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Wolfish   Listen
Wolfish

adjective
1.
Resembling or characteristic (or considered characteristic) of a wolf.  Synonym: wolflike.  "Wolfish rapacity"
2.
Devouring or craving food in great quantities.  Synonyms: edacious, esurient, rapacious, ravening, ravenous, voracious.  "A rapacious appetite" , "Ravenous as wolves" , "Voracious sharks"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wolfish" Quotes from Famous Books



... maize, no sugar; sauerkraut and cabbage in hot water twice a day, occasionally some boiled barley or rice or oatmeal, and now and then—almost by a miracle, so rare were the occasions—a small bit of horseflesh in the soup. Could one wonder at the wolfish look upon his face, the dreary hopelessness of his expression? And on this diet he had fatigues to do; but on those days of hard toil there was also a little extra bread and an inch ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... had to stoop a good deal to get in at the narrow doorway. It was dark, and not now an attractive-looking place, yet as thought flew back to the white wilderness of a few months before, the trapper and his long, solitary journeys in the relentless cold, with at last the wolfish night closing round him, it made all different, and one realised a little how welcome must have seemed the thought and the sight ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... almost empty. The clerk had locked his cigar-case and had gone to bed. In one corner, partly shrouded in gloom, sat a half-breed trapper who had come in that day from the Lac la Ronge country, and at his feet crouched one of his wolfish sledge-dogs. Both were wide-awake and stared curiously at Howland as he came in. In front of the two large windows sat half a dozen men, as silent as the half-breed, clad in moccasins and thick caribou skin coats. One of them was the factor from a Hudson ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood

... in the breeze that came not: savagely They glared upon each other—all was done, Water, and wine, and food,—and you might see The longings of the cannibal arise (Although they spoke not) in their wolfish eyes. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... youth—to the prairies in the far-off West, where, over and over again, he had heard these sounds, and his faithful Winchester repeater had stood him in good service. Again the yelping—this time nearer. Yes! it was undoubtedly a wolf; and yet there was an intonation in that yelping not altogether wolfish—something Mr. Anderson had never heard before, and which he was consequently at a loss to define. Again it rang out—much nearer this time—much more trying to the nerves, and the cold sweat of fear burst out all over him. Again—close under the wall of the house—a moaning, snarling, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... wolfish. She could see that he was spent, so weak with hunger that he had reeled against the wall as she handed him the dinner-pail. Pallor was on the sunken face, and exhaustion in the ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine

... slowly lit the candles. Then—I saw that the man opposite had but the remnant of a face, a gaunt wolfish face in which one unquenched eye, the sole remaining feature, still glittered. I was greatly moved, some suspicion of the truth occurring ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... dying flame of the fire. Slowly the worry went out of his eyes and resolve came in. Out of the chaos of his fortunes he had finally achieved a way. But it was not a pretty way. His face had become stern and wolfish, and the thin ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... Arcadian steed Fear'd lest, for every moment's flight, His nimble teeth should lose a bite. At last, "I counsel you," said he, "to wait Till master is himself awake, Who then, unless I much mistake, Will give his dog the usual bait." Meanwhile, there issued from the wood A creature of the wolfish brood, Himself by famine sorely pinch'd. At sight of him the donkey flinch'd, And begg'd the dog to give him aid. The dog budged not, but answer made,— "I counsel thee, my friend, to run, Till master's nap is fairly done; There can, indeed, be no mistake, That he will very soon awake; ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... crossed it by swimming; but Grom knew that such waters were apt to swarm with giant crocodiles of varying type and unvarying ferocity, as well as with ferocious flesh-eating fish that swarmed in wolfish packs, and were able to tear an aurochs or a mastodon in pieces with their razor-edged teeth. He gazed desirously at the opposite shore, however—which looked to him much more beautiful and more interesting than that ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... sprinkled my stretcher with insect powder, but my blanket had been on the floor for one minute, and fleas rendered sleep impossible. The night was very long. The andon went out, leaving a strong smell of rancid oil. The primitive Japanese dog— a cream-coloured wolfish-looking animal, the size of a collie, very noisy and aggressive, but as cowardly as bullies usually are—was in great force in Fujihara, and the barking, growling, and quarrelling of these useless curs continued at intervals until daylight; and when they were not quarrelling, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... discovered your title page; though it is barely possible that the melancholy fate of Wolfe Tone, with the indistinct tone of ferocity that is perceptible in his name, may have suggested the compellation of that unfortunate gentleman, as more significant of the wolfish atrocities with which your tale will necessarily abound. Whatever be the name, make haste with the book, and do not wait ten years in order to have another "Sixty Years Since." You must see that congruity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... I heard a tramping in the bushes, and in breaks my little gray mule. Thinks I them 'Rapahoes ain't smart; so tied her to grass. But the Injuns had scared the beaver so, I stays in my camp, eating my lariat. Then I begun to get kind o' wolfish and squeamish; something was gnawing and pulling at my inwards, like a wolf in a trap. Just then an idea struck me, that I had been there before trading liquor with ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... de pisce lupo—wolf, because of its voracity; a sea fish, sea pike, or sea bass; perhaps akin to our barracuda, wolfish both in appearance and character. Sch. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... to tell of aught save wrong on wrong, Wrought by our mother's deed? Though now she fawn for pardon, sternly strong Standeth our wrath, and will nor hear nor heed; Her children's soul is wolfish, born from hers, And softens ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... the Jews with reference to this wolfish shepherd may easily be imagined. Nothing but fear of Antiochus held them in check. Then a report gained currency that the king had perished in an expedition against Egypt (170); and Jason, who meanwhile had found refuge in Ammanitis, availed himself ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... decided to return to camp and there refit. Besides, we badly needed recuperation after the more than ordinary hardships we had undergone. We arrived at the Lower Camp one morning at about nine o'clock, more than half-starved. I shall never forget my wolfish sensations as we flung down our swags at Stopforth and Bowman's eating-house and called for breakfast. I then enjoyed the heartiest meal of my life, after which I sat back pulling at my pipe and noting with astonishment the amount ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... into a back street out of the Old Square. Putting her burden down at the pavement's edge, she blew a whistle. A hansom-cab appeared, and a man in ragged clothes, who seemed to spring out of the pavement, took hold of her valise. His lean, unshaven face was full of wolfish misery. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... my voice was thick with sighs, As in a dream. Dimly I could descry The stern black-bearded kings, with wolfish eyes, Waiting to ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... a sound. With an oath he turned on his heel and went out to the table. Eating his breakfast in his usual wolfish fashion, he went out into the hot sun with his team and riding-plough, not a little disturbed by this new phase of his wife's "cantankerousness." He ploughed steadily and sullenly all the forenoon, in the terrific ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... Nine wolfish sheep-dogs were scattering, one writhed before the porch; and Denton, tasting that strange delight of combat that slumbers still in the blood of even the most civilised man, was shouting and running across the garden ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... as the little maid protested. Massive, silent, contemptuous, his small eyes under the wolfish skull cold and alight with a look that sent shuddering from him the timid,—thus he had been in his hard-fought and hard-won supremacy, a great, mysterious beast brought full-grown from the snowbound wilderness of the forest one famine-time by old Aquamis and sold to Bois ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... in his Indian Journal gives two remarkable instances of language and unity of work among animals which he saw at Ranee Bennore, while he was on a hunting trip. He witnessed, one morning, a striking case of wolfish generalship, which in his belief proved that animals are endowed to a certain extent not only with reason but are able to communicate their ideas to others. He was scanning the horizon one morning to see if any game was in sight when he discovered a small ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... dreary monotony of the premises. Dark patches of lava, all littered with the heads and entrails of fish; a pile of turf from some neighboring bog; a rickety shed in which the fish are hung up to dry; a gang of wolfish-looking curs, horribly lean and voracious; a few prowling cats, and possibly a chicken deeply depressed in spirits—these are the most prominent objects visible in the vicinity. Sloth and filth go hand ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... curling slowly upward from an Indian camp on the prairie not far from the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. Fifteen or twenty cone-shaped lodges, each made of mats stretched on a frame-work of poles, compose the village. It swarms with wolfish-looking dogs and dirty, unclad children. Heaps of refuse, heads and feet of game, lie decaying among the wigwams, tainting the air with their disgusting odor. Here and there an ancient withered specimen of humanity sits in the sun, absorbing its rays with a dull ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... knowledge were about to be called into requisition, for the announcement that all this "property" was to be relinquished absolutely was received by the more important section of the slave-hunters with a sullen silence more eloquent even that the wolfish growls of the Wangoni. The latter's disappointment lay in the fact that they were balked in giving vent to their instincts of sheer savagery—the delight of plunder and massacre. That of the former, however, was a more weighty factor to reckon with; for the smatter of civilization in ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... Stetson produced a wolfish grin. "All right. So we're desperate, and we haven't much time. In a nutshell, since you're going to be a house guest at the Bullones'—we suspect Ipscott Bullone of being the head of a conspiracy to take ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert

