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Wildcat   /wˈaɪldkˌæt/   Listen
Wildcat

adjective
1.
Outside the bounds of legitimate or ethical business practices.  "Wildcat stock speculation" , "A wildcat airline" , "Wildcat life insurance schemes"
2.
Without official authorization.  Synonyms: unauthorised, unauthorized.  "Wildcat work stoppage"
3.
(of a mine or oil well) drilled speculatively in an area not known to be productive.  "A wildcat mine" , "Wildcat drilling" , "Wildcat wells"



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"Wildcat" Quotes from Famous Books



... bustards, and swans. We met from time to time monstrous fish, which struck so violently against our canoes, that at first we took them to be large trees, which threatened to upset us. We saw also a hideous monster; his head was like that of a tiger, his nose was sharp, and somewhat resembled a wildcat; his beard was long; his ears stood upright; the color of his head was gray; and his neck black. He looked upon us for some time, but as we came near him our oars frightened him away. When we threw our ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... picture of what is going on in our own little community year after year. I wish you could see what I have to see. I wish you could see the thousands of hard-earned dollars that go out of our community every year into just such wildcat enterprises as you described. The saddest part of it is that the money nearly always goes out of the pockets of the people who can least afford to ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... me to show fear, de Lussan?" cried the captain bending forward and staring at the Frenchman, his eyes glittering in the darkness like those of a wildcat. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... hard set jaw, and the straightness of his mouth. If he had been a ghost, men could not have avoided him more sedulously, and the giant servant who stalked at his back. Not that The Corner was peopled with cowards. The true Westerner avoids trouble, but cornered, he will fight like a wildcat. ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... was a gold strike I'd follow 'em," announced Sol Blugg. "Tom Dillon allers was a good one at strikes, an' so was Abe Blower. They know enough to keep away from anything thet looks like a wildcat. I'm a-goin' to look into this," he concluded. And after that the Blugg crowd kept close watch on Dave and ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer

... had not been gone fifteen minutes when Missy tuned up. I patted and, 'She-e-d' her, but she got her head above cover, squinted around the room, and not finding you, set up a squall that would have scared a wildcat. The more I patted, the worse she screamed, and her feet and hands flew around like a wind-mill. I took her up, and trotted her on my knee, but bless you! she squirmed like an eel, and her little bald head ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... do his best to earn a few honest dollars about the settlement and the sawmill. So the big-hearted mill hands paid him good money for doing many odd jobs, the most important of which was to keep a lantern lighted every dark night, both summer and winter, to warn them of the danger spot in the Wildcat river, that raced in its treacherous course between the mill and their shanty ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... suddenly occurred to him that the animal might be a wildcat or even a bear, that had strayed down from the mountains. A close encounter of this nature was by no means to Clay's liking. He stopped, and was just about turning back, when he saw a dark object passing through a break in the ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... dear Gabriel, you must be satisfied with the fact that Messrs. Peter Gunn & Sons will take back your wildcat stock at the price you paid for it. It is the price they pay for their share in this little transaction, as I had the honor of pointing out to Mr. Gunn on our way to ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... one before you left Saint Joe," replied Helen. "Don't you remember that school-teacher Barnes who said you were a wildcat and an Indian mixed? He spanked you ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... senior. "The girl ain't a coward, anyhow. She stood up to me like a wildcat. Said she hated me. Said she wouldn't take Peter if I paid her to—or words to that effect. Well, I didn't exactly offer to pay her for doing that, rather the other way around. But when she had the gorgeous cheek to up and say, after all, that she liked me for defending ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten, have disappeared; the otter is rarely if ever seen here at present; and the mink is ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... woods, in the woods! Hail to the darkness and God's murmuring between the trees, to the sweet, simple melody of silence in my ears, to green leaves and yellow! Hail to the life-sound I hear; a snout against the grass, a dog sniffing over the ground! A wild hail to the wildcat lying crouched, sighting and ready to spring on a sparrow in the dark, in the dark! Hail to the merciful silence upon earth, to the stars and the half moon; ay, to them ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun

... lead. His bewildered smile is a prelude often to a strong move in action. Older and wiser men learn to love this lean wildcat who knows the strategic spots in the anatomy of the foe; who can spit scorn at the Agrarians and venomous contempt at the Liberals; who dares to glorify a government of authority and of force as though it were a democracy; who can hold the allegiance ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... have to lug off ten or twelve wagon loads of furniture to the Safe Deposit Company, and spend weeks and weeks a settlin' his bisness, in Western lands, and Northern mines, Southern railroads, and Eastern wildcat stocks, to get ready to go. And Miss Abraham didn't have to have a dozen dress-makers in the house for a month or two, and messenger boys, and dry goods clerks, and have to stand and be fitted for basks and polenays, and back drapery, and front drapery, ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley

... monkeys cowering at his approach in the branches overhead; he can shake the earth with a vibrating, resonant purr, like the sound of faint thunder in the foot-hills; he can mew and snarl like an angry wildcat; and he can roar like a lusty lion cub. But it is when he lifts up his voice in the long-drawn moan that the jungle chiefly fears him. This cry means that he is hungry, and, moreover, that he is so sure of his kill that he cares not if all the world knows ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... enraged wildcat mother," Jack told him, "and without a sign of a gun to back you, that's the time to spell prudence in big capital letters. They've got terrible claws, and can use them to tear a fellow's clothes to ribbons, not to mention what they'll ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton

... Herminius He leaned one breathing space; Then, like a wildcat mad with wounds, Sprang right at Astur's face. Through teeth, and skull, and helmet, So fierce a thrust he sped, The good sword stood a handbreadth out ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... were mink, coon, muskrat, wildcat, and beaver. Besides this the stores advertised that they would take for their articles cash, beeswax, and country produce or tallow, hogs' lard in white walnut kegs, butter, pork, new feathers, good horses, and also corn, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... said Peter. "Now I'll tell you something. If you had gone away in that ambulance to an anesthetic and an operation, no wildcat that ever indulged in a hunger hunt through this canyon could have put up a howl equal to the one that I would ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... not see you sooner, Meinherr," said Hayraddin, very submissively, "there is a young Scot, with as quick an eye as the wildcat, who watches my least motions. He suspects me already, and, should he find his suspicion confirmed, I were a dead man on the spot, and he would carry back the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... not take it to them. They have souls to be saved, my friend. I feel it is my duty to carry the word to them. As for the wildcats," he continued, smiling, "I have my rifle. Besides the government offers a small bounty for every wildcat." ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson

... questions until they learned the chief facts in his history. When the long conversation ended they knew that Deerfoot was the son of a Shawanoe chief, and that he was born in the Dark and Bloody Ground. When but a small boy he was like a spitting wildcat in his hatred of the white people, and it was not until he was wounded and nearly beaten to death, that he could be taken prisoner on one of the excursions of his people against the ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... in the case of Latisan, he was admitting to himself that he rather admired the young wildcat from the woods. At any rate, Latisan had accepted at face value Mern's repeated dictum that if the other fellow could get Mern while Mern was set on getting the fellow, there would be no grudges. Latisan's come-back, the chief ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... Hiram," said Squire Hall, "that'll never do in the world. Suppose Levi West should come back again, what then? I'm responsible for that money. If you wanted to borrow it now for any reasonable venture, you should have it and welcome, but for such a wildcat scheme—" ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... Sergeant Champe Adventure with Pirates Kenton, the Spy The Dying Volunteer Escape from a Mexican Quicksand Charged by a Rhinoceros Burning of the Erie Conflict with an Indian Fire on the Prairies The Captain's Story Tussle with a Wildcat Incident in Frontier Life Encounter with Robbers Shipwreck of the Monticello A Jungle Recollection Attack of Boonesborough Thrilling Incidents of Battle Family Attacked by Indians Thrilling Incident Adventures of Dr. Bacon A Battle with Snakes Estill's Defeat Incident at Niagara ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... growed over it, an' they was slick an' hearty. An' I've caught them as had lost a hind leg, an' they was in good condition. A beaver'll stand a lot, I tell you. But then, supposin' you git yer beaver, caught so fast he ain't no chance whatever to git clear. Then, like as not, some lynx, or wildcat, or fisher, or fox, or even maybe a bear, 'll come along an' help himself to Mr. Beaver without so much as a by yer leave. No, ye want to git him in the water; an' as he's just as anxious to git thar as you are to git him thar, that suits ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Whetstone would allow him to mount, still standing with that indifferent droop to his head. But one who was sharp would observe that he was rolling his old white eyes back to see, tipping his sharp ear like a wildcat to hear every scrape and creak of the leather. Then, with the man in the saddle, nobody ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden

... what he was going to do to him some day. But Bob had no intention of letting him escape so easily, and as Buck put his foot on the ground and turned with the intention of running, Bob was on him with the fury of a wildcat. Buck was prepared for this too, and when he saw that he was fairly cornered started ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman

... the little group of houses. He then took off his belt, hung it over the pommel, fastened the reins to the belt, and turned away. Sally would stay where he left her—unless someone else tried to get to her head, and then she would fight like a wildcat. He knew that, and he therefore started for Los Toros with his line of ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand

... fierce he took my appetite away for several hours each time I saw him," said Stubby Woodchuck, "and I am sure he looks fully as terrible as Ki-yi Coyote or Tom Wildcat. Yes, sir, we have a very mean and dangerous enemy in Mr. Brushtail, and we ...
— Doctor Rabbit and Brushtail the Fox • Thomas Clark Hinkle

... while taking a few chances, sit unmoved. Mr. Snivel thinks the woman better be removed. "Our half-starved mechanics," he says, "are a depraved set; and these wives they bring with them from the North are a sort of cross between a lean stage-driver and a wildcat. She seems a poor, destitute creature-just what they all come to, out here." Mr. Snivel shrugs his shoulders, bids George good night, and takes his departure. "Take care of yourself, George," he ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... even during their early childhood, when they were hardly half so tall as the guns they carried, were companion knights in the great wars waged by the settlers against the wild beasts of the forests, and many a bear, wolf, wildcat, and deer fell before the prowess of small Sir Diccon la Valorous and little Sir Thomas de Triflin'. Out of their slaughter grew friendship, and for many years Sir Thomas was a frequent guest upon the ciphering log of Sir Diccon, and Sir Diccon spent many winter ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... howling, and hard blows. For my own lot I had old Simon to deal with, as I knew at once by the cold, greasy feel of his leathern jerkin, he being enraged to make me his prisoner for the ill I had done him. Hooking his horny fingers about my throat, he clung to me like any wildcat; but stumbling, shortly, over two who were rolling on the floor, we went down both with a crack, and with such violence that he, being undermost, was stunned by the fall. Then, my blood boiling at this treatment, I got astride of him, and roasted his ribs royally, and with ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... copse they came across a short, wide tree, without leaves, but possessing a multitude of thin, flexible branches, like the tentacles of a cuttlefish. Some of these branches were moving rapidly. A furry animal, somewhat resembling a wildcat, leaped about among them in the most extraordinary way. But the next minute Maskull was shocked to realise that the beast was not leaping at all, but was being thrown from branch to branch by the volition of the tree, exactly as an imprisoned ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... of Zada's agony was her pitiful effort to take her medicine like a lady. It was terrific how hard it was for one of a wildcat heritage and habit to keep the caterwaul back and the claws muffled. The self-duel nearly wrecked Zada, but she won it. She was not thoroughbred, but she had tried to be thoroughgoing. She was evidently not a success as a self-made lady. She kept ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... was about to reply when he heard a low growl, and turning his head (which worked beautifully on hinges) he saw a strange beast come bounding over the grass toward them. It was, indeed, a great yellow Wildcat, and the Woodman thought it must be chasing something, for its ears were lying close to its head and its mouth was wide open, showing two rows of ugly teeth, while its red eyes glowed like balls of fire. As it came nearer the Tin Woodman saw that running ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... the way wildcat "mining" men have robbed the unsuspecting public. For these rupture swindlers take advantage of ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons

... assailed their ears as the people scurried by; references to old companies and their latest projects, and to new companies and new finds; talk about the menace of the runs pinching out, and talk about the danger of over-stocking the world's zinc markets; grumbling talk about the wildcat exploitation going on at every corner, and envious talk about a report that some wildcat promoter had just succeeded in selling a face of ore that had cut blind under the drill of the buyer in ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... him are partners, but I don't believe you know him clean to the bottom as well as I do. You wouldn't be in business with him if you did, for you are a straight man—a body can tell that by your eye and voice—and I've never heard of any shady, wildcat scheme ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... eyes, like an owl's; or, better, a wildcat's, as though they never winked. From the pupils, which were very small, the little light-colored lines radiated across very large blue irises. There was something baleful and compelling in their glare, so that even Hallowell, cool customer as he was, forgot immediately ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White

