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Clam   Listen
verb
Clam  v. i.  To be moist or glutinous; to stick; to adhere. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Clam" Quotes from Famous Books



... millionaire, known in the States as the Clam King, had, for his sins, more money than he knew what to do with. It bored him. So he determined to persecute some of his poor but happy friends with it. They had never done him any harm, but he resolved to inoculate them with the "source of all evil." He therefore proposed ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... remember it?" said Ike Hoe, with a shudder. "When we're disposed to say one of them unproper words, the picture of that miserable scamp going a full week without a touch of Mountain Dew, will freeze up our lips closer than a clam." ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... trying to entertain Anabela. She talked a certain amount, but it was perfunctory and diluted. The nearest approach I made to speech was to formulate a sound like a clam trying to sing 'A Life on the Ocean Wave' at low tide. It seemed that Anabela's eyes did not rest upon me as often as usual. I had nothing with which to charm her ears. We looked at pictures and she played the guitar occasionally, very badly. When I left, her parting manner ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry

... Henderson's list is Henderson Sugar, Hickox Improved, Egyptian, and Stowell's Evergreen. Let me add Burr's Mammoth and Squantum Sugar—a variety in great favor with the Squantum Club, and used by them in their famous clam-bakes. ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... the Nation with a mighty wound, And all her ways were filled with clam'rous sound, Wailed loud the South with unremitting grief, And wept the North that could not find relief. Then madness joined its harshest tone to strife: A minor note swelled in the song of life Till, stirring with the love that filled his breast, But still, unflinching ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... cubby-houses, and fix 'em out with broken chiny and posies. I swan 't makes me feel curus when I think what children du contrive to get pleased, and likewise riled about! One day I rec'lect Hetty'd stepped onto my biggest clam-shell and broke it, and I up and hit her a switch right across her pretty lips. Now you'd 'a' thought she would cry and run, for she wasn't bigger than a baby, much; but she jest come up and put her little fat arms ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... she does," said he. "I wrote her she must come and live with me when I found I'd got to have——" He shut up like a clam, on that, and looked so horribly ashamed of himself that ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... even,—nay, something considerable, when the chains have grown corrosive, poisonous, to be free 'from oppression by our fellow-man.' Forward, ye maddened sons of France; be it towards this destiny or towards that! Around you is but starvation, falsehood, corruption and the clam of death. Where ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... This first clam bake gave us great encouragement. We soon learned that the bivalves were to be found in almost unlimited quantity and were widely distributed. The harvest was ready twice a day, when the tide was out, and we need have no fear ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... Fred, "I should say not! Clam soup and fried bacon and broiled bluefish and hot coffee! Nothing more than that. And we didn't do a thing to them, ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport

... an' trembly, an' screechy, an' wabbly. I reckon they come out on my account an' not for the ponies. But me for the brave kid that likes the ponies. You're the real goods, Saxon, honest to God you are. Why, I can talk like a streak with you. The rest of 'em make me sick. I'm like a clam. They don't know nothin', an' they're that scared all the time—well, I guess ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... chap. Close-mouthed? Say!"—he squared around and tapped my chest with an impressive forefinger—"a clam 's real noisy compared with him. Fact. Watched me steady all the time ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... crooned soothingly. "It's all RIGHT! I'm here. An' nobody's goin' to bother you none. You're a-helpin' me win that hundred. An' you're lettin' these gold-shirt folks see what a clam' gorgeous dawg you be! ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune

... a regular clam—won't tell me anything at all!" remarked Mr. Tutt severely, hanging up his hat on the office tree with one hand while he felt for a match in his waistcoat pocket with the other, upon the afternoon of the day that Miss Beekman had had the ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... 's all right," the man laughed. "That little prick frightened him though. Shut up like a clam." ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... pudicos mores facta haec fabulast. Neque in hoc subigitationes sunt neque ulla amatio Nec pueri suppositio nec argenti circumductio, Neque ubi amans adulescens scortum liberet clam suum patrem. Huius modi paucas poetae reperiunt comoedias, Ubi boni meliores fiant. Nunc vos, si vobis placet, Et si placuimus neque odio fuimus, signum hoc mittite; Qui pudicitiae esse voltis praemium, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... exclaimed the chief clerk to a stenographer as they were leaving the office that afternoon. "Funny thing: when I first came here James Neal was close as a clam; never a word out of him. Paid no attention to anybody, all gloom. Now look at him helping everybody! Best old ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the dangers that may be avoided in remaining at home, and supplied with such delights as clam fritters offer, she savorously remarked: "I hope I am not ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side. The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle and scud, My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from the deck. The boatman and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me, I tucked my trouser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time; You should have been with us ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... they might musty bread and mouldy meat, Larie and his mate enjoyed, too, the sport of catching fresh food; and many a clam hunt they had in true gull style. They would fly above the water near the shore, and when they were twenty or thirty feet high, would plunge down head-first. Then they would poke around for a clam, with their heads and necks under water and their wings out and partly ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... take all of them to New England for baked beans and brown bread and codfish balls; but on the way we would visit the shores of Long Island for a kind of soft clam which first is steamed and then is esteemed. At Portsmouth, New Hampshire, they should each have a broiled lobster measuring thirty inches from tip to tip, fresh caught ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... more credit to him if he does." Diane rose and looked stormily down at her friend. "You're about as broad as a clam, Gordon. Can't you see that even if it's true, all that is done with? It is a part of his past—and it's finished—trodden under foot. It hasn't a ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... ye go ashore, jump into the yawl and take a look at that snatch block on the spar buoy,—that clam digger may want ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... of those—ten cents each," Pee-wee announced. "Do you like clam chowder?" he called, raising his voice to cover the ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... much. Two of my men were arrested last Thursday for assaulting the Wellington kids. It seems they were walking past Bailey's Beach and the youngsters bombarded them with clam shells and gravel. It would have been all right, but one of the shells caught Kelly on the cheek and cut him. The men didn't do a thing but jump over that hedge into the holy of holies, gather in the young scions, and ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... to buy a coat, he perhaps exchanged a bear-skin for it. If he wished for a barrel of molasses, he might purchase it with a pile of pine boards. Musket-bullets were used instead of farthings. The Indians had a sort of money, called wampum, which was made of clam-shells; and this strange sort of specie was likewise taken in payment of debts by the English settlers. Bank-bills had never been heard of. There was not money enough of any kind, in many parts of the country, ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... of soapstone, formed like a clam-shell, and about eight inches in diameter; the fuel was seal-oil, and the wick was of moss. It smoked considerably, but Eskimos are smoke-proof. The pot above it, suspended from the roof, was also made of ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... on his temples. **Chooses. . . . . . . . "Then homeward all take off their sev'ral way; The youngling cottagers retire to rest: The parent-pair their secret homage pay, And proffer up to Heaven the warm request, That He who stills the raven's clam'rous nest, And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride, Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best, For them and for their little ones provide; But, chiefly, in their hearts ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... eleven the treasurer and his attorney were shown into the firm's office, the former a man of sixty, with a cold, smooth-shaven face, ferret eyes and thin, straight lips, thin as the edges of a tight-shut clam, and as bloodless. He was dressed in black and wore a white necktie which gave him a certain ministerial air. His companion, the attorney, was younger and warmer looking, and a trifle stouter, with bushy gray locks under his hat brim, ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith

... conservative instinct in human nature. This is one of the stickiest impediments to progress, one of the most respectable forms of evil-mindedness. "The hereditary tiger is in us all, also the hereditary oyster and clam. Indifference is the largest factor, though not the ugliest form, in the production of evil" (President Hyde). Men are morally lazy; they have to be pushed into what is good for them, and the "pushee" is almost sure to resent the pushing. The idea that men ardently desire ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... and colorless or slightly colored. The body is somewhat clam-shaped, flattened, slightly curved or straight on the right side, the other more convex. The true ventral side is only a narrow strip along the right and anterior edge of the body, the apparent ventral side being a fold of the very large dorsal ...
— Marine Protozoa from Woods Hole - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 21:415-468, 1901 • Gary N. Galkins

... their second night at the mouth of Lossman's River, where they had a famous clam-roast. They found a fisherman's house where they got fresh water and a can to hold it, also some cornmeal, with which Johnny made an ash-cake, or, as Dick called it, Johnny-cake. The captain said it was the best thing he had ever eaten, and Dick engaged him on the spot as a camping companion ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... Dicta sine lege, Tenta est ibidem, Per ejusdem consuetudinem, Ante ortum solis, Luceat nisi polus, Seneschallus solus, Scribit nisi colis. Clamat clam pro rege In curia sine lege: Et qui non cito venerit Citius poenitebit: Si venerit cum lumine Errat in regimine. Et dum sine lumine Capti sunt in crimine, Curia sine cura Jurata de injuria Tenta est die Mercuriae prox. post ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various

