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Wattle   Listen
noun
Wattle  n.  
1.
A twig or flexible rod; hence, a hurdle made of such rods. "And there he built with wattles from the marsh A little lonely church in days of yore."
2.
A rod laid on a roof to support the thatch.
3.
(Zool.)
(a)
A naked fleshy, and usually wrinkled and highly colored, process of the skin hanging from the chin or throat of a bird or reptile.
(b)
Barbel of a fish.
4.
(a)
The astringent bark of several Australian trees of the genus Acacia, used in tanning; called also wattle bark.
5.
Material consisting of wattled twigs, withes, etc., used for walls, fences, and the like. "The pailsade of wattle."
6.
(Bot.) In Australasia, any tree of the genus Acacia; so called from the wattles, or hurdles, which the early settlers made of the long, pliable branches or of the split stems of the slender species. The bark of such trees is also called wattle. See also Savanna wattle, under Savanna.
Wattle turkey. (Zool.) Same as Brush turkey.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wattle" Quotes from Famous Books



... side of the ancient Roman road from the eastward gate of the city, the houses of the citizens began to cluster into a street, with here and there a stone-built dwelling, and the rest made of that 'wattle and dab' construction, of which from time to time examples are still ...
— Winchester • Sidney Heath

... little town was crowded with the guardsmen, grooms, and yeomen prickers who were attached to the King's hunt. The King himself was staying at Castle Malwood, but several of his suite had been compelled to seek such quarters as they might find in the wooden or wattle-and-daub cottages of the village. Here and there a small escutcheon, peeping from a glassless window, marked the night's lodging of knight or baron. These coats-of-arms could be read, where a scroll would be meaningless, and the bowman, like most men of his age, was ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... with dense wattle thickets, the natives took advantage of the ground, and having completely surrounded the party, commenced first to threaten to throw their spears, then to throw stones, and finally one man caught hold of Mr. Bland by the arm, threatening to strike him with a dowak; another native threw a spear ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... of comparison; and according to this standard, the beak in one {140} Carrier was nearly half an inch longer than in the rock-pigeon. The upper mandible is often slightly arched. The tongue is very long. The development of the carunculated skin or wattle round the eyes, over the nostrils, and on the lower mandible, is prodigious. The eyelids, measured longitudinally, were in some specimens exactly twice as long as in the rock-pigeon. The external orifice or furrow of the nostrils was also twice as long. The open mouth in ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... last (fifth) edition of "Natural Selection," 1869, p. 102, admits that all sexual differences are not to be attributed to the agency of sexual selection, mentioning the wattle of carrier pigeons, tuft of turkey-cock, &c. These characters, however, seem less inexplicable by sexual selection than those ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... tonic. The fruit of A. vera, termed Egyptian and Senegal "bablah," has been employed in tanning and dyeing. Numerous species of this tribe are found abundant in New South Wales and the Cape Colony, and these, particularly the wattle bark of Australia, are in common use for tanning, from their astringent properties. The bark and rind of the fruit of the pomegranate (Pumica Granata) have ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... bill is short, thick, and pointed, and upon its head, above and between the eyes, grows a fleshy wattle, which does not stand up like the comb of a cock, but hangs down over the bill. Upon the breast is a ...
— Friends in Feathers and Fur, and Other Neighbors - For Young Folks • James Johonnot

... in the future than of tilling the little rood of earth, and living under the wattle roof, and being called Baas by neighbors a little poorer or a little less poor than himself. The cathedral spire, where it rose beyond the fields in the ruddy evening skies or in the dim, gray, misty mornings, said other things to him than this. But these he told only ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)

