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Tails   /teɪlz/   Listen
Tails

noun
1.
Formalwear consisting of full evening dress for men.  Synonyms: dress suit, full dress, tail coat, tailcoat, white tie, white tie and tails.



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"Tails" Quotes from Famous Books



... at five-and-forty, with a countenance like a sieve. His cravat was always tied so as to present two menacing points—one spike reached the height of his right ear, the other pointed downwards to the red ribbon of his cross. His coat-tails were violently at strife. A cut-away waistcoat displayed the ample, swelling curves of a stiffly-starched shirt fastened by massive gold studs. His dress, in fact, was exaggerated, till he looked almost like a living caricature, which no one could ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... absurdum, big as a cow or a camel, and the same caricature of the King of Beasts occurs elsewhere (i. 531; ii. 557 and iii. 250). The Wazir (ii. 105) wears the striped caftan of a Cairene scribe or shopkeeper. The two birds (ii. 140) which are intended for hawks (see ii. 130) have the compact tails and the rounded-off wings of pigeons. I should pity Amjad and As'ad if packed into a "bullock trunk" like that borne by the mule in ii. 156. The Jew's daughter (ii. 185) and the Wali of Bulak (ii. 504) carry European candlesticks much improved in ii. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... an eminence overlooking the lake, but with no better success than to behold the green-attired dame leisurely descending mid-lake, accompanied by the fugitive cows, and her calves formed in a circle around her; they tossed their tails, she waved her hands in scorn, as much as to say, 'You may catch us, my friend, if you can,' as they disappeared beneath the dark waters of the lake, leaving only the yellow water-lily to mark the spot where they vanished, and to perpetuate the memory of this strange event. Meanwhile, ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... to have established itself over all Europe. France had long since withdrawn from the actual strife, and kept its idle thunders in a concealed although ever threatening hand. In the East the Pacha of Buda had become Pacha of Pest. Even Gran was soon to fall before the Turk, whose advancing horse-tails might thus almost be descried from the walls of Vienna. Stephen Botschkay meantime had made himself master of Transylvania, concluded peace with Ahmet, and laughed at the Emperor Rudolph for denouncing him as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... if the body had been shot up from below; it may slope to the right or to the left. Amid all this variety and seeming caprice, can we discover any feature common to the different phenomena? We shall find that there is a very remarkable law which the tails of comets obey—a law so true and satisfactory, that if we are given the place of a comet in the heavens, it is possible at once to point out in what direction the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... his bowed back, the stick would fly abroad in demonstration, and the sharp thunder of his voice roll out a long itinerary for the dogs, so that you saw at last the use of that great wealth of names for every knowe and howe upon the hillside; and the dogs, having hearkened with lowered tails and raised faces, would run up their flags again to the masthead and spread themselves upon the indicated circuit. It used to fill me with wonder how they could follow and retain so long a story. But John denied ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... go; tails, I go," he said and spun the silver piece in the air, catching it in the flat of his ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... me to speak to them, uncle; I shall be sure to laugh at the odd names and the pig-tails and the slanting eyes. Please let me just trot round after you; I ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... time chatting and laughing. After a while I looked out. It had stopped raining. Therefore I emerged and set some of the men collecting firewood. Shortly I had a fine little blaze going under the veranda roof of the station. F. and I hung out our breeches to dry, and spread the tails of our shirts over the heat. F. was actually the human chimney, for the smoke was pouring in clouds from the breast and collar of his shirt. We were fine figures for the public ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... the river, his hands under the tails of his frock, and the perturbation of his mind expressed by the frequent flapping of those somber woolen wings. To the little man who watched him, there was a faint resemblance ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... Poor, stooping, miserable, travel-soiled objects, looking fit for nothing but the tramp-house. A murmer of astonishment burst from all present when they were recognised. It was Grind's lot. Grind and his family, who had gone off with the Mormons, returning now in humility, like dogs with burnt tails. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... Dishevelled women are peering out of their dens in the rocks and holes in the sand. They crawl into the evening light, shaking the dirt from their petticoats and the sand from their back hair. They rub the children's faces round with the tails of their gowns. They tempt scraps of flame to take the chill off the yellow water for the children's tea. After sundown a steady Scotch drizzle ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson

... proceeded so far as to render it probable that the theory of the unalterability of elements, and also the hitherto accepted explanations of various celestial phenomena—the source of solar energy and the appearances of the tails of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... over, and he marched to join the grand army under the command of the intrepid veteran Sir Hugh Gough, one of the noblest soldiers that ever served in the British army. General Sir Charles Napier, in his own eccentric way, said of him that he was "as brave as ten lions, each with two tails and two sets of teeth." Sir Charles rivalled Mr. Roebuck, the radical English commoner, in the scantiness of his commendations; his droll eulogy of Sir Hugh Gough will therefore be appreciated. On the 8th of February, Sir Harry Smith made his junction with the army of his chief, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... handful of water after it, said, "Go off, bad boy, and don't come back; we can do without you." A roar of laughter burst forth. Some of the small boys and girls leaped into the air with delight, causing the tails of the latter to ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... transmissible from parents to offspring, equally with diseases and peculiar proclivities. Among such blemishes may be mentioned moles, hair-lips, deficient or supernumerary fingers, toes, and other characteristics. It is also asserted that dogs and cats that have accidentally lost their tails, bring forth young similarly deformed. Blumenbach tells of a man who had lost his little finger, having ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... long speech fo' a hot day," said Mormon equably. "But I don't sabe that talk at all. Molly Casey ain't here, to begin with. Nor she ain't been here. An' I don't sabe no obstruction of the law by settin' up a fence in a mesa canyon to round up broom-tails." ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... Dasent draws from a comparison of these stories with others that bear the same relation to other races which these do to the Norsemen. The man who believes that Hell is a particular part of the universe, filled with flames and melted brimstone, into which actual devils, with horns, hoofs, and tails, dip, or are to dip, wicked people, whom, for greater convenience, they have previously perforated with three-tined pitchforks,—such a man will be puzzled by the story, "Why the Sea is Salt," and horrified with this comment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... reciting the rosary, but with less wrath than the boys. In their midst were to be seen several lads dragging along little rabbits made of Japanese paper, lighted by red candles, with their short paper tails erect. The lads brought those toys into the procession to enliven the birth of the Messiah. The little animals, fat and round as eggs, seemed to be so pleased that at times they would take a leap, lose their balance, fall, and catch fire. The owner would then hasten ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... people of as diverse and bizarre a character as their dwellings: Yankees of every possible variety, native Californians in serapes and sombreros, Chilians, Sonorians, Kanakas from Hawaii, Chinese with long tails, Malays armed with everlasting creeses, and others, in their bearded and embrowned visages, it was impossible to recognize any especial nationality." "San Francisco by day and night" is the title of one of the best chapters ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... over there and see how they were getting along. So off he started, lipperty-lipperty-lip. He wondered if those pollywog children of Old Mr. Toad would be much changed. The last time he saw them some of them had just begun to grow legs, although they still had long tails. ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess

... Ladies have their Share in the Possession; and if they have not the Devil in their Heads, or in their Tails, in their Faces or their Tongues, it must be some poor despicable She-devil that Satan did not think it worth his while to meddle with; and the Number of those that are below his Operation, I doubt is very ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... old man, catching his son by the coat tails, "do not go off in that way. It shall be as you wish. I will tell you everything. You headstrong boy! Do you want to break your ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various

... in the afternoon, they all came out." "Yesterday [the 9th] a rear-admiral and seven sail, including frigates, put their nose outside the harbour. If they go on playing this game, some day we shall lay salt upon their tails, and so end ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... the enemy sweeping down on Stuart's flank was thus routed. The spectacle which followed was ludicrous as well as exciting. The enemy fled in disorder. Never before had I seen the nails in the hind shoes of hundreds of horses—myriads of horses' tails streaming like ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... lived in great style, and their coachman and footman in knee breeches, their handsome horses with docked tails, the beautiful grounds about their house, a feebly shooting fountain on the front lawn, were a source of anxious disquietude in the mind of Mrs. Cliff. They were like the skeletons which were brought in at ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton

... East, but in the West the system cannot thrive. A real Englishman hates the man who will not work, scorns the man who would tell him a lie, and would give the thief who puts his hands into his pocket the cat-o'-nine-tails most unmercifully. The persecutions of the Gipsies in this country from time to time has been brought about, to a great extent, by themselves. John Bull dislikes keeping the idle, bastard children of other ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... while we were waiting in the hall. He ran and stood in front of people, and he pulled waiters' coat-tails, and got mixed up with the luggage, and called out to me to know where the ugly red-nosed man had gone. At last I had to ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed

... jolly Amandas who were simply irrelevant. There was for example Amanda the Dog Mistress, with an astonishing tact and understanding of dogs, who could explain dogs and the cock of their ears and the droop of their tails and their vanity and their fidelity, and why they looked up and why they suddenly went off round the corner, and their pride in the sound of their voices and their dastardly thoughts and sniffing satisfactions, so that for the first time dogs had souls for Benham to see. And there was ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... mournful cry, and for the first time brought his long lash across his horses—Tod first, then the wheelers; and as the three shot down the remnant of the slope, he kept Tod's traces tight while the heavy load at their tails compelled the pair to run from it ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... to side, overpowered by the fattest of the Miss Duffys. A thin, trim youth, with bright eyes glancing hither and thither, executed a complex step, and glided with surprising dexterity in and out, and through this rushing mad mass of light toilettes and flying coat-tails. Marks, too, of conflict were visible. Mr. Ryan had lost some portion of his garment in an obscure misunderstanding in the supper-room. All Mr. Lynch's studs had gone, and his shirt was in a precarious state; drunken Sir Richard had ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... Besides, I had to hire a dress suit, as I could not have gone without one. Some of the students sent me to a place kept by twin brothers, identical in appearance, and it was a funny sight to see them making me into one of their swallow-tails, taking in here and letting out there. Anyhow, it took the last dollar I had, and I've got to borrow to get along for ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump

... ten dollars for every Chinaman's head they produced. One of my men turning the corner of a street was met by a Ladrone running furiously after a Chinese; he had a drawn sword in his hand, and two Chinaman's heads which he had cut off, tied by their tails, and slung round his neck. I was witness myself to some of them producing five ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... comfortable contrast with our redundance. No impassioned personage wishes he had been born in the age of Pitt, that his ardent youth might have eaten the dearest bread, dressed itself with the longest coat-tails and the shortest waist, or heard the loudest grumbling at the heaviest war-taxes; and it would be really something original in polished verse if one of our young writers declared he would gladly be turned eighty-five that he might have known the joy and pride of being ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... members of the opposite sex whose charms reward, and, in rewarding, refine us? Or shall we meet his flat-bottomed boats with a united front, a stern 'Thus far and no farther,' and send them home with their tails between their legs? That, gentlemen, is the alternative. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... time you appeared in it, the game of heads I win and tails you lose had died out of the world," I replied with an indignant snort. "I think the best thing I can do will be to take the horse and look for those oxen. Meanwhile you can settle your business by the light of ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard

... with a whole stream of her hot Marish piss. Or that it did any waies become that hot-ars'd whorish Faustina, to govern that sage and understanding Emperor Marcus Aurelius. By no means, for then that hot-spirited, and high minded sex would prick up their Peacocks-tails so much the higher. But happy would all these hair-brain'd houswives be, if they had such Tutors to their husbands, as Aurelius was; 'tis most certain, that then that corrupt seed, would be cropt in the very bud and not be suffered to ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... when questioned by the commissioners of Edward I, that he held his fief of the king upon the following terms: When the lord king came through his estate he was to accompany him to a certain oak. There he must have waiting a cart loaded with wood and drawn by two cows without any tails. When the oak was reached, fire was to be applied to the cart and the whole burned up "unless mayhap the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... two fins just behind the gill slits, typical fish tails and blunt, sloping heads. But now and then I saw a spined monster that was queerly unlike ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... cleanliness. Neither are the pig-skins, in common use to hold wine, and hung out in the sun in all directions, by any means ornamental, as they always preserve the form of very bloated pigs, with their heads and legs cut off, dangling upside-down by their own tails. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... he laid about him with such energy that the Turkish dogs, utterly bewildered, dropped their ears, and tucking their tails between their legs, slunk howling away, whilst the triumphant orphan accompanied their flight with a lively tune on ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng

... grounds. The result was that when we overtook them, we found five mules up to their necks in a muddy creek. The packs were sunk to the bottom, and the animals nearly drowned or strangled. Fred and I rushed to the rescue. At once we cut the ropes which tied them together; and, setting the men to pull at tails or heads, succeeded at ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... that interests him, interests me. But perhaps of all his pursuits racing is the one to which I am least able to lend an attentive ear. That every horse has a head, and that all did have tails till they were ill-used, is the extent ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... had there been such slaughtering of capons, and fat geese, and barndoor fowls; never such boiling of "reested" hams; never such making of car-cakes and sweet scones, Selkirk bannocks, cookies, and petticoat-tails—delicacies little known to the present generation. Never had there been such a tapping of barrels, and such uncorking of greybeards, in the village of Wolf's Hope. All the inferior houses were thrown open ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... and yet many persons are tripped up by them. A friend recently produced five pennies and said to me: "In throwing these five pennies at the same time, what are the chances that at least four of the coins will turn up either all heads or all tails?" His own solution was quite wrong, but the correct answer ought not to be hard to discover. Another person got a wrong answer to the following little puzzle which I heard him propound: "A man placed three sovereigns ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... pottered round tryin' to find some trace of Foy—blind fools!—till I met up with 'em. I'd done gathered in that mizzable red-headed Joe Cowan on a give-out horse, claim-in' he'd been chousin' after broom-tails. He'd planted Foy's horse, I reckon. But it can't be proved, so I let him go. He'll have to walk ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... young gray squirrels in the woods, and brought them home in a cage. We gave them walnuts and chestnuts, but they were so cross they bit each other's tails, which when they were little looked more like rats' tails than squirrels'. When we let them out of the cage, they soon learned to go into my uncle's pockets after nuts. Then they would sit on his head or shoulder and eat them. When we gave them more than they could ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... wind whistling through a key-hole? or singing its shrill melancholy song among the straining cordage of the storm-threatened ship? Then, uninteresting accidents happen during squally weather: hats are blown off; coat-tails, and eke the flowing garments of the gentler sex, flap, as if waging war with their distressed wearers; grave dignified persons are compelled to scud along before the gale, shorn of all the impressiveness of their wonted solemn gait, holding, perchance, their shovel-hat firmly on with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... beg your pardon," interrupted the inn-keeper seriously. "We can arrange the balls and the tails, but you see we are simply country people and keep our bowels in order. City amusements put our stomachs in a bad fix ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... view of this species of groper at close quarters, and these three presented, a very beautiful sight, the very dark blue of the whole of their closely-scaled, shining bodies, and the very light blue of their fins and tails making a pretty contrast. Two were about 15 lb. to 16 lb. each, the other about 35 lb. to 40 lb., and nearly four feet in length. They swam but slowly, though every now and then they would turn with some swiftness ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke

... man appears at one of these hunts he must wear a tall silk hat, a double-breasted red coat, with tails like a dress coat, white breeches and top boots. After he has once made his appearance in this costume he may, thereafter, substitute for it a red frock hunting coat, white breeches and top boots and a velvet hunting cap, the same shape as the caps worn by the jockies. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... unlike their mother as they were to one another. Adele, the eldest, was very stout, with a profusion of grey ringlets. She spoke English fluently. I gathered, from her mysterious nods and tosses of the head, (to be sure, her head wagged a little of its own accord, the ringlets too, like lambs' tails,) that she had had an AFFAIRE DE COEUR with an Englishman, and that the perfidious islander had removed from the Continent with her misplaced affections. She was a trifle bitter, I thought - for I ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... sixteen of them, all apparently full-grown. They very closely approached the zebra in general shape, but were considerably larger animals, standing about fourteen hands high. They were of a beautiful deep cream colour, their legs black below the knee, and they had short black manes, black switched tails very similar to that of the gemsbok, and, in the case of four of the animals then in view, were provided with a single straight black pointed horn projecting from the very centre of the forehead, just above the level ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... which is styled Amid, or Kara Amid, in the public writings of the Turks, contains above 16,000 houses, and is the residence of a pacha with three tails. The epithet of Kara is derived from the blackness of the stone which composes the strong and ancient wall of Amida. ——In my Mem. Hist. sur l'Armenie, l. i. p. 166, 173, I conceive that I have proved this city, still called, by the Armenians, Dirkranagerd, the city of Tigranes, to be the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... pride of his life—to greet him upon his return, with the possible exception of Private McCoy, who had been in the service since George Washington was a "lance jack," and who swore that all the damned "shave-tails" in the Army could not ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves

... motley following. He took no manner of notice of them. He stalked majestically towards his own particular hovel, and at each corner of a lane or group of cottages the pigs said "Good night" to each other by a kick-up of their heels and a whisk of their curly little tails, and scampered off home by themselves, until, at the end of the village, only one solitary pig was following his leader—probably they shared one home between them. It seemed a peaceful, if ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... least, if not as a new species of animal. I have seen a breed of cats with an additional claw on every foot; of poultry also with an additional claw, and with wings to their feet; and of others without rumps. Mr. Buffon mentions a breed of dogs without tails which are common at Rome and Naples—which he supposes to have been produced by a custom long established of cutting their tails close off. There are many kinds of pigeons admired for their peculiarities which are more or ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler

... trip to the Yangtse gorges I expressed my intention of trying to get some of those beautiful Reeves pheasants, having tails several feet in length, which are indigenous to that locality, but was warned that it would be necessary to take long leggings as a protection against spear-grass. Not having any with me, and believing I knew what spear-grass was, I refrained ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... required several generations of guilty progenitors to render so pitiable an object as we beheld it—immediately took an unaccountable fancy to the gentleman just hinted at. It prowled about him like a pet kitten, rubbing against his legs, following everywhere at his heels, pulling at his coat-tails, and, at last, exerting all the speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly before him and held forth its arms, mutely insisting on being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps under-witted and incapable of prattle. But it smiled up in his face,—a sort of woful gleam was ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Tolman (1925) showed the balancing function of the tail in Mus musculus. Climbers (for example, squirrels) often possess long, well-haired tails. It is reasonable to suggest (as did Hall, 1955:134) that the long, tufted tail is an adaptation for a scansorial existence. Little observation is necessary to observe how such a tail is used in balancing. Furthermore, it is used as a prop when the mouse is climbing a vertical ...
— Natural History of the Brush Mouse (Peromyscus boylii) in Kansas With Description of a New Subspecies • Charles A. Long

