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Mildew   /mˈɪldˌu/   Listen
Mildew

verb
(past & past part. mildewed; pres. part. mildewing)
1.
Become moldy; spoil due to humidity.  Synonym: mold.



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"Mildew" Quotes from Famous Books



... rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered. 8. So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water; but they were not satisfied; yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. 9. I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens, and your vineyards, and your fig-trees, and your olive-trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. 10. I have sent among you the pestilence, after the manner of Egypt; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... studied above lives in the apple or bread, so other varieties live on leaves, bark, etc. Fig. 113 represents the surface of a mildewed rose leaf greatly magnified. This mildew is a fungus. You can see its creeping stems, its upright stalk, and numerous spores ready to fall off and spread the disease with the first breath of wind. You must remember that this figure is greatly magnified, ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... life, is this thy boasted prime! And does thy spring no happier prospect yield! Why should the sunbeam paint thy glittering clime, When the keen mildew desolates ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... Perhaps the mildew that stained the ghastly gaunt angels who kept guard over the dust of the dead wife, extended yet further than the silent territory over which sexton and mattock reigned, for one dreary December night, instead of nestling for a post-prandial nap among the velvet cushions ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... carves folly in brass, and breaks his head on his own monument; or forges it in steel, and stabs his own heart with it. The vanities of youth are yeast in wholesome ale. The follies of later life are mildew in the cask. The lad who never tasted Paul's intoxication may make a worthy citizen, but he will never ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... the most moderate manner, except in the rainy season, when the sooner the drying is effected the better; for it is a plant easily affected by the changes of the weather, after the drying commences. It is then liable to mildew in damp weather, which is when the leaf changes from its original color to a pale yellow cast, and from this, by parts, to an even brown. When the middle stem is perfectly dry, it can be taken down, and the leaves stripped from the stalk and put in bulk ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... rain during which we nearly filled all our empty water casks. So much wet weather, with the closeness of the air, covered everything with mildew. The ship was aired below with fires and frequently sprinkled with vinegar; and every little interval of dry weather was taken advantage of to open all the hatchways, and clean the ship, and to have all the people's wet ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... planted, Hiawatha, wise and thoughtful, Spake and said to Minnehaha, To his wife, the Laughing Water: "You shall bless to-night the cornfields, Draw a magic circle round them, To protect them from destruction, Blast of mildew, blight of insect, Wagemin, the thief of cornfields, Paimosaid, who steals the maize-ear! "In the night, when all is silence, In the night, when all is darkness, When the Spirit of Sleep, Nepahwin, Shuts the doors ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... being perfectly sweet and sound on an English ship after two years' keeping, and whalemen kill a number of pigs, which they hang in the rigging and keep for use during the cruise. It is also noticeable that leather articles do not mildew as they generally do at sea, some shoes kept in a locker on board the Corwin having retained their polish during the ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... the purposes for which wood ashes is chiefly used in horticulture, it is believed that ashes from the coal has too great a value to be wasted. It should all be saved and applied to some good purpose on the garden or orchard. Has any one tried it as a preventive to pear blight? or mildew on the gooseberry? or the grape rot? or for the yellows or leaf-curl in peach trees? or for the rust in the blackberry and raspberry? In any or all of these it may have a decided value, and should be faithfully experimented with. As an absorbent alone it ought to be worth saving, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... yellowish green. This gummy juice, inspissated and formed into a cake, is occasionally employed in flower painting. It is, however, a very imperfect pigment, disposed to attract the moisture of the atmosphere, and to mildew; while, having little durability in water and less in oil, it is not eligible in the one and is totally ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... the middle ages, had not been ground to dust by mere human rage. You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm—we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish—ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame; and the soul of man is to its own work as the moth that frets when it cannot fly, and as the hidden flame that blasts where it cannot illuminate. All these lost treasures of human intellect have been wholly destroyed by human industry of destruction; ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... or heathen—not so much as would tell us the way to the great fireplace—ever I should sin to say it! Either the moss and mildew have eat away the words, or we have arrived in a land where the natyves have lost the art o' writing, and should ha' brought our compass like ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy

... year. The inhabitants of St. Bazile, he said, were all very poor, their chief food being potatoes and chestnuts. Before the vines a little further down the valley were destroyed by the phylloxera and mildew, the people were much better off. Then there was plenty of wine in the cellars, but now St. Bazile was a village of water-drinkers. He spoke of the neighbouring parish of Servieres, where, at the annual pilgrimage, women go barefoot ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... disadvantages. The church here is tough and coarse, and full of grit, like a grindstone; and it does ministers from other more niminy-piminy places all sorts of good to come here once in a while and rub themselves up against it. It scours the rust and mildew off from their piety, and they go back singing and shouting. But of course it's had a different effect with you. You're razor-steel instead of scythe-steel, and the grinding's been too rough and violent for you. But you ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... thy conscious soul to fright, Make signs, and beckon thee my ghost to follow To sadder groves, and churchyards, where we'll hollo To darker caves and solitary woods, To fatal whirlpools and consuming floods; I'll tempt thee to pass by the unlucky ewe, Blasted with cursed droppings of mildew; Under an oak, that ne'er bore leaf, my moans Shall there be told thee by the mandrake's groans; The winds shall sighing tell thy cruelty, And how thy want of love did murder me; And when the cock shall crow, and day grow near, Then in a flash ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... produce a smooth thread with sufficient hardness to resist the continual chafing of the shuttles, reeds, and harnesses during the process of weaving. Flour and starch in a liquid state are used for this purpose, but owing to the liability to mildew, flour is not so much used as starch. Both of these materials, however, make the yarn brittle, and other ingredients are combined with them to overcome the brittleness. For a softener on heavy weight goods ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley

... venture to say, that in embarking for Greece, he was not entirely influenced by such exoterical motives as the love of glory or the aspirations of heroism. His laurels had for some time ceased to flourish, the sear and yellow, the mildew and decay, had fallen upon them, and he was aware that the bright round of his fame was ovalling from the full and showing the ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... has to be fulfilled, apart from the fineness of the cotton-wool. The plant, to be worth shearing, must be dead and dry. I have never seen the harvesting done on fresh plants. In this way, the Bee avoids mildew, which would make its appearance in a mass of hairs still ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... the aqueous particles that float in the air, seem to be more open in an easterly wind than in any other; and, when this wind prevails at the same time that the air is filled with the farina of the small parasitic fungus, whose depredations on the corn constitute what they call the rust, mildew, or blight, the particles penetrate into these pores, speedily sprout and spread their small roots into the cellular texture, where they intercept, and feed on, the sap in its ascent; and the grain in the ear, deprived of its nourishment, becomes ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... ever dilating on, compared with the moral mutations that are passing daily under our own eye; uprooting the hearts of families, shattering to pieces domestic circles, scattering to the winds the plans and prospects of a generation, and blasting as with a mildew the ripening ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... the life of the cow-bird, how suggestive is this spectacle which we may see every year in September in the chuckling flocks massing for their migration, occasionally fairly blackening the trees as with a mildew, each one the visible witness of a double or quadruple cold-blooded murder, each the grim substitute for a whole annihilated singing family of song-sparrow, warbler, or thrush! What a blessing, at least humanly speaking, could the epicurean population en route in the annual Southern ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... are not equally generous in surrendering the amiability of Timon, along with the depravity of Iago, to the arsenal of feminine weapons. What corroding mildew of discontent has fallen from Mrs. Parkman's velvet dress, and rusted the bright ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... a weather-thinned mainsail, black with mildew, and bent it; and by the time that was on the spars, he had completed his barter, and had been put on board again ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

... the trader. "you forget fur is an awful risky thing; what with mildew, moth, mice, and markets, we have a lot of risk. But I want to please you, so let her go; five each. There's a fine black fox; ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... tow cloths were bleached on the grass in the orchard, and it was my business to keep it sprinkled during the hot days, to take it in at night and on rainy days, to prevent mildew. In those days a girl began to prepare for marriage as soon as she could use a needle, stitching bits of calico together for quilts. She must spin and weave her own sheets and ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... complication of grave trusts and mighty charges. Well might she take the keys out of the little chiffonier which held the tea and sugar; and out of the two little damp cupboards down by the fireplace, where the very black beetles got mouldy, and had the shine taken out of their backs by envious mildew; and jingle them upon a ring before Tom's eyes when he came down to breakfast! Well might she, laughing musically, put them up in that blessed little pocket of hers with a merry pride! For it was such a grand ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... mikroskopo. Midday tagmezo. Middle centro. Middle meza. Midnight noktomezo. Midsummer duonjaro, somermezo. Midwife akusxistino. Mien mieno. Might potenco. Mighty potenca. Mignonette resedo. Migrate migri. Milch laktodona. Mild dolcxa. Mildew sximo. Mildness dolcxeco. Mile mejlo. Militant milita. Military milita. Military man militisto. Militia militantaro. Milk melki. Milk lakto. Mill muelilo. Mill-house muelejo. Miller muelisto. Millenium miljaro. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... the man crouching over the stove. His features, like those of his companion, were covered with green mould, and his beard was fringed with the same grim mildew. ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... pilgrims or Crusaders. The arum-fringed lane widens before the outer wall of the church, overtopped by its triangular gable. Behind this wall is a yard or atrium, the pavement grass-grown, the walls stained with great patches of mildew, and showing here and there in their dilapidation the shaft and capital of a bricked-up Ionic pillar. The place tells of centuries of neglect, of the gradual invasion of resistless fever; and it ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... Mildew, which results from allowing damp clothes to lie in the basket for a length of time, is obstinate and difficult to remove. Boil in salted buttermilk; or wet with lemon juice and stand in the sun. If these treatments are ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... Spirit come in his terrible might, And pour on the white man his mildew and blight May his fruits be destroyed by the tempest and hail, And the fire-bolts of heaven his ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... plantation, lying some twenty miles down the river. Years ago the estate had been sold to discharge the debts of its too-bountiful owners. Once again it had changed hands, and now the must and mildew of litigation had settled upon it. A question of heirship was in the courts, and the dwelling house of Charleroi, unless the tales told of ghostly powdered and laced Charleses haunting its unechoing chambers were true, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... Jerry, and clapping the handkerchief to his ear, thrust it beneath the other's eye of mildew. "What's ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant

