Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Nightcap   Listen
Nightcap

noun
1.
An alcoholic drink taken at bedtime; often alcoholic.
2.
A cloth cap worn in bed.
3.
The final game of a double header.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Nightcap" Quotes from Famous Books



... as if her twenty-six years had added another ten to themselves since morning. She patted the soft cheek on the pillow, and tenderly adjusted the gossamer nightcap which, after the fashion of its wearer's youth, kept the white locks snugly in order during ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... their eyes and shivering with fear, and Monsieur Ragoul was dancing about, with his red nightcap ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon

... which he could not answer for—that the house was rebuilt on a scale unusually large to give him a suite of secret apartments, and that he often walks about the woods and crags of Minto at night, with a white nightcap, and long white beard. The circumstance of his having died on the road down to Scotland is the sole foundation of this absurd legend, which shows how willing the vulgar are to gull themselves when they can ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... this, be without a fool? Certes, the good Lord St. Clere and his fair lady sister might think our housekeeping as niggardly as that of their churlish kinsman at Gay Bowers, who sent his father's jester to the hospital, sold the poor sot's bells for hawk-jesses, and made a nightcap of his long-eared bonnet. And, sirrah, let me see thee fool handsomely,—speak squibs and crackers, instead of that dry, barren, musty gibing which thou hast used of late; or, by the bones! the porter shall have thee to his lodge, and cob thee with thine ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... endless perfectness which are dimmed within us by the meaner aspects of human life, or by the sordid difficulties of thought which a sensual and wealth-seeking society present to us, are restored to us by her quiet, order and beauty. When he wrote Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Red Cotton Nightcap Country, and The Inn Album, Nature had ceased to awaken the poetic passion in him, and his poetry suffered from the loss. Its interest lies in the narrow realm of intellectual analysis, not in the large realm of tragic or joyous passion. He became the dissector of corrupt bodies, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... round her; and then, pausing for a moment to gaze with a fierce disdain at the unconscious face of Miss O'Donoghue, which, with snores emerging energetically and regularly from the great hooked nose, presented a weird and witchlike vision in the frame of a nightcap, fearfully and wonderfully befrilled, crept from the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... who is tied neck and heels; or rather resembling the attitude in which we often see fellows in the public streets of London, who are not suffering but deserving punishment by so standing. He had a nightcap belonging to Molly on his head, and his two large eyes, the moment the rug fell, stared directly at Jones; so that when the idea of philosophy was added to the figure now discovered, it would have been very difficult for any spectator to have ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... is a high, draped four-poster, plain and solid, evidently made by a ship-carpenter who had ambitions. The coverlet is light blue, and matches the draperies of windows, dresser and mirror. On the pillow is a nightcap, in which even a homely ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... case should a person be alarmed at what he suspects to be supernatural. A cool investigation will show, in most cases, that the supposed phenomenon may be easily explained. It might prove a serious thing for one to be frightened by a nightcap on a bedpost, for a fright affects unfavorably the nervous system, but a nightcap on a bedpost is in ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth

... should support me. The grin that goes for a laugh among gipsies followed my question of how Kiomi had managed to smuggle me. Eveleen was my informant when the dreaded Kiomi happened to be off duty for a minute. By a hasty transformation, due to a nightcap on the bandages about the head, and an old petticoat over my feet, Captain William's insensible friend was introduced to him as the sore sick great-grandmother of the tribe, mother of Kiomi's mother, aged ninety-one. The captain paid like a man for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... a favorable proposition whereon to rest the issue of the dialogue. So I put an end to it by calling for my nightcap. Methinks, I hear you wish to Heaven I had called a little sooner, and so spared you the ennui of such a sermon. I did not interrupt them sooner, because I was in a mood for hearing sermons. You, too, were the subject; and on such ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... and the eyes looked dully at Marsh. A lock of light brown hair drooped over his forehead from under a cap, which he wore well back on his head. The cap seemed to be a fixture, for it was not removed while Marsh remained, and the detective had the humorous thought that it might also serve as a nightcap. ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne

... enough: he was wrapped in a large dressing-gown of flowered chintz; his head was adorned by a nightcap drawn up at the top and surmounted by a muslin frill. His appearance did not contradict his complaint of illness; he was barely four feet six in height, his limbs were bony, his face sharp, thin, and pale. Thus attired, coughing incessantly, dragging his feet as ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... on the wrong road, old gentleman," said Sam. "I'm not ashamed of the nightgown and nightcap. They're cool and comfortable. It's seeing the guv'nor dressed up, and him and me and Mr Frank and Mr Landon in this procession. Do you know how ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, 'united in a common element of dust.' Books lay on tables, and below tables; here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Literature, and Bluecher Boots. Old Lieschen (Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove-lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... the same house as I did," Burkin went on, "on the same storey, his door facing mine; we often saw each other, and I knew how he lived when he was at home. And at home it was the same story: dressing-gown, nightcap, blinds, bolts, a perfect succession of prohibitions and restrictions of all sorts, and—'Oh, I hope nothing will come of it!' Lenten fare was bad for him, yet he could not eat meat, as people might perhaps say Byelikov did not keep the fasts, and he ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... curtain around the top. She was partly undressed, and was undoing her hair and brushing it out. It was very curly and all fluffed out in a shining white fuzz around her fat, pink face, full of soft wrinkles; but in a moment she was braiding it up again and putting on a tight white nightcap, which she ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... buried remembrances that glide out of their graves of nights, and whisper, "We are dead now, but we WERE once; and we made you happy, and we come now to mock you:—despair, O lover, despair, and die"?—O cruel pangs!—dismal nights!—Now a sly demon creeps under your nightcap, and drops into your ear those soft hope-breathing sweet words, uttered on the well-remembered evening: there, in the drawer of your dressing-table (along with the razors, and Macassar oil), lies the dead flower that Lady Amelia Wilhelmina wore in her bosom on the night ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... nightcap a little over his left ear, "you young gentlemen come out of the north with your dozen blackies or so, lay out some two or three thousand dollars in house and land, and then think you can play the absentee as much as you like, and that you do us a deal of honour when you allow us to collect ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various

... of a friend. The friend was out, and when the wife asked who he was, Duncombe laid his revolver on the table and made answer, "I am Duncombe; and I must have food." Here he lay disguised so completely with nightcap, nightdress, and all, as the visiting grandmother of the family, that loyalists who saw his white horse and came in to search the house, looked squarely at the recumbent figure beneath the bedclothes and did not ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... disappearing Doctor; and Anastasie and Jean-Marie were left face to face with the wet trousers. Desprez had gone to Paris, for the second time in seven years; he had gone to Paris with a pair of wooden shoes, a knitted spencer, a black blouse, a country nightcap, and twenty francs in his pocket. The fall of the house was but a secondary marvel; the whole world might have fallen and scarce left his ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... into a black woodpecker; and ever since that day the wicked old creature has wandered about the world in the shape of a bird, seeking her daily bread from wood to wood and from tree to tree." The red head of the bird is supposed to represent the red nightcap worn ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman

... through these places," said Uncle "the more I feel ashamed that I did not do my share in bringing of relics. Now I could have brought the old nightcap that sister Susan's dead husband's grandfather brought over from England; and I have a gridiron that my great aunt gave me to remember her by. And there's the snuffers and the old wood-yard rake that ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... Joe esteem'd it rude to break a party up, Indeed, it was his usual plan, where'er he dined to sup; And then to take what modern rakes sometimes "a nightcap" call— That is, a friendly parting glass, a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... impatience. A pack of cards dealt for a game of "fools" lay on the table. A bed had been made up on the leather sofa on the other side and Maximov lay, half-reclining, on it. He wore a dressing-gown and a cotton nightcap, and was evidently ill and weak, though he was smiling blissfully. When the homeless old man returned with Grushenka from Mokroe two months before, he had simply stayed on and was still staying with her. He arrived with her in rain and sleet, sat down on the sofa, drenched and scared, and gazed ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... careful not to detach as yet from the place in which he found it, showed that it was ragged, and frayed, and fast caught where it hung. It could not have been blown there by any chance air; it must have been torn from the article to which it belonged, whatever that might be,—head-dress, nightcap, night-dress, or handkerchief. The lace was of a kind to serve any ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths

... two of the nobles, or head men of the natives, came on board to visit him, who were naked like the rest, except that their aprons were much larger, and one of them had a handkerchief on his head, embroidered with silk, while the other wore a nightcap of green satin[22]. Observing their cleanliness, or civility, the general treated these people courteously, and gave them victuals, apparel, and other things, of which they seemed to make but small account; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr

... up, and playing delightful tricks—such as tapping at the salon door, and on being told to come in, making their appearance like two very, very old peasants, hobbling along on sticks—Jeanne with a cap and little knitted shawl of Marcelline's, Hugh with a blouse and cotton nightcap, so that Jeanne's mother quite jumped at first sight of the quaint little figures. Then Jeanne dressed up like a fairy, and pretended to turn Hugh into a guinea-pig, and they got Nibble up into the nursery, and Hugh hid in a cupboard, and tried to make his ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth

... What a contrast, but not an unpleasant one—for Olga was pretty, too, though in a different style. What a sight!—defying all order and bursting all bounds, flushed, tumbled and awry—the round arms tossed up, the rosy face flung back, the bedclothes pushed off, the pillow flung out, the nightcap one way, the hair another—all that was disorderly and lovely by night, all that was unruly and winning by day. Tina—dainty, elegant, perfumed, manicured Tina—bent over untidy little Olga ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... harmless drum. Drums indeed are commonly beaten at weddings, and it is fit they should; but drummers are well entertained and never beaten. Now let Beelzebub e'en take the drum, to make his devilship a nightcap. Brother, said the lame catchpole, never fret thyself; I will make thee a present of a fine, large, old patent, which I have here in my bag, to patch up thy drum, and for Madame St. Ann's sake ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... Callender, on looking from one of her windows one day, observed that the head of her rival's husband, who was at the moment recreating himself in his garden, was comfortably set off with a splendid new striped Kilmarnock nightcap. Now, when Mrs. Callender saw this, and recollected the very shabby, faded article of the same denomination—"mair like a dish-cloot," as she muttered to herself, "than onything else"—which her Thomas wore, she determined on instantly providing ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... suspense, strict discipline prevailed. The last persons to appear were the major and Mrs Bubsby and their two tall daughters. The former, with a blanket thrown over his head, making him look very much like a young polar bear, and the lady in her nightcap, with a bonnet secured by a red woollen shawl fastened under her chin, while the costume of the young ladies showed also that they had hurriedly dressed themselves, and in a way they would not have wished to have appeared in, under ordinary circumstances, one having her ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... Dane's custom to serve a Southern eggnog as a sort of stir-up-cup—nightcap, she calls it—on her evenings, and we found it waiting for us in the library. In the warmth of its open fire, and the cheer of its lamps, even in the dignity and impassiveness of the butler, there was something ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... my wig must come off and a nightcap take the place. In the morning that wig must go on, with never one look in the glass. Soon two persons called, both leaders in social life, one of them a physician, who had suddenly lost every spear of ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... had on a pair of stout canvas trousers, and a pair of sailors' thick shoes. Jack wore a red flannel shirt, a blue jacket, and a red Kilmarnock bonnet or nightcap, besides a pair of worsted socks, and a cotton pocket-handkerchief, with sixteen portraits of Lord Nelson printed on it, and a Union Jack in the middle. Peterkin had on a striped flannel shirt—which he wore outside his trousers, and belted round his waist, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... Nip; and all three, leaving my lord treasurer amazed at their levity, whisked into the painter's apartment. Permitting them to throw the ink over their victim's papers, break his pencils, mix his colours, mislay his nightcap, and go whiz against his face in the shape of a great bat, till the astonished Frenchman began to think the pensive goblins of the place had taken a sprightly fit,—we hasten to a small green spot some little ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... grating on his feelings was even more discordant. He had not pluck enough left to grumble: but he grunted his displeasure. He grunted, however, in vain; for in about a quarter of an hour Alaric was close to him, shoulder to shoulder. He also wore a white jacket, &c., with a nightcap of mud and candle on his head; but somehow he looked as though he had worn them all his life. The fast gallop, and the excitement of the masquerade, which for him had charms the sterner Neverbend could not feel, had dissipated his sickness; and he was ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... nonsense, Uncle John. There are plenty of men whom you trust for more than L2,000 who can take four glasses for their nightcap always." ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... large bed; they did so, and undressed themselves while the advocate and I went on talking at the table, with our backs turned to them. As soon as they had gone to rest, the advocate took the bed on which he found his nightcap, and I the other, which was only about one foot distant from the large bed. I remarked that the lady by whom I was captivated was on the side nearest my couch, and, without much vanity, I could suppose that it was ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... of John O'Connell, caretaker, stands forth, holding a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... no favorites; it is violated alike by the systematic glorification and the systematic depreciation of particular forms. The Apollo Belvedere would make as poor a figure in the foreground of a modern landscape as a fisherman in jack-boots and red nightcap on a pedestal in the Vatican. Claude's or Turner's figures may be absurd, when taken by themselves; but the absurdity consists in taking them by themselves. Turner, it is said, could draw figures well; Claude probably could not; (he is more likely to have tried;) but each must have felt ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... Madame Carthame, blissfully ignorant of the fact that she had neglected to remove her nightcap, stood up in her place, with her wrapper gathered about her in a statuesque fashion, and in a tragic ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... not suspect in my stupid noddle that John Fry would ever tell Jeremy Stickles about the sight at the Wizard's Slough and the man in the white nightcap; because John had sworn on the blade of his knife not to breathe a word to any soul, without my full permission. However, it appears that John related, for a certain consideration, all that he had seen, and doubtless more which had accrued to it. Upon this Master Stickles was much astonished at ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... they might be a great deal better than they are. Oh, Jane, I really can eat nothing served up as it is done here; and that grumbling old man's Kilmarnock nightcap, and his snuff, are enough to disgust one. Even at tea did you notice Peggy stirring the teacup with such vigour, and balancing her saucer in the ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... lose,' said the Doctor; 'follow me, like true men:' and the Doctor ran downstairs in his silk nightcap, for his ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... it sufficiently hard to cause it to rebound to the utmost length of the string, and might have made an idiot of himself for ever by his exertions, but for the timely interference of Mr. Ellis, who put a final stop to this diversion. Then he dressed himself in a short gown and nightcap, and made the pillow into a baby, and played the nurse with it to such perfection, that Charlie felt obliged to applaud by knocking with the knuckles of his best hand upon the head-board of his bedstead. ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... Ragnall, "and a nightcap of feathers. I will put it on for you if you won't be shocked. Or perhaps one of ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... the terms of her invective, had sat up on his haunches and turned his one eye mildly upon the bristling tufts of grey hair which formed a sort of halo around Mrs. Gammit's virginal nightcap. Then Mrs. Gammit, realizing that the time for action was come, had rushed downstairs to the kitchen, seized the first weapon she could lay hands upon—which chanced to be the broom—flung open the kitchen door, and dashed across the yard, screaming ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Macey coming towards me, carrying all her three children together. I noticed Mr. Pordage in the greatest terror, in vain trying to get on his Diplomatic coat; and Mr. Kitten respectfully tying his pocket-handkerchief over Mrs. Pordage's nightcap. I noticed Mrs. Belltott run out screaming, and shrink upon the ground near me, and cover her face in her hands, and lie all of a bundle, shivering. But, what I noticed with the greatest pleasure was, the determined eyes with which ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens

... me with simple kindness, and treated me at once as one of the family. An old army pensioner and Palashka, the one servant, laid the cloth for dinner; while in the square, near the house, the commandant, a tall and hale old man, wearing a dressing-gown and a cotton nightcap, was busy drilling some ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... He was in a coloured nightcap, not a very Imperial, nor, at any time, a becoming costume; he had travelled all night, which, also, is neither calculated to improve a man's beauty, nor to shed a ray of good-humour over his countenance. His face looked swollen, his complexion ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... nightcap drawn over his wig, and a short greatcoat, which half covered his cassock—a dress which, added to something comical enough in his countenance, composed a figure likely to attract the eyes of those who were ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... mine was much increased, when some days after, a storm came upon us, and the captain rushed out of the cabin in his nightcap, and nothing else but his shirt on; and leaping up on the poop, began to jump up and down, and curse and swear, and call the men aloft all manner of hard names, just like a common loafer in ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... her intimacy with this monk gave room for some suspicion that her privacies with him were not all employed about the care of her soul. Afterward, to ridicule her yet more, King Albert sent her a hone to sharpen her needles, and swore not to put on his nightcap until she had yielded to him. But under perilous circumstances Margaret was never at a loss how to act. She acted here with the utmost prudence, trying first to gain the favor of the peers of the state, and solemnly promising to rule according ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... incarnation of respectability and dignity, despite bed-gown and slippers and the nightcap covering his high, bald crown, made no presence of ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... called out: "Lift the latch, and the bolt will fall." The wolf did so, and in he went, and, without saying a word more, he fell upon the poor old creature, and ate her up in no time, for he had not tasted food for the last three days. He next shut the door, and, putting on the grandam's nightcap and nightgown, he got into bed, drew the curtain, and buried his head in the pillow, and kept laughing in his sleeve at the trick he meant to put upon poor Little Red Riding Hood, and wondering how long she would be ...
— Bo-Peep Story Books • Anonymous

