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Tick   Listen
verb
Tick  v. i.  (past & past part. ticked; pres. part. ticking)  
1.
To make a small or repeating noise by beating or otherwise, as a watch does; to beat.
2.
To strike gently; to pat. "Stand not ticking and toying at the branches."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tick" Quotes from Famous Books



... of the three other men, with a wonderful distinctness; and also the tick of my watch upon the table seemed to sound as loud and as slow as the tick of an old grandfather's clock. Someway I knew that none of the others saw ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson

... so much better company than a clock," she said; "though when I'm here by myself I always like to hear the clock tick. It seems as if I were not so entirely alone. But a bird is better. I talked to Dickey to-day and he twittered back. He has such a cute way of perking his little head to one side just as knowing as you please, and he acts exactly as if he were considering whether he should answer 'yes' ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson

... I recall, carried the mail that winter. 'Twas a thankless task: a matter of thirty miles to Jimmie Tick's Cove and thirty back again. Miles hard with peril and brutal effort—a way of sleet and slush, of toilsome paths, of a swirling mist of snow, of stinging, perverse winds or frosty calm, of lowering ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... his chair. Had there been a clock in the room its faintest tick would have rung out like ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... martyrdom, I must draw upon his hoard of merit to acquit myself. You will at least get thus much by this charming manner of obliging me: I look upon myself as double obliged; and when it cost me so much to ask one favour, and I find myself in debt for two, I shall scarce run in tick for a third. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... to the levee where the men are working. As long as this flood keeps rising we're safe. Then the other three of us will go for the house. We may be seen that way, but there's no use spending any more time here playing tick-tack-toe on that wood up there. We locate what we want, and if we're cornered we can come out through here to ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... especially warned us against sleeping here, the Chapar khaneh being infested with the Meana bug, a species of camel tick, which inflicts a poisonous and sometimes dangerous wound. It is only found in certain districts, and rarely met with south of Teheran. The virus has been known, in some cases, to bring on typhoid fever, and one European is said to have died from its effects. For the truth of this I cannot vouch; ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... was pulled down over the foot-board, an' I could see the slit in the tick where they poke in their hands to stir up the straw. I put the trap with the mouse in it, in there among the straw, an' then I went down just as quiet as I could, an' got old ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks

... power."[29] And in a series of cases, which today seem irreconcilable with Hammer v. Dagenhart, it sustained federal laws penalizing the interstate transportation of lottery tickets,[30] of women for immoral purposes,[31] of stolen automobiles,[32] and of tick-infested cattle.[33] It affirmed the power of Congress to punish the forgery of bills of lading purporting to cover interstate shipments of merchandise,[34] to subject prison made goods moved from one State to another to the laws of ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... Now, whether the man was shamming, or whether it was real tic tic, or epileptic fit, I know not; but I never heard of such a cure for it before. I threw the fellow half a pictareen, as much for the amusement he had afforded me as to get rid of him. "Tanky, massa; now man-of-war man, here de tick for you again to keep off all the dam niggers." So saying, he handed the stick to Swinburne, made a polite bow, and departed. We were, however, soon surrounded by others, particularly some dingy ladies with baskets of fruit, and who, as they said, "sell ebery ting." I perceived that my sailors ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... your mind were clear again, that I might water an ass at it. I had rather be a tick in a sheep ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... high she had to climb on a chair to get in. She heard Maria's heavy feet go shuffling down the stairs. A door banged. Then it was so still she could hear the clock tick ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston

... the cotton growers of the Southern States by the advance of the boll weevil. The Department is doing all it can to organize the farmers in the threatened districts, just as it has been doing all it can to organize them in aid of its work to eradicate the cattle fever tick in the South. The Department can and will cooperate with all such associations, and it must have their help if its own work is to be done in the most ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... tick of the five seconds over the four minutes, Joe shot up to the surface. He tried not to show his exhaustion as he climbed, dripping wet, out on to the platform and bowed to the plaudits of the enthusiastic crowd, but it was hard work for Joe to keep up. ...
— Joe Strong, the Boy Fish - or Marvelous Doings in a Big Tank • Vance Barnum