... her soul like mildew upon growing grain, and after Gombert had helped her into the carriage again she begged him to let her rest in silence for a while. The Netherlander, it is true, had no suspicion of her condition, but he knew that she had not yet wholly recovered, and carefully pushed his own ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... showed beneath him. It was a large, irregular room, divided into unequal portions by the four wide, massive pillars that supported its arched roof. A smell of damp and mildew came from its walls and from its flags moistened by the water that trickled from without. Its appearance at any time must have been gruesome. But, at that moment, with the tall figures of Sebastiani ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... consists in splitting the doctrines of Calvin into thousands of undistinguishable films, and in setting up a system of justifying-grace against all breaches of all laws, moral or divine. In short, Sir, you are a mildew—a canker-worm in the bosom of the Reformed Church, generating a disease of which she will never be purged, but by the shedding of blood. Go thou in peace, and do these abominations no more; but humble thyself, lest a worse ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... getting the camp equipage out of store, and the tents pitched for inspection. There had not been a large camp for many years, and everything in India deteriorates so rapidly, that I found most of the tents in such a state of mildew and decay as to render it necessary to renew them almost entirely before they could be used for such a splendid occasion as that of the first Viceroy's first march through the ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... love and submission. His long separation from her, his wild soldier's life had crushed out the last blossoms of tender and chaste affection in his heart, and he ridiculed himself for his pure, adoring, timid love. Distrust had resumed power over him, and doubt, like a mildew, had spread itself over his last ideal. Elise was to him only a woman like the rest. She was his property, and as such he wished to do ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... beyond them Marguerite gradually became aware of three walls of a narrow room, dank and grey, half covered with whitewash and half with greenish mildew! Yes! and there, opposite to her and immediately beneath that semblance of a window, was another paillasse, and on it ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... very kine will go to Hades, while thou too art in love with a luckless victory, and thy pipe is flecked with mildew, the pipe that once thou madest ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... took heart of grace and determined to see a little more. I opened a side-door, and entered a large room, where were, in a corner, some rusty and cobwebbed bird-cages, but nothing more. It was a wainscoted room, but a white mildew stained the panels. I looked from the window: it commanded that dismal, weed-choked quadrangle into which I had once looked from another window. I opened a door at its farther end, and entered another chamber, not quite so large, but equally dismal, with the ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... the two big fires necessary to keep it aired. Pixie sniffed with delight when she entered the gloomy apartment, for the room represented the family glory to her childish imagination, so that the smell of mildew was irresistibly associated with luxury. The dining-room carpet was worn into holes, and there was one especially big one near the window, where Esmeralda, who was nothing if not artistic, had painted so ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... treasury of our genuine idiom. Even this labour of the lexicographer, so copious and so elaborate, must have been projected with rapture, and pursued with pleasure, till, in the progress, "the mind was musing on many things." Then came the melancholy doubt, that drops mildew from its enveloping wings over the voluminous labour of a laborious author, whether he be wisely consuming his days, and not perpetually neglecting some higher duties or some happier amusements. Still the enchanted ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... examined before wetting, as soap-suds, washing-fluids, etc., will fix almost any stain past removal. Many stains will pass away by being simply washed in pure, soft water; or alcohol will remove, before the article has been in soap-suds, many stains; iron mold, mildew, or almost any similar spot, can be taken out by dipping in diluted citric acid; then cover with salt and lay in the bright sun till the stain disappears. If of long standing, it may be necessary to repeat the wetting ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... a huge habitation where only servants live to put cases on the furniture and open the windows. I enter as I would into the tomb of the Capulets, to look at the family pictures that here frown in armour, or smile in ermine. The mildew respects not the lordly robe, and the worm riots unchecked on the cheek ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft

... Mr. Clarkson, as they surrounded him; "rise up, Daniel Drake Nelson Farragut Finnegan. You are small potatoes and few in the hill; you are shamefully drunk, and your nose bleeds; you are stricken with Spanish mildew, and you smell vilely—but you are immortal. You have been a disgrace to the service, but Fate in her gentle irony has redeemed you, permitting you, in one brief moment of your misspent life, to save to your ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... sweet, That I may run my fingers through your hair, And see your face turn upwards like a flower To meet my kiss. Have you not sometimes noted, When we unlock some long-disused room With heavy dust and soiling mildew filled, Where never foot of man has come for years, And from the windows take the rusty bar, And fling the broken shutters to the air, And let the bright sun in, how the good sun Turns every grimy particle of dust ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde

... rich in giving— All its wealth is living gain; Seeds which mildew in the garner Scattered fill with gold ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... withered, parched, torpid, like a corn-field on which a poisonous mildew has fallen; yet it had once ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... entered the little building. The key, it was presumed, had been lost; the lock certainly looked rusty. The roof, too, soon fell into disrepair, and no doubt within, the place soon became the prey of damp and mildew, the nest of homing birds, or the lair of timid beasts. Very soon the proud copy of an archaic temple took on that miserable and forlorn look peculiar to ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... Eschscholtzia californica Forest, New Garden allotments, by Mr. Bailey Glass, writing on, by M. Brunnquell Gunnersbury Park Hollyhocks, new India, vegetable substances used in, for producing intoxication, by Dr. Gibson Leaves, variegated, by M. Carriere Mangosteens Marigold, white Mildew, Continental Vine National Floricultural Society Norton's (Captain) cartridge Oak, the Pig Breeding Potato Crop, returns respecting the state of in Ireland Pots, garden Reaping machines Roses, soil for Sale of cattle at Tortworth Sap, motion of, by Mr. Lovell Sheep, Leicester ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various

... shimmer of a peaceful sea, and an atmosphere whose influences are all cheering. Though from 13 to 16 feet of rain fall here in the year the air is not damp. Wet clothes hung up in the verandah even during rain, dry rapidly, and a substance so sensitive to damp as botanical paper does not mildew. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... answer the purpose—for he had no money to buy them, and no shop could have furnished them for him if he had possessed all the money in Spain. In his attic he found an old suit of armor that had belonged to his great-grandfather and had been lying there for ages, rotting with rust and mildew in company with old chests, bedding and other family treasures. He brought it out and scoured it as best he could and at last made it shine with considerable brightness. But the helmet was only partially complete, for it lacked a beaver and a visor to protect his face, so Senor ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... cosmic process were no longer sedulously warded off, or counteracted. The walls and gates would decay; quadrupedal and bipedal intruders would devour and tread down the useful and beautiful plants; birds, insects, blight, and mildew would work their will; the seeds of the native plants, carried by winds or other agencies, would immigrate, and in virtue of their long-earned special adaptation to the local conditions, these despised native weeds would soon choke ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... ink-coolie all winter, the place was at my disposal if it so turned out that a winter in California seemed desirable for me and my kiddies. It would, in fact, be a God-send—so he protested—to have somebody dependable lodged in that empty house, to keep the cobwebs out of the corners and the mildew off his books and save the whole disintegrating shebang from the general rack and ruin which usually overtakes empty mansions of that type. He gave me the name and address of the caretaker, on Euclid Avenue, and concluded by saying it wasn't very much ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... all her customers. Since her aunt had been confined to her armchair upstairs, she had let the shop go from bad to worse, abandoning the goods to dust and damp. A smell of mildew hung in the atmosphere, spiders came down from the ceiling, the floor was ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... physical life, and convulsing their minute sphere with struggles as fierce and protracted as those of men. In the common spots of mould, which my mother, good housekeeper that she was, fiercely scooped away from her jam pots, there abode for me, under the name of mildew, enchanted gardens, filled with dells and avenues of the densest foliage and most astonishing verdure, while from the fantastic boughs of these microscopic forests, hung strange fruits glittering with green, and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... much rain fall with so little noise. None of the summer winds make roaring storms, and thunder is seldom heard. I heard none at all. This wet, misty weather seems perfectly healthful. There is no mildew in the houses, as far as I have seen, or any tendency toward mouldiness in nooks hidden from the sun; and neither among the people nor the plants do we find anything ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir

... protect the corn from blight and the ravages of worms and vermin, and to insure a good crop. It was believed that neither worms nor vermin could cross the mystic or enchanted ring made by the nocturnal footsteps of the wife, nor any mildew or canker affect the growing stalks ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... roves your fairest lands; And till he flies or fears, Your fields must grow but armed bands, Your sheaves be sheaves of spears! Give up to mildew and to rust The useless tools of gain; And feed your country's sacred dust With floods ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... day, but where was the maternal heart of love which should have beat within that bosom? 'Can a mother forget her children?' There is a fell and terrible destroyer, which murders peace in hearts and homes, whose very breath is a mildew and a blight, in whose desolating track follow woe, want, and ruin; a fierce, insatiable appetite, trebly cursed, that makes of life a loathsome degradation, and fills dishonored graves, blighting all that is divine and godlike in human nature, sealing the gushing fountain of maternal tenderness, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... putting away clothes-bags into numerous boxes. The ironing-room farther on is filled with busy workers. Days come during every week when time is spent in the study of laundry chemistry. Rust and mildew stains and scorching are some of the problems of the Laundry, and they find solution. Soap, starch, water, and bluing have their composite qualities and are analyzed, and no more interesting correlation is there than that of the ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... find an antagonistic divinity, called Robigus, a worker of evil, who delighted in the destruction of the tender herbs by mildew, and whose wrath could only be averted by prayers and sacrifices, when he was invoked under the title of Averuncus, or ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... air first, for goodness sake!" said the Captain, going heavily up the old steps; "I am pretty nearly choked with all this mildew. A little fresh air, before we undertake the ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... natural scenery draw the attention away from so vile a centre. I could excuse any man who became a pessimist after a long course of conversations in a sleepy old borough, for he would see that a mildew may attack the human intelligence, and that the manners of a puffy well-clad citizen may be worse than those of a Zulu Kaffir. The indescribable coarseness and rudeness of the social intercourse, the detestable forms of humour which obtain applause, the low distrust ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... the brutes." All which lowers the influence or the sacredness of this memory is debasing. The corrupting of this memory "is the impoverishment that threatens our posterity;" and this "new famine, a meagre fiend, with lewd grin and clumsy hoof, is breathing a moral mildew over the harvest of our human sentiments." That eager yearning of the nineteenth century for truth and reality, for something more than traditions and national memories, which displays itself in reforms and revolutions of every kind, had little of George Eliot's ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... to December, placing the tubers 2-1/2 or 3 in. deep and 4 or 5 in. apart, with a trowelful of manure under each plant, but not touching them. A little sea sand or salt mixed with the soil is a preventive of mildew. If planted in February and March they will bloom from April to June. They are increased by seeds, divisions, or off-sets; the greenhouse varieties from cuttings in light loam under glass. The tubers will not keep long out of the ground. In growing ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink

... influence upon female temper, or produce an ossifying effect on female hearts? Is ignorance an inevitable concomitant of refinement and delicacy? Does the knowledge of Greek and Latin cast a blight over the flower-garden, or a mildew in the pantry and linen closet; or do the classics possess the power of curdling all the milk of human-kindness, all the streams of tender sympathy in a woman's nature, as rennet coagulates a bowl of sweet milk? Can an ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... and total darkness. The boxes, of which a great number lay broken open, as they can be by merely pulling with the fingers at a pliant crack, contain dates; and the bottles, of which many thousands lay empty, contain, I saw, old Ismidtwine. Some fifty or sixty casks, covered with mildew, some old pieces of furniture, and a great cube of rotting, curling parchments, showed that this cellar had been more or less loosely used for the occasional storage of ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... sometimes dressed with oil, but this is not to be recommended, though it is an advantage to have them wet occasionally with a weak solution of copper sulphate or with sea water as a preservative and to prevent mildew. Such covers, well cared for, may last five years or be of little use after the first, depending upon the care given them. They can be made from 50 to 200 feet long and two men can roll them up ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... way? Did genius to thy verse such bane impart? No. 'Twas the demon of thy venom'd heart, (Thy heart with rancour's quintessence endued). And the blind zeal of a misjudging crowd. Thus from rank soil a poison'd mushroom sprung, Nursling obscene of mildew and of dung: 110 By Heaven design'd on its own native spot Harmless to enlarge its bloated bulk, and rot. But gluttony the abortive nuisance saw; It roused his ravenous, undiscerning maw: Gulp'd down the tasteless throat, the mess abhorr'd Shot fiery influence ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... Hence, there was always an indescribable and, to me, unpleasant odour of their profession about them. If they knew more concerning the life of the world than other men, why should everything they said remind one of mustiness and mildew? In a word, why were they not men at worst, when at best they ought to be more of men than other men?—And here lay the difficulty: by no effort could I get the face before me to fit into the clerical mould which ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... Mildew.—Mildew, if not of too long standing, can be removed by the use of raw tomato and salt. Rub the stains with raw tomato, sprinkle thickly with salt and lay in the sun. It may be necessary to repeat the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... harvest is usually commenced at the end of December, after the grain has hardened and the dry season has fairly set in. If, at such an abnormal period, the rains were to return (and such a thing has been known), the sheaves, which are heaped for about a month to dry, would be greatly exposed to mildew owing to the damp atmosphere. After the heaping—at the end of January—the paddy, still in the straw, is made into stacks (Tagalog, Mandala). In six weeks more the grain is separated from the straw, and this operation has to be concluded ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... de'il at other times gi'es, it's said, his agents a mutchkin o' mischief, but on this night it's thought they hae a chappin; and one thing most demonstrable is;—but, sir, the sun's down—the blessed light o' day is ayont the hill, and it's no safe to be subjek to the whisking o' the mildew frae the tails o' the benweed ponies that are saddled for yon awfu' carnavaulings, where Cluty plays on the pipes! so I wis you, sir, gude night and weel hame.—O, sir, an ye could be persuaded!—Tak an auld man's advice, and rather read a chapter of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... not that we are not secretly much more of women, and better and cleverer women, than you think us. But there is no call for such wares, so we lay character and brain on the shelves to mildew, and fill the show-windows with confectionery and illusion. We supply the demand. We always have supplied ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell

... the veins of earth and sky, That mortals miss the loyal heats, Which drove them erst to social feats; Now, to a savage selfness grown, Think nature barely serves for one; With science poorly mask their hurt; And vex the gods with question pert, Immensely curious whether you Still are rulers, or Mildew? ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... another comet, insisting that "it was no fiery meteor caused by exhalation, but it was sent immediately by God to awaken the secure world," and goes on to show how in that year "it pleased God to smite the fruits of the earth—namely, the wheat in special—with blasting and mildew, whereby much of it was spoiled and became profitable for nothing, and much of it worth little, being light and empty. This was looked upon by the judicious and conscientious of the land as a speaking providence against the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... no waste of time to go forth through our streets, thus proclaiming our desire for the advancement of our great cause. You, with us, no doubt, feel that Intemperance is the blighting mildew of all our social connections; you would be most happy to speed on the time when no Wife shall watch with trembling heart and tearful eye the slow, but sure descent of her idolized Companion down to the loathsome haunts of drunkenness; you would hasten the day when no Mother shall ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... panacea for apoplexy, palsy, and falling sickness, a belief current in Sweden, where finger rings are made of its wood. An old-fashioned charm for the bite of an adder was to place a cross formed of hazel-wood on the wound, and the burning of a thorn-bush has long been considered a sure preventive of mildew in wheat. Without multiplying further illustrations, there can be no doubt that the therapeutic virtues of these so-called lightning plants may be traced to, in very many cases, their mythical origin. ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... cinders and rubbish, and brought up a black mass of half-burnt parchment, entwined with vegetable refuse, from which he speedily disengaged an oval frame of gold, containing a miniature, still protected by its glass, but half covered with mildew from the damp. He was in ecstacies at the prize. Even the white catskins paled before it. In all probability some of the men would have taken it from him, "to try and find the owner," but for the ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... it. It was a gaudy red print representing a pierced heart. The Indian girl kissed every sanguinary drop which dribbled down the coarse paper. Fog and salt air had given it a musty odor, and stained the edges with mildew. She found it no small labor to cover these stains, and pin the moss securely in ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... conversation. My bookseller has dwelt so long in his corner with folios and quartos and other antique tomes that he talks in black-letter and has the modest, engaging look of a brown old stout binding, and to the delectation of discriminating olfactories he exhaleth an odor of mildew and of tobacco commingled, which is more grateful to the true bibliophile than all ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... judges women by his deformed wife. Men do judge that way, I suppose, and then pride themselves on their experience, commencing their speeches about us, with 'you women.' I'll answer your question, though,—there's a blight creeping over me, or a mildew." ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... streets was, of course, as lovely as it could be; not in the least because anyone could see anything—that was hindered by the fact that the windows of the bus were so old that they were crusted with a kind of glassy mildew, and no amount of rubbing on the window-panes provided one with a view—but because the inside of the bus was inevitably connected with adventure—partly through its motion, partly through its noise, and partly through its lovely smell. These were, of course, ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... earth also had to suffer a tenfold punishment: independent before, she was hereafter to wait to be watered by the rain from above; sometimes the fruits of the earth fail; the grain she brings forth is stricken with blasting and mildew; she must produce all sorts of noxious vermin; thenceforth she was to be divided into valleys and mountains; she must grow barren trees, bearing no fruit; thorns and thistles sprout from her; much is ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... back the tide of every separate individual's complaints in the domestic circle, till often the whole air of the house is chilled and darkened by a drizzling Scotch mist of querulousness. Very bad are these mists for grape-vines, and produce mildew ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... life: involves the heaven In tempests, quits His grasp upon the winds And gives them all their fury; bids a plague Kindle a fiery boil upon the skin, And putrefy the breath of blooming health. He calls for Famine, and the meagre fiend Blows mildew from between his shrivelled lips, And taints the golden ear. He springs His mines, And desolates a nation at a blast. Forth steps the spruce philosopher, and tells Of homogeneal and discordant springs And principles; of causes how they work ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... smite thee . . . with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... projection, and that beneath this hill was large enough for us to drive into it two ice caves. The first of these was to contain our larder, notably the frozen mutton carcasses brought down by us from New Zealand in the ice-house on deck. These, however, showed signs of mildew, and we never ate very freely of them. Seal and penguin were our stock meat foods, and mutton was considered to be ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... blindfold when transported there. In low dark rounds the arches hung, From the rude rock the side-walls sprung; The grave-stones, rudely sculptured o'er, Half sunk in earth, by time half wore, Were all the pavement of the floor; The mildew-drops fell one by one, With tinkling plash upon the stone. A cresset, in an iron chain, Which served to light this drear domain, With damp and darkness seemed to strive, As if it scarce might keep alive; And yet it dimly served to show The awful ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... impurity; immundity[obs3], immundicity[obs3]; impurity &c. 961[of mind]. defilement, contamination &c. v.; defoedation|; soilure[obs3], soiliness|; abomination; leaven; taint, tainture|; fetor &c. 401[obs3]. decay; putrescence, putrefaction; corruption; mold, must, mildew, dry rot, mucor, rubigo|. slovenry[obs3]; slovenliness &c. Adj. squalor. dowdy, drab, slut, malkin[obs3], slattern, sloven, slammerkin|, slammock[obs3], slummock[obs3], scrub, draggle-tail, mudlark[obs3], dust- man, sweep; beast. dirt, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... intention and design, none but worms can be familiar with. A hundred and ten years have passed, since any play was acted here. The sky shines in through the gashes in the roof; the boxes are dropping down, wasting away, and only tenanted by rats; damp and mildew smear the faded colours, and make spectral maps upon the panels; lean rags are dangling down where there were gay festoons on the Proscenium; the stage has rotted so, that a narrow wooden gallery is thrown across it, or it would sink beneath the tread, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... accomplished their gracious work, and every one was satisfied, behold, they did not cease. And as hitherto the cry had gone up for water on the furrows, so now men's hearts failed them for fear lest it should continue to overflowing, and lest mildew should set in upon the full, rich ears, and the glorious crops should ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... often lie hid in those quaint odds and ends which the elder generations have discarded as rubbish! All children are by nature antiquarians and relic-hunters. Still, there is an order and precision with which the articles in that room are stowed away that belies the true notion of lumber,—none of the mildew and dust which give such mournful interest to ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of Architecture—it is not possible to have any right morality, happiness, or art, in any country where the cities are thus built, or thus, let me rather say, clotted and coagulated; spots of a dreadful mildew, spreading by patches and blotches over the country they consume. You must have lovely cities, crystallized, not coagulated, into form; limited in size, and not casting out the scum and scurf of them into an encircling eruption of shame, but girded each with its sacred pomoerium, and ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... indistinguishable in the twilight; the floor seemed composed of packed earth, three or four doors showed in the woodwork; that opposite to the one by which they had entered stood slightly ajar, and a smoky light shone from beyond it. The air was heavy and hot and damp, and smelled of mildew. ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... be expected from thee, when the beings on whom thou art said naturally to depend for reason and support, have all an interest in deceiving thee! This is the root of the evil that has shed a corroding mildew on all thy virtues; and blighting in the bud thy opening faculties, has rendered thee the weak thing thou art! It is this separate interest— this insidious state of warfare, that undermines ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]