... was usual with him, was elegant, if not rich.[77] Oldys describes it, but mentions, that "he had a wrought nightcap under his hat;" this we have otherwise disposed of; he wore a ruff-band, a black wrought velvet night-gown over a hare-coloured satin doublet, and a black wrought waistcoat; black cut taffety breeches, and ash-coloured ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... caused the retirement of the favorite "singing chambermaid," the affair was postponed till February, when Washington's birthday was always celebrated by the patriotic town, where the father of his country once put on his nightcap, or took off his boots, as that ubiquitous hero appears to have done in every ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott

... which soon brought him alongside the others. They stopped in front of Abbott's pension, and he tried to persuade them to come up for a nightcap. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... remembers being struck, the first night he spent at the Speculative, with the singular appearance of the secretary, who sat gravely at the bottom of the table in a huge woollen nightcap; and when the president took the chair, pleaded a bad toothache as his apology for coming into that worshipful assembly in such a "portentous machine." He read that night an essay on ballads, which so much interested the new member that he requested to be introduced to him. Mr. Jeffrey called ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... a morning when she asked for Rebecca. The door was opened into the dim sick-room, and Rebecca stood there with the sunlight behind her, her hands full of sweet peas. Miranda's pale, sharp face, framed in its nightcap, looked haggard on the pillow, and her body was pitifully ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the field of Mars; here is a genuine old beau, with the unmistakable self-consciousness of one who has been a favorite of the sex, but who has slowly decayed in the midst of his cosmetics; here saunter along a couple of actors with the air of being on the stage. These people all have the "nightcap" habit, and drift along towards the bar-room—the last brilliant scene in the drama of the idle day, the necessary portal to the realm of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... come to his inn, at night, with a sort of frost on his five wits, and a starless night of darkness in his spirit. Not for him the mild luminous evening of the temperate walker! He has nothing left of man but a physical need for bedtime and a double nightcap; and even his pipe, if he be a smoker, will be savourless and disenchanted. It is the fate of such an one to take twice as much trouble as is needed to obtain happiness, and miss the happiness in the end; he is the man of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... brown, and red, And nuts come pitter, patter down; When days are short and swiftly sped, And Autumn wears her colored gown, I'm up before old Mr. Sun His nightcap has a chance to doff, And have my day's work well begun When others ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess

... cottage they turned, and Matt sprang from the wagon and used the old-fashioned knocker vigorously. A long silence followed, and then a window upstairs was raised and a head adorned with a nightcap was thrust out. ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer

... the light of the unshaded lamp, and looking very cross and tired. He glanced at us without comment as he went over to the sink. "Nobody offered me anything good to drink," he complained, "so I came in to get some water from the faucet for my nightcap." ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... at once to their mistress, who was then in her petticoat, and had put on her nightcap, ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... ourselves, or most capable of improvement. Thus, my sister, instead of consulting her glass and her toilet for an hour and a half after her private devotion, sits with her nose full of snuff and a man's nightcap on her head, reading plays and romances. Her wit she thinks her distinction, therefore knows nothing of the skill of dress, or making her person agreeable. It would make you laugh to see me often, with my spectacles on, lacing her stays, for she is so very a wit, that she understands ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele

... be expected, she dropped suddenly fast asleep, overturned the candle, and set the curtains in a blaze. Luckily, the footman went into the room at the moment, in time to tear down the curtains and throw them into the chimney, and a pitcher of water on her nightcap extinguished her wick; she is a greasy subject, and would have ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock

... terrific storm of rain, thunder, and lightning, that continued with great violence for several hours: in the midst of this tempestuous weather, he (having a great mind to clear his afternoon's expenses) stripped off all his apparel, except his nightcap, shoes, and breeches, and went to Squire Rhodes's. Nothing could possibly look with a more deplorable appearance than this naked and wretched spectacle, in such dreadful weather: the landlord with pity regarding his destitute appearance, fetched ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... is going to sleep with me," answered the fun-loving youth. "Come on, Wags, get your nightcap and come ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield

... sextant and playing on a small mouth-harmonicon. As to his vices, it was no secret that he kept a fat black bottle in the chimney-closet in his own room, and occasionally he swore strange oaths about his grandmother's nightcap. "He used to blaspheme," his daughter-in-law said; "but I said, 'Not in my presence, if you please!' So now he just says this foolish thing about a nightcap." Mrs. Drayton said that this reform would be one ...
— An Encore • Margaret Deland