... States. In 1492 the first settlers found the Indians carrying on agriculture in a crude and limited way, by the women; their farm machinery consisting of their fingers, a pointed stick for planting, and the bones of animals and the shell of the clam for a hoe; with nothing more than a squatter's right as a voucher for the ownership of their farms. Prof. McMaster's History of the People of the United States, George K. Holmes, assistant statistician of the United States Department of Agriculture, in his "Progress of Agriculture ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... wealth, caressed by ladies and children, and guarded so that even the winds of heaven might not visit him too roughly, fallen through the successive grades of equine degradation, until at last he hobbles before a clam-wagon or a swill-cart—a sorry relic ...
— Rational Horse-Shoeing • John E. Russell

... nobody knew," his father answered. "As you know, she was queer, and as tight as a clam when it came to talking about her personal affairs. The only thing we're sure of is that she had plenty of money to travel anywhere she wanted to, and that's saying something ...
— Billie Bradley and Her Inheritance - The Queer Homestead at Cherry Corners • Janet D. Wheeler

... old clam? Do his lips come together in that precise Prussian way, and does he order the universe about? Or does a new spirit come over him when he gets with nature? Is she a soothing mistress who smooths his stiff hair with her soft hand, and pats his cheek and nestles him in her arms, and with her cool ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... wrinkled, sloping sharply to the white sand of the beach a hundred feet below. Only one building, except those connected with the lighthouses, near at hand, this a small, gray-shingled bungalow about two hundred yards away, separated from the lights by the narrow stream called Clam Creek—Seth always spoke of it as the "Crick"—which, turning in behind the long surf-beaten sandspit known, for some forgotten reason, as "Black Man's Point," continued to the salt-water pond which was named "The Cove." A path ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... corner of the garden an oblong mound of earth, bordered with bright stones and river-clam shells, marked the "posy" bed. Within its boundaries a collection of overgrown house plants, belated pinks, and seeding sweet-peas, fought for life with the early fall frosts. Landers looked steadily down at the sorry little garden. Like everything else he had seen that ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... Dr. Gregr founded the Narodni Listy in Prague in November, 1860, to support the policy of Rieger, and in January, 1861, the latter, with the knowledge of Palacky, concluded an agreement with Clam-Martinic on behalf of the Bohemian nobility, by which the latter, recognising the rights of the Bohemian State to independence, undertook to support the Czech policy directed against the centralism of Vienna. The Bohemian nobility, who were always indifferent ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... Oti concluded, "he like 'm that much dirt. He like 'm clam he die KAI-KAI (meat) he stop, stink 'm any amount. He like 'm one fella dog, one sick fella dog plenty fleas stop along him. We no fright along that fella trader. We fright because he white man. We savve ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... "With clam shells!" cried the other lad, and, putting aside the Plush Bear and the airship, the two little friends began to make a large hole in the sand. When it was finished the Plush Bear was put down in it, and some sticks were stuck up ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope

... clam chowder for dinner—a New England clam chowder, made with milk and crackers, and clams with shells as white as snow. They were what the New Yorker calls "soft-shell" clams, for a Fulton Market chowder is a "quahaug soup" to the ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... mind is at best a petty piece of machinery. It is oyster-like in its functioning, or, perhaps better, clam-like. It has its little siphon of thought-processes forced up or down into the mighty ocean of fact and circumstance; but it uses so little, pumps so faintly, that the immediate contiguity of the vast mass is not disturbed. Nothing ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... Mr. Rendall had apparently lived much abroad but he dropped no hint as to whether he had sojourned in foreign parts for reasons of pleasure, health, or business. In fact he was close as a clam on the subject, and, indeed, on every other subject. Add to this that I had heard he was hard up, that he had no wife to look after him, and that he evidently took a caustic rather than an enthusiastic view of life, and in my present ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston

... exposed inch of skin are persistent and constant. I have seen a young man after two days' exposure to these pests come out of the woods with one eye entirely closed and the brow hanging over it like a clam shell, while face and hands were almost hideous from inflammation and puffiness. The St. Regis and St. Francis Indians, although born and reared in the woods, by no means make light of ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears

... already. Imagine how nervous one may be waiting in the hall and watching with a keen glance for the approach of the physician who is to announce that one is a forefather. The amateur forefather of 1620 must have felt proud yet anxious about the clam-yield also, as each new mouth ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me, I tuck'd my trowser ends in my boots and went and had a good time; You should have been with us that day ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... drops of onion juice, some bits of butter and a few teaspoonfuls of strained tomato sauce, and thin slices of boiled potatoes. Dredge each layer of clams with flour. Lastly, pour in a cupful of clam juice, put on the crust and bake half an hour in a quick oven.—From "The National Cook Book," by Marion Harland ...
— 365 Luncheon Dishes - A Luncheon Dish for Every Day in the Year • Anonymous

