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Louse   /laʊs/   Listen
Louse

noun
(pl. lice)
1.
Wingless usually flattened bloodsucking insect parasitic on warm-blooded animals.  Synonym: sucking louse.
2.
A person who has a nasty or unethical character undeserving of respect.  Synonyms: dirt ball, insect, worm.
3.
Any of several small insects especially aphids that feed by sucking the juices from plants.  Synonym: plant louse.
4.
Wingless insect with mouth parts adapted for biting; mostly parasitic on birds.  Synonyms: bird louse, biting louse.



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"Louse" Quotes from Famous Books



... the Park a fair Fancy was seen, Betwixt an old Baud and a lusty young Quean; Their parting of Money began the uproar, I'll have half says the Baud, but you shan't says the Whore: Why 'tis my own House, I care not a Louse, I'll ha' three parts in four, or you get ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... of a white, chalky character, and very poor, but having been terraced and enriched with fertilizers, it produces the champagne grape in such abundance that the region, once considered valueless, and named by the peasantry the "land of the louse," now supports a dense population. We remained in Rheims eight days, and through the politeness of the American Consul—Mr. Adolph Gill—had the pleasure of seeing all the famous wine cellars, and inspecting the processes followed in ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... louse—might be distinguished from scurf (although to the naked eye it is very much like it in appearance) by the former fastening firmly on one of the hairs as a barnacle would on a rock, and by it not being readily brushed off as scurf would, which ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... you expect us to win every match? Why, Preston North End itself"— here he spoke solemnly, of heroes—"Preston North End itself in its great days didn't win every match—it lost to Accrington. But did the Preston public desert it? No! You—you haven't got the pluck of a louse, nor the faithfulness of a cat. You've starved your football club to death, and now you call a meeting to weep and grumble. And you have the insolence to write letters to the Signal about bad management, forsooth! If anybody in the hall thinks he can manage this ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... of the Burgh and Parish of Stanrawer, and the Parishes of Anwith and Borgh, to the several Presbyteries, for applying to the Meetings in Ireland, to louse the Irish Ministers now serving in these Parishes to the end they may continue their setled ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland

... his marriage. He had a sore back, he said, which became a torture if he leant forward at his loom. What truth there was in this I cannot say, but not every weaver in Thrums could "louse" when his back grew sore. Nanny went to the loom in his place, filling as well as weaving, and he walked about, dressed better than the common, and with cheerful words for those who had time to listen. Nanny got no approval even for doing his work as well ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie

... I wants to know is, why it wasn't me was took? I've only got meself, 'e stands for three. I'm plainer than a louse, while 'e was 'andsome as a dook; 'E always was a better man than me. 'E was goin' 'ome next Toosday; 'e was 'appy as a lark, And 'e'd just received a letter from 'is kid; And 'e struck a match to show me, as we stood there in the ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service