... called Audal or Auzal by the Somal, is a town about the size of Suez, built for 3000 or 4000 inhabitants, and containing a dozen large whitewashed stone houses, and upwards of 200 Arish or thatched huts, each surrounded by a fence of wattle and matting. The situation is a low and level spit of sand, which high tides make almost an island. There is no Harbour: a vessel of 250 tons cannot approach within a mile of the landing-place; the open roadstead is exposed ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... on the Hatiheu side begin high up; higher yet, the more melancholy spectacle of empty paepaes. When a native habitation is deserted, the superstructure—pandanus thatch, wattle, unstable tropical timber—speedily rots, and is speedily scattered by the wind. Only the stones of the terrace endure; nor can any ruin, cairn, or standing stone, or vitrified fort present a more stern appearance of antiquity. We must have passed from six to eight of these ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... with the grey monotone of British winters, and, alighting at a farm road too rough for a carriage, we passed through fields and hedgerows to an erection which looks too insignificant for such solemn use. Don't expect any ghastly details. A longish building of "wattle and dab," much like the northern farmhouses, a high roof, and chimneys resembling those of the "oast houses" in Kent, combine with the rural surroundings to suggest "farm buildings" rather than the "funeral pyre," and all that is horrible is left to ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... is Father of you, To take HER as a bride to your ebony side; nay, you give her a wide berth; quite right of you, too. For her father, you know, is YOUR father, the Crow, and no blessing but woe from the wedding would spring. Well, these rules they were made in the wattle-gum shade, and were strictly obeyed, when the Crow was the King. {12} Thus on Earth's little ball to the Birds you owe all, yet your gratitude's small for the favours they've done, And their feathers you pill, and you eat them at will, yes, you plunder and kill ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang

... Po they entered the Gaboon. On the right hand bank were the fort and dwellings of the French. A little farther up stood the English factories; and upon a green hill behind, the church, school, and houses of an American mission. On the left bank was the wattle town of King William, the sable monarch of the Gaboon. Mr. Goodenough at once landed and made inquiries for a house. He succeeded in finding one, consisting of three rooms, built on piles, an important point in a country in which disease rises from the soil. At Bonny Mr. Goodenough had, with the ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... a hurdle-maker in our company, so I gave him a brace of light-duty men as apprentices and they built a little hut of wattle and daub. It had a nice rural appearance and was warm, but it leaked in wet weather, and the more I thought of Chaucer lying dry under his felt roofs the worse I felt about it. So I had a chat with my sergeant at the wharf, and the long and short of it was that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various

... metals, and stones, The things he's filched out of the earth's old pockets And hoised up into walls and domes; the gold, Ebony, agate stairs, wainscots of jade, The windows of jargoon, and heavenly lofts Of marble, all the stuff he takes to be wealth, Reckons like savage mud and wattle against The matter of my building.'—And the king, Gloating upon the white sheen of that palace, And weeping like a girl ashamed, inquired 'What is that stone?' And the voice answered him, 'Soul.' 'But in ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... Kassanje) is composed of thirty or forty traders' houses, scattered about without any regularity, on an elevated flat spot in the great Quango or Cassange valley. They are built of wattle and daub, and surrounded by plantations of manioc, maize, etc. Behind them there are usually kitchen gardens, in which the common European vegetables, as potatoes, peas, cabbages, onions, tomatoes, etc., etc., grow. Guavas and bananas appear, from the size and abundance ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... Souich, where we were destined to spend one of the least enjoyable periods out of the line that we ever experienced. We were only there for a week, but into that short time was crammed an immense amount of work both in training, and in cutting wood and making wattle hurdles in Lucheux Forest. The weather was very wet, and our billets were anything but comfortable. In our humble opinion the training here was too strenuous. We had to march out four miles to the training ground, and four ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman

... is built, after the fashion of these islands, of wattle plastered with coral lime, the roof thatched with the leaves of the cocoa-nut and pandana; the fences of the garden were made of cane, prettily worked together in a cross pattern; the path neatly kept, and ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge



Words linked to "Wattle" :   entwine, build, building, enlace, mimosa, lace, Acacia cambegei, caruncle, construction, silver wattle, stinking wattle, twine, construct, sweet wattle



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