... with home-made ticks filled with straw or pine needles. The best room may have had a carved oak chest, brought from England, a tent or field bedstead, with green baize, or white dimity curtains, and generous feather bed. The stout tick for this, the snow-white sheets, the warm flannel blankets, and heavy woollen rugs, woven in checks of black, or red, and white, or the lighter harperlet, were all the products of domestic wheel and loom. There were no carpets. The floors were sprinkled with fine, white sand, which, on particular ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... to cook all right, but the bed looks just like straw tick—not much good, I'd say," responded Mrs. ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson

... all the furniture for that cabin out of a few popple poles and a hollow basswood log. For beds, beams were fitted in between the logs and stuck out about a foot above the floor and were six feet long. To these we fastened cross pieces of "popple" and on this put a tick filled with wild hay and corn stalk leaves. It made a wonderful bed when you were tired as everyone was in those days, for all worked. After we had cut off a section of our big log by hand, we split it ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... don't get excited," spoke up Bunker pacifically, "you can have what grub you want. But I'm telling you the truth—those people down below won't give me another dollar's worth on tick. These are hard times, boy, the hardest I've ever seen, and if you'd offer me that mine back for five hundred cents I couldn't raise the money. That shows how broke I am, and I've got ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge

... from generators that were perhaps not equaled in space; no ordinary ship's defensive web could resist its vicious thrust. From the streak of silver that represented the Hawk's swoop, a stream of orange cut a swathe through the air ahead, holding accurately on the brigand ship. For just a tick of time there was a turmoil of color as offensive ray met defensive web; then the air cleared ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore

... eat it, then, For Heaven's sake, and stop your silly noise! I haven't heard the clock tick ...
— Aria da Capo • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... faint streak of the dawn of June 7 the mines at Hill 60 and St. Yves were exploded. The sight was awe-inspiring, and the ground trembled as if in the throes of an agonizing palsy. On the tick of the appointed time our 'boys' went 'over the top.' It was for this experience that they had worked and waited. They advanced immediately behind the barrage so consistently sustained by the artillery, and in the face of ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss

... Signal. His wife came in, seated herself, and overflowed the low rocking-chair on the other side of the table with her voluminous skirts. She was tall and very large. Her face was as placid as that of a clock which has just marked the last hour of the day and has nothing to do but tick-tock ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... little money—not much—and transformed Camp One. Every bunk was provided with a tick, which the men could fill with hay, balsam, or hemlock, as suited them. Cheap but attractive curtains on wires at once brightened the room and shut each man's "bedroom" from the main hall. The deacon seat remained but was supplemented by a half-dozen simple and ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... face in his hands and wept like a child, while Mrs. Montgomery sat motionless, her eyes fixed upon the quaintly carved case of the eight day clock, whose solemn tick ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... the Ajumba, and before I joined them felt a fearful pricking irritation. Investigation of the affected part showed a tick of terrific size with its head embedded in the flesh; pursuing this interesting subject, I found three more, and had awfully hard work to get them off and painful too for they give one not only a feeling of irritation at their ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... loudly to utter its signals through a telegraphic sounder, or forcibly indent them upon a moving strip of paper? Not directly, but indirectly, as the very last refinement of initiation. Let us imagine an ordinary telegraphic battery strong enough loudly to tick out a message. Be it ever so strong it remains silent until its circuit is completed, and for that completion the merest touch suffices. Now the thread of dust in the coherer forms part of such a telegraphic circuit: ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various

... to fall, and my hold of you were to give way, I should be down after you in a less moment than a lady's watch can tick, and catch you long before you ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald

... argument), leaves me the absolute control of this wood, and I proceed to lay an English lever watch on several places of it, keeping my ear near to that nodal point where I know will come the inner bout, or D of the violin, consequently the bridge, which I mark with a X. The tick-tack of the watch varies in strength as I get farther from or nearer to a nodal point, as, of course, it was bound to do; but, from experience, it is a fine-toned piece of wood. I detach it from the glass rod, ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson

