Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Beck   /bɛk/   Listen
Beck

noun
1.
A beckoning gesture.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Beck" Quotes from Famous Books



... would consider a man as unrefined as I was and thirty-seven years old, she so sweet and young and with such gentle, winning ways. She was a governess to their children, and that made me think she would, for no woman likes to be a dependent and at the beck and call of another. I sat there dreaming of her, and of the place nicely fixed up, and of us driving out of a Sunday to Vailele in a smart little buggy, with me reelected to the Council, and people saying: "How d'ye do, won't you drop in a moment"—to ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... business having so dwindled, Joanna was obliged to serve in the shop herself; and it galled and mortified her that Emily Lester, sitting in her large drawing-room over the way, could witness her own dancings up and down behind the counter at the beck and call of wretched twopenny customers, whose patronage she was driven to welcome gladly: persons to whom she was compelled to be civil in the street, while Emily was bounding along with her children and her governess, and conversing with the genteelest ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy

... which the grim phantom of the husband frowned from a corner and suppressed all idle chatter. Sybilla's favourite system of killing time by half-hours in various idle ways, at home and abroad, was terminated at once. She had now to learn how to be a duteous wife, always ready at the beck and call of her husband, and attentive to his ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... the angel came, With upraised eye, and beck'ning hand, And gently folding in his arms, Bore me ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... were admitted, and soon were busy with a much better supper than I had ever imagined they could have produced; but my new friend ordered right and left, with a tone of authority, and everybody in the house appeared at his beck and command. After a couple of glasses of grog, we ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... an Oratory did not contemplate any parochial work, but you could not contemplate so many souls in want of pastors without being prompt and ready at the beck of authority to strain all your efforts in coming to their help. And this brings me to the third and the most continuous of those labours to which I have alluded. The mission in Alcester Street, its church and schools, were the first work of the Birmingham ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... smeared with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. Un demi setier! A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at his beck. Il est irlandais. Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux irlandais, nous, Irlande, vous savez ah, oui! She thought you wanted a cheese hollandais. Your postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial. There was a fellow I knew ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... man, thou just and loving God! Should stand before thee with a tyrant's rod, O'er creatures like himself, with souls from Thee, Yet dare to boast of perfect liberty! Away! away! I'd rather hold my neck By doubtful tenure from a Sultan's beck, In climes where liberty has scarce been nam'd, Nor any right but that of ruling claim'd, Than thus to live where boasted Freedom waves Her fustian flag ...
— No Compromise with Slavery - An Address Delivered to the Broadway Tabernacle, New York • William Lloyd Garrison

... what you saw, Annie. She must have—or she will have—some one to amuse her; to be at her beck and call; and it's best to have it all in the family, ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... to Wimbledon? Three score and ten. Can I get there by candle-light? Yes! and back again. Then open the gates and let me go. Not without a beck and a bow. Here's a beck and there's a bow; Now open the gates and we'll all ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green

... fact that Teispes was the immediate successor of Achaemenes, indicated by Herodotus, is affirmed by Darius himself in the Behistun inscription. According to Billet- beck, the Anzan (Anshan) of the early Achaemenidae was merely a very small part of the ancient Anzan (Anshan), viz. the district on the east and south-east of Kuh-i-Dena, which includes the modern towns of Yezdeshast, Abadeh, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... the Koil's cry With music filled the place, As 'twere some city in the sky; Which heavenly minstrels grace. With each voluptuous art they strove To win the tenant of the grove, And with their graceful forms inspire His modest soul with soft desire. With arch of brow, with beck and smile, With every passion-waking wile Of glance and lotus hand, With all enticements that excite The longing for unknown delight Which boys in vain withstand. Forth came the hermit's son to view ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... Chars the thin leafage of your rocks in fire: Autumn with windy robe and ruinous feet On your wide forests wreaks his fell desire, Heaping in barbarous wreck The treasure of your sweet and prosperous days; And lastly the grim tyrant, at whose beck Channels are turned to stone and tempests wheel, On brow and breast and shining shoulder lays ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman

... were altogether outside this scale. Her father, who occupied a position above all men, and who was saluted respectfully wherever he went, always stood up before a lady, regardless of her age, kissed the hands of those he knew, and was at the beck and call of every pretty woman. The result of this was that very early in life she became very firmly convinced of the superiority of her own sex, and accustomed herself to look upon a man as ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... omission. Soames had failed so piteously as all that! Nor is there a counterpoise in the thought that if he had had some measure of success he might have passed, like those others, out of my mind, to return only at the historian's beck. It is true that had his gifts, such as they were, been acknowledged in his lifetime, he would never have made the bargain I saw him make—that strange bargain whose results have kept him always in the foreground of my memory. But it is from those very ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm

... and wise monarch, I should still think that the interest of the people (for this is, as I have said before, the same as the Commonwealth) could not be very effectually promoted when all things depended on the beck and nod of one individual. And though at present the people of Marseilles, our clients, are governed with the greatest justice by elected magistrates of the highest rank, still there is always in this condition of the people a certain appearance of servitude; and when ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... looked into it towards evening; it commanded a peep of a green garden; a bird hung by a neighbour's window and made the morning beautiful; and I, who was sick, might lie in bed and rest myself: I, who was in full revolt against the principles that I had served, was now no longer at the beck of the council, and was no longer charged with shameful and revolting tasks. Oh! what an interval of peace was that! I still dream, at times, that I can hear the note of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... seems to have been that the service, which was not military, was fixed, and that when it was performed the lord had no further hold on the tenant. The great mass of the population were, however, villeins, who were always at the beck and call of their lords, and had to do as much ploughing, sowing, and reaping of his land as he could make them. Theoretically they were his goods and chattels, who could obtain no redress against any one except in the lord's ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... left Augustus almost alone with Virginia. Having previously sent off all his available force to Ropes at the sink, in answer to a pressing call for reenforcements, he had now only the sergeant and two men at his beck. But perhaps this was as he wished it to be. He approached Virginia, and, bowing formally, still without speaking, ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... saw it applaud the crimes of the emperors the vile populace has not changed. These barbarians who swarm at the bottom of societies are always ready to stain the people with every crime, at the beck of every power, and to ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... irascibly. "A man that favours the poor priests of whom you spake, and swears by the Rector of Ludgarshall, this Wycliffe, that maketh all this bruit. Prithee, who is the Rector of Ludgarshall, that we must all be at his beck and ordering? Was there no truth in the whole Church Catholic, these thirteen hundred years, that this Dan John must claim for to have discovered ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... Melvin, with a smile, "that's only the name the fellows gave to Sid Wilton. He plays second fiddle to Shanks. He's always at his beck and call, and ready to fetch and carry for him. He jumps through the hoop and rolls over and plays dead whenever ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport

... hot lights of that fiery sunset in such quivering flakes upon the golden flesh of Eve, half-hidden among laurels, as she stretches forth the fruit of the Fall to shrinking Adam. No one but Tintoretto, till we come to Blake, could have imagined yonder Jonah, summoned by the beck of God from the whale's belly. The monstrous fish rolls over in the ocean, blowing portentous vapour from his trump-shaped nostril. The prophet's beard descends upon his naked breast in hoary ringlets to ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... we saw waggons and tents being packed. Advancing at last? Oh, dear, no. Only Lord Kitchener at the other end of the wire playing with us again. We were to retire on Boshof, but Lord Methuen decided, instead of going into the town, to encamp at Beck's Farm about five miles out, where the grazing was better. The lay mind found it hard to understand the purpose of these movements. Lord Methuen had been humbugged and baffled by Headquarters in what seemed at the ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... [Footnote: Lord Hardwicke married in 1782 Elizabeth, daughter of James, fifth Earl of Balcarres, the sister of Lady Anne Barnard, the authoress of Auld Robin Gray.] and had the misfortune to lose the only son who survived infancy in a storm at sea off Lbeck in 1808 at the age of twenty-four. The succession to the peerage was thus opened up to his half-brothers, the sons of Charles Yorke's second wife, Agneta, daughter of Henry Johnston of Great Berkhampsted: Charles Philip (1764- 1834) who left no heir, and Joseph Sydney (1768-1831), father of ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... priests to pray perpetually for his soul, and for the souls of his parents and benefactors, within the chapel of St. John the Baptist in the south part of this cathedral; as also for the soul of Antony Beck, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Bishop of Durham. And further directed that out of the revenue of these messuages, &c., there should be a yearly allowance to the said Dean and Chapter, to keep solemn processions ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... childish fancies weave In the Land of Make Believe; And her love of magic lore Is as avid as before. Dollies big and dollies small Still are at her beck and call. But for all this pleasant play, ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor

... was at the door; and the other, rising from her seat at her beck, came slowly, and with no conciliatory ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... think so meanly of him for a moment! We owe you much, Miss Plowden; but we may have other duties. You know that we serve our common country, and have a superior with us, whose beck is our law." ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... and the willow-wand Are bristling into axe and brand, And every tuft of broom gives life 'To plaided warrior armed for strife. That whistle garrisoned the glen At once with full five hundred men, As if the yawning hill to heaven A subterranean host had given. Watching their leader's beck and will, All silent there they stood and still. Like the loose crags whose threatening mass Lay tottering o'er the hollow pass, As if an infant's touch could urge Their headlong passage down the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... magnetic influence; for his ardent and variable genius infused itself entirely into all his desires, the least as well as the greatest: whatever he willed, all his energies and all his faculties united to effect: they appeared at his beck; they hastened forward; and, obedient to his dictation, simultaneously assumed the ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... noble man that fauoured our nation.] He hath here and in other places of these parts set a good stay in things since the kings death: he is well knowen to M. Ienkinson, his name is Cozamomet. Also another Duke named Ameddin-beck is our great friend. And his sister is the Shaughes wife. These two haue promised your Agent by their lawe, not onely to procure to get the Shaughes priuiledge but also that I shall haue the debts ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt

... and anemones vicariously at the expense of your tendon achilles. We know it, for we have suffered. We calculate, and are prepared to prove, that the successful collection of a single ribbon of ruffled seaweed, procured in a slimy haystack of red dulse at the beck of one inconsiderate girl, who is keeping her brass heels dry on a safe and sunny ledge of the Purgatory at Newport, may require more mental calculation, involve more anguish of equilibrium, and encourage more heartfelt secret ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... the Powhatan, trying not to tax either his judgment or his desire as to what streets he traveled. He would have been glad to lose his way if it were possible; but he had no hope of that. Adventure and Fortune move at your beck and call in the Greater City; but Chance is oriental. She is a veiled lady in a sedan chair, protected by a special traffic squad of dragonians. Crosstown, uptown, and downtown you may move ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... across the Brenner Pass and down the Rhine, or sent them by sea to be exchanged in Flanders. By the thirteenth century important centers of trade had come into being, some of which are still among the great commercial towns of the world. Hamburg, Lbeck, and Bremen carried on active trade with the countries on the Baltic and with England. Augsburg and Nuremberg, in the south of Germany, became important on account of their situation on the line of trade between Italy and the North. Bruges and ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... He wished us good luck on our journey, and, following his instructions, we soon reached Gordale Scar. It was interesting to note the difference in the names applied to the same objects of nature in the different parts of the country we passed through, and here we found a scar meant a rock, a beck a brook, and a tarn, from a Celtic word meaning a tear, a small lake. Gordale Scar was a much more formidable place than we had expected to find, as the rocks were about five yards higher than those at Malham ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... wait upon her, so there! The girls may do it, and if she isn't satisfied let her give notice. I'm sure I shan't be sorry. She's given me more trouble in a day than poor Mrs. Brown did all the months she was here. I won't be at her beck ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... stood with a slight smile curving his lip. 'By my troth,' he said to himself, 'a lordly lady! She knows her own vocation. She is one to command scores of holy maids, and have all the abbots and priors round at her beck, instead of one poor man. Rather Malcolm than I! But he is the very stuff that loves to have such a woman to rule him; and if she wed at all, he is the very man for her! I'll not give it up! Love is the way to make a man of him, ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the least likely to stand a repetition of such treatment. No, Mrs. Lumley; I fear I must now choose between Frank and my cousin. The latter has behaved honourably, considerately, and kindly, and like a thorough gentleman. The former seems to think I am to be at his beck and call, indeed, whenever he chooses. He has never been to see me during the whole of this past week. At Dangerfield he was as little careful of my reputation as he was of his own limbs. Did I tell ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... horses down to water, to scour arms, to fetch wood from the forest for the fire. He was at the beck and call of all the other men, who never scrupled to use his services, and, observing that he never refused, put upon him all the more. On the other hand, when there was nothing doing, they were very kind ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... Von Beck was a lady intimately connected with the chiefs of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, and appears to have been employed by them in various patriotic services. In 1851 she visited Birmingham and was a welcome guest until "someone blundered" and charged her with being an impostor. On the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... "He not only sets it, but carries it along. He has fine wenches at his beck and call." 'Twas evident 'twas but the beginning of revelry; a sort of bacchanalian prelude to what might come later. No sooner was this dance finished than another began. Some lithe creature came forth to dance, in bright scarlet, the passacaglia. The glasses were refilled ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... Gautsch ministry found itself without a parliamentary majority and was succeeded by a ministry made up by Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfuerst. This ministry lasted but six weeks, and June 2 the coalition cabinet of Baron Beck assumed office. Convinced that the establishment of universal and direct suffrage would afford the best means of stimulating loyalty to the dynasty, as well as the only practicable means of freeing the Government from parliamentary obstructionism, Emperor Francis ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... The beck grows wider, the hands must sever On either margin, our songs all done, We move apart, while she singeth ever Taking the course ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Hoheneck? Why keep me pacing to and fro Amid these aisles of sacred gloom, Counting my footsteps as I go, And marking with each step a tomb? Why should the world for thee make room, And wait thy leisure and thy beck? Thou comest in the hope to hear Some word of comfort and of cheer. What can I say? I cannot give The counsel to do this and live; But rather, firmly to deny The tempter, though his power is strong, And, inaccessible to wrong, Still like ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... hold for long; but it would seem that, as science advances and life gets easier and easier, safer and safer, he may loose his hold for longer spaces. Man subdues the world about him first by force and then by reason; and when the material world is mastered and lies at his beck, he needs brute force no longer, and needs reason no more to make tools for conquest. He is free to think for thought's sake, he may trust intuition once again, and above all dare to lose himself in contemplation, dare to be more and more an artist. Only here there ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison

... Such roads are locally called “rampers,” i.e., ramparts. The road to “Kirkstead Wharf,” or ferry, where now a fine bridge spans the river Witham, was also in fairly good condition. {11b} The road which now runs from St. Andrew’s Church by the blacksmith’s shop and Reed’s Beck to Old Woodhall and Langton was just passable with difficulty. A small steam packet plied on the river Witham, between Boston and Lincoln, calling at Kirkstead twice a day, going and returning, and a carrier’s cart from Horncastle struggled through ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... when Bella strolled aimlessly down the ascending road that led to Marple's residence. On one hand of the road there was a deep rift, filled with shadow, in which a beck murmured among the stones, and the oaks that climbed to the ridge above flung their great branches against the saffron glow in the western sky. Fallen leaves, glowing brown and red, had gathered thick beneath one hedgerow and more ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... me very happy, Steve," said Mrs. White, mollified by the gentle answer. "You're a good boy, and always was; but it does vex me to see you always so ready to be at everybody's beck and call; and, where it's a woman, it naturally vexes me more. You wouldn't want to run any risk of being misunderstood, or making a woman care about you more ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... said, after deliberating with herself, "that I shall sentence you to slavery. You are to be at my beck and call until you've attained a proper pitch of repentance and are ready to admit that I'm not as hopelessly homely ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... lean'd against A cypress pillar by the builder's art Polish'd long since, and planted at the door. Then took Telemachus a loaf entire 410 Forth from the elegant basket, and of flesh A portion large as his two hands contained, And, beck'ning close the swine-herd, charged him thus. These to the stranger; whom advise to ask Some dole from ev'ry suitor; bashful fear Ill suits the mendicant by want oppress'd. He spake; Eumaeus went, and where he sat Arriving, in wing'd accents thus began. ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... one's race is a serious thing. I can't think of anything that would make that worth while. Here comes Mr. DeWitt. It must be dinner time. John, come up and see a little desert owl at close range. Kut-le has all the desert at his beck and call!" ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very well kept now by a widow lady of the name of Beck. Our rooms are the same Dr. Wallace occupied there, and boarding only costs four dollars a week (for the two). I most heartily wish you and your family will not fail to come. Just let us know the time, a week in advance, and we will have a room prepared for ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... were moved to make him an offer. This offer he stolidly considered and at last stolidly accepted. He became an official with the weight of the Federal authority behind him. He became an investigator with the secrets of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving at his beck. He found himself a cog in a machinery that seemed limitless in its ramifications. He was the agent of a vast and centralized authority, an authority against which there could be no opposition. But he had to school himself to the knowledge that he was a cog, and ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... to retain him. He crossed the sidewalk and paused abruptly as he remembered that Buckner was McNabb's attorney. Of course, the prosecution of his case would be in the hands of the state, but—why jeopardize his own case by employing a man who stood at the beck and call of the very man who was pushing his prosecution? He turned and proceeded slowly toward his hotel, and as he passed down the street a man stepped from the office of the attorney and followed. He was a large man, muffled to the ears in a fur coat. He followed ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx

... rather aghast at the idea of asking any one else to do a service for her, who all her life had been at the beck and call of other people. One of the old ladies came and was asked to bring Mrs. Smith. The Director came quickly, showing that she had ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... 1.16 Spelling, punctuation, oral English, letter writing, and business practice. Duncan, Beck and Graves's Prose Specimens 1.16 Selections illustrating description, narration, exposition, and argumentation. Gerrish and Cunningham's Practical English Composition 1.24 Modern, progressive, teaching by example as well as by precept. Williams's Composition and Rhetoric by Practice 1.00 Concise ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various

... so, in part, my dear. No one man so young could be so wicked as he has been reported to be. But such a man at the head of such wretches as he is said to have at his beck, all men of fortune and fearlessness, and capable of such enterprises as I have unhappily found him capable of, what is not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... service where the Police were at the beck and call of every case of need or distress or danger, no matter how much hardship and exposure they involved, was taking its toll. The men of the corps were paying the price for the proud privilege of preserving the Pax Britannica in a remote region inhabited by a ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... notable advance in the design of arc search-lights was achieved in recent years by Beck, who developed an intensive flame carbon-arc. His chief object was to send a much greater current through the arc than had been done previously without increasing the size of the carbons and the unsteadiness of the arc. In the ordinary arc excessive current causes the carbons ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh

... suddenly gained complete sway among us and over whom? Over the club, the venerable officials, over generals with wooden legs, over the very strict and inaccessible ladies of our local society. Since even Varvara Petrovna was almost at the beck and call of this rabble, right up to the time of the catastrophe with her son, our other local Minervas may well be pardoned for their temporary aberration. Now all this is attributed, as I have mentioned already, to the Internationale. This idea has taken such root that it is given as ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... her with two or three teachers to worry the life out of her. They went away two days ago; and Madame was in full feather and glory, with her son at her beck and call, and all her grand airs and manners about her. Sophy says she watched them away from her bedroom window, and then she cried her heart out. And she couldn't learn her lessons, and so sent the man teacher and the woman teacher about their ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... smile and facile tear, Improvised hopes, despairs at nod and beck, And language—ah, the gift of eloquence! Language that goes as easy as a glove O'er good and evil, smoothens ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons

... assumes that they are so, is as needless as it is absurd and perplexing. Now let the words, beck'on, lip'ping, cut'ter, be properly pronounced, and their syllables be compared with each other, or with those of lim'beck, fil'lip, Dra'cut; and it cannot but be perceived, that beck, lip, and cut, like other syllables in general, are lengthened by the accent, and shortened only in its absence; so that all these words are manifestly trochees, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... the same train," said he, naming station, line, and hour; "unless I telegraph, all will be ready and you shall be met. You may rely on reasonable charges. As to the fishing, go up-stream—to the right when you strike the beck—and you'll find a good pool or two. I may have to go to Lancaster the day after to-morrow, but I shall give you a call when I ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... again; but when he tested it the faint ticking sound was still there. His mind was now calm; his thoughts no longer went at a gallop, but they seemed—what was the word?—freer, more articulate, more at his beck and call; and in spirit he was far less harassed and anxious. Altogether he felt that he possessed himself more than he had ever done before: his mental views had ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... Shall repent him before he haue sold it. No man loueth his fetters thowgh they be of gold. The nearer the church the furder from God. All is not gold that glisters. Beggers should be no chuzers. A beck is as good as a dieu vous gard. The rowling stone neuer gathereth mosse. Better children ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... home at the Hermitage, but you will do yourself a still more sorry one. Solitude will complete the blackening of his imagination; he will fancy all his friends unjust, ungrateful, and you first of all, if you once refuse to be at his beck and call; he will accuse you of having bothered him to live under your roof and of having prevented him from yielding to the wishes of his country. I already see the germ of these accusations in the turn of the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... most complicated: he suffered from aneurism, rheumatism and three or four minor affections. He was nearly sixty, and since he had been five years old had been accustomed to having everybody at his beck and call. That he was surly one could well forgive; but he was also very malicious. He took pleasure in the grief and the humiliation of others. At the end of three months I was tired of putting up with him and had resolved to leave; ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... academic cast were some of the companies later assembled in this same room—Judge Story, Doctor Beck, President Felton, Professors Pierce, Lane, Child, and Lowell, with maybe Longfellow, listening to one of his own songs, or that strange figure, Professor Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles, oddly ill at ease in his suit of dingy black. In his younger days he had been ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... sorry, Mrs. Beck, but I really can't!" pleaded Miss Emily quickly. "I promised to help out in the canteen work this afternoon. You know the troop trains are coming through, and Mrs. Martin wanted me to take her place ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... He himself strode over to them, lifted one chubby youngster after another into the huge swing, and sent them flying into the tree-tops. It was a form of pastime that he detested; but he was not going to have Wanda at the beck and call of "those little ruffians." At last, with the sympathetic assurance that if they wanted any more swinging they were at liberty to get it from each other, he left them, and rejoined ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... Mr. Beck, who is one of the leaders of the New York Bar, is the author of the most widely read article written since the war began, entitled: "The Dual Alliance v. The Triple Entente," which was subsequently expanded into a book, called "The Evidence in the Case," pronounced by a distinguished ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck

... did; 'twas the only bit of fun I've had. It's a regular nuisance to be at some one else's beck and call like this, just when one is getting a little pleasure. Why should we come before we ...
— Archie's Mistake • G. E. Wyatt

... one so low and despicable who could not call him comrade, to whom he had not given himself without reserve. There was nothing left, and now the one thing he had ever wanted had come, and had found him like a bankrupt, his credit wasted and his coffers empty. He had placed himself at the beck and call of every idle man and woman in Paris, and he was as common as the great clock-face that hangs ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis

... cost me a pretty penny. But here you are miles from a settlement with your own private physician in attendance. Were you a young prince you could not be more royally cared for. Think of having one of the best New York surgeons at your beck and call here in this wilderness. You are ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... she is rather exacting, and if we always give in to her whims, she will always expect it. So let's start out, as we mean to continue. I'll read to her occasionally, but I can't always be at her beck and call. Perhaps ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells

... Dec. 15.—"The Compensation | |of Employes for Injuries Received While | |at Work" was taken by J. D. Beck, | |commissioner of labor of Wisconsin, as | |the theme of his address before the | |National Civic Federation here | |today.—Milwaukee ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde

... that she loved him, so that there was no one thing that she desired more in this wide world than to become his wife. And yet she was bound, bound by a sense of honour and a sense too of money received, to stay at the beck and call of a man she detested, and if at any time it pleased him to throw down the handkerchief, to be there to pick it up and hold it to her breast. It was bad enough to have had this hanging over her head when ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... journeys and the life of Charlotte Bronte when she was a teacher in the Pensionnat Heger. The principal characters in the story have been identified, more or less completely, with people whom the writer knew. Paul Emanuel resembles M. Heger in many ways, and Madame Beck is a severe portrait of Madame Heger. Dr. John Graham Bretton is a reflection of George Smith, Charlotte Bronte's friendly publisher; and Mrs. Bretton is Mr. Smith's mother. Lucy Snowe is Jane Eyre, otherwise Charlotte Bronte, placed amidst different surroundings; and Ginevra Fanshawe was sketched ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... ep'och de cease' dis ease' bea'con beck'on de scent' dis sent' coffin cough'ing de vice' de vise' grist'ly gris'ly huz za' hus sar' di'vers di'verse in tense' in tents' cho'ral cor'al a loud' al lowed' gant'let gaunt'let im merse' a merce' mu'sic mu'cic af fect' ef fect' rad'ish red'dish e ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... speeches on the question of amnesty was that made by Elliott protesting against a bill to this effect by Beck of Kentucky. Contending that the men now seeking relief were responsible for the crimes perpetrated against the loyal men of the South, Elliott maintained that the passage of the bill would be nothing less than the paying of a premium on disloyalty and treason ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... more; Caesar is on his guard: I know, sir, you have conquered against odds; But still you draw supplies from one poor town, And of Egyptians: he has all the world, And, at his beck, nations come pouring in, To fill the gaps ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... Jonas heartily. "You'd better go down to the store after supper, Abner, and tell the boys, for they've just heard that Paul Beck can't come." ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger

... ambulance. I came to myself in a base hospital in France. I was strapped to a water bed. Everything round me was soft and fresh and clean, and smelled deliciously. There was a patient, sweet-smiling woman in nurse's costume who came and went to the beck and call of every man of us. We were whimpering and peevish; we were wracked with pain and weary of mind, but that nurse never failed to smile. Call a hundred times, call her once, she was always there to soothe, to help, ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat

... that it's a shame that men of rank like myself should be at the beck and call of such old fogies as my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty?" he exclaimed. "I have had positively to give up Lady Seacombe's ball on the 15th. Putting my own feelings aside, there will be several sweet girls who ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... could not count on those who were mentally akin to himself, as they did not read, he was delivered up to the hosts of the enemy, to the mercy of men of letters, who were for the most part hostile to his ideas, and the critics who were at their beck ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... Ah, know you not the Citie fauours them, And they haue troupes of Souldiers at their beck? Westm. But when the Duke is slaine, they'le ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... she passed from one house to the other. In these houses Madame Scarron was far from being on the footing of the rest of the company. She was more like a servant than a guest. She was completely at the beck and call of her hosts; now to ask for firewood; now if a meal was nearly ready; another time if the coach of so-and-so or such a one had returned; and so on, with a thousand little commissions which the use of bells, introduced a long time after, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... animal rather than a human being. All day long she drudges in a muddling, inefficient way, continually scolded for her inefficiency yet never really taught how to do anything properly. Her work is never done, for she is always at the beck and call of her employers; yet she lives apart in social isolation, is referred to contemptuously as the "slavey," and even her food is dispensed to her grudgingly and minus the special dainties bought for Sundays and holidays. ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... the beck of spring Live in the moment still: Thy boughs unquivering, Remembering winter's chill, And many other winters past and gone, Are mocked, not cheated, by ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... modifications; in place of olive-oil or oleic acid, castor oil was used, as cheaper, and the number of operations was reduced. Castor oil, modified by sulphuric acid, can be introduced at once into the dye-beck, so that the fixation of the coloring matter as the lake of a fatty acid is effected in a single operation. The dyeing was then followed by steaming ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various