... frock coat, in which I used to think he must have been born, went too. If his fashion-plate correctness—men wore frock coats then—made him conspicuous at our Thursday nights it can be imagined what he was sitting with his coat tails in the gutter at the cabman's table where the glazed hat and the three-caped coat of the Paris cocher set the fashion. He had the grace to be ashamed of himself, often apologizing for his clothes and assuring us that he could not help himself, which ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... vision. There is a place below the bridge there, where the cattle come down from the waste pastures across the yellow sands to drink and stand in the low water of the Jumna, to stand and switch their tails while their herdsmen on the bank coax them back with 'Ari!' 'Ari!' 'Ari!' long and high, faint and musical; and the minarets of Akbar's fort rise beyond against the throbbing sky and the sun fills it all. This place I shall never see more distinctly than I ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... All rapids have "tails" of waves tapering out below, that is the waves grow smaller as they increase the distance from the initial wave. These waves are the reverse of sea waves, the form remaining in practically one place while the water flies through. In many rapids there is an eddy on ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... June, with his two brothers and a shipped "hand," Ned landed north of fifty-three in a lovely cove in some islands off the mouth of a long bay. Even as he passed in he had seen fish schooling so thick "you could catch 'em by the tails." His vessel safely anchored, he went ashore, much as did the old navigators in the brave days of the French explorers. No sign of human beings existed anywhere. Thick groves of evergreen trees covered all the ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... were not so tangled. It was not quite so hot, either, though this was the middle of summer, and there were not as many birds as Nero was used to seeing in his home jungle. Nor were there any monkeys swinging by their tails from the trees. It was quite a different jungle altogether, but Nero liked it ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum

... Indians leave us in the evening all the party Snugly fixed in their huts- I recved a presnt of Capt L. of a fleece hosrie Shirt Draws and Socks-, a pr. mockersons of Whitehouse a Small Indian basket of Gutherich, two Dozen white weazils tails of the Indian woman, & Some black root of the Indians before their departure- Drewyer informs me that he Saw a Snake pass across the parth to day. The day ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... white rabbits they wept and they sobbed, Till the boat it shook up in the sails; Oh, the white rabbits they sobbed and they shook From their poor loppy ears to their tails. ...
— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford

... and they'll come home, wagging their tails behind them," said Uncle Wiggily quickly, and he laughed jolly like and happy, because he had made a rhyme to go with what ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis

... in age to Katy, sat in the middle. She was a fair, sweet dumpling of a girl, with thick pig-tails of light brown hair, and short-sighted blue eyes, which seemed to hold tears, just ready to fall from under the blue. Really, Clover was the jolliest little thing in the world; but these eyes, and her soft cooing voice, always ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge

... continued his tale. "'I'll marry Agnes or I won't marry nobody'—William says—and they couldn't budge him. No, old Harry cracked on, but he wouldn't have it, and at last Harry says: 'It's like this.' He pulls a half-crown out of his pocket and 'Heads it's Agnes,' he says, 'or tails it's Edith,' he says." ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... beneath their luscious loads; Here vineyards climb the hills thick set with grapes; There rolling pastures spread, where royal mares, High bred, and colts too young for bit or spur, Now quiet feed, then, as at trumpet's call, With lion bounds, tails floating, neck outstretched,[5] Nostrils distended, fleet as the flying wind They skim the plain, and sweep in circles wide— Nature's Olympic, copied, ne'er excelled. Here, deer with dappled fawn bound o'er the grass,[6] And sacred herds, and sheep with skipping lambs; ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... remarkable difference was the absence of lace, an absence specially authorized only for this corps, and then only in view of special service and many bush fights in America. The double-breasted coats were made to button across, except at the top, where the lapels turned back, like the cuffs and coat-tails. All these 'turnbacks' and the breeches were blue. The very long gaiters, the waist and cross belts, the neckerchief and hat piping were white. Wearing this distinctively plain uniform, and led by their buglers and drummers in scarlet and gold, ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood

... on foot, as wel of man as of woman—that all thilke trailing," he verily believes, which wastes, consumes, wears threadbare, and is rotten with dung, are all to the damage of "the poor folk," who might be clothed only out of the flounces and draggle-tails of these children of vanity. But then his Parson is not less bitter against "the horrible disordinat scantnesse of clothing," and very copiously he describes, though perhaps in terms and with a humour too coarse for me to transcribe, the consequences of these ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... human queue, which issued from the doors of Page, Bacon & Company, now reached around the corner. It was growing turbulent. Women tried to force themselves between the close-packed file and were repelled. One of these was Sherman's washwoman. She clutched his coat-tails as he hurried by. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... top used as a shelf for a hundred various objects, deep long chairs of caressing ease and chairs of coffee-colored wicker with amazingly high backs woven with designs of polished shells into the semblance of spread peacocks' tails. The yellow silk curtains at the windows, the rug with the intricate coloring of a cashmere shawl, the Russian tea service, were in a perfection of order; and Linda almost resentfully acknowledged the skilful efficiency of his maid. It ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... miraculous escapes, together with a proper assemblage of old castles, ruined tombs, yawning cloisters, grim vaults, mouldering coffins, unearthly sounds, awful visitations, spiritual appearances; ghosts in white sheets, with bleeding bosoms: hobgoblins with saucer eyes, fierce claws, and long tails; and catastrophes so tremendous as to set the hair on end, and convulse the whole frame with the delight of tenor, and ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... see what you'd say to some of the old Dutch towns and their churches, and all that; then Cologne, you know, and a sail up the Rhine to Mainz; then you'd go on to Bale and Geneva, and we'd get you a fine big carriage, with the horses decorated with foxes' and pheasants' tails, to drive you to Chamounix. Then, when you had gone tremulously over the Mer de Glace, and kept your wits about you going down the Mauvais Pas, I don't think you could do better than go on to the Italian lakes—you never saw anything like them, I'll be bound—and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... vermiformis of the science of pedagogics: it is as useless as the letter q in the alphabet, or the proverbial two tails to a cat, which no cat ever had, and the finest cat in the world, the Manx cat, has no ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... answered by a chorus of loud neighs, as the group broke into a mad gallop and bore down upon her. It seemed to Mrs. Harold and Polly as though the on-rushing creatures must bear her down, but just when the speed was the maddest, when heads were tossing most wildly, and tails and manes waving ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... wiping his red head, told the women to get up. Papa's chestnut horse went trotting along with a prancing gait as it tossed its head and swished its tail to and fro to drive away the gadflies and countless other insects which tormented its flanks, while his two greyhounds—their tails curved like sickles—went springing gracefully over the stubble. Milka was always first, but every now and then she would halt with a shake of her head to await the whipper-in. The chatter of the peasants; ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy

... Pocantico swept by it in a deep dark stream, where I had so often angled; there expanded the mill-pond, as of old, with the cows under the willows on its margin, knee-deep in water, chewing the cud, and lashing the flies from their sides with their tails. The hand of improvement, however, had been busy with the venerable pile. The pulpit, fabricated in Holland, had been superseded by one of modern construction, and the front of the semi-Gothic edifice was decorated by ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... the hot end of the poker," replied the officer. "Loser goes first," said Glover, producing a copper. "Heads or tails?" ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... turned from gray to dark, and soon began to show colours—black, red, roan, piebald—as the ponies came on with what seemed an effect of a tossing sea of waving manes and tails, blending and composing with the deep sweeping feather trails of the grand war bonnets. Hands rose and fell with whips, and digging heels kept up the unison. Above the rushing of the hoofs there came forward now and then a keen ululation. Red-brown bodies, leaning, working ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough

... see, the rain's turned out a few, and some on 'em, folks says, was buried with lots o' goold platted up in their pig-tails. I know o' one man that dug up two or three to git their teeth, (to sell to the tooth-doctors, you know,) and when he took hold o' the pig-tail to lift the head by, the hair come off in his hand, and out rattled ten good goolden guineas. Now, if any money's washed out, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... thing, let whoso will say the contrary, to behold the ducks and geese marching forth in handsome order from their beds of fern and straw. What a goodly noise they kept, what a flapping of their wings, and a jerking of their tails, as they stood right up and tried with a whistling in their throats to imitate a cockscrow! And then how daintily they took the wet upon their dusty plumes, and ducked their shoulders to it, and began to dress themselves, and laid their grooved bills on the snow, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... of the Terror. There were the incroyables, a set of young dandies who affected royalist sympathies, and paraded the streets of Paris when young Napoleon was yet a general in the service of the Directory. They wore short-waisted coats with tails of preposterous length, cocked hats of ponderous dimensions, green cravats, powdered hair plaited and turned up with a comb, while on each side of the face hung down two long curls called dogs' ears (oreilles de chien). These charming ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... Whether Bears are better Than Synod-men? I say, Negatur. That bears are beasts, and synods men, 1295 Is held by all: they're better then: For bears and dogs on four legs go, As beasts, but Synod-men on two. 'Tis true, they all have teeth and nails; But prove that Synod-men have tails; 1300 Or that a rugged, shaggy fur Grows o'er the hide of Presbyter; Or that his snout and spacious ears Do hold proportion with a bear's. A bears a savage beast, of all 1305 Most ugly and unnatural Whelp'd without form, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... and it is more chill and showery than before. The mist, too, is driving north-east," said the Doctor. "The clouds are cumbrous and broken, coiling, as they roll, into huge masses that will ere long bring some of the dark Atlantic on their tails. Seest thou not, Bartholomew, as though it were a grim pile of hills ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... French casualties are placed at 3000 and they are said to have taken that number of prisoners, but as a man said to me, "Where are they then, they must have buried them?" General Hunter-Weston, I was told, "is as proud as a dog with two tails over the French success". ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... on their blue smocks over their new frock-coats or over their old dress-coats of green-cloth, the two tails of which hung down below their blouses. When the horses were in the stable there was a double line of rustic conveyances along the road: carts, cabriolets, tilburies, wagonettes, traps of every shape and age, tipping forward on their shafts or else tipping backward ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... silky aigrette, struts and bows to his female, while his throat swells and he utters a sort of guttural note.[62] The common shield duck, geese, wood-pigeons, carrion-vultures, and many other birds have been observed to dance, spread their tails, chase one another, and perform many strange courting parades. A careful observer of birds, Mr. E. Selous, who is quoted by Havelock Ellis,[63] has found that all bird dances are not nuptial, but that some birds—the stone-curlew (or great plover), for example—have different kinds of dancing. ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... chief difficulties encountered in the early days of the acetylene industry was the design of a satisfactory burner which should possess a life of reasonable length. The first burners tried were ordinary oil-gas jets, which resemble the fish-tails used with coal- gas, but made smaller in every part to allow for the higher illuminating power of the oil-gas or acetylene per unit of volume. Although the flames they gave were very brilliant, and indeed ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... went to fetch the golden apples of Hesperides. Moreover, the feats of Herakles show a higher intellectual quality than those of Samson, all of which, save one, were predominantly physical. The exception was the trick of tying 300 foxes by their tails, two by two, with firebrands between and turning them loose to burn the corn of the Philistines. An ingenious way to spread a conflagration, probably, but primitive, decidedly primitive. Herakles was a scientific engineer of the modern school; he ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... this they also agreed, provided Moytoy should be made answerable to Sir Alexander for his behaviour to them. After which many useful presents were made them, and the congress ended to the great satisfaction of both parties. The crown was brought from Tenassee, their chief town, which with five eagle tails, and four scalps of their enemies, Moytoy presented to Sir Alexander, requesting him, on his arrival at Britain, to lay them at his Majesty's feet. But Sir Alexander proposed to Moytoy, that he should depute some of their chiefs ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness. Now the thing for YOU to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a MAN along. Now LEAVE—and take your half-a-man with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... life on the ocean wave, A home on the rolling deep, Where codfish waggle their tails 'Mid tadpoles ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... the east of south—that is the battle ground of Tippecanoe. The western edge is the sheer bank of Burnet's Creek. A savage would have some difficulty in climbing there. Back of the creek is a low marsh, filled with cat-tails and long grass. The surface of the flatiron is a sandy plain with scattering oaks, and sloping towards the east. At the north the plain widens, but comes to an abrupt point at the southern end. To ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... beads of wampum; He was dressed in deer-skin leggings, Fringed with hedgehog quills and ermine, And in moccasins of buck-skin, Thick with quills and beads embroidered. On his head were plumes of swan's down, On his heels were tails of foxes, In one hand a fan of feathers, And a pipe was ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow

... cellar stairs! It won't hurt anything down there," and before Billy, Stubby or Button could move, a deluge of water struck them full in the face, blinding them and sousing them from the tips of their noses to the ends of their tails. ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery

... gave her was a very wise look and he rose from his chair and strutted up and down the room with his hands under his coat-tails, in a very pompous and imposing manner. This was the first time so difficult a matter had been brought to him and he wanted time to think. It would never do to let them suspect his ignorance and so he thought very, very hard ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... women walked past them toward the airboat. Kennon turned to look at them and noticed with surprise that they weren't human. The long tails curled below their spinal bases were adequate denials of ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone

... this, she said, "Who knows, husband, but this may be a lizard with two tails, that will make our fortune? Who knows but this lizard may put an end to all our miseries? How often, when we should have an eagle's sight to discern the good luck that is running to meet us, we have a cloth before our eyes ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... that were fast to the hooks—in fact, that it was all up with them. Orders had been given by the commanding officer that the sharks were not to be pulled on board, partly from the dangerous action of their tails and jaws even when half dead, partly on account of the confusion they make while floundering about the decks; so we hauled them close to the top of the water, fired a bullet into their brains and cut them loose. We killed thirty ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... Now Khalt was fashioned in the likeness of a lion, with a tail like a tortoise twenty years' journey in length and ending in a member masculine; while Malt was like a pied wolf whose tail was furnished with a member feminine. Then Almighty Allah commanded the tails to couple and copulate and do the deed of kind, and of them were born serpents and scorpions, whose dwelling is in the fire, that Allah may there with torment those whom He casteth therein; and these increased and multiplied. Then ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... the east and swam across. A second band of 8 now appeared. We gave chase. They spurted; so did we. Our canoe was going over 6 miles an hour, and yet was but slowly overtaking them. They made the water foam around them. Their heads, necks, shoulders, backs, rumps, and tails were out. I never before saw land animals move so fast in the water. A fawn in danger of being left behind reared up on its mother's back and hung on with forefeet. The leader was a doe or a young ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... together in fairy ball rooms whose lights and colours her imagination was obliged to construct for her out of its own fabric; she knew what the girls would look like if they went to a Drawing Room and she often wondered if they would feel shy when the page spread out their lovely peacock tails for them and left them to their own devices. It was mere Nature that she should have pondered and pondered and sometimes unconsciously longed to feel herself part of the flood of being sweeping past her as she stood apart on ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... principally of immense, pallid palmlike trees. Farther on, the path wound through a belt of swampy land covered by gigantic reeds which rustled above their heads with a glassy sound, and by things which looked like the cat-tails of the upper world, but were a hundred times larger. Everywhere hovered odd little creatures like birds, but with teeth in their long snouts and small frondlike growths on each side of their tails. About some ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... round his feet and his hands. He was as beautiful as Baldur to look at, said the Viking's wife, and she was grieved at his fate; but young Helga wished that he should be ham-strung, and bound to the tails of wild oxen. ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... would be difficult to give a full account of the curtains, which rolled up (as fine as a) shrimp's moustache; of the carpets of other skins spread on the floor; of the tripods exhaling the fragrant aroma of the brain of the musk deer; of the screens in a row resembling fans made of pheasant tails. Indeed, the gold-like doors and the windows like jade were suggestive of the abode of spirits; while the halls made of cinnamon wood and the palace of magnolia timber, of the very homes of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... made no reply, but strolled away into the green wood, while wearily she turned back. The stag-hounds, with their collars of jade, came to meet her, and the three enormous Persian cats whose tails were like long plumes. She stooped to caress them, and to hide her tears, for Prince Hugh and Prince Richard were coming towards her, and she did not wish them to know ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl

... William Rockefeller, and John D. Rockefeller. And if any doubt remains in the minds of my readers of the absolute power of "Standard Oil," the Private Thing, to "make" dollars at will, or of the dead-sure working of their "heads-I-win-and-tails-you-lose" gambling game, I ask them carefully to analyze the above statements in connection with the facts in the Amalgamated transaction which ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... such vandalism, Marcoy caught the first offender by the plaited tails at the back of the neck. "What ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... human nature to see the meeting between the hawks and the dogs. The hawks would be sitting on the ground or on a bush, evidently and unmistakably using language of the most sulphurous nature; while the dogs came up, their tongues out, their tails between their legs, and with a general air of exhaustion, dejection, and apology. As they slunk up the muttered curses broke forth: "You! you lazy hound! Call yourself a greyhound! You're a fat-tailed ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband

... truth. I was in the Stony Plains. Little Hammer was 'good Injin' then. . . . Yes, sacre! it is a fool who smiles at that. I have kissed the Book. Dam! . . . He would be chief soon when old Two Tails die. He was proud, then, Little Hammer. He go not to the Post for drink; he sell not next year's furs for this year's rations; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... crocodiles lay basking on the sand, their hungry mouths agape. Great hippopotamuses, "like huge islands," walked about in the shallows, and sometimes bellowed and fought all night. Troops of monkeys, "with very long tails stuck up straight like swords all over their backs," came down to drink. Herds of elephants and of fierce, coal-black buffaloes eyed the boat threateningly from the banks, while giraffes, looking like steeples, nibbled the tops of trees. At Khartoum the ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang

... see. The argument may be briefly stated thus by the phrenologist: "Heads I win, tails you lose." Well, that's convenient. It must be confessed that Phrenology has a certain resemblance to the pseudosciences. I did not say it was ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... the utmost which our modern poetical imagination has been able to invent, is a row of gas-lamps. It has, indeed, farther suggested itself to our minds as appropriate to gas-lamps set beside a river, that the gas should come out of fishes' tails; but we have not ingenuity enough to cast so much as a smelt or a sprat for ourselves; so we borrow the shape of a Neapolitan marble, which has been the refuse of the plate and candlestick shops in every capital of Europe for the last fifty years. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... dog named Dix, and he and Splash are good friends. First they sort of growled at each other, and then they smelled noses and now they always wag their tails ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope

... put up Miss Carlyle. "Hadn't you better have your hair curled, and your coat tails lined with white satin, and a gold opera-glass, and a cocked hat?" retorted she. "My gracious me! A fine new cap to go to their mess of a concert in, after paying ten shillings for the tickets! The world's ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood



Words linked to "Tails" :   swallow-tailed coat, evening clothes, evening dress, eveningwear, morning coat, swallowtail, formalwear



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