Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Itch   Listen
verb
Itch  v. i.  (past & past part. itched; pres. part. itching)  
1.
To have an uneasy sensation in the skin, which inclines the person to scratch the part affected. "My mouth hath itched all this long day."
2.
To have a constant desire or teasing uneasiness; to long for; as, itching ears. "An itching palm."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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





"Itch" Quotes from Famous Books



... pennyweight of this medicine to drink, he is cured in a moment. Again if a woman is hard in labour they give her just such another dose and she is delivered at once. Yet again if one has any disease like the itch, or it may be worse, and applies a small quantity of this gall he shall speedily be cured. So you see why it sells at ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... an old story, if well understood, 'Tis a thing dress'd up in a parliament's hood, And like it—but the tail stands where the head shou'd! 'Twould make a man scratch where it does not itch! They say 'tis good luck when a body rises With the rump upwards; but he that advises To live in that posture, is ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... Heads to the river mouth in the wake of the tug-boat Platypus, slow and toil some, set Jim in an itch of impatience. He was longing to feel land under his feet once more, and was leaning over the side, his awkwardly-packed canvas bag of belongings at his feet, watching the line of Liardit Beach, with its ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... common habit is the one so frequently heard,—a little laugh when there is no feeling of merriment and no occasion for it.) Motor activity discharges tension and is pleasurable and these tics furnish a momentary pleasure; they relieve a feeling that some of the victims compare to an itch and the habit thus is based on a seeking of relief, even though that relief is obtained in a way that distresses the more settled ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... transformed him into a large piggiebillah-like animal, though instead of being covered with spines, thick hair grew over him; he has since been known as Nahgul. He went away into the bush, where he has been a dreaded devil ever since; for if he touches a man's shadow even, that man will itch all over and nothing can cure him of ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... companion. 'You mustn't let me tire you,' he said; 'but even on our theory it would not necessarily follow that you yourself would be much affected. It's true this fellow Sabathier really was something of a personality. He had a rather unusual itch for life, for trying on and on to squeeze something out of experience that isn't there; and he seemed never to weary of a magnificent attempt to find in his fellow-creatures, especially in the women he met, what even—if they have it—they cannot give. The little book I wanted ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... tidied the carriage violently, carefully hiding the book Pamela had been reading and putting the cushion on the rack. Finally, tucking the travelling-rug firmly round her mistress, she remarked pleasantly, "A h'eight hours' journey without an 'itch!" ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... say it in that fashion;—that's easy. You must say it at some moment when the itch of play is on you; when there shall be no one by to hear: when the resolution if held, shall have some meaning in it. Then say, 'there's that money which I had from old Grey. I am bound to pay it. But if ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope

... piling words, but there's royal dust hid In the heart of each sky-piercing pyramid. While he talks he is great, but goes out like a taper, If you shut him up closely with pen, ink, and paper; 650 Yet his fingers itch for 'em from morning till night, And he thinks he does wrong if he don't always write; In this, as in all things, a lamb among men, He goes to sure death when he goes to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... penetrate, and were sunk, or stuck pretty deep into my skin. After I had thus rubb'd it for a pretty while, I felt very little or no pain, in so much that I doubted, whether it were the true Couhage; but whil'st I was considering; I found the Down begin to make my hand itch, and in some places to smart again, much like the stinging of a Flea or Gnat, and this continued a pretty while, so that by degrees I found my skin to be swell'd with little red pustules, and to look as if it had been itchie. But suffering ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... sir. There will be perhaps, Something about the scraping of the shards, Will cure the itch,—though not your itch of mind, sir. [ASIDE.] It shall be saved for you, and sent home. Good sir, This way, for fear the lord ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... more general and less poisoned with personalities than any of his former. "Gotham," by far the most poetical of his works, came next. When Lord Sandwich stood for the High-Stewardship of Cambridge, Churchill's ancient grudge, as well as his itch for satire, revived, and he improvised "The Candidate," a piece of hasty but terrible sarcasm. With breathless and portentous rapidity followed "The Farewell," "The Times," and "Independence," which was his last published production. Two fragments were ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... brought forward at La Scala, in Milan. It was in a sense the child of his penury and suffering, but he had taken it up inspired by tremendous enthusiasm for the subject, and inasmuch as most of its music had been written before success had turned his head, or desire for notoriety had begun to itch him, there was reason to hope to find in it some of the hot blood which surges through the score of "Cavalleria." As a matter of fact, critics who have seen the score or heard the work have pointed out that portions of "I Rantzau" and "Cavalleria" are as alike as two peas. It ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... of Monseigneur's hotel, three sides of a square, towered up behind them; the steward in the opening sprawled his feet apart and set his hands to his stout sides, and jeered at me. "Ha! ha! Here is the lame leper from the Cour des Miracles!" he cried. "Have a care or he will give you the itch!" ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... to the spoken language of the New World. Moreover, Ramon Pane, in the account he wrote for Columbus of the Indian religion, gives as Indian words, the Mande toto, "frog," and the Malinke kobo, "bug." What is more important, he imputes to the Indians, a knowledge of the terrible West African itch, or craworaw, which he calls by the supposed Indian name caracaracol. The critic faces a dilemma. Either Ramon Pane lied, or he told the truth. Either he fabricated stories of Indians, which he drew from ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... That's rank falsehood. Fear'st thou not death? Fie, there's a knavish itch In that salt blood, an utter foe to smarting! Had Jaffier's wife proved kind, he'd still ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway

... to the pastor! Brush me off, August, clean me a bit! I feel as if I had the itch ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... clasp and the linger Of loosening finger, Loth to dissever; Thrill of the comrade heart to its fellow Through droughts that sicken and blasts that bellow From purple furrow to harvest yellow, Now and forever. How our feet itch to keep time to their measure! How our hearts lift to the lilt of their song! Let the world go, for a day's royal pleasure! Not every ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... their house was going on a journey, too. In his trotting around after Harriet, while Mother was telephoning a last good-by to some friend, he found a square white box on the parlor table, neatly tied with red string—one of that mysterious kind that makes your fingers fairly itch to untie the string and look inside. Sunny Boy went in ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White

