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Poacher   /pˈoʊtʃər/   Listen
Poacher

noun
1.
Someone who hunts or fishes illegally on the property of another.
2.
A cooking vessel designed to poach food (such as fish or eggs).
3.
Small slender fish (to 8 inches) with body covered by bony plates; chiefly of deeper northern Pacific waters.  Synonyms: sea poacher, sea poker.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Poacher" Quotes from Famous Books



... myself: 'Let us wait until twelve o'clock. Then this poacher will go to lunch and I shall get my place again. As for me, Monsieur le President, I lunch on that spot every Sunday. We bring our provisions in Delila. But there! At noon the wretch produced a chicken in a newspaper, and while he was eating, he ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... Edmee. "For my part, I preferred him in his poacher's garb. It suited his face and ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... chipmunk had his den in the side of the terrace above my garden, and spent the mornings laying in a store of corn which he stole from a field ten or twelve rods away. In traversing about half this distance, the little poacher was exposed; the first cover on the way from his den was a large maple, where he always brought up and took a survey of the scene. I would see him spinning along toward the maple, then from it by an easy stage to the fence adjoining the corn; then back again with his booty. One ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... supporters," laughed Robert; "a bit of a poacher and a bit of a pub-loafer, but he's ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... lichen-strewn stone wall and penetrated the thick undergrowth beyond. Hence he had returned, with white face and staring eyes, with the information that great wild dogs dwelt in the thickets. Subsequently the village poacher confirmed this information. He was not exactly loquacious on the subject, but merely hinted that the grounds of Longdean Grange were not salubrious for ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... him of several rare frolics, chance love-affairs, meetings in the woods, and so on, and he feared the priest might have told Reine some unfavorable stories about him. "Ah!" he continued, clenching his fists, "if this old poacher in a cassock has done me an ill turn with you, he will not have much ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... love the brutal bird who had teased another out of her life, but I certainly looked for an improvement in his temper now that he had no one to vex his sight. I looked in vain. He was more savage, more of a tramp and poacher, more of a scold, than ever. He even went so far as to huff at the sparrows outside the window. He never entered into the feelings of his neighbors in any way; when every other bird in the room was excited, alarmed, or disturbed, he alone remained perfectly unconcerned, exactly as if ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... story if his attention is called to the skilful way in which Kingsley handles his plot. It is high art to throw into the early part of the story the conversation between the keeper and Grimes. It shows that Grimes is a poacher and known to be one. The keeper is inclined to wink at the offense, but still he feels that a warning is necessary. Nothing more is said about poaching till much later, where Tom, the Water Baby, sees Grimes ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... letter says 'all the prisoners.' You don't seriously tell me that anyone wants a photograph to identify Poacher Tresize, whom I've committed a score of times if I've committed him once? And perhaps you'll explain to me this further demand for a 'Composite Photograph' of all the prisoners, male and female. A 'Composite ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... who had left her home—then the excitement of putting that and that together—the search, and the discovery of the body. The next paragraph turns suspense into exulting wrath: the perpetrator has been found with his bloody shirt on—a scowling murderous villain as ever was seen—an eminent poacher, and fit for anything. But the next paragraph turns the tables. The ruffian had his own secrets of what he had been about that night, and at last makes a clean breast. It would have been a bad business ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... on these occasions must have been a weird sight; though one did not mark that at the time. The poacher crept from the darkness. into the glaring smithy light; for in country parts the anvil might sometimes be heard clanging at all hours of the night. As a rule, every face was blackened; and it was this, I suppose, rather than ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... by which the proud heir of the house of Loring would share the fate of the meanest village poacher, the hot blood of Nigel rushed to his face, and his eye glanced round him with a gleam which said more plainly than words that there could be no tame acceptance of such a doom. Twice he tried to speak, and twice his ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... breaking even an unreasonable law tends to make men altogether lawless. However absurd a tariff may be, a smuggler is but too likely to be a knave and a ruffian. How ever oppressive a game law may be, the transition is but too easy from a poacher to a murderer. And so, though little indeed can be said in favour of the statutes which imposed restraints on literature, there was much risk that a man who was constantly violating those statutes would not be ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... many a match of cocks together, taken many a roe in company, hauled in countless quantities of shad and salmon, slain wild geese and wild swans, pigeons and plovers, and destroyed myriads of canvas-backed ducks. It was said by the envious that Broadbent was the midnight poacher on whom Mr. Washington set his dogs, and whom he caned by the river-side at Mount Vernon. The fellow got away from his captor's grip, and scrambled to his boat in the dark; but Broadbent was laid up for two Sundays afterwards, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... open for a few steps. He crossed the strip of turf with giant strides and got into cover again, but not quick enough to prevent me recognizing him. It was—great heavens!—the bishop! In a soft hat pulled over his forehead, with a long cloak and a big stick, he looked like a poacher. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... at all," said Horace, trying with a very bad grace to laugh off his evident annoyance; "at all events, I don't consider Hurst a very formidable poacher; but what I want to know is, how he didn't come home with Miller and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various

