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Dirt   /dərt/   Listen
Dirt

noun
1.
The part of the earth's surface consisting of humus and disintegrated rock.  Synonym: soil.
2.
The state of being covered with unclean things.  Synonyms: filth, grease, grime, grunge, soil, stain.
3.
Obscene terms for feces.  Synonyms: crap, poop, shit, shite, turd.
4.
Disgraceful gossip about the private lives of other people.  Synonyms: malicious gossip, scandal.



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"Dirt" Quotes from Famous Books



... the square inch, and nothing but hitting them will make them budge. They are disgusting creatures. Of course the filthy habits of the natives encourage them. The streets are littered with every kind of food-scraps and dirt: and the Arab has only two W.C.'s—the street and the river. Our chief tyranny in his eyes is that we have posted sanitary police about who fine him 2s. if he uses either: but like all reforms ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer

... in reply, that such does not become caste, and two pompous-looking servants set upon him brushing the dirt from his clothes with great earnestness. The negroes understand Mr. Scranton at a glance; ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... there is an idea of the good, but not of such things as hair and mud and dirt, Parmenides advises him "not to despise even the meanest things," and this advice shows the genuine scientific temper. It is with this impartial temper that the mystic's apparent insight into a higher reality and a hidden good has to be combined if ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... all covered with ashes and dirt. (To Ogre.) Please, where can I find a towel and a ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory

... at the surrounding country. In the foreground was a wide dirt street at the rear of the station. For the equivalent of the length of a city block it was lined on both sides with wooden structures one-story in height, but with the false fronts of the frontier country pretending to second stories—a front wall sticking above the roof and with the semblance ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... Ramon took her was prettily set in a grove of cottonwoods, with white hollyhocks blooming on either side of the door, and strings of red chile hanging from the rafter-ends to dry. Half a dozen small children played about the door, the younger ones naked and all of them deep in dirt. A hen led her brood of chicks into the house on a foray for crumbs, and in the shade of the wall a mongrel bitch luxuriously gave teat to four pups. Bees humming about the hollyhocks bathed the ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... partly, of the possession of qualities, which, under different conditions of life, might have excited esteem and even admiration. It was a shrewd man of the world who, in discussing sewage problems, remarked that dirt is riches in the wrong place; and that sound aphorism has moral applications. The benevolence and open-handed generosity which adorn a rich man, may make a pauper of a poor one; the energy and courage to which the successful soldier owes his rise, the cool and daring subtlety to which the great ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... weather. Sermon ended, Bishop Laud proceeded to his charge to the Clergy, and observing the Church ill repaired without, and slovenly kept within, I am sorry (said He) to meet here with so true an Etymologie of Diaconus, for here is both dust and dirt too, for a Deacon (or Priest either) to work in. Yea it is dust of the worst kind, caused from the mines of this ancient house of God, so that it pittieth his[1] servants to see her in the dust. Hence he took occasion ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... that I have been telling you of is "Moral Jim," of the Sierras. The mine? Oh, I almost forgot. Well, that blue dirt was the old bed of the stream, and it was ten times richer than where the miners were all at work below. Struck it! I should say so! Ask any of the old Sierras miners about "The Children's Claim," if you want to hear just how rich ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... immoral alternative, it is none the less infamous of society to offer such alternatives. For the alternatives offered are not morality and immorality, but two sorts of immorality. The man who cannot see that starvation, overwork, dirt, and disease are as anti-social as prostitution—that they are the vices and crimes of a nation, and not merely its misfortunes—is (to put it as politely as possible) a ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... byway, found an old Japanese bureau, dishonored and forlorn, standing amongst rusty bedsteads, sorry china, and all the refuse of homes dead and desolate. The bureau pleased him in spite of its grime and grease and dirt. Inlaid mother-of-pearl, the gleam of lacquer dragons in red gold, and hits of curious design shone through the film of neglect and ill-usage, and when the woman of the shop showed him the drawers and well and pigeon-holes, he saw that it would be ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... of dirt that would try to stand out against me," declared Mother Meraut, with a flourish of her dust-cloth, "for when I go after it I think to myself, 'Ah, if I but had one of those detestable Germans by the nose, how I would grind it!' and the very thought ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... and by way of putting it in practice they spread the rice on the ground before a fire, and as it grew hot continued to throw water on it. Their ingenuity was however very ill rewarded, for the rice became so mingled with the dirt and sand on which it was laid, that even they could not eat it, and ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... soft and tender with the little creatures, pats gently their little golden heads, and watches with unfailing pleasure their ways, their sports, their jokes, laughter, caresses. Enfans terribles come home from Eton; young Miss practising her first flirtation; poor little ragged Polly making dirt-pies in the gutter, or staggering under the weight of Jacky, her nursechild, who is as big as herself—all these little ones, patrician and plebeian, meet with kindness from this kind heart, and are watched with curious ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray

... rum punch flowing with sufficient liberality they would "pay him with their worst Wood," and "commonly" they "had a stock of such" ready for the niggard when he came. Often, indeed, they would give such a one a load of hollow logs "filled with dirt in the middle, and both ends plugg'd up with a piece of the same." But if the captain commanding were "true steel, an old bold blade, one of the old buccaneers, a hearty brave toss-pot, a trump, a true twopenny"—why, then, they would spend thirty or ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield

... Pancrazio, they ask me two lire! Macche!" (He flung down the apron passionately upon the stall.) "Go and find Lipari people to buy your dirt; don't come ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens

... door, not to open it and bid her welcome. Let us spread our sail to the favorable gale, now that it blows.' ... Can't you perceive, animal, with half an eye," proceeded Sancho, "that I shall act wisely, in devoting this body of mine to some beneficial government that will lift us out of the dirt, and enable me to match Mary Sancha according to my own good pleasure; then wilt thou hear thyself called Donna Teresa Panza, and find thyself seated at church upon carpets, cushions, and tapestry, in despite and defiance ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... do the right. Wingfold never built much on bed-repentance. The aphorism of the devil sick and the devil well, is only too true. But he welcomed the fresh opportunity for a beginning. He knew that pain and sickness do rub some dirt from the windows toward the infinite, and that things of the old unknown world whence we came, do sometimes look in at them, a moment now, and a moment then, waking new old things that lie in every child born into the world. I seem to see the great marshes where the souls go wandering ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... not altogether a happy looking set of boys, and many of their cheeks were stained with tears and begrimed with dirt from the knuckles which had been used to wipe them away; for there was in the year 1807 but one known method of instilling instruction into the youthful mind, namely, the cane, and one of the chief qualifications ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty

... was to take off her shoes and stockings and she advised the other girl to do the same. "Else you'll get 'em all dirt going through the swamp to the pool. We don't have none too much water hereabouts but what we have ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond

... we naturally shrink from them. Burns may make merry over a louse crawling in a lady's hair, but few of us can regard its kind with equanimity even on the backs of swine. Men of science deny that the louse is actually engendered by dirt, but it undoubtedly thrives on it. Our anger against the flea also arises from the fact that we associate it with dirt. Donne once wrote a poem to a lady who had been bitten by the same flea as himself, ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... seized the hand of my innocent lamb, and cried, "Behold, Mary, our Lord God yet liveth! 'and he rode upon a cherub, and did fly; yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. Then did he beat them small as the dust before the wind; he did cast them out as the dirt in the streets.' Look down, and see what the Almighty God hath done." While she hereupon raised her eyes towards heaven with a sigh, we heard Dom. Consul calling out behind us as loudly as he could: and seeing that none could understand his words for the fearful storm and the tumult of the ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold

... to the genius, as well as the moral sense of the author, than in its present abridged and rectified shape. In the language of Campbell, "never were beauties and faults more easily separated than those of this tragedy. The latter, in its purification for the stage, came off like dirt from a fine statue, taking away nothing from its symmetrical surface, and leaving us only to wonder how the author himself should have soiled it with such disfigurements. Pierre is a miserable conspirator, as Otway ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway

... maggots, such as have affinity With those in thine own brain? or dost thou think That all is sweet which hath a horrid stink? Why dost thou make Hautgout thy sole divinity? Here is enough of genius to convert Vile dung to precious diamonds, and to spare, Then why transform the diamond into dirt, And change thy mind w^h. sh^d. be rich & fair Into a medley of creations foul, As if a Seraph ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart

... my lodgings is always to avoid a thick and stinking air; and those beautiful cities, Venice and Paris, very much lessen the kindness I have for them, the one by the offensive smell of her marshes, and the other of her dirt. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... his faded neck-tie, whose original color was hardly discoverable, flashed with brilliants of an unusual size, and had not the arms emblazoned upon the door of his chair, in spite of the dust and dirt, betrayed a noble rank. The arms were those of the Ostermann family, and this dirty old man in the ragged cloak was Count Ostermann, the famous Russian statesman, the son of a German preacher, who had managed by wisdom, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... lifted his head toward the light, while he ran his hand through his hair, and again she saw the look, so like spiritual exaltation, transfigure his face. Before this man, who had sprung from poverty and dirt, who had struggled up by his own force, overcoming and triumphing, fighting and winning, fighting and holding, fighting and losing, but always fighting—before this man, who had been born in a cellar, she felt suddenly humbled. Without friends, without knowledge, except the bitter knowledge ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... fear" again, but to love rather, and honour him as a Father. And, then, take heed to walk suitably and preserve your seal of adoption unblotted, unrusted. You would study so to walk as you may not cast dirt upon it, or open any gap in the conscience for the re entry of these hellish-like fears and dreadful apprehensions of God. Certainly, it is impossible to preserve the spirit in freedom if a man be not watchful against sin and corruption. David prays, "re establish ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... A huge ball of fire was "rapidly drifting" toward the truck. Without a second's hesitation Saucedo did what the Korean War had taught him to do when in doubt, he shoved open the car door and hit the dirt. ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... into his brain, Mislikes the place, and fled into his feet; And there it wanders up and down the street,[474] Dabbled in the dirt, and soaked in the rain. Doubtless his wit intends not to aspire, Which leaves his head, to ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... jerked her roughly erect and stood up himself. "Thou art a woman. Wherefore the dirt is no place for thee, nor the feet of ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... period set apart for house-cleaning, and removing all the dust and dirt, which will necessarily, with the best of housewives, accumulate during the winter months, from the smoke of the coal, oil, gas, &c. This season is also well adapted for washing and bleaching linen, &c., as, the weather, not being then too hot for the exertions necessary in washing counterpanes, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... unsteadily up and down beneath the cottonwoods. The details of her new existence, the dirt, the roughness, were beginning to sink in on her. She paced back and forth, lips compressed, eyes black. Kut-le stood with his back against a cottonwood eying the slender figure with frank delight. Now and again he chuckled as he rolled a cigarette with his facile finger. ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... wonderful light that had flashed upon me and blinded me; and when I saw my own vileness in it I flung myself down on my face, and felt a more fearful despair than I had ever dreamed could torture a soul. I would have crawled to you upon my knees and groveled in the dirt and begged you to have mercy upon me; and afterwards when you lifted me up, I could have kissed the ground that you trod. But oh, I knew one thing, and it was all that gave me courage ever to look upon you; I heard the sacred voice of my womanhood within me, telling ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... this fellow a bower somewhere by a beautiful stream," he cried, laughing. Then more seriously, "Never mind the dirt, Cob," he cried. ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... only full"—he slapped his pockets—"there's no saying I wouldn't up and ask one of you to come along o' me! There's that beauty, yonder," he jerked his thumb at Hetty. "She's the pick. My word, and you are a beauty, bridling to yourself there, and thinking dirt of me. Go on, I like you for it: you can't show too much spirit for William Wright." Molly's hand closed over Hetty's two, clasped and lying in her lap: Hetty sat motionless as a statue. "If only your father would trade you off against an honest debt—But you're gentry: I knows ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... a literature the baseness of which made us sick." Havelock Ellis, otherwise an admirer of the genius of Emile Zola, has said that his soul "seems to have been starved at the centre and to have encamped at the sensory periphery." Blunt George Saintsbury calls Zola the "naturalist Zeus, Jove the Dirt-Compeller," and adds that as Zola misses the two lasting qualities of literature, style, and artistic presentation of matter, he is doomed; for "the first he probably could not have attained, except in a few passages, if he would; the second he has deliberately ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... of law and customs and selfishness which is called society for much of this misery of men, this hindrance to a fair distribution of the goods of this world, this guilty permission on the part of the fortunate few of the want and dirt and ugliness and coarseness which are the lot of almost the whole race of man. Yet he was not blind to individual guilt. Right here in his diary, after lamenting his enforced inability to succor human misery, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... of centripetal, is centrifugal force, which tends to throw outwardly. Dirt flying from a rapidly ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... cause them to see it in any other light. The sooner we get the ideal, fanciful, and romantic side of a vagrant's and vagabond's life removed from our vision, and see things as they really are, the better it will be for us. For the life of me I cannot see anything romantic in dirt, squalor, ignorance, and misery. Ministers and missionaries have completely failed in the work, for the simple reason that they have never begun it in earnest; consequently, the schoolmaster and School-board officer must begin to ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... her bouquet clasped to her breast. He went over and walked to and fro beside her, studying the flowers. "Those come up out o' the dirt, didn't they?" he mused. "But they're pink and green. And dirt ain't, is it? So how can the roses be like they are? 'R else the ground ought t' be pink on top—that's t' make the flowers—and green 'way down, so's t' grow the stems. And how does the roses know not t' git green up top and pink ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... mate, if he were disposed to do so. As soon as Christy perceived the role which circumstances had laid out for him, he put his hand into a slush-tub he found in the waist, and anointed his face with the filthy stuff. There was just color enough in the compound of grease and dirt to change his complexion, if it had been light enough to observe his physiognomy. Flint did the ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... An Apology against a Pamphlet called "A Modest Confutation, &c." (1642), is chiefly remarkable for a defence of his own Cambridge career. A man who throws dirt, as Milton did, must not be surprised if some of it comes back to him. A son of Bishop Hall, coming forward as his father's champion and avenger, had raked up a garbled version of Milton's quarrel with his tutor Chappell, and by a further distortion, had brought it out in the shape that, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... after the Copley sale. The southerly part of Charles Street was laid out through it. And the first railroad in the United States was here employed. It was gravitation in principle. An inclined plane was laid from the top of the hill, and the dirt-cars slid down, emptying their loads into the water at the foot and drawing the empty cars upward. The apex of the hill was in the rear of the Capitol near the junction of Mount Vernon and Temple Streets, and was about sixty feet above the present level ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... exhilarated her as much as a fortnight by the sea. That house which she fought so desperately to keep tidy and respectable, had been furnished almost entirely in this way. There was hardly an article in it that had not already lived other lives in other houses, before it had been picked up, "dirt cheap," by Aunt Tipping. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... you are going to Merton; you will live much more comfortable, and much cheaper, than in London: and this spring, if you like to have the house altered, you can do it. But, I fancy, you will soon tire of so much dirt, and the inconvenience will be very great ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson

... worth while to take pains. In another proverb, homely enough—but if it be in the Bible, it is not too homely for us—'Where no oxen are, the crib is clean,' Solomon says the same thing as in the text. He says, 'Where no oxen are, the farmer is saved trouble; the clearing away of dirt and refuse; and all the labour required to keep his cattle in condition: but all that trouble,' Solomon says, if a man will but undergo it, will repay itself; 'for much increase is in the strength of the ox.' For the ox, in that country, as in most parts of the world now, is the beast used for ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... door unlocked. The apartment opened, and we entered. The interior of this habitation by no means corresponded with the appearance of my protector, but, on the contrary, wore the face of discomfort, carelessness, and dirt. The only person I saw within was a woman, rather advanced in life, and whose person had I know not what of extraordinary and loathsome. Her eyes were red and blood-shot; her hair was pendent in matted ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... the White House proved that whatever may have been Mrs. Lincoln's other good qualities, she hadn't earned the compliment which the Yankee farmer paid to his wife when he said: "Ef my wife haint got an ear fer music, she's got an eye fer dirt." When we reached the room of the President's Private Secretary, my old friend, the Rev. Mr. Neill, of St. Paul's, told me that it was military court day, when the President had to decide upon cases of army discipline that came before ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... the last attack is a dreadful bill—not a bile—which has caused a utilization sewage company to appear upon her body corporate. It is almost impossible for sister cities to understand the torments of such an affliction. Nobody can now clear away their own dirt—Councils, Board of Health, or any body else. If rooms are swept, the sewage company must take up the dust; if a pig-pen or a stable needs cleaning, the company must do it; if the lady of a house throws the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various

... to him good!" cried a voice, and in a twinkling a shower of shavings, straw, and dirt descended upon poor Nat, covering him from head ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... sat at the open door, and smoked and watched, with my fire blazing merrily away; then, before it was too late, I stripped off, and went out and let the rain wash off the dust and dirt of a day's journey under a fierce, baking sun. How cool, delightful, and ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke

... they are, but what we believe them to be, of which we read in the newspaper. The poor sewing-girl, as she stitches her life away "in poverty, hunger, and dirt," seeing unconsciously the fairy texture and costly delicacy of the robe she fashions, follows it in fancy to the form which is to wear it, and which to that fancy must needs be that of a most lovely and most gracious woman, because none other would that soft splendor of raiment befit. ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... without taste and without ideals who get bored, don't enjoy anything and are useless? One has to allow oneself to be abused, laughed at, and misunderstood by them, that is inevitable. But don't abandon them, and always throw them good bread, whether or not they prefer filth; when they are sated with dirt they will eat the bread; but if there is none, they will eat filth in ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... bad children, and the sincere do sometimes beget hypocrites. My mother also called me by this name of mine from my cradle; but whether she said so because of the moistness of my brain, or because of the softness of my heart, I cannot tell. I see dirt in mine own tears, and filthiness in the bottom of my prayers. But I pray Thee (and all this while the gentleman wept) that Thou wouldst not remember against us our transgressions, nor take offence at the unqualifiedness of Thy servants, but mercifully ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... will your mother say?" I asked of my small human attendant with conscientious contention against my desire to take them both with me on out of the dirt and heat and flies and other swarming young humans up into the coolness and shade ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... is ailing a good deal this winter, and begged me to remember her to you the first time I wrote to you. Surely woman, amiable woman, is often made in vain. Too delicately formed for the rougher pursuits of ambition; too noble for the dirt of avarice, and even too gentle for the rage of pleasure; formed indeed for, and highly susceptible of enjoyment and rapture; but that enjoyment, alas! almost wholly at the mercy of the caprice, malevolence, stupidity, or wickedness of an animal at all times ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... untrimmed, in the attire of a suppliant, to beg the people's grace. But Clodius met him in every corner, having a band of abusive and daring fellows about him, who derided Cicero for his change of dress and his humiliation, and often, by throwing dirt and stones at him, interrupted ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... a great success, when people begin to come to Bruton Street, for her sake as well as Lady Henry's, then Lady Henry turns against her, complains of her to everybody, talks about treachery and disloyalty and Heaven knows what, and begins to treat her like the dirt under her feet! How can Julie help being clever and agreeable—she is clever and agreeable! As Mr. Montresor said to me yesterday, 'As soon as that woman comes into a room, my spirits go up!' And why? Because she never thinks of herself, she always makes other people show ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... as it's you, Swing," was the prompt reply, "I'll only say ten dollars and six bits. And that's dirt cheap. Honest, I'll bet it'll cost me fifteen dollars and a half to replace 'em, what with the ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White