... bank of the river he noticed a pile of empty shells of the fresh-water Mussel, or Clam. The shells were common enough, but why all together and marked in the same way? Around the pile on the mud were curious tracks and marks. There were so many that it was hard to find a perfect one, but when he did, remembering the Coon track, he drew ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... shocking taste to add insult to injury by spreading all our wealth of canned dainties on the very stones where sit the ghosts of those who perished from hunger and thirst! Eminently Dantesque, but the sacrilege appalls Leo. She would sooner attend an oyster supper, or a clam-bake in the Catacombs, or—" bowing to a young Englishman standing near, "lead a German in the Poets' corner of Westminster Abbey. My dear girl, under which flag do you fight? Athenian, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was ushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough, with a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four harpooneers ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... whole world round For feats of tongue and tooth alike renowned. Pauper in thought but prodigal in speech, Nothing he knew excepting how to teach. But in default of something to impart He multiplied his words with all his heart: When least he had to say, instructive most— A clam in wisdom and ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... make your fortune by hiring yourself out to a museum as the biggest human clam in captivity? That's what you are. You sit there just saying "Thanks," and "Bai Jawve, thanks awf'lly," while a girl's telling you nice things about your eyes and hair, and you don't do ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... your design, at least,' said she, 'Take us along to share your destiny. If any farther hopes in arms remain, This place, these pledges of your love, maintain. To whom do you expose your father's life, Your son's, and mine, your now forgotten wife!' While thus she fills the house with clam'rous cries, Our hearing is diverted by our eyes: For, while I held my son, in the short space Betwixt our kisses and our last embrace; Strange to relate, from young Iulus' head A lambent flame arose, which gently spread Around his brows, and ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... dwellers in the rocks and bushes, and especially were we interested in the ducks on Fern Hollow creek. Dora insisted upon feeding them a piece of bread. "Calamity," the dog, was along, of course, and as he belonged to William Pitt, who called him "Clam," he was always in that boy's company. It was, "Love me, love my dog," with William; and as he was a professional of some kind, he was greatly ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... born and in which I have lived most of the time since I was twenty-seven years old. Nobody calls me "My Lord." Hephzy has always called me "Hosy"—a name which I despise—and the others, most of them, "Kent" to my face and "The Quahaug" behind my back, a quahaug being a very common form of clam which is supposed to lead a solitary existence and to keep its shell tightly shut. If anything in my manner had hinted at a mysterious past no one in Bayport would have taken the hint. Bayporters know my past and that of my ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... kinds of this shell-fish, the common thin-shelled clam and the quahaug. The first is the most abundant. It is sold by the peck or bushel in the shell, or by the quart when shelled. Clams are in season all the year, but in summer a black substance is found in the body, which must be pressed from it before ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... pretty partner and dancing pupil! How are our friends at St. Martin's Bay and Sinepuxent? Many a sail and clam-bake we ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... remember how I teased once to go to the Home Club party; but ma wouldn't let me. I hadn't anything to put on, anyhow. But I'd have gone in my shirt if they'd let me. The nearest to a real party I'd been to before to-night was a clam-bake. I don't count church sociables. Out West there used to be celebrations in a sort of bar-room place, but even I couldn't stand those. To think I've always yearned so to have a good time, and now I'm having it! ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... there is a black five-pointed star centered in the red band; uses the popular pan-African colors of Ethiopia; similar to the flag of Cape Verde, which has the black star raised above the center of the red band and is framed by two corn stalks and a yellow clam shell ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... discussion of a practical nature, especially when at the very outset I must begin to talk about clams. [Laughter.] For when we begin to consider wampum we have to begin to consider the familiar hard-shell clam of daily use, which was the basis of wampum. At this stage of the feast, after the confections contained in that eulogium passed upon you by the Governor of Massachusetts [Frederick T. Greenhalge], and after that private parlor-car, canvas-back-duck, cold-champagne ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... touch a buffalo head. Other horn spoons of light color are made of cow horn. These are of modern origin. Wooden spoons (ja^{n}[t]ehe) were made of knobs or knots of trees. Spoons made of buffalo horn are found among the Omaha and Ponka, but the Osage, Kansa, and Kwapa use clam shells ([t]ihaba, in [|C]egiha; tcuehaba, tcuehuba, in Kansa), so the Kansa call a small spoon, tcuehaba jinga. Spoons of buffalo horn had their handles variously ornamented by notches and other rude carving, often terminating in the head of a bird, the neck or ...
— Omaha Dwellings, Furniture and Implements • James Owen Dorsey,