... your airy flights; and to those who complain, I suppose nothing less than an illustrated edition, with a large gallows on the last page, with Donatello in the most pensive of attitudes, his ears revealed at last through a white nightcap, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... some insignificant remark to him now and again, but nobody really took any notice of what he had to say. He had survived his strength, his usefulness, his very wisdom. He wore long, green, worsted stockings pulled up above the knee over his trousers, a sort of woollen nightcap on his hairless cranium, and wooden clogs on his feet. Without his hooded cloak he looked like a peasant. Half a dozen hands would be extended to help him on board, but afterward he was left pretty much to his own thoughts. Of course he never did any work, except, perhaps, to cast off some ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... rocks. The dominie chanted the song of Saint Nicolaus, and the goblin, unable to endure either its spiritual potency or the worthy parson's singing, shot upward like a ball and rode off on the gale, carrying with him the nightcap of the parson's wife, which he hung on the weathercock of Esopus steeple, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... safely arrived, went to bed in high dudgeon, and led Polly and her mother a sad life of it for two weary days. Having heard of Toady's gallant behavior, she solemnly ordered him up to receive her blessing. But the sight of Aunt Kipp's rubicund visage, surrounded by the stiff frills of an immense nightcap, caused the irreverent boy to explode with laughter in his handkerchief, and to be hustled away by his mother before Aunt Kipp discovered the true ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

... view a signal of distress was made and a gun fired with a red-hot poker from the galley. Its detonation awoke the sleepers. Door after door was opened, and in the grey light of the morning fisher after fisher was seen to come forth, yawning and stretching himself, nightcap on head. Fisher after fisher, I wrote, and my pen tripped; for it should rather stand wrecker after wrecker. There was no emotion, no animation, it scarce seemed any interest; not a hand was raised; but all callously awaited the harvest of the sea, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... I suppose you couldn't tell me what year it was when old John Cann took the Saucy Codfish over Black Tooth Reef and laid her alongside the Spaniard in the harbour there, and up comes the Don in his nightcap. "Shiver my timbers," he says in Spanish, "but there's only one man in the whole of the Spanish Main," he says, "and that's John Cann," he ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne

... cannot comply, gentlemen. Vattel has nothing on the subject of watering belligerents, or neutrals, and the laws of Congress compel me to carry so many gallons to the man. If you will take it in the way of a nightcap, however, and drink success to our run to America, and your own to the shore, it shall be in champagne, if you happen to like that ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... elfish locks, and darted off in triumph, dragging up from another corner a big box, first unceremoniously dumping out the various articles, such as dirty clothes, a tin pan or two, a skillet, an empty bottle—last of all, a nightcap, which she held aloft. "Gran's," she shouted; "it's been lost a mighty long time. Now I'm goin' to wear it to my five-o'clock tea. It's a picter hat, same's that lady had on to your house once—I seen her." She threw the old nightcap over her hair, ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney

... sturdiness and spirit in that corpulent and complacent old gentleman. Mr. Pickwick was a mild man, a respectable man, a placid man; but he was very decidedly a man. He could denounce his enemies and fight for his nightcap. He was fat; but he had a backbone. In Master Humphrey's Clock the backbone seems somehow to be broken; his good nature seems limp instead of alert. He gushes out of his good heart; instead of taking a good heart for granted as a part of any decent gentleman's ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... raw from the handling of heavy implements of toil. And then you will think of city home-comings after the theatre or the ball; of the quiet half-hour in front of the dying cannel; of the short cigar and the little nightcap, and of the gentle passage bedward, so easy in that warm and slumberous atmosphere that you hardly know how you have passed from weariness to peaceful dreams. And there will come to your spirit a sudden passion of humiliation and revolt that will make you say to yourself: ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... indifferent cook; and I determined to try whether something more palatable could not be provided for our meals; the idea haunted me day and night, and at last I imagined myself a French restaurateur; I tied a cloth before me as an apron, put on a cotton nightcap instead of my fur cap, and was about to make a trial of my skill, when I discovered that I had no lard, no fat of any kind except train oil, which I rejected as not being suitable to the "cuisine Francaise." My messmates who lay dead, were examined one by one, but they had ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... himself, and was dragged out dripping and dead. The kitten lived to a good old age. . . . Princes in that day were not the tormented race as they are now; the crown grew firmly on their heads, and at night they drew a nightcap over it, and slept peacefully, and peacefully slept the people at their feet; and when the people waked in the morning, they said, 'Good morning, father!' and the princes answered, 'Good morning, dear children!' But it was suddenly quite otherwise; for when ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... major, whom I had not seen during a whole week. I knocked softly at the door, and being bid to open it, I found the major in his sister's ante-chamber warming her posset. His dress was certainly whimsical enough, having on a woman's bedgown and a very dirty flannel nightcap, which, being added to a very odd person (for he is a very awkward thin man, near seven feet high), might have formed, in the opinion of most men, a very proper object of laughter. The major started ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... long, my old friend, who was then recovering from a severe fit of sickness, came down in his nightcap, nightgown, and slippers, and embraced me with the most cordial welcome, showed me in, and after giving me a history of his indisposition, assured me that he considered himself peculiarly fortunate in having under his roof the man he most loved on earth, and whose stay with him ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... door and ran out into the street, only pulling up with her hand violently agitating Grodman's door-knocker. In a moment the first floor window was raised—the little house was of the same pattern as her own—and Grodman's full, fleshy face loomed through the fog in sleepy irritation from under a nightcap. Despite its scowl the ex-detective's face dawned upon her like the sun upon an occupant of the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... evidently a satire on the beautiful Lady Hamilton, who is however represented in this print as enormously fat.[10] Gillray has evidently no sympathy or mercy for the frail and famous beauty; for here she is tumbling out of bed in nightcap and nightdress, from which a huge foot protrudes, while she waves her fat arms in despair. A flask of Maraschino is on the dressing-table near the rouge pot; on the floor lie broken antiques; and a work on Studies of Academic Attitudes, with scarcely academic illustrations, lies near ...
— The Eighteenth Century in English Caricature • Selwyn Brinton