... nursing of the sick, mothers' meetings, Sunday-school teaching, Bible classes, and all the multitudinous ways of meeting the squalor, poverty, ignorance, sickness, and sin of the poor of the east of London. There is no poetic enthusiasm that strengthens one for such work, the dirt, the degradation, the forlorn condition are so trying. The little children so precociously wicked, so preternaturally cunning, that the natural charm and attraction of childhood have wholly disappeared; the sights and sounds that assail the senses; the dulled, ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... smart gowns, good music, and an excellent supper;—thus surrounded, I pass my first evening in Teheran, a pleasant contrast indeed to the preceding night of dirt, cold, ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... Producing the photograph, she verified the exact location, and with her pick, proceeded to stir up the ground and loose rocks at the base of the ledge. For an hour she worked steadily, then carefully replaced the dirt and small fragments, taking care to leave the samples from her sack where they would appear to have been tossed with the other fragments. Indicating the spot by a dot on the photograph she rode back to her cabin and ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... friend and his grandfather would but come down stairs again, here is liquor enough to make wine and water of the Danube; for he comes from thence by his accent. No, I'll have none of your wine; keep it to throw on the sandy floor, that the dust may not hurt your delicate shoes, nor dirt the hand of the gentleman in green and gold when he cleans them for ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... barrier to signify that the road was closed; very well, they'd see. Dirt under their feet, huh? All right. How he hated them all, with their horses and carriages and dances and dinners and clubs! Bah! He took a flask from his pocket and drank. Then he cursed the laggard Italians, and mourned that a year and a half must pass before he ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... mean to be careful, and not get a speck of dirt on my clean apron," whispered Susy to Grace. "Aunt Madge ironed it ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May

... cried Morrice with a loud hallow, "I am really sorry for him. But pray, Sir, what became of your best coat and waistcoat while you gave him this drubbing? did you leave them in the dirt?" ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... and stars on t'other. It will wipe dust from the eyes so completely as to be death to demagogues, and make politics as bad a business as printing papers. Its great length, breadth and thickness, together with its dark colour, will enable it to hide dirt, and never need washing. Going at one dollar? seventy-five cents? fifty cents? twenty-five cents? one bit? Nobody wants it! Oh, thank you, sir! Next, gentlemen—for the ladies won't be permitted to bid on this article—is a real, simon pure, tempered, ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... bombardment as part of the regular routine. Pieces of shell were continually flying about, and it was the regular thing for a bomb to drop down among us at intervals. I have seen them come down within fifty feet of a sentinel, and throw up a wagon-load of dirt, without his even turning his head. We had but few men hurt by the artillery-fire. I do not believe we averaged one man hit for every thousand pounds of metal thrown. I remember that one day I counted thirteen ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... that there had been no hell, or that I had been a devil to torment others.' A common childish but demoniac idea. His mind was as 'the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.' 'A while after, these terrible dreams did leave me; and with more greediness, according to the strength of nature, I did let loose the reins of my lusts, and delighted in all transgression against the law of God.' 'I was the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... seventh child in its cradle of carved wood, and drew Halil to her bosom; and Fadlallah knew that she loved him still, because she kissed his face, regardless of the blood and dirt that stained it. She then washed him and dressed him, and gave him a purse of gold, and handed him over to his father; who had resolved to send him off by the caravan that started that very afternoon. Halil, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... the Amahagger, who do not reckon dirt among their many disagreeable qualities, use a kind of burnt earth for washing purposes, which, though unpleasant to the touch till one gets accustomed to it, forms a very fair ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... two for the carriage of passengers. These were both labelled "First Class." One was devoted to a few men, who were smoking; the other was the one from which Trenholme had descended. Its seats, upholstered in red velvet, were dusty from the smoke and dirt of the way; its atmosphere, heated by a stove at one end, was dry and oppressive. It would have been impossible, looking at the motley company lounging in the lamplight, to have told their relations one to another; ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... their experience of the hard fighting in which they had been engaged. They were dirty, unshaven, dusty from head to foot, scorched by the August sun, in tattered uniforms and broken boots; but they were beautiful men for all their dirt, and the laughing courage, quiet confidence, and unbragging simplicity with which they assured me that the Germans would soon be caught in a death trap and sent to their destruction filled me with admiration which ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various