... praise of the dairy, or the plough; or in celebration of the harvest-home, or the churn-supper; or descriptive of the pleasures of the milk-maid, or the courtship in the farm-house; or those that give us glimpses of the ways of life of the waggoner, the poacher, the horse-dealer, and the boon companion of the road-side hostelrie, are no less curious for their idiomatic and primitive forms of expression, than for their pictures of rustic modes and manners. Of special interest, too, are the songs which relate to festival and customs; such as ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... A poacher, surprised at his work and pursued in his escape by a vengefully thrown axe, remarked, as he vaulted a fence: "I have no fault to find with your remarks, but I object ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey

... great migrations of population, of great waves of friendship and good feeling which all the trade rivalries and hostile tariffs of a half century have failed to stem. The pot shot of some fishery patrol across the nets of a poacher on the wrong side of the international line fails to excite anybody. Even if some flag lunatic full of whisky climbs a flagstaff and tears down the other country's national emblem—the boundary does ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... London, and the pay, according to the prevalent system, was provided by fees, the new officials became known as 'trading justices,' and their salaries, as Fielding tells us, were some of the 'dirtiest money upon earth.' The justices might perhaps be hard upon a poacher (as, indeed, the game laws became one of the great scandals of the system), or liable to be misled by a shrewd attorney; but they were on the whole regarded as the natural and creditable representatives of legal authority in ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... mind, and none of 'em seemed to 'ave much liking for it. Peter Gubbins told 'im not to shoot at 'im because he 'ad a 'ole in his pocket, and Bill Chambers, when it pointed at 'im, up and told 'im to let somebody else 'ave a turn. The only one that didn't flinch was Bob Pretty, the biggest poacher and the greatest rascal in Claybury. He'd been making fun o' the tricks all along, saying out loud that he'd seen 'em ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... or some defect in their moral character, how many are there who would have been very differently placed to-day had their surroundings been otherwise? Charles Kingsley puts this very abruptly where he makes the Poacher's widow say, when addressing the Bad Squire, who ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... time had never haunted it, and his own gamin propensities had never extended so far. It was a tumble-down quarter; the houses, deplorable hovels, run up hastily for the workmen at the potteries, and every third or fourth a beershop; and in the midst dwelt Mr. Sims, a maimed poacher, who kept a large live-stock with which to trade on the sporting tastes of the youth ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... some money to keep 'e with." In some of the Wood Norton woods there are large numbers of fir trees, planted, it was said, as roosting places for the pheasants, so that they might not be visible to the night poacher; but it was found that the birds preferred the leafless trees, where they offer an easy pot shot in the moonlight or in the grey ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... old songs used to be regularly sung. "The Poacher" was always a great favourite and the chorus, "For its my delight on a starry night" used to be given with great force and feeling. I wish I could remember the old songs which are ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack

... rearing possessed so few advantages as did that of Shakespeare, having written the plays attributed to him. This is really the strong point in the whole discussion. All other arguments are subordinate. It is admitted that it does seem impossible for the poacher and wild country lad to become the poet pre-eminent in English literature. But this question is not to be decided by a priori reasoning. The genius displayed in the dramatic works under consideration is little less than miraculous. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... poetry. Yeast deals with the country—which Kingsley knew better and loved more than he did the town. It deals with real, permanent, deep social evils, and it paints no fancy portrait of the labourer, the squire, the poacher, or the village parson. Kingsley there speaks of what he knew, and he describes that which he felt with the soul of a poet. The hunting scenes in Yeast, the river vignettes, the village revel, are exquisite pieces of painting. And the difficulties overcome in the book are extreme. To fuse ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... strains of a penny whistle and a child's drum taken from a toyshop in a wrecked French town. I remember in India, in a cholera camp, where the men were suffering very badly, the band of the Tenth Lincolns started a regimental sing-song and went on with that queer, defiant tune, "The Lincolnshire Poacher." It was their regimental march that the men had heard a thousand times. There was nothing in it—nothing except all England, all the East Coast, all the fun and daring and horse play of young men bucketing about big pastures in the moonlight. But as it was given, very softly at that ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... been employed to defend poachers: have you been careful to impress upon them the enormity of their practices?" It appeared in a wrangling conversation that the magistrates saw little moral difference between poaching and being a poacher's professional defender without lecturing him on his wickedness: but they admitted with reluctance, that there was a legal distinction; and the brain of N^3 could no further go. This is nearly fifty years ago; and Westernism was not quite extinct. If the present lords of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... four men are now on their way to penal colonies. Six families are thus deprived of husband and father, that this wretched system of game-preserving may be continued in a country densely peopled as this is. The Marquis of Normanby's gamekeeper has been murdered also, and the poacher who shot him only escaped death by the intervention of the Home Secretary. At Godalming, in Surrey, a gamekeeper has been murdered; and at Buckhill, in Buckinghamshire, a person has recently been killed in a poaching affray. This insane system is the cause of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... house was vacated. He afterwards told Lord Bute that he had brought, without the knowledge of any one in the house, two seismic instruments, but that they recorded nothing, and that during the night he heard a sound as of a gun being fired outside the house. This he attributed to some poacher unknown, an explanation which seems hardly probable, as at this time of year there is nothing to shoot except rabbits. One never hears of a poacher shooting rabbits, and in any case, he would hardly do ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various