... source is the locative "ham." Chester is of Roman origin, tun is of Gaelic; but "ham" is Anglo-Saxon, and means village, whence the sweet word home. Witness the use of this suffix in Effingham and the like. "Stoke" and "beck" and "worth" are also Saxon. "Thorpe" and "by" are Danish, as in Althorp and Derby. These reminiscent instances from over seas will serve to illuminate the thought under discussion—the historical element embodied in the names of localities. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... said, "I am not accustomed to run at the beck and call of my—er—acquaintances, but, even though we have disagreed of late, even though to me your conduct seems quite unjustifiable, still, for the sake of our boyhood friendship, and, because you are not ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the munificence of the nomarch, and the affection of the great lords around him, alert to every beck of his and ready to ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... words," said Tom, impatiently; "but I'm sick of being at another man's beck and call. It's, 'Tom, do this,' and 'Tom do that,' and nothing but work, work, work, from Monday morning till Saturday night. I was thinking as I walked over to Squire Morton's to ask for the turnip seed for master,—I was thinking, Sally, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... renew the mutiny. The officials of the Home Office believed the London Corresponding Society to be guilty; and on 16th June one of them, J. K[ing], issued a secret order to two of his agents at Sheerness to discover whether two members of that society, named Beck and Galloway, had had dealings with the rebel crews. The agents, A. Graham and D. Williams, on 24th June sent to the Duke of Portland the following report, which merits ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... in jail, and there's better men sometimes hung than that Jock Fairbanks. I guess some o' the gals are kindy sorry they sot their caps for 'em! The Faddle gals, I guess, would give all their old shews, if they'd a' kep away from the whelps. My gals is all in titters about it; and Beck Teezle, says she, 'I wonder, says she, if Des and Luce Faddle, says she, will feel above us now?' They couldn't git me to dew their dirty Work, with all their ile and palaver. I bought a pitchfork on 'em, once ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... courses. Larry! Five years younger than himself; and committed to his charge by their mother when she died. To become for life one of those men with faces like diseased plants; with no hair but a bushy stubble; with arrows marked on their yellow clothes! Larry! One of those men herded like sheep; at the beck and call of common men! A gentleman, his own brother, to live that slave's life, to be ordered here and there, year after year, day in, day out. Something snapped within him. He could not give that advice. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck, carefully placed his cigar where it would not char his Italian Renaissance desk and smoothed out the list which Mr. Elderberry, the secretary of The Horse's Neck Extension Copper Mining Company, handed to him. The list was typed on thin sheets; of foolscap and contained ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... his influence—but to a host of showmen whose names and activities would fill more space than is possible here. E. F. Albee, Oscar Hammerstein, S. Z. Poli, William Morris, Mike Shea, James E. Moore, Percy G. Williams, Harry Davis, Morris Meyerfeld, Martin Beck, John J. Murdock, Daniel F. Hennessy, Sullivan and Considine, Alexander Pantages, Marcus Loew, Charles E. Kohl, Max Anderson, Henry Zeigler, and George Castle, are but a few of the many men living and dead who have helped to ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... emptying into Bassenthwaite on the north. A village known as Little Town stands about midway in the vale, and a road runs along each bank. The tents were pitched for the sports near the bed of the valley, on the east side of the Newlands Beck. On the west side, above the road, there was a thick copse of hazel, oak, and birch. From a clearing in this wood a thin column of pale blue smoke was rising through the still air. A hut in the shape of a cone stood a few yards from the road. It was thatched from ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... Blackmore, Dorset of Hardy and Barnes, and Lincoln of Tennyson. The literature of Lancashire is vast; it suffices to mention John Collier (otherwise Tim Bobbin), author of Tummus and Meary, Ben Brierley, John Byrom, J.P. Morris, author of T' Lebby Beck Dobby, and Edwin Waugh, prose author and poet. Giles's Trip to London, and the other sketches by the same author, are highly characteristic of Norfolk. Northamptonshire has its poet, John Clare; and Suffolk can boast of ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat

... to the spot, but not before Sancho, who, immediately upon perceiving his young friend, scoured at full gallop the intervening space, and pounced upon him with an impetuous mirth that precipitated the child almost into the middle of the beck; but, happily, the stones preserved him from any serious wetting, while their smoothness prevented his being too much hurt to laugh at the ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... bags on her arm she went out across the dry grass to where a little black mule, not much larger than a goat, was standing. Beck greeted her with a bray astonishing for one of her size, and a switch with her rope of a tail. Unheeding the cheerful greeting, Religion gave all her attention to untying the halter, and soon they were going along the sandy road straight through ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... When vitality is gone, you cannot recall it, or reproduce it by your chemistry; but you can recombine the two gases in which you have decomposed water, any number of times, and get your aquosity back again; it never fails; it is a power of chemistry. But vitality will not come at your beck; it is not a chemical product, at least in the same sense that water is; it is not in the same category as the wetness or liquidity of water. It is a name for a phenomenon—the most remarkable phenomenon in nature. It is one that the art of man is powerless to reproduce, while water may ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... girl," said Grandma: "Emily was in here the other day, and Becky, she happened to come in the same time, and I didn't see no use in Emily's speaking up in the way she did; for, says she, 'What do you have that Dave Rollin flirtin' around you for, Beck? What do you suppose he wants o' you 'cept to amuse himself a little when he ain't nothin' better to do, and then go off and forgit he's seen ye!' And Becky didn't say nothin', but she give Emily a dreadful long, quiet kind of a look out ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... Company, the Saltair Beach Company, the Idaho Sugar Company, the Inland Crystal Salt Company, the Salt Lake Knitting Company, and the Salt Lake Dramatic Association; and that he was a director of the Union Pacific Railway Company, vice-president of the Bullion-Beck and Champion Mining Company, and editor of the Improvement ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... green ribbon! we kneeled beside it, We parted the grasses dewy and sheen: Drop over drop there filtered and slided A tiny bright beck that trickled between. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... hint it and nod it. We have to round November. I could strangle the world till that month's past. You'll own,' he added mildly after his thunder, 'I'm not much of the despot Nevil calls me. She has not a wish I don't supply. I'm at her beck, and everything that's mine. She's a brave good woman. I don't complain. I run my chance. But if we lose the child—good night! Boy ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... commonwealth by an oath; this again must be so large, as would go quite contrary to their own interest, they being as free and as fully estated in their liberty as any other, or so narrow that they could do no hurt, while the people being in arms, and at the beck of the strategus, every tribe would at any time make a better army than such a party; and there being no parties at home, fears from abroad would vanish. But seeing it was otherwise determined by the Senate and the people, the best course was to take that which they held the safest, in ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... see a prisoner! Come to-morrow then, and, meanwhile, depart to Gehenna. Must a man be forever at the beck and call of every sleepless sot? 'Urgent'—is the Duke's mandate. Shove it through the lattice then, that a lantern may flash ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... Vanslyperken until the vessel was in the blue water; if possible, not till she was over on the other side. And Moggy determined to go on board, see the corporal, and make the arrangements with him and the crew, who were now unanimous, for the six marines were at the beck of the corporal, so that Mr Vanslyperken should be frightened out of his wits. Desiring Smallbones to lie down on her bed, and take the rest he so much needed, she put on her bonnet and cloak, and taking a boat, pulled ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... course, she had no need of a special committee. It was vigorously opposed also by Senator Beck, of Kentucky, who said "the colored women's votes could be bought for fifty cents apiece;" and by Senator Morgan, of Alabama, who made a stump speech on "dissevered homes, disbanded families, pot-house politicians seated at the fireside with another man's ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... was a mad thing he was doing, rushing across space through the dark at the beck of a woman's smile, a woman who was another man's wife, but a woman who had set on fire a whole circle of men of which he was a part. He was riding against all caution to win a bet, riding against time to get there before two other men who were ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... and never, perhaps, was competition keener for the very few seats available in that antique theatre of justice. Nor, indeed, could the most enterprising of modern managers, with the star of all the stages at his beck for the shortest of seasons, have done more to spread the lady's fame, or to excite a passionate curiosity in the public mind, than was done for Rachel Minchin by her official enemies ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... last was he forced to yield. In vain does Beck, with a body of fresh cavalry, hasten his march through the woods in order to attack our exhausted soldiers; the prince has forestalled him; the defeated battalions are asking quarter. But victory for the Duc d'Enghien was destined to ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser

... No extension of municipal reform can possibly make the corporations more revolutionary than they are—with one solitary exception (Belfast), his influence and his principles prevail in all. They are all at his beck, "good men and true." What more would he have? What more could any alteration in the law effect for him? And as to the increase in the Irish representation, what benefit could that be to the country, when, admitting that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... eternity of idleness to make Heaven, Earth, and Hell—a conception involving a King of kings, enthroned like an eastern monarch, and sending forth His ministering spirits, or appointing His angel deputies to direct and govern at His beck. Or if it be said that never, except in the ages of primeval simplicity, or amongst later generations living under primeval conditions? has such a conception been entertained, it would be difficult for the "broadest" Churchman to say what has been, put in its place. ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton

... concerning the difference between the streams of Switzerland and England—those in the former country being emptiest, those in the latter fullest in the Winter. It was—when the frost should have bound up the sources of the beck which ran almost by our door, and it was no longer a stream, but a rope of ice—to take that rope for our guide, and follow it as far as we could towards the secret recesses of ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... to the hour of her escape she had worn the yoke under Mrs. C., as her most efficient and reliable maid-servant. She had been at her mistress' beck and call as seamstress, dressing-maid, nurse in the sickroom, etc., etc., under circumstances that might appear to the casual observer uncommonly favorable for a slave. Indeed, on his first interview with her, the Committee man was so forcibly impressed with the belief, that ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... us all that I do not know of a woman but Juliet whose voice does not sink a tone lower whenever she speaks of him. But he is a proud man, and seems to take no notice of any one. Indeed he scarcely appears to live in our world. Will he come down from his high estate at the beck of this village beauty? Many say not, but I say yes; with those eyes of ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... is paid, and the finder nearly thrust out of doors. The lady returns and expresses some little dissatisfaction with her sister and sister-in-law, because they happen to have paid forty or fifty dollars for a fac-simile of her diamond ring—a fac-simile made out of real pinch-beck and unquestionable paste. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... while to remark that letters are sometimes added as well as dropped by the peasantry. Thus the Cockley, a little tributary of Wordsworth's Duddon, is by the natives of Donnerdale invariably called Cocklety beck; whether for the sake of euphony, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various

... of collective re-incarnation of some past state of princely culture, symbolised for Mrs. Hicks in what she called "the court of the Renaissance." Eldorada, of course, was their chief prophetess; but even the intensely "bright" and modern young secretaries, Mr. Beck and Mr. Buttles, showed a touching tendency to share her view, and spoke of Mr. Hicks as "promoting art," in the spirit of Pandolfino celebrating the munificence of ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton



Words linked to "Beck" :   motion, gesture



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com