... the short sharp-shooter; "he's the only one. It was a good afternoon's sport—very good. We saw 'e'd got no rifle, and was in a tight clove-'itch, so we took the job on right there an' finished four of 'em; but it took some ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... have a local origin, as in the case of ague caused by miasma of swamps; and then they are named endemic. In other cases, they are caused by personal contact with the diseased body or its clothing, as the itch or small-pox; or else by effluvia from the sick, as in measles. Such are called contagious or infectious. In other cases, diseases result from some unknown cause in the atmosphere, and affect numbers of people at the same time, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... said, "if we are both King's men we have no leisure for quarrel, however much our fingers may itch. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... eating this is rather to provoke dyspepsia than to prevent it. Formerly, in the East, these seeds were in use as part payment of taxes: "Ye pay tithe of mint, anise [dill?], and cummin!" The oil destroys lice and the itch insect, for which purpose it may be mixed with lard or spermaceti as an ointment. The seed has been used for smoking, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... food by the way. Their clothes hang from them. Their flesh is often caked with dirt. They do not smell sweet. Their manners are crude: I think they must all have studied Guides to Good Society. They spit when and where they will. Some of them writhe in a manner so suggestive as to give you the itch. This writhe is known as the Spitalfields Crawl. There is a story of a constable who was on night duty near the doors of one of the doss establishments, when a local doctor passed him. "Say," said the doctor, with a chuckle, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... expensive talking machine, the slurring notes of a jazz orchestra greeted their ears as plainly as though it were coming from a neighboring room instead of a broadcasting station many miles away. Amy confessed that it made her feet itch. She ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose

... chalybeate and cataplastic, was renowned for removing stains from household linen. Taken in minute doses, under medical advice, it gave relief to patients afflicted with the wolfe, NOLI ME TANGERE, crudities, Bablyonian itch, globular pemphlegema, fantastical visions, koliks, asthma and affections of the heart. It also "fortifies the stomach, comforts the bowels, reduces the gallstone to sand, the sand to mud, the mud to water—water which can ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... two peas, excep' they don't swar quite so bad, but they make up for that in prayin'—and prayin' too much, I reckon, when a man's a d—d hippercrit, is 'bout as bad as swearin'. But I tell you, the decent folks up North han't ab'lisheners. They look on 'em jest as we do on mad dogs, the itch, or the nigger-traders. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... are towns where victual is cheap and abundant, with quantities of dates and other fruits. The wheaten bread, however, is so bitter, owing to the bitterness of the water, that no one can eat it who is not used to it. The baths that I mentioned have excellent virtues; they cure the itch ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... parts affected with itch, has been followed by vomiting and convulsions. The same article, applied to the skin on the pit of the stomach, occasions faintness, vomiting, and ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey

... Two systems of monarchies, the Bourbon system and the German, then ruled Europe between them. With the latter was associated the tradition of the European unity under the Roman empire; all the Germanic monarchs had an itch to be called Caesar. The Kaiser of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the Czar had, so to speak, the prior claim to the title. The Prussian king set up as a Caesar in 1871; Queen Victoria became the Caesar of India (Kaisir-i-Hind) under the auspices of Lord Beaconsfield, and last ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells

... emaciated creatures covered with loathsome sores, living heaven knows how. They were called by the common name of lepers, and probably the leprosy strictly so called was awfully common. But the children must have swarmed with vermin; and the itch, and the scurvy, and the ringworm, with other hideous eruptions, must have played fearful havoc with the weak ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... pots, the farm implements, a fowl-house, the household things, and everything, in a way that I cannot describe. But I dare not confess to you all my misdeeds, because speaking of them makes my mouth water, and the thing with which God curses me makes me itch dreadfully. If this folly bites and pricks me, and slays my virtue, will God, who has placed this great love in my body, condemn ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... the silver on the desk, he exclaimed, "There, Captain Riga, you may keep your tin! It has been in your purse, and it would give me the itch to retain it. Good ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... some careful hints that the police know more than they'll tell at present," answered Triffitt, importantly. "That's what I shall do, anyhow—I've got carte blanche on our rag, and I'll make the public ear itch and twitch by breakfast-time tomorrow morning! And after that, my boy, you and I'll put our heads together, as you suggest, and see if we can't do a bit of detective work of our own. See you tomorrow at the usual ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher

... scarcely anything else will grow. The seeds or berries contain nearly 60 per cent. of a fragrant, fixed oil, which is used for burning as well as for medicinal purposes, being considered a cure for the itch. As commonly prepared it has a dark green color. It is perfectly fluid at common temperatures, but begins to gelatinise when cooled ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... our Spaniard says, "of the decadence of contemporary literature is found, to my thinking, in the vice which has been very graphically called effectism, or the itch of awaking at all cost in the reader vivid and violent emotions, which shall do credit to the invention and originality of the writer. This vice has its roots in human nature itself, and more particularly in that of the artist; ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... nice way of mending the matter—that's curing the itch by scratching the skin off. I could not give your tall fellows less than a crown a-piece, and I could buy off the bloodiest Mohawk in the kingdom, if he's a Whig, for half that sum. But, thank Heaven, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Bonaparte. Here the satirist has seated the emperor (a lean, ragged, forlorn, miserable, diseased object) on a huge article of bedroom furniture, labelled, "Imperial Throne." He is in a forlorn condition, suffering from itch, with large excrescences growing on his toes. He is all alone in his island prison (Elba), and tempted by a fiend, who tenders him a pistol—"If you have one spark of courage left," it says, "take this." "Perhaps I may," replies Napoleon, "if you'll take the flint ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... worse with Paul at school. In the itch to let his instructors know how heartily he despised them, and how thoroughly he was appreciated elsewhere, he mentioned once or twice that he had no time to fool with theorems; adding—with a twitch ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... medical writer is a compound of ignorance, egoism and garrulity, and this may account for the great crop of reasons for "diseases." However, the writers in question are not so much to blame after all, even though they do belong to county medical societies; for how can they well resist the literary itch with which most of them are afflicted? Let them keep on writing while victims of pruritus ani wear out their weary lives scratching through weary nights—nights that extend into years, until permanent invalidism seems to be their destiny and end. Who, verily, are the medical quacks? I will ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... his mat, while the Hunter continued to look down on the unholy feast in the bowels of the earth, with an itch to send a bullet smashing into the midst of ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... himself in dark and intricate passages, till he is put to a shift, and obliged to get out of a scrape—by scraping. His Viol has the effect of a Scotch Fiddle, for it irritates his hearers, and puts them to the itch. He tears his audience in various ways, as I do this subject; and as I wear away my pen, so does he wear away the strings of his Fiddle. There is no medium to him; he is either in a flat or a sharp key, though both are natural to him. He deals in third minors, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... the close comes round, Or leave the substance to preserve the sound; You never wander after words that fly, For all the words you need before you lie. But I, who—smarting for my sins of late— With itch of rhyme am visited by fate, Expend on air my unavailing force, And, hunting sounds, am sweated like a horse. In vain I often muse from dawn till night: When I mean black, my stubborn verse says white; If I should paint a coxcomb's flippant mien, I scarcely can forbear to name the Dean; ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... can feel my hand returning to normal. Fourteen ... The tingling feeling has left. Fifteen ... My right hand feels perfectly normal." You could try a variation of this test by saying your nose or one of your toes will itch at a specific count. Once this test is accomplished, you are ready for ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers

... applauding desperately, encoring.... One Little-Russian divinity student bellowed in so deep a bass, 'Mill-itch! Mill-itch!' that his neighbour civilly and sympathetically advised him, 'to take care of his voice, it would be the making of a protodeacon.' But Aratov at once rose and made for the door. Kupfer overtook him.... 'I say, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... and when his passion was dormant sought to excite it, for then at least she had the illusion of holding him. Perhaps she knew with her intelligence that the chains she forged only aroused his instinct of destruction, as the plate-glass window makes your fingers itch for half a brick; but her heart, incapable of reason, made her continue on a course she knew was fatal. She must have been very unhappy. But the blindness of love led her to believe what she wanted to be true, and her love was ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... in comparative quiet, the Concerned struggled with the Concerned. Then true to all Dog Psychology,—absolutely indisputable, absolutely unalterable, the Non-Concerned leaped in upon the Non-Concerned! Half on his guard, but wholely on his itch, the jostled Parrot shot like a catapult across the floor! Lost to all sense of honor or table-manners the benign-faced Giraffe with his benign face still towering blandly in the air, burst through his own neck with a most curious anatomical effect,—locked ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... Lord!" exclaimed the stout General, rising to his feet. "I'll see old Chenoweth at once. My fingers have the itch." ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... "They burn and itch, and are so tender I can hardly touch them. I can't sleep at nights sometimes for ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... the meeting with an "itch" to speak, though it sometimes happens to me, as to others, that I am moved to speak before arriving at the meeting house. Even so, I usually restrain the urge until we have had at least a short period of silent waiting before God. One ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer

... methodical minded, and, like so many good men, he has been dead now many months. His words, which have proved true, were the first to turn my mind definitely to war-thoughts. Besides, the man whose trade is writing has always, when events are stirring, the itch to go, look ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie

... to be a greater degree of titillation, and to be owing to the stimulus of some acrid material, as the matter of the itch; or of the herpes on the scrotum, and about the anus; or from those universal eruptions, which attend some elderly people, who have drank much vinous spirit. It occurs also, when inflammations are declining, as in the healing of blisters, or in the cure of ophthalmia, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... is a condition that may have its moments of sublime exaltation, but it is for the most part an experience far down the scale below divine experience; it is often love only in so far as it shares the name with better things; it is greed, it is admiration, it is desire, it is the itch for excitement, it is the instinct for competition, it is lust, it is curiosity, it is adventure, it is jealousy, it is hate. On a hundred scores 'lovers' meet and part. Thereby some few find true love and the spirit of God in themselves ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... said Will. "I'm itching for a row like they say drovers in Monty's country itch for mile-stones! Let Fred warble. I'll ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... Bombay for cloth were in consequence of their having bought some slaves, whose whims and tastes they could not satisfy without our aid; and they knew these men would very soon desert them unless they received occasionally alluring presents to make them contented. But finessing is a kind of itch with all Orientals, as gambling is with those who are addicted to it; and they would tell any lie rather than gain their object easily by the simple truth, on the old principle that "stolen things are sweetest." Had Bombay only opened his heart, ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... ought to keep my head down all the wile and keep out of the snippers way and I could all most shut my eyes and imagine I was back there again in that he—ll hole but I know I'm not Al as I don't itch. ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner

... Street on the site of the present Clark Gymnasium. Some of the hardships of the early settlers to which history may only allude are suggested by a sign which hung in front of the drug store of Dr. Pomeroy, as he was called. This sign depicted a hand pointing to these words: "Itch cured for 2 cts. 4 cts. ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... with a snigger, touching the piano again, and Philip, sitting near the door, felt the palm of his hand itch for the whole breadth of ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... people's skins. And then here he comes back, sent by the Government right down to Flat Rock, on the other side of Providence Nob, to study out about that curious corn disease they calls Pellagra, what I don't think is a thing in the world but itch and can be cured by a little sulphur and hog lard. But I'm blessing the chanct that brought him back to me, even if I know it are just for a spell. And, too, he oughter be happy to have brung his mother such a song bird as you. I'm so used to you and your helping me with Cindy away to Springfield, ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... renversi. invest : (money), procent'doni, -meti. invoice : fakturo, kalkulo. iris : (of eye), iriso; (flower) irido. iron : fero; gladi. ironmonger : ferajxisto. irony : ironio. irritate : inciti, kolerigi. island : insulo. isolate : izoli. isthmus : terkolo, istmo. italics : ("in—"), kursive. itch : juki. item : ero. itinerant : vaganta. ivory : ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... for it, it is pitched into the fire; if it has been good, it is allowed to pass on to the abode of the blessed. The soul that meets with neither fate, is punished according to its sins: if it has lied, its mouth pains; if it has been a thief, its hands itch and burn, and eventually, after the period of punishment is over, it precedes to ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... now. In a great room to the right of the steps of the War Office a number of men in civilian clothes sit in gilded chairs with a strained look of expectancy, as though awaiting some message of fate. They have interesting faces. My fingers itch to make a sketch of them, but only Steinlen could draw these Parisian types who seem to belong to some literary or Bohemian coterie. What can they be doing at the Ministry of War? They smoke cigarettes incessantly, talk in whispers tete-a-tete, or stare up at ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