... had forgotten it. You see, the neighbourhood is rich with game; it might have been a poacher." ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... silently, a tyrant to the other servants sent down from the Court. Every day also the headgroom and the huntsman came, and in the village Gaston's humble friends discussed the mystery, stoutly defending him when some one said it was "more nor gabble, that theer saying o' the poacher at the meetin.'" ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... "was down that way, wondering could he hear word of Crone's being seen with anybody last night. I saw Crone last night. I went to his shop, buying some bits of old stuff. He was all right then—I saw nothing. Chisholm—he says Crone was a poacher. That would account, likely, for his ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher

... life might exist for the wives. Even today the wives might be resting their feet under the bridge tables, secure in the consciousness that no bobbed haired young poacher was daring to dance with their husbands, if they had just let prohibitions enough alone—if they had only not been swept away by the high sport of gossiping about our Wild Young People, which struck the country in the summer of 1920. This ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... to himself that, if he ever discovered his father, he should find him all that was good; but the colonel had, for many years, not only given up all hope of ever finding his son, but almost every desire to do so. He had thought that, if still alive, he must be a gipsy vagabond—a poacher, a liar, a thief—like those among whom he would have been brought up. From such a discovery, no happiness could be looked for; only annoyance, humiliation, and trouble. To find his son, then, all that he could wish for—a gentleman, a most promising young officer, the ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... One Eye Mount, York. Mundella Bulli Bullet Mundella Secondary. Oakfield Ruggiola Sabaka 'Gun Dog' (Hound) Oakfield School, Rugby. Oldham Vaida Christian name Hulme Grammar School, Oldham. Perse Vaska Lady's name Perse Grammar. Poacher Malchick Black Old Man Grammar School, Lincoln. Chorney Stareek Price Llewelyn Hohol Little Russian Intermediate, Llan-dudno Wells. Radlyn Czigane Gipsy Radlyn, Harrogate. Richmond Osman Christian name Richmond, Yorks. Regent Marakas seri Grey Regent Street Polytechnic Steyne Petichka Little Bird ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... beast that burrows, not for any bird that flies, Would I lose his large sound council, miss his keen amending eyes. He is bailiff, woodman, wheelwright, field-surveyor, engineer, And if flagrantly a poacher—'tain't for me to interfere. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... Hubert; but he had laughed,—for, observe, HE always jeered at the priests too; hence this story!—and had declared that the flaming cross seen between the horns of the sacred stag was only the torch of a poacher, and he would shoot it! Good! the body of the comte, dead, but without a wound, was found in the wood the next day, with his discharged arquebus in his hand. The Archbishop of Rouen refused his body the rites of the Church until a number of masses ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... hunter, poacher and smuggler, living in the village hard by Grenoble, where Dr. Benassis located, during the Restoration. When the doctor arrived in the country, Butifer drew a bead on him, in a corner of the forest. Later, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... my notice-boards. Your duty? Curse your impudence, sir. Your duty was to keep off my grounds. Talk of duty to me! Why—why—why, ye misbegotten poacher, ye'll be teaching me my A B C next! Roarin' like a bull in the bushes down there! Boys? Boys? Boys? Keep your boys at home, then! I'm not responsible for your boys! But I don't believe it—I don't believe a word of it. Ye've a furtive look in your eye—a furtive, sneakin', poachin' look in ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... said Martin. "And to your town-girls, who no longer see romance in a Chimneysweep, your Poacher's a Pirate and your Shepherd a Poet. Could you not find it in your heart, Mistress Jessica, to put up ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... a poacher. Trundleben deserves to get the sack for this. A poacher from the wilds of Warwickshire. I heard all about him. He got ...
— Plays of Near & Far • Lord Dunsany

... a lot to say, however. They talked for ten minutes, but the poacher couldn't move the policeman, though he appealed to his friendship and so on. Then Joseph saw a look that he never had seen afore in the little man's eyes and was startled, but not afeared. For a minute Teddy glared ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... determined to dare the jump, calculating, as he afterwards confessed, that as his limbs were strong and well knit, that he should suffer no damage, but that Milnes, being slight, would break his leg. Milnes, nothing daunted, kept his hold, and went down with the poacher, whose calculations were reversed, for he broke his legs, and Milnes escaped, comparatively ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)

... been slipping down to the stream. Now, I had the angler's hatred of otters, which abounded in these waters. Many a time had I seen a prime fish lying dead on the banks with a single bite taken out of the shoulder, and I looked upon the otter as the common poacher of the neighbourhood. I went to the help of Selta, for the dog was crouched down ready to spring upon the otter when it should run out from behind the large stone ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... without foundation, to be connected with this Abbey. "Hark to Rover," the name of the house where the key is kept, was, a century ago, a retired inn or pot-house, and the haunt of many a desperate highwayman and poacher. The anecdote is so well known, that it is scarcely necessary to relate it. It, however, is ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... admit the tired labourer to his home; but that sounded very far away. A stealthy, creeping, cranching sound among the crisp fallen leaves of the forest, beyond the garden, seemed almost close at hand. Margaret knew it was some poacher. Sitting up in her bed-room this past autumn, with the light of her candle extinguished, and purely revelling in the solemn beauty of the heavens and the earth, she had many a time seen the light noiseless leap of the ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... see the man, the village poacher, slouching along under a hedge with the ever-faithful ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper

... oyster beds were soon destroyed, and when in course of a few years I was appointed inspector of fisheries at Port Albert I could never find a single dozen oysters to inspect, although I was informed that a certain reverend poacher near the Caledonian Canal could obtain a bucket full of ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... to stop at that moment, and he felt himself turning white in the darkness. The men could hardly shoot into the trees without hitting him, though he had slipped down as far as he could into the hollow trunk. He would be horribly wounded, if not killed. It was a hard fate, to be shot as a poacher might shoot a pheasant roosting on a bough. An unsportsmanlike sort of death, Uncle Joseph would say. He held his breath. Should he await it, or give himself back to the police by jumping ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... importation (which was absurd). The appearance—old Macklin declared—of a single green-plumed or white-ringed bird within a mile of Cleeve Court was enough to give him a fit: certainly it would irritate him more than any poacher ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... accompanies his English friend to Petty Sessions in a country town, and is horrified by the degraded plight of an old peasant who is tried for poaching. The English friend (the imaginary Arnold) says that for his own part he is not so much concerned about the poacher as about his children. They are being allowed to grow up anyhow. Really he thinks the time has come when compulsion must be applied to the education of children of this class. "The gap between them and our educated and intelligent ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... suffering and need of help to go up to the hall for succor; and she could not but fancy that for some frolic, perhaps some jest, or some wild whim, he had been trespassing upon the manor in pursuit of game. That he was an ordinary poacher she could not suppose; his dress, his ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... here?" was the question sounded in his ear; and, starting, he found himself in the grasp, as his blood tingled to know, of a gentleman in a shooting-dress, who looked at him with a wrathful brow. "Are you a poacher, or what?" ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... farmer came up and greeted us, and said he'd been having a stroll through the heather before he went to bed. I gied him a cigar—the last I had, too, but I was too relieved to care for that. We walked along wi' him, and bade him gude nicht at the end of the road that led to his steading. But the poacher was not grateful, for he sent the dogs into one of the farmer's corn fields as soon as he was oot of ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder

... his knife from his pocket, while looking about him with the poacher's unquiet glance, when he uttered a ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... sometimes when I could,—though that warn't as often as you may think, till you put the question whether you would ha' been over-ready to give me work yourselves,—a bit of a poacher, a bit of a laborer, a bit of a wagoner, a bit of a haymaker, a bit of a hawker, a bit of most things that don't pay and lead to trouble, I got to be a man. A deserting soldier in a Traveller's Rest, what lay hid up to the chin ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... of the long passage, and having found the clothes of the soldier which he had hidden there, he put them on. Then he went prowling about the fields, creeping along, keeping to the slopes so as to avoid observation, listening to the least sounds, restless as a poacher. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... manners, broad dialect of canny Yorkshire, with a certain cunning cast of the eye,—contracted no doubt by peering through the hedge, to see if the gamekeeper was coming,—all contributed to exhibit him before us, as the very beau ideal of a poacher. ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown

... him. The sleeplessness, the excitement, the misery, the wild running of the past night had left him strengthless and racked with pain, but he knew that he must press onward or be caught, sooner or later, like netted game in the poacher's silken mesh. Where to go, what to do, he knew no more than if he were a child; everything had always been ready to his hand; the only thought required of him had been how to amuse himself and avoid being bored; now thrown alone on a mighty calamity, and brought ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... through the back yard, slipped into the woods, found the dead man's clothes and put them on. Then he began to crawl through the fields, following along the hedges in order to keep out of sight, listening to the slightest noises, as wary as a poacher. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... sympathised at a very early age with the bold and the energetic; his favourites among the peasantry were ever those who excelled in athletic sports; and, though he never expressed the opinion, he did not look upon the poacher with the evil eye of his class. But a coarse and violent woman jarred even his young nerves; and this woman was his mother, his only parent, almost his only relation; for he had no near relative except a cousin ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... same, he knew perfectly well what he was about, and how to catch the large, fat, dark-coloured, speckled beauties that haunted the stream— the only way, in fact, unless he had descended to the poacher-like practice of "tickling," ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn

... thing—a cruiser. The hunters, never more than roughly aware of the position of the ship, nevertheless knew that we were close to the boundaries of the forbidden sea, while Wolf Larsen's record as a poacher was notorious. All eyes ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... pretty to-do, indeed! The Frenchman must have laughed till he shook with glee! It was not the Hudson's Bay Company ship at all, but a poacher, a pirate, an interloper, forbidden by the laws of the English Company's monopoly; and who was the poacher but Ben Gillam, of Boston, son of Captain Gillam of the Hudson's Bay Company, with whom, no doubt, he was in ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... it, as I knew, to turn my father's suspicion, having himself taught me the poacher's trick. But my uncle Gervase, whose mind moved as slowly as it was easily ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... that he was one of the villagers: a small farmer originally, who had drunk himself down to a day-labourer and reputed poacher. ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... purchase them, and the drunkard has the pleasure of wine, without the cost: the drone lives awhile without work, and the shopkeeper, in the flow of money, raises his price: the mechanick, that trembled at the presence of sir Joseph, now bids him come again for an answer: and the poacher, whose gun has been seized, now finds an opportunity to reclaim it. Even the honest man is not displeased to see himself important, and willingly resumes, in two years, that power which he had resigned for seven. Few love their friends so well ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... mysterious note to meet you here at three, you turn up racing and running like an escaped lunatic, and with a disgusting growth of hair all over your face, so that I didn't know you till you spoke, and then there's Walter dodging about in the wood here like a poacher hiding from the keepers. Are you both quite ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon

... a popular hero of the Middle Ages. He was a great poacher of deer, brave, chivalrous, generous, full of fun, and absolutely without respect for law and order. He robbed the rich to give to the poor, and waged ceaseless war against the wealthy prelates of the church. Indeed, of his endless ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... which he took chambers at 120 Piccadilly, and then again moved to Spanish Place, Manchester Square. Apparently at this time he made an unsuccessful attempt to return to active service. He was meanwhile working hard at Poor Jack, Masterman Ready, The Poacher, Percival Keene, etc., and living hard in the merry circle of a literary Bohemia, with Clarkson Stanfield, Rogers, Dickens, and Forster; to whom were sometimes added Lady Blessington, Ainsworth, Cruickshank, and Lytton. The ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... touch noses with the tinker's mongrel, the brief reward and pleasure of their artificial lives? Doubtless, when man shares with his dog the toils of a profession and the pleasures of an art, as with the shepherd or the poacher, the affection warms and strengthens till it fills the soul. But doubtless, also, the masters are, in many cases, the object of a merely interested cultus, sitting aloft like Louis Quatorze giving and receiving flattery ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... let me know when you want a day's shooting, and you shall have it." Under this system the yeomen became keen sportsmen; they and all their labourers took a keen interest in preserving, and the whole district would have risen on a poacher. The keeper's place became a sinecure, and the squire had as much game as he wanted without expense, and was, moreover, the most popular man in the county. Even after the new man came, and all was changed, the mere revocation of their sporting liberties, and the increase of game, unpopular ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... by the time of their second ascent from the sea; and no further change takes place in their character or attributes, except that such as survive the snares of the fishermen, the wily chambers of the cruives, the angler's gaudy hook, or the poacher's spear, continue to increase in size from year to year. Such, however, is now the perfection of our fisheries, and the facilities for conveying this princely species even from our northern rivers, and the "distant islands of the sea," to the luxurious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... year. We won't have so much of it now. Great Britain, Japan, Russia, and the United States are united in the desire to prevent pelagic sealing. Good thing, too. A treaty has been signed, forbidding it for fifteen years. So you see, a seal poacher on the rookeries finds ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... Captain," said Billington putting his hand to his face with an unabashed laugh. "It was a poacher"— ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... ignorant of the ways of our sex, and I for one heartily wish you might always remain so! But we men are proverbially selfish-and we like to consider cleverness, or 'genius' if you will, as our own exclusive property. We hate the feminine poacher on our particular preserves! We consider that women were made to charm and to amuse us—not to equal us. Do you see? When a woman is clever—perhaps cleverer than we are—she ceases to be amusing—and we must be amused! We cannot have our fun spoiled by the blue-stocking element,—though ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... convivial with those kindred and acquaintances, who would allow his superiority in rank—contentious and quarrelsome with all that crossed his pretensions—kind to the poor, except when they plundered his game—a Royalist in his political opinions, and one who detested alike a Roundhead, a poacher, and a Presbyterian. In religion Sir Geoffrey was a high-churchman, of so exalted a strain that many thought he still nourished in private the Roman Catholic tenets, which his family had only renounced in his ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... a resident poacher brought into Grant, Colorado, a lot of mountain sheep meat for sale; and he actually sold it to residents of that town! The price was six cents per pound. A lot of it was purchased by the railway station-agent. I have no doubt that the same man who did that job, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... mentions that he has seen two old stoats with five half-grown young ones hunting together. {69} Richard Jefferies, in his book, “Round about a Great Estate,” mentions having seen a pack of five stoats hunting in company, and says that a poacher told him that he had seen as many as fourteen so engaged. In the above case, which came under my own observation, the weasels were all apparently full grown and ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... authorized her to wed at her earlier pleasure with the Lothario whom he—the cast-off husband—had not even begun to suspect of treachery. Or, again the lord and master whose preference has wandered from his lawful wife to some designing female poacher on her rightful domain, may openly give that wife the fullest justification in law for a New York divorce, and, after the petition has been granted, go with his paramour to any State outside the jurisdiction of the State of New York, ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... this truthful poem off hand, so to speak, in "broken" French, the cosmopolitan, polyglot audience "caught on" and "shipped" the Stratford "poacher" a ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... good deal more pluck than you, though. Up and told her father she would marry me if he liked it or lumped it. He said he'd cut her. And he did. We never seen him since. But Naomi and I don't care. That's her name; so you can see she's a Bible-poacher's daughter. Naomi and I've been happier than any people on earth. [Sternly.] She's taught me to stand when a lady was standing. That's why I wouldn't obey you. She's teaching me how to speak, too, and if I do say "ain't" ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various

