Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Cur   Listen
noun
Cur  n.  
1.
A mongrel or inferior dog. "They... like to village curs, Bark when their fellows do."
2.
A worthless, snarling fellow; used in contempt. "What would you have, you curs, That like nor peace nor war?"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Cur" Quotes from Famous Books



... first quarter, and the clouds through which she appeared to struggle, were light and fleecy, but rather cold-looking, such, in short, as would seem to promise a sudden fall of snow. Frank had passed the two first cabins of the village, and was in the act of parrying the attacks of some yelping cur that assailed him, when he received a slap on the back, accompanied by a gho manhi Dhea gliud, a Franchas, co wul thu guilh a nish, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... he said, with earnestness, "I don't want to take the money. I begin to see how it is; I see you're right. To tell the truth, I was afraid I'd been a little hard on the boy. I knew that young cur of a Freeman was to blame for it, and I was sorry on the girl's account and all; but I was hasty, I suppose. I shouldn't have done anything, though, about taking him back; but now that you've made me ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... of home and young and of all. But note keenly that this is incidental. It is immensely important at times, but it is distinctly secondary. The great simple plan of God is this: let the light shine. The darkness flees like a whipped cur, tail tightly curled down and in, before the real ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... time, a cat crossed the street, and jumped over the gutters, carefully. A cur sniffed at every tree, and hunted for fragments from the kitchens, but I did not see a single human being, and I felt listless and disheartened. What could I do with myself? I was already thinking of the inevitable and interminable visit to the small cafe at the railway ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... have heard. He is making wigs for the actors. He is now our master, and does what he pleases with us. He is a good man himself, but his wife is Russian—and what a cur! She is robbing the people—simply awful! But here is the prison. Shall I drive up to the front? I think they don't admit ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... If she was out with Mr. and Mrs. Chester for a good time, it was dollars to doughnuts that a fourth member of the party was that chap Pratt. Jennie was going altogether too much with the fellow anyhow, and though he was an ill-mannered cur (this was Daniel's opinion), he had money, and seemed to be pretty popular with other people. He certainly was blamed popular with Jennie and the Chesters. Confound it all, the Chesters were not so many! (this also was ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump

... suffer through disease, no beating vein Conveyes infection dangerous to the heart, No part impostum'd to be cur'd by Art, This body holds; and yet a feller grief Than ever skilfull hand did give relief Dwells on my soul, and may be heal'd ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... habits, people regarded him as crazy and left him severely alone. He had never been known to molest anyone, but sought rather to avoid meeting human beings, so he was suffered to remain there in his lonely hut on the mountain with no one but a stray cur ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown

... that you insulted me, striking me on the face with a glove, because I offered certain civilities to a maid of honor to the Princess of Plassenburg. You wounded me in the arm. Your father, of whose death I have heard but now, cast me forth like a cur-dog from a chamber window. Between you ye have shamed me, and would shame me worse—for the sake of the murderess of mine ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... smile on his sanctified countenance, a pen behind his ear, and recommending his constrained customers in honeyed tones to be patient and orderly. Behind the substantial counter which was an impregnable fortification, was his popular son, Master Joseph; a short, ill-favoured cur, with a spirit of vulgar oppression and malicious mischief stamped on his visage. His black, greasy lank hair, his pug nose, his coarse red face, and his projecting tusks, contrasted with the mild and lengthened countenance ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... dispraised Hercules. As with Hercules, so with the physical activity he represents,—no one dispraises, if few practise it. Even the disagreement of doctors has brought out but little skepticism on this point. Cardan, it is true, in his treatise, "Plantae cur Animalibus diuturniores," maintained that trees lived longer than men because they never stirred from their places. Exercise, he held, increases transpiration; transpiration shortens life; to live long, then, we need only remain perfectly still. Lord ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... A mongrel cur might have kept up, much less a seasoned thoroughbred. Up and down hill ahead of him the car swayed and wallowed laboriously in an unused, gully-washed road. There was constant shade in which to stop and pant, there were frequent streams in which to lie for a moment, half submerged, and cool his ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... Smith, taking the opportunity of filling his glass while his comrade's back was turned; "we're a nat'ral cur'osity." ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Duchess," he said, in a whisper, as she bent over him. Then, with a spark of his old gayety in the eyes, "I should be a cur to grumble. Life has been very ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... parrot's language o'er, Bawd, hussy, drunkard, slattern, whore; On all the sex she vents her fury, Tries and condemns without a jury. At once the torrent of her words Alarmed cat, monkey, dogs, and birds: All join their forces to confound her; Puss spits, the monkey chatters round her; 30 The yelping cur her heels assaults; The magpie blabs out all her faults; Poll, in the uproar, from his cage, With this rebuke out-screamed her rage: 'A parrot is for talking prized, But prattling women are despised. She who attacks another's honour, Draws every living thing upon her. Think, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... gwine keep yo' cur'osity up long. You see, Sistah Griggs, you done 'lucidated one p'int to me dis night dat meks it plumb needful fu' ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... thought you had only to deal with some helpless creature you could bully. Stir your fat carcass, you ugly cur! I'm ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... Every dog has that same nature about him. I've seen it proven many times. We had an old dog named Mose, who was never known to chase anybody. He used to lie there asleep on our front porch by the hour. Then next door there was a little cur that somehow took to chasing after wheels and wagons. You've heard how dogs yap-yap whenever they do that, ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... great boy-flogger at Montaigu College. If for flogging poor little children, unoffending school-boys, pedagogues are damned, he, upon my word of honor, is now on Ixion's wheel, flogging the dock-tailed cur that turns it.' Pantagruel's education was now humane and gentle. Accordingly he soon took pleasure in the work which Ponocrates was at the pains of rendering interesting to him by the very nature and the variety of the subjects of it. . . . Is it not a very ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... way to Ancrum, scourging himself. If ever there was an ungrateful cur, it was he! Why could he find nothing nice to say to that girl in return for all her pluck? Of course she would get into trouble. Coming to see him at that time of night, too! ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... while contemplating the doctrines of the Academy and the Portico, even as they appear in the transparent splendour of Cicero's incomparable diction, we have been tempted to mutter with the surly centurion in Persius, "Cur quis non prandeat hoc est?" What is the highest good, whether pain be an evil, whether all things be fated, whether we can be certain of anything, whether we can be certain that we are certain of nothing, whether a wise man can be unhappy, whether all departures from right be equally ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... might call royster, no way of the world but just that; but get him off to Boston, or any place where there were shells to be bought, and he'd come home fairly drunk with 'em, his trunk busting out and all his money gone. Seems cur'ous, too, for such an old rip as Dym Scraper, to care for such things; but we're made sing'lar,—one one way, and 'nother one t'other. That's so, I reckon, in your part of the world ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards

... she gritted, in a swift surge of anger. "I am afraid to face this country alone. I admit my helplessness. But so help me Heaven, I'll make you pay for this dirty trick! You're not a man! You're a cur—a miserable, contemptible scoundrel!" ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... word still holds him," said Thorpe, evenly. "As I understand, he asked her to marry him and she consented. He was never released from his promise—did not even ask for it. He slunk away like a cur. In the sight of God he is bound to her by his own word still. He should go to her and either fulfil his promise or ask for release. The tardy fulfilment of his promise would be the only atonement ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... reached the next stage, the diggers were before us; and when our men began to unsaddle at a hut about fifty yards from where they were feeding their horses, one of them, the biggest blackguard to look at of the lot, and though the fiercest probably the greatest cur, shouted at us to put the saddles on again and 'get out of that.' He had warned us in the morning that they'd had enough of us, and, with a volley of oaths, advised us to be off. Fred, who was in ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... attempt to frighten us into again postponing the Day of Conquest! Know now, spineless weakling, that the time is ripe, and that the Fenachrone in their might are about to strike. But you, foul traducer of your emperor, shall die the death of the cur you are!" The hand within his tunic moved and a ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... and have known these things, since the form of man was separated from the dust. The knowledge and enforcement of them have nothing to do with religion: a good and wise man differs from a bad and idiotic one, simply as a good dog from a cur, and as any manner of dog from a wolf or a weasel. And if you are to believe in, or preach without half believing in, a spiritual world or law—only in the hope that whatever you do, or anybody else does, that is foolish or beastly, may be in them and by them mended ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... utterly overwhelmed and broken down, and had shown only the cringing spirit of a detected and whipped cur, Mr. Arnot's complacency would have been perfect. But as it was, the affair had gone forward in a jarring, uncomfortable manner, which annoyed and irritated him as would a defective, creaking piece of mechanism in one of his factories. ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... cleverness, so that through all his torture he would be obliged to admire and respect her skill—she had let her temper get the better of her, and had shown him a side of herself that, she was well aware, was most unrefined, so that he had been able to leave her, not as a humbled, beaten cur, as she had intended, but feeling what she knew ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... care. Then he stood up, and his eyes fixed themselves on a curious heap under the table. It was a tumbled pile of pale blue, dirty white, with a four-legged dash of yellow. And out of the heap he made the forms of two small sleeping children, each hugging in their arms an extremity of a yellow cur pup, also sound asleep, in the shaft of sunlight which flooded in through the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... road to the farm gate. A cur yelped at their feet as they approached the house, and an old man, coatless and slippered, opened the door, holding an oil lamp high above his head. "Down, Rover! What ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin

... now, you cur?" he cried, "Look at her then. You will never see another face as beautiful, not in the whole length and breadth of your cursed country. Look—while you have the chance! By heaven, whoever you are, chief of the devil himself, ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... breeding. Since the walks of life he trod He never wagged an unkind tale abroad, He never snubbed a nameless cur because Without a friend ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... of the Prophet," he muttered, "is it for this I have fed the girl and clothed her with linen from Beni Mazar all these years!" And he turned upon his heel, and kicked a yellow cur in the ribs; then he went to the nearest cafe, and making huge rolls of forcemeat with his fingers crammed them into his mouth, grunting like a Berkshire boar. Nor did his anger cease thereafter, for this meal of meat had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... is apt to leap to a conclusion, rendered easy by the attractiveness of the witness and the feeling that the defendant is a "cur anyway," and ought to be ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... Villabuena, an old captain of our's before the war. He resigned when Zumalacarregui took the field, and joined the Carlists, and it seems they've made him a colonel. A surly, ill-conditioned cur he always was, or we should not be standing here without a word of kindness or ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... damned drunken cur! You vile-mouthed liar! ... I may be an Isbel, but by God you cain't slander thet girl to my face! ... Then he moved so quick I couldn't see what he did. But I heerd his fist hit Bruce. It sounded like an ax ag'in' a beef. Bruce fell clear across the room. An' by Jinny ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey

... "You rotten-hearted Dutch cur," and Chard seized the captain by the beard with his left hand and clenched his right threateningly, "brace yourself up, or I'll ring your neck like a fowl's, and send you overboard after them. Think of your wife and family—and of ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke

... cook I informed him that Scotty was a damned liar; that it was I who had been with him; that he ran like a white-livered cur under fire from his cookhouse and didn't stop until he had reached the wagon lines; that he was there without being relieved and that he would shortly have another tale ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... dog is usually small or much more so than the common cur. they are party coloured; black white brown and brindle are the most usual colours. the head is long and nose pointed eyes small, ears erect and pointed like those of the wolf, hair short and smooth except on the tail where it is ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... there came running up a rough urchin about the age of Tom. He stared at Maggie, and she felt very lonely, and was quite sure she should begin to cry before long. But the springing tears were checked when two rough men came up, while a black cur ran barking up to Maggie, and threw her into a ...
— Tom and Maggie Tulliver • Anonymous