... horrid boy! What will we do with him? I can't run, and boys despise dolls. As for talking, I never could talk to boys. They shut me up like a clam. I always feel as if they wanted to get away, and I believe they would if they could," said ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard

... darndest? A clam is communicative compared with Leslie. Fancy him having that card up his sleeve all the while. Nina's had the bulge ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... Wang Fu, writing in the time of the Han Dynasty, enumerates the "nine resemblances" of the dragon. "His horns resemble those of a stag, his head that of a camel, his eyes those of a demon, his neck that of a snake, his belly that of a clam, his scales those of a carp, his claws those of an eagle, his soles those of a tiger, his ears those of a cow."[134] But this list includes only a small minority of the menagerie of diverse creatures which at one time or another have contributed their quota to this ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith

... turning round Mastic Point to follow the channel connecting the Great South with East Bay, and so to reach Moriches. From that point east the shore is broken up into shallow creeks until Quogue (from quohaug, a clam), an old resort of the citizens of Philadelphia, New York and other cities, is reached. It occupies the neck of land dividing Shinecoc from East Bay, and is the first place after leaving Rockaway, about sixty miles to the west, which has direct communication with the shore ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... Alec. "They make me tired with their Chief Josephs and Chief Henrys! White Clam Shell—that was the name he got when ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... the clams along the Stratford shore are dying by thousands of a malignant disease, which a correspondent of the Bridgeport Standard calls "clam cholera." This is a sad c'lamity for the people ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... character and little brain have the hardihood to advance a foot covered with a broken shoe? If I could tell you that she rode in a Pullman, and wore exquisite clothing, you would be doing something. The other side of the picture shuts you up like a clam, and makes you appear shocked. Let me tell you this: No other woman I ever saw anywhere on God's footstool had a face of more delicate refinement, eyes of purer intelligence. I am of the woods, and while they don't ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... truth behind taboo. He explained his personal taboos, and how they came to be. Never must he eat clam-meat, he told Agno. It was so selected by himself because he did not like clam-meat. It was old Nino, high priest before Agno, with an ear open to the voice of the shark-god, who had so laid the taboo. But, ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... go farther off; but there are other fish besides perch, and I don't intend to confine my operations to one kind. There are eels, and smelts, and cod, and haddock; and if worse comes to worse, I can go into the clam trade." ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams

... to me. Odd sort of a gink he was, with a lot of queer streaks in him that didn't show on the outside. It was more or less entertainin', followin' up the plot of the piece; but all of a sudden Merry gets over his confidential spasm and shuts up like a clam. ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford

... As the gun chiefly used in Quonab's time was the old-fashioned, smooth-bore flint-lock, there was not much difference in the accuracy of the two weapons. Quonab had always made a highclass bow, as well as high-class arrows, and was a high-class shot. He could set up ten clam shells at ten paces and break all in ten shots. For at least half of his hunting he preferred the bow; the gun was useful to him chiefly when flocks of wild pigeons or ducks were about, and a single charge of scattering shot might bring down a ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... Cross-examination of Tom by Mr. Goldstein, Singleton's attorney, brought out one curious fact. He had made no dark soup or broth for the after house. Turner had taken nothing during his illness but clam bouillon, made with milk, and the meals served to the four women had been very light. "They lived on toast and tea, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... of absolute dependence. His expensive taste for building, magnificent shows, and above all a constant and liberal distribution of corn and provisions, were the surest means of captivating the affection of the Roman people. [59] The misfortunes of civil discord were obliterated. The clam of peace and prosperity was once more experienced in the provinces; and many cities, restored by the munificence of Severus, assumed the title of his colonies, and attested by public monuments their gratitude and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... It is when hunger, clam'ring for relief, Hears a shrill voice exclaim, "That graceless sinner, The cook, has been, and gone, and burnt the beef, And spilt the tart—in short, she's dish'd ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... to Kit, because he had to stay covered up in the sand, and Kit built a play dyke all around himself with them, and Kat dug a canal outside the dyke. Then she made sand-pies in clam-shells and set them in a row in the ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... had its redeeming features, though they were probably unrecorded at the time. There was fishing and boating; rambles on shore over the grassy hills; a search for clams and a good old-fashioned clam bake; to which the sharpest appetites did ample justice; and there were quiet fellows, who stole apart from the rioters and had hours of solid satisfaction. You may have rocked in a small skiff ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... have no doubt but there are many other speceis of fish, which also exist in this quarter at different seasons of the year, which we have not had an oportunity of seeing. the shell fish are the Clam, perrewinkle, common mussle, cockle, and a speceis with a circular flat shell. The Whale is sometimes pursued harpooned and taken by the Indians of this coast; tho I beleive it is much more frequently killed by runing fowl on the rocks of the ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... Von Roon and General Bittenfeld. The King in person and Bismarck were present with the advance. The impact was more than Austria could stand. On the twenty-seventh and twenty-ninth of June, Frederick Charles defeated the Austrian advance in four indecisive engagements. Count Clam-Gallas, the Austrian general, was obliged to fall back on the main body ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... to us, can be covered up and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of ancestors that stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam or grasshopper or monkey from whom our race has been so tediously and ostentatiously and unprofitably developed. And as for me, all that I think about in this plodding sad pilgrimage, this pathetic drift between the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... possibilities of that division of the Animal Kingdom,—without recalling to my readers a Polyp or a Jelly-Fish, a Sea-Urchin or a Star-Fish. Neither can I present the structural elements of the Mollusk plan, without reminding them of an Oyster or a Clam, a Snail or a Cuttle-Fish,—or of the Articulate plan, without calling up at once the form of a Worm, a Lobster, or an Insect,—or of the Vertebrate plan, without giving it the special character of Fish, Reptile, Bird, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... soon as Pao-yue entered his quarters, he addressed himself to Hsi Jen, with a long sigh. "I was very wrong in what I said yesterday evening," he remarked. "It's no matter of surprise that father says that I am so narrow-minded that I look at things through a tube and measure them with a clam-shell. I mentioned something last night about having nothing but tears, shed by all of you girls, to be buried in. But this was a mere delusion! So as I can't get the tears of the whole lot of you, each one of you ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... away her daughter clam et secrete. 2. For endeavouring to bind her to my Lord Oxford without her father's consent. 3. For counterfeiting a letter of my Lord Oxford offering her marriage. 4. For plotting to surprise her daughter and take her away by force, to the breach of the King's peace, and for that purpose assembling ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville

... many of these new houses were steep, and were shingled with hand-riven shingles. The walls between the rooms were of clay mixed with chopped straw. Sometimes the walls were whitened with a wash made of powdered clam-shells. The ground floors were occasionally of earth, but puncheon floors were common in the better houses. The well-smoothed timbers were sanded in careful ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... himself divers tugs and clam-boats, ferry-boats, and one or two larger craft, which thieves had stolen ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... I can say," replied the scout master, "it's something like this. Most storms have a regular rotary movement as well as their forward drift. On that account a hurricane at sea has a core or center, where there is almost a dead clam." ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster

... clam can keep his information," remarked Jim. "I propose to find out for myself what these rascals are up to. That's the ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt

... more, Mr. Calvin. We don't seem to be gettin' at the clam in this shell as fast as we'd ought to. Al, what have you got to say about all ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... by a full band of boys and negroes, performing on the popular instruments of rattle-bones and clam-shells, while Anthony Van Corlear sounded his trumpet ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... discover his meaning, but the fellow became suspicious and shut up like a clam. Is there anything ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... cook can make neither clear nor cream soup, but can make a delicious clam chowder, better far to have a clam chowder! On no account let her attempt clear green turtle, which has about as good a chance to be perfect as a supreme of boned capon—in other words, none whatsoever! And the same way throughout ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... valuable white cedar from the swamps for shingles and boards, leaving great "pool holes" in the swamps which even today sometimes trap the unwary sportsman. The women knitted innumerable mittens and also made wampum or Indian money from the clam and oyster shells, an important means of exchange in the Indian trade all over the colonies, and even to some extent among the colonists themselves. The Cape May people built sloops for carrying the white cedar, the mittens, oysters, and wampum ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher

... he says, 'I've got a soul, but the trouble is,' he says, 'I've got a lot of other vital organs, too. When I ponder,' he says, 'and remember how many times I've got up from the table and gone away leaving bones and potato peels and clam shells and lobster claws on the plate—when I think,' he says, 'of them old care-free, prodigal days, I could bust ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... creature especially wont to produce this illusion is the Hamaguri,—a Japanese mollusk much resembling a clam. Opening its shell, it sends into the air a purplish misty breath; and that mist takes form and defines, in tints of mother-of-pearl, the luminous vision of H[o]rai and the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... last Friday, after one of Harshaw's entirely frank but perfectly unexplained absences, that he came into camp and inquired if there was any clam-broth left in the kitchen. I referred him to the cook. Finding there was, he returned to me and asked if he might take a tin of it to Miss Malcolm for ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote

... all I had,” I replied amiably. “Thank God I’m not a clam! I’ve seen the world and paid for it. I don’t want anything from you. You undoubtedly share my grandfather’s idea of me that I’m a wild man who can’t sit still or lead an orderly, decent life; ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson

... ye out a walie hammer; About the knottit buttress clam'er; Alang the steep roof stoyt an' stammer, A gate mischancy; On the aul' spire, the bells' hie cha'mer, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Bacchus sur sa roche fertile!' Tautin—no, Tautin couldn't sing like that little Stephanie! Well," continued Vogotzine, hiccoughing violently, "because all that happened then, I now lead here the life of an oyster! Yes, the life of an oyster, of a turtle, of a clam! alone with a woman sad as Mid-Lent, who doesn't speak, doesn't sing, does nothing but weep, weep, weep! It is crushing! I say just what I think! Crushing, then, whatever my niece may be—cr-r-rushing! And—ah—really, my dear fellow, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... skipper! He ain't got no more feelin' in his old carkiss than a Rock Island clam!" muttered the leading man of the disturbed watch, as he stepped out over the coaming of the hatchway on to the deck, as leisurely as if he were executing a step in the sword dance; but, the next moment, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... exclaimed, setting the dish before her employers; "I don't know as clam fritters are what rich folks ought to eat, but I done the best I could. I'm so shook up and trembly this day it's a mercy I didn't fry ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln

... near Raine Island, in Torres Straits. A stalwart young Kanaka, one of the crew of a pearling lugger, was diving for clam shells on the reef, when a snake about three feet in length suddenly shot up from below within a foot of his face. In his anger and disgust he unthinkingly struck it with his hand, and was quickly bitten on the forefinger. A few ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke

... their parents and the servants, but it was of no avail. It was quite evident that his feelings were so wounded that he would not appear. Mr. Otis consequently resumed his great work on the history of the Democratic party, on which he had been engaged for some years; Mrs. Otis organized a wonderful clam-bake, which amazed the whole county; the boys took to lacrosse, euchre, poker, and other American national games, and Virginia rode about the lanes on her pony, accompanied by the young Duke of Cheshire, who had come to spend the last week of his holidays at Canterville Chase. It was generally ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... time; the basal and embedded portion having been reduced and modified, so as to become suitable to the erect or semi-erect position." (Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man", Second Edition (London, 1879), page 60.) The Turtle clam of the Iroquois think that they are descended from real mud turtles which used to live in a pool. One hot summer the pool dried up, and the mud turtles set out to find another. A very fat turtle, waddling ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... is fifteen leagues from Perpisawick Inlet, but La Baye de Toutes Isles is, more strictly speaking, an archipelago, extending along the coast, say from Clam Bay to Liscomb Point, as may be seen by reference to Champlain's map, 1612, and that of De Laet, 1633, Cruxius, 1660, and of Charlevoix, 1744. The north-eastern portion of this archipelago is now called, according to ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... and full-grown walrus taken in Whale Sound were without exception well filled with freshly opened clams, with very few fragments of shells in evidence; the removal of the clam from the shell being as neatly accomplished as though ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... were over, the colony beyond the beaver pond scattered widely, returning each one to the shy, wild, solitary life that Quoskh likes best. Almost anywhere, in the loneliest places, I might come upon a solitary heron stalking frogs, or chumming little fish, or treading the soft mud expectantly, like a clam digger, to find where the mussels were hidden by means of his long toes; or just standing still to enjoy the sleepy sunshine till the late afternoon came, when he likes best to ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... theology is the real belief of few, and varies with their changing intellectual point of view; while superstition is the belief unacknowledged of the few and acknowledged of the many, nor does it materially change from age to age. The rites employed among the clam-diggers on the New York coast, the witch-charms they use, the incantations, cutting of flesh, fire-oblations, meaningless formulae, united with sacrosanct expressions of the church, are all on a par with the religion of the lower classes as depicted in Theocritus ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... seen she was some kind of a foreigner, so I set her down for Dutch—as them vas the only foreigners I vas acquainted vith at the time. I artervards discovered she was French. She was werry thin, and as pale as a soft-shelled clam; there was a dark blue color under her eyes, like these here muscle shells. At first, she used to buy ninepence worth of oysters. Arter a while it came down to fourpence; and one day she only vanted two cents vorth. I asked her who they vas for, ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... are the shooting touches in which the "unwearyd fowler" is introduced, with the "leaden death" of the "clam'rous lapwings," and the "mounting larks." The glimpse of lonely woodcocks haunting the watery glade is sufficiently apt, but let the shooting man stand at attention when ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... is Mary V," Bud agreed heartily. "Bawl yuh out quick enough if they's anything yuh want kep' under cover, and then turnin' right around and makin' a clam ashamed of itself for a mouthy cuss if yuh want to know anything right bad. Bound she'd go with us getherin' hosses when she wasn't needed nor wanted, and now when we're short-handed, she ain't able to see us ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... into the old cellar: empty fruit cans, broken dishes, leaky old pans and dippers, parts of broken chairs and broken looking-glasses, and old kettles and frying-pans; bits of shingles, old nails, and piles and piles of clam and oyster shells; and Billy knew the minute he saw a thing ...
— Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... little bird, Harris and me, and roast it, and mother would give us a little apple-sauce in a clam-shell, and we would go off back the island and eat it. Harris was sent to school up to Perkins's; couldn't stay; run away, and borrowed a boat, and came home again; afraid of his father, and hid in the barn. Dug a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... people say, 'He's deaf as a stone!' and having everybody work their lips at me while I pretended to study them in a dumb effort to understand. Actors have two hours of it an evening, and an occasional change of parts, but I act one part all the time. I get as taciturn as a clam. If war doesn't come pretty soon I shall be ready for a ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... very sensitive to lack of sympathy and she shut up like a clam. She was coldly polite to us for the remainder of our visit, but she did not again refer to the Indians, which ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... soaked into grimy hardness by the recent spring rains, and nearer still an ancient chopping-block, round which were scattered old weather-beaten hardwood knots which had defied the axe, parts of broken barrels and packing-boxes, and a nameless debris of tin cans, clam-shells, and general rubbish. It was pleasanter to lift the eyes, and look across the neighbors' fences to the green, waving tops of the elms on the street beyond. How lofty and beautiful they were in the morning sunlight, and with what matchless charm came the song of the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... water shallows slowly on a bottom of the fine slimy sand, dotted with clumps of growing coral. Then comes a strip of tidal beach on which the ripples lap. In the coral clumps the great holy-water clam (Tridacna) grows plentifully; a little deeper lie the beds of the pearl-oyster and sail the resplendent fish that charmed us at our entrance; and these are all more or less vigorously coloured. But the other shells are white like lime, or faintly tinted with a ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... blacks. That they were low in the order of human life was apparent at a glance. They were man-eaters. Their faces were asymmetrical, bestial; their bodies were ugly and ape- like. They wore nose-rings of clam-shell and turtle-shell, and from the ends of their noses which were also pierced, projected horns of beads strung on stiff wire. Their ears were pierced and distended to accommodate wooden plugs and sticks, pipes, and all manner of barbaric ornaments. Their faces and bodies were tattooed or scarred ...
— Adventure • Jack London

