Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Swash   Listen
noun
Swash  n.  
1.
Impulse of water flowing with violence; a dashing or splashing of water.
2.
A narrow sound or channel of water lying within a sand bank, or between a sand bank and the shore, or a bar over which the sea washes.
3.
Liquid filth; wash; hog mash. (Obs.)
4.
A blustering noise; a swaggering behavior. (Obs.)
5.
A swaggering fellow; a swasher.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Swash" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the cook. His imagination, excited by the frequent reading of novels of travel, had made him conceive a type of heroic, gallant, dashing sailor—a regular swash-buckler capable of swallowing by the pitcherful the most rousing drinks without moving an eyelid. He wanted to be that kind; every good ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... be that she gloried in her shame, like other fallen creatures; for her large, slanting oval hawse-pipes and boot-top stripe gave a fine, Oriental sneer to her face-like bow, and there was slur and insult to respectable craft in the lazy dignity with which she would swash through the fleet on the port tack, compelling vessels on the starboard tack to give up their right of way or be rammed; for she was a large craft, and there was menace in her solid, one-piece jib-boom, thick as an ordinary ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... the slow drift of the tide-current. The prolonged roar of its fall comes with startling effect, and heavy swells are raised that haste away in every direction to tell what has taken place, and tens of thousands of its neighbors rock and swash in sympathy, repeating the news over and over again. We were too near several large ones that fell apart as we passed them, and our canoe had narrow escapes. The seal-hunters, Tyeen says, are frequently lost in these sudden ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... fairly justified himself of the reviewer in his own day, and at this time the people who assailed him have something like a right to sleep in peace. In private life one of the most amiable of men, and distinguished for courtesy and kindness, he was a swash-buckler in controversy. He had a trick of being in the right which his opponents found displeasing, and he was sometimes cruel in his impatience of stupidity and wrong-headedness. Scarcely any continuance in ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... deepest, she assuredly conceived and cherished a bitter loathing. But there was one man who had always been ready to champion her cause, the daring, reckless, ruffianly James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who nevertheless was no mere swash-buckler, but according to Scottish standards of the day, a man of education [Footnote: Lang, Hist. Scotland, ii., p. 168.] and even, it would seem, of some culture. From this time, Bothwell was her one ally. She had the policy and the self-control to profess a desire for reconciliation even with ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... the scream of tempest and the crash of thunder. Dreary uplands, the hiss of rain, the sough of drifting snow, the patient plod of a mule along a perilous trail. And then the jungle: its discordant uproar, its hammering of frogs, its hoots and howls, the dismal swash of flood waters. A monotonous ebb and flow of life, punctuated by sudden flares of fight. Then a long, mournful ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel

... day, no sun, with occasional splatters of rain and a persistent crash of seas over the weather rail and swash of water across the deck. With my eyes glued to the cabin ports, which gave for'ard along the main deck, I could see the wretched sailors, whenever they were given some task of pull and haul, wet through and through by the boarding seas. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... which none are ready, dashes in, and with it tumble ashore, in one great wreck of humanity, small craft and large, stout hulk and swift clipper, helm first, topsail down, forestay-sail in tatters, keel up, everything gone to pieces in the swash of ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... of the guard, standing motionless in the swash of the rout, like rocks in running water, held out till night. They awaited the double shadow of night and death, and let them surround them. Each regiment, isolated from the others, and no longer connected with the army, which was broken on all sides, died where ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... that the rusted hinges will creak a warning and the wooden halves begrudgingly divide, and that from under the slewed arch will issue a most gallant swashbuckler with his buckles all buckled and his swash swashing; hence ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... voices, and shouted till our lungs were exhausted, but no answer came, the only sounds we heard being the thrapping and swash of the waves against our boat. Five minutes—which seemed hours—passed, and then we suddenly lost sight of the barque's headlight, and saw the dull gleam of those aft shining through the ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... at Ocracoke, waiting for a chance over "the Swash," the crew of the Mary having little to do, were generally engaged in looking after their physical comforts by laying in a stock of shell-fish. Oysters were found in abundance all along shore, and of excellent quality; ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... the warm light from the stove. Too, he remembered how he and his companions used to go from the schoolhouse to the bank of a shaded pool. He saw his clothes in disorderly array upon the grass of the bank. He felt the swash of the fragrant water upon his body. The leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody in the wind ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... a bar, or 'swash,' which stretches inside Ocracoke Inlet, (at that time the only passage to the sea,) the vessels take in but a part of their cargoes at Newbern, while lighters with the remainder accompany them across the 'swash,' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... had fallen short of his printed promise. The hurricane had come by night, and with one fell swash had made an irretrievable sop of everything. The circus trailed away its bedraggled magnificence, and the ring was cleared for ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... greyness out ahead and the deck whitens all awash, and the "old man" shivers in his oilskin coat as he hangs on to a pin in the rail to watch us. The poop is wet and gleaming, wet with the spray of following seas, and as our ship rolls the swash of shipped seas hisses, and her cleanness is as the cleanness of something newly varnished. Once and again as she rolls (the wind now quartering) the scuppers spout geyser-like and gurgle. As she ran like a beaten thing she wallowed a little, dived, scooped up seas and shook them off. And ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... Bethnal Green," written long before it was printed in 1659, the following:—"As God mend me, and ere thou com'st into Norfolk, I'll give thee as good a dish of Norfolk dumplings as ere thou laydst thy lips to;" and in another passage of the same drama, where Swash's shirt has been stolen, while he is in bed, he describes himself "as naked as your Norfolk dumplin." In the play just quoted, Old Strowd, a Norfolk yeoman, speaks of his contentment with good beef, Norfolk bread, and country home-brewed ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt

... Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors, The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw, Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan, These ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... of the bed, and every time I flew up, thinking my hour had come, I bumped my head severely against the little shelf at the top, evidently put there for that express purpose. At last, after listening to the swash of the waves outside, wondering if the machinery usually creaked in that way, and watching a knot-hole in the side of my berth, sure that death would creep in there as soon as I took my eye from it, I dropped asleep, and ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott

... is an aggressive sheet. It calls George William Curtis 'the Apostle of Swash.'"—New York ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... after being wounded the first thing that met my ears was the roar of musketry and the boom of cannon, with the continual swish, swash of the grape and canister striking the trees and ground. I placed my hand in my bosom, where I felt a dull, deadening sensation. There I found the warm blood, that filled my inner garments and now trickled down my side as I endeavored to stand upright. I had been shot through the left lung, and ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... Mount, and when he desired victuals he would wade across the tides to the mainland and furnish himself forth with all that came in his way. The poor folk and the rich folk alike ran out of their houses and hid themselves when they heard the swish-swash of his big feet in the water; for if he saw them, he would think nothing of broiling half-a-dozen or so of them for breakfast. As it was, he seized their cattle by the score, carrying off half-a-dozen fat oxen on his back at a time, ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel

... "Oh, a sorter swash-bucklin' Spanish don—the kind whut likes ter dress up, an' play the dandy. He's got a pink an' white complexion, the Castilian kind yer know, an' wears a little moustache, waxed up at the ends. He's about two inches taller than I am, with no extra flesh, but ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish

... form of Pantomime there were many other personages in these dumb shows which we never had in the English Pantomimes. To note a few of them:—The Captain, a bragging swash-buckler; the Apothecary, a half-starved individual with a red nose; and a female soubrette, who acted for her mistress, Columbine, similar duties as what Clown performed as valet for his master. The Doctor brought at first on the stage ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... yer could cut it 'Thout reachin' a foot over-side, The dory she'd nose up ter butt it, And then git discouraged an' slide; No noise but the thole-pins a-squeakin', Or, maybe, the swash of a wave, No feller ter cheer yer by speakin'— 'Twas lonesomer, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln

... ladies were never invited to invade the cricket's corner, where we were permitted to beguile the hours in gossip, song, and story until the scrub-women had cleaned the rest of the big basement and "the first low swash" of the suds and brush threatened the legs of our chairs. Then, with a parting anathema on the business of slaves that toiled when honest folk should be abed, we would ascend the stairs and betake ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... charming little river, in the wilds of the West, near the Mississippi. I went down that way to-day by the Iron Mountain Railroad—was switch'd off on a side-track four miles through woods and ravines, to Swash Creek, so-call'd, and there found Crystal city, and immense Glass Works, built (and evidently built to stay) right in the pleasant rolling forest. Spent most of the day, and examin'd the inexhaustible and peculiar sand the glass is made of—the original whity-gray stuff in the banks—saw the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... sends none a warfaring on their own charges." The tide crept up upon this second martyr like the death-chill, but her heart was strong and fearless in the Lord. Her voice arose sweetly above the swash of the waves, reciting Scripture, pouring forth prayer, and singing Psalms. The tide swelled around her bosom, ascended her naked neck, touched her warm lips, yet the heavenly music continued. But now a breaker dashes over the uplifted face; the voice is silenced; ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... down an ass, by all means," said Barker calmly; "but please explain what you mean. I told you not to buy in the Green Swash Mine, and now I suppose you have gone and done it, because I said it might ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... live as students ought to do—viz., temperat, abstemious, and plaine and grave in the apparel; but to live like gentlemen, to keep dogs and horses, to turne their studies and coleholes into places to receive bottles, to swash it in apparell, to wear long periwigs, &c., and the theologists to ride abroad in grey coats with swords by their sides: the masters have lost their respect by being themselves scandalous, and keeping company ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson

... bodyguard. Its members elected to be known as the Alemannia, and invited her to accept the position of Ehren-Schwester ("honorary sister"). Lola was quite agreeable, and reciprocated by setting apart a room in her villa where the swash-bucklers could meet. Not to be outdone in paying compliments, the Alemannia planted a tree in her garden on Christmas Day. Their distinguishing badge (which would now probably be a black shirt) was a red cap. As was inevitable, they were very soon at daggers drawn with the representatives ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... basin, and catching occasional glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass, whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play or as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The other children about the tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... up nearly to the body of the wagon, and the swift ripples deluded the eye into almost conviction that horses, vehicle, and all were not gaining an inch in forward progress, but drifting surely down. They came up out of the depths, however, with a tug, and a swash, and a drip all over, and a scrambling of hoofs on the pebbles, at the very point aimed at in such apparently sidelong fashion,—the wheel-track that led them up the bank and into the ten-mile pine woods through which they were to skirt the base of the Cairn and reach Feather-Cap on his accessible ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... to him for the glowing picture of a knight-errant of the sixteenth century, moving with the port of a swash-buckler across the field of vision, wherever cities were to be taken and heads cracked in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and, in the language of one ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... factions splutter, Power's cheated claimants mutter, And foiled fire-eaters utter Most sanguinary threats. "He Freedom's fated suckler? The traitor, trickster, truckler!" So fumes the fierce swash-buckler, And his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various

... puffed out his sooty cheeks as if to blow a fly off the next bite of cheese. "So-oftly, so-oftly, muster," drawled he; "do na go to ruffling it here. This shop be mine, and I be free-born Englishman. I'll stand aside for no swash-buckling rogue on my own ground. Come, now, what wilt thou o' the lad?—and speak thee fair, good muster, or thou'lt get a dab o' the red-hot shoe." As he spoke he gave the black tongs an ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... storm was in its richest mood—the gray rain-flood above, the brown river-flood beneath. The language of the river was scarcely less enchanting than that of the wind and rain; the sublime overboom of the main bouncing, exulting current, the swash and gurgle of the eddies, the keen dash and clash of heavy waves breaking against rocks, and the smooth, downy hush of shallow currents feeling their way through the willow thickets of the margin. And amid all this varied throng of sounds ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir

... thronged the islet, and which now, being roused, began their night-feeding and flying, though at an earlier hour than usual. When their discordant cries were left so far behind as to be softened by distance, the flapping of wings and swash of water, as the fowl plunged in, still made ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau

... listened. A heavy noise, like that of some huge flouring-mill in full operation, could be plainly heard above the swash of the waves and the drive ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... unfamiliar to the readers of old books of maritime adventure. There being a ferry hard by the mouth of the Tunnel, I recrossed the river in the primitive fashion of an open boat, which the conflict of wind and tide, together with the swash and swell of the passing steamers, tossed high and low rather tumultuously. This inquietude of our frail skiff (which, indeed, bobbed up and down like a cork) so much alarmed an old lady, the only other passenger, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... on board, the schooner spread her white wings and stood in for Sandy Hook, while the ship was headed towards the "Swash Channel." ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... more, your worship, he is pugnax, bellicosus, gladiator, a fire-eater and swash-buckler, beyond all Christian measure; a very sucking Entellus, Sir Richard, and will do to death some of her majesty's lieges erelong, if he be not wisely curbed. It was but a month agone that he bemoaned himself, I hear, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... awoke, next morning, the engines were at work again, and their heavy thud, thud, was mingled with the swash of water, as the Bengali boys washed down decks, while a rattling of spars and creaking of cordage showed that sails were ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... sheds rather than houses, of broken plaster and crazy timbers. But here and there were open places of public reception, crowded with the lower followers of the puissant chief; and the eye rested on many idle groups of sturdy swash-bucklers, some half-clad in armour, some in rude jerkins of leather, before the doors of these resorts,—as others, like bees about a hive, swarmed in and out with a ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Scottish ballads, struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate. A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless Southern night. There was no sound but the faint swash of the coming tide, the noises of the reed-birds in the marshes, and the occasional leap of a fish; and it seemed to my over-strained ear as if every footstep of my own must be heard for miles. However, I could have no more postponements, and the thing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... upon one of the boats anchored in the ferry-way. Paddling away, he suddenly heard the swash of waves, and found himself approaching a wharf, but on which side the river ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... Shakespeare, vol. ii. p. 61). Rowland Yorke, however, who betrayed the fort of Zutphen to the Spaniards, for which good service he was afterwards poisoned by them, is said to have been the first who brought the rapier-fight into general use. Fuller, speaking of the swash-bucklers, or bullies, of Queen Elizabeth's time, says, 'West Smithfield was formerly called Ruffian's Hall, where such men usually met, casually or otherwise, to try masteries with sword or buckler. More were frightened than hurt, more hurt than ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... saw only the outline of the one before it and the rolling current of the Ohio beneath it. Noise had ceased on the fleet at the stern command of Adam Colfax and his lieutenants. The men talked only in whispers, there was no flapping of sail, only the swash of the oars in the water, drowned by the wind. Since the lightning had ceased, both shores were lost permanently in the darkness, and the five, who now knew this part of the river thoroughly, moved up to the head of the line, leading the way. After them came the Independence and then ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... overlooking another harbor, or estuary, landlocked save for an entrance about a mile in width. Behind him lay, not a great, but a little, city; hardly more than a big town; before him a few vessels of moderate tonnage placidly plied the main or swash channels. ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... Swash! Down fell the Fiddler into the apple-tree and down fell a dozen apples, popping and tumbling about ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle

... spikes in our soles; There is water a-swash in our boots; Our hands are hard-calloused by peavies and poles, And we're drenched with the spume of the chutes; We gather our herds at the head, Where the axes have toppled them loose, And down from the hills where the rivers are fed We harry ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... stream are still, Save now and then a low and gentle swash, All which doth try me sore against my will— So hot! And all my ducks ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles

... the waves with a silvery radiance or clashing its emerald waters in plumes of spray. One never tires gazing at the waters leaping and gliding like living creatures as they dash themselves to pieces on the rocks, or listening to the swash and gurgle of the rapid waters or the keen clash ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... cold, and the old schooner was rollin' like a washtub. One minute I'd see the skipper and the mate h'isted up in the air, hammerin' for dear life, and then, swash! under they'd go, clear under, and stay there, seemed to me, forever. Every dip I thought would be the end, and I'd shet my eyes, expectin' to see 'em gone when she lifted; but no, up they'd come, fetch a breath, shake the salt water out of their ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... the people of the United States of America. There were those who thought perhaps that kings were at their old tricks—and although they saw the gallant Republic of France fighting, they some of them perhaps regarded it as the poor victim of a conspiracy of monarchical swash-bucklers. The fact that the United States of America has made up its mind finally makes it abundantly clear to the world that this is no struggle of that character, but a great fight ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... was the lovely bay of Bolinas, blue and sparkling in the summer afternoon sun, its borders dotted with thrifty ranches, and the woody ravines and bristling Tamalpais Range rising over all. The tide was running out, and only a peaceful swash whispered along the level sandy beach on our left, where the busy sandpiper chased the playful wave as it softly rose and fell along the shore. On the higher centre of the sandspit which shuts in the bay on that ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... heard their steps shuffle off, and even caught the swash of their knees against the stiff rubber coats, so near they passed. The girl, who had been staring with strained neck and motionless eyes at the tall figure of the waiting man at her side, drew a long breath and laid her hand ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... Wednesday, September 14, I left Norfolk in the C. W. Thomas, which steamed to Fortress Monroe, where she arrived at 7-1/2 p.m., when I got aboard the John Farran, and steamed by the way of the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Hatteras, through the Swash, and through Pamlico sound to Neuse river, and thence up to Newbern, where we arrived at 7 p.m. of the 15th. Having expended all the money that I took with me but a few cents, I felt perplexed as to how I should reach ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten

... family history, Judith, and she, now aged twenty-one, was possibly the sole member of the house of Talbot-Lowry for whom a successful future might confidently be anticipated. Judith, a buccaneer by nature and by practice, was habitually engaged in swash-bucklering it on a round of visits. She was good-looking, tall, talkative, and an able player of all the games proper to the state of life to which she had been called. She was a competent guest, giving as much entertainment as she received, being of those who contribute as efficiently ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... rebellious factions, the historic 300 miles of adventurous coast has scarcely known for hundreds of years whom rightly to call its master. Pizarro, Balboa, Sir Francis Drake, and Bolivar did what they could to make it a part of Christendom. Sir John Morgan, Lafitte and other eminent swash-bucklers bombarded and pounded it in ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... almost there. She could hear the buttermilk begin to swash! She turned her head to call to her mother-in-law to bring a pitcher for the buttermilk, when a sound of galloping hoofs echoed from the road. Nelly frowned, released her hold on the dasher, listened an instant, and ran into the house. She went right upstairs ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... there, Mr. Mulford?" called out Capt. Stephen Spike, of the half-rigged, brigantine Swash, or Molly Swash, as was her registered name, to his mate—"we shall be dropping out as soon as the tide makes, and I intend to get through the Gate, at least, on the next flood. Waiting for a wind in port is lubberly seamanship, for he that wants one should go ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... into the effort, Hollingsworth heaved amain, and up came a white swash to the surface of the river. It was the flow of a woman's garments. A little higher, and we saw her dark hair streaming down the current. Black River of Death, thou hadst yielded up thy victim! ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... keeping my mouth to the air. Piece by piece I freed myself of my clothing and let it drop. The cut in my shoulder was raw and made me faint. It was not dangerous, but deep enough to give me trouble, and would make my swimming slow, if, indeed, I could swim at all. I felt the water swash against me and knew the Indian was swimming back. There was only a thin wall of reeds between us, and in a moment he would come to where the channels joined and see my floating garments. I could not stop to secure them, ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... government was called to these piratical enterprises, that were becoming so frequent and outrageous. Vigorous measures were taken to check and punish them. Several of the most noted freebooters were caught and executed, and three of Vanderscamp's chosen comrades, the most riotous swash-bucklers of the Wild Goose, were hanged in chains on Gibbet-Island, in full sight of their favorite resort. As to Vanderscamp himself, he and his man Pluto again disappeared, and it was hoped by the people ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... who was then out of town: "I know from experiment that the other contrivance, which you saw me try, performs at least as well, and has in fact many advantages over the crank."[12] The "other contrivance" probably was his swash wheel which he built and which appeared on his next important patent specification (fig. 7a). Also in this patent were four other devices, one of which was easily recognizable as a crank, and two of which were eccentrics (fig. 7a, b). The fourth device was the well-known sun-and-planet ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson

... bitterly cold. A swash of ice-water filled the bottom of the skiff. She was low enough down without that. They could not stop to bail, and the miniature icebergs they passed began to look significantly over the gunwale. Which would come to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... young man," said the woman tartly. "And if you'll take my advice, you won't bring him into these parts again, where they're doing nothing else but swash-buckling from morning to night. The broken heads I've seen this year ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn

... us; but the mismanagement of affairs at Jullundur had done much to lower our prestige in the eyes of his people, and there was no mistaking the offensive demeanour of his troops. They evidently thought that British soldiers had gone never to return, and they swaggered about in swash-buckler fashion, as only Natives who think they have the ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... a fence in their rear, and began to heehaw' in a most melodious strain. The nags pricked up their ears in a twinkling, and made no more ado but bolted. Poor aunty tugged! but all in vain; her bay-cob ran into the water; and she lost both her presence of mind and her seat, and plumped swash into the pond—her riding habit spreading out into a beautiful circle—while she lay squalling and bawling out in the centre, like a little piece of beef in the middle of a large batter-pudding! Miss Scragg, meanwhile, ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... of the Swash, in Pamlico Sound, and that of Cape Fear, below the town of Wilmington, in ...
— A Compilation of Messages and Letters of the Presidents - 2nd section (of 3) of Volume 2: John Quincy Adams • Editor: James D. Richardson

... It hath been spoke too often, The spell hath lost its charm—I tell thee, friend, The meanest cur that trots the street, will turn, And snarl against your proffer'd bastinado. SWASH-BUCKLER. 'Tis art shall do it, then—I will dose the mongrels— Or, in plain terms, I'll use the private knife 'Stead of ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... of civilization and Christianity. Europe will know us better henceforth; even Spain will know us better; and this knowledge should tend powerfully hereafter to keep the peace of the world. The war should abate the swaggering, swash-buckler tendency of many of our public men, since it has shown our incredible unreadiness at the outset for meeting even a third-rate Power; and it must secure us henceforth an army and navy less ridiculously ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... the steel rails continuous, I have heard this irreverent train give the words of a certain popular revival hymn after this fashion: "Hold the fort, for I am Sankey; Moody slingers still. Wave the swish swash back from klinky, klinky klanky kill." On the New York and New Haven, where there are many switches, and the engine whistles at every cross road, I have often heard, "Tommy make room for your whooopy! that's ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... stupid at his work, for suddenly there was a growling of water, and a crest came with a roar and a swash into the boat, and it was a wonder that it did not set the cook afloat in his life-belt. The cook continued to sleep, but the oiler sat up, blinking his eyes and ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... officer who gave a boat-load of bluejackets shore leave at New York was liable to find them all Americans when their leave was up. Other nations looked covetously upon our great body of able-bodied seamen, born within sound of the swash of the surf, nurtured in the fisheries, able to build, to rig, or to navigate a ship. They were fighting sailors, too, though serving only in the merchant marine. In those days the men that went down to the sea in ships had to be prepared to fight ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... time of the Second Emperor Frederick of Swabia. In its revival of old forms, old customs, it is a masquerade. But behold that it is a gorgeous blood-coloured masquerade and that Cercamorte is a distinct portrait of the swash-buckler ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... was laboring with all her might. Stern heard her breath, gasping and quick, above the roar and swash of the mad waters. And all at once revulsion seized him—rage, and a kind of mad exultation, a ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... there was not a peak in all that district on which there was not some Black Rudolph's castle, not a road that did not clack romantically with horses' hoofs on bold adventure. But the wars have changed all this by bringing too sharp a light upon the dim scenery of this pageantry, and swash-bucklery is all but dead. ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... the fish, watching the gang, watching the other boats, watching us in the dory—watching everything. Whoever made a slip then would hear from it afterwards, we knew. And clip, clip, clip it was, with the swash just curling nicely under the bow of the other boat, and I suppose our own, too, if we could ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... Jack, putting his ear to the door and listening intently. "I can hear the swash of water just the same, Dick. We had better be a ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh

... went out and took his favorite seat under the apple tree. All was still, save for the crickets' ceaseless chirp, the soft thud of an August sweeting dropping in the grass, and the swish-swash of the water against his boat, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... from goun in, an' when I got out I was astarn of all, an' there was the schooner carryun on, right through to clear water! So, hold of a bight o' line, or anything! an' they swung up in over bows an' sides! an' swash! she struck the water, an' was out o' sight in a minute, an' the snow drivun as ef't would bury her, an' a man laved behind on a pan of ice, an' the great black say two fathom ahead, an' the storm-wind blowun 'im ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... do it as well as it could be done—at least, the way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash—there's your road." He paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of a barn. "Swish, swash—there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt the edges of your foliage in with a blow-pipe. Throw ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington

... paddled across the lake to the mouth of the Kabekanka River. A brisk wind was blowing from the north, and the waves ran so high as to cause some anxiety in the minds of those who were not accustomed to the motion of a canoe; for, now they rose lightly to the top of the wave and anon sank with a swash into the trough, splashing and dashing the water over their bows. Gradually, however, as they became more used to their frail barks, their anxiety lessened, and they began to enjoy the beautiful prospect before them, and to inhale ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... turning to him, with an air of exultation, "Pardon me, friend, there you happen to be mistaken: these are none of Impayable's; but done by Nicholas Pouseen. I have seen prints of them in England, so that none of your tricks upon travellers, Mr. Swiss or Swash, or what's your name." He was much elated by this imaginary triumph of his understanding, which animated him to persevere in his curious observations upon all the other pieces of that celebrated collection; but perceiving ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... sternly across the water and echoed back and forth from sail to sail. The shouting hushed. Only the creak of the swaying yard, the hoarse swash of the water, the panting of deep breathing broke the silence, then once more from the lofty prow came the ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... full of thought both for myself and for the poor souls around me. At last, however, the measured swash of the water against the side of the vessel and the slight rise and fall had lulled me into a sleep, from which I was suddenly aroused by the flashing of a light in my eyes. Sitting up, I found several sailors gathered about me, and a tall man with ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and architecture could have made it. Neighbours it had none, for contrast; but a low woody point of land stretched off behind it, reaching out even into the Mong. And the Mong itself—with its cool sharp glitter in the stirring wind, and the swash of its blue waves at the very foot of the little paling about the house; its white-sailed ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... time we talked, we advanced in our slashing swath up the field, and all the time that chorus of wild laughter and shrieks of disloyalty kept time with the swash of the knives, and all the time rose Captain Jaynes' storm of fruitless curses and commands, and now and then the stinging lash of his riding whip, and also Dick Barry's. As for Nick Barry, he lay overcome with sleep on a ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... heard, save the low, tremulous swash of the sleet outside, or the death-rattle in the throat of the bath-tub. Then all was still as the bosom of a fried chicken when the spirit ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... Surbiton) in which one has acquitted oneself without discredit, and I cannot say that of my part in the war, of which I now loathe the thought for other reasons. The battlefield was no place for me, and neither was the camp. My ineptitude made me the butt of the looting, cursing, swash-buckling lot who formed the very irregular squadron which we joined; and it would have gone hard with me but for Raffles, who was soon the darling devil of them all, but never more loyally my friend. Your fireside fire-eater ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... shallows. Pretty faces that bent over its sheltered pools, as in a lookin' glass, wavin' locks that scattered gold light down into the water, bright eyes that shone like stars above it. I shouldn't wonder a mite if it missed 'em and tried to say so in its gentle, pensive swish, swash, swish. ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley

... dozed, myself, as the hours passed, although hardly aware of doing so. The soft, continuous chugging of the engine, the swash of water alongside, the ceaseless sweep of the current, and the dark gloom of the shadows through which we struggled, all combined to produce drowsiness. I know my eyes were closed several times, and at last they opened to a realization that gray, sickly dawn ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... the gun he made his plans. Swish-swash the sponge-staff ran in and out—he would try to steal away at dog-watch. He struck the sponge smartly on ma couzaine's muzzle, cleansing it—he would have to slide into the water like a rat and swim very softly to the shore. He reached for a fresh cartridge, and thrust it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... was a little pale-faced, delicate-looking boy in the class, who blundered a good deal. Every time he did so the cruel serpent of leather went at him, coiling round his legs with a sudden, hissing swash. This made him cry, and his tears blinded him so that he could not even see the words which he had been unable to read before. But he still attempted to go on, and still the instrument of torture went swish-swash round his little thin legs, raising upon them, no doubt, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... bidden, and then the little man said, "Swash, swish!" and the steed shot up from the strand like a lark from the grass, and pierced the covering sea, and went bounding on over the level waters; and when his hoofs struck the hard ground, Connla and Nora opened ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy

... studies—most of them made in that same pair of high-water boots. No one but the late Fritz Thaulow approaches him in giving the reality of this most difficult subject for an outdoor painter. The ocean surf repeats itself in its recurl and swash and by close watching a painter has often a chance to use his "second barrel," so to speak, but the upturned face of an unruly brook-is not only million-tinted and endless in its expression, but so sensitive in its reflections that every passing cloud and patch of ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... he remembered was feeling hands on his legs and arms—hard, strong, little hands—and then a swash of branches in his face, and then he was staring down through the swaying boughs as Baloo woke the jungle with his deep cries and Bagheera bounded up the trunk with every tooth bared. The Bandar-log howled with triumph and scuffled away to the upper branches where Bagheera dared ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... Admiral Paul Jones commanded the right wing of the Russians, and the Prince of Nassau the left. On the 26th of the same month, the Turkish principal fleet, that is to say, their ships of the line, frigates, &c, having got themselves near the swash, at the mouth of the Borysthenes, the Prince of Nassau took advantage of their position, attacked them while so engaged in the mud that they could not manoeuvre, burnt six, among which were the admiral's and vice-admiral's, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... present taste by my peppery defiance of Daniel. A man could do no less than bristle a little, under the circumstances; could do no less than challenge the torpedoes, like Farragut in Mobile Bay. Whether the game was worth the candle, I was not to be bullied out of my privileges by a clown swash-buckler who aped the characteristics of ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... within the disguise. He attempted to lift my soft beaver hat, the broad rim of which hid Dorothy's face, but to that she made a decided objection, and John continued: "By my soul I believe you are a woman. Your walk"—Dorothy thought she had been swaggering like a veritable swash-buckler—"your voice, the curves of your form, all betray you." Dorothy gathered the ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major

... Cutting Dick, dissolute rogues from the Pickt-hatch in Turnbull Street, near Clerkenwell; old Tom Wootton, once a notorious harbourer of "masterless men," at his house at Smart's Quay, but now a sheriffs officer; and, perhaps, it ought to be mentioned, that there were some half-dozen swash-bucklers and sharpers from Alsatia, under the command of Captain Bludder, who was held responsible for ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... of the Middle Ages were very skilful in the use of the lathe, and turned out much beautiful screen and stall work, still to be seen in our cathedrals, as well as twisted and swash-work for the balusters of staircases and other ornamental purposes. English mechanics seem early to have distinguished themselves as improvers of the lathe; and in Moxon's 'Treatise on Turning,' published in 1680, we find Mr. Thomas Oldfield, at the sign of the Flower-de-Luce, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... the ship. As he did so, he discovered a steamer, which had just passed through the narrow opening between Odderoe and the main land, and whose course lay close to the point of the island where the cutter was moored. He saw that the swash of the steamer was likely to throw the boat on the rocks, and grind her planking upon the ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic

... pestilential odor of oil, were to be seen the great majority of the passengers. Some were silently gazing at the changing scenes along the banks, others were playing cards or conversing in the midst of the scraping of shovels, the roar of the engine, the hiss of escaping steam, the swash of disturbed waters, and the shrieks of the whistle. In one corner, heaped up like corpses, slept, or tried to sleep, a number of Chinese pedlers, seasick, pale, frothing through half-opened lips, and bathed in their copious perspiration. Only a few youths, students for the most part, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... gripe, the court of appeal could never get them out of it. I tell you what it is, friend, he has a devil within him, that same conde de Punonrostro. Seville, and the whole country round it for ten leagues, is swept clear of swash-bucklers; not a thief ventures within his limits; they all fear him like fire. It is whispered, however, that he will soon give up his place as corregidor, for he is tired of being at loggerheads at every hand's turn with the senores ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... moment the news of the calamity of the Swash reached their ears. Some went in quest of the doubloons of the schooner, and others to pick up any thing valuable that might be discovered in the neighborhood of the stranded brig. It may be mentioned here, that not much was ever obtained from the brigantine, with the exception of a ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... Perhaps the ball nestled a few inches nearer the goal, but no more than that. It was Don who bore the brunt of that attack and after the piled-up bodies had been pulled aside he and the Claflin full-back remained on the ground. On came the trainers with splashing buckets. Don came to with the first swash of the big, smelly sponge on his face. Danny Moore was ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour

... Birkenshead? What has happened? Bah! this is horrible! I have swallowed the sea-water! Hear it swash against the sides of the boat! Is the boat going ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... sitting in his chamber, indolently trimming his nails. A tall swash-buckler, with a red nose and a black patch over his eye, was with him, also seated and conversing with familiar earnestness, as the ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... "Swash it round, and get that mud off,—I don't want any of it on the deck. ... That's right. Now, shove these jugs under the seats, ... that's better. ...
— The Voyage of the Hoppergrass • Edmund Lester Pearson

... came not up last night with his wains—bad land this to journey in, my master; and the fool will travel by night too, although, (besides all maladies from your tussis to your pestis, which walk abroad in the night-air,) he may well fall in with half a dozen swash-bucklers, who will ease him at once of his baggage and his earthly complaints. I must send forth to inquire after him, since he hath stuff of the honourable household on hand—and, by our Lady, he hath stuff of mine ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... into deep water, waves swash up and down the face of the rocks but cannot break and strike effective blows. They therefore erode but little until the talus fallen from the cliff is gradually built up beneath the sea to the level at which the waves drag bottom upon ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton

... I say to you about this matter," said Aramis, "is not for the sake of hunting a quarrel. Thank Heaven, I am not a swash-buckler, and being a musketeer only for a while, I only fight when I am forced to do so, and always with great reluctance; but this time the affair is serious, for here is a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... this charge, we have to pay from ten to twenty francs for a pilot, depending upon the tonnage, and the same for each passenger. Through the greater portion of the canal the speed of steamers is limited to five miles an hour; otherwise the swash of the propeller would injure the embankments on either side. It takes steamers about sixteen hours ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic

... street with its bustle of coaches, and water-carriers with their asses, and porters, and mounted nobles with trains of followers, and swash-buckling swordsmen, any of whom might have insulted Miriam, conspicuous by her beauty and by the square of yellow cloth, a palm and a half wide, set above her coiffure. They walked on in silence till they came to the Arch of Titus. Involuntarily both stopped, for by reason of the Temple candlestick ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... when it was too deep for kicking—Stranger was ever uncertain and not to be trusted too far—he caught him firmly by the tail and felt the current grip them both. The feel of the water was glorious after so long a ride in the hot sun, and Happy Jack reveled in the cool swash of it up his shoulders to the back of his neck, as Stranger swam out and across to the sloping, green bank on the home side. When his feet struck bottom, Happy Jack should have waded also—but the water was so deliciously ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... slovenly habit, flung the water from her pail straight out, without moving from where she stood. The smooth round arch of the falling water glistened for a moment in mid-air. John Gourlay, standing in front of his new house at the head of the brae, could hear the swash of it when it fell. The morning was ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... whispered to him, when I had stepped out into the swash of the rain. "Frankly, I hardly enjoyed it. You drive like ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... the argument, but realizing that the sentiment of his men was not with him and that his position was growing momentarily more ridiculous, he ceased abruptly. Rough though he was and of the swash-buckler type, he was neither insensible to the humor of the situation nor to the nerve it had taken on Dick's part to hold twenty armed men at bay single-handed. It is usually a difficult matter to pocket one's pride, especially if ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... Hull bargee gave his name as ALFAINA SWASH. Nevertheless the Court did not decide to hear the rest of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various