... and cleanse them thoroughly from dust, dirt, and insects: this requires great attention. Pick off all the outside leaves, trim them nicely, and, if not quite fresh gathered and have become flaccid, it is absolutely necessary to restore their crispness before cooking them, or they will be tough ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... to be compounded in, institutions called corporations and trusts, and that among these the head and centre was a great affair called "Standard Oil." Wherever this "Standard Oil" was, all knew that strange wonders were worked. Within the sphere of its influence dirt changed to gold, liquids to solids, and what was, was not, and what was not, was. Whoever became a part of this mysterious "Standard Oil," at the same time was rendered "powerful"; as though touched by a fairy's wand, he changed from pauper to millionaire. ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... be facetious under the cliffs of Jungfrau or the ghastly precipices of the Matterhorn? Hence people who kindly excuse us from the blame of notoriety-hunting generally accept the "greased-pole" theory. We are, it seems, overgrown schoolboys, who, like other schoolboys, enjoy being in dirt, and danger, and mischief, and have as much sensibility for natural beauty as the mountain mules. And against this, as a more serious complaint, I wish to make my feeble protest, in order that my lamentations on quitting the profession may not seem ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... risks. He now professed to reform all literature, and all religion. But even this ultimately failed him. At length the butchers deserted him, and, falling from one disgrace to another, he sank into dirt and debauchery, and died in 1750 at the age of sixty-four, remembered in the world only by being pilloried ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... a race of Indians whom it is extremely difficult to fix down to the soil. Like other wandering savages, they are distinguished by their dirt, revengeful spirit, and fondness for wandering. The greater part of them live by fishing and the chase, in the plains often flooded by the Apure, the Meta, and the Guaviare. The nature of those regions, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... clothing ripped, torn, and covered with dirt and blood, with one arm obviously broken and his head beaten, kicked, and cruelly gashed—here, beyond a doubt, lay the man who nearly five years earlier had been the one obstacle between him and the goal of his ambition, the cadetship at West Point; here lay the son ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... a queer fad. He cultivated one of his finger-nails, that of the little finger of his left hand, with the greatest care. Just like a Chinese mandarin. At last the nail was fully a centimetre long, and made holes in all his gloves. Now, whenever a speck of dirt lodged in this nail, he was in the habit of removing it with his teeth. It wasn't exactly a nice thing to do; but, you see, he had a passion for that nail. I often said to him, 'My dear fellow, do keep your finger away from your mouth—it's just swarming with ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... disfigurement, while the simplest dress, combined with cleanliness, may be absolutely refreshing. There is no reason whatever why the most menial occupation should be admitted as any excuse for want of personal cleanliness. It is always easy to distinguish between accidental dirt which cannot always be avoided, and that which ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... Mr. Lee's house; they have pebble paths with flowers here instead of sidewalks and a dirt road; it is just like the real country and there are daisies in the fields, Peggy says they do not call them lots. The grass is greener than in the Square at home. All the children have gardens. Peggy ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott

... dishes, but for this oil, would be quite tempting; and such, as have tasted them in the houses of the rich, assure us that they are not so bad as they smell. The much-talked-of edible bird's-nest soup is really a fine dish. The substance, after it is prepared, all the dirt and feathers being separated from it, is as clean and pure as isinglass, which it greatly resembles in appearance. Great care is taken to make it pure before it is sold for use, and in the shops at Canton it may be seen in every ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... he's beyond the recall of law up here. And he stops around on the fringe looking for the poor fool suckers who don't know better than to get within his reach. Gee, it was tough! I'd a holt on him I wouldn't get in a thousand years, and I'd nearly got the life out of him. I'd stood for all his dirt weeks on end. He made his set at me because I'm green and college-bred. But he called me a 'son-of-a-bitch!' Think of it! Oh, I can't rest with that hitting my brain. It's no use. I'll have to break him. God, ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... what sort of lady, Sue? The poor girl may fancy herself a lady, but only till she's left in the dirt. That sort of gentleman makes fine speeches to your face, and calls you horrid names behind your back. Sue, dear, don't have a word to say to one of them—if ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald

... can get in is through a window in the basement that has been left open by mistake. There is a broad plank running from the window down to the floor that the men use with their wheelbarrows to carry out the dirt. It makes it very handy to get out. We all could jump down, but few of our club members can jump up so high. None of us can ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery

... The old lady-dog was down, and the three was eating her vicious; but as I come up, scattering the pebbles, she hears, and thinking it's one more of them, she lifts her head, and my heart breaks open like some one had sunk his teeth in it. For, under the ashes and the dirt and the blood, I can see who it is, and I know that my mother has come ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis

... rivalry between him and Master Francis!' said the Doctor, laughing. 'How he launched out against young men's conceit when Francis was singing with her. Sheer jealousy! He could see nothing but dilapidation, dissent, and dirt at Laneham, and now has gone ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Jones," declared that plain-spoken old lady, "we wimmen have made up our minds to clean out the flies, an' all other dirt, if we can. Poketown is unsanitary—so Dr. Poole says—and we know it's always been slovenly. There ain't a place, I'll be bound, in the whole town, that needs cleaning ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... . . . . . . 'My sister,' quoth she, 'hath a living good, And hence from me she dwelleth not a mile, In cold and storm she lieth warm and dry In bed of down. The dirt doth not defile Her tender foot; she labours not as I. Richly she feeds, and at the rich man's cost; And for her meat she need not crave nor cry. By sea, by land, of delicates* the most, Her caterer seeks, and spareth for no peril. She feeds on boil ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... could be understood to-day by the English-using people of the world. The mass of the populace were steeped to the lips in brutality and ignorance. The houses of the peasants were built of "sticks and dirt;" many of them "without chimneys or glazed windows;" the habits of the people were "inconceivably filthy;" "scurvy and leprosy were endemic;" the schools did not, as a rule, teach English; the amusements of the populace were bear-baitings and dancing naked in barns; the people of one county ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... terms, eh?" said he, heavily leaden of face. "By gosh, you might be, doctor, but you ain't! More fool you. Then it's Barraclough, is it, playing on his own." He chuckled. "That man treated me as pretty dirt all along, didn't he? I'll go bail it was public property. Barraclough's real blue blood. Prick him and see. My son, he's got to be pricked, but ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... beloved village! the long, straggling street, gay and bright on this sunny, windy April morning, full of all implements of dirt and mire, men, women, children, cows, horses, wagons, carts, pigs, dogs, geese, and chickens—busy, merry, stirring little world, farewell! Farewell to the winding, up-hill road, with its clouds of dust, as horsemen and carriages ascend the gentle eminence, ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous

... Deutscher, Geoff. Heine's about as clean as dirt an' as straight as a corkscrew; why, he'd shoot his own mother if y' paid him, like he did—but say, what d' you know ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... permitted, without deigning once to look around him, or to ask his landlord a single question. At last the orders he expected with great impatience were brought him, in the beginning of the evening, by a servant, who, attending him as a guide, after having led him for about half an hour in the dirt, through a park of vast extent, brought him at last into a garden, into which a little door opened: he was posted exactly opposite to this door, by which, in a short time, he was to be introduced to a more agreeable situation; and here his conductor ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... harm; Ah! there are memories, God knows, that never, never die. . . ." "Too late!" she sighed; "I've lived my life of splendor and of shame; I've been adored by men of power, I've touched the highest height; I've squandered gold like heaps of dirt—oh, I have played the game; I've had my place within the sun . . . and now I face the night. Look! look! you see I'm lost to hope; I live no matter how . . . To drink and drink and so forget . . . that's all ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... always riding. As you are so great a sportsman, perhaps you will kindly look to one very trifling point for me, as my neighbours here think it too absurd to notice—namely, whether the feet of birds are dirty, whether a few grains of dirt do not adhere occasionally to their feet. I especially want to know how this is in the case of birds like herons and waders, which stalk in the mud. You will guess that this relates to dispersal of seeds, which is one of my greatest difficulties. My health is very indifferent, and I am seldom ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... thrown out of the houses into the road. A few years ago it was considered expedient to banish these dogs from Constantinople. They were transported to two uninhabited islands in the Sea of Marmora, the males to one and the females to another. But dirt and filth increased in the city to such a degree, that people were glad ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... is my place. Sad though her dirt, as I admit, is, I love the dear unconscious grace That shines beneath her sooty face Better than ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various

... the sun was hot, and the sands were hotter, and the glare on the waters blinding; that every splash of the pony's hoofs sent up glittering sparkles that stabbed my aching eyes like white-hot dagger-points; that the black and clotted dirt on the pony's shoulder was not mud, but blood; that before and behind were other splashing feet, all hiding the trail in the thin current of the wide old Arkansas; that the quick turns to follow the ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... his cleansing. "Your clock needs wiping," he remarked. "A man might suppose it was nine, to see that thing the way the dirt hides the hands. Look again in half an hour and it'll say three. That's the kind of clock gives a man the jams. Sends ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... a lash on his buttocks, and Sorrel, disdaining the rein sprang forward with the captain at a pace that would have soon brought him up with the robber, had not the girtle (happily for him) given way, by which means he landed in the dirt; and two of his attendants continued their pursuit, without minding his situation. Meanwhile one of the three who remained at my desire, turning the body of Strap, in order to see the wound which had killed him, found him ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... out, and appear then as thread-like, whitish masses which contain fatty material. The black point may be due to pigment or to dirt from without. Comedones may exist with acne and seborrhoea and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... you have to sift dirt to find diamonds, don't you? And this man says things that are worth ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... The china gods and beasts were all put away, the silver tankards and plate removed, the rugs gone. My good Whig aunt had done her best to make her despotic boarders no more comfortable than she could help. All was neglect, dust, and dirt; pipes and empty bottles lay about, and a smell of stale tobacco smoke was in ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... she had resolved to throw feline argument and sophistic persuasion to the winds, "I am just tired of this house, Fred, and I should like to move to-morrow. It is pitifully small and disgustingly dirty with dirt that I can't get rid of, and everything about it is old as the hills. It has never been the same place since that fall of soot. If I am obliged to live in it I shall have to, but I am sure that a new, clean house would add ten ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... begin 'fore you're born and pick out the right father. T'other is to begin after you're born and pick out the right son. You can make yerself whatever you want to be. It's all inside of a boy and it comes out by and by—swords and gold and diamonds, or rags an' dirt an' shovels ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller

... monkeys, slatternly females, small donkeys, and big oxen; dirty soldiers and idle sailors of all the shades and colours which distinguish the human race, dressed in handkerchiefs, and shirts, and jackets, and petticoats of every hue of the rainbow—the only thing they had in common being their dirt. Indeed, dirt predominates throughout the streets and dwellings, and in every direction. The houses, though mean, from being white-washed deceive a stranger at a little distance as to the cleanliness of the place. From ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... can't pour it right on a dirt road, can they?" asked Aunt Abigail. "Don't they put down cracked ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... by a visit to London. Arrived in Paris before his time, he takes a cab to the office of Galignani's Messenger, fancying himself, as the rain-drops rattle on the roof and the mud splashes against the windows, already in the midst of the immense city, its smoke and dirt. He reaches Galignani's Messenger, and there, turning over Baedekers and Murrays, loses himself in dreams of an imagined London. He buys a Baedeker, and, to pass the time, enters the 'Bodega' at the corner of the Rue de Rivoli and the Rue Castiglione. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... the lump of disintegrating dirt into the arms of his outraged superior. "It is yours, sir; I, Bendigo Jones, have given ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... often the distiller has no choice, but must take that which is most convenient;—great care however ought to be observed in selecting sound rye, that has been kept dry, is clean and free from cockle, and all kind of dirt, advantages will result from fanning it, or running it through a windmill before it ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry

... as it may seem, it was indeed Lady Clare. But oh, who would have recognized in this skeleton, covered with a rusty-black skin and tousled mane and forelock in which chaff and dirt were entangled—who would have recognized in this drooping and rickety creature the proud, the dainty, the exquisite Lady Clare? Her beautiful tail, which had once been her pride, was now a mere scanty wisp; and a sharp, gnarled ridge running along the entire length of her ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... to Myra until he was sure of himself. It seemed that he would have to choose between woman and work. It seemed as if his work would lead into peril, dirt, disaster, and that he could not ask a delicate, high-strung woman to go with him. The woman could not follow her warrior to the battle, for marriage meant children to Joe, and the little ones must stay back at home ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... to the Maltese Cross next morning. The old stockade shack, with the dirt floor and dirt roof, had, as he had suggested, been converted into a stable, and a simple but substantial one-and-a-half story log cabin had been built with a shingle roof and a cellar, both luxuries in the ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... badly; he had been waiting two hours for an infantine pose as common as dirt, and the little ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade

... the stop-joint between the floating part and the fixed part of the apparatus, whereby to avoid the clogging by accumulations of dirt ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... where you threw the first pack down. It left the mark of the rope in the soft dirt," explained the girl. "I am not gifted with second sight, but I did see that. What I started to say was that I know how the packs got ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge

... and do while you are here? What is your particular line? I suppose you have one?—every one has now-a-days. Is it old furniture shops? If so we can motor over to Eastminster, where you can poke about in dust and dirt to your heart's content. Or is it something more learned—abbeys and architecture? If so there are Castle Hill and the ruins of Bessmoor Priory. Or pictures at Longmead—or scenery? Make your choice. The only things we can not supply are social functions. ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... Ridge generally run the main Roads, in a pleasant, dry, sandy Soil, free from Stones and Dirt, and shaded and sheltered chiefly by Trees; in some Places being not unlike ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones

... was experienced in May by the troops of the English army, and the extravagance, dirt, and confusion of the transport service caused a heavier sick list than would ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... simply as the "boiling-place," and could be changed as often as convenient. The kettle which contained the sap was also open for the reception of the dust, and smoke, and falling leaves, and forms of dirt innumerable. ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... commonly practiced, but this is the easiest means of preventing dampness in the house and is necessary in heavy soils. The ground-level may be raised with a plow and scraper, or the foundation of the house may be built and filled with dirt. ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings

... lay hands upon those gems. I went to her to-day and asked for them. Of course I did not anticipate any difficulty whatever; I expected that she would cock that imperially haughty nose of hers in the air and hand them over to me as if I were dirt beneath her feet. To my astonishment she utterly refused to do anything ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White



Words linked to "Dirt" :   fuller's earth, crap, subsoil, fecal matter, feces, desertic soil, dirt cheap, ungraded, sedimentary clay, till, clay, bole, residual soil, loess, tundra soil, vulgarism, podzol, caliche, mud, regosol, podzol soil, dejection, dirtiness, gumbo soil, turd, obscenity, stool, ordure, hardpan, alluvial soil, residual clay, humus, dirty word, smut, malicious gossip, stain, podsolic soil, prairie soil, desert soil, gilgai soil, uncleanness, bog soil, laterite, undersoil, dirty, podsol, mold, wiesenboden, pay dirt, faecal matter, bm, boulder clay, sand, faeces, comment, clunch, unimproved, gossip, surface soil, gumbo, silt, dirt track, soil, podsol soil, ground, indurated clay, earth, scuttlebutt, grunge, Indian red, loam, grease, marl, mould, topsoil, shite



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