... finger on your wrist, and keep very still for a moment. Listen. You feel something, do you not? Something alive, and it goes beat, beat; one, two, three, like the ticking of a watch. As long as you live, that tick, tick will go on; but for this little girl it had stopped, because her heart had ceased to beat. When the doctor put his hand upon her wrist, he could feel nothing moving there. "She is quite dead," he said, as he took ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... already? Had her hope been spoiled by some accident? Surely not. It was twenty minutes to nine. They were safe in the theatre by now. Oh, she was afraid! She was alone in the house—worse than alone! Jenny cowered. She felt she could not answer the summons. Tick-tick-tick said the clock, striking across the silences. Again Jenny made a step forward. Then, terrifying her, the noise began once more—the thunderous knock, the ping-ping-ping-whir ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton

... club with spikes on it; it lay unnoticed in a nook in the big amalgamated copper vault, covered with papyrus books and records of the bank. Some of the old past due notes on the shelves were still drawing interest and you could hear it tick like the clanking cogs when a ferry boat makes her landing. The writer fairly shudders at what the interest on those notes would now amount to, computed at five per cent. (the prevailing rate paid for call loans in that ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne

... tick of the little Empire clock on the mantelpiece assured Juve that he was indeed in ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain

... room wavered and darkened; then she recovered a torturing acuteness of vision. Every detail of her surroundings pressed upon her: the tick of the clock, the slant of sunlight on the wall, the hardness of the chair-arms that she grasped, were a separate wound ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... knowledge of the one she had bartered for money. Money! The thought stung and almost maddened her. She had given her own flesh and blood for money, and her punishment was rapidly increasing upon her. Her sin had followed her through the years, and had now suddenly enmeshed her. The steady tick of the clock seemed like an accusing voice to her hot brain, and the gentle motion of the blind at the open window annoyed her. She fancied it knew of her guilt and was mocking her. She was learning, as others have learned, ...
— Jess of the Rebel Trail • H. A. Cody

... black tar and covered with feathers from head to foot; not even his features spared, nor yet his hair; on his cheeks great clumps of gray goose plumes, suggestive of diabolical ears, and with no other covering but this to shield him from the night wind, save the emptied bed-tick, which he had drawn over his shoulders, and which Toby had mistaken ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... to the table with a rasping sound you may serve it honest cuthbert said the captain impatiently and the butler broke a hole in the top crust he touched a hidden mechanism for immediately something right under me began to go tick tock tick tock tick tock what is that noise captain said the larboard mate only the patent log clicking off the knots said the butler it needs oiling again but cuthbert said the captain why are you so nervous ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... home and open that parcel of Parish Magazines you'll find on my study table, and deliver those that belong to the village. You know where to find the list. Be sure to tick the names off. And don't go farther down the road than Marriott's farm; ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... stroll backwards and forwards by the lakeside. Encouragement was all very well; but... "Shall I—shall I not? Shall I—shall I not? Shall I—shall I not?" The eternal question went tick-tack, tick-tack, to the rhythm of his march. He glared at vacancy, and tried hard to make ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... hand as though in deep and earnest meditation. I looked on in silence and wonderment. Heliobas spoke not another word, and together we watched the pensive figure in the chair, so absorbed in serious thought. Some minutes passed. The gentle tick of the clock in the outer hall grew almost obtrusive, so loud did it seem in the utter stillness that surrounded us. I longed to speak—to ask questions—to proffer sympathy—but dared not move or utter a ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli

... to make. Time went on, seconds into minutes. The nerves of the assaulters were, no doubt, at extreme tension. Four o'clock came, still all was still and silent. The Federal commanders held their watches in hand and watched the tiny steel hands tick the seconds away. The streaks of day came peeping up over the hills and cast shadows high overhead. The fuse had failed! A call was made for a volunteer to go down into the mine and relight the fuse. A Lieutenant and Sergeant bravely step forward and offered to undertake ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... saw a man— A fat man with dull eyes aleer— Within the shadow of the van; And I was on the point to rise To send him spinning 'mid the wheels And stop his leering grin with mud ... And would have done it in a tick ... When, suddenly, alive with fright, She started, with red, parted lips, As though she guessed we'd come to grips, And turned her black eyes full on me ... And as I looked into their light My heart forgot the lust of fight, And something shot me to the quick, And ran like wildfire through my blood, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... so still that every tick of the Dresden clock could be distinctly heard. When Miss Gorham, Alora's governess, turned a page of her book, the rustle was appallingly audible. And the clock ticked on, and Miss Gorham turned page after page, and still the child sat bowed upon ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum

... explored, under the guidance of our hostess, who has a wonderful knack with all animals, the coach and cavalcade of riders set forth to the scene of operations. Here we found a large number of animals ready to be dipped. This process is necessary to clean the animals from the garrapata. This is a tick which has been, and still is, the terror of the north. It is the means of transmitting to cattle the disease known as "Texas Fever." The rough native cattle do not suffer badly from this fever, but any newly imported fine stock from the ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... spring out of his chair as though electrified. Watch how, regardless of the laws of buttons, he frantically tears his trowsers from his limbs; he has him! no he hasn't!—yes he has!—no—no, positively he cannot get him off. It is a tick no bigger than a grain of sand, but his bite is like a red-hot needle boring into the skin. If all the royal family had been present, he could not have refrained from tearing off ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... out the candle, for it was not yet dark enough to justify artificial light to her thrifty mind. She thought the big, empty house, in which she was the only living thing, was very lonely. It was so still, except for the slow tick of the "grandfather's clock" and the soft purr and crackle of the wood in the stove. Josephine sat ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... blame in the matter. He was sent out again directly. After that, with Aunt Lucy to assist, they hurriedly packed what few things might be taken. The costly relics of Arlington Street were untouched, and the French clock was left on the mantel to tick all the night, and for days to come, in a silent and forsaken room; or perhaps to greet impassively the King's officers when they broke in at the door. But I caught my lady in the act of wrapping up the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... hung round with other idlers, playing marbles all day in the West Park, and going home at night to tell his landlady how he had been seeking for a job. I believe this kind of existence was not unpleasant to Alick himself, and he might have long continued to enjoy idleness and a life on tick; but he had a comrade, let us call him Brown, who grew restive. This fellow was continually threatening to slip his cable for the States, and at last, one Wednesday, Glasgow was left widowed of ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Teresa had returned to the kitchen, the door closing with a bang to demonstrate her displeasure. Nothing could be heard but the tick-tack of the clock, and the sound of the turning pages, as Paula, in spite of her tears, looked for ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte

... who also are too gentle, and having suffered yourself, can feel for those who suffer, which Mauriti who has never suffered cannot do. Still, you too thought me a trouble, one that sticks in the flesh like a hooked thorn, or a tick from the grass, and cannot be unfastened. You spoke to the Master about it and he spoke ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... "Tick, tick, tick!" he could see it go back and forth, each movement marking the passing of another second of ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas

... listening to the tick of my watch," he breathed against her ear. "I reckon it has taken ten minutes to collect two dug-outs. Unless we mean to remain all night we must let up ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... fresh as any cats in the market; and pepree-pot was no go. Bean-soup was just as bad; people said kittens wasn't good done that way, and the more I hollered, the more the customers wouldn't come, and them what did, wanted tick. Along with the boys and their pewter fips, them what got trust and didn't pay, and the abusing of my goods, I was soon fotch'd up in the victualling line—and I busted for the benefit of my creditors. But genius riz. I made a raise of a ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... they haven't received more, and then fight over what they have; then they eat too much French candy, and get sick and cross, and the whole house is filled with their noise. So mamma has a headache; and papa longs for his office, and misses the tick-tick of the stock telegraph, and thinks what a confounded nuisance holidays are. That is what Christmas is ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... footsteps ceased to echo in the gallery, and then, he scarcely knew why, he furtively opened the door and peeped out. All was dark; and save for the regular tick of the pendulum on the stairs, the house was still. Mr. Thomasson, wondering which way Julia's room lay, stood listening until a stair creaked; and then, retiring precipitately, locked his door. Lord Almeric, in the gloom of the green moreen curtains ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... is fine and free, with no one to obey, No sergeants shouting, "Show a leg!" or "Double up!" all day; No buttons to be polished, no army boots to wear, And nobody to tick you off because you grow ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various

