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Tease   Listen
noun
Tease  n.  One who teases or plagues. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tease" Quotes from Famous Books



... still in camp on the prairie, waiting for something, anything, to move them on. General Phillips is mightily pleased that the Indians did not succeed in getting the animals from his command, and I am pleased that they cannot tease me any more. ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... scurrilous as Dr. Smollett, and be dignified with the appellation of the Younger Smelfungus. Well, let those make out my diploma that will, I am determined to vent my spleen, and like Lucifer, unable to enjoy comfort myself, tease others with the details of my vexatious. You must know, then, since I am resolved to grumble, that, tired with my passage, I went to the Capuchin church, a large solemn building, in search of silence and solitude; but here again was ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... again become silent, dull, and unhappy, was brooding over her miseries and disappointments, and she declined. Lord Kilcullen was behind her chair, and when they pressed her, he whispered to her, "Don't sing for them, Fanny; it's a shame that they should tease you at such a time; I wonder how my mother can have ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... more than I should make a mistake about you, father, when you begin to tease me with your horrid principles! Because, in spite of them, you are the chastest and most ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... rush for him and, throwing her arms about his neck, kissed his cheek. "You are a great big tease, and I choose to salute you this way." Then she kissed her mother, saying: "I've the loveliest plan, Captain. I'm sure that this dress will fit Constance. She says she won't go to the school dance because she has no pretty ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester

... for one moment of marrying him," said Bessie, haughtily. "If I ever had any sort of mercy on him, it was all to tease you. There, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... something more than childish joy showing in her face, an older person would have seen that, but it was largely lost on Rolf. There was a tendency to blush when she laughed, a disposition to tease her "big brother," to tyrannize over ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... tables, Fritzy, I like a nice long table with plenty of young people at it. And myself at the head, carving and carving, and seeing the plates passed round and round and round;—getting them back and back and back—There, there, Katje! They shan't tease you. We'll keep the table just as it is. For you and Fritz and me. A nice little circle. All ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... that the People should have this toy; something to play with and to tease, round which to dance the mad Carmagnole and sing ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... valley knows," said Sarah, "that Sir Timothy's father married his own cook, who was Happy Jack's first cousin. When I was a little girl, and wanted to tease Peter," she added ingenuously, "I always used to allude to it. It is the skeleton in their cupboard. We haven't got a skeleton in our family," she added regretfully; "least of all the skeleton ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... used to tease him an' say, 'Bud, why don't you go to de war?' Dey laughed an' teased 'im when he went. But twant no laughin' when he come home on a furlough an' went back. Dey was cryin' den. An' well dey mought[FN: might] cry, 'cause he never ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... "You mustn't tease Uncle Joel any more," Persis finally admonished the child. "You don't want him to go if he wouldn't have a good time." And to her brother she added, "You'd better go to the ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... anemones and brown anemones that seemed nothing but shadows, and curtained with green of finest sea-silk. Siegmund loved to poke the white pebbles, and startle the little ghosts of crabs in a shadowy scuttle through the weed. He would tease the expectant anemones, causing them to close suddenly over his finger. But Helena liked to watch without touching things. Meanwhile the sun was slanting behind the cross far away to the west, and the light was swimming in silver and gold upon the lacquered water. At last Siegmund looked ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... his hands seizing her round the waist. He was, no doubt, spying upon her; he would appear before her some afternoon; and the bare idea threw her into a cold perspiration, because he would to a certainty kiss her on the ear, as he used to do in former days solely to tease her. It was this kiss which frightened her; it rendered her deaf beforehand; it filled her with a buzzing amidst which she could only distinguish the sound of her heart beating violently. So, as soon as these fears ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... "No! No! Don't tease; it's really important. This day at noon Madame Chartrain was in her chamber—you know the young man who came with M. Jerome?" ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... down to the drawing-room there was great exhilaration, Swinburne leading the fun. Morris was, as usual, very serious, and, in discussing some subject of conversation, Swinburne began to chaff and tease him, and finally gave him a vigorous thrust in the stomach, which sent him backwards into a high wardrobe, on the outer corners of which stood Rossetti's two favorite blue and white hawthorn jars, a pair unrivaled in London, for which he had paid several hundred pounds each. The wardrobe yielded ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... act like that Fannie Leach? She's awfully rough. Miss Dorothy spoke to her twice—wasn't that dreadful? What made you dance all the time with Cissy Weston? She's an awful baby—a regular fraid-cat! We girls tease her just ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... since he has given his heart to another, while in that picture he has eyes for her alone (as Malavika, too, had noticed when she entered the water-house). The viduschaka has proved an unreliable sentinel; he has fallen asleep at the door of the house. The queen's maid perceives this and, to tease him, touches him with a crooked staff. He awakes crying that a snake has bitten him. The king runs out and is confronted again by Iravati. "Well, well!" she exclaims, "this couple meet in broad daylight and without hindrance to gratify their wishes!" "An unheard-of ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... the Astrarium was to open quite shortly! The blue-chins discussed the thing, amid clouds of tobacco smoke, in the bars, after the show. To allude to it now was not like talking of castles in the air; on the contrary. To tease a pal, one said: ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... was to gain over the nurse. Old Sophy was as cunning as a red fox or a gray woodchuck. She had nothing in the world to do but to watch Elsie; she had nothing to care for but this girl and her father. She had never liked Dick too well; for he used to make faces at her and tease her when he was a boy, and now he was a man there was something about him—she could not tell what—that made her suspicious of him. It was no small matter to get ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... Caffarelli, the famous Italian treble, whom the Pope had sent from his own chapel to Madrid that he might cure the King's melancholy by the sweetness of his voice, she took out of her hair the beautiful white rose, and partly for a jest and partly to tease the Camerera, threw it to him across the arena with her sweetest smile, he took the whole matter quite seriously, and pressing the flower to his rough coarse lips he put his hand upon his heart, and sank on one knee before ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde

... speaker, delighted to tease the doctor, "for instance, I made up my mind all the time I was here to stick in a low form. It was an easier life, and fun to boss kids like Edgar Doe and Rupert Ray. And I pulled all the strings of the famous Bramhall Riot, ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... little urchins to tease them. When the llamas felt that the time had come for reprisals, their aim was straight and the result a precipitate retreat. Their tormentors, howling and rubbing their eyes, had to run home and wash ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... Pottawattomies, always friendly to the whites, were particularly fond of my father and I often remember seeing both the bucks and the squaws at our cabin, though I fancy that they were not so fond of us boys as they might have been, for we used to tease and bother them at every opportunity. Johnny Green was their chief, and Johnny, in spite of his looks, was a pretty decent sort of a fellow, though he was as fond of fire-water as any of them and as Iowa was not a prohibition State in those early days he managed now and then to get hold of a ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... scarcely innocent, simply because I was so innocent. I played endless child's tricks with my bridal veil, my wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the room whither I had been conducted in state, I planned a piece of mischief to tease Victor. While I awaited his coming, my heart beat wildly, as it used to do when I was a child stealing into the drawing-room on the last day of the old year to catch a glimpse of the New Year's gifts piled up there ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... Atlantic day. Brazilla's wilds, Mackensie's savage lands With bickering strife inflame their furious bands; Atlantic isles and Europe's cultured shores Heap their vast wealth, exchange their growing stores, All arts inculcate, new discoveries plan, Tease and torment but school the race of man. While his own federal states, extending far, Calm their brave sons now breathing from the war, Unfold their harbors, spread their genial soil, And welcome freemen to ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... harm to come to Johnny Chuck, but he wanted to make Johnny uncomfortable. That is Sammy Jay's idea of fun—seeing somebody else uncomfortable. So he slipped away to a thick hemlock-tree in the Green Forest to try to think of some plan to tease Johnny Chuck and make ...
— The Adventures of Johnny Chuck • Thornton W. Burgess

... things get 'ome-like; an' we torks till late, An' tries to tease Doreen to fix the date, An' she gits suddin soft and tender-like, An' cries a bit, when we parts ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis

... the bottle-shaped snout was as friendly and playful as most of its fellow dolphins. Too playful, Tom concluded, after vainly trying to tease it into chasing them. Instead of following, it would "tag" Tom or Mel quickly, then swim away, evidently expecting to be chased ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... would establish himself on terms of cosy friendship with the brilliant beauty before whose gracious coldness they had stood shivering for months; the daring with which he would tuck under his arm, so to speak, the prettiest girl in the room, smooth down as if by magic her hundred prickles, and tease her out of her overwhelming sense of her own self-importance. The secret of his success was, probably, that he was not afraid of them. Desiring nothing from them beyond companionableness, a reasonable amount of appreciation ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... don't know what to do about it. He's a nice young man, but every now and again, when he begins talking, you can't understand a word he's saying. I think I like him. He's madly in love with me. He's an unlucky man; every day something happens. We tease him about it. They call ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... "Don't tease mamma with questions," said the Captain; "she is not very well, and rather sad. We must all be very kind and good to poor, dear mamma;" and the Captain raised his wife's hand to his lips as he spoke. Robin seized the other hand and kissed it tenderly. He was very fond ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... if a prime amuser, was also a prime tease, and being nearer Donald in age was also much ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey

... had a friend, Bessie Bates, who had a brother named Bob, a regular tease. Bessie was only eight, but Bob was eleven, and every one said that he ought to be at school in America. Then there were several children living in the mission compounds, but none of them were near ...
— The Little Girl Lost - A Tale for Little Girls • Eleanor Raper

... Swynnerton, he did at length open the box and take out a cigar. "Now," he observed roguishly, cutting the cigar, "we shall see, Mrs. Plover!" He often called her Mrs. Plover, for fun. Though she liked him to be sufficiently interested in her to tease her, she did not like being called Mrs. Plover, and she never failed to say: "I'm not Mrs. Plover." He smoked the cigar slowly, in the rocking-chair, throwing his head back and sending clouds to the ceiling. And afterwards he remarked: "The old man's cigars weren't so bad." "Indeed!" she answered ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... "Don't tease her, Dick," said Falconer, with the gentle, protective air of an elder brother. "She does not look ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... queer," with a musical ripple. "You certainly were a princess in disguise at school, and some of the girls said you were my double to tease me; but I don't think we look very much alike; do ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... moments of sadness, had been a witch's fingers, and Gavin was still trembling under their touch. Even in being taken to task by her there was a charm, for every pout of her mouth, every shake of her head, said, "You like me, and therefore you have given me the right to tease you." Men sign these agreements without reading them. But, indeed, man is a stupid animal at the best, and thinks all his life that he did not propose until he blurted out, ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... aloud. "I'll show him that if I am a coward, I am going to master it, and then perhaps they will not tease me and laugh ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... passes, and she feels better acquainted and at ease with us, Madame M.'s younger daughter amuses us by showing some mischievous tendency; and we conclude she is something of "a tease". In the most artless manner, and without intentional familiarity, she slides her arm through Octavia's in a confidential manner and imparts some important information "dans l'oreille". What is it? Well, remember it is whispered; and now don't go and tell! It is that there is a swain ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase

... "Don't tease the boy, Winny dear," said the little gentle mother; then she turned her kind, interested eyes on him, and waited for ...
— Three People • Pansy

... should get very few of them; and as they lay many more than they can hatch, it would be a great and wasteful loss. By this we are sure that poultry was intended for our use; and if you take care not to frighten or tease them, you may bring up chickens to be as tame and familiar as dogs or cats. I remember a droll proof of this. Once, out of a great many fowls, belonging to a dear friend in whose house I lived, there was only one that would not be friends with me. She was a fine old speckled ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth

... binding her, she cried out to her husband, "Ah! here are some bad boys trying to take me to the church." But her husband said that the crazy fellows were only trying to tease her. When they reached the church with this old woman, the priest, who was also crazy, performed the burial-ceremony over her. She cried out that she was alive; but the priest answered that since he had her burial-fee, he did not ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... she said with her peculiar exact deliberation and gift of circumlocution, "it is better to go and sew your sampler than to tease your grandfather." ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... to smoke their cigarettes, provided they would not desert the salon. The conversation was general, and finally one of the guests chanced to speak of celebrated crimes. And that gave the Marquis de Rouzieres, who delighted to tease the count, an opportunity to mention the affair of the Queen's Necklace, a subject ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... patriot thus to insult us with ridiculous accusations, without making him pay forfeit for his temerity, we shall be eternally pestered with the humming and buzzing of these stingless wasps. Though they cannot wound or poison, they will tease and vex. They will divert our attention from the important affairs of State to their own mean antipathies, and passions, and prejudices. Did they not count upon the spirit of the times and imagine that the same latitude which is taken by the libellers is here ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker

... and underneath a monogram "M. M." in the raised heart of an elaborate marguerite. As we ate ice-cold chicken, salad, and chilled wild strawberries of the north, Mrs. James began with a gay perkiness to tease Sir S. about the "grateful model," whose name must surely be Marguerite; but I put a stop to that. The hour after a wedding at Gretna Green is no tune for talk of any woman-thing except the bride; and as I may perhaps never be anybody's real bride, ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... childish fears, in a sound sleep which remained unbroken till the morning sun was shining brightly above the trees. But it was long before I heard the last of the night I spent in the bush; and as often as my brothers wished to tease me, they would enquire if I had lately heard the cries of a catamount? Time passed on till I grew up, and leaving the paternal home went forth to make my own way in the world. Old Rufus still resided in R. When a child I used to fancy that ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell

... side of the vessel, but now the fascination of the scene had all faded out. The restless billows were dreary, savage, hungry and dizzying; they seemed to claw at, and tear, and wrench the struggling ship as a group of huge lions would tease and worry a captive dog. They distressed her and all on board by dealing a blow which would send her reeling in one direction, but before she had swung the full length that impulse would have sent her, catching her on the opposite side with a stunning shock that ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... bonnet, so she left the book on the table, and in the mean time Fred came in, snatched it up, and was soon deep in the feats of the "Flying Trunk." Then came the little lady back and demanded the book, not very pleasantly, if the truth must be told. Fred meant to give it up, but he meant to tease his sister first, and Edith, who had no patience to wait, snatched at the book. Fred of course resisted, and it was not until the book had been nearly parted from its cover, and some damage had ensued to the dress ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart

... him as one. We do just as we like with him,—scold and tease him, and send him on our errands;" which intelligence fairly convinced the envious Hamilton that the youngest Miss Challoner was not his ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... wake you not; Not the sweetest fluting Tease you back to thought. Yet the scratching mouse Makes all my flesh a ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman

... Jove, right and tight, away! No show now how best plough sea's brow, Wrinkling—breeze quick, tease thick, ere day, Clear sheer wave's sheen of green, I mean, ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... church on Sunday evening with some young man. Their conversation is vulgar and prosaic; there is nothing in the language they use that suggests an ideal or any conception of the abstract. They make jokes, state facts about the work, tease each other, but in all they say there is not a word of value—nothing that would interest if repeated out of its class. They have none of the sagaciousness of the low-born Italian, none of the wit and penetration of ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... does not believe in equal suffrage, or to use his own expression, he is "not a suffragette." He is sure that no one would ever advertise in the paper unless he believed in votes for women, and frankly, he does not want his friends to be given a chance to tease him about "this ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Look Forward and Back at the Woman's Journal, the Organ of the - Woman's Movement • Agnes E. Ryan

... man riding by, at the rate of twelve miles an hour, it would at once have formed an opinion as to all the workings of his mind and the meditations of his heart. But my impressions are of slower growth, and I am even dull enough to require some foundation for them." Christopher loved to tease Elisabeth. ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... have been as eager as Fred to find the place for which they were seeking, but they were more restrained in their manner and inclined to tease their ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay

... only talked so just to tease him. I do so like to tease Luke; he puts on such airs. Let him make money of course, if he can; all the better for him. I'd a deal rather have him doing this than spending all his nights at that club in Westminster Bridge Road, talking nonsense, and worse. Why, ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... love." He had high-peaked, tufted ears and a blackish grey coat that trailed on the floor like a shawl that was too big for him. When you tried to stroke him the shawl swept and trailed away under the table. You saw nothing but shawl and ears until Papa began to tease Tib. Papa snapped his finger and thumb at him, and Tib showed little angry eyes and white teeth set in a ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair

... little tease you are!" laughingly interposed Miss Minot, as she playfully tweaked the girl's ear. "I wonder how long the things would last you if you had ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... or an isolated exquisite line does not constitute a poem. What Lowell says of Dr. Donne applies in a manner to Miss Dickinson: "Donne is full of salient verses that would take the rudest March winds of criticism with their beauty, of thoughts that first tease us like charades and then delight us with the felicity of their solution; but these have not saved him. He is exiled to the limbo of the formless and ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... Mr. Pickle," said Emilia, who had by this time recollected herself, "I never questioned your gallantry and taste; but I am resolved that you shall never have cause to exercise your talents at my expense; so that you tease yourself and me to no purpose. Come, Sophy, let us walk home again."—"Good God! madam," cried the lover, with great emotion, "why will you distract me with such barbarous indifference? Stay, dear Emilia!—I conjure you on my knees to stay and hear me. By all that is sacred, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... his age and size, and seemed to consider himself called upon to preserve a great degree of dignity and decorum in our society. As he jogged along a little distance ahead of us, the young dogs would gambol about him, leap on his neck, worry at his ears, and endeavor to tease him into a frolic. The old dog would keep on for a long time with imperturbable solemnity, now and then seeming to rebuke the wantonness of his young companions. At length he would make a sudden turn, seize one of them, and ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving

... instant that there was something of compassion in Pepita's glance as she noted the pitiable appearance I no doubt presented, seated on my mule. My cousin Currito looked at me with a mocking smile, and immediately began to make fun of me and to tease me. ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... managed to avoid Stuart and took her seat beside Phil Sheridan—not to tease her admirer but to give to her Western guest the warmest welcome of the old South. She knew the dinner would be a revelation to Phil and she ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... her by and by, he said, and he pictured to himself how she must look by this time, hoping that he should not find her greatly changed, for Morris Grant's memories were very precious of the playful child who, in that very room where he was sitting, used to tease and worry him so much with her lessons poorly learned, and the never-ending jokes played off upon her teacher. He had thought of her so often when across the sea, and, knowing her love of the beautiful, he had never looked upon ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... I don't know what she did say, exactly, but she let me think we were going to drive off somewhere. And look at me—rigged out like this! You know how she'll tease me!" There were almost tears ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

... so—but who has enough courage for such a desperate step?' sighed the young cockerels. 'Why, you yourself are no more courageous than we, else why do you stop here chained up all day, and allow those tiresome children to come and tease you?' ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... the Friend of the Flag, looking from her elevation; "he is a very good father, too, and I don't tease him like his sons the priests! But I have told him to take you the next time you are stripping a dead body; so look on it—he won't have to ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... around the neck of his master, and is even more human in his behaviour than the orang-utan, from which he differs in temperament, being more vivacious and inclined to mischief. In a kampong I once saw a young gibbon repeatedly descend into a narrow inclosure to tease a large pig confined there. The latter, although three or four times as large, seemed entirely at his mercy and was submissive and frightened, even when his ears were pulled by the wah-wah. During my travels in the jungle of Borneo, few were the days in which I was not summoned to rise by ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... indifferently, and returned towards her bleak station, and waited and shivered again. It was a trifle, after all—a childish thing—looking out from a tower and waving a handkerchief. But her new friend had promised, and why should he tease her so? The effect of a blow is as proportionate to the texture of the object struck as to its own momentum; and she had such a superlative capacity for being wounded that little hits struck ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... going to pay you a visit without making much fuss about it. I shall be at Les Fresnes on the second of September, the day before the hunting season opens; I do not want to miss it, so that I may tease these gentlemen. You are very obliging, Aunt, and I would like you to allow them to dine with you, as you usually do when there are no strange guests, without dressing or shaving for the occasion, on the ground that they ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... was a look of stubborn determination on his little ebony face while his heart was beating with pride and exultation. Here was his great chance to turn the tables on his white companions. No longer would they dare tease him about running from the eel or about his adventure after the crane. He would be able now to twit them all, even the captain, with running away while he, Chris, stood ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... to pass the word to our worst jokers," he smiled, "that it won't be safe for the fellow who starts in to tease you young men." ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham

... arrangements, he was released from the ties which hobbled him, and we commenced the arduous task of driving him towards the village, a distance of five miles. The only method of getting him along, was to keep two men to tease him in front, by shouting and waving cloths before his face; he immediately charged these fellows, who, of course, ran in the right direction for the village, and by this repeated manoeuvre we reached the borders of the tank by nightfall. We were still at least two miles from the village, and ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... think the neglect is really blameworthy. For instance, I'm sure that my uncle knows nothing about what we have seen in the last few days. He is charitable on system, and he weighs and balances things so much that we tease him. He never gives a sixpence unless he knows all the facts of the case, and I'm sure when I tell him he'll be willing to assist Mr. Fullerton. Then I'm as ignorant as my uncle. I can guess a great deal, of course, but really I've only seen about ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... tho' they ca' me fornicator, An' tease my name in kintra clatter: [country gossip] The mair they talk I'm kent the better, [more] E'en let them clash; [tattle] An auld wife's tongue's a feckless matter [feeble] To gie ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... have dared to have let me into it, and since it is still harder to suppose that the Regent would make this express condition with the Duke of Ormond, and the moment the duke's back was turned would suffer these women to tease him from me and to bring me answers from him. I am, however, far from taxing the duke with affirming an untruth. I believe the Regent did make such a condition with him; and I will tell you how I understand all this little management, which will explain a great deal to you. This Prince, with ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke

... one special bull which was esteemed by his lordship as of great value, and regarded as a high favourite. The people about the place declared that the beast was vicious, but Lord De Guest had often been heard to boast that it was never vicious with him. "The boys tease him, and the men are almost worse than the boys," said the earl; "but he'll never hurt any one that has not hurt him." Guided by faith in his own teaching the earl had taught himself to look upon his bull as a large, horned, innocent ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... like any of my pieces; and if I do roll my eyes, I don't rumple up my hair and pull faces at the ceiling, as some people do, and I know who they are, but I am too polite to say so! I hope Peggy will be my friend, because then there will be two of us, and you won't dare to tease me any more. When Arthur was here, a boy pulled my hair, and he carried him upstairs and held his head underneath ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... and Joan stared. "You'll have to lure the public, Elspeth, there's no doubt about that. Tea rooms are no novelty these days. You'll have to tease it with a bait, and the ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock

... go out and open that bundle," she said. "And if you tease much more daddy won't even tell you what's in it when he comes home. Be good ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope

... trouble has made me a little light-headed. I think to-day I am foolisher than usual. Thoughts that would not tease other ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... of which, in such a contest of Titans, had an inappreciable value of position: partly for its absolute interference with the plans of our enemy, but still more from its keeping alive through central Europe the sense of a deep-seated vulnerability in France. Even to tease the coasts of our enemy, to mortify them by continual blockades, to insult them by capturing if it were but a baubling schooner under the eyes of their arrogant armies, repeated from time to time a sullen proclamation of power lodged in one quarter to which the hopes of ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... I hope it will," said Jenny, half vexed at Tom's pertinacity, and half amusing herself, for she thought it good fun to tease him. ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt

... tempting of Providence I call it, but I hope it will do you good, and learn you a lesson. What, Georgy! you expected a wild, shy young girl to show you her heart without asking? you expected a spoiled, flattered child, whom you have done the most to spoil and flatter, not to tease and torment you when she had it in her power, and could you not bear it better from your little wayward favorite, who, you know, was always true-hearted after all? Pshaw, my dear boy, I needn't plead for our dear baby. Poor Dora has a sore heart, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... round your face must be very trying. Now if you were not so vain—what does a rash matter when only women are present? Well, well, I will not tease you. Do you know many of the Kunitzers? Do you ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim

... perfectly well that Nino had only asked for the extra lesson in order to get a chance of talking about the Contessina di Lira, and so, to tease him, as soon as he appeared, the maestro made a great bustle about singing scales, and insisted on beginning at once. Moreover, he pretended to be in a bad humour; and that ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... all his advances, his honeyed words and oglings, the Stuart maid only laughed a merry childish laugh. She would romp with him, as she had done with the gallants at the French Court; to her he was only another "big playfellow" to tease and play with. She knew nothing of love, and did not wish to know more. He might kiss her—vraiment—why not? and that Charles made abundant use of this concession, we know, for we are told that "he would kiss her for half an hour at a ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... her, and to tease her about her lover. They asked her whether he was tall, handsome and rich. When was the wedding to be, and the christening? And often she ran away, to cry by herself, for these questions seemed to hurt her, like the prick of a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... a proverb, "Love me, love my dog:" that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser thing,—any inanimate substance, as a keep-sake, a watch or a ring, a tree, or the place where we last parted when my friend went away upon a long absence, I can make shift to love, because I love ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... they came out from behind a line of cars upon a stretch of track where a handful of soldiers were engaged in pressing back a rabble of boys, women, and men. The rabble were teasing the soldiers, as a mob of boys might tease a cat. Suddenly, as the officers and deputies appeared, some one hurled a stone. In a moment the air was thick with missiles, revolver shots followed, and then the handful of soldiers formed in line with ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... she exclaimed. "But you must not tease Ramon. You understand, the voice of the people has made Galleo President, but no one forgets that he is not one ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... play, but I'll stay and tease you as I used to, if Miles don't come and carry me off as he said he would," answered Kitty, with a toss of the head which showed she was not so childlike as David fancied. But the next minute she was sitting on a stool at his feet petting the cat, while ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott

... the sneer. When a man is resolutely bent upon a journey he does not stop to fight the flies that tease him. ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... sort of turned-out heiress, and have them pitying me. If they knew I was hunting for hiding-places, I believe some of them would rag me dreadfully. I should never hear the last of it. They'd always be pretending they'd found something, just to tease me." ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... reached puberty I was sometimes called a 'sissy' by my father. Such taunts humiliated me more than anything else has ever done. After puberty my father no longer applied the term, and gradually other persons ceased to tease me that way. The sting of it lasted, though, and led me more than once to ask intimate friends, both men and women, if they considered me at all feminine. Every one of them has been very emphatically of the opinion that my rational life is distinctively masculine, being logical, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... in good spirits, was inclined to tease him, "I should have thought it would be a capital opportunity to show an intelligent foreigner ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... half believed it. Now I know it is so and just how you do it, and I feel as if I had learned something worth knowing. Do you know, I think you are one of the most interesting and wonderful of all my neighbors, and I'll never laugh at or tease ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess

... unharmed. Yet once again, months later, she forgot herself and mocked Ab when he had been boastful over some exploit of strength and courage and when he had seemed to say that he knew no fear. She, but to tease him, sprang up with a face convulsed and agonized, and with staring eyes and hands opening and shutting, had cried out "Oak! Oak!" as she had seen Ab do at night. Her mimic terror was changed on the moment into ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... will our Catos with their frowning brows Condemn a work of fresh simplicity'? A cheerful kindness my pure speech endows; What people do, I write, to my capacity. For who knows not the pleasures Venus gives? Who will not in a warm bed tease his members? Great Epicurus taught a truth that lives; Love and enjoy life! ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... That's right.... Besides, it's too late to go back; you have no choice now, you must all start with us.... But you, Fire, don't come near anybody; you, Dog, don't tease the Cat; and you, Water, hold yourself up and try not to run all over ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck

... Vernon said: "Willoughby will everlastingly tease that boy to be loved by him. Perhaps, poor fellow, he had an excuse last night. Anyhow, he went into Crossjay's room this morning, woke him up and talked to him, and set the lad crying, and what with one thing and another ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... I would rest at ease, The merry lad begins to tease; He'll loose the kine to take me out, And ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie

... certainly true—Dave was a very trying boy. Though possessing naturally some good qualities, he had been so humored and indulged that his own will had become his law; he loved to tease, and hated to be thwarted in the slightest degree, and this made him often very exacting and tyrannical. Miss Higginson called him a "most exasperating boy," and she wasn't far wrong. He teased Kate and Eva so much that ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... strange," he remarked, "that you cannot learn not to ask to do what I have forbidden. I shall have to punish you every time you do it; for you must learn that no means no, and that you are never to coax or tease after papa has once said it. I love my little girl very dearly, and want to do all I can to make her happy, but I must have her entirely submissive and obedient to me. But stop crying now," he added, ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley

... made a path up to the sky, and up sailed the little bed into the midst of the sky. All the little bright Stars were there with their nice little lamps. And when he saw them, that naughty Little Jack Rollaround began to tease. "Out of the way, there! I am coming!" he shouted, and sailed the trundle-bed boat straight at them. He bumped the little Stars right and left, all over the sky, until every one of them put his little lamp out ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... whole scenes by heart. I declare I was astonished at him. Oh, you can't imagine how much he is pleased with the book; he 'could not get rid of the rogue,' he told me. But was it not droll," said she, "that I should recommend it to Dr. Burney? and tease him so innocently ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... held in his hand. She had seen him writing it. She had even seen some of the lines scrawled and re-scrawled on bits of paper, showing careful if not swift and skillful manufacture. One of these crumpled-up bits of paper she had in her pocket now, having recovered it that she might tease him by quoting the lines at ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... and don't tease,—or else I'll never bring you to the Stryd again." So it happened that Lord Lovel and Lady Anna went across the meadow together, down to the river, and sauntered along the margin till they came to the stepping-stones. He passed over, and she followed ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope

... I do not want his daughter," Hayoue exclaimed, looking straight at his brother. He was in earnest about this matter, and whenever Hayoue grew serious it was best not to tease him too much. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... sister and brother who had just left. "Queer they are!" she thought to herself. "If Davie came back to me after a year in India, I wouldn't have liked to meet him in somebody else's house. But they seemed quite happy to look at books, and talk about just anything and play with Jock and Mhor and tease Peter. Now I expect they'll be talking about their own affairs, but I would have rushed at the pleasure of hearing all about everything—I couldn't have waited. Pamela has such a leisured air about everything she does. It's nice and sort of aloof and quiet—but I could never attain to it. I'm little ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... DO UNDERSTAND, their class loyalty and class pride will astonish the world. They will stand erect in their vast class strength and defend—THEMSELVES. They will cease to coax and tease; they will make demands—unitedly. They will desert the armory; they will spike every cannon on earth; they will scorn the commander; they will never club nor bayonet another striker; and in the legislatures ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... an' ef de road wuz muddy or she wuz tired, he use' to tote her; an' 'twarn' hardly a day passed dat he didn' kyar her some'n' to school—apples or hick'y nuts, or some'n'. He wouldn' let none o' de chil'en tease her, nudder. Heh! One day, one o' de boys poked he finger at Miss Anne, an' arfter school Marse Chan he axed 'im 'roun' hine de school-house out o' sight, an' ef he didn' ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various

... Who loved so quickly, and who loved so well. O'er all his veins the wandering passion burns, He calls her nymph, and every nymph by turns. 160 Her form to lovely Venus he prefers, Or swears that Venus must be such as hers. She, proud to rule, yet strangely framed to tease, Neglects his offers while her airs she plays, Shoots scornful glances from the bended frown, In brisk disorder trips it up and down, Then hums a careless tune to lay the storm, And sits and blushes, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... agreeing monosyllable and moved the strawberries to a position where they intruded into the conversation like a punctuation mark in the middle of a sentence. Her glance dropped to the pail, and she looked at it saying nothing, amused to thus tease him and covertly note his ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... had thought that Johnny would run, and then Reddy meant to run after him and pull his tail and tease him all the way home. Now, Reddy Fox got as big a surprise as Johnny had had when Reddy pulled his tail. Johnny didn't stop to think that Reddy Fox was twice as big as he, but with his eyes snapping, and ...
— Old Mother West Wind • Thornton W. Burgess

... ha! ha!"—And how could I help it? it wasn't by my own CHOICE that that ruffian Waters took such liberties with me. Didn't I show how averse I was to all quarrels by refusing altogether his challenge?—But such is the world. And thus the people at Stiffelkind's used to tease me, until they drove me ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray

... tease me like this, when you know it will do no good?—when you know I can't let you do it? Don't you think I want you to be as well-dressed as anybody, if we could afford it? Come, I'm waiting. You must wear the blue or stay at home. What shall I ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter

... while Miss Minnie Senior, to stop at the Combe Florey Rectory, and to discover that the eminent wit took as much trouble to amuse his own family when alone as to set the tables of Mayfair upon a roar. He liked to tease his girl guest by telling her that her father, then a Master in Chancery, did not care a straw for his daughter "Minnie." "De Minimis non curat Lex"—"the Master does not care for Minnie"—was a favourite travesty ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... Ham's time-honored custom to tease his aunt, and while she snorted and sniffed, she enjoyed it, for whatever she thought of a Babylonian life, she secretly worshiped this brilliant young nephew who so well fitted its ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck



Words linked to "Tease" :   flout, banter, tantalize, brush, jolly, make fun, jest at, chaff, badger, excite, harassment, card, ribbing, teaser, twit, tantalization, let down, roast, laugh at, torment, persona non grata, beleaguer, kid, barrack, scoff, taunt, bedevil, wind up, vamp, sex, shred, comb out, bait, prickteaser, poke fun, arouse, tantalise, comb, razz, disappoint, vexer, straighten out, minx, change surface, cod, control, unsnarl, rally



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