... brand," admitted Smith, laughingly; "but I believe it's good sound criticism just the same. If a man is going to play the swashbuckler, I like to see him able to swash his buckle. But seriously, I shouldn't have objected to that one bad piece of business if it hadn't seemed to me that the whole performance was out of key and wrong. But here's the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... avoid the swash of water which poured over the rock at her feet; then she exclaimed ruefully: "If I wasn't sure before, I am now! The fudge is just under that rock, between those two ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard

... of Cromwell's disputatious troopers. In his capacious pocket, he always carried a copy of the New Testament—as, of old, the carnal controvertists bore a sword buckled to the side. Thus armed, he was a genuine polemical "swash-buckler," and would whip out his Testament, as the bravo did his weapon, to cut you in two without ceremony. He could carve you into numerous pieces, and season you with scriptural salt and pepper; and he would do it with a gusto so serious, that it would have been no unreasonable ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... death. And me a musician. And me the gentlest of God's creatures—who never did any harm, but killed the mice in father's barn. I ask you, as a man of the world, is it delicate, is it fair? Drip, drip, drip—swish, swish, swash,—ugh, the rain! If it could guess how I despise it!" He made a face and shook his fist at it. "Do you think the weather knows how disagreeable it is? We all know how disagreeable other people can be, ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... not wake till the swash of the night boat from the south caused the Goldwing to bump against the wharf. It was five o'clock in the morning. He felt in his pocket, and found that his money was safe. He slept another hour after this, and then went on shore. ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic

... that stable of King Augeas, which appalls human hearts, so rich is it, high-piled with the droppings of two hundred years; and Hercules-like to load a thousand night-wagons from it, and turn running water into it, and swash and shovel at it, and never leave it till the antique pavement, and real basis of the matter, show itself clean again! In any intelligent circle such a rumor, like the first break of day to men in darkness, ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... could be shifted without difficulty. But scarcely had I stooped to raise it when an emotion of fear seized me, and I started back alert and listening, though I was unconscious of having heard any thing more than the ordinary swash of the water beneath the windows and the beating of my own overtaxed heart. An instant's hearkening gave me the reassurance I needed, and convinced that I had alarmed myself unnecessarily, I bent again over the board, and this time succeeded in moving it aside. ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... better, penetrated into the wild- looking creeks and rivers, more than one hundred of which enter the parent stream along the thousand miles of its course. Here, in these secluded nooks, I found security from the steamer's swash. ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... More and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... but be sure that you will be happy! But no! This man, before whom you immolate me, will never know the worth of a soul as delicate as yours. He is a brute, a swash-buckler, a drunkard." ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... upon a rock and looked out over the ocean, which extended afar, under a sky that was dark with mountainous masses of piled-up clouds. The great roll of the sea struck the foot of the cliffs rather slowly, as if performing some solemn function, and the swash of the returning water was like some strange dirge. The very waves had lost their blueness and were tinted with a leaden, ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... to eat the large fibrous roots of the pond-lilies. He splashes along till he finds a suitable spot, when he begins feeding, sometimes thrusting his bead and neck several feet under water. The hunter listens, and when the moose lifts his head and the rills of water run from it, and he hears him "swash" the lily roots about to get off the mud, it is his time to start. Silently as a shadow he creeps up on the moose, who by the way, it seems, never expects the approach of danger from the water side. If the hunter accidentally makes a noise the moose looks toward the shore for it. There is always ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs

... Wabash lies off the Main Ship Channel. Of course, all the others are blockaded, too, but General Beauregard thinks that if we can torpedo the flagship the others will hurry to her assistance and the blockade-runners can get out through the Swash Channel. Our magazines are running low, and we must have arms, powder, everything. There are two or three shiploads at Nassau. This is an attempt to get to them. If we can blow up Admiral Vernon's flagship, perhaps we can raise the blockade. At any rate it's ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... And the calves of his wicked-looking legs Were more than two feet about, my dear, O, the great big Irishman, The rattling, battling Irishman— The stamping, ramping, swaggering, staggering, leathering swash of an Irishman. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... briar of many years' service. He has had (though I speak only by guess) a rummer of hot toddy to celebrate the greatest of all Evenings. At his elbow is a porthole, brightly curtained with a scrap of clean chintz, and he can hear the swash of the seas along his ship's tall side. And now he is reading. I can see him reading. I know just how his mind feels! Oh, the Perfect Reader! There is not an allusion that he misses; in all those lovely ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... hove, the watch called, and we went to breakfast. Here I cannot but remember the advice of the cook, a simple-hearted African. "Now,'' says he, "my lad, you are well cleaned out; you haven't got a drop of your 'long-shore swash aboard of you. You must begin on a new tack,— pitch all your sweetmeats overboard, and turn to upon good hearty salt beef and ship bread, and I'll promise you, you'll have your ribs well sheathed, and be as hearty as any of 'em, afore you are up to the Horn.'' This would be good advice to give ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... Pig, I'm a fairly "learned" pig, and will back myself to get some small piggish pleasures out of this mortal stye, before I go to the Butcher!! But—IF—I am something very different, and very much higher, I won't ignore my birthright, or sell it for Hog'swash, because it involves the endurance of some pain, and the exercise of some faith and hope and charity! Mehalah is a well-written book, with a delicious sense of local colour in nature. And it is (pardon the sacrilege!) a LOVE ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... the beach, ran up on both sides of us, closed in behind us. We were lying on a little sand island, and the waves nibbled at its edges—nibbled and nibbled and nibbled—the island was being nibbled up. This would never do! We must move! And I woke. Ripple, ripple, swash! ripple, ripple, swash! went the unconscious waves. As I raised my head I saw the pale beach stretching off under the moon-washed mists of middle night. Reassured, I sank back, and when I waked again the big sun was well above the rim of the waters and all the ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge

... says, "it was a time of jubilee for offenders; every culprit started up into an accuser." All the ills of the colony, many of them inevitable in such an enterprise, many of them due to the shiftlessness and folly, the cruelty and lust of idle swash-bucklers, were now laid at the door of Columbus. Aguado was presently won over by the malcontents, so that by the time he was ready to return to Spain, early in 1496, Columbus felt it desirable to go along with him and make his own explanations to the sovereigns. Fortunately for his purposes, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske

... let it be supposed that I had become a swash-buckler of a soldier. The cold chill of fear still crept up and down my spine whenever I thought of taking part in an engagement; but I was becoming so nearly a man as to desire, in case it became necessary to fight, that I might ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis

... making sail and trimming yards and the clank of the capstan pawls. Then the anchor flukes scraped and banged against the bow timbers. The vessel heeled a little and the lapping water changed its tune to a swash-swash as the hull pushed it aside. The brig was alive ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... chill through me. It was a meal for the very young or the very hungry. The uncompromising coldness and solidity of the viands was enough to appall a man conscious that his digestion needed humoring. A huge cheese faced us in almost a swash-buckling way, and I noticed that the professor shivered slightly as he saw it. Sardines, looking more oily and uninviting than anything I had ever seen, appeared in their native tin beyond the loaf of bread. There was a ham, in its third quarter, ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse

... of dishes. Flaxen was whistling. Eight years of hard work had not done much for these sturdy souls, but they had managed to secure with incredible toil a comfortable little house surrounded with outbuildings. Calves and chickens gave life to the barn-yard, and fields of wheat rippled and ran with swash of heavy-bearded heads and dapple of ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland

... which we would camp. These pools were stagnant and their edges invariably lined with dead cattle that had died while trying to get a drink. Selecting a carcass that was solid enough to hold us up, we would walk out into the pool on it, taking a blanket with us, which we would swash around and get as full of water as it would hold, then carrying it ashore, two men, one holding each end, would twist the filthy water out into a pan, which in turn would be emptied into our canteens, ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole

... Grand Jurymen, 1630, 12mo, the following list of the names of the more celebrated familiars of English witches. "Such as I have read of are these: Mephistophiles, Lucifer, Little Lord, Fimodes, David, Jude, Little Robin, Smacke, Litefoote, Nonsuch, Lunch, Makeshift, Swash, Pluck, Blue, Catch, White, Callico, Hardname, Tibb, Hiff, Ball, Puss, Rutterkin, Dicke, Prettie, Grissil, and Jacke." In the confession of Isabel Gowdie, a famous Scotch witch, (in Pitcairne's ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... use of lights may be seen as a vessel enters New York Lower Bay. A steamship drawing not more than eighteen feet of water may enter through Swash Channel (follow the course on the chart). In this case the pilot makes for Scotland lightship, and merely keeps New Dorp and Elmtree beacons in range, giving Dry Romer a wide berth to starboard, until Chapel Hill and Conover ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... said; but the expression was incorrect, except as a figure. Bucklers went out fifty years ago, "about the twentieth of Queen Elizabeth"; men do not now swash with them, or fight in that way. Iron armor has mostly gone out, except in mere pictures of soldiers; King James said, It was an excellent invention; you could get no harm, and neither could you do any in it. Bucklers, either for horse or foot, are quite gone. Yet old ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... at last, and went across the sands to her father. Neckart was soon conscious of an uneasy change in everything about him. The atmosphere of sunlit rest was broken. The clouds only meant rain, the sand was sand, and the sea but a wet swash of water: he began to look at his watch and think of the trains. The influence that had quieted him so unaccountably had been in the girl, then? He shut his eyes and tried to recall the erect figure, the fall of yellow hair, the clear Scandinavian face. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... Squitty's dusky headlands, pointing a course straight down the middle of the Gulf. His man turned in to sleep. MacRae stood watch alone, listening to the ka-choof, ka-choof of the exhaust, the murmuring swash of calm water cleft by the Bluebird's stem. Away to starboard the Ballenas light winked and blinked its flaming eye to seafaring men as it had done in his father's time. Miles to port the Sand Heads lightship swung to its great hawsers off the ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... swash and eddying of the current; she closed her eyes to keep from falling, when she felt a hand on the bridle, and in a moment had reached the opposite shore. The jester made no motion to remount, but remained at her horse's head, closely surveying ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... far south, and settled on the bosom of Silver Lake to take a night's lodging there. Ducks, from the same region, and bound for the same goal—though with less stately and regular flight—flew hither and thither with whistling wings, ever and anon going swash into the water as a tempting patch of reeds invited them to feed, or a whim of fancy induced them to rest. Wild swans occasionally sailed in all their majesty on its waters, while plover of every length of limb and bill, and every species of plaintive ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne

... getting no response, turned away toward the shed and the deep, wet, burring sound of a wash-board. The woman bending over it did not hear his footfall. Presently he stopped. She had just straightened up, lifting a piece of the washing to the height of her head, and letting it down with a swash and slap upon the board. It was a woman's garment, but certainly not hers. For she was small and slight. Her hair was hidden under a towel. Her skirts were shortened to a pair of dainty ankles by an extra under-fold at the neat, round waist. Her feet were ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable



Words linked to "Swash" :   go, splash, dot, tout, gas, overdraw, spatter, slosh, moving ridge, magnify, slush around, boast, puddle, exaggerate, sprinkle, shoot a line, vaunt, amplify, dust, gasconade, slosh around, act



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com