... undertake work at the bar on Saturdays, in order to devote that day to hunting. He used to say that his great incentive to hard work at his profession in early days was his desire to keep hunters, and he retained his keenness as a sportsman as long as he was able to indulge it. Of his personal characteristics, it may be said that he was a spare man, with a Scottish, not an Irish, cast of countenance. He was scrupulously neat in his personal appearance, faultless in bands and necktie, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... it appears there's a chappie unknown for whom Maud has an absolute pash. It seems she met this sportsman up in Wales last summer. She was caught in the rain, and he happened to be passing and rallied round with his rain-coat, and one thing led to another. Always raining in Wales, what! Good fishing, though, here and there. Well, what I mean is, this cove was so deucedly ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... Jung's shooting-party, I must remark, in justice to him as a sportsman, that he considers nothing less than a deer to be game at all. Tiger or rhinoceros shooting is his favourite sport, and he looks upon shooting a parrot, a snipe, a hawk, or a partridge as being equally unworthy of the ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant

... from these questions and answers that Mr. Burke had testified to nothing to his discredit and had conducted himself as a gentleman and a sportsman according to his best lights. Yet owing to the subtle suggestions contained in Mr. Tutt's inflections and demeanor the jury leaped unhesitatingly to the conclusion that here was a man so ignorant and debased that if he were not deliberately lying he was being made a cat's-paw by the police ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... their disposal were quite insufficient to atone for the Army's difficulties in point of numbers and in point of ground. It would appear as if we enjoyed no real ascendancy over the enemy either in aircraft or mining. Bombing was most unfamiliar to us on arrival. It appeals to the English sportsman greatly and came to be brilliantly practised, but it was rarely a determining element. The Battalion bombers on Gallipoli were officially known as Grenadiers. Steel hats were, of course, unknown. They would have saved many lives. Visual signalling, ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst

... known civilization—all civilization that has succeeded in obtaining acquaintance with the world at large—is very great. Even American travelers do not go up there in great numbers, excepting those who intend to settle there. A stray sportsman or two, American or English, as the case may be, makes his way into Minnesota for the sake of shooting, and pushes on up through St. Paul to the Red River. Some few adventurous spirits visit the Indian settlements, and pass over into the unsettled regions of Dacotah and Washington Territory. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... doing good to others. The personal qualifications and outfit for a single man who would thus settle among the natives should be various. If he wished to secure their attention and admiration, he should excel as a rifle shot and sportsman. If musical, he should play ' the Highland bagpipes. He should be clever as a conjurer, and be well provided with conjuring tricks, together with a magic lantern, magnetic battery, dissolving views, photographic apparatus, coloured pictorial illustrations, &c., &c. He should be a good surgeon ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... between the mountains, not marked on the map, whose very existence was unsuspected by me until I had a few days before accidentally stumbled upon it. Indeed, in all the world there is hardly another sheet of water so likely to escape the eye, not only of the tourist and the sportsman, but also of the hunter and the trapper. Day by day as I paddled over the lake or explored its shores the conviction grew upon me that the place had never before been visited by any human being. The more ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various

... and were perfect cover for the poor wee beastie. I sometimes say what I think, but such views are naturally neither understood nor taken seriously. And the Major, bless him! likes me to do this type of thing because he thinks it is good for me. "We must really try and teach you to be more of a sportsman, you know. Sporting instinct. What? Every Englishman should have it!" This all very good-humouredly, and I answer, laughing: "Aha, sir. You see I know better." Which merely stirs some jovial spirit to stand up and propose: "Gentlemen, ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson

... with a stroke of the blade. Gerard bought one and practised with it. Denys quietly filed and ground his bolt sharp, whistling the whilst; and when they entered a gloomy wood, he would unsling his crossbow and carry it ready for action; but not so much like a traveller fearing an attack, as a sportsman watchful not to miss ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... mine, was the debateable cat. An impulse of murderous rage possessed me. I took an old golf-ball from my pocket and hurled it as hard as I could at the potential destroyer of my peace. The black cat was no sportsman. It dodged, and disappeared hastily on the Trumpington side. At the same moment from behind a large clump of hollyhocks I heard the sudden cry of a strong man in pain, followed by a stilled oath. I squatted down instantly behind ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various