... spring-guns and such articles, collecting them from all his neighbors. He knew the histories of all these—which gin had broken a man's leg, which gun had killed a man. That one, I remember his saying, had been set by a game-keeper in the track of a notorious poacher; but the keeper, forgetting what he had done, went that way himself, received the charge in the lower part of his body, and died of the wound. I don't like them here, but I've never yet given directions for them to be taken away." She added, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... make friends with any living being under the canopy of heaven—Zack the gregarious, who in his days of roaming the country, before he was fettered to an office stool, had "cottoned" to every species of rustic vagabond, from a traveling tinker to a resident poacher—at once declared that he would sleep in the offered bed that very night, by way of showing himself worthy of his host's assistance and regard, if worthy of nothing else. Greatly relieved by this plain declaration, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... you bring me into the matter? I never see Mrs. Casaubon, and am not likely to see her, since she is at Freshitt. I never go there. It is Tory ground, where I and the 'Pioneer' are no more welcome than a poacher and his gun." ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... acquainted with Alexander Davidson, the notorious poacher and smuggler. He was a very powerful man, and his whole body was covered with hair like that of an ox. He was a favourite with many of the gentlemen, and was often sent for by them to show his feats of strength and agility. He could shoot in a direct line from ...
— Cattle and Cattle-breeders • William M'Combie

... traditional account of Hankford's death (anno 1422), which represents the judge, in doubt of his safety, and mistrusting the sequel of the matter, to have committed suicide by requiring his park-keeper to shoot at him when under the semblance of a poacher: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... never stopped of his own free-will, though he was stopped: once when he walked up to a man kneeling—and he was a poacher—and did not see him till, if I may so put it, the man coughed, when he ran like winkle into the hedge, and promptly became a ball for ten minutes; and once when he came upon a low, long, sinister, big, and grunting shadow, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... poor, wee thing was little hurt; I straikit it a wee for sport, Ne'er thinkin they wad fash me for't; But, Deil-ma-care! Somebody tells the poacher-court ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... corral. One had been successfully removed, and the other trussed-up carcass had been hidden until a good opportunity offered for it to follow suit. I do not wish to leave the impression on the minds of my readers that every man on this part of the coast is a poacher. Far from it. But the majority of the best men were against the reindeer experiment from the moment that the first trouble arose. A new obligation of social life was introduced. This implied restraint in such trifling things as their having to fence their tiny gardens, protect small ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... employed by poachers are taught to keep out of sight and avoid keepers and such-like folk. They know as well as the poacher himself the nature of their trade, and that the utmost secrecy must be observed. To see them trotting demurely down the road you would never think them capable of doing anything wrong. A wave of the hand and they are into the covert in a second, ready to pounce like a cat on ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... brother sportsman arrested for killing anything that can fly, run, or swim. So I rose from my sketching stool and looked him over: his eyes—not a bit of harm in 'em; his loose necktie thrown over one shoulder; trim waist, and so on down to the leather leggings buttoned to his knees. If he was a poacher and subject to the law, he certainly was the most picturesque specimen I had met in many a day. I had, of course, never laid eyes on him before, having been but a few days in the village, but that made the situation all the ...
— Fiddles - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... a dark, fierce-looking fellow of about five and twenty, with a spare, wiry frame, brilliant black eyes, and very white teeth—which were long and pointed like the fangs of a young wolf. He looked as if he might be a brigand, poacher, smuggler, thief, or assassin—all of which he had been indeed by turns. He was dressed like a Spanish peasant, and in the red woollen girdle wound several times around his waist was stuck a formidable knife, called in Spain a navaja. The desperadoes who make use of these terrible ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... seeing that he had undertaken this hard task with a single eye to the nourishment of his soul—that he might have a greater abundance of texts and hymns wherewith to banish evil memories and the temptations of old habit—or, in brief language, the devil. For the brickmaker had been a notorious poacher, and was suspected, though there was no good evidence against him, of being the man who had shot a neighbouring gamekeeper in the leg. However that might be, it is certain that shortly after the accident referred to, which was coincident with the arrival of an awakening Methodist preacher ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... park, the road runs across a rather desolate strip of country with a lot of low undergrowth on one side. We have had a little trouble with poachers, as there is a sort of gipsy camp on some common land a short distance away. My head-keeper, to whom the very idea of a poacher is intolerable, was patrolling this ground himself that afternoon, and caught sight of one of these gipsy fellows setting a trap. He chased him, and more, I am sure, to frighten him than anything else, when he saw that the fellow was getting away he ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... some friend of Gawdy's—not a relation, because he had none, poor devil! he was the last of his line: kind of spes ultima gentis—must have planned to get hold of Francis's boy and put an end to his line, too. I don't know—it's rather an out-of-the-way thing for an Essex poacher to think of—but, you know, I should say now it looks more as if old Gawdy had managed the job himself. Booh! I hate to think of it! ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James

... and stale; Two thirsty soakers watch'd a vessel's side, When he the tap, with dext'rous hand, applied; Nor from their seats departed, till they found That butt was out and heard the mournful sound." He praised a poacher, precious child of fun! Who shot the keeper with his own spring gun; Nor less the smuggler who th' exciseman tied, And left him hanging at the birch-wood side, There to expire;—but one who saw him hang Cut the good cord—a traitor of the gang. His own exploits with ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe

... accompanied by his constant shadow, Martyn, in search of the professional ratcatcher of the neighbourhood, in spite of Chapman's warning—that Tom Petty was the biggest rascal in the neighbourhood, and a regular out and out poacher; and as to the noises—he couldn't 'tackle the like of they.' After revelling in the beauty of the beechwoods as long as was good for me or for Clarence, I was left in the garden to sketch the ruin, while my two companions started on one of their ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... offers to give up the farm, the other shall have it; but I will not begin at this time of day to distress my tenants, because they are unfortunate, and cannot make regular payments: I wonder that Barns should think me capable of such oppression — As for Higgins, the fellow is a notorious poacher, to be sure; and an impudent rascal to set his snares in my own paddock; but, I suppose, he thought he had some right (especially in my absence) to partake of what nature seems to have intended for common use — you may threaten him in my name, as much ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... she cried, in rather a louder and quicker way than that in which she had been speaking. "Remember, Job Gregson is a notorious poacher and evildoer, and you really are not responsible for what goes ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... you, sir? Why, my chap, you looks as if ye didn't much mind what come t'yer nose, I reckon. You looks an old poacher, you do. Tall ye what 'tis'!" He changed his banter to business, "That bird's mine! Now you jest hand him over, and sheer off, you dam young scoundrels! I know ye!" And he became exceedingly opprobrious, and uttered contempt of the name ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the "Yeth Hounds" were seen, not so long ago, in a parish in Yorkshire by an old poacher called Barnes. Barnes was walking in the fields one night, when he suddenly heard the baying of the hounds, and the hoarse shouts of the huntsman. The next moment the whole pack hove in view and tore past him so close ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... stand by the ditch with their hands in their pockets sucking a stale pipe. They would rather lounge there in the bitterest north-east wind that ever blew than do a single hour's honest work. Blackguard is written in their faces. The poacher needs some courage, at least; he knows a penalty awaits detection. These fellows have no idea of sport, no courage, and no skill, for their tricks are simplicity itself, nor have they the pretence of utility, for they do not catch birds for the good of the farmers or the market gardeners, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... their guide, one of those American gypsies, half poacher, half farmer. He kept a wife and family in a shack at the foot of the lake, and Isabelle, with a woman's need for the natural order of life, sought out and made friends with the wild little brood. The woman had been a mill-hand, ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... know a gentleman in the neighbourhood called William Busfeild Ferrand?" "Yes, sir," replied I. "He lives at St. Ives; I know him very well." "Have you (queried the Colonel with a merry twinkling in his eye) ever had any of his hares and rabbits?" "No," replied I, "I'm not a poacher." "Well," remarked the Colonel, "I think you will do well; perhaps it's the best thing you ever did. But of these Sheffielders I have no high opinion; they're a bad sample of soldiers indeed, and if I had my way I would petition Government to have no Sheffielders at all in the Army." Then we retired ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... banqueted and lauded; but they would hang him, now, if they could get him. In England the natural enemy of the rabbit is detested and persecuted; in the Bluff region the natural enemy of the rabbit is honored, and his person is sacred. The rabbit's natural enemy in England is the poacher, in Bluff its natural enemy is the stoat, the weasel, the ferret, the cat, and the mongoose. In England any person below the Heir who is caught with a rabbit in his possession must satisfactorily explain ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... reported in the next morning's Colonist by "Leigh Harnett" as looking very sweet, etc., but "as not speaking up," which, of course, was a serious defect. This criticism was a damper on my theatrical aspirations in female parts, for I returned to the commonplace parts of a poacher, a brigand and a footman. The performances were generally given for some charity, such as the Orphans of St. Ann, the fire department, and so forth, and were "under" the distinguished patronage ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... beans, was put to heat in a pan of water on the gas stove. The coffee-pot was "rastled" under the tap to remove the early morning aroma which clung to the grounds always left to await my attention the following morning. The egg poacher, the toaster, the slab of bacon, and a mince pie, bought an hour before to produce sleep, were brought out and displayed to make a scene like the old days when joy was unconfined, when women were mere theories ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... of being snowed up on the way home from a visit to a forester who had been wounded by a poacher. The danger is over now, but my eyes continue to suffer. The forest folk have been very good to me, and much concerned about my progress. And now I am able to go out again. To-day I was watching a spider in the thicket, when I saw Aga rushing towards me. "Ah, it's you!" she ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... for a poacher!" he cried, as Copley Banks passed over the bulwarks. "I will drub you within an inch of your life, and that inch also! What mean you by fishing ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to find a poacher!" laughed Ralph; "though there'd be nothing for him to trap here, unless he kept a boat stowed away in the reeds, and took midnight excursions ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... of your riding and shooting. No one knew of your literary tastes. I don't mind telling you that Mount Rorke often suspected you of being a bit of a poacher." ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... of the wood, when whom should he see but Arthur-a-Bland, busily creeping after a graceful deer that browsed alone down the glade. "Now by Saint George and the Dragon!" quoth Robin to himself. "I much fear that yon same fellow is a rascally poacher come after our own ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... A poacher, aged nineteen, first outraged and then strangled in the woods a peasant woman, the mother of a family. On this occasion there could be no question of a miscarriage of justice or even of any suggestion of such a thing, because the prisoner pleaded guilty. That is a great point. In France ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... into ready money, so as to purchase grain against a bad season; but of course the harvest turns out to be excellent, and he does not make a farthing, but runs away to conceal his ruin and rage. There is also the villain who leaves his plough to become a poacher. There are many other curious examples which altogether tend to prove that there has been but little change in the villager class since the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... was repeated in his character. On the one side he was a robust, healthy Etonian, who could ride, shoot, and golf like the rest of his kind, who used the terse, slangy ways of speech of the ordinary Englishman, who loved the land and its creatures, and had a natural hatred for a poacher; and on another he was a man haunted by dreams and spiritual voices, a man for whom, as he paced his tired horse homeward after a day's run, there would rise on the grays and purples of the winter dusk far-shining "cities of God" and visions of a better life ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... him to bricks and mortar and so he had to hear them in imagination. He said that all them footling little beasts were a-listening to 'em, and they told him all about it. I remember he told me more about the woods than I know myself—and I reckon I could teach his business to any gamekeeper or poacher in England. I don't say as how he knew the difference between a stoat and a weasel—he didn't. A cock-pheasant and a hen-partridge would have been the same to him. But the spirit of it—the meaning of it—he fair raised my hair off—he knew it a darned sight better ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... view which influenced the decision of the German Government is perhaps, best illustrated by a parallel taken from the ordinary laws of the country: A forester (game-keeper) is attacked by a poacher, and in that same moment perceives a second poacher bearing a gun at full-cock, creeping into a strange house in order to obtain a better shot at the forester. Just as he is about to enter the house the forester breaks the ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith

... I be reflected upon, and the sex affronted, for my patience and perseverance in the most noble of all chases; and for not being a poacher in love, as thy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... the hare was sold, being unfortunately taken many months after with a quantity of game upon him, was obliged to make his peace with the squire, by becoming evidence against some poacher. And now Black George was pitched upon by him, as being a person already obnoxious to Mr Western, and one of no good fame in the country. He was, besides, the best sacrifice the higgler could make, as he had supplied him with no game since; and by this means the witness had an ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... more agreeable to him than the rattle of cutlery. "I have scarcely [he writes] seen anything of the ——s since your departure; business and an amazing want of inclination have kept me from their threshold. Jim, that sly poacher, however, prowls about there, and vitrifies his heart by the furnace of their charms. I accompanied him there on Sunday evening last, and found the Lads and Miss Knox with them. S——was in great spirits, and played the sparkler with such great success as ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the larger birds of prey, and animals of the weasel kind. One of the largest of the latter is the pine marten, which is still found in remote and uninhabited parts of our country. It is a fierce and active animal, ever on the look-out for game and eggs. It is, in fact, a great poacher, and for this reason it has been practically exterminated by gamekeepers, in all the districts where game is carefully preserved. In other countries the marten is hunted for its skin, the fur of which is scarcely less valuable than that of ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... Strenuous Life. Memories Grave and Gay. Life of Danton. A Pocketful of Sixpences. The Romance of a Proconsul (Sir George Grey). A Book about Roses. Random Reminiscences. The London Police Courts. The Amateur Poacher. The Bancrofts. At the Works. Mexico as I Saw It. Eighteenth Century Vignettes. The Great Andes of the Equator. The Early History of C. J. Fox. Through the Heart of Patagonia. Browning as a Religious Teacher. Life of Tolstoy. Paris to ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... chief's own land! under the very eyes of the man whose business it was to watch over him! It was an offence unpardonable! an insult as well as a wrong to his chief! In the fierce majesty of righteous wrath he threw himself on the poacher. Sercombe met him with a blow straight from the ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... Blake was a sporting fellow, thought this was a good opportunity to sound that gentleman about getting him a rider, and began whispering to him all the qualities of the mare; how she could do everything a mare should do; how high she was bred and how well she was trained, and how she was like the poacher, and could "leap on anywhere;" for all which, and Kickie-wickie herself, with her owner into the bargain, Blake did not care a straw;—for he was confident of winning himself with the Galway ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... acting justice being the Mayor of Newcastle, and he, as being rather inclined to the consumption of the game when properly dressed, than to its preservation when alive, was more partial, of course, to the cause of the poacher than of the sportsman. Resolving, therefore, that it was expedient some one of their number should sacrifice the scruples of Jacobitical loyalty to the good of the community, the Northumbrian country gentlemen imposed ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... in Mr. Capulet's orchard. Ten minutes more, Clarissa, and I vanish amidst the woods of Arden, through which I came like a poacher in order to steal upon you unawares by that little gate. And now, my darling, since we have wasted almost all our time in fencing with words, let us be reasonable. Promises such as you speak of are pledges given to the winds. They cannot hold ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon



Words linked to "Poacher" :   Agonus cataphractus, alligatorfish, scorpaenoid fish, pogge, poach, Agonidae, scorpaenoid, cookware, cooking utensil, family Agonidae, Aspidophoroides monopterygius, appropriator, armed bullhead, vessel



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