... shades on his rugged face gradually deepening from sullenness into ferocity. He looked quite wolfish at last, for it was a habit he had to show his white teeth more when he was savage than when he smiled. But the music went ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... the trail in silence for about six miles. They then saw, not far from them, upon a meadow on the banks of a small stream, a very picturesque group of wigwams, with all the accompaniments of loafing warriors, busy women, sporting children, and wolfish dogs, usually to be found in an Indian village. At the distance of about a mile and a half, upon a gentle eminence, there was another village of about ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott

... Beaty's Spring. Here we stayed several days, in which time the troops began to collect from all quarters. At last we mustered about thirteen hundred strong; all mounted volunteers and all determined to fight, judging from myself, for I felt wolfish all over. I verily believe the whole army was of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... hymn, and all the while we may be far off from the Kingdom of Heaven, because we are not in our lives doing the will of our Father which is in Heaven. If we are selfish, self-willed, proud, lovers of our own selves, our religion is but the sheep's clothing covering the wolfish heart, or the white paint hiding the corruption of the sepulchre. It is easy enough to assume the character and manner of a Christian, but to live the Christian life is not so easy. A man can make a sham diamond in a very short time, but the real gem must lie for ages ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... rather staggered me, but I thanked him, and drawing out my slender purse, gave him a piece of silver. He fastened on it with wolfish eagerness and the next instant had disappeared, leaving me to find La Boule d'Or as ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... and streams, Val d'Arno, Val di Tevere, the hills of Perugia, the valleys of Umbria, the lean, wolfish country of the Marche, the rugged mountains of Romagna. There, on the summit of La Verna, you look down on the broken fortresses of countless wars, the passes through which army after army, company upon company, has marched to ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... damp and dark, in one corner of which a youthful figure was crouching; and then (most intolerable of all!) a flaring gin-palace, where, among a noisy crowd, a face was looking wistfully on, while coarse and vulgar men were clustering with cruel, wolfish eyes around a beggar-girl. This I saw and more—a ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... little breath. His fingers closed upon the piece of gold. There was a glare in his eyes which was almost wolfish. He had dared to let his thoughts rest for a moment upon food. He, who was fighting the last grim fight against starvation. He spoke in a whisper, for ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... a pause, In spite of teeth and claws, Left nothing of the Lynx to tell the story; The Leopard all irate At his relation's fate, Made mince meat of that wolfish monster hoary. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... career had Ujarak displayed such anxiety to increase the distance between himself and his tribe. Never since that long-lashed, short-handled, heavy whip was made, had it given forth such a rapid series of pistol-like reports, and never since they were pups had those ten lanky wolfish dogs stretched out their long legs and scampered over the Arctic sea as they did on that occasion. The old ice was still sufficiently firm and smooth to afford a good road, and the new ice was fortunately strong enough to bear, for the pace was tremendous. With "the world before him where ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... here on Broadway early in the spring. Dead broke, hungry, and about ready to make good for some manager." As the answer was fired point-blank at him, Mr. Dennis Farraday seemed to see a fire of psychic hunger blaze as high as that of wolfish, physical agony in the ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... upturned faces below him, Mr. Tapster was very glad that a stout pane of glass stood between himself and the sinister-looking men and women who seemed to be staring up at him, or rather at his windows, with faces full of cruel, wolfish curiosity. He let the blind fall to gently. His interest in the vulgar, sordid scene had suddenly died down; the drama was now over; in a moment the crowd would disperse, the human vermin (but Mr. Tapster would never have used, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... wolfish, my boy. But go on. It certainly is a delicious fish, and Dolly has cooked it to a turn. They ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... lot,—the front ones, at least,—comprising some of the largest Esquimaux we had yet seen. There must have been thirty or forty in the front groups; and others were momentarily rushing in from behind. The dogs, too, fifty or sixty at least calculation,—great, gaunt, wolfish, yellow curs,—looked almost ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... indecision. Quiet, purposeful, controlled, it sounded; that pace, pace, that came through the twig-carpeted timber. The Greek Fates were pictured as moving with just that even relentlessness of stride. Yet in life, so far as I have seen it, tragedies commonly pounce upon us, like a wolfish cat upon her prey, and we find ourselves stunned and mangled before we gather dignity to meet the blow. I thought of this, in an incoherent, muddy way, as the step came nearer. And I worked with hurrying hands at ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... with its emphatic curve, was almost gaunt in the moment when she fixed her eyes on the wolfish face of that tousle-headed giant who encircled her. Her shoulder blades were pinched back; the line of the marvelous full throat lengthened; she devoured the man with a vehemence of love, brief and fierce as the summer lightning which played ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... dogs have now been exterminated, and every dog in Japan is owned, licensed, taxed, or else liable to go the way of the old wolfish-looking curs. The pet spaniel-like ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton

... night brought a return of his most terrible moods. Beatrice sensed them in his pale, set face and his cold, wolfish eyes. The wolf sat beside him, swept by his master's mood, gazing with deadly speculations into the darkness. Beatrice saw them as one breed to-night. The wild had wholly claimed this repatriated son. The ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... Mr. Shannon, turning once more to the jury], think of the colossal, wolfish nerve that would permit a man to say to Albert Stires that he had just purchased sixty thousand dollars' worth additional of city loan, and that he would then and there take the check for it! Had he actually purchased ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... my native land! loftiest Muse! O first-born on the mountains! by the hues Of heaven on the spiritual air begot: Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot, While yet our England was a wolfish den; Before our forests heard the talk of men; Before the first of Druids was a child;— Long didst thou sit amid our regions wild Rapt in a deep prophetic solitude. There came an eastern voice of solemn mood:— 10 Yet wast thou patient. Then sang forth the Nine, Apollo's garland:—yet ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... to end it in this way. The hard bed, the cold night wind blowing on me, my wolfish visitor, were all forgotten. Once more I gave loose to my imagination, and saw myself (clothed and in my right mind) sitting at Yoletta's feet, learning the mystery of that sweet, tranquil life from her precious lips. ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... with a horrible quaking laugh, as she pointed to the perches. Rows of pert ravens stood upon tip-toe along the bars looking with bright eyes upon the strangers; while here and there an owl opened his crooked beak and said Too whit, Too whoo. A strange creature, with wolfish head and limbs, crouched by the hearth; but after three or four furtive glances at the intruders, he skulked back into a dark corner of the cabin. From this retreat he continued to glare ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins

... complication of the situation filled me with dismay. Lord Carwitchet's wolfish glance at my rubies took a new meaning. They were safe enough, I believed—but the sapphire! If he disbelieved his mother, how long would she be able to keep it from his clutches? That she had some plot of her own of which the bishop would eventually be the victim ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... and it would be our duty to become the converts of that religion whatever it might be, whose priests could swear the loudest, and damn and curse the fiercest. But I am here to grapple with this Popery in disguise, this wolfish argument in sheepish clothing, upon Scriptural ground, and on Scriptural ground only; taking the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, for this argument's sake, to be divine authority. The question proposed is, 'Whether is the believer or the unbeliever the ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... of the candidate was of whitened wool, we know. Does 'wolvish' or 'woolvish' mean 'made of wool?' If it means 'wolfish,' what is the sense? ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... a curtain,—it is such a rough, ungainly thing. Yet there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline, that show a master's hand. Sometimes,—to-night, for instance,—the curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out imploringly in the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine: a wan, woful face, through which the spirit of the dead korl-cutter looks out, with its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its unfinished work. Its pale, vague lips seem to tremble with a terrible question. "Is this the End?" ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis

... new blankets was opened, as it appeared to me, for my especial benefit. The chief, his lady, two sons almost grown, two or three wolfish looking dogs which forcibly reminded me of Field's terrible scare, and myself made up the number of lodgers in that mansion that night. Late that night some warriors who had been out on a campaign came home, and learning that there was a ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... motion to obey, but his small eyes seemed to grow smaller as they stared. "What colour has money now-a-days, Master Franois?" he asked doggedly. In a moment the brown, dirty hand of the poet was clapped to his dagger and there was something of a wolfish snarl in his voice as he answered menacingly, "The colour of blood sometimes." But the landlord, unabashed and undismayed, stood ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... . . There's never been a white woman in Katleean. It would be great sport to see one up against it here, eh, Kayak?" The White Chief turned, smiling, and the light in his pale, narrow eyes matched the wolfish ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... custom, so we rubbed noses heartily with the whole party, women and all! The only disagreeable part of the process was when we came to rub noses with Mahine, and Peterkin afterwards said that when he saw his wolfish eyes glaring so close to his face, he felt much more inclined to bang than to rub his nose. Avatea was the last to take leave of us, and we experienced a feeling of real sorrow when she approached ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... that night the good Albanian bishop, betrayed by who knew what of episcopal charity and response to appeals for succour from his fellow-countrymen, the helpless sheep of his flock, threatened by the wolfish atrocities of ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay

... you, Gato, for the wolfish coward that you are," Tom Reade shouted mockingly. "You are desperately afraid when you won't meet me, ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock

... past a farm-house with never a light to show upon its front, there was a ferocious hullabaloo, something between the angry snorting of a buffalo and the puffing of a railroad engine going up a steep grade. It was the wolfish welcome of three canine brigands, the bloodthirsty watch-dogs that surrounded and guarded this lonely and poverty-stricken little farm-house from the approach of any one evil- ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... useless, he checked his horse. Willock now sat erect on the broncho's bare back, lightly clasping the halter. Looking behind, he saw seven horsemen in varying degrees of remoteness, motionless, doubtless fixing their wolfish eyes on his fleeing form. As long as he could distinguish these specks against the sky, they remained stationary. To his excited imagination they represented a living wall drawn up between him and the abode ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... Goffredo's powers Direct their march to Salem's sacred towers; And plant his throne beneath the Asian skies, A sacred seat that now neglected lies. Ye lords of Christendom! eternal shame For ever will pursue each royal name, And tell your wolfish rage for kindred blood, While Paynim hounds profane the seat of God! With him the Christian glory seem'd to fall, The rest was hid behind oblivion's pall; Save a few honour'd names, inferior far In peace to guide, or point ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... merely regretting, not condemning it. Perhaps if the Republicans come back into power after four years, they will not be quite so hungry as the Democrats were after sixteen years of famine, and we may have a little less wolfish desire to get ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft

... counted the leagues of barren ocean that still stretched before. With haggard, wolfish eyes they gazed on each other, till a whisper passed from man to man, that one, by his death, might ransom all the rest. The choice was made. It fell on La Chere, the same wretched man whom Albert had doomed to starvation on a lonely island, and whose mind was burdened ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... little distance, "I can't say that I'm any more favorably impressed with Mr. Buncombe, or whatever his name is, than I was with old Boomerang yesterday. That fellow looked like a silly, pompous, old fool, and this one like a sly, old villain. I wish he'd stop that confounded, wolfish grin of his, it makes me feel uncomfortable, he looks as if he knew he had his prey just dead easy, and his chops were watering in anticipation. I say, old fellow, I don't think much of this Buncombe-Boomerang combination of yours, and I guess it's ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... wolfish haste, hacking off great strips of flesh with patches of hide still attached to them; and it was only when he flung them half-raw out of the frying-pan that Weston roused himself. Fresh bush venison is not a delicacy even when properly cooked, and there are ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss

... until the kings of Europe follow her example, and call their nations to the field. Till then she will be invincible, but then her conquests will vanish; and the world, exhausted by carnage, will be quiet for a while. But the wolfish spirit of human nature will again hunger for prey; some new system of havoc will be discovered by some great genius, who ought to be cursed to the lowest depths of human memory; but who will be exalted to the most rapturous heights of human praise. Then again, when one half ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... that they will attack him. The ground, however, was now completely covered with snow, and I knew that they would find but little food. As I could not venture out, most of the day passed away in a half-unconscious dreamy state; part of it I slept. The next night I was awoke soon after dark by the wolfish chorus; it was much nearer than before. The sounds formed themselves into words to my disordered senses. "We'll eat you up; we'll eat you up ere long," they appeared to say. A third night came. The pack seemed increased in numbers, as if they had ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... the boat shudders into the Coteau Rapids, and down through the Cedars and Cascades. On the rocks of the last lies the skeleton of a steamer wrecked upon them, and gnawed at still by the white-tusked wolfish rapids. No one, they say, was lost from her. "But how," Basil thought, "would it fare with all these people packed here upon her bow, if the Banshee should swing round upon a ledge?" As to Isabel, she looked upon the wrecked steamer with indifference, as did all the women; but ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... roared in concert, a crowd of eager, wolfish, ravenous, impatient men, hungry as camp fasting could make them, and half inclined even to tear their darling in pieces, since she kept them thus ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... to be some wolfish, ma'am," he agreed. In hope that she would be deterred by exaggeration, he dwelt on the subject. "The gunmen and hoss thieves and tinhorn gamblers all come in on the rush. There's a lot of them hobos and wobblies—reds and anarchists and such—floatin' ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... duty. Right, it is clear, can never be rightfully resisted. If it be the right of certain persons to do a certain thing, it must be the duty of all other persons to let that thing be done. Where there is no such duty, there can be no such right. Wherefore, if the 'stern, black-bearded kings, with wolfish eyes,' who sate 'waiting to see her die,' had a right to kill Iphigenia, it must have been Iphigenia's duty to let herself be killed. Was this then her duty? 'Duty,' as I have elsewhere observed,[3] 'signifies something due, a debt, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... Curdie ate there came a change. Clouds had gathered over his head, and seemed drifting about in every direction, as if not 'shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind,' but hunted in all directions by wolfish flaws across the plains of the sky. The sun was going down in a storm of lurid crimson, and out of the west came a wind that felt red and hot the one moment, and cold and pale the other. And very strangely it sang in the dreary old hawthorn tree, and very cheerily it blew about Curdie, now making ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald

... later, Mr. Lane entered the room; a single glance at his daughter's face, a quick look at Wash Gibbs, as the bully sat following with wolfish eyes every movement of the girl, and Jim stepped quietly in front of his guest. At the same moment, Sammy left the house for a bucket of water, and Wash turned toward his host with a start to find ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright

... toward animals was the same. A horde of mange-corroded curs lived off his bounty, wolfish, ungrateful, often marking him with their teeth, yet never knowing the meaning of a harsh word. A burro, over-fed, lazy, incorrigible, browsed on the hill back of the Mission, obstinately refusing to be harnessed to Sarria's little cart, squealing and biting whenever the attempt was made; and ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... dwindling trunk and wolfish jaw Revolving sullen things, But most the blind unequal law That rules ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... of a generous mind, To do no good, and shrink within itself, Sick of the jostling of the wolfish throng. Your cause is just; though devils fight for it, Heaven with its sworded angels doth enlist them: So works a ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... proposal to kill all their children, so that they should not be hampered in their flight; of their life in the woods, like wild beasts, and the ignoble ferocity of their ends. Scarcely less sombre reading is the account of how they were hunted down, and of the wolfish eagerness the borderers showed to massacre the women and children ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... alarmed. "Don't cast those wolfish glances at me, for I come to do you a great service, and not to vex you needlessly. I have told your unfortunate story to no one. What for? Any secret may be a treasure, which he who tells gives away. There are, however, occasions in which an EXCHANGE ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various