... yo' par'n— no' a 'itch! [In difficulties with his overcoat.] When a gen'leman'sh invited b' th' lady 'f th' house t' partake ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero

... however, destined moreover to place my friends in anxiety and trouble by means of a prank in which I indulged. Among us young people who had been at Leipzig, there had been maintained ever afterwards a certain itch for imposing on and in some way mystifying one another. With this wanton love of mischief I wrote to a friend in Frankfort (he was the one who had amplified my poem on the cake-baker Hendel, applied it to /Medon/, and caused its general circulation) a letter dated ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... healthy, broad Scots folk, without a hair of nonsense to the pair of them. And the fact was that she made a goddess and an only child of the effete and tearful lady; and even as she waited at table her hands would sometimes itch ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... varieties of "spots" are found, and the four sensations of touch, warmth, cold and pain are believed to be the only elementary skin sensations. Itch, stinging and aching seem to be the same as pain. Tickle is touch, usually light touch or a succession of light touches. Smooth and rough are successions of touch sensations. Moist is usually a compound of smooth and cold. Hard and soft ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and there shall be none to fray them away. The LORD shall smite thee with the boil of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scurvy, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed. The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and with blindness, and with astonishment of heart: and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... lady, be she who she may. Nay,' adds he, with greater fury, 'I will not stay where my loyalty and better judgment may be affected by the contagion of a vile suspicion. Away while you may; my fingers itch to be revenged on you for sundering me from one who should have been my ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... can't, my legs itch so. I am sure I shall be crazy before long. I almost wish I'd been sent away to school too, then I could give them away, ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... in and about a distillery becomes an indispensable requisite, without a strict observance of which the undertaker will find the establishment unproductive and injurious to his interest. Purity cannot exist without cleanliness. Cleanliness in the human system will destroy an obstinate itch, of consequence, it is the active handmaid of health and comfort, and without which, ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry

... they burst into the redoubt after it was found that the Browns had gone, all, even the judge's son, were the war demon's, own. The veneer had been warped and twisted and burned off down to the raw animal flesh. Their brains had the fever itch of callouses forming. Not a sign of brown there in the yard; not a sign of any tribute after all they had endured! They had not been able to lay hands on the murderous throwers of hand-grenades. Far away now was the barrack-room geniality of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... pain had subsided to an over-all smarting itch. He'd have to bear with that until his work was finished and he could enjoy a hot bath. He got another bottle out of the first-aid kit—a flat pint, labeled "Old Overholt," containing a locally-manufactured specific for inward and subjective wounds—and medicated himself ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper

... stables they come and the boys are on their backs and it's lovely to be there. You hunch down on top of the fence and itch inside you. Over in the sheds the niggers giggle and sing. Bacon is being fried and coffee made. Everything smells lovely. Nothing smells better than coffee and manure and horses and niggers and bacon frying and pipes being smoked out of doors on a morning ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson

... morning I began to itch, and found I had made the acquaintance of that gay and festive little soldier's enemy, the "cootie." The cootie, or the "chat" as he is called by the officers, is the common body louse. Common is right. I never got rid of mine until I left the service. Sometimes when I get to thinking ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes

... ways before them, and shalt be moved into all the kingdoms of the earth. And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away. The Lord will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, the scab and the itch, with madness and blindness, that thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness. Thou shalt not prosper in thy ways, and thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee. Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg

... nature and maintain the dead man pose for the long silent minutes that crawled by before there came any sound from behind. The Jupiter-light, flooding down on him from the glittering blue sky above, was hot and growing hotter, and of course he began to itch. Had he had the freedom of his limbs, he would not have itched, he knew; it happened only when he had to keep absolutely still; he cursed the phenomenon to himself. Minute after minute, and no sound to tell him what was happening behind, or how close the three approaching figures ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore

... on, never ceasing, it stirred the Dragon's blood in Kan Wong's veins. The pick and shovel irked his hands as he swung them; his palms began to itch for the weapons that the soldiers bore. Now and then he came upon a gun where it had dropped from its owner's useless hands. He studied its mechanism, even asking the Foreign Devil overseer how it was worked, and, being shown, he remembered ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... that as Sayyidna (our Lord) Adam had died intestate, so all men (Arabs) have a right to all things, provided the right can be established by might. Hence the saying of the Fellah, "Shun the Arab and the itch." Thus encouraged by the Shaykhs, the "dodges" of the clansmen became as manifold as they were palpable. They wanted us to pay for camping-ground; they complained aloud when we cut a palm-frond for palms, or used a rotten fallen trunk for fuel. They made their sheep appear ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... again. Mr Nickleby for once at fault; out, quite out! To a young and beautiful girl; fresh, lovely, bewitching, and not nineteen. Dark eyes, long eyelashes, ripe and ruddy lips that to look at is to long to kiss, beautiful clustering hair that one's fingers itch to play with, such a waist as might make a man clasp the air involuntarily, thinking of twining his arm about it, little feet that tread so lightly they hardly seem to walk upon the ground—to marry all this, sir, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... that was brought upon him, with considerable justice, by his later theories. But he lived onto propound his extraordinary theory of "potentiality"—that medicines gained strength by being diluted—and his even more extraordinary theory that all chronic diseases are caused either by the itch, syphilis, or fig-wart disease, or are ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... you ain't no more beholden to him for your eddication, an' all, he is more pennyurious than ever—yes he is! For Jabez's sake, I could almost wish you hadn't got all that money you did, for gittin' back the lady's necklace. Spendin' money breeds the itch for spendin' more. Since you wrote him that you was goin' to pay all your school bills, Jabez Potter is cured of the little itch of that ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson

... Blackfoot Indian who has set a trap for eagles, and is watching it, would not eat rosebuds on any account; for he argues that if he did so, and an eagle alighted near the trap, the rosebuds in his own stomach would make the bird itch, with the result that instead of swallowing the bait the eagle would merely sit and scratch himself. Following this train of thought the eagle hunter also refrains from using an awl when he is looking after his snares; for surely if he were to scratch with an awl, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... some pedling stall, with trinkets stock'd, There earn thy daily halfpence, nor again Trust the false Muse; so shall the cleanly meal Repel intruding hunger.—Oh! 'tis vain, The friendly admonition's all in vain; The scribbling itch has seized him, he is lost To all advice, and starves for ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside

... "but he ought to have been horsewhipped too. It makes one's fingers itch to think of it. However, Smith's all ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... bloomless and now brown with autumn—and I paced its gravelled paths up and down, at the same time favoring Mr. Beasley's house with a covert study that would have done credit to a porch-climber, for the sting of my blunder at the table was quiescent, or at least neutralized, under the itch of a curiosity far from satisfied concerning the interesting premises next door. The gentleman in the dressing-gown, I was sure, could have been no other than the Honorable David Beasley himself. He came not in eyeshot now, neither he nor any other; there was no sign of life ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington

... experiment, to some rare natures, is the unbroken pastime of a life. These are enviable natures; people shut in the house by sickness often bitterly envy them; but the commoner man cannot continue to exist upon such altitudes: his feet itch for physical adventure; his blood boils for physical dangers, pleasures, and triumphs; his fancy, the looker after new things, cannot continue to look for them in books and crucibles, but must seek them on the breathing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... we've got some cabbage. You Jew-dog, if you linger, May the Itch in pomp of scabbage Pop out between ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... made ready for the scrutiny of the official eye in various ways, practising many devices for procuring a temporary disability and a permanent discharge. Some, horrible thought! "rubbed themselves with Cow Itch and Whipped themselves with Nettles to appear in Scabbs"; others "burnt themselves with oil of vitriol" to induce symptoms with difficulty distinguishable from those of scurvy, that disease of such dread omen to the fleet; whilst others emulated the passing of the poor ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... the catalogue given by another philosopher of the number of authors he mastered before his twelfth year. Two attacks of the plague, agues, tertian and quotidian, malignant ulcers, hernia, haemorrhoids, varicose veins, palpitation of the heart, gout, indigestion, the itch, and foulness of skin. Relief in the second attack of plague came from a sweat so copious that it soaked the bed and ran in streams down to the floor; and, in a case of continuous fever, from voiding a hundred and twenty ounces of urine. ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... rain. He would strike out of the cold iron, be often in the dumps, and frig and wriggle it. He would flay the fox, say the ape's paternoster, return to his sheep, and turn the hogs to the hay. He would beat the dogs before the lion, put the plough before the oxen, and claw where it did not itch. He would pump one to draw somewhat out of him, by griping all would hold fast nothing, and always eat his white bread first. He shoed the geese, kept a self-tickling to make himself laugh, and was very steadable in the kitchen: ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... our lives fill a great part of them with the uneasinesses of hunger, thirst, heat, cold, weariness, with labour, and sleepiness, in their constant returns, &c. To which, if, besides accidental harms, we add the fantastical uneasiness (as itch after honour, power, or riches, &c.) which acquired habits, by fashion, example, and education, have settled in us, and a thousand other irregular desires, which custom has made natural to us, we shall find that ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke

... exhausted to expand; the neck too weary to support the heavy head. The shoulders ache under the galling weight of sword and haversack, and every inch of clammy skin on the body seems ten times as sensitive as it normally is. The nerves in the face and hands feel like swelled veins that itch so that they long to be torn by the nails. The tongue and eyes seem to expand to twice their usual size. Sound itself loses its sharp conciseness, and reaches the brain only as ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... with a cheaper kind mixed in. Inferior brown sugars are often full of a certain crab-like animalcule or minute bug, often visible without a microscope, in water where the sugar is dissolved. It is believed that this pleasing insect sometimes gets into the skin, and produces a kind of itch. I do not believe there is much danger of adulteration in good loaf or crushed white sugar, or good granulated ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... hand and pulled away a quantity of charred hair. His forehead began to itch, and, rubbing his finger across it, he realized that his eyebrows were gone. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... life up to the hilt, and was all pulse and granite. Then he began to talk in his quiet way about hunting and fishing; about stalking in the Highlands and tiger-hunting in India; and wound up with some wonderful stuff about moose-hunting, the sport of Canada. This made me itch like sin, just to get my fingers on a trigger, with a full moose-yard in view. I can feel it now—the bound in the blood as I caught at Malbrouck's arm and said: 'By George, I must kill moose; that's sport for Vikings, and I was meant to be a Viking—or ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... school-divinity. He has sounded both religions, and anchored in the best, and is a protestant out of judgment, not faction; not because his country, but his reason is on this side. The ministry is his choice, not refuge, and yet the pulpit not his itch, but fear. His discourse is substance, not all rhetoric, and he utters more things than words. His speech is not helped with inforced action, but the matter acts itself. He shoots all his meditations ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... son of Satan, whose brazen instruments (one of whom gave his first born the name of Morse) instigated by the Gent in Black, not content with inflicting us with the Irish Potato Rot, has recently brought over the Scotch Itch, if, perhaps, by plagues Job was never called upon to suffer (for there were no Courts of Equity and Chancery in those early days) the American inventor might be tempted to curse God and die. But, Ah! you have such a sweet wife, and Job's was such ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... to be in the middle of that heap of good-for-nothings, but I said to myself, 'Come, it's only for a bit, Firmin.' There was just one time that I very near broke out with the itch, and that was when one of 'em said, 'Later, when we return, if we do return.'—NO! He had no right to say that. Sayings like that, before you let them out of your gob, you've got to earn them; it's like a decoration. Let them get ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... know. You needn't teach me that. I do it not so much as a precaution as out of curiosity. I just itch to know what's doing in the world. And it's very interesting reading, I tell you. Some letters are fascinating—parts of them written grand—more edifying than the ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol

... down in Exchange history as a bear day. When I resolve on that, your threats will hardly alter me. This is not that day. The rumor of my attack is absurd. My brokers will be found bracing the market. The next time that you feel an itch to coerce me, regard my answer as given in advance. It is that you may go ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... the Commons-house, with its green benches, and grilled galleries, so agreeable to my mood, that I went again the next morning, and listened to more records, till they tired me: for what I had was a prurient itch to hear secret scandals, and revelations of the festering heart, but these cylinders, gathered from a shop, divulged nothing. I then went out to make for Woolwich, but in the car saw the poet's note-book in which I had written: and I took it, went back, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... men do say that it driveth out the poison that maketh itch and spots on the skin." After a moment Monapini said, "It looketh to me like the foot ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... so soon unriddled.) And where is 'Fum' the Fourth, our 'royal bird?' Gone down, it seems, to Scotland to be fiddled Unto by Sawney's violin, we have heard: 'Caw me, caw thee'—for six months hath been hatching This scene of royal itch and ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... itch, lad, let them itch," was my answer; "here's the gig by the point, and they won't trouble you with that complaint long. Do you, Peter, give them a hail when I cry, 'Now!' If they stop, well and good; if they come on—why, you won't be asking them to ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... House of Peers withholds Its legislative hand. And noble statesmen do not itch To interfere with matters which They do not understand, As bright will shine Great Britain's rays, As in King ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert

... 'I find a law in my members warring against the law of my spirit, and making me a prisoner under the law of sin;' [Footnote: Romans vii. 23.] for if I see my neighbour rich and I am poor, then the demon of covetousness rises in me, and my fingers itch to seize my share. Or, if the foaming flask is before me, how can I resist to drain it, for the spirit of gluttony is within me? Or, if I see a maiden, the blood throbs in my veins, and the demon of lust has taken possession of me. 'Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... itch of youthful blood, Of doing acts extravagantly good; We call that virtue, which is only heat That reigns in youth, till age ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... calf calm catch castle caught chalk climb ditch dumb edge folks comb daughter debt depot forehead gnaw hatchet hedge hiccough hitch honest honor hustle island itch judge judgment knack knead kneel knew knife knit knuckle knock knot know knowledge lamb latch laugh limb listen match might muscle naughty night notch numb often palm pitcher pitch pledge ridge right rough scene scratch should sigh sketch snatch soften stitch ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... good friend, I believe that literature, in the day we live in, is no better than the trade of a woman of the town, who prostitutes herself for a dollar. It leads to nothing. I have an itch to go off and wander and explore, make of my life a drama, risk my life; for, as for a few miserable years more or less!... Oh, when one looks at these great skies of a beautiful night, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... cursed, nimble, supple serpent and lurking-witch! Where art thou gone? But in my face do I feel through thy hand, two spots and red blotches itch! ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... amiss, but what it was I couldn't at first make out, until I see'd the blackies jump out of the bushes, and then I knowed at once what a reg'lar fix you was in. I see'd ye fire at 'em, lad, and bring 'em up with a round turn, and my fingers was just all of a itch to be alongside of ye with one of them same revolvin' rifles in my fist, though I'm, a'ter all, no great matter of a shot. Well, I see'd ye run, and I see'd the little lady here step into the canoe and lie down; and then in course I knowed what you was after, so I ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... for firing in the direction of Matammeh, some lying down with their ears to the ground to hear the farther. But all was still as the desert only can be, and the great battle which was expected had certainly not yet begun. But expectation of a fight excites men, and if at a distance they itch to be in it, this feeling even actuating men who fail to show any particular ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... at the door, and in came three Mongols with my Chinese card. They were asked to wait till the service was concluded, then I took them to my quarters and had some conversation with them. One of them had come for the doctor, and wished to get cured of so prosaic a disease as the itch. ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... fashion, superior even to France, the conditions were the same, and how little water found favor even with aristocratic ladies we may gather from the contemporary books on the toilet, which abound with recipes against itch and similar diseases. It should be added that Burckhardt (Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien, eighth edition, volume ii, p. 92) considers that in spite of skin diseases the Italians of the Renaissance were the first nation in Europe ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... trying to scratch an itching back on parade. Military discipline, I need not tell you, Major, doesn't take into account the sensitiveness of a recruit's back. It flatly denies such a phenomenon. Now I think I can defy anything in God's quaint universe to make me itch. But that's by the way. I tore the letter up and never answered it. You do these things, sir, when the whole universe seems to be a stumbling-block and an offence. Phyllis was the stumbling-block and the rest of the cosmos was the other thing. That's why I have reason on my side when ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... when he found his peasant pupils indisposed to learn he dismissed the school, went home, and occupied himself in his own affairs. After an interval, more or less long, a scuffling of feet and a rapping would become audible at the door, and small voices would plead: "Please, Lyeff Nikola'itch, we want to study. Please, come and teach us." He went, and they made rapid progress because all ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... inferior to him in quality, but, their lot and circumstances being the same, it was decidedly a mistake to make the others feel their inferiority, and, as I think, a mark of ill breeding to boot. His few words were sneers, and he had a contemptuous way of looking at a man that made one itch to thrash him. At length he was thrashed, and very smartly, by a man in our dormitory, and after that he was utterly ignored, by general consent. It ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... such maladies as affect others, and are either dangerous or disagreeable to them. Of the epilepsy; because it gives a horror to every one present: Of the itch; because it is infectious: Of the king's-evil; because it commonly goes to posterity. Men always consider the sentiments of others in their judgment of themselves. This has evidently appeared in some of the foregoing reasonings; and will appear still more ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... on me!" thought he after his next dose. The sun of southern California was shining brightly out of doors; it must be a glorious day at Westlake Park. The bedclothes were warm and irksome, and that confounded plaster had begun to itch. If he was ever to see Dolores again he should have to make a clean ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... fault is in nature, and not in me; or, as Ben Jonson tells us in "The Alchymist," when projection had failed, and the glasses were all broken, there was enough, however, in the bottoms of them, to cure the itch; so I may thus be positive, that if I have not succeeded as I desire, yet there is somewhat still remaining to satisfy the curiosity, or itch of sight and hearing. Yet I have no great reason to despair; for I may, without vanity, own some advantages, which are not common to every writer; such as ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... of the Egyptians, because they would say to the children of Israel, "Go and prepare a bath for us unto the delight of our flesh and our bones." Therefore they were doomed to suffer with boils that inflamed their flesh, and on account of the itch they could not leave off scratching. While the Egyptians suffered thus, the children of ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... seventy-three guineas, and let my old governess see what good luck I had at play. However, it was her advice that I should not venture again, and I took her counsel, for I never went there any more; for I knew as well as she, if the itch of play came in, I might soon lose that, and all the rest of what I ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... heart to the woman whose ambition it is to sway the minds of multitudes as did a Demosthenes or a Cicero? What are the tender affections and childish prattle of the family circle, to women whose ears itch for the loud laugh and boisterous ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... among us, not so much a spy, As a recording chief-inquisitor, The town's true master if the town but knew! {40} We merely kept a governor for form, While this man walked about and took account Of all thought, said and acted, then went home, And wrote it fully to our Lord the King Who has an itch to know things, he knows why, And reads them in his bedroom of a night. Oh, you might smile! there wanted not a touch, A tang of. . .well, it was not wholly ease, As back into your mind the man's look came. Stricken in years a little, such a brow {50} His eyes had to live under!—clear ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... out that you are a woman with an itch to meddle at the righting of the world. There have been more men than women at the task, but such an one was I never. The King was never man of mine, nor should have been had I any say in the matter.' ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford

... venture having perhaps discouraged him. Some slight amount of practice in his profession fell to his share. An entry in the Minute Book of the Aldeburgh Board of Guardians of September 17, 1775, orders "that Mr. George Crabbe, Junr., shall be employed to cure the boy Howard of the itch, and that whenever any of the poor shall have occasion for a surgeon, the overseers shall apply to him for that purpose." But these very opportunities perhaps only served to show George Crabbe how poorly he was equipped for his calling as surgeon, and after a ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... smiled, with his slow, generous eyes fixed on the boy's face. "Thou art a good boy, Erdman!" ... "It is only thy fingers that itch to know things." He patted them gently, where they lay ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee

... thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the emerods, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... Pablo, he would never have allowed the monkeys to get quietly out of the zamang—for it being an isolated tree, it would have afforded him a capital opportunity of "treeing" them. His blow-gun had been causing his fingers to itch all the time; and as soon as Don Pablo and the rest were satisfied with observing the monkeys, Guapo set out, blow-gun, in hand, followed ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... Not long after she went home. When she arrived in her house the space between the little finger and the next itched. "Bolinayen, you stick the needle in my finger where it itches. I do not know what makes it itch so," she said. As soon as Bolinayen stuck the needle the little baby popped out. [188] "What shall we name the baby?" "Dagolayan will be his name." The baby shook his head, so they gave ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole

... perhaps the soul grows cold again, it also forgets this grace received, and waxeth carnal, begins again to itch after the world, loseth the life and savour of heavenly things, grieves the Spirit of God, woefully backslides, casteth off closet duties quite, or else retains only the formality of them, is a reproach to religion, grieves the hearts of them that are awake, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... follow Matai Shang to kill him, though the God of mine own planet knows that my hands itch to be at his throat. I follow him, Thuvan Dihn, because with him are two prisoners—my wife, Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium, and your daughter, ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... painful minutes. As they dragged by, an abominable curiosity took hold of me, an itch to open the door of the shed, strike a match, and have a look at the dead face I had never seen. Then came into my mind a passage in the Republic which I had read a fortnight before—how that one Leontius, the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from the Piraeus under the north wall ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... cucumber; the pulp is very agreeable and very wholesome; but the rind, which is easily stripped off, leaves on the fingers so sharp an acid, that if you touch your eye with them before you wash them, it will be immediately inflamed, and itch most ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... disease is one of the most tragic examples of a great wrong done to do a little right. What if there are a few who deserve what they got? We may well ask ourselves how free we are to cast the first stone. And why single out syphilis as the badge of venery? The "itch" is transmitted by sexual relations too. Why not make the itch a sign of shame? The power that has done the damage is not the intrinsic viciousness of syphilis, but the survival of the old idea of sexual taboo, the feeling that sex is a secret, shameful ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... His friend touched him, and said, "Don't speak so to a gentleman." "Why not?" exclaimed the fellow. He grated his short teeth, which appeared to be nearly worn away by the incessant chewing of tobacco, and said, "It always makes me itch all over, from head to toe, to get hold of every d——d nigger I see dressed like a white man. Washington is run away with SPILED and free niggers. If I had my way I would sell every d——d rascal of 'em way down South, where the devil would be ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft

... which we often saw schools of as many as fifty disporting themselves for hours together. We had no means of disturbing their peaceful sport, although the sight of all these monsters, each worth a small fortune, was well calculated to make our fingers itch. It was the whaling ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... hark to him!" cried the little fat man. "It is even thus, Dicon! Wit, lad, is a catching thing, like the itch or the sweating sickness. I exude it round me; it is an aura. I tell you, coz, that no man can come within seventeen feet of me without catching a spark. Look at your own case. A duller man never stepped, and yet within the week ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... see," one of the men asserted; "they got the goods on him. Thompson had been a good delegate until he got the finger itch, then he had an idea he could use the miners' union to scratch 'em. He held up one or two small mines before the big guns got wise. That got him to feelin' his oats, and he went for ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... forgiven the great man of the family for his desertion of Agnes; she flatly refused to consult her memory. 'Even the bare sight of my lord, when I last saw him in London,' said the old woman, 'made my finger-nails itch to set their mark on his face. I was sent on an errand by Miss Agnes; and I met him coming out of his dentist's door—and, thank God, that's the last I ever saw ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins

... PRURIENS.—A tall climbing plant of the West Indies and other warm climates. It is called the cowage, or cow-itch, on account of the seed pods being covered with short brittle hairs, the points of which are finely serrated, causing an unbearable itching when applied to the skin, which is relieved by rubbing ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders

... were it not for United States troops, these beautiful objects would be mutilated by relic-hunters. Hence, another duty of our soldiers is to watch the formations constantly, lest tourists should break off specimens, and ruin them forever, and lest still more ignoble vandals, whose fingers itch for notoriety, should write upon these glorious works of nature their worthless names, and those of the towns unfortunate enough to have produced them. All possible measures are taken to prevent this vandalism. Thus, every tourist entering the Park must register his name. Most travelers do so, ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard

... have a youthful Itch of going my self. [Aside.] —Madam, if I thought your Brother might not know it, and I might wait on you, for by my troth I'll ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... much troubled with what the settlers called "prairie dig." It was a kind of itch that seemed to come from the new land. It made the hands very sore and troublesome. We did everything but could find no cure. The Dakota Sioux were our neighbors and were very friendly. They had not yet learned ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... my feet stink!" Ramos once laughed. "They must be rotten. They're sore, and they itch something awful, and I can't scratch them, or change my socks, even. The fungus, I guess. Just ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... painful to the mother and child, and made more so by the disgust with which the Spanish roadside bill-of-fare inspired the more civilized French stomach. They were forced to make a part of the journey in wagons with the common soldiery and camp-retainers, and Aurore in this manner took the itch, to her mother's great mortification. Arrived at Nohant, however, the care of Deschartres, joined to a self-imposed regime of green lemons, which the little girl devoured, skins, seeds, and all, soon healed the ignominious eruption. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... "Miscellaneous" printed upon the back. Far be it from me to claim any credit for the quite unexpected popularity which I am pleased to find these bucolic strains have attained unto. If I know myself, I am measurably free from the itch of vanity; yet I may be allowed to say that I was not backward to recognize in them a certain wild, puckery, acidulous (sometimes even verging toward that point which, in our rustic phrase, is termed shut-eye) flavour, not wholly unpleasing, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... identical afternoon of the lecture a strange lady descended from the Rouen Accommodation and was greeted on the platform by the wealthiest citizen of the county. Judge Briscoe, and his daughter, Minnie, and (what stirred wonder to an itch almost beyond endurance) Mr. Fisbee! and they then drove through town on the way to the Briscoe mansion, all four, apparently, in a fluster of pleasure and exhilaration, the strange lady engaged in earnest conversation with Mr. Fisbee ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... that want doing: I want to count, to make a name. I'm damnably ambitious. You'll despise that, of course—and you're quite right, it is despicable. But there it is. Most men and many women are tormented by it—they itch ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... idea but those of parasitism. She was honest and earnest, was eager to learn the truth. She might be put to some use. At any rate he had been unworthy of his own ideals when he, assuming without question that she was the usual capitalistic snob with the itch for gratifying vanity by patronizing the "poor dear lower classes," had been ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... Vince good, for the action given to his muscles carried off the sensation which made his fists clench from time to time in his pockets and itch to be delivering blows wherever he could make them light ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... hang Undy Scott, I think I should deter some others. The figure of Undy swinging from a gibbet at the broad end of Lombard Street would have an effect. Ah! my fingers itch to be at ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... his chair, like one who is troubled with the itch, seemed greatly disturbed. His nostrils expelled and drew in the air, like those of a horse. Within that massive frame a storm of rage and fury, roaring and destroying, struggled to escape. After stammering a few words and muttering others ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... "I think an itch is an awful feeling; why do you want him to have that?" Patricia replied, sinking into obscurity at the laugh ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... you, gentlemen. See to it! I have made some arrangements in my own department, and I advise you to do the same. Especially you, Artemy Philipp'itch! Without a doubt, this traveling official will wish, first of all, to inspect your institutions, and therefore, you must arrange things so that they will be decent. The nightcaps should be clean, and ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood

... road. Mother even had Leon stack the wood pile straighter. She said when corded wood leaned at an angle, it made people seem shiftless; and she never passed a place where it looked that way that her fingers didn't just itch to get at it. He had to pull every ragweed on each side of the road as far as our land reached, and lay every rail straight in the fences. Father had to take spikes and our biggest maul and go to the bridges at the foot of the Big and the Little Hill, and see that ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... must have shown the same front under such discipline. I did not see enough of their gentry to enable me to form an opinion about them; but the middling and lower orders are extremely filthy both in their persons and in their houses, and they have all an intolerable itch for gambling. The soldiers, though fainting with fatigue on the line of march, invariably group themselves in card-parties whenever they are allowed a few minutes' halt; and a non-commissioned officer, ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... everything? I won't pretend I'm sorry you're rich; I'm delighted. I delight in everything that's yours—whether it be money or virtue. Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet. It seems to me, however, that I've sufficiently proved the limits of my itch for it: I never in my life tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be less subject to suspicion than most of the people one sees grubbing and grabbing. I suppose it's their business to suspect—that of your family; it's proper on the whole they should. They'll like me better some day; so ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... and the private soldier had to starve the other two days and a half. Never in all my whole life do I remember of ever experiencing so much oppression and humiliation. The soldiers were starved and almost naked, and covered all over with lice and camp itch and filth and dirt. The men looked sick, hollow-eyed, and heart-broken, living principally upon parched corn, which had been picked out of the mud and dirt under the feet of officers' horses. We ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... spent on the old ramparts. We were there, as a matter of fact, to do a little building-up and clearing-away when the German itch for destruction proved too strong for their more gentlemanly feelings. We lay on the grass in the sun and smoked our pipes, looking across the placid moat to Zillebeke Vyver, Verbranden Molen, and the slight curve of Hill 60. The landscape was full of interest. Here was shrapnel ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... a man of impious and scandalous habits, a wild, drunken, unmannerly clown, more inclined to look into the wine can than into the Bible. He would prefer drinking brandy two hours to preaching one; and when the sap is in the wood his hands itch and he wants to fight whomsoever he meets. The commandant at Fort Casimir, Jean Paulus Jacqet, brother-in-law of Domine Casparus Carpentier, told us that during last spring this preacher was tippling with a smith, and ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor

... his own act had rendered it impossible, that act the outcome of wilful trifling with his infirmity, his itch for thieving. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph



Words linked to "Itch" :   Cuban itch, Saint Ignatius' itch, tingle, pruritus, swimmer's itch, barber's itch, prickle, irritate, smart, ache, infection, itch mite, haptic sensation, hurt, titillate, spoil, dhobi itch



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com