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Riddled   /rˈɪdəld/   Listen
Riddled

adjective
1.
(often followed by 'with') damaged throughout by numerous perforations or holes.  "Cliffs riddled with caves" , "The bullet-riddled target"
2.
Spread throughout.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Riddled" Quotes from Famous Books



... riddled by the curculio last year. This year, when the dusting was done, this tree was overlooked, so I undertook to dust it myself, and not realizing that the Niagara duster which I used was set in the closed position, I dusted the tree with considerable effort. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... very sharp bone of an ape, rubs it with a pungent spice, and then pinching up the skin of his son's arm he pierces it with the bone through and through, as a surgeon might introduce a seton. This operation he repeats till the young man's arm is riddled with holes at regular intervals from the shoulder to the wrist. Almost all who take part in the festival are covered with these wounds, which the Indians call culucute. Having thus prepared themselves ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... and as the Shah-in-Shah she had been overtaken on the high seas, indecently full of munitions of war, by the cruiser of an agitated Power at issue with its neighbour. That time she was very nearly sunk, and her riddled hull gave eminent lawyers of two countries great profit. After a season she reappeared as the Martin Hunt painted a dull slate-colour, with pure saffron funnel, and boats of robin's-egg blue, engaging in the Odessa trade till she was invited (and the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... about the village, the rest of the troop exchanged greetings with their countrymen. It was, even to the warrior's eye, a mournful scene. Here and there, heaps of ashes and ruin-houses riddled and burned—the small, humble church, untouched indeed by war, but looking desolate and forlorn—with sheep grazing on large recent mounds thrown over the brave dead, who slept in the ancestral ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... guns to bear, poured in a broadside that I thought would have annihilated us. Fortunately she had answered her helm so quickly that as she came round her guns bore ahead of us, and the round shot struck the water under our bows. The grape, however, cut up the rigging, riddled the sails, and damaged the masts, and as the next broadside would assuredly have sunk us, Cochrane ordered the flag to be hauled down. Nothing could have been kinder than our treatment. The captain declined ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... to see a Tank come down the stalls, Lurching to rag-time tunes, or "Home, sweet Home,"— And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls To mock the riddled corpses ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon

... din of voices, the crash of woodwork as the panels of the cart were riddled by the wildly flung shots, was powerless to draw the defender. His guns were ready. He was ready for the purpose in his mind. That was all. His fierce eyes lit with a murderous intent as he calculated with certainty ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... struck by about a hundred pellets of the three or four hundred which would go to the ordinary ounce and an eighth. Had he received the whole charge he must, at that distance, have been instantly killed. As it was, the point of the shoulder was riddled, and so to a somewhat smaller extent was the back of his neck and the region of the right ear. One or two outside pellets had also struck the head higher up, and the skin and muscles along the back were torn by ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... Chatterton's masterly analysis and comprehension. She had, so to speak, taken Frida Tancred to pieces and put her together again in a phrase—"Dying for love of life." Beside her luminous intuition his own more logical method seemed clumsy and roundabout, a constructive process riddled by dangerous fallacies and undermined by monstrous assumptions. At the same time he persisted in returning to one of these, the most monstrous, perhaps, of all. In spite, perhaps because, of her flat denial, he pictured Frida not only as mysteriously in love with existence, but with a certain ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... fact was that he felt himself an outcast, a negligible bit of driftwood upon the tide of opportunity. His profession had found him a useless unbeliever. In the end, it would cast him out completely, a tattered remnant of a soul, riddled with doubts. His wife would be quite too well-mannered to do anything so radical as to cast him out; but she was finding him devoid of interest for her, was holding herself aloof from him, shutting him away from any real spiritual ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... and shipping, for which purpose she was placed in charge of Lieut. Morgell, who carried her in gallant style towards the enemy's shipping, but the wind falling calm, she became a target for their really excellent practice, and was in a short time riddled through and through. As the Spaniards began to fire red-hot shot, Lieut. Morgell was compelled to abandon her, first setting fire to the train, then turning her adrift, thus causing her to explode, though at a distance which did no damage to ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... fight raged fiercely on the left. The woods were riddled with bullets; the dead and wounded of the rebels were taken away from this part of the field, but I am informed by one accustomed to judge, and who went over the field to-day, that from the pools of blood and other evidences the loss must have ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... resisted by Sir Robert Peel, but the condition and state of public feeling in England could not be as well ignored by a Parliament sitting in London. In returning from the opening of the Houses in January, 1817, the Regent was hooted in the street, and his carriage riddled with stones. A reward of 1,000 pounds, issued for the apprehension of the ringleaders, only gave additional eclat to the fact, without leading to the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... Nearer still lay a great disabled Spaniard, with bowsprit and top-masts gone, and flag struck, being towed by her capturers into port. As for the Rata herself, 'twas sad to see how dingy the gay gilding had become in one day, and how sails were riddled, tackle flying, ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... when, if Houston had appeared near the dwelling of his former wife, he would have been lynched or riddled with bullets. Again, there were enemies and slanderers of his who, had they shown themselves in Nashville, would have been torn to pieces by men who hailed Houston as a hero and who believed that he could ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... gallery. They are obviously not permanent ways of communication with the outer world, but hunting-trails which the insect has followed once, without going back to them. What was the Wasp seeking when she riddled the soil with these tunnels which are now full of running sands? No doubt the food for her family, the larva of which I possess the empty skin, now ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... long to convince Phipps that in this contest his fleet was getting badly worsted, and he soon withdrew his vessels to a place of safety. The flag-ship had been fairly riddled with shot; and her rigging was so badly cut, that she could only get out of range of the enemy's guns by cutting her cables, and drifting away with the current. Her example was soon followed by ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... the news of fierce fighting at South Mountain, where the—th Massachusetts was prominent; then of the Antietam, where twice it charged through that fearful stretch of cornfield and had but a handful left to guard the riddled colors when nightfall came, and then—silence and ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King