... the baron's bed with a cloth-of-gold dressing-gown on a chair beside him. He wakes up, ruts his eyes, looks about, and becomes frightened; he rubs them again, puts a hand to his head, and finds a gold-embroidered nightcap on it; he moistens his fingers and wipes out his eyes, then rubs them again, turns the nightcap around and looks at it, looks at the fine shirt he is wearing, at the dressing-gown and the other fine things in the room, making strange faces. Meanwhile, soft music ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg

... Dom Manuel explained that at this season of general merriment this palisade also was mirth-provoking because (the weather being such as was virtually unprecedented in these parts) a light snow had fallen during the night, so that each head seemed to wear a nightcap. ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... a little old gentleman in a red nightcap and flowered dressing-gown, with slippered feet, and spectacles on nose, entered the hall, followed by another in black, apparently his clerk. Two other persons also came in, and took their seats at the table, while the clerk began to nibble his pen ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston

... was at present only half drawn, and did not, therefore, conceal the mysteries of the den within; the bed was still unmade, and apparently of no very inviting cleanliness; a red handkerchief, that served as a nightcap, hung pendant from the foot of the bed; at a little distance from it, more towards the pillow, were a shawl, a parasol, and an old slipper. On a table, which stood between the two dull, filmy windows, were ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... group with a street-organ, generally played by Le Poittevin, the painter, with a cotton nightcap on his head. Two men carried lanterns. We followed in procession, laughing and chattering like a ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... Hastily taking off her nightcap and throwing a shawl over her nightgown, Victoria descended to receive the official announcement of her succession to the throne of England, and to receive on her hand the kiss of allegiance from these two great lords ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... figure-flingers, Fellows, indeed that only live by stealth, Since they do merely lie about stol'n goods, They 'd make men think the devil were fast and loose, With speaking fustian Latin. Pray, sit down; Put on this nightcap, sir, 'tis charmed; and now I 'll show you, by my strong commanding art, The circumstance that breaks your ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... his scourge. He found his spacious pleasure-house valueless against that particular annoy, but (as always) he was the more whimsical for his affliction. Nothing works your genuine man of humour so nearly as himself. The sight of his own image, puffed and blinking in nightcap, bed-gown, and slippers, when he came upon it in a long mirror, set him chuckling. He paused before the absurd epitome to apostrophise, wagged a finger at it, and got wag for wag. "We might be two drolls in a pantomime!" said he to his double. "Your arm, gossip:" he crooked an elbow. "It ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... the wicked Wolf he ist put on Her nightcap, an' all covered up in bed— Like he wuz ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley

... profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales Bessie sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Reed's lace frills, and crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... he was led before the general, though that officer looked, to his boyish eyes, more like a woman than a stalwart fighting-man. His tall body was enveloped in a great, shaggy fur coat right down to the feet, and a white nightcap covered his head. Nothing but the moustache on the pale face indicated the warlike calling of the man who ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous

... Thoms solicitously, "you're giving me the wheels now. If I had a chariot I'd have gone to bed in it long ago. And without any singing and preaching for a nightcap, either." ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... is that so?" said the landlord, who had come down, and was standing by the hotel door in nightcap and bedgown. "I thought, maybe, you was hurrying to see the last of your brother. Well, there's but one horse left in stable, and that's the grey your master sold me two months back; and he's a screw, as you must know. But here's the stable key. Run and take ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... stone and the universal medicine." In consequence of which raptures he resolved to make use of it in the most necessary as well as the most paltry occasions of life. He had a way of working it into any shape he pleased, so that it served him for a nightcap when he went to bed, and for an umbrella in rainy weather. He would lap a piece of it about a sore toe; or, when he had fits, burn two inches under his nose; or, if anything lay heavy on his stomach, scrape off and ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift

... tender mercies of the principal of Do-the-boys Hall. Observe the extraordinary anatomical proportions, hat and toggery, of Mr. Newman Noggs, as he stretches up to the top of the coach to hand a letter to Nicholas. Regard the nightcap and head-gear of the detestable Mrs. Squeers, as she administers matutinal brimstone and treacle to the starving pupils of Do-the-boys Hall. Mark the astonishment of Squeers and his victim, as the savage goes down under the thundering blows of Nickleby's cane. Look at ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... A certain medical professor was wont to lecture in bed. One night he left town unexpectedly. Lever, by chance, came early to lecture, found the Professor absent, slipped into his bed, put on his nightcap, and took the class himself. On another day he was standing outside the Foundling Hospital with a friend, a small man. Now, a kind of stone cradle for foundlings was built outside the door, and, when a baby was placed therein, a bell rang. Lever lifted up his friend, popped him into the cradle, and ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... Turin, describes how he ascended "the mountain Brovis," and on the top thereof met a Quixotic figure, whom he thus pictures: "He was very tall, meagre, and yellow, with a long hooked nose and twinkling eyes. His head was cased in a woollen nightcap, over which he wore a flapped hat; he had a silk handkerchief about his neck, and his mouth was furnished with a short wooden pipe, from which he discharged wreathing clouds of tobacco-smoke." This scarecrow turned out to be an Italian marquis; and no doubt the singularity of ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... sweet sleep that she could not venture to disturb her. Then they said, 'We are come on business of State to the QUEEN, and even her sleep must give way to that.' It did; and, to prove that she did not keep them waiting, in a few minutes she came into the room in a loose white nightgown and shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair falling upon her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... filled with cushions, the extended limbs swathed in flannel, the wide wrapping-gown and nightcap, showed illness; but the dimmed eye, once so replete with living fire—the blabber lip, whose dilation and compression used to give such character to his animated countenance—the stammering tongue, that once ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... Inflammation of the middle ear with abscess, discharge of matter from the ear externally, and—as the final outcome—deafness, is not uncommon. This complication may be prevented to a considerable extent by spraying the nose and throat frequently and by the patient's use of a nightcap with earlaps, if the room is not sufficiently warm. Inflammation of the eyelids is an occasional complication. The heart is sometimes attacked by the toxins of the disease, and permanent damage to the organ, in the form ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... honour to mistake me for a sheriff's-officer, cousin," says Harry, with great gravity, sitting up in his tall nightcap. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a weight lay on him and David. The gaunt head in the coarse white nightcap turned now to one, now to the other, pursued them phantom-like. Presently he insisted that his nephew must dine, avoiding Hannah's look. David would much rather have gone without; but Reuben, affecting joviality, called the servant, and some ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... morning, it came into their heads to go and knock up Johnson, and see if they could prevail on him to join them in a ramble. They rapped violently at the door of his chambers in the Temple, till at last he appeared in his shirt, with his little black wig on the top of his head, instead of a nightcap, and a poker in his hand, imagining, probably, that some ruffians were coming to attack him. When he discovered who they were, and was told their errand, he smiled, and with great good humour agreed to their proposal: 'What, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... Damon. "Bless my nightcap! If I had known I was going to be brought so far away from ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton

... me to make two on't; but, never fear—the nightcap will only warm my brain, not clog it. So, man or devil, give me notice if you are disturbed, and rely on me in a twinkling." So saying, the cavalier retreated into his separate apartment, and Colonel Everard, taking off the most cumbrous part of his dress, lay down in his ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... room that night, and after she had taken off her lace headdress and put a frilled nightcap over her lonesome little knot of gray hair and said her prayers, she composed herself on her pillow with a patient sigh, and lay watching Marg'et Ann crowd her burnished braids into her close-fitting cap without speaking; but after the ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham



Words linked to "Nightcap" :   night-robe, double feature, gown, game, twin bill, doubleheader, nightie, nightgown, nightdress, drink, cap



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com