... to prolong life, which have sometimes been resorted to by famishing wretches. I had read how the pangs of hunger, and the still fiercer torments of thirst, had seemed to work a dire change even in kind and generous natures, making men wolfish, so that they slew and fed upon each other. Now, all that was most revolting and inhuman, in what I had heard or read of such things, rose vividly before me, and I shuddered at the growing probability that ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... rain-proof. Scores of graceful birch canoes, such as the northern tribes excel in making, were drawn up on the river bank; paddles and spears leaned against the lodges, smoke-blackened kettles and other rude cooking-utensils were scattered about the smouldering fires, and a throng of wolfish-looking dogs added their discordant baying ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... him one; but he needed food and a saddle almost as much, and moving forward a few paces gazed at the sleeping man. He saw the pack that had been seized to the saddle, and guessed that there were several days' provisions inside it, while a wolfish gleam came into his eyes as he straightened himself and stood very still listening. His garments hung in thorn-rent rags about him, weariness was in his very attitude, but his face had written on it the ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... think Cecil is a—you know—one of those boys," she euphemized. "Well, he isn't. He takes a perfectly normal, and even slightly wolfish, interest in the female of his species. And while Arnold Rivers may have been a good provider from a financial standpoint, he wasn't quite up to his wife's requirements in another important respect. ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... quality of ex-pompier and commandant of the 'Terrors of Morteyn'—my battalion"—here he made a sweeping gesture as though briefly reviewing an army corps instead of a dozen wolfish-eyed peasants—"I extend to our honoured and beloved Chatelaine de Nesville, and to our honoured guest, Monsieur Marche, the protection and safe-conduct of the ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... that the young man was a ravenous wolf, but his manners were not wolfish. Had Mrs. O'Hara been a princess, supreme in her own rights, young Neville could not have treated her or her daughter with more respect. At first Kate had wondered at him, but had said but little. She had listened to him, as he talked to her mother and the priest about the cliffs and the birds ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope

... feeling horribly frightened. She strained her ears in vain for a sound. The whole house seemed wrapped in a grave-like quiet. The smile had never left Mr. Schulz's face. But it was a cruel, wolfish grin without a ray of kindliness in it. The girl felt her heart turn cold within her every time her eyes fell ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... tracing his genealogy, it were ascertained that he was a remote descendant of the mastiff or some other breed, or that both these and other breeds came (as is suspected) from some wolf? If not, how is the argument for design in the structure of our particular dog affected by the supposition that his wolfish progenitor came from a post-tertiary wolf, perhaps less unlike an existing one than the dog in question is to some other of the numerous existing races of dogs, and that this post-tertiary came from an equally or more different tertiary wolf? And if the argument from structure ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... I confess; I couldn't think her capable of joking on such a subject, yet it seemed impossible that she should be speaking seriously. But she was. I knew it by the way she looked at Vard, who was sitting opposite, his wolfish profile thrown back, the shaggy locks tossed off his narrow high white ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... once, and was forthwith ushered up into Mr. Wilks's private sanctum. The sub-editor was a dry, grizzly-bearded man, with a prevailing wolfish greyness of demeanour about his whole person; and he shook Ernest's proffered hand solemnly, in the dreary fashion that is always begotten of the systematic transposition ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... Dannie, that I was never afore cotched in such a swirl an' noise o' waters. 'Twas wonderful—the thunder an' spume an' whiteness o' them big waves in the dawn! An' 'twas wonderful—the power o' them—the wolfish way they'd clutch an' worry an' drag! 'Twas a mean, hard thing t' keep a grip on that smoothed rock; but I got my fingers in a crack o' the reef, an' managed t' hold on, bein' stout an' able, an' sort of savage for life—in them old days. Afore long, ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... against the invalid's head. There was something rarely savage and yet beautifully soft in the dog's face, scarred as it was by the whips of earlier owners. The sick man's hand went up and caressed the wolfish head. "Good dog, good Akim!" he said softly in French. "Thou dost know when a storm is on the way; thou dost know, too, when there is a storm in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... toil for Holy Church, I was not thinking only of the labours you should assume about temporal things, but chiefly that you and the Holy Father ought to toil and do what you can to get rid of the wolfish shepherds who care for nothing but eating and fine palaces and big horses. Oh me, that which Christ won upon the wood of the Cross is spent with harlots! I beg that if you were to die for it, you tell the Holy Father to put an end to such iniquities. And when the time ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... was finished, the party resumed their station under the shadow of the tree, intending to watch for a while, and see how the wolfish intruders would act. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... than those he still felt in his left foot. He was afraid of showing disquiet by any dramatic change, or he would have carried her off a fortnight at least before his cure was over. He knew too well the signs of passion. That long, loping, wolfish fiddling fellow with the broad cheekbones and little side-whiskers (Good God!) and greenish eyes whose looks at Gyp he secretly marked down, roused his complete distrust. Perhaps his inbred English contempt for ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... were often fat; they never seemed to go out long walks in the hills or to write poetry. She laid her hands flat against his chest and pushed away from him. "No!" she whimpered. But he bent on her a face wolfish with a hunger that was nevertheless sweet-tempered, since it was beautifully written in the restraint which hung like a veil before his passion that he would argue only gently with her denial. And at the sight she knew his whisper, "Ellen, be kind, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... well-bred ease appeared sinister, her aristocratic repose a treacherous device, her venerable graciousness a mask of unbounded contempt for all human beings whatever. She was a terrible old woman with those straight, white wolfish eye-brows. How blind I had been! Those eyebrows alone ought to have been enough to give her away. Yet they were as beautifully smooth as her voice when she admitted: "That protection naturally is only partial. There is the danger of her own self, ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... its pointed ears, its muzzle and chops, its great teeth and hanging tongue. The orchestra grinds, wails, quivers; then suddenly bursts out into funereal shrieks, like a concert of owls; the hag is now eating, and her wolfish shadow is eating also, greedily moving its jaws and nibbling at another shadow easy to recognize—the arm of a ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... Hale had been studying that strange face. One side of it was calm, kindly, philosophic, benevolent; but, when the other was turned, a curious twitch of the muscles at the left side of the mouth showed the teeth and made a snarl there that was wolfish. ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... shrouds—O, in one snowy gale, The pink hands fluttered them out, and spread them on their knees. Who knew what gouts might drop, what filthy flakes of grease, Now that o'er every shoulder, through the coiling steam, Inhuman faces peered, with wolfish eyes a-gleam, And grey-faced vampire Lusts that whinneyed in each ear ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... fast asleep, with her head on the book, and her cheeks flushed almost to a vermilion hue. From that brief summer dream she was aroused by some sudden noise, and starting up, she saw the sheep bounding far away, while a large, gaunt, wolfish, grey dog snuffed at her ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... mercifully spare my mother to me, my loftiest and holiest ambition shall be to distance the wolfish cares and woes that have hunted her, ever since she became a widow. Any and all honest labor that can contribute to her comfort, will be ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... forget the most important members of the hunting party—the dogs. Some two dozen have been collected for the occasion, most of them belonging to Maoris; of no particular breed, but all large and heavy, strong-jawed and supple-limbed animals, wolfish-looking fierce creatures, but all more or less trained to the work before them. Good pig-dogs are not easily met with, and in the bush they are esteemed a prize. Our lot are a scratch pack, made up of any that can be induced ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... month. Then the winter comes back, and I have again to answer another summons. The same traps are put on the sledge, to which are harnessed the twelve finest dogs in the town,—my own team,—and, at the wildest pace with which this wolfish herd can rush along, Adam guides me to my destination. Perhaps it may be early in the winter, and the ice is in places thin. We very likely break through, and get wet, and are in danger of freezing. Perhaps we reach a crack which we cannot pass, and have to hold on, possibly in a hut ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... was a scene of wild disorder, of fighting Malemutes buried under a rush of angry huskies, while men shouted, and the yelling Frenchman leaped about and cut his caribou- gut in vicious slashes over the wolfish horde around ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood



Words linked to "Wolfish" :   wolf, gluttonous



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