... when I turned, and with perfect good nature freed my arm and sprang to his feet, bowing with hand upreached to me. His eye had lost its peculiar stare, and shone now with what seemed genuine interest and admiration. He seemed ready to call me a sportsman, and a good rival, and much as I disliked to do so, I was obliged to say as much for him in my ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... he is married and has a family; is 44 years of age, and due for his pension from the service. He is as strong as most and is an undefeated old sportsman. Being a chief stoker, R.N., his original job was charge of one of the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... I. The Tourist's and Sportsman's Guide to Eastern Canada and Newfoundland, including full descriptions of Routes, Cities, Points of Interest, Summer Resorts, Fishing Places, &c., in Eastern Ontario, The Muskoka District, The St. Lawrence Region, The Lake St. John ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... schoolmaster, and the wandering weaver out of work or disinclined to work. In his rags, with his thin face and red "goatee" beard, with his hazel wand and his home-made reel, there is withal something kindly about this poor fellow, this true sportsman. He loves better to hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep; he wanders from depopulated stream to depopulated burn, and all is fish that comes to his fly. Fingerlings he keeps, and does not return to the water "as pitying their youth." Let us not grudge him his sport as long ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... Doctor lent me his heavy Reilly rifle with which I seldom failed to bring an animal or two home to the camp, and that I found the Fraser shell answer all purposes for which it was intended. The feats related by Capt. Speke and Sir Samuel Baker are no longer matter of wonderment to the young ]sportsman, when he has a Lancaster or a Reilly in his hand. After very few trials he can imitate them, if not excel their Leeds, provided he has a steady hand. And it is to forward this end that this paragraph is written. African game require "bone-crushers;" ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... crossed the stream and rose upon the opposite hill, making somewhat at random towards the village of Cours. On my way I started numerous coveys of red partridges from juniper and box and other low shrubs. Had I been a sportsman carrying a gun I could have made a splendid 'bag,' but these chances generally fall to those who cannot profit by them. I wondered, however, at the lack of poaching enterprise in a district so near to Cahors. It is not often that one meets even in the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... for today," was one of the sayings of an old sportsman-friend of mine, when he had had unusually good luck—come home thoroughly tired, but with satisfactory ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... I'm afraid we are in for a bad pull again to-morrow, luckily the wind holds. I shall be very glad when Bowers gets his ski; I'm afraid he must find these long marches very trying with short legs, but he is an undefeated little sportsman. I think Oates is feeling the cold and fatigue more than most of us. It is blowing pretty hard to-night, but with a good march we have earned one good hoosh and are very comfortable in the tent. It is everything now to keep up a good marching pace; I trust we shall be able to ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... does not want gold, he has no use for it; and, besides, as a rule, Indians never have anything to do with mining. He and Hunting Dog really come as hunters, and he has an understanding with me that when the expedition is over I shall pay them the same as they would earn from any English sportsman who might engage them as guides and hunters, and that I shall take their shares in whatever we may make. I need not say that if it turns out as well as we expect, the Indians will get as many blankets and as much ammunition as will ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty

... sportsman would not be likely to shoot a gentleman in his own house, with bird-shot, so long as quails ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... be under any great concern for his property; the sportsman seldom does any thing with his arms—but—carry them. We are more famous for making, than using ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... felt of a badger in consistence, and in colour a reddish brown, like the hue of the heather-blossom. His limbs seemed of great strength; nor was he otherwise deformed than from their undue proportion in thickness to his diminutive height. The terrified sportsman stood gazing on this horrible apparition, until, with an angry countenance, the being demanded by what right he intruded himself on those hills, and destroyed their harmless inhabitants. The perplexed stranger endeavoured to propitiate the incensed dwarf, by offering ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... the twilight sky. The passion of the spring has few more pleasing exemplars. The madness of the season, the abandon of the mating instinct, is in every move and note. Ordinarily the woodcock is a very dull, stupid bird, with a look almost idiotic, and is seldom seen except by the sportsman or the tramper along marshy brooks. But for a brief season in his life he is an inspired creature, a winged song that baffles the eye and thrills the ear from the mystic regions of the ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... the Sioux had now three times that many, they had learned too much of the shooting powers of these seasoned troopers, and deemed it wise to avoid close contact. The Indian fights well, man for man, when fairly cornered, but at other times he is no true sportsman. He asks for odds of ten to one, as when he wiped out Custer on the "Greasy Grass," or Fetteman at Fort Phil Kearny,—as when he tackled the Gray Fox,—General Crook—on the Rosebud, and Sibley's little party among the pines ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... plains. He stepped up by her side and was about to take her hand after delivering himself of this gallant speech, but she quickly drew it away. Passing through a covert as they neared the little settlement, Riel's sportsman companion walked ahead, leaving the other two some distance in the rear. The ravishing beauty of the girl was more than the amorously-disposed stranger could resist, and suddenly throwing his arms around her he sought to kiss her. But the soft-eyed fawn ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins

... active-looking man, dressed like an ordinary English sportsman bound for a day's shooting on the moors; and, after pressing us to enter the house and partake of refreshment, which we declined, he at once called up a couple of hard, muscular-looking men, gave them an order or two, and the result was that these two shouldered ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... and yet we feel that their prosaic lives are governed, restrained, and rectified by a deep-rooted faith in the authority of the Catholic Church. "The qualities most obvious are not those of the mystic, but of the manly out-of-door sportsman who may seem to be nothing more than a bluff Englishman who rides to the hounds and does his ordinary duties. Yet one of these red-coated cavaliers would, I have not the least doubt, if occasion called for it, show himself capable of the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... frivolous, the sportingly inclined, the seekers after gross pleasures, the Garden has meant the Arion Ball, or the French Students Ball, the Horse Show, Dog Show, Cat Show, Poultry Show, Automobile Show, Sportsman's Show, the Cake-Walk, the Six-Day Bicycle Race, or events of the prize-ring from the days of Sullivan and Mitchell to those of Willard and Moran; Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show, or the circus, the Greatest Show on Earth, with ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... bids fair to remain undisposed of, like the disputes of Hogarth's doctors, till the patient is dead, we revert to Colonel Dodge's book, and to those of its pages which it is clear he wrote most en amateur. Soldier and student, he is above all a sportsman. It is delightful to follow him over the plain and (in spirit and untearable trousers) into the chaparral. Anywhere between the Rio Grande, the Missouri and Bridger's Pass he seems to be as much at home as on his own farm. All its live-stock is familiar ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... the season is arriving for the sportsman, angler, yachtsman, and lover of nature to visit the wild and solitary beauties of Gamle Norge, nothing could be better timed than the pleasant gossiping Month in Norway, by J. G. Holloway, which forms this month's issue ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... defenceless and does not need to be laid low with a dagger-thrust. To seek and find for one's larder a torpid prey incapable of resistance is, if you like, less meritorious than heroically to stab the strong-jawed Rose-chafer or Rhinoceros-beetle; but since when has the title of sportsman been denied to him who blows out the brains of a harmless Rabbit, instead of waiting without flinching for the furious charge of the Wild Boar and driving his hunting-knife into him behind his shoulder? Besides, if the actual assault is without danger, the approach is attended with a difficulty ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... well-timed shrapnel would have been very damaging. Still, we have been very lucky even so, only one man wounded, and no guns, waggons or horses touched. Once, when trotting out of action, a shell burst just beside our team—an excellent running shot for the sportsman who fired it! It made a deafening noise, but only resulted in chipping a scratch on my mare's nose with a splinter. She thought she was killed, and made a great fuss, kicking over the traces, etc.; so that we had to halt ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... thought of the slaughter that awaited not themselves, but their foes. The idea that they, free men, could be vanquished by wretched slaves was as remote from their minds as the idea that the hare can be dangerous to him is from the mind of the sportsman. But they saw themselves compelled to shoot down in cold blood thousands of unfortunate fellow-creatures; and this excited in them, who held man to be the most sacred and the highest of all things, an unspeakable repugnance. Had this been told me before the battle, I should not have understood ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... came, and with it came The promised party, to enjoy its sweets. The corn is cut, the manor full of game; The pointer ranges, and the sportsman beats In russet jacket:—lynx-like in his aim; Full grows his bag, and wonderful his feats. Ah, nutbrown partridges! Ah, brilliant pheasants! And ah, ye poachers!—'T ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... finch, condemned to chirp out its wretched existence in this airless underground region. In reply to our pitying exclamation, we were told that the bachelors' friend who occupied the corner apartment on the ground-floor was a great sportsman, and devotedly fond of la caccia; that these unhappy little prisoners were employed by him in the season as decoy-birds; that they were kept in these dungeons during the other months of the year; and that they were BLINDED to make them sing better and be more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... knocking the old raider on the head and standing off his twenty ruffians, I could not imagine a way of turning him from his set purpose. And at that, I had not a weapon of any kind. I was the goods, and the game old sportsman intended to deliver me, right side up, perhaps, but all in one piece and ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... and make a jolly good dish, a pleasant addition to the ceaseless round of mutton and beef to which the dead level of civilisation reduces us. Coursing is capital, the harriers first-rate. Now every man who walks about the fields is more or less at heart a sportsman, and the farmer having got the right of the gun he is not unlikely to become to some extent a game preserver. When they could not get it they wanted to destroy it, now they have got it they want to keep it. The old feeling ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... for it. The insulted sportsman was casting about for the cruelest retort he could think of, when, as it happened, Miss Violet bethought her of looking round the corner of the boiler to see whether they were getting near Ryde; and at the same moment ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... the use?" he said to himself when these thoughts recurred to him; and he smothered them as he walked towards his room—this was in the chambers of a brother militia officer who played at being a barrister and lived in the Temple. As he was a sportsman and an Alpine climber, he did not live very much in London, and finding that his subaltern, Kavanagh, was going to lodge in the capital for the sake of reading with a crammer, and having a spare bedroom which he did not want, and was thinking of letting off if he found a ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... the two gendarmes, with the rain streaming from their cocked hats; you see them, chilled and soaked, making their way along the path among the vineyards, bent almost double in the saddle, their horses almost covered with their long blue cloaks. You think of the belated sportsman hastening across the heath, pursued by the wind like a criminal by justice, and whistling to his dog, poor beast, who is splashing through the marshland. Unfortunate ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... suddenly to her heart, for through an opening in the hedge she caught sight of the man who for the past two months had occupied all her waking thoughts. Norbert was waiting for something with all the eagerness of a sportsman, his finger on the trigger of ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... habitue of the clubs and an eager sportsman, Santos-Dumont at once won the liking of the French people, and attracted attention wherever people gave thought to aviation. Liberal in expenditure of money, and utterly fearless in exposing his life, he ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... disappointing. So much so that in the last of the series a soured sportsman on one of the benches near the roof began in satirical mood to whistle the "Merry Widow Waltz." It was here that the red-jerseyed thinker for the first and last time came out of his meditative trance. He leaned over the ropes, and ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... be somewhat imagined, from the circumstance that all who were not of the body-guard were downright plotters and malignant traitors. At length the death penalty was tacitly abolished, owing to the timely thought, that were strict sportsman's justice to be dispensed among such subjects, ere long the Nimrod King would have little or no remaining game to shoot. The human part of the life-guard was now disbanded, and set to work cultivating the soil, and raising potatoes; the regular ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... prove an invaluable manual to the true sportsman, whether he be a tyro or expert."—Book ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... that were looking for him, were he once but a musquet shot from them; but that he was somewhat afraid of the highlanders who were against him. He was well used to walking in Italy, in pursuit of game; and he was even now so keen a sportsman, that, having observed some partridges, he was going to take a shot; but Malcolm cautioned him against it, observing that the firing might be heard by the tenders who were hovering upon ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... rude for asking these questions. When pretty eyes are employed to see, and pretty lips to tell of, game for one sportsman in preference to another, the neglected one might be excused for seeking to know in what way fortune has been kind ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins

... passing through the incidents of the story, had made the acquaintance of Mr. Lowell Woolridge, a Fifth Avenue millionaire and magnate. He had formerly been a well-known sportsman; but he had abandoned the race-course, though he kept up his interest in yachting. He was the owner of a large sailing schooner; and through this craft Louis and his mother became acquainted with the yachtsman's family, consisting of his wife, ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... was a Scottish sportsman, brought up from boyhood in familiarity with the Zulus. His knowledge of their language and customs was minute, and his book, privately printed, contains much interesting matter. ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... on your faces where you stand, and take your chance. As a general rule this proved sound enough, but in this especial case it was obvious to the Officers that the longer they delayed, the heavier would be the casualty list, a fact which the men did not understand. The British soldier is a sportsman, and understands the game as well as his Officer. He only wants to be led; and in battle, scarcely that. Driving is an Art absolutely ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... river; the ice was firm enough. I was on the main road now. And I walked on, thinking over the porter's story. That scene at the hut—what did it amount to, after all? It merely showed that one of the two men was big and strong, the other a little, would-be sportsman heavily built behind. But the Captain was an officer—it was something of that sort, perhaps, he had been thinking. Perhaps he ought to have thought a little more in other ways while there was yet time—who can say? It was his wife! who had ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... comrades accompanied him armed only with native spears, for their object was not to hunt the animal, but to discover one if possible, and let the professor know so that he might go after it with his rifle, for they knew that he was a keen sportsman as well ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... the opposing slope, one of which hit her, for she rolled over, then picked herself up again, roaring. As a matter of fact, it came from the Captain's rifle, but Higgs, who, like many an inexperienced person was a jealous sportsman, declared that it was his and we did not think it worth ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard

... made use of her saddle-horses to accompany him in his hunting and shooting excursions. Like a true wife, she boasted to her mother of his skill as a shot: the very day that she wrote he had killed forty head of game. (She did not mention that a French sportsman's bag was not confined to the larger game, but that thrushes, blackbirds, and even, red-breasts, were admitted to swell the list.) And the increased facilities for companionship with him that her riding afforded increased his tenderness for her, so that she was happier ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... was a good-looking, long-legged, long-moustached Major, who, conforming beautifully to type, was a soldier, sportsman, and loyalist, as had been his ancestors before him. He had fought in the Mutiny as a lad of nineteen, and had been wounded in the thigh in a cavalry charge in a subsequent fight on the Afghan Frontier. Dick, like Horatius, "halted ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... see how a sportsman can really love creatures," she said. "If you love them, you want them to live, as you say. Oh! oh, Captain Roger, please quickly stop! Look! What wonder ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... at one another in blank dismay, and seemed to feel just as though the enemy were to "bag" them, as a sportsman does the game he has brought down. I did not despair yet. From the wheel-house I had surveyed the surroundings, and a plan had occurred to me by which I hoped to work the Adieno out ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic

... in a world where all was new? The kind chief officer, bidding us not trust negro boats on such a trip, lent us one of the ship's, with four honest fellows, thankful enough to escape from heat and smoke; and away we went with two select companions—the sportsman and our scientific friend—to land, for the first time, in ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... make this vicinity their favorite place of resort in the autumn months. The effect of this nourishing food is to make the flesh of the birds so fat, so white, and so tender, that a caution is always given to a young sportsman to fire only at such as fly very low, for if shot high in the air they are bruised to pieces and rendered unfit for eating by ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie

... an easy walk. Though he had seemed, on the whole, disinclined to go in the Keldale direction that morning, nevertheless he continued to head that way till at last he was on the high road with the little town behind him; and then his pace altered again. He stepped out now like the sportsman he was, and was doing a good four miles an hour by the time he was out of ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... I lost mine. You win." Harrigan was a true sportsman. He had no excuses to offer. He had dug the pit of humiliation with his own hands. He recognized this as one of two facts. The other was, that had Courtlandt extended himself, the battle would have lasted about one minute. It was gall and wormwood, ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... partly wooded, and vegetation grows there with tropical luxuriance; creeping plants climb from tree to tree, and form an almost impenetrable undergrowth, which swarms with game secure from the sportsman. A score of villages are dotted about in the clearings, and are surrounded by carefully cultivated fields, in which durra predominates. An unknown Pharaoh of the XIIIth dynasty built, near to the principal village, a temple of considerable size; it covered an area, whose limits ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... resorted to for obtaining her acquiescence; as matters stood, there was all the difference that there is between slaughtering a tame and unresisting animal, and pursuing wild game, until the animation of the sportsman's exertions overcomes the internal sense of his own cruelty.[I-E] The same idea occurred to ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... rose to propose the toast of the evening. He said that although Mr. Shweitzer was called upon to fight against the English people, the town had no ill-will against him personally; they all knew him as a good fellow, a good sportsman, and an honourable business man. During the time he had been in Brunford they had opened their doors to him and received him as an honoured guest, and although the unfortunate war had taken place, they had nothing but good feeling towards Mr. Shweitzer. ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking

... cornets, Hendrik Von Bloom and Arend Van Wyk, each endeavouring to wear the appearance of old warriors, are present in the camp. Although both are passionately fond of a sportsman's life, each, for certain reasons, had refrained from urging the necessity or ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... turkey, too—grandest of all game birds—is on the professional hunter's list for the larder; the lynx and panther he will kill for their pelts; but squirrels, racoons, rabbits, and other such "varmints," he disdains to meddle with, leaving them to the amateur sportsman, and the darkey. ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... would have been blasted indeed could cursing have blighted it, to whom the game of detective seemed to possess the fascination of the chase; and so successful was he that his baffled opponents could not view the matter dispassionately, nor accept their defeat in sportsman-like spirit. I knew him later; he had a saturnine appearance, not calculated to conciliate a victim, but he liked a joke, especially of the practical kind, and for the sake of one successfully achieved could forgive an offender. Night surprises, inroads on ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... campaign in the East Worcestershire Division have been greatly brightened by the decision of the well-known sportsman, Mr. Otis Q. Janaway, to stand as an Independent Candidate with the express purpose of speeding-up the British Legislature. Mr. Janaway, who graduated in sociology at the University of Pensacola, and has recently ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... remarked Ellsworth. "He calls it murder, to catch a trout with a common rod and a natural fly. He will scarcely be the man to bring in the sea-serpent; he would go after it though, in a moment, if a regular European sportsman were to propose ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... cheerful little bachelor's establishment in Mercer street, with my old friend and comrade, Henry Archer. Many a frown of fortune had we two weathered out together; in many of her brightest smiles had we two reveled—never was there a stauncher friend, a merrier companion, a keener sportsman, or a better fellow, than this said Harry; and here had we two met, three thousand miles from home, after almost ten years of separation, just the same careless, happy, dare-all do-no-goods that we were when we parted in St. James's street,—he for the West, ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)

... or two of the shining marks which disasters at sea seem invariably to involve have lived to tell the Lusitania's tale. Vanderbilt, the sportsman, is gone. Genial Charles Klein, the playwright, is gone. That erratic American literary genius, Elbert Hubbard, is gone, and with him a wife to whom he seemed particularly devoted. And Charles ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... coloration, the animal is not able thus to secure concealment, it nevertheless exhibits the instinct of crouching which is of benefit to all its kind, although, from the accident of its own abnormal colouring, this instinct is then actually detrimental to the animal itself. For example, every sportsman must have noticed that the somewhat rare melanic variety of the common rabbit will crouch as steadily as the normal brownish-gray type, notwithstanding that, owing to its abnormal colour, a "nigger-rabbit" ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... and I am not going to speak of it. I don't consider it a subject to be treated lightly. It was in about the thickest of it that I heard from a man I know in Ireland. He is a little old horse-coping sportsman with a red face and iron-grey whiskers, who has kept hounds all his life; or, rather, he has always had hounds about, on much the same conditions that other men have rats. The rats are indubitably there, and feed themselves ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... he sets at defiance, and boasts of his destruction of La Navidad, and of his plan to destroy Isabella; Ojeda he respects and holds in honour, as being the only man in the island brave enough to come into his house and carry him off a captive. There is a good deal of the sportsman in Caonabo. ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... trench. Think of it for a moment. He appealed to their sporting instinct; he turned their thoughts from death and wounds and introduced a jest into every dug-out that night; and he indicated, without boasting, that he was going to be first over the parapet. He made it certain that every sportsman in the company—and what British regular is not—would strain every nerve to be first across. And the cream of the jest was that, stalwart athlete that he was, he was first across himself! The same may be said of the officer; he wins more than obedience ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan

... wild turkeys lifted their long necks with that peculiar cry of half-doubting surprise so familiar to a sportsman, then all was still ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... about mated pairs; about moths and birds and other creatures (as well as men-things) finding each other and living and working together; about a tiger that had mourned for many seasons alone, after some sportsman had killed his female; about another rollicking young tiger pair that leaped an eight foot wall into a native yard in early evening, made their kill together of a plump young cow, and passed it up and over ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... more or less closely associated with the Lake Poets by residence or social affiliation. John Wilson, the editor of Blackwood's, lived for some time, when a young man, at Elleray, on the banks of Windermere. He was an {239} athletic man of out-door habits, an enthusiastic sportsman, and a lover of natural scenery. His admiration of Wordsworth was thought to have led him to imitation of the latter, in his Isle of Palms, 1812, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... in Bhaugulpore, I went out frequently fishing in the various tanks and streams near my factory. My friend Pat, who is a keen sportsman and very fond of angling, wrote to me one day when he and his brother Willie were going out to the Teljuga, asking me to join their party. The Teljuga is the boundary stream between Tirhoot and Bhaugulpore, and its sluggish muddy waters teem with alligators—the regular square-nosed ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... For the sportsman game in abundance generally lies within reach, and nothing of its kind is more delightful than an afternoon with the spring snipe, or a shooting trip of a few days in company with ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... duck hunter who was concealed in the bushes mistook his feet for a pair of ducks and fired at them. Luckily the shot struck the heavy rubber soles of his dress and no damage was done. Boyton rose up in the water with a torrent of forcible comments in English, and the frightened sportsman rapidly ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... somptueux."—Littre. The allusion, of course, is to Don Quixote, Part II. chap. xx.—"Donde se cuentan las bodas de Bamacho el rico, con el suceso de Basilio el pobre."] With what glee he raids through his domains, and what signs of destruction and massacre mark the path of the sportsman! His hand is infallible like his glance. The spirit of sarcasm lives and thrives in the midst of universal wreck; its balls are enchanted and itself invulnerable, and it braves retaliations and reprisals because itself is a mere flash, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... other bird. A consultation afterwards took place respecting the fate of these poor tremblers, when it was humanely determined that they should be taken in a basket to some distance, and liberated, which was accordingly done. A keen sportsman would not approve of this forbearance; but perhaps none of the doctors had taken out a license ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... lived at Bass Cove, where he shot wild ducks, took some to town for sale, and attracted the attention of a portly gentleman fond of shooting. This gentleman went duck shooting with Joe, and their adventures were more amusing to the boy than to the amateur sportsman. ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... felt myself taking it as one gentleman would take a rag from other gentlemen—not as a bit of a sneak who would tell the truth to save his face. A couple of chaffing old beggars they were, but they had found me a topping dead sportsman of their own sort. Be it remembered I was still uncertain whether I had caught something of that alleged American spirit, or whether the drink had made me feel equal at least to Americans. Whatever it might be, it was rather great, and I was prepared to face ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... yards apart. One side of the point they call "Bay," and the other "River." The sportsmen look out carefully from side to side, and the moment any ducks are seen in motion, the cry is given "bay" or "river," according to the side from which they are approaching. Each sportsman, the moment he "views the ducks," crouches down in his blind as much out of sight as possible, waiting till they are nearly overhead, then, rising with his murderous weapon, lets drive at them the moment they have passed. As they ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... have a bite at least as often as once a week or his passion will cool and he will put up his tackle. The tiger-sportsman must find a tiger at least once a fortnight or he will get tired and quit. The elephant-hunter's enthusiasm will waste away little by little, and his zeal will perish at last if he plod around a month without finding a member of that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... excellent shot himself, he had been in some degree the instructor of his sons; and, although, owing to the wooded nature of the country, the facilities afforded to the enjoyment of his favorite pursuit in the orthodox manner of a true English sportsman, were few, still, as game was every where abundant, he had continued to turn to account the advantages that were actually offered. Both Gerald and Henry had been his earlier companions in the sport, but, of late years and especially ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson



Words linked to "Sportsman" :   athlete, jock, sportsmanship, sportswoman, sport



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