... it, none the less. The life one led out here was not calculated to tone down any innate restlessness of temperament: on the contrary, it directly hindered one from becoming fixed and settled. It was on a par with the houses you lived in—these flimsy tents and draught-riddled cabins you put up with, "for the time being"—was just as much of a makeshift affair as they. Its keynote was change. Fortunes were made, and lost, and made again, before you could say Jack Robinson; whole townships shot up over-night, to be deserted the moment the soil ceased ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... mitrailleuses and gatlings went off at a terrible rate, and volleys succeeded each other, second for second, from five in the morning till half-past nine. The work of death was fearful, and hundreds of spectators were shot down as they watched from their balconies or housetops. Cannon balls riddled all the houses near the Cinco Esquinas. In the attack on the Plaza Lavalle, three hundred men must ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... 'cut off'—and cut off the Jews' quarter was, by walls, by religion, by tradition, by mutual hatred between Hebrews and other men. It has been compared to a beehive, to an anthill, to an old house-beam riddled and traversed in all directions by miniature labyrinths of worm-holes, crossing, intercommunicating, turning to right and left, upwards and downwards, but hardly ever coming out to the surface. It has been described by almost ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... with rage and disappointment. The following day search was made for him, under instructions from Mr. Cameron and Houston, who offered a large reward for him, living or dead. His body was found in an old, abandoned shaft on the mountain side, riddled with bullets. The vengeance of the miners, desperate from the loss of homes and employment, had overtaken him first. He was buried hastily and with little ceremony, his two sons having already taken themselves to parts unknown, fearful lest the penalty of ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... other said humorously. "Since 1919, when they were first organized, the so-called Communists in this country, from the lowest to the highest echelons, have been so riddled with police agents that a federal judge in New England once refused to prosecute a case against them on the grounds that the party was a ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... of Bravalla is said to have been won by the Gotland archers and the men of Throndham, and the Dales. The death of Harald by treachery completed the defeat, which began when Ubbe fell (after he had broken the enemy's van) riddled with arrows. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... The rocks split like planks of deal beneath the axe. A jet of fire, smoke, and debris sprang from the middle of the grotto, enlarging as it mounted. The large walls of silex tottered and fell upon the sand, and the sand itself, an instrument of pain when launched from its hard bed, riddled the faces with its myriad cutting atoms. Shrieks, imprecations, human life, dead bodies—all were engulfed in one ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... had sent a detachment of Croats to hold Arcola. These now stoutly disputed Augereau's progress, pouring in from the loopholed cottages volleys which tore away the front of every column of attack. In vain did Augereau, seizing the colours, lead his foremost regiment to the bridge of Arcola. Riddled by the musketry, his men fell back in disorder. In vain did Bonaparte himself, dismounting from his charger, seize a flag, rally these veterans and lead them towards the bridge. The Croats, constantly ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... Province from Austrian into Prussian, in the Financial, Administrative and every other respect:—in all which important operations the success was noiseless, but is considered to have been perfect, or nearly so. Cannot we, from these enormous Paper-masses, carefully riddled, afford the reader a glimpse or two, to quicken his ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... writer saw a lion in the service of Prof. Trasbot, at Alfort, which had contracted the disease by eating glandered meat and died with the lung riddled with nodules. A litter of kittens lapped the blood from the lungs of a glandered horse on which an autopsy was being made, and in four days almost their entire faces, including the nasal bones, were eaten away by rapid ulceration. Nodules were found in the lungs. A pack of wolves ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... in his flitter through that murky, radiation-riddled atmosphere, setting up equations from the readings of his various meters and gauges and solving those equations almost instantaneously in his mathematical-prodigy's mind, sat appalled. For the activity level was, and even ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... "Because we're riddled with compassion, I tell you. If we see a man poorer than we are, we get so apologetic we send ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... the sternest. Dancing he held to be of the devil. Card-playing was a sin. If he still drank freely, his drinking was within bounds. But he did not let his piety interfere with the feud. Within the year, pillar of the church though he was, he had been carried home riddled with bullets. Of the four men who had waylaid him two had been buried next day and a third had kept his bed ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... browned by the sun of Egypt and Italy, and who had been engaged in more battles than they numbered years When the colours of the 96th, 43d, and 34th demi-brigades, or rather their flagstaffs surmounted by some shreds, riddled by balls and blackened by powder, passed before him, he raised his hat and inclined his head in token of respect. Every homage thus paid by a great captain to standards which had been mutilated on the field of battle was saluted by a thousand ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... against the regulars' defense, found it impossible to make any decisive gains. Vigor and rocklike endurance marked the clashes, and both regulars and scrubs had to punt and punt again. Fake plays were riddled by swift and sagacious end rushes, for one side or the other, hurling attacks against the center were crushed and flung back; and, more and more as the battle raged, it became evident that the regular eleven, while good, were no whit better ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish

... friendship had never been of that texture—she had received a sad letter from him saying that his wife was seriously ill. The letter had implied, too, that he ought to have been told, before the marriage had taken place, that his wife's family had been one riddled with consumption. Blanche had written back at once—by that time she was a good deal nearer home than Portugal, though still abroad—asking if she could "do anything?" And he had answered that no, there was nothing to be done. "Poor Milly" ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

... no condition to benefit by the cessation of the attack. In spite of the terrible disadvantages under which they laboured, they had fought with splendid courage. The sides of the galleons had been riddled with shot, and the splinters caused by the rending of the massive timbers had done even greater execution than the iron hail. Being always to leeward, and heeling over with the wind, the ships had been struck again and again below the waterline, and many were ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... Dover is the proper place for, I leave to people who are cleverer than I am. I was so glad to get home again that the idea of thinking in French was quite comical. My father and I were going to shoot together, and when he is shooting he forgets all the little grievances with which he has riddled his life and he is—though it makes me blush to confess it—the best companion in the world. If he could only shoot all the year round I believe that Ritualists and Radicals would lose their powers of annoying him, ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... Smedley was solid and imperturbable; he stood firm on his facts, and defended himself with figures. Tyson, a master of literary strategy, was alert and ubiquitous. Having driven Smedley into a tangled maze of controversy, Tyson pursued him with genial irony. When Smedley argued, Tyson riddled his arguments with the lightest of light banter; when Smedley hung back, Tyson lured him on with some artful feint; when Smedley thrust, Tyson dodged. Finally, when Smedley, so to speak, drew up all his facts and figures in the form of a hollow square, Tyson charged with magnificent ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair

... that they were getting short. So this morning, at daybreak, I rode out with the hands I have about the house. We could see nothing of the sheep, so we rode straight to the men's hut. There, lying some twenty yards away, was the body of one of the men, riddled with spear holes. He had evidently been running to the hut for shelter, when he was overtaken. I did not stop to look for the other, for no doubt he had been ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... bore down upon them, his right arm high, crumpled in his hand the folds, tarnished with smoke, riddled by shot, of the great ensign. It was the beginning of the end. Half an hour later the red cross of St. George usurped the place of the golden flag. That same afternoon the Cygnet and the San Jose—the latter now manned by an English crew, with her former ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... years of service in the field. He recognized it all now. It was the tread of his old veterans. With his little remaining strength he arose and dragged himself to the window. As he gazed upon those battle-flags dipping to him in salute, those precious standards bullet-riddled, battle-stained, but remnants of their former selves, with scarcely enough left of them on which to print the names of the battles they had seen, his eyes once more kindled with the flames which had lighted them ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... The cliff, riddled with tunnels and eaten out by its numerous subterranean streams, had fallen. The charge of dynamite exploded, as it happened, beneath that part which buttressed the entire structure, combining ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... his sword, he spun it several times over his head, and caught it in a similar way as it fell. After these skilful exercises, during which the enemy were gaping in mute astonishment, he forced his charger through the English ranks, and caused great havoc before he fell, positively riddled with wounds. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... dared not breathe. It was at a season of year when the Maine law exacts a heavy fine for the killing of a moose; and even the guide had no desire to send his bullets through the law, though he might have riddled ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... His late comrades—the bandits—evidently thought he had played the traitor with them, for they fired on him relentlessly. He fell, then rose again to scramble on. Bullets kicked up the sod around him. Others plumped into his body. Again he fell, this time to stay. His body was riddled with scores of bullets. So ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... lad at first. The major set him up as a young ranchman in a lovely valley in the Big Horn Range, and there he went sturdily to work, but before the winter was fairly on the country was rousing to the appeals of Cuba, and before it was gone the Maine had sunk, a riddled hulk, and the spring came in with ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King

