Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Woolly   /wˈʊli/   Listen
Woolly

adjective
1.
Having a fluffy character or appearance.  Synonyms: flocculent, wooly.
2.
Confused and vague; used especially of thinking.  Synonyms: addled, befuddled, muddled, muzzy, woolly-headed, wooly, wooly-minded.  "Your addled little brain" , "Woolly thinking" , "Woolly-headed ideas"
3.
Covered with dense often matted or curly hairs.  Synonyms: woolly-haired, wooly, wooly-haired.
4.
Covered with dense cottony hairs or hairlike filaments.  Synonym: lanate.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Woolly" Quotes from Famous Books



... black shadow against the walnut wainscoting; he formed the connecting link between the dining-room and the remote kitchen. Betty suspected that most of the platters journeyed down the long corridor deftly perched on top of his woolly head. She frequently detected him with greasy or sticky fingers, which while it argued a serious breach of trust also served to indicate his favorite dishes. These two servitors were aware that their mistress was laboring under some unusual stress of emotion. In its presence big ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... equally upon its face. These portraits are racier than many anecdotes, and more complete than many a volume of sententious memoirs. You can see whether you get a stronger and clearer idea of Robertson the historian from Raeburn's palette or Dugald Stewart's woolly and evasive periods. And then the portraits are both signed and countersigned. For you have, first, the authority of the artist, whom you recognise as no mean critic of the looks and manners of men; and next you have ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... tribes of the Malayo-Polynesian race retaining their uncivilised and primitive state. Be this as it may, of these Harfours D'Urville states, that they reminded him of the ordinary type of the Australians, New Caledonians, and the black race of Oceania, from their sooty colour, coarse but not woolly hair, thick beards, and habit of scarifying the body. I mention these Harfours for the purpose of stating that no people answering to the description of them given above were seen by us in New Guinea or the ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... Fifth Avenue, so their forebears at some prehistoric period had, likely as not, occupied the same cave and had in company waded on frosty mornings the ice-skimmed swamps of Mittel Europa in pursuit of the cave bear, the mastodon and the woolly rhinoceros, and for afternoon relaxation had made up twosomes for hunting wives with stone clubs instead of mashies in ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... in the night, of his long journeys on horseback, driving great flocks of bleating sheep over endless steppes and wolds and expanses of pasture and meadow; he remembered the reddening of the sheep's woolly coats in the evening sun, the quick change from gold to grey as the sun went down, the slow transition from twilight to night, the uncertain gait of his weary beast as the darkness closed in, the soft sound of the sheep huddling together, the bark of his dog, the sudden, ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... Growers in turn rode East to take possession of Ottawa there was a popular expectation that they were about to whoop in and shoot up the town in the real old wild and woolly way. They were referred to cleverly as "Sod-Busters." It was rather startling to find them merely a new type of Business Farmer, trained to think on his feet, a ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... one of these trips to the town came just the week before Christmas, and Gretchen's eyes were delighted by the sight of the lovely Christmas-trees which stood in the window of the village store. It seemed to her that she would never tire of looking at the knit dolls, the woolly lambs, the little wooden shops with their queer, painted men and women in them, and all the other fine things. She had never owned a plaything in her whole life; therefore, toys which you and I would not think much of, seemed to ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... to contend with. In the first place, being a sheepman, he was absolutely without caste in the cattle country, where men who went in for the "woolly idiots," as someone has aptly called them, was considered for the most part as a degenerate, and only fit for target practice. This side of the matter troubled him not at ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... Robin filled her gleaming tub with hot water and quickly undressed Susy and put her, wailing, into it. Then she rushed to the pantry, commandeered a yellow box, fled back and dropped a generous portion of its contents into the tub. Next she spread a soft woolly blanket on her bed, wrapped another around the child and rolled her in both until nothing but the tip of ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott

... like bloody pools through cotton-woolly mist; The Captain kept a-lookin' at the watch upon his wrist; And there we smoked and squatted, as we watched the shrapnel flame; 'Twas wonnerful, I'm tellin' you, how fast them bullets came. 'Twas weary work the waiting, though; I tried to sleep a wink, For waitin' means a-thinkin', ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service

... Mose was to be the honored driver of the carriage, to take them to the railway station. Never was there a prouder or happier negro. He showed the importance of his duty in every turn of his body. He was dressed in a new suit of clothes, and a tall silk hat ornamented his woolly head. He held his whip and lines like ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick

... so foolish as to be caught in this way. There were in the cave a number of stout and woolly rams. Of these I put three abreast and tied them together with twigs that happened to be in the cave. Under each middle ram I tied one of my companions. The two sheep, one on each side of him, hid ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... yaourt, or coagulated milk, and other forms of lacteal dishes, sometimes mixed with meal, form the chief diet of the poor. The wife of our host, a buxom woman, who, as we had seen, could leap upon a horse's back as readily as a man, now entered the doorway, carrying a full-grown sheep by its woolly coat. This she twirled over on its back, and held down with her knee while the butcher artist drew a dagger from his belt, and held it aloft until the assembly stroked their scant beards, and uttered the solemn bismillah. Tired out ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... properly so-called, there was none. We had agreed to reunite after riding on for twenty minutes or so, but we forgot that such a determination might not be so easily accomplished as designed. Our black guard pulled up, shouting lustily, and tugging at and scratching his woolly locks, uncertain in which direction to pursue us. In vain he shouted, and shrieked, and swore. The extraordinary mixture of nigger and French oaths in which he gave vent to his fury had no effect on us. He might as well have tried to stop a fly-away eagle with them. We turned round ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... story short, I shall follow poor Jack, and let the other two take their chance, for I don't think there was much good in them. Off poor Jack rides over hills, dales, valleys, and mountains, through woolly woods and sheepwalks, where the old chap never sounded his hollow bugle-horn, farther than I can tell you to-night or ever intend ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... giving herself a twist, passed her woolly tail across her eyes; while the greyhound watched her, but held his peace. Then ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... ship that farest forth, a greater Argo, Unto the homeland of the woolly fleece, Soft gales attend thee! may thy precious cargo Slide over oceans smoothed of every crease, So as the very flower, or pick, Of England's flanneled chivalry ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various

... forward over his eyes, shutting out the dazzle of the morning sun. Once or twice he shook himself, being heavy with broken sleep, and gazed across the ridges, then drew up his knees, clasped them, and let his heavy, woolly head drop forward, nodding. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... boy, with a woolly dog, made shy advances of friendship, and in a little time we had set him to gathering flowers for us: asphodels and bee-orchids, anemones, and the little thin green iris so fairylike and frail. The murmur of the tourist crowd had merged itself ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... wool is the production of the llama, or al-lama, a native of South America. This ruminant animal resembles in its nature, but not in its form, a camel. The back and sides of the llama are clothed with fine long woolly hairs, becoming smooth, silky, and shining towards the tips, the general colours being of a uniform bright brown. The native Indians use it in the manufacture of stuffs, ropes, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... changed materially by external conditions, the latter (I think) never, except in such a coarse way as stunting or enlarging—e.g. no increase of cold on the spot, or change of individual plant from hot to cold, will induce said individual plant to get more woolly covering; but I suppose a series of cold seasons would bring about such a change in an individual quadruped, just as rowing will harden hands, etc.") I fancied a bud lived only a year, and you could hardly expect any change in that time; but if you call a tree or plant an individual, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... for your compliment, Mr. B., but I have not forgotten your Buffalo-hunt, your Mermaid, nor your Woolly Horse. They were a good offset to my rich helmet and sword, my burnished gauntlets and gaudy cuirass. Both are intended as advertisements of something genuine, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... automaton. She walked about the streets like a bored exile, but an exile who has forgotten his home. Her spirit never responded to the stimulus of environment. Suggestions at once lost their tonic force in the woolly cushion of her apathy. If she continued to live, it was by inertia; to cease from life would have required an effort. She did not regret the vocation which she had abandoned; she felt no curiosity about the fortunes of the newspaper. A ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... chanced to be Christmas Eve, it was infernally cold. The snow was falling in heavy flakes, and, driven by the wind, beat furiously against the window panes. The distant chiming of the bells could just be heard through this heavy and woolly atmosphere. Foot-passengers, wrapped in their cloaks, slipped rapidly along, keeping close to the house and bending their heads to ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... Aaron was, in our sense, black; and he appears to have been a Negro. To mention nothing else, he is twice called 'coal-black'; his colour is compared with that of a raven and a swan's legs; his child is coal-black and thick-lipped; he himself has a 'fleece of woolly hair.' Yet he is 'Aaron the Moor,' just as Othello is 'Othello the Moor.' In the Battle of Alcazar (Dyce's Peele, p. 421) Muly the Moor is called 'the negro'; and Shakespeare himself in a single line uses 'negro' and 'Moor' of the same ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... do you make of it?" He threw back his head and laughed a frank, boyish laugh, as he finished. "Some wild and woolly adventure, eh? Who were those little men? And what does it ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell

... altogether like were her eyes—which, though large and well shaped, had in them an occasional glitter—and her hands, which, though remarkably white and slender, had very long and curved nails, that to his mind suggested all sorts of unpleasant ideas. She was becomingly dressed in brown—brown woolly garments, with a brown fur cap, brown stockings, and brown shoes ornamented with very bright silver buckles. Altogether she was decidedly chic; and if a little incongruous in her surroundings, such incongruity only made ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... have three distinct kinds of goats: the rabbu, or large woolly animal, such as the one I had purchased; the ratton, or small goat; and the chitbu, a dwarf goat whose flesh is delicious eating. The rabbu and ratton are the two kinds generally used for carrying loads, and they have sufficient strength to bear ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs, Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece; The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee, As the woolly-pates hoe in the sugar-field, the overseer views them from his saddle, The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other, The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof'd garret and harks to the musical rain, The Wolverine sets traps on the creek ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... obligatory upon them in their intercourse with European states and colonies. But we have a different law of nations regulating our intercourse with the Indian tribes on this continent; another, between us and the woolly-headed natives of Africa; another, with the Barbary powers; another, with the flowery land, or Celestial empire. This last is the nation with which Great Britain is now at war. Then, reasoning on the rights ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... see how that broad prickly star-shaped plant, Half-down in the crevice, spreads its woolly leaves, All thick and glistening ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... "I see another crack in my friend's sides. We all fall in love with beautiful ladies, my poor Asticot, one after the other, plunging into destruction with the comic sheep-headedness of the muttons of Panurge. Another woolly one over? Ho! ho! laughs the man in the moon, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... overtook Mr. Britling. He was wearing now a very old blue flannel blazer, no hat, and a pair of knickerbockers, not tweed breeches but tweed knickerbockers of a remarkable bagginess, and made of one of those virtuous socialistic homespun tweeds that drag out into woolly knots and strings wherever there is attrition. His stockings were worsted and wrinkled, and on his feet were those extraordinary slippers of bright-coloured bast-like interwoven material one buys in the north of France. ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... chewer, or snuffer can expect to find in any tobacco shop, besides a good many things that he never will find in any of these shops. Prominent among these symbolical displays is the counterfeit presentment of a jet-black Indian of African descent—his woolly head adorned with a crown of pearls and feathers; in his right hand an uplifted tomahawk, with which he is about to kill some invisible enemy; in his left a meerschaum, supposed to be the pipe of peace; a tobacco plantation in the background, and a group of warriors smoking ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... his rags he is wearing a vest, as woolly and soft as a man could wish. Let him gull the state, and he's off to the mart; an eager, extravagant buyer ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes

... every day came fresh and delightfully interesting contributions to her outfitting from Jeannette or Aunt Olivia—a handsome little handbag of silk and silver to match the traveling suit; a snug toilet case of soft blue leather, holding everything mortal woman could want on train or ship; a great woolly steamer rug to use on shipboard. Georgiana could only catch her breath at such kindness, and dash off hasty notes of spirited thanks, and protests against any more of the same sort. But in spite of her pride it was impossible to resist accepting these ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond

... retorted Drusilla angrily. "It's mo' woolly dan what mine is. 'T ain't never been kyarded much less combed. An' who got any mo' strings roun' der hair dan you got ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris

... of the picture was in the West, when it was still "wild and woolly," and depicted many encounters between settlers and Indians. These fights were the subject of much criticism by the expert audience, who did not hesitate to shout words of advice at ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall

... O'Lynn had no breeches to wear, He bought a sheepskin for to make him a pair, With the skinny side out, and the woolly side in, 'They're warm in the ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... she, takin' me by the shoulders and turnin' them blue eyes of hers straight at me. "My new steady? That—that woolly-haired freak?" ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... lappels in which are stuck a few pins for use in sudden inspirations, a flowered waistcoat, and a heavy watch-chain. His head is bald and surrounded by a fringe of dust-colored gray hair, frizzled so finely that it looks like swans'-down. His whiskers and moustache have the same fine and woolly appearance. His blue eyes look worn and faded; his face has flushed red patches on a pale anaemic ground; his expression is one of subdued suffering, due to the continual neuralgia by which he is tormented, thanks to the strong perfumes which his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... was opened, and there appeared before him, in the moonlight, the bent and crooked figure of an aged negress. She was clad in a calamanco raiment, and was further adorned with a variety of gaudily colored trimmings, vastly suggestive of the tropical world of which she was an inhabitant. Her woolly head was enveloped, after the fashion of her people, in the folds of a gigantic and flaming red turban constructed of an entire pocket handkerchief. Her face was pock-pitted to an incredible degree, so that what with this deformity, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... in dense, pyramidal clusters. Calyx of 5 sepals; corolla of 5 rounded petals; stamens, 20 to 60; usually 5 pistils, downy. Stem: 2 to 3 ft. high, erect, shrubby, simple, downy. Leaves: Dark green above, covered with whitish woolly hairs beneath; oval, saw-edged, 1 ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... warbled from their cages among the green vines, and every thing around the place betokened the approaching return of its refined and tasteful mistress. The expectant servants ran hither and thither from window to door, and from door to window, thrusting out their woolly heads at every sound of carriage-wheels. Never lagged the time so wearily, and never was house more joyous than that, as the waning day brought the loved ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... life and engaging simplicity. Then he had such a wonderful picture face, with its fringe of curling hair which thrust its way out from under the thick, arctic helmet of fur which was part of his outer clothing. For a moment, as he bundled over the snow like a brown woolly ball, Steve wondered how he managed it, so encased was his small figure in seal-skin. But he did, and his high-pitched greeting to the man with the dog train floated back upon the still, cold air as he ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... climes, Dolls of all ages and dolls of all times; Soldier dolls, sailor dolls, red, white and blue; Khaki dolls, darkie dolls, trusty and true; Curio Chinese and quaint little Japs, Nid-nodding at nothing, the queer little chaps; Bigger dolls, nigger dolls woolly and black, With never a coat or a shirt to their back. Dolls made of china and dolls made of wood, Dutch dolls and such dolls, and all of them good; Dolls of fat features, and dolls with more pointed ones, Dolls that were rigid and dolls that were jointed ones, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... palate! You woolly-haired hordes! You owned persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops! You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes! I dare not refuse you—the scope of the world, and of time and space, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... very imperfect knowledge of the ethnological history of New Guinea. Speaking very broadly, it is generally admitted that the bulk of the population belongs to the Papuan race, a dark-skinned, woolly-haired people who have also spread over western Oceania; but, to a greater or less extent, New Guinea has been subject to cultural and racial influences from all sides, except from Australia, where the movement has been the other way. Thus the East Indian archipelago has directly affected ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... and going home with his patron was indescribable. He laid out a portion of his gold in a suit of plain clothes, white linen shirts, and in every respect the wardrobe of a man of fashion; in fact, he was now a complete gentleman's gentleman; was very particular in frizzing his woolly hair—wore a white neck-cloth, gloves, and cane. Every one felt inclined to laugh when he made his appearance; but there was something in Mesty's look, which, at all events, prevented their doing so before his face. The day for sailing arrived. Jack took leave of the Governor, thanking him for ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... selection to improve the qualities which evidently commend themselves to our use. The flesh of this species is quite as good as that of the wild bulls of the genus Bos, and the hides have a peculiar value on account of their somewhat woolly character. There is reason to believe that, bred in the region of the high north, about Lake Saskatchewan for instance, with proper selection this hairy covering could be developed much as has the wool on the sheep. ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... then with a pluck of their tooth the work was always made even, and the bitten wool-shreds adhered to their dried lips, which shreds at first had stood out from the fine thread. And in front of their feet wicker baskets of osier twigs took charge of the soft white woolly fleece. These, with clear-sounding voice, as they combed out the wool, outpoured fates of such kind in sacred song, in song which none age yet to come ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... sprung, were her own private property. They had been given to her when she was six years old. Tat had died. But Tit. I knew Tit? Did I not? No one could spend an hour in Mansfield Court without making the acquaintance of the ancient thing on the hearthrug, with the shape of a woolly lamb and the eye of a hawk and the smile of a Court jester. Besides, I had known him since he was a puppy. I, moi qui parle, had been the donor of Tit and Tat. I reminded her. I was a stupid. As if she didn't know. But I was to confirm her right to ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... do it," said Frank, coolly. "I know this section of the country is called 'the wild and woolly West,' but it is not sufficiently wild and woolly to overlook a cold-blooded murder. If you take a fancy to shoot two boys you will be pretty sure ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... in the kitchen, busy over a heap of more or less woolly garments belonging to himself. Jimsie was at afternoon school; Jeannie sat in the little parlour knitting as though ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell

... March hare table, the lion table, the lamb table, or the pussy willow table. Each table is marked by a distinguishing centerpiece: at the March hare table is a plaster rabbit, at the lion table, a toy lion; the lamb table has a woolly lamb on wheels, and the pussy willow table, a bunch of pussy willows or ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt

... it strange that the rich Miller never gave little Hans anything in return, though he had a hundred sacks of flour stored away in his mill, and six milch cows, and a large flock of woolly sheep; but Hans never troubled his head about these things, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to listen to all the wonderful things the Miller used to say about the ...
— The Happy Prince and Other Tales • Oscar Wilde

... emulate them, and leap on land, Before the fisher, or into his hand. Thou hast thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers, Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours. The early cherry with the later plum, Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come: The blushing apricot and woolly peach Hang on thy walls that every child may reach. And though thy walls be of the country stone, They're rear'd with no man's ruin, no man's groan; There's none that dwell about them wish them down; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... Steele. "Actually, that country clown is trying on, right here in New York, the same primitive methods that real estate boomers use in the soggy South and the woolly West. Would you believe it? Come ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... horizon; the doctor proposed a halt for breakfast. They swallowed it rapidly, and in half an hour they were off again. The ground was sloping gently; a few patches of snow, preserved either by their position or the slope of the rocks, gave it a woolly appearance, like waves in a high wind. The country was still barren, and looking as if no living being had ever set foot ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... group, too, who embodies one of Hawthorne's most delicate fancies, could have breathed no atmosphere less richly perfumed with old romance. In New York he would certainly have been in danger of a Barnum's museum, beside Washington's nurse and the woolly horse. It is a triumph of art that a being whose nature trembles on the very verge of the grotesque should walk through Hawthorne's pages with such undeviating grace. In the Roman dreamland he is in little ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... feet sinking deep into one of the woolly stars, her slim figure encircled by the light from the upper hall window. She saw a dozen faces uplifted to her, and she answered ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund

... during February, when The Legends of King Arthur were uppermost in Johnnie's mind, that the flat had a mysterious caller, this a bald-headed, stocky man wearing a hard black hat, a gray woolly storm coat, and overshoes. "You Johnnie Smith?" he asked when the door was opened ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... into a wild and woolly yarn which would have been looked upon with suspicion by the editor of a blood-and-thunder ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... their hostile designs, conspire to be especially attractive in Cauterets. We waste much time—from a masculine standpoint—in an enticing lace store, where really fine Spanish nettings are purchased at tempting prices. They sell too, in Cauterets, the woolly stuffs called Bareges crape, marvelously delicate in texture, woven in various tints for mufflers and capes and shoulder-wraps. Farther up the street, we are allured during the forenoon into buying a woollen berret or two, and scarlet sashes, the badge of the country, for to-morrow's ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... was the smoothest turf, a band of it only—not coarse grass with stalks far apart, as it is on most sea-beaches; but smooth and short as though it had been cropped by a thousand woolly generations. "Such a place!" they both cried. And Anna, who had never been here before, clapped ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... little clouds of wool which will come to you if you cannot come to them, and make themselves sensible to you in the form of the old philosophic wool, as it was called? We shall have left in that crucible, also, a quantity of this woolly matter. But I will take a piece of this same zinc and make an experiment a little more closely at home, as it were. You will have here the same thing happening. Here is the piece of zinc, there [pointing to a jet of hydrogen] ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday

... gathered in his eyes. He hugged the despised china dog fondly to him, and carried it indoors to put in a place of honour in Granny Pyetangle's oak corner-cupboard—where it looked out proudly from behind the glass doors, in company with the best tea-cups, a shepherdess tending a woolly lamb, two greyhounds on stony-white cushions, and Grandfather ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... old sheep-dog of a dirty white colour with woolly tufts about its nose and eyes walked three times quietly round the horse, trying to seem unconcerned in the presence of strangers, then all at once dashed suddenly from behind at the overseer with an angry aged growl; the other ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... with the rapidity of lightning he struck the savage on the neck, immediately under the ear. The Dead Boxer fell, and from his ears, nostrils, and mouth the clear blood sprung out, streaking, in a fearful manner, his dusky neck and chest. His second ran to raise him, but his huge woolly head fell from side to side with an appearance of utter lifelessness. In a few minutes, however, he rallied, and began to snort violently, throwing his arms and limbs about him with a quivering energy, such as, in strong men who die unwasted ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... everlasting; satin grasses in the moist soil of the open woodlands where the fine white flowers of the Canada anemone blow, and slough grass in the marshy meadows where the white-crossed flowers of the sharp spring are fading, and the woolly stem of the bitter boneset is lengthening; reed grass and floating manna grass in the swamps where the broad arrow leaves of the sagittaria fringe the shore and the floating leaves and fragrant blossoms of the water ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... a butterfly," with utter intensity of joy and singleness of purpose, was a sight to be remembered. For Carlotty was a pickaninny four years old, and blacker than the Ace of Spades! Her purple calico dress, pink apron, and twenty little woolly braids tied with bits of yellow ribbon made her the most tropical of butterflies; and the children, having a strong sense of color and hardly any sense of humor, were always entirely carried away ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... becoming little bodies of themselves with long tails upon them, and looking just like a squad of white rats! The large body to which they had all been attached we now saw was an old female opossum, and evidently the mother of the whole troop. She was about the size of a cat, and covered with woolly hair of a light grey colour. She had a snout somewhat resembling that of a pig, though much sharper at the point, and with whiskers like a cat. Her ears were short and standing— her mouth very wide, and, as we could see, full of sharp teeth. ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... Jumbo. I hear two wild an' woolly bad-men are after me. One is a tall, lopsided, cock-eyed rooster, an' the other is a hammered-down sawed-off runt. They sure have got me good an' scared. I've been runnin' ever since I ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine

... curling horns, giving their countenances a ferocious aspect—range up and down, sometimes amounting to ten thousand head in one herd. They commonly go by the name of buffaloes, but are properly called bisons. Clothed in a dense coat of long woolly hair, the buffalo is well constituted to stand the heats of summer as well as the cold of the snowy plains in the northern regions to which he extends ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... world is the great source of energy and the great marshaler of energy. From the child bored by lack of playmates, who brightens up at the sight of a woolly little dog, to the old and vigorous man who makes the mistake of resigning from work, this function ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... to make sounds now, and had achieved the word "puss-ee". This originally had signified the woolly kitten he carried with him, but now by a metonymy it had come to include all kinds of living things; and great was the delight of the parents when a big red automobile flashed past, and the baby pointed his finger, exclaiming gleefully, "Puss-ee!" It is an astonishing thing, how little ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... contact, the scales interlock (see Fig. 9), and thus the fibres are held together. Just as with hair, the scales of which have their free edges pointing upwards away from the root, and towards the extremity of the hair, so with wool. When the wool is on the back of the sheep, the scales of the woolly hair all point in the same direction, so that while maintained in that attitude the individual hairs slide over one another, and do not tend to felt or mat; if they did, woe betide the animal. The fact of the peculiar serrated, scaly structure of hair and wool is easily ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith

... head was a perforated sheet-iron bottom like a housewife's colander. Into this box the gravel was shovelled by one miner. The man's 'pardner' poured in water and rocked the cradle—cradled the sand. The water ran through the perforated bottom to a second {30} floor of quicksilver or copperplate or woolly blanket which caught the gold. On a larger scale, when streams were directed through wooden boxes, the gold was sluiced; on a still larger scale, the process was hydraulic mining, though the same in principle. In fact, in huge free milling works, where ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... she would amuse herself with pulling off the pillow-cases. Then she would butt her woolly head among the pillows, until it was covered with feathers sticking out in all directions. She would climb the bedpost, and hang head downwards from the top; wave the sheets and covers all over the room; dress the bolster up in Miss Ophelia's nightgown and act scenes with it, singing, whistling, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin, Young Folks' Edition • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... the serving man; he being a great negro, grotesquely attired as a man of fashion. Indeed, had not the whole place been so threatening, I should have paused to laugh at this dusky scoundrel, whose white hat sat jauntily on the side of his woolly head, and whose well-cut black coat was ornamented with a great bunch of white flowers. But there was evil in this man's face, and in the faces of the others who sat close-packed on the faded couches; and when ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... for the sacrifice of any portion of their natural liberty. The colour of these people is a dark chocolate; their features bear a strong resemblance to the African negro; they have the same flat nose, large nostrils, wide mouth and thick lips; but their hair is not woolly, except in Van Dieman's Land, where they have this further ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... how it came that Mr. Neelands took the out-trail when all the signs were against travelling, but to his unaccustomed eye there was nothing to fear in the woolly grayness of the sky, nor in the occasional snowflake that came riding on the wind. The roads were hard-packed and swept clean by the wind, and the sensation of space ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... figure of this dog could be obtained. He approaches in appearance to the largest kind of shepherd's dog. The head is elongated, the forehead flat, and the ears short and erect, or with a slight direction forwards. The body is thickly covered with hair of two kinds—the one woolly and gray, the other silky and of a deep yellow or fawn colour. The limbs are muscular, and, were it not for the suspicious yet ferocious glare of the eye, he might pass for a handsome dog. The Australasian dog, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... Hundred to the Flocks' is the way they'll headline it, and they'll print photographs of the old Van Dresser mansion and the church where I was married. They won't have my picture, but they'll get an artist to draw it. I'll be wild and woolly, and ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... had indulged in too many tests of Oak Creek whiskey, called "Pizen" by the natives. The cow-boys were picturesque enough. in their wide sombreros, woolly chaps, gay shirts, and a swagger that matched their trick of shooting. The miners were swarthy, bearded foreigners, who wore long boots, loose shirts, and belts from which ugly-looking ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... upon Ulysses; "Tell me," he said, "who is that other, shorter by a head than Agamemnon, but broader across the chest and shoulders? His armour is laid upon the ground, and he stalks in front of the ranks as it were some great woolly ram ordering ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... say it was high time you got away from the wild and woolly West!" cried Jack Diamond. "I've heard that loneliness on the ocean or the plains makes a man gloomy, and, by Jove! ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish

... which floats ashore in loathsome blobs, a hand's breadth and more, the centre a grey, solidified slime, with a periphery of long, dull green, slimy, shapeless fringes Individual plants coalesce on the sand and, mingling with other weeds, cover respectable beaches with a woolly, compact mass not unlike a rough, thick blanket, but teeming with unpleasantnesses. Isolated plants cling to ropes, which become garlanded with thickened slime, from which evil-smelling mud oozes. Offensive ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... Connubial vines o'ertop the larch they climb, The long-lived olive mocks the moth of time, Pomona's pride, that old Grenada claims, Here smiles and reddens in diviner flames; Pimento, citron scent the sky serene, White woolly clusters fringe the cotton's green, The sturdy fig, the frail deciduous cane And foodful cocoa fan the ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... days your wild and woolly man is transformed, and no longer does your sympathy go out towards him. Shaven and shorn, clad in silken underwear, with patent leather shoes, and a suit in New York style, you absolutely fail to recognise him as your friend of the moccasins and mackinaw ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... the clergyman found him. Not this clergyman, you understand. The one before, Father Vivian. He's now a bishop. Out somewhere in Africa. That's his photograph on the wall over there. He sent us a picture-postcard the other day. Little black woolly-headed baby with no clothes on! I haven't seen it myself, because my eyes are bad; but they all laugh at it, and I dare say it's funny enough. A nice man Father Vivian was. A genneman. He's a bishop now, but he don't forget his old friends, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... figure, and her dress fitted it to perfection. It was a white dress, and she had a very gorgeous parasol, deeply fringed, and she wore a kerchief of many colours round her shoulders, and an equally bright silk one cleverly twisted into a little cap on her woolly head. Her costume was, in short, very ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... a foot broad, and perhaps eighteen inches deep, all with outriggers—namely, a slight wooden frame or raft to balance them, and for the most part containing two men, or sometimes three or four. Before long, not less than fifteen or twenty had come on board, with woolly hair and mahogany skins, generally wearing a small strip of calico, but some without even this. They were small men, but lithe and supple, and walked about the deck quite at ease, chattering in a language no one understood except the words 'Missy ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... once for all; a secret which has been rediscovered at the present day. Pretty women use it, and that which was formerly considered ugly is now considered an embellishment. Gwynplaine had yellow hair. His hair having probably been dyed with some corrosive preparation, had left it woolly and rough to the touch. Its yellow bristles, rather a mane than a head of hair, covered and concealed a lofty brow, evidently made to contain thought. The operation, whatever it had been, which had deprived his features of harmony, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... from half-a-dozen animals of a large size, with strong horns bent back and flattened towards the point, with a woolly fleece, hidden under long silky ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... we can judge of the larger animals which dwelt in that old world. About these lost lowlands wandered herds of the woolly mammoth. Elephas primigenius, whose bones are common in certain Cambridge gravels, whose teeth are brought up by dredgers, far out in the German Ocean, off certain parts of the Norfolk coast. With them wandered ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... Sally's deafness, and the increasing thickness of the air, in which the two old figures were dimly seen as through a woolly veil, conversation was really impossible. There were many questions Maisie would have liked to ask about the kitten's future comfort, but she saw that they would be useless; so she contented herself with quietly saying good-bye to her favourite, and dropping a few secret tears over it. Dennis, ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton

... the strange wonder of thine infant lip, What this aghast surprise of keenest panging, Wherefrom I blench, and cry thy soft mouth rest? Ah hold, withhold, and let the sweet mouth slip! So, with such pain, recoils the woolly dam, Unused, affrighted, from her yeanling lamb: I, one with her in cruel fellowship, Marvel what ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... glabrous at low levels. If I DO find that I have marked such facts, I will lay the evidence before you. I wonder how the belief could have originated! Was it through final causes to keep the plants warm? Falconer in talk coupled the two facts of woolly Alpine plants and mammals. How candidly and meekly you took my Jeremiad on your severity to second-class men. After I had sent it off, an ugly little voice asked me, once or twice, how much of my noble defence of the poor in spirit and in fact, was owing to your having not seldom ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... Alexander Pop, the colored helper around the Rover homestead. He scratched his woolly head thoughtfully. "Yo' don't mean to say it am lak a plane a carpenter man uses, does yo', Massa Dick? 'Pears lak to me it was moah lak some ship sails layin' down,—somethin' lak dem ships we see over in Africy, when we went into dem jungles ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer

... the woolly leaves over very slowly. He frowned impatiently, and from the end backwards turned them over again. Then he laid the book softly down on the table and sat back. He stared with narrowed lids into the ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... arrived in Iceland during the early spring, I had an opportunity of seeing the horses and sheep in their winter garments. The horses seemed to be covered, not with hair, but with a thick woolly coat; their manes and tails are very long, and of surprising thickness. At the end of May or the beginning of June the tail and mane are docked and thinned, their woolly coat falls of itself, and they then look smooth enough. The sheep have also a very thick ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... so, since those themselves thou canst not see, Their motion also must they veil from men— For mark, indeed, how things we can see, oft Yet hide their motions, when afar from us Along the distant landscape. Often thus, Upon a hillside will the woolly flocks Be cropping their goodly food and creeping about Whither the summons of the grass, begemmed With the fresh dew, is calling, and the lambs, Well filled, are frisking, locking horns in sport: Yet all for us seem blurred and blent afar— A glint of ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius

... as we were going to church, I was too little at the time to remember, mother said that a small black boy with very white teeth and a very woolly head, would pop up ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... destined from the beginning to be a day of misfortunes. She woke with a dull, listless feeling, and the first thing to greet her eyes when she went downstairs was the woolly head of Bob, the grandson of her sole dependence, Aunt Sally, waiting on the doorstep to impart the cheering information that granny had the "misery" in her side mighty bad, and couldn't ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard

... roots, with scarcely any change in other parts of the plant. Alum directly influences the colour of the flowers of the Hydrangea.[680] Dryness seems generally to favour the hairyness or villosity of plants. Gaertner found that hybrid Verbascums became extremely woolly when grown in pots. Mr. Masters, on the other hand, states that the Opuntia leucotricha "is well clothed with beautiful white hairs when grown in a damp heat; but in a dry heat exhibits none of this peculiarity."[681] Slight variations ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... while, like other folks, To let a killing butcher coax A score of lambs and fatted sheep to slaughter. A sturdy man he looked to fell an ox, Bull-fronted, ruddy, with a formal streak Of well-greased hair down either cheek, As if he dee-dashed-dee'd some other flocks Besides those woolly-headed stubborn blocks That stood before him, in vexatious huddle— Poor little lambs, with bleating wethers grouped, While, now and then, a thirsty creature stooped And meekly snuffed, but did ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... servant entered the room. A spotless kerchief was folded about her expansive shoulders; a bright red bandanna was coiled around her woolly head, and a long, blue and white checked apron was ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... out that covered basket, Nelson," said Major Waldron to one of the men; and taking it carefully to the house, he untied the cover, and there lay two little white woolly puppies— one for Diddie, and ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... beckons," cried the dervish; "and see those others at the corner, how they bend and heave. Ha! by the Prophet, I had thought it." As he spoke, a little woolly puff of smoke spurted up at the corner of the square, and a 7 lb. shell burst with a hard metallic smack just over their heads. The splinters knocked chips from the red ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... shield with woolly ram, and giving a mantle to a naked beggar. The old wool manufacture of Amiens having this notion of its purpose—namely, to clothe the poor first, the rich afterwards. No nonsense talked in those days about the evil consequences of ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... the reservation road to where the pinto was picketed in the grassy swale, and brought her in, with her blind black colt trotting at her heels. And when he had bridled her and girthed on the soft, woolly pelt of a sheep, he lifted the little girl to her back and fastened both bare ankles to the cinch with hame-straps. Then he put the short reins into the little girl's hands, gave the mare a good slap on the flanks, and watched horse, rider, and colt depart northward toward the cattle. For it had ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... bore a basket in which were flowers for the tomb, with a wineflask and eatables. A memorial banquet was to be held at the grave of their ancestors; and the little one, whose golden head rose above the black, woolly poll of the negress, nodded gayly in response to Melissa's smiles. The children were enchanted at the prospect of a meal at such an unusual hour, and their parents rejoiced in them and in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... explosive balls had stripped off. "To-morrow," said Bearwarden, "we must make it a point to get some well-fed birds; for I can roast, broil, or fricassee them to a turn. Life is too short to live on this meat in such a sportsman's paradise. In any case there can be no end of mastodons, mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, moa birds, and all such shooting." As the sun was already near the horizon, they chose a dry, sandy place, to secure as much immunity as possible from nocturnal visits, and, after procuring a supply ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor

... boy had a pet of a woolly head—Henry once gave him a tip, a "fee," in American-English, and said: "There, that's for a new wig when this one is worn out," gently pulling the astrakhan-like hair. The tip would have bought ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... M. ABEL REMUSAT has devoted a section of his Melanges Asiatiques, 1825; vol. i. p. 100, to combating the conjecture of Sir W. JONES in his third Dissertation on the Hindus, drawn from the curled or rather the woolly hair represented in his statues, that Buddha drew his descent from an African origin. (Works, vol. i. p, 12.) Another ground for Sir. W. JONES'S conjecture was the large ears which are usually characteristic of the statues of Buddha. But it is curious ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... as he was told; then scratching his woolly head, said to himself, "I golly. Neber thought ob dat. I'll sure hab ter take care ob ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... too. He watches me over the top of his mug at breakfast and I stare back at him over my coffee cup. If I wrinkle my nose, he wrinkles his. If I stick out my tongue, he sticks his out, too. He answers wink with wink. When I pet his woolly lamb, however, he seems to wonder at my absurdity. When I wind up his steam engine, certainly he suspects that I am a novice. He shows a disregard of my castles, and although I build them on the windy vantage of a chair, with ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... it is a significant fact that the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet are quite naked, like the inferior surfaces of all four extremities in most of the lower animals. As this can hardly be an accidental coincidence, the woolly covering of the foetus probably represents the first permanent coat of hair in those mammals which are born hairy. Three or four cases have been recorded of persons born with their whole bodies and ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... the people of the province in throwing off the dominion of his master. Round the guard-house a number of negro girls, with broad flat baskets on their heads, were selling fruit and cold water: they had decked their woolly hair, and the edges of their baskets, with garlands of the scarlet althaea; their light blue or white cloaks were thrown gracefully across their dusky shoulders, and white jackets, so that it was such a picture ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... around the corner to the veilings, and there they saw the very pretty, very blond, very young "chicken" deep in conversation with her weasel. The weasel's trousers were very tight and English, and his hat was properly woolly and Alpine and dented very much on one side and his heels were fashionably flat, and his hair ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... have had a many days' growth of beard all over the face; but, owing to one particular fad, he had not; and thank goodness! for it would have been simply appalling to have had to end the book with the hero looking like a woolly hearthrug. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... at Salamanca just eight years before to a day. And there were wonderful things on the walls, too. First and foremost there were two coloured pictures, one of France and Britannia joining hands, with a very woolly lamb and a very singular lion lying down together at their feet; and the other of Commerce and Plenty, represented as two very slender ladies with very short waists, loading Britannia with corn and fruit and flowers of the brightest colours. The children had heard ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue

... heaven as her reverend maternal fancy painted for them in our world. There, certainly, they would not be subject to tanning, which had ruined the delicate complexion, and had knotted into black woolly tangles the once wavy blond locks of our little maid-servant Naomi; and I would fain believe that Toussaint Washington Johnson, who ran away to sea so many years ago, has found some fortunate zone where his hair and skin keep the same sunny and rosy tints they wore to his mother's ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... had led him upstairs, and he stood by a cradle looking down at a small wrinkled face almost wholly concealed by a soft woolly blanket. And presently Allan ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... explained apologetically, "mother gets woolly when she writes and she's forgotten there's Di. She thinks Demetrius is the youngest. She's mad about writing. If she sees a blank paper anywhere, she ain't happy until she has written something on it, and the sight of a pencil makes ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... head except the curious ring into which the men weave their hair. So soon as a youth is considered old enough to assume the duties and responsibilities of manhood he begins to weave his short crisp hair over a ring of grass which exactly fits the head, keeping the woolly hair in its place by means of wax. In time the hair grows perfectly smooth and shining and regular over this firm foundation, and the effect is as though it were a ring of jet or polished ebony worn round the brows. Different tribes slightly vary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various



Words linked to "Woolly" :   soft, hairy, confused, haired, hirsute, wool



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com