... put them in a pot, with just water enough to prevent the shells burning at the bottom of the pot. Heat them till the shells open—take the clams out of them, and warm them with a little of the clam liquor, a little salt, butter, and pepper. Toast a slice or two of bread, soak it in the clam liquor, lay it in a deep dish, and turn the clams on to it. For clam pancakes, mix flour and milk together to form a thick batter—some cooks use the clam liquor, but it ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous

... a vara busybody, Whe will jest with me and call me fule and noddy, And sets his lads te spout Latin ayenst me, But ay spose then with Deparfundis Clam aui: And oftentimes he wil reason with me of the Sacarment, And say he can prove bay the New Testament That Chraist's body is in heaven placed; But ays not believe him, ay woll not be awt-faced. He says besayd that the Pope is Antichraist, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... flopped as I landed. The nest might be upon the ground or lodged among the bushes; but the only ground space large enough was covered layer over layer with pearly clam-shells, the kitchen-midden of some muskrat; and the bushes were empty. I went to the other islets, searched bog and tangle, and finally pulled away disappointed, giving the least bittern credit for considerable mother-wit and woodcraft. How little wit she really had appeared ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... the beaver builds his house Within his winter dam; And how the oyster lays its egg, And hatches out a clam; ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... woman nature asserted itself. Isabel had had enough of fairies and goblins. They must give up this wandering life and settle down, she declared. They would build a house in the fence corner and carpet it with moss and have clam shells from the creek for dishes. Scotty had fallen quite meekly into the unaccustomed role of follower and was willing that they should go housekeeping, provided he was allowed to play the man's part. He would be Big Wind, the ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith



Words linked to "Clam" :   America, USA, banker's bill, the States, soft-shell clam, banknote, one dollar bill, pelecypod, razor clam, blood clam, Tridacna gigas, Mercenaria mercenaria, United States of America, dollar bill, clam up, garner, knife-handle, teredinid, shipworm, New England clam chowder, clam dip, bank note, Venus mercenaria, shellfish, bivalve, dollar, quahaug, cherrystone clam, steamer clam, United States



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