... To dream of a louse, foretells that you will have uneasy feelings regarding your health, and an enemy ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... Ballade of Dead Ladies Andrew Lang A Ballad of Dead Ladies Justin Huntly McCarthy If I Were King Justin Huntly McCarthy A Ballade of Suicide Gilbert Keith Chesterton Chiffons! William Samuel Johnson The Court Historian Walter Thornbury Miss Lou Walter de La Mare The Poet and the Wood-louse Helen Parry Eden Students Florence Wilkinson "One, Two, Three" Henry Cuyler Bunner The Chaperon Henry Cuyler Bunner "A Pitcher of Mignonette" Henry Cuyler Bunner Old King Cole Edwin Arlington Robinson The Master Mariner George Sterling A Rose to the Living Nixon Waterman A ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... were crawling over the winter-locked plain. In the aching circle of its immensity they were like little black ants. One, the leader, was of great bulk and of a vast strength; while the other was small and wiry, of the breed that clings like a louse to life while better ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... temperature can be raised from 8 to 10 degrees R. above the outside air without any artificial contrivance, and simply through the natural qualities of the glass-house. In order to protect the vines from that dangerous and destructive foe, the vine louse, should it show itself, it is enough to close the drain and open all the water pipes. The inundation of the vines, thus achieved, the enemy can not withstand. The glass roof and walls protect the vineyard from storms, cold, frost and superfluous ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... that process does not take place till September, one cannot well account for their appearing in the Tweed and elsewhere so early as February and March, seeing that they lose in weight and condition during their continuance in fresh water. Some think it is to get rid of the sea-louse; but this supposition must be set aside, when it is known that this insect adheres only to a portion of the newly-run fish which are in best condition. I think it more probable that they are driven ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... a term applied to that condition of local or general cutaneous irritation due to the presence of the animal parasite, the pediculus, or louse. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... replied, "True, my Lord; but let me tell you a story. In a sea fight in the reign of Charles the Second, there was a very bloody engagement between the English and Dutch fleets, in the heat of which a Scotch sea-man was very severely bit by a louse on his neck, which he caught; and stooping down to crack it between his nails, many of the sailors near him had their heads taken off by a chain-shot from the enemy, which dashed their blood and brains about him; on which he had ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... are," McLeod said in a cold voice. "Get your hands off me. I may get you fired anyway, just because you're a louse, but if you keep acting like this, I'll see that they toss you into solitary and toss the ...
— A World by the Tale • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Glad you slobs got memories. Glad to be of assistance, anytime. Les is no louse—he'll help old friends. I'll bring him the camera, out of the safe at my hotel, as soon ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... things in the world I hate a thief:) However, I was resolved to bring the discourse slily about: "Mrs. Duke," said I, "here's an ugly accident has happened out: 'Tis not that I value the money three skips of a louse:[10] But the thing I stand upon is the credit of the house. 'Tis true, seven pounds, four shillings, and sixpence makes a great hole in my wages: Besides, as they say, service is no inheritance in these ages. Now, Mrs. Duke, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... the Hebrew word in the Old Testament: it is my own opinion that the insects thus inflicted upon the population were not lice, but ticks. Exod. viii. 16, "The dust became lice throughout all Egypt;" again, Exod. viii. 17, "Smote dust . . . it became lice in man and beast." Now the louse that infects the human body and hair has no connexion whatever with "dust," and if subject to a few hours' exposure to the dry heat of the burning sand, it would shrivel and die; but the tick is an inhabitant ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... in Massachusetts: I have just discovered the most contemptible of all God's creatures in Kansas City. Some may suppose that the first discovery excludes the last; but such forget that there is the same difference between cussedness and contemptibility that exists between the leopard and the louse, between a Cuban hurricane and the crapulous eructations of a chronic hoodlum. I want the world to take an attentive look at one Walter S. Halliwell, to make a labored perscrutation of this priorient social pewee, this arbiter eligantarium of corn-fed aristocracy, this Beau Brummel of ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... brands of the fire smouldered all day in a bank of ashes; there was never any flame in his grate. He went through his day, from his uprising to his evening coughing-fit, with the regularity of a pendulum, and in some sort was a clockwork man, wound up by a night's slumber. Touch a wood-louse on an excursion across your sheet of paper, and the creature shams death; and in something the same way my acquaintance would stop short in the middle of a sentence, while a cart went by, to save ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac

... the inhabitants and neighbours near adjoining." The Ram Alley, Fleet Street, mentioned above, was notorious in sundry ways. Mr. Bell mentions that in 1618 the wardmote laid complaint against Timothy Louse and John Barker, of Ram Alley, "for keeping their tobacco-shoppes open all night and fyers in the same without any chimney and suffering hot waters [spirits] and selling also without licence, to the great disquietness and annoyance of that neighbourhood." There were sad goings on of ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... but all truth is not poetry. When Burns treats a natural-history theme, as in his verses on the mouse and the daisy, and even on the louse, how much more there is in them than mere natural history! With what a broad and tender philosophy he clothes them! how he identifies himself with the mouse and regards himself as its fellow mortal! So have Emerson's "Titmouse" and "Humble-Bee" a better excuse ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... codling moth, to be destroyed by paper bands, or with Paris green showered in water. The round-headed apple-tree borer is to be cut out, and the eggs excluded with a sheet of tarred paper around the stem, and slightly sunk in the earth. For the oyster-shell bark louse, apply linseed oil. Paris green, in water, will kill the canker worm. Tobacco water does the work for plant lice. Peach-tree borers are excluded with tarred or felt paper, and cut out with a knife. Jar ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... his beard from under his arm; and Dom. Consul, thinking it was a fly, struck at him with his hand, without even looking up; but when he felt the constable his hand, he jumped up and asked him what he wanted? whereupon the fellow answered, "Oh, only a louse was creeping there, and I would have ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... sack of coals on a blazing fire unless his nurse or his parents or his schoolmaster or his bishop or his judge or his army or his navy will do something to frighten these bad things away. And this Englishman, without the moral courage of a louse, will risk his neck for fun fifty times every winter in the hunting field, and at Badajos sieges and the like will ram his head into a hole bristling with sword blades rather than be beaten in the ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... the crusty creatures you know well enough, and you can find it without going to the seaside, I mean the wood-louse, which I used to hear called a "carpenter" when I was a child. In damp places, you can hardly turn over a mossy stone, or pick off a bit of bark from a fallen tree, without disturbing a whole colony of these slate-coloured ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... some of the lower members of the animal kingdom, for the purpose of broadening the interests of the pupils. The following are suggested as types: snail, spider, freshwater mussel (clam), crayfish (crab), centiped, milliped, salamander, and wood-louse. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education

... kill an animal on any account, not even a fly, or a flea, or a louse,[NOTE 7] or anything in fact that has life; for they say these have all souls, and it would be sin to do so. They eat no vegetable in a green state, only such as are dry. And they sleep on the ground stark naked, without a scrap of clothing on them or under them, so that it is ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... piece of rope. The giant was surprised at its size. He then asked to see Teofilo's louse, and Teofilo threw out the duck. The giant was terrified, for he had never seen such a large louse before. Finally the giant said, "Well, you seem to be larger than I. Let ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... of the chief thunder-god, fell violently in love with the same Aino woman. Said one of them to the other, in a joking way: "I will become a flea, so as to be able to hop into her bosom." Said the other: "I will become a louse, so as to be able to stay always ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain

... And at me: "What yu goin' to do? She's promised to me. I'm takin' keer of her; she's rode on my wagon; an' naow yu think to toll her off? Yu meet her ag'in right under my nose arter I've warned yu? Git, yoreself, or I'll stomp on yu like on a louse." ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... thought of his own good name:— "Now ye could haste my coal to waste, and sit ye down to fry: Did ye think of that theft for yourself?" said he; and Tomlinson said, "Ay!" The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from care:— "Ye have scarce the soul of a louse," he said, "but the roots of sin are there, And for that sin should ye come in were I the lord alone. But sinful pride has rule ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... Murder!—murder a louse! Who's hurting you, old gentleman? Don't make such a noise. We'll try and make some use of you when we have time, but we must bustle now. Come on, Jack. Stop a bit, though; where's the Clerk of the Court? Oh, there! Clerk, we shall want this ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris

... fairies, all attired in green silk; all these, with King Obreon, did welcome Robin Good-fellow into their company. Obreon took Robin by the hand and led him a dance: their musician was little Tom Thumb; for he had an excellent bag-pipe made of a wren's quill, and the skin of a Greenland louse: this pipe was so shrill, and so sweet, that a Scottish pipe compared to it, it would no more come near it, than a Jew's-trump doth to an Irish harp. After they had danced, King Obreon spake to his son, Robin ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... and a small book-louse who had been sleeping on the word 'Tranibore,' began to make its way slowly towards the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... was wished, three of us concluded to go and try to find a better place. The next day was Sunday and all lay in bed late. Before I rose I felt something crawling on my breast, and when I looked I found it to be an insect, slow in motion, resembling a louse, but larger. He was a new emigrant to me and I wondered what he was. I now took off my pants and found many of his kind in the seams. I murdered all I could find, and when I got up I told Williams what I had found. He said they hurt nobody and were called piojos, more commonly ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... above that of a pig-louse, could help loathing the system, the instant he saw it in its native meanness. Then, in order to keep his own self-respect,—to gratify the love of the good and true in his own soul, he must ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... bear off in their great jaws. They appear to use their sting only as a defensive weapon; but other smaller species that hunt singly, and are very agile, use their stings to paralyse their prey. I once saw one of these on the banks of the Artigua chasing a wood-louse (Oniscus), very like our common English species, on a nearly perpendicular slope. The wood-louse, when the ant got near it, made convulsive springs, throwing itself down the slope, whilst the ant followed, coursing from side to side, and examining the ground with its vibrating antennae. The actions ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... Hither many shippes come from all partes of India, Ormus, and many from Mecca: heere be manie Moores and Gentiles. They haue a very strange order among them, they worshippe a cowe, and esteeme much of the cowes doung to paint the walles of their houses. They will kill nothing not so much as a louse; for they holde it a sinne to kill any thing. They eate no flesh, but liue by rootes, and ryce, and milke. And when the husbande dieth his wife is burned with him, if shee be aliue: if shee will not, her head is shauen, and then is neuer any account made of her after. They say if they should ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt

... like throwing up your kind heart, and any other old thing you hadn't use for in your stummick. But I guess I can say right here, a lumber-jack's a most disgustin' sort of vermin who hasn't more right than a louse to figger in your reckonin'. I guess he was born wrong, and he'll mostly die as he was born. And meanwhile he's lived a life that's mostly dirt, and no account anyway. There's a few things we ask of a lumber-jack, and if he fulfils ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... he stuffs you all morning with Greek, and Latin, and Logic, and all that. Egad I have a dry-nurse too, but I never looked into a book with him in my life; I have not so much as seen the face of him this week, and don't care a louse if I ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... pointed hat Six Madonnas made of lead Shield him from the foeman's balls Or invasions of the louse. ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine

... that after their sheep fed on the foliage of this group of plants a skin disease, produced by a certain tiny louse (pediculus), would attack them - hence our innocent betony's ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... tribe or brotherhood; a word much used in Scotland. The head of the clan; the chief: an allusion to a story of a Scotchman, who, when a very large louse crept down his arm, put him back again, saying he was the head of the clan, and that, if injured, all the rest ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... dinars it cost me, too. I was chosen priest of Augustus without paying the fee, and I hope that I won't need to blush in my grave after I'm dead. But you're so busy that you can't look behind you; you can spot a louse on someone else, all right, but you can't see the tick on yourself. You're the only one that thinks we're so funny; look at your professor, he's older than you are, and we're good enough for him, but you're only a brat with the milk still in your nose and all you can prattle is 'ma' or 'mu,' ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... rolled himself up between two bales of goods to wait the event, but was discovered by a Turcoman of great size, and of a most ferocious aspect, who, taking him at first for part of the baggage, turned him over on his back, when (as we see a wood-louse do) he opened out at full length, and expressed all his fears by the most abject entreaties. He tried to soften the Turcoman by invoking Omar, and cursing Ali; but nothing would do; the barbarian was inexorable: he only left him in possession of his turban, out of consideration to its colour, but ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... thoroughly enervated, good-for-nothing parasite, who can only exist under the most special conditions, who can only exist when thousands of people toil at the preservation of this life which is utterly useless to every one. And I, that plant-louse, which devours the foliage of trees, wish to help the tree in its growth and health, and I wish to ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... onion. Of course you know the author is right here. You may have read some great poetry in your time, poems on daffodils, violets, roses, daisies. Even you have known a great poet who could write about a louse and a field mouse, but where do you find a poem about an onion? What orator waxes eloquent in its praise? What bride ever carries a bouquet of ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... Skin Produced by.—This is a disease of the skin produced by an animal parasite, the pediculus or louse. There are the head louse, pediculus capitis; the body louse, pediculus corporis; the pubis, (about the genitals) pediculus pubis. The color of lice is white or gray. They multiply very fast, the young being hatched out in about six days and within eighteen days are capable ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... not worth a louse, As our King's the best about the house. 'T is ay good to be sober and douce, To live in peace; For many, I see, for being o'er crouse, Gets ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... or green plant louse is the most commonly encountered of all the insect pests. It used to be dreaded, but with modern methods it may be readily and effectively exterminated. There are several forms and colors of these pests. If you have attempted plant-growing you are undoubtedly ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell

... observed the same thing where insects were the cause of all the trouble. A little downy species of the aphis, or plant louse, had completely overrun a Stump apple tree and really caused it to die. The owner told me that tree was blighted. But here also no sign of blight could be detected. Nothing but insects caused the tree to die, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... blamedest fools," she began abruptly; "'pears like they ain't got the sense of a grayback louse, leastways some of 'em. Now, there's dad, filled up on stuff they call whisky out yer, and consequence is he can't eat any grub for two days or more. Doggone it, it makes me huffy, it plum does. Mam has put up with it fer twenty years, which is just twenty more than I'd stand it, and don't you ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... "rather liked it;" he portrayed the effect of these tyrants of the street upon the sick and on the worker; and he never spared the offenders themselves. Once, indeed, he was goaded into showing one of these dirty persons leading a louse, like a monkey, by a string; but after a few copies had been struck off (and included in the parcel for Scotland), the printing-press was stopped, and the "realism" was cut from the block. From the first contribution, in which an old lady ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... all up to Marlboro! (All the slaves) Ten days or two weeks going. PeeDee bridge, stop! Go in gentlemen barn! Turn duh bridge! Been dere a week. Had to go and look the louse on we. Three hundred head o' people been dere. Couldn't pull we clothes off. (On flat.) Boat name Riprey. Woman confine on boat. Name the baby ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... necessary for the little threadbare gownman, with his wife, his proctor and every child who can crawl, to watch the fields at harvest time, for fear of losing a single sheaf, which he could not afford under peril of a day's starving; for according to the Scotch proverb, a hungry louse bites sore. This would of necessity, breed an infinite number of brangles and litigious suits in the spiritual courts, and put the wretched pastor at perpetual variance with his whole parish. But, as they have hitherto stood, a clergyman established in a competent living is not under the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... stop talking about your husband. If Alice and I don't need to ask our husbands, I'm sure you never need ask yours. Will Mossop hasn't the spirit of a louse and we know it as well as you do. (Crosses ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse

... chicken acari. MALADY: Poultry acariasis.—This is a large-sized acarus, though usually miscalled "hen louse," and the disease "poultry lousiness." The mite (Pl. XXXIX, fig. 4) lives in droppings and in crevices of chicken houses, but temporarily passes on to the skin of man and of the horse and other quadrupeds, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... particular parasite. Thus flax, after covering the human body and hanging the human being, after roaming the world on the back of an army, becomes writing-paper; and those who write or who read are familiar with the habits and morals of an insect called the "paper-louse," an insect of really marvellous celerity and behavior; it undergoes its mysterious transformations in a ream of white paper which you have carefully put away; you see it gliding and frisking along in its ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... rinsings, cheeseparings; sweepings &c (useless refuse) 645; offscourings^, outscourings^; off scum; caput mortuum [Lat.], residuum, sprue, fecula [Lat.], clinker, draff^; scurf, scurfiness^; exuviae [Lat.], morphea; fur, furfur^; dandruff, tartar. riffraff; vermin, louse, flea, bug, chinch^. mud, mire, quagmire, alluvium, silt, sludge, slime, slush, slosh, sposh [U.S.]. spawn, offal, gurry [U.S.]; lientery^; garbage, carrion; excreta &c 299; slough, peccant humor, pus, matter, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... So the poor widow agreed and spent the day picking out the lice and at evening the rich woman brought out a measure of rice to give her as her wages and, as she was measuring it, she felt her head itch and she put up her hand and scratched and pulled out a large louse. ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... please me. I have never seen it. I love this sort of poems, that open a new intercourse with the most despised of the animal and insect race. I think this vein may be further opened; Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostrophized a fly; Burns hath his mouse and his louse; Coleridge, less successfully, hath made overtures of intimacy to a jackass,—therein only following at unresembling distance Sterne and greater Cervantes. Besides these, I know of no other examples of breaking down the ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... louse; it is just a little yellow mite; but is it nothing else? Its genealogical history teaches us "by what amazing essays of passion and variety the universal law which rules the transmission of life is evolved. Here is neither father nor eggs; all these mites are mothers; and the young ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... martyrs with independence; but in all, in their degrees, it is a bosom thought: - Not in man alone, for we trace it in dogs and cats whom we know fairly well, and doubtless some similar point of honour sways the elephant, the oyster, and the louse, of whom we know so little: - But in man, at least, it sways with so complete an empire that merely selfish things come second, even with the selfish: that appetites are starved, fears are conquered, pains supported; that almost the dullest shrinks from the reproof of a ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... from colonising. All the defects of centralisation, its oppressions, its faults, its absurdities, its endless documents, which are dimly perceived in France, become one hundred times bigger in Africa. It is like a louse in a microscope.' ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville

... condition he removed them to the stone, and placed them like marbles in a row, Monsieur Crapaud watching the proceeding with rapt attention. After awhile the balls would slowly open and begin to crawl away; but he was a very active wood-louse indeed who escaped the suction of Monsieur Crapaud's tongue, as his eyes glowing with eager enjoyment, he bolted one after another, and Monsieur the Viscount clapped ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade

... a jumping plant-louse which early in the season sucks the juices of the tree about the axils of the leaves. They are covered with the exudations of the sap, which often drops on the ground. The visits of the ants should call attention to this pest. Syringe well with soft soap and water, 1/2 lb. to 4 gallons, and add ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum

... "You louse-bitten, egg-sucking, bloated faggot-porter! How stupid do you think we are? As stupid as your Essjay bosses? By heaven, we're staying! Then see if you have the nerve ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson

... (Fig. 36) which also belong to this order are suspected of carrying some of these same diseases. It is thought that the common louse on rats (Haematopinus spinulosus) is responsible for the spread from rat to rat of a certain parasite. (Trypanosoma lewisi), which, however, does not produce any disease in the rats, but if they are capable of acting as alternative hosts for such parasites, ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... too," replied our hero; "why, it's against the articles of war, 'all quarrelling, fighting, etc.' I say, Mr Gossett, have you got the spirit of a louse?" ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... he added witheringly, "I'd hate to see such a miser'ble spectacle as you goin' to a man's death. I'd git sick feelin' sore I belonged to the human race. Nope, you couldn't never be a man. Say, you ain't even a—louse." ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... that he was master of a ship, kept so many servants, and to personate their part the better take upon them to be gentlemen of good houses, well descended and allied, hire apparel at brokers, some scavenger or prick-louse tailors to attend upon them for the time, swear they have great possessions, [5178]bribe, lie, cog, and foist how dearly they love, how bravely they will maintain her, like any lady, countess, duchess, or queen; they shall have gowns, tiers, jewels, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... was in, with a louse of a husband that prevented her from crawling under her own blankets and a low skunk behind her just waiting to take advantage of the situation to possess her again. She begged Lantier to be quiet. Turning toward the small room where Nana ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... prominent place,—carnivorous arachnidae of ill repute, that live under stones and fallen trunks, and seize fast with their nippers upon the creatures on which they prey, crustaceans usually, such as the wood-louse, or insects, such as the earth-beetles and their grubs. With the scorpions there occur cockroaches of types not at all unlike the existing ones, and that, judging from their appearance, must have been foul feeders, to which scarce anything could have come amiss as food. Books, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... who talks, not one who sings. But I believe the very fact that it was only speech served the book with the public. Horace is much a speaker, and see how popular! most of Martial is only speech, and I cannot conceive a person who does not love his Martial; most of Burns, also, such as 'The Louse,' 'The Toothache,' 'The Haggis,' and lots more of his best. Excuse this little apology for my house; but I don't like to come before people who have a note of song, and let it be supposed I do ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... is a direct harking back to the ancient days in the Alt Mark, to the Circle of Stendal with its little town of Bismarck, on the Biese, where stands the ancient masonry dating from 1203, and known as the "Bismarck Louse." ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... Chinch bug Bean-leaf beetle Wireworm May beetle Corn billbug Imbricated-snout beetle Plant lice Cabbage butterfly Mosquito Squash beetle Clover leaf beetle Cotton boll weevil Cotton boll worm Striped garden caterpillar Cutworms Grasshoppers Corn-louse ants Rocky Mountain locust Codling moth Canker ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... influence of the operations of the Trinity louse might be shown by many interesting instances. Here is one specimen; it ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... hardly understood what the good-looking old man was saying, because his attention was riveted to a large, dark-grey, many-legged louse that was creeping along ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... acquaintance of our companions. The chief was a man of about forty years of age, Potokomik by name, which, translated, means a hole cut in the edge of a skin for the purpose of stretching it. The next in importance was Kumuk. Kumuk means louse, and it fitted the man's nature well. The youngest was Iksialook (Big Yolk of an Egg). Potokomik had been rechristened by a Hudson's Bay Company agent "Kenneth," and Kumuk, in like manner, had had the name of "George" ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace

... narrow-gauge logging-road, and pursued his fair head up the blue-stone crags behind the house, her vast feet causing avalanches among the garden beds. She withdrew him with railings from the enchanting society of louse-infested Polish children, and danced hysterically on the shore of the valley-wide, log-stippled pool when the Varians took him to swim. She bore him off to bed, lowering at the actual nurse. She filled ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... than the High-toby-cracks of old! They were as brave as lions; he is a very louse for timidity. His conduct is meaner than the conduct of the most ruffianly burglar that ever worked a centre-bit. Of art he has not the remotest inkling: though his greed is bounded by the Bank of England, he understands not the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... you tiresome," Sunderland said. "I advise you, do not make me think of you again," and he struck his bell. But when Mr. Waverton was gone: "I fear he has not the spirit of a louse," my lord remarked to ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... not originally a native of this country; and that is the reason why, so many years after its first appearance in England, it was known only by a corruption of its French name punaise, or its German appellation wandlaus (wall-louse). Penny, a celebrated physician and naturalist in the reign of Henry VII., discovered it at Mortlake in rather a curious manner. Mouffet, in his Theatrum Insectorum (Lond. 1634), ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... have daring deeds to tell! And you who have felt Ambition's spell! Have you heard of the louse who longed to dwell In the golden hair of a queen? He sighed all day and he sighed all night, And no one could understand it quite, For the head of a slut is a louse's delight, But he pined for the ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service



Words linked to "Louse" :   lousy, psylla, Anoplura, grape phylloxera, Menopon palladum, homopterous insect, disagreeable person, Phylloxera vitifoleae, unpleasant person, Menopon gallinae, cootie, oak blight, Phthirius pubis, Pediculus humanus, aphid, Mallophaga, psyllid, homopteran, Pediculus capitis, order Mallophaga, Pediculus corporis, crab, adelgid, order Anoplura



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