... laughed. "It's some of fat old Benny's nonsense," he said. "He wouldn't come in, because you city chaps were coming. He's rigged a tick-tack; I can see the string of it. Wait a minute and I'll just steal 'round the other door and catch him at it. You fellows go on eating, and don't pay ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith

... cautious with the whiskey, I told you before. Not a sound could we hear of Godfrey or of my father. Only the rapid, calling and calling,—I mind it well that night. Ay, and well I mind the striking of the great clock,—tick, tick, tick, tick, tick,—I listened and I dreamed on it till I doubted but it was the beating ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson

... "The tick of the lock is as well known to the knaves, as the blast of a trumpet to a soldier! lay down the piece—lay down the piece—should the moon touch the barrel, it could not fail to be seen by the devils, whose eyes are keener than the blackest snake's! The smallest motion, now, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the blasts. Near-by shells, especially German, broke brilliantly against a background so thick that it swallowed up the flashes of more distant shells in its garishly illumined density. Thousands of officers were studying their wrist watches for the tick of "zero" as the minute-hands moved on with merciless fatalism; and hundreds of thousands of men who had come into position overnight were in line in the trenches looking to their officers ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... look where I put them," and she insisted that not even Nan should know the mystery of the clocks. "This will be a real surprise party," finished Dorothy, having put each of five clocks in its hiding place, and leaving the tick-ticks to think it over, all by ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope

... the table with such energy that it groaned beneath him. "Error? Not a bit of it. Can't you follow a simple calculation like that? The thing is, you see, you get your original hen for next to nothing. That's to say, on tick. Anybody will let you have a hen on tick. Now listen to me for a moment. You let your hen set, and hatch chickens. Suppose you have a dozen hens. Very well, then. When each of the dozen has a dozen chickens, you send the old hens back with thanks for the kind loan, and there you ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse

... hair, like the silken floss of the maize, hung Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal. Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred Children's children rode on his knee, and heard his great watch tick. Four long years in the times of the war had he languished a captive, Suffering much in an old French fort as the friend of the English. Now, though warier grown, without all guile or suspicion, Ripe in wisdom was he, but patient, and simple, and childlike. He ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow

... starlight; and the Ranger lay back to rest, slipping into a dusky realm as of half consciousness and sleep; but for the nervous ticking of his watch, and the slow drop, drop, drop; then sleep with a dream face wavering through the dark; then the watch tick scurrying on again; then a hand touched him! Wayland sprang to his feet half asleep. He could have sworn she was, standing there; but the form faded. The pack mule had flounced up with a cough. A white horse stood between the banks of the arroyo. There was a steel flash in the dark, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... it was a hot day, and all around the field waved fruit boughs nearly past their bloom, with the green of new leaves overcoming the white and red, and the air was heavy with honey-sweet, and, as steady as a clock-tick through all the roaring of the merrymakers, came the hum of the bees and the calls of the birds. A great flag was streaming thirty feet high, and the gay dresses of the women who had congregated to ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... kindly eyes. He sits in a glass cage and about him are a score or more of clocks all ticking soundly and all surrounded by an extra dial of small numbers running from one to a thousand. Each number means a workman—each tick of the clock a moment of his life gone in the service of the pickle company. I rap on the window of ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... on the last guess. It was something. But not even the teacher knew just what. The school room was clammily, reproachfully silent, every tick of the elm clock which told off the time without prejudice, seemed to pile up ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... together with sundry other hindrances and annoyances, delayed the usual morning work until far into the afternoon—something that was always particularly displeasing to methodical Aunt Polly, who ordered her own life, preferably, by the tick of the clock. ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... error, Not too slow nor too quick, And better than alarum clocks— She doesn't have to tick! ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley

... crying was so—Why should she cry at me? I was upset! I wasn't thinking!" She could hear him pleading and sighing to her to forgive him. But she would not—not this time! He had hurt a helpless thing once too often. Her fit of crying ceased, and she lay listening to the tick of the clock, and marshalling in her mind a hundred little evidences of his malevolence toward her baby—his own baby. How was it possible? Was he really going mad? And a fit of such chilly shuddering seized her that she crept under the eider down to regain warmth. In her rage, she retained ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... partly raised, and bent: remarked what a marvelous mingling of grace and power was in his form and bearing: as the watch ticked again, she saw him spring forward and upward, grasping and dragging down both reins in his hands: another tick—he was dashed against Dolly's shoulder, and his body swung around along the shaft, but without loosening his hold upon the reins: tick, tick, tick, the mare's headway was slackened; the dragging at the bit of that great weight was more than she could carry; tick, tick, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... gold! Oh, merry was I that winter night, And gleeful our little one's din, And tender the grace of my darling's face As we watched the new year in. But a voice—a spectre's, that mocked at love— Came out of the yonder hall; "Tick-tock, tick-tock!" 't was the solemn clock That ruefully croaked to all. Yet what knew we of the griefs to be In the year we longed to greet? Love—love was the theme of the sweet, sweet dream I ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... that she did not hear him. There was no sound but the drowsy tick of the great clock in the hall and the low song of ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... to take the place of the old one. Certainly the new friend had very little to do with all that old life of which the fountain was the door. He belonged, most definitely, to the new one, and everything about him—the delightfully mysterious tick of his gold watch, the solid, firm grasp of his hand, the sure security of his shoulder upon which Ernest Henry now gloriously rode—these things were of ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... referred to at the commencement of this sketch. He discovered the now celebrated change of dimensions produced by the magnetization of soft iron by the current. The peculiar noise which accompanies the magnetization of an iron bar by the current, sometimes called the "magnetic tick," ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... his pillow. "It's as easy as falling off a log. A baby in a perambulator could learn to tick off orders for its bottle. And—on the square—there isn't its equal on the market, Miss Vanderpoel—there isn't." He fumbled beneath his pillow and actually brought ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the top flat, where the chimes were played, I had to pass through the vault in which the great pendulum was slowly swinging in its ghostly-like tick-tack, tick-tack; while the great ancient clock was keeping time with its sudden and startling movement. The whole scene was almost as uncanny as the witches' cell underneath. There was also a wild ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... "what makes you call that great clumsy dog 'Watch'? A watch goes 'tick, tick,' as busy as can be all the time; and this dog ...
— The Nursery, November 1873, Vol. XIV. No. 5 • Various

... pellet of mud taken from the leg of a partridge. So on and so on. The imagination delights to picture these floral vagabonds, each with its own clever method of getting a fresh start in the world. But by none of these methods just mentioned do the tick-trefoils spread abroad. Theirs is indeed a by hook or by crook system. The scalloped, jointed pod, where the seeds lie concealed, has minute crooked bristles, which catch in the clothing of man or beast, so that every herd of sheep, every dog, every man, woman, or ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... time we'll have, what a rich new life." Her deep sweet voice was a little unsteady. "Listen, dearie, how quiet it is." And for some moments nothing was heard but the sober tick-tick of the clock on the mantle. "I wonder what we're going ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... the colts with merry tick-tack of the brush and comb, and after the last stroke on their shining limbs, threw his tools in the box and ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... from tic douloureux of the fifth nerve. She had had most of her teeth drawn before I saw her, and an attempt had been made to wrench out the nerve on the left side by the external scission. But it made no difference: all the clocks in hell tick-tacked in that poor woman's jaw, and it was the mercy of Providence that ever she came across me. My organisation was found to have almost complete, and quite easy, control over hers, and with a few passes ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... as not, he would emerge from beneath the Feather Tick and lean against the Porcelain Stove, wondering vaguely if he ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... a persistent, relentless, remorseless regularity. Tick, tick—tick, tick. Every moment it appeared to be louder and louder. His brow wrinkled and his head bent forward more deeply, while his eyes were set straight before him. Tick, tick—tick, tick. The solemn beat became human ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... from him that he had a headache and would confer with me on the morrow. Neither did I see Lois again that evening, a gill of rum having been issued to every man, and I sticking close as a wood-tick to my red comrades—indeed, I had them out after sunset to watch the cattle-guard, who were in a sorry pickle, sixty head having strayed and two soldiers missing. And the manoeuvres of that same guard ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... the boy been with it all that he nearly forgot about the watch. But when he remembered and the man let him take it in his rusty, brown fingers, that was the most wonderful moment of all. The tick, tick inside was a marvel, almost a thing uncanny to the boy, and when it was explained how the hands went round and round, telling the time of day, it surely seemed a thing beyond ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins

... in both public and private houses tell different tales of the torrent that stopped them. Some of them ceased to tick the moment the water reached them. In Dibert's banking-house the marble time-piece on the mantel stopped at seven minutes after 4 o'clock. In the house of the Hon. John M. Rose, on the bank of Stony ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... shirt-sleeves prowled backwards and forwards—as the tigers do about feeding time in the Zoo. They, too, had super-hearing. From little funnels that looked like electric light shades they caught the tick of the messages, and chalked the figures of the latest prices as they altered with the dealing on the floor upon a huge blackboard that made ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... the spaniel; it was a perfect beauty! Roper said Blake only wanted ten shillings for it, and it was an absolute bargain. He advised me to buy it and keep it at the kennels. I'd run through all my cash by then, but Blake said I could go on tick if I cared; and I thought it was a pity to miss the chance, because if I didn't have the dog, Jarrow was going to ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... it with her own hands; but I saw that she was young, and of a fair complexion. Peggotty had been crying. So had little Em'ly. Not a word was spoken when we first went in; and the Dutch clock by the dresser seemed, in the silence, to tick twice as loud as ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... a 'tick for his arm," interrupted Jamie, who must be sure papa knew all about this ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson

... doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.' 'A day in Thy courts is better than a thousand.' We all know how strangely elastic time is, and have sometimes been amazed when we remembered what an infinity of joy or sorrow we had lived through in one tick of the pendulum. When men are dreaming, they pass through a long series of events in a moment's space. When we are truly awake, we live long in a short time, for life is measured, not by the length of its moments, but by the depth of its experiences. And when some new truth is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... would squirt, with or without provocation, the triple compound essence of malaria into veins brought up on oxygen, and on water through which you could see the pebbles at the bottom. A bosom friend of the mosquito, and some say his paramour, was little Miss Tick. Of the two she was considerably the more hellish, and forsook her dwelling-places in the woods for the warm flesh of soldiers where it is rosiest, next the skin. The body, arms, and legs of Miss Tick could be scratched to nothing by ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... quiet, silent even of the tick of a clock. Outside, the traffic swept by, and feet pattered along the pavement. But this vulgar storm of life seemed shut out of Helena's room, that remained indifferent, like a church. Two candles burned dimly ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence

... her. It was smoky an' dark kaze dey wuzn' no windows. We didn' have no sheets an' no towels, so when I cried an' said I didn' want to live on no Yankee house, Mammy beat me an' made me go to bed. I laid on de straw tick lookin' up through de cracks in de roof. I could see de stars, an' de sky shinin' through de cracks looked like long blue splinters stretched 'cross de rafters. I lay dare an' cried kaze I wanted to go back ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... while I was helping Timmy Finbrink out of his difficulties, and afterwards tried to fool you with the fake window-breaking, some of the Central fellows had been down at Ritchie's playing tick-tack on one of his front windows. Tick-tack is a stupid game, and it got me ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock

... house. The tick-tick of the clock, very even, slow, dryly metrical, increased the silence and solitude. I put my ear to the door of the room, in hope of hearing a groan, a word, an insult, anything that would be a sign of life, that might bring back peace to my conscience; I was ready to let myself ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... . . . tick . . . he heard the clock in the next room. The church-bell chimed the hour in the churchyard close by. The bell tolled slowly, depressingly, mournfully. . . . A cold chill ran down Vaxin's neck and spine. He fancied he heard someone ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... hour of fairy ban and spell;— The wood-tick has kept the minutes well; He has counted them all with click and stroke Deep in the heart of the mountain-oak; And he has awakened the sentry Elve Who sleeps with him in the haunted tree, To bid him ring the hour of twelve, And call the Fays to their revelry; Twelve ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson

... Featherstone, th' champeen roller-skater iv Harvard, '98, Pro-fissor McGlue, th' archyologist, Lord Dum de Dum, Mike Kehoe, Immanuel Kant Gumbo, th' naygro pote, Horrible Hank, t' bad lands scout, Sinitor Lodge, Lucy Emerson Tick, th' writer on female sufferage, Mud-in-the-Eye, th' chief iv th' Ogallas, Gin'ral Powell Clayton, th' Mexican mine expert, four rough riders with their spurs on, th' Ambassadure iv France an' th' Cinquovasti fam'ly, jugglers. Th' conversation, we larn fr'm wan iv th' guests who's ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne

... the politicians nowadays. The Front Trenches have about as much use for the Front Benches as a big-game hunter for mosquitoes. The bayonet professor indicates his row of dummies and says to his lads, "Just imagine they are Cabinet Ministers—go!" and in a clock-tick the heavens are raining shreds of sacking and particles of straw. The demon bomber fancies some prominent Parliamentarian is lurking in the opposite sap, grits his teeth, and gets an extra five yards ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various

... lived, and the tall steeples of the churches, in which the sweet bells were ringing a merry peal as they entered it, and found their way to their grandmother's door. They went upstairs into the little room, where all looked just as it used to do. The old clock was going "tick, tick," and the hands pointed to the time of day, but as they passed through the door into the room they perceived that they were both grown up, and become a man and woman. The roses out on the roof were in full bloom, and peeped in at the window; and there stood the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... just as bad— The few men who have, and the many who've not tick, All shockt to find out that that promising lad, Prince Metternich's pupil, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... answered me, but I pressed the inquiry to give him an opportunity to sing the praises of this newest of his household gods. Mr. Bolum's pleasure was evident. Once launched into an account of the comfort of springs as compared to a straw-tick on ropes, he would have monopolized our attention to the end of the journey, but the sagacious Henry blocked him rudely by a tug at the reins which almost threw the lemon-colored mules ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... to remember what he had read in the Sunday supplements, "these scientists were working on criminology. They were studying murderers, to find out what made them tick. So they found that murderers throw out a different sort of brain wave from ordinary people. And their glands act funny, too. All this happens when they're about to commit a murder. So these scientists worked out a special machine to flash red or something ...
— Watchbird • Robert Sheckley

... face hard in thought. "As you probably know, I have had very little to do with women. That little has always been on a logical level. You are such a completely new experience that I can't figure out what makes you tick." ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... stimulus does not, as a rule, give rise to that perception. I cite a simple example in which I first observed this fact. Since I was a child there had been in my bed-room a clock, the loud ticking of which habit of many years prevented my hearing. Once, as I lay awake in bed, I heard it tick suddenly three times, then fall silent and stop. The occurrence interested me, I quickly got a light and examined the clock closely. The pendulum still swung, but without a sound; the time was right. I inferred that the clock must have stopped going just a few minutes ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... understand the allusions I had already heard to Rachel's being "dry," or Abigail's being as "full as a tick," or ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... could tick twenty seconds, and while Adamo's foot was still on the last round of the winding stair, the church-bells of Corellia clash out in ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot

... for his gun. Not a breath was drawn in the room. Hands remained frozen in air in the midst of a gesture. Lips which had parted to speak did not close. The steady voice of the clock broke into the silence—a dying space between every tick. For the second time in his life Tex Calder ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand

... takes more pleasure is one of those old clocks which reach from the ceiling to the floor, and conceal all the mystery and solemnity of pendulum and weights from the vulgar gaze. It has a very loud and self-asserting tick, and a still more arrogant strike, for such an old clock; but, then, everybody here has a voice that is much stronger than is needed, and it is the habit to scream in ordinary conversation. A clock, therefore, could not make itself heard by such people as these Quercynois, unless ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... last the old clock, tick it never so slowly, must bring round the hour when she may go down to the river to ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown

... and patriotic Wadsworth has gone in the field, also his two sons; one of them, (Tick,) was at Fredericksburgh, and his bravery was remarkable, even among all the heroism of that most glorious and most accursed day. How many such patriots as Wadsworth, can we boast of? Yet the miserable Halleck had the impudence ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski



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