... to insinuate herself into a place on one of the benches. She listened to what was being said, and started a conversation with her neighbour, some sallow-faced workingman's wife, who sat mending linen, from time to time producing handkerchiefs and stockings riddled with holes from a little basket patched up with string. Moreover, Mademoiselle Saget had plenty of acquaintances here. Amidst the excruciating squalling of the children, and the ceaseless rumble of the traffic in the Rue Saint Denis, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... sheep picked clean by the ravens. It was a thankless job, and I got very cross over it. I had an ugly feeling that I was on a false scent and wasting my time. I wished to Heaven I had old Peter with me. He could follow spoor like a Bushman, and would have riddled the Portuguese Jew's track out of any jungle on earth. That was a game I had never learned, for in the old days I had always left it to my natives. I chucked the attempt, and lay disconsolately on a warm patch of grass and smoked and thought about Peter. But my chief reflections ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... lends her charms to the pursuit of the Beachcomber. Landing in one of the unfrequented coves, he knows not what the winds and the tides may have spread out for inspection and acceptance. Perhaps only an odd coco-nut from the Solomon Islands, its husk riddled by cobra and zoned with barnacles. The germ of life may yet be there. To plant the nut above high-water mark is an obvious duty. Perhaps there is a paddle, with rude tracery on the handle, from the New Hebrides, part of a Fijian canoe that has been bundled over the Barrier, a wooden spoon ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... that I grieve over my political and military prospects that were lost in the royal storm of '30, when plebeian cannon riddled the Tuilleries and shattered a senile crown. I was only sixteen, and hardly understood the lamentations of my father, whose daily refrain was, "My ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... many a fine fellow had met his fate. Our journey lay over a field of battle, through the entire extent of which the houses were not only thoroughly gutted (to use a vulgar but most expressive phrase), but for the most part were riddled with cannon-shot. Round some of the largest, indeed, there was not a wall nor a tree which did not present evident proofs of its having been converted into a temporary place of defence, whilst the deep ruts ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... shortly, repaired or replaced, it would be back at work. But it was not the defenders who had suffered most heavily. The fortress was literally ringed about with the shattered remnants of airships, and the riddled hulls of more than a few of those mighty globular cruisers of the void bore mute testimony to the deadliness and efficiency of the warfare ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... surrounded by a sort of vast wall, or high edifice that resembled a wall, which enclosed it on all four sides. There were neither doors nor windows in this wall; just a few holes here and there. At certain spots it appeared to have been riddled with shot; at others it was cracked and hanging over as though it had been shaken by an earthquake. It had the bare, crumbling and desolate aspect ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... your worship, for half a minute, and just assist a poor dismantled craft, who has been riddled in the wars—"'Tis a furious lion.' Long life to your honour—'In battle ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... twenty-two exceed 14,400 feet. The highest summit of all towers to a height of 22,606 feet above the surface of the lunar disc. At the same period the examination of the moon was completed. She appeared completely riddled with craters, and her essentially volcanic character was apparent at each observation. By the absence of refraction in the rays of the planets occulted by her we conclude that she is absolutely devoid of an atmosphere. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... journal at arm's length with hand a thought more shaky, perhaps, than usual. Presently he looked up: "Mother of God! what a white-faced rogue it is! Eh, Giuseppe?" "By Mars, if looks could stab, thou hadst been riddled by the knife before this," said his friend. Marco shrugged and went on reading—he ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... destructive. A ship a mile distant is a point-blank target for modern guns and gunners, and everything protected by less than eight inches of steel suffered. The Argyll had lost her military mast and most of her secondary guns. The flag-ship Cumberland, raked and riddled by nine- and eleven-inch shells, surrounded herself with steam from punctured boilers shortly after the signal to turn, and swung drunkenly out of line, her boilers roaring, her heavy guns barking. A long, black thing, low down ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson

... lies the midnight, Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness, Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the one we have conquer'd, The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as a sheet, Near by the corpse of the child that serv'd in the cabin, The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... old rail was accidentally jarred and a number fell from it. A section was cut down through it, and the winter home of the tribe destroyed—probably the work of weeks, perhaps months. The interior of the wood was completely riddled by tunnels and passages, some being large and holding several hundred ants, while others contained only a few. In some of the interior passages the ants had not been affected by the heat, and were packed in great ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various

... would stop to say in an awesome whisper, "Come out here, you little devils!" and bang would go his rifle at the stovepipe, which was riddled with holes. Then once more in a loud voice he would hurry to ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor

... Greece was thus finally effected. It was added to the European kingdoms, and now bids fair to be prosperous and happy. "Thus did the Old Hellas rise from the grave of nations. Scorched by fire, riddled by shot, baptized by blood, she emerged victorious from the conflict. She achieved her independence because she proved herself worthy of it; she was trained to manhood in the only school of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord

... entirely black. Anatomically, it is distinguished from the white whale and the North Cape whale by the seven cervical vertebrae, and it has two more ribs than its congeners. The unfortunate cetacean was lying on its side, riddled with holes from the bites, and quite dead. From its mutilated fin still hung a young whale which it could not save from the massacre. Its open mouth let the water flow in and out, murmuring like the waves breaking on ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... but one cartridge missing. There were fragments of clothing, hair, blankets, murderous bowie and dirk knives, spurs, flasks, caps, and plumes, dropped all the way through the thicket, and the trees on every hand were riddled with balls. I came upon a squirrel, unwittingly shot during the fight. Not those alone who make the war must feel the war! At one of the mounds the burying party had just completed their work, and the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... and machine-guns poured a spray of lead across the crest when the French appeared. But the French, who were righting for Sister Julie's town, would not stop their rush at first. They kept on, as Pickett's men did when the Federal guns riddled their ranks with grapeshot. This accounts for many of the mounds being well beyond the crest. The Germans made a mistake in firing too soon. They would have made a heavier killing if they had allowed ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... knows his business, and always has in reserve thirty of these portraits in charming frames of the period, made expressly for him in the Faubourg St.-Antoine, and which have all been buried fifteen days and riddled with shot, in order to have the musty appearance and indispensable ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Probably he was dead. Keok was sobbing in the cellar-pit. Then he saw a shape growing in the illumination, three or four of them, moving, alive. He waited until they were clearer, and he knew what they were thinking—that the bullet-riddled cabin had lost its power to fight. He prayed God it was Graham he was aiming at, and fired. The figure went down, sank into the earth as a dead man falls. Steadily he fired at the others—one, two, three, four—and two out ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... Corso, we soon turned up a valley to the left, winding among hills of no great elevation and cultivated to their summits. Not much farther than a mile from the town, we passed a lone house, the door of which was riddled with bullets. The brigands attacked it not long before. It was an affair, I believe, of summary justice for ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... was once a kiddy upon town, A thorough varmint and a real swell... Full flash, all fancy, until fairly diddled, His pockets first, and then his body riddled. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... attempt to get away from the raider her guns opened on his ship with shrapnel, badly riddling it. She had caught fire and was burning in three places before he signaled that he would surrender. Thirteen men had meanwhile been killed by the shrapnel. Some of the lifeboats had also been riddled by the firing from the submarine's deck guns, making it more difficult for the crew to leave the ship. The German commander gave him ample time to get ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... as keen a watch as the besieged to guard against the possibility of any of them escaping. A hat which Chris squeezed out through a crack between the posts was promptly riddled ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... long, heavy, iron-gray hair was streaming in the wind, and he was a most conspicuous mark. The Confederates were blazing away along their whole line, yelling like devils, and I fairly held my breath, expecting to see the old General forthwith pitch headlong from his horse, riddled with bullets. But he gave the enemy very little time to practice on him. I was not close enough to hear what he said, but he called to those Ohio men in a ringing tone, and waved his hat towards the enemy. The effect was instantaneous and sublime. The whole line went forward with a ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... broke and, disentangling themselves with difficulty from the dead and the dying, fled back out of that accursed place. Some, the most unfortunate of all, became caught in the darkness in the wire defences, and were found in the morning hung up 'like crows,' as one spectator describes it, and riddled with bullets. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... 60: The Indian who seized Putnam tied him to a tree, and for a time he was exposed to the cross-fire of the combatants. His garments were riddled by bullets, but, strange to say, not one touched his person. He was carried away in the retreat, his wrists tightly bound with cords. The Indians rejoiced over the capture of their great enemy, and he was doomed to the ...
— The Military Journals of Two Private Soldiers, 1758-1775 - With Numerous Illustrative Notes • Abraham Tomlinson

... shooting in England. It seems that Cetewayo had taken a fancy to see them, and, being too tired to walk over the field of battle, ordered that this should be done. Among these, by the way, I saw the body of my old friend, Maputa, the general of the Amawombe, and noted that it was literally riddled with spear thrusts, every one of them in front; also that his quaint ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... of France, had already hanged Count Charles in reality. Further, they said that he was no count at all, but the son of their old bishop, Heinsberg. They went so far as to suspend the effigy on a gallows and then riddled it with arrows and left it dangling like a scarecrow in sight of the ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... body of a man—nailed to a rude crucifix. The thing was more like a T than a cross. It was made of planks, perhaps two by five, and the man was spiked on by his hands and feet. Across the abdomen he was riddled with bullets and again with another row a little higher up near his chest. The man was the sergeant I had talked to earlier in the night. What had happened was this. He had, no doubt, been taken by a German patrol. Probably he had refused to answer questions. ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes

... could see that he was riddled with deep shame and self-contempt and haunted, always, by the thought of his father. She longed to speak to him about his father's death, but as yet she did not dare. If once she could persuade him that ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... limestone or marble, and this circumstance alone prevented their complete destruction during the English bombardment in 1841. The marks of the shells are everywhere seen, and the upper parts of the lofty buildings are completely riddled with cannon-balls, some of which remain embedded in the stone. We made a rapid tour of the town on horseback, followed by the curious glances of the people, who were in doubt whether to consider us Turks or Franks. There were a dozen vessels in the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... they planted in battery on a neighboring hill, well covered by intrenchments from the English shot. Here they presently opened fire; and, in an hour, the stockade with the houses that it enclosed was completely riddled. The English took shelter in a cellar, nor was it till the fire slackened that they ventured out to show a white flag and ask for a parley. Troyes and Sargent had an interview. The Englishman regaled his conqueror ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... and heart were driven So wild, that every casual thought of that and this Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago; And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason, Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro, Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken, Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken By the injustice ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats

... that a balloon would run of being riddled by bullets, shrapnel, or pom-poms has not been taken into account, and as to the estimate of this risk there is some difference of opinion. The balloon corps and the artillery apparently approach the question with different bias. On the one hand, it is stated with perfect truth that ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... the prince meant to do, but before long he was fast asleep. And while he slept, the princesses danced and danced, for, in the morning, the soles of their slippers were once more riddled with holes. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... lost a leg. We received on board, in all, 118 prisoners, four of whom have since died of their wounds. Having removed the prisoners, and taken on board such provisions and stores as would be useful to us, I scuttled the Penguin this morning, before daylight, and she went down. As she was completely riddled by our shot, her foremast and bowsprit both gone, and her main-mast so crippled as to be incapable of being secured, it seemed unadvisable, at this distance from home, to attempt sending her to ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... the meaning of these can be guessed: but "Tot verbas tot spondera," for example,—what can any commentator make of that? "Festina lente," "Dominus vobiscum," "Flectamus genua," "Quod bene notandum;" these phrases too, and some three or four others of the like, have been riddled from his Writings by diligent men: [Preuss (i. 24) furnishes the whole stock of them.] "O tempora, O mores! You see, I don't forget my Latin," ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle

... ladies in velvet dresses killed by the musketry, two booksellers shot on the threshold of their shops without even knowing what was wanted of them, bullets fired into cellar-windows and killing no matter whom, the Bazar de l'Industrie riddled with shell and balls, the Hotel Sallandrouze bombarded, the Maison-d'Or mitrailleused, Tortoni taken by assault, hundreds of corpses on the Boulevard, a stream of ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... tramp. It was the Chancellor, followed by four of Otto's valets and a litter. The servants, when they were admitted, stared at the dishevelled Princess and the wounded man; speech was denied them, but their thoughts were riddled with profanity. Gondremark was bundled in; the curtains of the litter were lowered; the bearers carried it forth, and the Chancellor followed behind with a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... came, and, revolvers in hand, he stepped to one side and opened fire at the coach. He fired with both hands, and did not cease until he had emptied his weapons and riddled the coach. ...
— Buffalo Bill's Spy Trailer - The Stranger in Camp • Colonel Prentiss Ingraham

... through a number of small villages completely riddled; one village had but a single house ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

... attention upon his own safety. The tugs advanced gallantly to the onset, six of them rushing almost simultaneously upon the "Vittoria." That vessel met them with a broadside which sank four at once, and the other two were riddled by shell from Hotchkiss revolving cannon from the decks of the Spaniard; their machinery was crippled, and they drifted helplessly out to sea. Of the others, some ran aground on the bank, some were sunk, and not one succeeded in exploding her torpedo near a Spanish vessel. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various

... the Union ships, and from share fortifications too distant to be effective, the Merrimac rammed and sank the sloop-of-war Cumberland, and then, after driving the frigate Congress aground, riddled her with shells. Towards nightfall the Confederate vessel moved dawn stream, to continue the ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... was half concealed. It looked very dreary with its black, gaping windows. To our right was a big farmhouse. Most of the tiles had been blown from the roof, showing the bare rafters. The door was in splinters, and the walls were riddled. A little lane wound round the farm in a loop and then lost itself ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... Broadway leaps highest in folly and the nights are riddled with incandescent tire and chewing gum signs; jazz bands and musical comedies to the ticket speculators' tune of five dollars a seat, My Khaki-Boy, covered with the golden hoar of three hundred Metropolitan nights ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... man lay in a heap in the middle of the road, riddled with bullet wounds, any one of which would have ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott

... mast but her foremast, and the English ship was in almost as bad a plight. Both ships were badly riddled by shot, and their crews were decimated. It seemed as though, unless some decisive move were made to end the conflict, that the combatants would ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... lake. His first impulse was to jump in the water and dive for it, which he did. Rose was close behind him, and formed his men on the bank ready to shoot him as he rose. In a few seconds he came up to breathe; and scarce had his head reached the surface of the water when it was completely riddled with the shot of their guns, and he ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... section in question lies a property now in the hands of the late M. Bonnat's executors: the grant was given to him as a wedding-present by his friends, the chiefs. Report says that from this part of the lode, which is riddled with native pits, came some of the specimens that floated the G. C. M. Company. Succeeds in due order the African Gold Coast Company, French and English, which was brought out in 1878. It is popularly and locally known as the Takwa (not 'Tarcquah') mine, from ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron

... of suitable craft. He had no difficulty in buying a dozen old native boats. He then procured a large quantity of cane, and lashed these in the bottom of the boats, using a sufficient quantity to keep them afloat even if they were riddled with balls. Then the carpenters set to work to make platforms in the bows of each to carry a seven-pounder gun. In three days the work was completed and the Furious started again, putting two men in each of the boats and taking them ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty

... two years before, and explain to her the different positions held by the enemy. She was intensely interested in visiting the Sikandarbagh, the Shah Najaf, the mess-house, and, above all, that glorious memorial of almost superhuman courage and endurance, the Residency, ruined, roofless, and riddled by round shot and bullets. Very little had then been done towards opening out the city, and the surroundings of the Residency were much as they had been during the defence—a labyrinth of streets and lanes; it was therefore easier for the stranger to realize exactly what had taken place than ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... bayonet. If he shot the man he was stalking alarm would be given and he would be riddled with bullets before he got back. He was willing to give a life for a life if it were necessary, but he was reluctant to do so if it could be avoided. Cold steel would be better. Cold steel! He smiled grimly. It would need some hot blood to take the chill off the ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... the meaning of the man's farewell. Poor Tom was once a kiddy upon town, A thorough varmint, and a real swell, Full flash,[568] all fancy, until fairly diddled, His pockets first and then his body riddled. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... the regular hospital flag floated above it. This unfortunate house, with its maimed occupants, was brought between Reynolds's men and the attacking enemy when the former were driven into the open field; and, despite the non-combatant flag flying from the gable, it was riddled with shells from the Southern batteries. I do not charge upon those gunners a knowledge of the facts here given: their batteries were some distance away through the forest. However, whether they saw the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various

... and never surely without great profit from his having been "drawn." His apparent triumph—if it be even apparent—still leaves, it will be noted, convenient cover for retort in the riddled face of the opposite stronghold. The last word in these cases is for nobody who can't pretend to an ABSOLUTE test. The terms here used, obviously, are matters of appreciation, and there is no short cut to proof (luckily for us all round) either ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James

... treatment could not be obtained there, he was hastily carried twenty miles to his home, where a physician was immediately summoned. His wounds proved to be very severe, but were not such as to prevent his recovery. The thigh was literally riddled with buckshot, one hundred and thirteen having already been extracted from his body. He writes us, "I am glad to have your sympathy and prayers; they are of great strength to me. It will be quite a while before I can walk as before, ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 3, September, 1898 • Various

... Younkins cabin in quest of news from up the river, where, it was said, a party of California emigrants had been fired upon by the Indians. They found that the party attacked was one coming from California, not migrating thither. It brought the Indian frontier very near the boys to see the shot-riddled wagons, left at Younkins's by the travellers. The Cheyennes had shot into the party and had killed four and wounded two, at a point known as Buffalo Creek, some one hundred miles or so up the Republican Fork. It was a daring piece of effrontery, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks

... him now or never!" thought Tom. Once more he shifted his direction, and then, as he had his gun aimed just where he wanted it, he pressed the lever and a burst of bullets shot out and fairly riddled the red plane. It seemed to stop for an instant in the air, and then, quivering, turned and went down in a nose dive, ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach

... we brighten up a little, to be saddened the more, for the Massachusetts on her return trip tells us that, so far from there being good news from Charleston, we have only the worst to hear. The brave little Keokuk is riddled with balls and sunk, and the fleet of ironclads have retired from before the city. It is a costly experience, though it may yet bear precious fruit, for they tell us it has revealed what was necessary to make our next attack successful. What it is, we cannot learn, the authorities meaning in the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... pasturage, ferocious fowl Riddled with rage a more than putrid roast; Each of them stabbing, like a tool, his foul Beak in the oozing members of ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray

... recklessness which Indians are apt to show when excited. The hunters could hear the hoarse commands of the chiefs, the war-whoops and the taunts in broken English which some of the warriors hurled at them. Very soon all of their horses were killed, and the brush was fairly riddled by the incessant volleys; but the three men themselves, lying flat on the ground and well concealed, were not harmed. The more daring young warriors then began to creep toward the hunters, going stealthily from one piece of cover to ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... be found in that river. At low water curious eruptive, highly ferruginous rocks showed in the river bed, some in the shape of spherical balls riddled with perforations, as if they had been in a state of ebullition, others as little pellets of yellow lava, such as I had before encountered between Araguary and Goyaz, and which suggested the spluttering of molten rock suddenly cooled by contact with ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... riddled by the Russian censor, so that the complete version has appeared only abroad, have recently been followed by two important stories: "Among the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... watched the demolition of part of an old log cabin which was being riddled by termites. Many of the ordinary logs were in ruins but the walnut boards which had served as weather-boarding over the ends of some of the termite-infested logs were as sound and as beautifully preserved as they had been when ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various

... bank. It was a passage made by elephants, and those animals, doubtless by hundreds, were in the habit of traversing this part of the forest. Great holes, made by the feet of the enormous pachyderms, riddled a soil softened during the rainy season. Its spongy nature also prepared it for ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... of the burning vessel enabled the whole of the terrible scene to be clearly witnessed. Half the ships were partly or wholly dismasted, the rigging was cut to pieces, and the sails were riddled with balls. The splintered sides, bulwarks shot away, and port-holes blown into one, showed how terrible was the damage inflicted on both sides. Higher and higher rose the flames on board the Orient. Men could be seen leaping ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty

... was the last utterance of that glorious and courageous soul, in the National Senate. Within three months, his lifeless body, riddled by Rebel rifle balls, was borne away from the fatal field of Ball's Bluff—away, amid the lamentations of a Nation —away, across land and ocean—to lie beside his brave friend Broderick, on that Lone Mountain whose solemn front looks out upon the ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... run without lights now, and make the crew use flashlights instead of lanterns. Right over there"—pointing to the side of the roadbed, in the snow—"a 'flyin' Dutchman' came down last week, after being chased by a French plane. His chassis was all riddled with bullets till it looked like Cook's strainer, and his wings were bent till they looked like corkscrews. When they came up to look at the machine, they found the pilot's right body in it, burnt just like a strip o' bacon that's been left on the stove too long. They found the carcass of the ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces

... the buildings on the high ground in its rear were simply riddled. Great holes were in places blown out by our large shells and the walls were pitted by the hail of the ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall

... window behind Sandy had not been lowered, and a very magnificent black night riddled with stars stood like a shield against which the boyish form and pale face rested. There was a crumbling fire on the hearth, and the lamp on the table was turned low. Markham, listening to the slow, earnest voice, became hypnotized by its quality and pure purpose. He ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... reflection never abandoned, "gentlemen, think of what you are about. Patience, Athos! You are running your heads into a very silly affair; you will be riddled. My lackey and I will have three shots at you, and you will get as many from the cellar. You will then have our swords, with which, I can assure you, my friend and I can play tolerably well. Let me conduct your business and my own. You shall soon have ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... etc., as the number might be since our people opened fire upon the City. The part where we lay was a mass of ruins. Many large buildings had been knocked down; very many more were riddled with shot holes and tottering to their fall. One night a shell passed through a large building about a quarter of a mile from us. It had already been struck several times, and was shaky. The shell went through with a deafening crash. All was still for an instant; then it exploded with a dull ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... batteries to sweep them with a storm of bullets and balls. The cannonade was instantly commenced. The missiles of death fell like hail stones into the crowded boats and upon the crowded decks. Many of the ships were sunk, others disabled, and but a few, torn and riddled, succeeded in escaping to sea, where the most of them also perished beneath the waves of the stormy Euxine. Such was the utter desolation of this one brief war tempest which ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... red-handed, the victors, who with malice inconceivable had brought cords knotted round their waists, did speedily hang, and by their side the dead ones, to make the gallanter show. "That one at the end was the captain. He never felt the cord. He was riddled with broad arrows and leaden balls or ever they could take him: a worthy man as ever cried, 'Stand and deliver!' but a little hasty, not much: stay! I forgot; he is dead. Very hasty, and obstinate as a pig. That one in the—buff jerkin is the lieutenant, as good a soul ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... was a sieve of patched-up bullet holes. His nerve was almost superhuman and his devotion to the cause for which he fought sublime. The day he was wounded he attacked four machines. Swooping down from behind, one of them, a Fokker, riddled Chapman's plane. One bullet cut deep into his scalp, but Chapman, a master pilot, escaped from the trap, and fired several shots to show he was still safe. A stability control had been severed by a bullet. ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell

... and men slept well in the aromatic air; even the mules did not squeal and kick so very much in their lines, while the weary camels groaned and sighed and sobbed in half-tones, as if bemoaning their fate as being rather better than usual, for none had been riddled by bullets, fallen, or been beaten overmuch, and their leaders had taken care that they were not overloaded, and that they had plenty to eat and drink. The only men who slept badly were Gedge and Symons, ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... have been cheap. Do you hear that? It would have been cheap! Bakkan is one of the most vulnerable outposts of the Empire. It is a terrible danger-zone. If certain powers can usurp our authority—and, mark you, the whole blamed place is already riddled with this new pernicious doctrine—you know what I mean—before we know where we are the whole East will be in a blaze. India! My God! This contract we were negotiating would have countered this outward thrust. And you, you blockhead, you come here and insult the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... house was burned, was led out and shot in the street in the presence of his wife and children. M. Chary, aged 55, foreman roadmaker, was escaping from the conflagration, holding his wife by the hand, when he was killed by rifle shots. I have seen his body, which was riddled with wounds. M. Ernest Samen was struck by five revolver bullets at the moment when he was shutting the door ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times

... he asked, "that those six include all the guilty? How do we know that all in Le Bouffay do not share the guilt? The prisoners are riddled with disease, which spreads to the good patriots of Nantes; they eat bread, which is scarce, whilst good patriots starve. We must have the heads off all those blasted swine!" He took fire at his own suggestion. ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... death, its roofs riddled by shell, its every church a crowded hospital, every street a battle-line, every hill a rampart, every rock a fortress, and every stone wall a blazing line ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... uncoiling into gloom, The River, jaded and forlorn, Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on; Yet in and out among the ribs Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles Of some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls, Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, Lingers to babble, to a broken tune (Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!) So melancholy a soliloquy It sounds as it might tell The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, The terror of Time and ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley



Words linked to "Riddled" :   damaged, full



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