Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

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




Battered   /bˈætərd/   Listen
Battered

adjective
1.
Damaged by blows or hard usage.  Synonyms: beat-up, beaten-up.  "The beaten-up old Ford"
2.
Damaged especially by hard usage.
3.
Exhibiting symptoms resulting from repeated physical and emotional injury.  "The battered woman syndrome"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Battered" Quotes from Famous Books



... land's not important, But seven good peasants Once met on a high-road. From Province "Hard-Battered," From District "Most Wretched," From "Destitute" Parish, From neighbouring hamlets— "Patched," "Barefoot," and "Shabby," "Bleak," "Burnt-Out," and "Hungry," From "Harvestless" also, 11 They met and disputed Of who can, in Russia, Be ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... my view, the educated brute and the despairing, battered, faithful drudge of a woman, to migrate from lodging-house to lodging-house, to suffer ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... nations there are times and tides. Against the tide-wall of history, beaten by many a storm, and battered by many a thundering wave, there is about to sweep the incoming wave of a new life for the race: there is about to pass a greater than the spirit of Tsze-sue,—even the ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... the foot of Greenland, and must have landed somewhere in what is now Labrador. It would be inconceivable that in four centuries of voyages this never happened. In most cases, no doubt, the storm-tossed and battered ships, like the fourteen vessels that Eric lost, were never heard of again. But in other cases survivors must have returned to Greenland or Iceland to tell of what ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock

... Big Creek stream a long double boom cradled the large "R & P" drive. The last log had shot safely down the crooked brook and rested calmly by the side of its companions. There were thousands of them there, scarred and battered by rock and flood; worthy veterans were they, this hardy army of the forest, reposing now ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody

... strangely elated, strangely gay, at times inclined to laugh as she caught sight of her bruised and puffy face in an opposite mirror, yet happy in the knowledge that notwithstanding the thirteen years of separation, her repeated rejection of his early love, her battered appearance, Frank still felt tenderly towards her, still remembered the timbre of her voice. Her mouth was too sore and swollen to make eating very pleasant. She trifled with her food but she felt young and full of gay adventure. Mrs. Rossiter a little overwhelmed with all the information Gardner ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... him in bags and wrinkles like a ploughman's Sunday coat; his accent was rude, broad, and dragging: take him at his best, and even when he could be induced to hold his tongue, his mere presence in a corner of the drawing-room, with his open-air wrinkles, his scanty hair, his battered hands, and the cheerful craftiness of his expression, advertised the whole gang of us for a self-made family. My aunt might mince and my cousins bridle; but there was no getting over the solid, physical fact of the ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... huge wax baby-doll, considerably battered, which had once been a favourite of her own. Diavolo came out of his seat, hugging himself, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... to his rooms, switched on the electric light, and shut the door. Spike stood blinking at the sudden glare. He twirled his battered hat in his hands. His red hair ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... Your fealty to such rule? What, all— From Heavenly John and Attic Paul, And that brave weather-battered Peter, Whose stout faith only stood completer For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, As the more his hands hauled nets, they hardened— All, down to you, the man of men, Professing here at Goettingen, Compose Christ's flock! So, you and I Are ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... frequently shared; when they cannot find 3d. for their night's lodging, unless favourably known to the deputy, they are turned out at night into the street, to return to the common kitchen in the morning. From these come the battered figures who slouch through the streets, and play the beggar or the bully, or help to foul the record of the unemployed; these are the worst class of corner-men, who hang round the doors of public- houses, the young men who spring ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson

... not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the shocks of ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... was conscious that this question drew upon him the gaze of a pair of searching eyes, yet none the less he met the issue. He glanced at the battered phonograph which leaned ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... think I am through with the cave under the point—the Cavern of the Two Arches, I have named it. It is a dangerous place to work in alone, and my little skiff has been badly battered several times. But I peered into every crevice in the walls, and sounded the sands with a drill. I suppose I would have made a more thorough job of it if I had not been convinced from the first that the ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... glancing up from his typewriter to the somewhat battered and worn countenance of ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed

... very much defaced inscription underneath a battered Elizabethan effigy, whose feet had been knocked off, and whose features were blurred into nothing. Two words of the ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle

... increasing daily: the Parliament was trying to come to terms with the king, all Wales around him was disaffected, the Scotch had crossed the border and were marching on London. After many weeks of assaults and desperate defence, the guns came and the old walls were battered down. Pembroke Castle, whose great round tower still stands, had protected William Marshall against Llywelyn and had enabled an important district to remain a "little England beyond Wales," was the last mediaeval castle to take an important part in war. The Scotch were soon defeated at the battle ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards

... came to, Kansas Shorty, of whom he expected this last of all, was sitting upon the edge of the bed upon which he had been placed, and while he fanned the poor boy's bruised and battered face with a folded newspaper, he was talking to him in a softly purring voice, telling him how sorry he felt to have been forced to punish him for having attempted to run away from his "protector", who intended to make out of "Dakota Jim" a "man" who in the future would be proud to ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... like that ought not to be battered about. It's meant for something better than bawling to a ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... respectfully for the sake of the sixpence, and proceeded to carry out the first of them straightway. As quickly as his battered shoes would allow he was out of sight on his way to a certain well-known cook-shop. There, in all the assurance of conscious wealth, he planted his elbows on the window-ledge and critically surveyed the contents. Great joints of meat, slabs of suet pudding, ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... ensued. She left the loge and wandered out to the entrance. Rain had begun to fall, that would make it harder to find a taxi. It would happen, now of all times! Ten minutes passed, then up the street chug-chugged a somewhat battered motor-vehicle with the apache hanging on the step. Yes, it was a taxi, an antediluvian one, but she must not be critical. If a chariot offered one a lift out of hell, one would not stop to inquire its horse-power. The apache helped her in and closed the door. She turned grateful eyes on him ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... after that I was in a hospital when one was brought in who was at that service. I thought he was unconscious, and I said to the Sister beside me, "Sister, how battered and bruised his poor ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith

... thoughts wandered from one trivial matter to another, always eluding his effort to fix them. He found himself acutely studying the gang of laborers who were going by train to their day's work, and wondering how many pipes each of their carefully guarded matches would light, and what each carried in his battered tin drinking-bottle, remembering with a dreary sort of amusement that he had heard this same incurable littleness of thought settled on men condemned to death. Still, it passed the time, and he was surprised out of a sort of reverie by the ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... furlough entered a jeweler's shop and, placing a much-battered gold watch on the counter, said, "I want this ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... encounter with Walton, and wrote on it that the match with Blackburn's would take place that afternoon, his team turned out like lambs, and were duly defeated by thirty-one points. He had to play a substitute for Walton, who was rather too battered to be of any real use in the scrum; but, with that exception, the team that entered the field was the same that should have entered it the ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... doing the work of compassion every day - visiting prisoners, providing shelter to battered women, bringing companionship to lonely seniors. These good works deserve our praise...they deserve our personal support...and, when appropriate, they deserve the assistance of our government. I urge you to pass both my faith-based initiative and the Citizen Service Act ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... to annihilate a fleet of sixteen first-class and twenty-three small vessels of war. It was not without some amount of bitter sarcasm that the ambassadors replied that, instead of making such grandiose proposals, it would be more practical to take measures that the wretchedly battered vessels now lying in the harbour at Ungama might be repaired and sent to sea again as quickly at possible. Even the possibility of saving them from the immensely superior force of the enemy rested upon the very uncertain ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... Murat has reached the Kremlin gates, And finds them closed against him. Battered these, The fort reverberates vacant as the streets But for some grinning wretches gaoled there. Enchantment seems to sway from quay to keep, And lock commotion in ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... something sickening in the spectacle—that battered, bleeding, broken creature huddling there against the tree, coughing up the red stuff that discoloured the snow. Loving dogs, he was not afraid of them, and forgetting Father Roland's warning he rose from the log and went nearer. From where he stood, looking down, Baree could have reached ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... or a family of helpless ones, such as I had often visited, or a drunken husband. I had often glanced at guilt and crime, but never would my imagination have pictured the scene before me. The room was dark and loathsome, containing but few articles of furniture, and those battered and defaced by age, and with a rickety bed in one corner, on which lay stretched in mortal agony the figure of a wrinkled, gray-haired old man, apparently approaching the final struggle. O my children, poverty, loneliness, want, are the portion of many on this ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester

... herds and flocks covered immense ranges. Hundreds of these cattle must have supplied the United States commissary; the rest were scattered, and in the end there was little left of the estate; just a few hundred acres and a battered hacienda. But Mrs. Weatherbee's father was English; the younger son of ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... economies of Western Europe. GDP growth averaged a strong 5% in 1989-1997, but Hong Kong suffered two recessions in the past 6 years because of the Asian financial crisis in 1998 and the global downturn of 2001-2002. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak also battered Hong Kong's economy, but a boom in tourism from the mainland because of China's easing of travel restrictions, a return of consumer confidence, and a solid rise in exports resulted in the resumption of strong ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... that his scouts thought reinforcements were marching to the battered old fort, and Admiral Sampson ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis

... always most particular to wear the dress of my calling, observing that it has a peculiar and gratifying effect on the minds of the natives. I soon dried my tall hat, which, during the storm, I had attached to my button-hole by a string, and, though it was a good deal battered, I was not without hopes of partially restoring its gloss and air of British respectability. As will be seen, this precaution was, curiously enough, the human means of preserving my life. My hat, my black clothes, my ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... My hats will come no doubt in good time, my present chapeau is very seedy, very limp and crooked and battered; as near green as black almost—a very good advertisement of the poverty of the Mission. But if I go about picking up gold in Australia, I shall come out in silk cassock and ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... will allow, is a more honourable part of the body than the paunch, I claim to be the first on the field; and, moreover, to have seen the patient before you could possibly have done so, Doctor Murphy. Sir," he continued, stalking past his brother practitioner, and making a bow with a battered hat to the major, "I come, I presume, on your summons, to attend to the injured boy; and such skill as I possess—and I flatter myself it's considerable—is at your service. May I ask what ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... his master with the gaze of a wise old dog and, relieved of his pack, moved slowly to the shade of the living tent. Roger, looking his guest over, from faded overalls and blue flannel shirt to battered sombrero, led the ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... the ramparts by the Trinidad breach, peering curiously among the slain. Across the top of the breach stretched a heavy beam studded with sword blades, and all the bodies on this side of it were French. Right beneath it lay one red-coat whose skull had been battered out of shape as he attempted to wriggle through. All the upper blades were stained, and on one fluttered a strip of flannel shirt. Powder blackened every inch of the rampart hereabouts, and as Nat passed over he saw the bodies ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... Residency, where our people defended themselves so long and valiantly against thousands of armed men well supplied with ammunition. At every step proofs presented themselves of the desperate struggle maintained with the foe. The houses in the Residency had been so battered and torn by shells and balls that scarcely one was habitable before its evacuation, and the ruin was completed when the city was finally taken by Sir Colin Campbell. At the beginning of 1859 the whole place was a mass of ruin, with here and there a piece of tottering wall, ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... a man, made out of the ruins. "If they send us peas," said Guise, "we will give them back beans" ("we will give them at least as good as they bring "). On the 26th of November the old wall was battered by a formidable artillery; and, breached in three places, it crumbled down on the 28th into the ditch, "at the same time making it difficult to climb for to come to the assault." The assailants uttered shouts of joy; but, when the cloud of dust had cleared ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... looking amazed— formed the centrepiece of the design; around these were five other photographs of three young ladies and two young gentlemen, looking conscious, but pleased. The spaces between these, and every available space around them, were occupied by pot-lids of various sizes, old and battered, but shining like little suns; small looking-glasses, also of various sizes, some square and others round; little strings of beads; heads of meerschaums that had been much used in former days; pin-cushions, shell-baskets, one or two horse-shoes, and iron-heels of boots; several flat ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... thin, miserable faces of the poor fellows in the boat. Besides the five sitting up, there were three others lying on the bottom, so far gone that they scarcely seemed to know that help had come to them. There was not a morsel of food, nor a drop of water on board. Their boat, too, was so battered and rotten, that it was a wonder it was still afloat. One or two of the strongest tried to speak, but couldn't, and burst into tears as we got alongside; some of the rest groaned, and pointed to their mouths, as if we wanted ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston

... death, it's him. I'd like to make sure, though. Want to go over to the James with me?" Both boys welcomed the opportunity and as the longboat was just then starting back, they were soon aboard the battered pirate, so recently their home. Three or four dead men lay on the canted deck, for no effort had been made as yet to clean the ship. Bob and Jeremy had no stomach for looking at the corpses of their erstwhile ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... impossible. At Hapsburg he sat at table with his father and mother only; even I had never sat with him in the castle. At Basel he was sitting with a burgher and a burgher's frau. In Styria he ate boar's meat from battered silver plate and drank sour wine from superannuated golden goblets; in Switzerland he ate tender, juicy meats and toothsome pastries from stone dishes and drank rich Cannstadt beer from leathern mugs. His palate and his stomach jointly attacked ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major

