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Spitfire   Listen
Spitfire

noun
1.
A highly emotional and quick-tempered person (especially a girl or woman).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Spitfire" Quotes from Famous Books



... was gone, "it will be a pretty good thing if I get rid of Spitfire"—he had named him thus—"for two hundred and fifty dollars. He's a bad-tempered brute, and blind into the bargain. But I'm not bound to tell Mr. Richmond that, and so spoil my trade. I've put a flea in his ear about Nichols, and I guess he will ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger

... grow longer, as befitteth; then you will have freer play with them. Come with me to see the miracle-play, and be not so ready to answer these rascallions. I begin to think that we should not have gone the round of the shows by ourselves, Master Spitfire. Travelling unattended with you ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... spitfire you are," he said, firmly grasping her arms, which felt rigid to the touch. "Surely you can understand? Rita amused me, at first. Then, when I found she was going to marry Monte Irvin I didn't bother about her any more. In fact, because ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... and can appreciate her real qualities far better than any man can. (He shakes his head sadly and turns to the bookcase, looking along the shelves for a volume. She follows him with intense pepperiness.) You don't believe me? (He turns and faces her. She pounces at him with spitfire energy.) You think I'm jealous. Oh, what a profound knowledge of the human heart you have, Mr. Lexy Mill! How well you know the weaknesses of Woman, don't you? It must be so nice to be a man and have a fine ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw

... right on, for the sounds that came from Spitfire's hoofs could hardly be heard, the ground being very ...
— Young Wild West at "Forbidden Pass" - and, How Arietta Paid the Toll • An Old Scout

... winter's night when they were dull, and to torment her until her little face grew scarlet with the blood which flew up into it, and she ran from one to the other beating them and screaming like a young spitfire, was among ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Adieu, small spitfire of a Gulf! The change from the inside to the outside of the Birkat el-Akabah was magical. We at once glided into summer seas, a mosaic of turquoise and amethyst, fanned by the softest of breezes, the thermometer showing on deck 63 deg F. Perhaps the natural joy at our lucky escape from "making ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... mean it?" he demanded. "Well, I guess you must or you wouldn't give me a kiss like that. Say, you think a lot of me, now don't you, Little Spitfire? I believe you'd go through ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... fishing within three miles of the coast, off La Haive, in contravention of the treaty, he narrowly escaped capture by the British cruiser "Spitfire," commanded by Captain Stoker. By a skilful manoeuvre, he decoyed the man-of-war, in the eagerness of the chase, on to a sand-bar, when he dexterously slipt through a narrow passage between two islands, and keeping one of them in a line between the "Black Hawk" and her pursuer, so as to be ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... had porter; and on such occasions, what better beverage would you ask? Swiftly and gaily did the slim bark cleave through the glassy sea. Its hue was a dark crimson, with one black stripe—its nom de guerre, the Spitfire. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... night when you were ready for bed in your little canton-flannel night-drawers, that you lost your temper over some trifling matter? You danced up and down, yelling, 'I won't. I won't.' I could hardly keep from laughing. My young spitfire looked very funny capering around and around, her long curls rumpled about her determined, flushed face, and her feet not still an instant in her flapping night-drawers. Many and many a time you escaped punishment, ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... began to yearn. "Look here, you little spitfire," said he, "if you don't instantly take my arm, I'll catch you up and carry you over, with no more trouble than you ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... pearls again into the pouch and put it back to its place among his clothes. His face had grown savage and lowering, but it was clear that this little spitfire of a sailor, with his handy pistol, daunted him. Kettle, who read these signs, was not insensible to the compliment they implied, but at the same time he grew, if anything, additionally cautious. He watched his man with a cat-like caution, and when Rad called a slave ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... will catch her!" says the pilot. A wave of the hand, and the Spitfire is alongside, running up like a dog to its master. Lieutenant Bishop, Pilot Bixby, and a gun crew jump on board the tug, which carries a boat howitzer. Away they go, the tug puffing and wheezing, as ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... to chuckle with a kind of inward merriment; "I'll never forget the day that child sat down on a wopses' nest an' got all 'er little legs stung;—she was about five 'ear old then, an' she never cried—not she!—the little proud spitfire that she was, she jes' stamped 'er mite of a foot an' she sez, sez she: 'Did God make the wopses?' An' 'er nurse sez to 'er: 'Yes, o' course, lovey, God made 'em.' 'Then I don't think much of Him!' sez she. Lord, Lord! We larfed nigh to split ourselves that arternoon;—we was ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... pushing a Spitfire or a Thunderbolt. You just plow along through the muck and hope the boys will bat down all of the fighters coming at you ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery

... Big Swinton step forward, but he did not. His revenge was not to be gratified by mere insubordination. The man who did at last step forward was an insignificant fellow, who had been nicknamed Spitfire, and whose chief characteristics were self-will and ill-nature. He did not lack courage, however, for he boldly faced the angry ruler and defied him. Every one expected to see Spitfire follow Dick Swan, and in similar ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... Eugenia represented, developed by the fact that it was not force but weakness that had vanquished his victorious opponent. Dudley Webb was a gentleman, and only a bully would strike a girl, even if she were a spitfire—the term by which he characterised Eugenia. He remembered suddenly her exultant, "an' you can't hit me back!" and it seemed to him that, even in the righteous cause of his deliverance, she had taken an unfair and feminine advantage of the ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... indeed a spitfire,' he replied, sinking back upon the pillow, and drawing the clothes round him, 'a feuerkopf as the Germans call it, or sometimes tollkopf, which in its literal significance meaneth a fool's head. Your father was, as I have heard, a ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of their comrades, "we've just got to beat Marshall on Saturday. Why, it'd break the hearts of those pretty girls if we failed. I really believe they'd feel it more than any of us would. And that little spitfire Mollie is crazy to rub it into her boastful friend over at Harmony, too. Oh! we've got our job set out before us for a fact, and must sweep the ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... Miss Spitfire," turning to Inza, "you must feel proud to have a friend in a fellow of his class! Do not forget what I ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... reply. He caught himself framing curt, stinging sentences to be embodied in the letter; but he drew himself up with a start. Surely there was something very wrong with Mark Bower, the millionaire, when he gloated over such paltry details. Why, his reflections were worthy of that old spitfire, Mrs. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... "Spitfire!" murmured Villon, but so cautiously that only La Mothe heard him. "Certainly I should have said Mademoiselle and Monseigneur. Or better still have left the Monseigneur out altogether. You do not go the right way. Win the girl, I tell you, and the boy will follow ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... was searching the vacant ruin, Beauchamp was comfortably seated on the box of the Spitfire, tooling it halfway home—namely, as far as the house of its owner, the laird above mentioned, who was a relative of his mother, and whom he was then visiting. He had seen Kate and Alec take the way to the castle, and had followed them, and found the door unlocked. Watching ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... the steep slope into the yard where the children were marching in double file into the building, smiling as he saw Tabitha's long, lean legs keeping step behind the short, plump ones of little Carrie, and mentally hoping that the day would go well with the little spitfire sister. ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown

... her gracious good-humour, so untameable her high spirits, that it was only by remembering the little spitfire of twelve or fourteen years ago that it was credible that she had a temper at all; the temper erst wont to exhale in chamois bounds and dervish pirouettes, had apparently left not a trace behind, and the sullen ungraciousness ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... he told Lorraine. "And I'm behind yuh with a gun. Don't forget that, Miss Spitfire. You let Skinner go to suit himself—and if he goes wrong, you pay, because it'll be you reining him ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... carman who could drink porter by the two-gallon, and had an arm like a leg of mutton. But this great, lusty carman found himself ruled with a rod of iron by the little spitfire he took for his second wife. She managed the carman, and she managed his brats of children. She particularly managed Joe because he particularly ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... blinking. When she saw that Professor Kennedy had come in, she did what Sylvia would never have dared do; she ran to him and climbed up on his knee, laying her shining, dark head against his shoulder. The old man's arms closed around her. "Well, spitfire," he said, "comment ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... glow again last night. Don't understand it. Once should have been enough for them. This matter of hoarding tobacco may be a sad error. If Old Spitfire keeps on the way she has to-day I shan't need much more. It would be a raw jest to be burned or swallowed up with a month's supply of unsmoked cigarettes on one. Cave getting shaky. Still, I think I'll stick there. As between being ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams

... ambulance after the next rest—I was careful to get there first—I sat down on the back seat and made myself comfortable, but I must admit that my heart was giving awful thumps, for Mrs. Barker's sharp tongue and spitfire temper are well known. My head was aching because of my having ridden backward, and I was really cross, and this Mrs. Barker may have noticed, for not one word did she say directly to me, but she said much to her son—much that I might have resented had I felt inclined. The ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... and a few wildcats in the pasture woods. With the aid of a dog we had great sport with them. Hard pressed, they would take to the trees, from which we would shoot them. On one occasion we found four little spitfire, baby lynx, which we carried home and later traded to the proprietor of a menagerie. We got some money and two pair of fan-tail pigeons in exchange for them. When quite small they were the most vicious, untamable little varmints imaginable, and as long as we had them ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves

... whose stiffness would serve as "a good example to a poker?" He acts toward his employees as the father of Frederick the Great did toward his subjects, caning them on the streets, and shouting, "I wish to be loved and not feared." "Growl, Spitfire and Brothers," says Talmage, "wonder why they fail, while Messrs. Merriman ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden

... "Christmas-time, you spitfire. So you ain't married yet? Lord! I don't wonder they fight shy of you; you'd be a handful, my vixen, for any man to tame. How's ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... face, with regular features, except that the nose turns up somewhat after the spitfire order, and her mouth is a trifle too wide. Her forehead is not very high—it would not become her style if it were. Her hair is splendid—thick, black and glossy as satin, and her eyes,—there are not words ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes



Words linked to "Spitfire" :   emotional person



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