... certain dangers which beset the inexperienced handler of books. Never lift a book by one of its corners. Do not pile books up too high. Be careful not to rub the dust into instead of off the edges. If mildew or damp is discovered, carefully wipe it away, and let the book stand open for some days in a very dry spot—but not in front of a fire. Be careful that no grit is on the duster, or it will surely mark your books. Do not ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys

... doorway, into a dim, cavernous, ruined house of New Orleans we passed. The mildew and dirt, the dark denuded dankness of that old hostel, rotting down with ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... Merritt's house stood behind a file of dark pointed evergreen trees, which had grown and thickened until the sunlight never reached the house-front, which showed, in consequence, green patches of moss and mildew. One entering had, moreover, to turn out, as it were, for the trees, and take a circuitous route around them to the right to the front-door path, which was quite slippery with a film of ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... head, and cast his eyes full low, And reverence made with courtly grace and art, For all that humble lore to him was know; His sober lips then did he softly part, Whence of pure rhetoric, whole streams outflow, And thus he said, while on the Christian lords Down fell the mildew of ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... good talker—a mighty good reporter too, let me tell you. Across the room from Ike, tilted back in a chair against the wall, sat the major, looking shabby and a bit forlorn. For a month now shabbiness had been seizing on the major, spreading over him like a mildew. It started first with his shoes, which turned brown and then cracked across the toes, it extended to his hat, which sagged in its brim and became a moldy green in its crown, and now it had touched his coat lapels, his waistcoat front, his ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... with her pleasures, and all that we love, We shall leave for the land of bright spirits above; No blasting nor mildew, nor soul-blighting care, No sorrow, no dying, ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... resist the deadly fungus better than those producing yellow cocoons.[545] Analogous facts have been observed with plants: a new and beautiful white onion, imported from France, though planted close to other kinds, was alone attacked by a parasitic fungus.[546] White verbenas are especially liable to mildew.[547] Near Malaga, during an early period of the vine-disease, the green sorts suffered most; "and red and black grapes, even when interwoven with the sick plants, suffered not at all." In France whole groups of varieties were comparatively ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... said they, 'the merry winds go Away from every horn; And those shall clear the mildew dank From ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... to see, he did not know. He was following his natural instinct when he threw aside the chase and capture of Mhtoon Pah and burst into the cellar-room. It was small and close, and smelt of the foul, fruity atmosphere of mildew. The ceiling was low, and crouching in one corner was a small boy, clad only in a loin-cloth, who stared at them ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... this unfettering of the basest human passions giving meanwhile such an impetus to bribery, corruption, and unprincipled advancement for party purposes as to resemble the loathsome luxuriant growth of mildew in the damp ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... expiration of which the pledge, if not redeemed, will become the property of the pawnbroker, to be disposed of as he shall think fit. All damages to the deposit arising from war, the operations of nature, insects, rats, mildew, &c., to be accepted by both sides as the will of Heaven. Deposits will be returned on presentation of the proper ticket without reference to the possession of it by the applicant." Besides this, the name and address of the pawnshop, a number, description of the article pledged, ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... thee, Yet of himself, he is loving to the world, And charitable to the poor; now men, that, As he, love goodness, though in smallest measure, Live without compass of our reach: his cattle And corn I'll kill and mildew; but his life (Until I take him, as I late found thee, Cursing and swearing) I ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts

... earth can gratify. If his "great riches" afford him any enjoyments, yet these are by no means permanent and lasting. The desolating flame may lay them in ruins—the storms on the ocean may sink them in its waves—the famine or blighting mildew may wither them forever, and leave him stript of all his fancied joys. But nothing of this can happen to virtue. That remains forever unharmed amidst the shocks of earth. A good name is, therefore, of inconceivably more value ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods

... what was the serious occupation of my life here, I should answer without hesitation, "Airing my clothes." And it would be absolutely true. No one who has not seen it can imagine the damp and mildew which cover everything if it be shut up for even a few days. Ammonia in the box or drawer keeps the gloves from being spotted like the pard, but nothing seems to avail with the other articles of clothing. Linen feels quite wet if it is left unused in the almirah, or chest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... dishes, also knife cloths, have them marked and kept in their proper places. Some persons have their towels washed out every day, but it is better to save them for the weekly wash. If towels are thrown aside damp, they are liable to mildew. You should keep dusters of several kinds. Old silk handkerchiefs, are best for highly polished furniture, or an old barege veil answers a good purpose. For common purposes, a square of coarse muslin, or check is suitable. You should keep one floor cloth for chambers, and one for the ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... gave him a sound beating. He shrank into a corner and sulked there for a week. "He doesn't care for you or me, the monster," Grigory used to say to Marfa, "and he doesn't care for any one. Are you a human being?" he said, addressing the boy directly. "You're not a human being. You grew from the mildew in the bath-house.(2) That's what you are." Smerdyakov, it appeared afterwards, could never forgive him those words. Grigory taught him to read and write, and when he was twelve years old, began teaching him the Scriptures. But this teaching came ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... kept tolerably dry, as they are more susceptible of injury from damp than from cold; a top shelf near the glass in the greenhouse is a very suitable place for them. If mildew appears, to be dusted with flowers ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane

... the eye of Mars, and a posture like to Mercury newly alighted on some heaven-kissing hill! this man, he said, had been her husband. And then he showed her whom she had got in his stead: how like a blight or a mildew he looked, for so he had blasted his wholesome brother. And the queen was sore ashamed that he should so turn her eyes inward upon her soul, which she now saw so black and deformed. And he asked her how she could continue to live with this man, and be a wife to him, who had murdered her first ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... to-day on the sexual system of plants, and began one on the fungus tribe, and on mildew, blight, &c., intended for "A Natural History of Helpstone," in a series of letters to Hessey, who will publish it when finished. Received a ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry



Words linked to "Mildew" :   fungus, smut, spoilage, dry-rot, downy mildew, mould, change, spoiling



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