... penitence. Once, however, when Uncle Jim, as the boys and Polly called him, felt compelled to apply to rod to Dick—unjustly, as it afterward appeared—Bud burst into a tempest of passionate tears, and, leaping upon the Colonel's back, clung there clawing and striking like a wildcat until Allen was forced to let Dick go. It is shrewdly indicative of the Colonel's character that not only did he refrain from punishing Bud on that occasion, but, when floggings were subsequently due the little fellow, laid ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... Accordingly, I frowned savagely at my visitor. Apparently, however, she was not alarmed. Her eyes flashed fire and she began to gnash her teeth, seemingly bent upon serious hostilities. Aware of my danger, I immediately made great haste and snatched this cylindrical ruler from the desk, but the wildcat was too ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson

... be made with extreme rapidity, a good deal of preliminary practice on the part of the intending players would be necessary. Would this little group of players be, as he hoped, forthcoming? I still regarded the project as something of the wildcat kind; but I was struck by the undoubted success of Beckett's own experiments, actual and theoretical, so far; and, as the four players would at all events lose nothing, even if they gained nothing, by renewing them, I and the three others at last ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... stuffed full of food, made the child-larks so nervous that they hailed with delight the arrival of Policeman Bluejay in the early evening. The busy officer had brought with him Mrs. Chaffinch, a widow whose husband had been killed a few days before by a savage wildcat. ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum

... dollars instead of two thousand. "I ain't attempting," says he, "to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... wildcat, don't you, Toby?" whispered Landy, for the two boats were close enough together for the occupants to have shaken hands, had ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas

... must have scoured after us in silence, hunting us in the dark for the last mile. For as we stood out, a black blot on the hilltop against the night sky, they broke out in chorus just behind us, for all the world like a pack of hounds who had treed a wildcat; and too close for any fool lying to occur ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... you scared me at first, Thad; I sure thought it was a wildcat, or something, that had grabbed me. I'm trembling all over, what with the bites, the tumble, and ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... said Jack. "Ho! did you see him blink when he came up? It was worth while, Jerry, even if I have to fight you, but I don't believe I shall. You see, your father had to go off, and he asked me to keep the peace, and I said I would; and I didn't see any other way, wildcat that you are. A sweet condition the Charmer would have been in to go back to his Mamma, if I had not ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards

... woods became alive with night creatures, and the most harmless made the most noise. The owls began to hoot, and soon we heard the wildcat, whose cry—a screech like that of a lost and panic-stricken child—is one of the most appalling sounds of the forest. Later the wolves added their howls to the uproar, but though darkness came and we children whimpered ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw

... from a man no woman of her stamp could do anything but detest. She was the patientest creature you ever saw. She was even too patient. If I had been tied to such a cub, I think I should have cultivated the beautiful and benignant qualities of a wildcat; there would have been one good fight, and one of us would have been living, and the other would have been dead, and that would have been the end of it. But Mrs. Jedwort bore and bore untold miseries and a large number of children. She had had nine of these, and three were under the sod and six ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge

... bunch of quail from which he hoped to raise a family later on; a red fox that had a limp on account of the broken leg set by Toby after he had found the little animal apparently dying from hunger in the bitter wintry storm; and last but not least a small edition of a wildcat that never would make up with the hand that fed it, but continued to snarl and spit and look ferocious week after week, until even patient Toby was beginning to despair of ever calling ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie

... of life and death went on outside, the three people, the man, woman and child, in the cave slept as soundly as sleep the drunken or the just. They were full-fed and warm and safe. No beast of a size greater than that of a lank wolf or sinewy wildcat could enter the cave through the narrow entrance between the heaped-up rocks, and of these, as of any other dangerous beast, there was none which would face what barred even the narrow passage, for it was fire. Just at the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... rush me, did you?" growled the trader. "You didn't stop any too soon to save your bacon, you she-wildcat. Stand still now, or you'll git gentled with ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... "YOU'LL hammer on the floor with your heels! YOU'LL behave like a wildcat—you that's been like a kitten! You've never done it before and you'll never do it again! If it takes me three ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... his queer little companion. The tracks puzzled him somewhat, but since they had already served their purpose and were in process of obliteration he paid little attention to them. In his more ambitious rambles during late fall and winter, he had run across too many tracks of deer and bear and wildcat to become excited by these signs of some ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... big cat to tear things like that. Did you see it? Do you suppose it's a wildcat? Don't they have all sorts of creatures in the Nova Scotia woods? Do you suppose ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond

... could 'a' gone back an' made a mess o' the hull party with the toe o' my boot but I ain't overly fond o' killin'. Never have been. I took my time an' slopped erlong toward shore with the runt under my arm cussin' like a wildcat. We got ashore an' I made the leetle sergeant empty his pockets an' give me all the papers he had. I took the strip o' rawhide from round my belt an' put a noose above his knees an' 'nother on my wrist an' sot down to wait fer dark which the sun were then below the tree-tops. I looked with my ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... personality—the ability to win the confidence of others. He was sure that Andrew Jackson was all wrong in his opposition to Nicholas Biddle and the United States Bank, one of the great issues of the day; and he was worried, as he might well be, by the perfect storm of wildcat money which was floating about and which was constantly coming to his bank—discounted, of course, and handed out again to anxious borrowers at a profit. His bank was the Third National of Philadelphia, located in that ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... tatas, crabapple,—gen. tatse, dat. and acc. tatsi, &c., also, portz, wildcat, gen. portze, ...
— Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language - Shea's Library Of American Linguistics. Volume III. • Buckingham Smith

... twilight came, he crept through the bushes to the little stream in the ravine and drank deep again. His glance caught a pair of red eyes gleaming through the dusk and he saw a wildcat treading lightly. But the cat did not snarl or arch its back. Instead it moved away without any sign of hostility and climbed a big oak, in the brown foliage of which it was lost to Henry's sight. In his ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... books there is revealed the whole workings of a great American railroad system. There are adventures in abundance—railroad wrecks, dashes through forest fires, the pursuit of a "wildcat" locomotive, the disappearance of a pay car with a large sum of money on board—but there is much more than this—the intense rivalry among railroads and railroad men, the working out of running schedules, the getting through "on time" in spite of all obstacles, and the manipulation of railroad ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope

... feeble folk were to gather food for the warriors, of whom the principal ones were the Bear, Wolf, Wildcat and Bison. The Swallow served as messenger to the birds, and the swift Trout carried the news to the finny tribes, for all were ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman

... She was an ugly little hoyden of five years, this Giovanna, who, squat of stature and swarthy as a gypsy, bestrode her little pony like a man; but, though by nature stubborn and subject to fits of anger in which she bit and scratched like a wildcat, to me she had taken a fancy as intense ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... %341. Wildcat State Banks.%—As soon as the reelection of Jackson made it certain that the charter of the Bank of the United States would not be renewed, the same thing happened in 1833 that had occurred in 1811. The legislature of every state ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... next morning. He drew a breath of pure ecstasy, rolled over and began pummelling the inert form of Bob, who had shared his blanket on an improvised bed in the cabin. The Delaware boy opened an eye, closed it again with carefully assumed drowsiness, and the next instant leaped like a joyful wildcat on his tormentor. There was a beautiful tussle that was only broken off by Tom's ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... off her head, of course. She took me for a wildcat once, poor child. No, no—when she was sane she addressed me very properly. She's back on the old decorous ground now. Made me a beautiful little speech this morning, informing me that I had to stop calling ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond

... conditions must lead to such rational and recommendable behaviour. A psychological problem appears only when such a course of wisdom is abandoned, and either the savings are hidden away instead of being made productive, or are thrown away in wildcat schemes. Yet of the two extremes the first again is easily understood. A hysteric fear of possible loss, an unreasonable distrust of banks and bankers, keeps the overcautious away from the market. But while such a state of mind is said to be frequent in countries ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... he attempted to throw her off, but, frail strength magnified by a fury of fear, she joined issue with him, clinging to his wrists with the tenacity of a wildcat, though she was lifted from her feet and dashed this way and that, brutally, mercilessly, though her heart fell sick within her for the hopelessness ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance

... did not doubt but that it would be so. He concluded, therefore, not to catch Toby—that night. Moreover, he resolved to go back to his quarters and sleep. He was afraid of that wildcat; he dreaded the thought of trusting himself in the house with her. He durst not kill her, and he durst not go to sleep, leaving her alive. The Germans, perceiving his fear, looked at each other and grunted. That grunt was the German for "mean ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... Richmond!"] but eventuating in a defense of Washington, humiliating as was this reverse, promoted all sorts and conditions of men, moneyed, well-grounded, and investing in the new government securities, fluctuating like wildcat stock, to pester the President with Jeremiads and counsel. To one deputation from his home parts he administered this caustic rebuke in such illustration ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... Gloucester — Wilson thanked him for his generous manner of proceeding, and was discharged. On our return to our lodgings, my nephew explained the whole mystery; and I own I was exceedingly incensed — Liddy being questioned on the subject, and very severely reproached by that wildcat my sister Tabby, first swooned away, then dissolving in a flood of tears, confessed all the particulars of the correspondence, at the same time giving up three letters, which was all she had received from her admirer. ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... doctor's kindly talk wore off in a fortnight. Yet he was popular with teachers as well as pupils. His head was crowned with a mass of sandy hair and his impertinent face plastered with freckles. The boy was quick and full of grace as a wildcat and so well built and lithe that he was a terror on the ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... thickets. Cotton-tailed rabbits darted away, showing the white flag of fear. Once I thought I saw the fuscous gleam of a red fox stealing silently through the brush. It would have been no surprise to hear the bark of a raccoon, or see the eyes of a wildcat gleaming through ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... Rose, "if he had flopped into your face all dripping wet, in the dark, as he did into mine last night, you wouldn't have stopped to measure him before you yelled, any more than I did. He felt as big as—a wildcat, so there!" and Rose turned away with flushed cheeks, followed by ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston

... is, this business of taking directorships has never quite appealed to me. I don't know anything about the game, and I should probably run up against some wildcat company. I can't say I like the directorship wheeze much. It's the idea of knowing that one's name would be being used as a bait. Every time I saw it on a prospectus I should feel like a ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... Dan Anderson. "He didn't need any chimney. You've no idea how useless a chimney really is. He never stopped to cut any wood, but just fed a log in through the front door into the fire, and let the smoke go out the window. He had a pet wildcat that shared his legal studies—oh, I admit that some of our ways may seem strange to you, just fresh ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... Lover's Walk," said young Pickles, who was in high spirits, "under a pile of brush and trees. I though it was a wildcat, or something moving and snarling—the light was kind of dim—and when I went up there was McCuaig. He was alone. Two or three men were lying near him, dead, I guess, and he was swearing, and talking to himself something fierce. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... the wood seemed to awake. Owls insisted to the ears of the sleeping Humphrey that the morrow would be a fair day. Leaves rustled in the gentle wind. Far off sounded a wildcat's cry. And with these sounds in his ears ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... way to the rudely improvised prison, Mizzoo defended himself. "He wasn't too old and rheumatic to fight like a wildcat—why, he had to be lifted up bodily and carried into his cell. Not a word can we get out of him, or a bite of grub into him. I believe that old codger's just too ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... with amazement. When he had regained his power of thought and speech, he fell into a state of savage fury, which could be equalled by nothing living, except, perhaps, by a trapped wildcat, and among his objurgations, as he strode up and down his cell, the most prominent referred to the new and incomprehensible trick which this prince of human devils had just played upon him. That he had been talking to his old captain he did not doubt for a moment, and that that captain ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... elevator for us, and he looked like the loser in a battle royal. He says the stout dame has just left, and she's in a terrible state. I could believe that easy, because they is nothin' more vicious in the land of the free than a enraged come-on. I'd rather face a nervous wildcat than face ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer

... detaining hand on Nahum Beals's arm as he strode past him. "Oh, Lord, stop rampagin' up and down like a wildcat," he said. "What good do you think you're doin' tearin' and shoutin' and insultin' people? He ain't talkin' like a scab, he's only talkin' ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... not push Leila about what Tom did. John slapped his face and got knocked down. He got up and went at Tom like a wildcat. Tom knocked him down again and held him. He said that John must ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... ever done that was rational?" cried his mother sharply. "From the beginning, when she was a baby of three months old, and howled at me because I kissed her, and that dreadful mother of hers flew at me like a wildcat and said I had the evil eye, Leam Dundas has been more like some changeling than an ordinary English girl. I declare it sometimes makes my heart ache to, see her with those awful eyes of hers, looking as if she had seen one does not know what—as if she was being literally burnt up alive with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... his intentions, and roused to a fit of temporary insanity by her wrongs and sorrows, sprang at her supposed foe like a wildcat. She was naturally a strong woman, and violent passion lent her ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... lately that he had noticed it. Here was Buster and here was Prince, and here was the approaching joke of the preacher. Why then this sense of loneliness? Maybe loneliness wasn't the right word. Maybe it was longing. And for what? Not for Jude! Lord, no! Not for that young wildcat. But the feeling of emptiness was there, as real as hunger, and at this moment as persistent. Funny thing, longing. What in the world had a guy like him to ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... wildcat, Puppy Reiss crept up and listened to the two women bewailing to each other how they had worked all the past week to clean up the house and scour the kitchen things, and complaining about all they had to do before Passover, so that not a crumb of leavened bread should stick to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... brought his child back with him. It was four years since she had been carried off, and she was a regular little savage, when she arrived in the settlement with him. Of course she could not speak a word of English, and was as fierce as a little wildcat. I expect she got all right, ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... be offended, or look out from amang your curls then, like a wildcat out of an ivy-tod, for ye are to understand that he wishes most sincere weel to you, and has proved it. And it's partly that whilk has set the heather ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... the breast of Jack Carleton. For a year previous, stories had reached the settlement where he had made his home, of the wonderful Shawanoe youth, who was captured when a child, and while he was as untameable in his hatred of the whites as a spitting wildcat, but who was transformed by kindness into the most ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis

... formed a large living room. A great table in the middle was comfortably littered with books and magazines. All the available wall space, from floor to ceiling, was occupied by filled bookshelves. It seemed to Daylight that he had never seen so many books assembled in one place. Skins of wildcat, 'coon, and deer lay about ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... the time I came down in a brush-heap, where we had been clearing up a new potato-patch. It broke my fall, but it was very stiff, scratchy brush, and when I got out I felt as if I had been in an argument with Mr. Wildcat. I was limping, too, and afraid I was injured internally, for I didn't feel hungry, which is always a bad sign. I was taking on a good deal, and making some noise, I suppose, for when I got to the shop and was going ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine

... association of ideas," observed Horne Fisher. "If you meet a cat in a wood you think it's a wildcat, though it may have just strolled from the drawing-room sofa. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that is not the woodman's chopper. It's the kitchen chopper, or meat ax, or something like that, that ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... I will depart and leave you to organize. I wish you all the success you deserve to obtain through a wildcat scheme of a simple boy, who knows just about as much about business and business methods as a yellow dog knows about ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... a chief of the Shawanoes, who loved to fight; Deerfoot when a child was a wildcat in his hate of his enemies and of the pale faces; but the Great Spirit whispered in his ear, and he became another being. It was the Great Spirit who told him just now that danger threatened him. Hay-uta knows that Deerfoot could have slain him had he wished to do so; but he never wished ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... it no more than the scratch of a wildcat," said the armourer; "and now that the colour is coming to Catharine's cheek again, you shall see me a sound man in ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... especial," he grinned, "but you'll run across things—a wolf, mebbe, that'll get fresh with you, or a sneakin' coyote that'll kind of make the hair raise on the back of your neck, not because you're scared of him, but because you know his mean tricks an' don't admire them, or a wildcat, or a hydrophobia polecat, ma'am," he said, with slightly reddening cheeks; "but mostly, ma'am, I reckon you'll like shootin' at side-winders best. Sometimes they get mighty full of fight, ma'am—when it's ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... on one side at least, he inherited blind loyalty to my name. I say on one side, for his blood was mixed; his father had married a vagrant, a half-gypsy Irish girl who begged among the villages. It was the union of a stolid ox and a wildcat, and I had much amusement watching the two breeds fight for the mastery in the huge Pierre. The cat was quicker of wit, but the ox was of more use to me in the long run, so I tried to keep an excess of stimulants—whether of brandy or ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith



Words linked to "Wildcat" :   jaguarundi, ocelot, Pallas's cat, Felis serval, Felis, attacker, mountain lion, tiger cat, jaguarondi, leopard cat, exploratory, Felis pardalis, Felis bengalensis, explorative, Felis yagouaroundi, manul, oil well, genus Felis, Felis manul, cougar, Felis chaus, kaffir cat, panther cat, jaguarundi cat, cat, sand cat, caffer cat, Felis wiedi, eyra, true cat, unsound, oiler, aggressor, catamountain, serval, catamount, Felis ocreata, margay, assaulter, Felis silvestris, unofficial, jungle cat, assailant, painter, Felis concolor, puma, Felis tigrina, margay cat, panther, lynx



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