... that Abercromby might have brought up his artillery, and battered down the breastwork, or he might have planted a battery on the heights which commanded the position, or he might have marched a portion of his army through the woods, and placed them on the road between Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and so have cut off the whole French army, and forced them to surrender, ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... too, feeling himself reproved. But from under the wide, battered felt that had supplanted the nubia, his eyes shone with no ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... once they had taken an observation. And when the lost boat drew near, such a dreadful clamor as broke forth, both Jimmie and Josh blowing conch shell and tin horn for all they were worth; while Nick did his best to drown them out with his own battered ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel

... house, the doors and windows of which had been battered in and afforded admission to the damp, cold air from without. It was clear enough that there was no one there; the masters must have taken their departure before the battle. She continued to prosecute her search, however, and had entered the kitchen, when she gave utterance to another cry ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... the garage door, in the hope of lodging his men there for the night. Unluckily the chauffeur, being absent, had the key, which plunged his Military Highness into a towering rage and he placed Monsieur S. at once under arrest between two soldiers, baionnette-au-canon, while the others battered in the door with the butt of their guns. Not finding sufficient quarters for two hundred men, he marched Monsieur S. away, as guide, half a mile down ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow

... too, has suffered many vicissitudes. The primitive Romanesque building was raised to the level of the new footway by dividing the nave into two floors and building a flight of steps, supported on a squinch arch, down to what then became the lower chapel. Much battered during the sieges of the palace, it was restored and reconsecrated in 1411 and a century later the Gothic upper apse was added, whose external walls overtop the old nave. In consequence of these modifications the lower chapel has a Gothic ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... Now that he knew more about the magter, he shuddered at his innocence in walking alone and unarmed into the tower. Skill had helped him survive—but better than average luck had been necessary. Curiosity had gotten him in, brashness and speed had taken him out. He was exhausted, battered and bloody—but cheerfully happy. The facts about the magter were arranging themselves into a theory that might explain their attempt at racial suicide. It just needed a little time to ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... pioneer colonies along this Turkestan highway. The peculiarity of these villages is their extreme length, all the houses facing on the one wide street. Most of them are merely mud huts, others make pretensions to doors and windows, and a coat of whitewash. Near-by usually stands the old battered telega which served as a home during many months of travel over the Orenburg highway. It speaks well for the colonizing capacity of the Russians that they can be induced to come so many hundreds of miles from their native land, to settle in such a ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... and her father walked through the green park to make their first visit to the State House. They stood hand in hand on the cool, marble-paved floor of the corridor, gazing silently at the stained and battered battle-flags behind the glass, and Wetherell seemed to be listening again to the appeal of a great President to a great Country in the time of her dire need—the soul calling on the body to fight for itself. Wetherell seemed to feel again the thrill he felt when he saw the blue-clad men of this ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... correct rendering of this nickname would be "The Remnant," and it applies to the battered ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa

... his face, to see the battered jeep from "Greyrock," driven by Arthur, the stableman and gardener, with Sergeant Williamson beside him. The older Negro jumped to the ground and ran toward him. At the same time, he ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper

... letter that he was a "thorough flunky" and "un-American functionary." But he did insult him with various questions suggested by the anonymous letter,—questions that must have been felt as an indignity by the most thick-skinned of battered politicians. ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Peg Bowen herself appeared on the threshold. She was a tall, sinewy old woman, wearing a short, ragged, drugget skirt which reached scantly below her knees, a scarlet print blouse, and a man's hat. Her feet, arms, and neck were bare, and she had a battered old clay pipe in her mouth. Her brown face was seamed with a hundred wrinkles, and her tangled, grizzled hair fell unkemptly over her shoulders. She was scowling, and her flashing black ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... mess-room of the White Hussars was a sight to be remembered. All the mess plate was out on the long table—the same table that had served up the bodies of five officers after a forgotten fight long and long ago—the dingy, battered standards faced the door of entrance, clumps of winter-roses lay between the silver candlesticks, and the portraits of eminent officers deceased looked down on their successors from between the heads of sambhur, nilghai, markhor, ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... local constabulary. The stranger was young and of poor appearance. His bare feet were bound in a pair of the rope sandals worn by the natives, his clothing was of torn and soiled drill, and he fanned his face nonchalantly with a sombrero of battered and shapeless felt. ...
— The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... shelves here, and cupboards. Here we ranged our tins and our saucepans,—the best and newest; Rosamond would have nothing to do with the old battered ones; over them we hung our spoons and our little strainers, our egg-beaters, spatulas, and quart measures,—these last polished to the brightness of silver tankards; in one corner stood the flour-barrel, and over it was the sieve; in the cupboards were our porcelain kettles,—we ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... which can be valuable to the Dooley sept, after I shall have conferred it upon Dooley—for a consideration. It is a discovery which I made by accident, thirty-eight years ago, in my father-in-law's house in Elmira. There was a scarred and battered and ancient billiard-table in the garret, and along with it a peck of checked and chipped balls, and a rackful of crooked and headless cues. I played solitaire up there every day with that difficult outfit. The table was not level, but slanted sharply to the southeast; there wasn't ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... past him over the fading green of the prairie; the wagons with their bowed white covers; a heavy cart, jolting, creaking, lumbering mysteriously along, a sick driver hidden somewhere back under its makeshift cover of torn counterpanes; a battered carriage, reminiscent of past luxury, drawn by oxen; more wagons, some without covers; a two-wheeled cart, designed in the ingenuity of desperation, laden with meal-sacks, a bundle of bedding, a sleeping child, and drawn by a little dry-dugged ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... yearning to fall asleep became actual agony. It was a rather large, square room, crowded up with a jumble of antiquities. The only real furniture was the window-seat on which I knelt, and an oblong table; but even the table was laid on its side to make room for a battered Roman bust standing on the floor ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... the trees came John de Mohun, now a brave, stout, hearty- looking English baron; and with him, wrapped in a battered and soiled scarlet mantle, a war-worn soldier, his complexion tanned to deep brown, his hair bleached with toil and sun, a scar on his cheek, a halt on his step—altogether a man in whom none would have recognized the bright, graceful, high-spirited young Hospitalier of twenty years since. ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... their stone walls without much effect during the war; but their fate was sealed with that of their King, and the gunpowder of Cromwell's soldiers was soon employed in blowing up the walls that resisted him so long, and left them battered ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield

... was me," answered Hetty, who was engaged in stirring something in a small saucepan, the loose handle of which was attached to its battered body by only one rivet; the other rivet had given way on an occasion when Ned Frog sent it flying through the doorway after his retreating wife. "You see I was paid my wages to-night, so I could afford it, as well as to buy some coal and a candle, for the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... were the pioneers in exploring the paths of sexual pathology.[60] From the antiquarian side, Bachofen, more than half a century ago, put forth his conception of the exalted position of the primitive mother which, although it has been considerably battered by subsequent research, has been by no means without its value, and is of special significance from the present standpoint, because it sprang from precisely the same view of life as that animating the German women who are to-day inaugurating the movement we are here concerned with. From the medical ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... kitchen, sometimes the tap-room, sometimes the "dancing-flure." Forms which had run by the walls, and planks by way of tables which had been propped before them, were turned topsy-turvy, and in some instances broken. Pewter pots and pints, battered and bruised, or squeezed together and flattened, and fragments of twisted glass tumblers, lay beside them. The clay floor was scraped with brogue-nails and indented with the heel of that primitive foot-gear, in token of the energetic dancing which had lately been performed upon ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... over the parapet near the Saint-Michel Bridge, and looking at the water and absently turning over the books in one of the little boxes. He chanced upon a battered old volume of Michelet and opened it at random. He had already read a certain amount of that historian, and had been put off by his Gallic boasting, his trick of making himself drunk with words, and his halting style. But that evening he was held from the very first words: he had ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... were several raids and many deportations of the tar and feather variety. In Aberdeen in the fall of 1917 during a "patriotic" parade, the battered hall of the union loggers was again forcibly entered in the absence of its owners. Furniture, office fixtures, Victrola and books were dumped into the street and destroyed. In the town of Centralia, about a year before the tragedy, the Union Secretary ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin

... Trottle and the old woman did not startle or disturb him in the least. He just looked up for a minute at the candle, with a pair of very bright, sharp eyes, and then went on with his work again, as if nothing had happened. On one side of him was a battered pint saucepan without a handle, which was his make-believe pail; and on the other a morsel of slate-coloured cotton rag, which stood for his flannel to wipe up with. After scrubbing bravely for a minute ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens

... weak, resolution for the strong, and a fearless amiability toward all. He was like the St. Bernard dog, very difficult to arouse. It is rather the way with all men who are strong mentally and physically. He was tall and broad and deep. Under the battered pith-helmet his face was as dark as the Eurasian's; but the eyes were blue, bright and small-pupiled, as they are with men who live out-of-doors, who are compelled of necessity to note things moving ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... a rich man's sparkling wine, His silverware I've handled. I've placed these battered legs of mine 'Neath tables gayly candled. I dine on rare and costly fare Whene'er good fortune lets me, But there's no meal that can compare With those the missus ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... Warwick and of Richard duke of Gloucester, was fortunate enough by a judicious marriage with the daughter of lord Roos, heiress of the Tiptofts earls of Worcester, to add the noble castle and fertile vale of Belvoir to the battered towers and wasted fields of his ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... curs. Heavens! when I think what shouts I have heard when the name of that man, then deemed little less than a god, was but breathed!—and now—why do you look at me, Sir? My eyes are moist; I know it, Sir,—I know it. The old battered broken soldier, who made his first campaigns when that which is now dust was the idol of France and the pupil of Turenne,—the old soldier's eyes shall not be dry, though there is not another tear shed in the whole ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... great was the rattle of the train; then he made his way, with the ease of a sure-footed chamois, back to "The General." He had ordered the men in the car to split up part of its sides for kindling-wood. By the use of the cross-ties, which they had picked up along the road, they battered down some of the planking of the walls, and quickly reduced it to smaller pieces. It was a thrilling sight. The men worked as they had never worked before. It was at the imminent risk of falling out, however, and as the train swung along over the track ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... Greek imagination became the dwelling-place; beautiful, perfectly understood human outlines, embodying a strange, delightful, lingering sense of clouds and water and sun. Such a world, the world of really imaginative Greek sculpture, we still see, reflected in many a humble vase or battered coin, in Bacchante, and Centaur, and Amazon; [36] evolved out of that "vasty deep"; with most command, in the consummate fragments of the Parthenon; not, indeed, so that he who runs may read, the gifts of Greek sculpture being always delicate, and asking much ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... replied a tall, raw-boned young man, with long tawny hair streaming down from a hat very much battered. "At the juvenile age, the child is consigned to the mother! Have I said it?" and he turned ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the good name, keep out of peril the honor, without which even your battered old soldier, who is hobbling into his grave on half pay and a wooden leg, would not ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... possible aid to the insurgents, to compel these to lay down their arms, in order to insure the safety of the sympathizers. Had the first, and the second, and the third house from which the assassins were permitted to fire been battered to the ground with cannon shot, the last two days of fighting would have been unnecessary. The police cowed the mob wherever they met them, because they showed no quarter. They hit hard and they hit often. They felt that the way to knock the riot in the head, was to knock the rioters in the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... to us, where we expect to find everything at once. Doubtless there is not a spot on the whole earth, a wild rock, an arid plain, over which we pass with indifference, that has not been consecrated in the life of some man, and is not painted in his remembrance; for, like battered vessels, before meeting inevitable wreck, we leave some fragment ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... a proprietor, as a matter of business pride, is glad to recount the names of his patrons on Lakeside Drive and their splendid orders just given. Garage men, too, wishing it known that millionaire automobile owners patronize their shops, often are willing to tell of battered cars repaired by their men. All such sources are fertile with stories. Many a rich man's automobile crashes into a culvert or a telegraph pole and nobody knows of it but the mechanic in the repair shop. Many a prominent club-man indulges in orgies of revelry and dissipation of which ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... Plymouth through the eyes of a Pilgrim man and maid watching the departing Mayflower. It was the Mayflower, battered and beaten, her sails blackened and mended, her leaks hastily caulked, which was the first vessel to sail into Plymouth Harbor—a harbor so joyfully described as being a "most hopeful place" with "innumerable store of fowl ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... opinion of the "monarch" whose name and deeds were on everybody's lips; and the impression was by no means unfavorable. "Very tall and thin he was," says her journal, "but erect and dignified; a good specimen of a fine old, well-battered soldier; his manners perfectly simple and ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... flashed a glance at the gun-rack. The rifle was gone. The patent-clasp which held the weapon in place had been wrenched free. Her eyes traveled to the empty provision-locker, which stood open. Close by it lay a small monkey-wrench with which some one had battered the padlock. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... admit Graves. He was dishevelled, dirty, battered, and covered with blood. When he saw the group in the hall he made ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... original uniform greyness, relieved here and there by whitewash, and presents strong contrasts of colour against the green meadows and the masses of trees that crown the hill where the castle stands. The ruins, now battered and ivy-mantled, are dignified and picturesque and still sufficiently complete to convey a clear impression of the former character of the fortress, three of the towers at angles of the outer walls having still an imposing ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... could not last much longer. His only hope lay in immediate attack. He must finish off his man within the next minute or accept defeat. Nature was now taking revenge upon him for his long outraging of her laws. Barney, on the other hand, though bruised and battered about the face, was stepping about easily and lightly, without any sign of the terrible punishment he had suffered. Reading his opponent's face he knew that the moment for a supreme effort had arrived, and waited for his plan to ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... later the staff galloped off and the escort clattered behind, minus two troopers, who sat on the edge of the veranda in their blue-and-yellow shell jackets, carbines slung, poking at the grass with the edges of their battered steel scabbards. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers

... sister were in bed, he wrestled all alone with the angel of knowledge, and half the time knew not whether he was smitten hip and thigh or was himself the victor. Many a problem in his higher algebra Jerome was never sure of having solved rightly; renderings of many lines in his battered old Virgil, bought for a sixpence of a past collegian in Dale, might, and might ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... thousand words; the upshot of which comes to a matter of twenty-two million words. So that, if the English language contains (as some curious people say it does) forty thousand words, he will have used it up not less than five hundred and fifty times. Poor old battered language! One really pities it. Think of any language in its old age being forced to work at that rate; kneaded, as if it were so much dough, every hour of the day into millions of fantastic shapes by millions of capricious bakers! Being old, however, and superannuated, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... hill to the rampart instead of plunging into distraction with the crowd on the sands or into the sea with the semi-nude bathers. They gazed once more at their gilded Virgin; they sank once more upon their battered bench; they felt once more their distance from the Regent's Park. At last Mrs. Wix became definite about their friend's silence. "He IS afraid of her! She has forbidden him to write." The fact of his fear Maisie already knew; but her companion's mention of ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... battered a good deal and had received a wound upon one side of his face that did not improve his looks at all. And while he had been so lively and pugnacious up on the hillside, now he splashed about in the ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... this region are radically different from those of other coastal bodies of the eastern United States, so, too, the shore land, battered as it has been by sea and storm or worn by glacial action or Arctic ...
— Fishing Grounds of the Gulf of Maine • Walter H. Rich

... school. They were too poor. All he knew his mother taught him and he got out of the few old books in the book-case left by the war,—odd volumes of the Waverley novels, and the Spectator, "Don Quixote," and a few others, stained and battered. He could not have gone to school if there had been a school to go to: he had to work: work, as Mrs. Wagoner had truthfully said, "like a common nigger." He did not mind it; a bird born in a cage cannot mind it much. The pitiful part is, it does not know anything ...
— "Run To Seed" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page

... up his dogs, and tramped skyward. As he passed out through his horse-lot, a cap and worm of a whisky-still lying in the corner of the fence attracted his attention. He paused, and turned the apparatus over with his foot. It was old and somewhat battered. ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... a pocket and offered her a somewhat battered pocket comb. She looked at it distastefully but used it to good purpose, smoothing her hair swiftly, rearranging her loose-pinned robe so that the worst of the tears and stains were covered, and giving me, meanwhile, an artless and ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... threads were frayed and tarnished; and his shoes of soft leather were broken by the road. On his brown fingers the places of the vanished rings were still marked in white skin. He carried not the long staff nor the heavy nail-studded rod of the shepherd, but a slender stick of carved cedar battered and scratched by hard usage, and the handle, which must once have been of precious ...
— The Sad Shepherd • Henry Van Dyke

... listened to the folly of expecting to find Mary Standish. Between Eyak River and Katalla was a mainland of battered reefs and rocks and an archipelago of islands in which a pirate fleet might have found a hundred hiding-places. In his experience of twenty years Ericksen had never known of the finding of a body washed ashore, and he stated firmly his belief ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... under them, as out of a rocky cave, his small pale eyes blinked like cornered foxes in their dens. His nose, overlarge to start with, had at some time in his life been broken, and its crooked shape leaned to the right as if still bending beneath the blow that had battered it. ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson



Words linked to "Battered" :   worn, maltreated, mistreated, abused, damaged, ill-treated



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com