... they compare favorably with the whites; they are easily handled, true and obedient; there is less viciousness among them; they are more patient; they have great constancy. The character of the white, as you know, runs to extremes; one has bull-dog courage, another is a pitiful cur; one is excessively vicious, another pure and noble. The phases of the character of the white touches the stars and descends to the lowest depths. The blacks character occupies the inner circle. Their status is mediocrity, and this mediocrity ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... undistinguishable in the hazy atmosphere; with the village church looming brown and dingy through the uncertain light; with every winding path and cottage door, every gable end and gray old chimney, every village child and straggling cur seeming strange and weird of aspect in the semi-darkness, Phoebe Marks and her Cousin Luke made their way through the churchyard of Audley, and presented themselves before a shivering curate, whose surplice hung in damp folds, soddened by the morning mist, and whose temper was ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... aside his upper garment; and to the old man's answer and anxious exclamation: "How badly you look, Philip!" he answered crossly: "Like a man who deserves a kick rather than a welcome; a booby who has submitted to have his nose pulled; a cur who has licked the hand of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... brother," Wrayson answered, "if possible, a more contemptible little cur than the man himself was. His only interest is to discover the source of his brother's income. He wants money! Nothing but money. The other is a much more dangerous person. His name is Heneage, and he is an acquaintance of my own, a barrister, and a ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... huic foederi Moabitico ad amussim respondent. Appellat suum foedus Jeremias 'foedus novum; ab eo, quod cum majoribus populi Israelitici gypto exeuntibus pepigerat DEUS, omnino diversum.' Idem etiam de Moabitico foedere dicit Moses. Causam reddit Jeremias cur novum DEUS pactum, Sinaiticum aboliturus, molitus fuerit; nempe, quod Israelit, prpotentiore gratia destituti, Sinaiticum illud irritum fecissent, prceptis ejusdem non obtemperando, (ver. 32.) Eandem causam et Moses manifesto designat; 'Nondum,' inquit, 'dederat vobis JEHOVA mentem ad cognoscendum, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... my darling wife! I should be a cur, and worse than a cur—a thankless wretch—to wish to restrain you in anything!" he answered, sealing his agreement ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... worthy Knight, being then but a stripling, had occasion to inquire which was the way to St. Anne's Lane, upon which the person whom he spoke to, instead of answering his question, called him a young Popish Cur, and asked him who had made Anne a saint! The boy, being in some confusion, inquired of the next he met, which was the way to Anne's Lane; but was called a prickeared cur for his pains, and instead of being shown the way, was ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... sinister face. It was Rama Ragobah! For fully a minute we stood silently face to face, each expecting the assault of the other. It was Ragobah who spoke first. "She is mine, body and soul; and the English cur may find a mate in his own kennel!" He bent toward me and hissed these words in my very face. His hot breath seemed to poison me. It made me beside myself. I knew he meant to take advantage of his physical superiority ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy

... tan-smelling bow-legs!" the enraged Populus retorted at a shout. "Who is this Mule, that he should represent the majesty of the bailiwick of Grelot? A cur whose very name is enough to relegate him to limbo; whose deeds are ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... as he would, he could not disguise his inward contempt for this petty jack-in-office,—and his keen glance was, to the perverse nature of the ill-conditioned boor he addressed, like the lash of a whip on the back of a snarling cur. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... boxes, long and flat, square and oblong, each bearing weird and cryptic pencillings on one end; cryptic, that is, to any one except Mrs. Brewster and you who have owned an attic. Thus "H's Fshg Tckl" jabberwocked one long, slim box. Another stunned you with "Cur Ted Slpg Pch." A cabalistic third hid its contents under "Sip Cov Pinky Rm." To say nothing of such curt yet intriguing fragments as "Blk Nt Drs" and "Sun Par Val." Once you had the code key they translated themselves simply enough into such homely items as ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... omnipresent—is the Disagreeable Girl. She is a disappointment to her father, a source of humiliation to her mother, a pest to her brothers and sisters, and when she finally marries, she slowly saps the inspiration of her husband and very often converts a proud and ambitious man into a weak and cowardly cur. ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... causa, cur attenuatae sint legiones,' says Vegetius. 'Magnus in illis labor est militandi, graviora arma, sera munera, severior disciplila. Quod vitantes plerique, in auxiliis festinant militiae sacramenta percipere, ubi et minor sudor, et maturiora ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... followed, would lead him past Stillyside. Slowly and without special aim he continued to walk, ruminating and still drawn onwards, lured by the time and scene, until the sound alike of mastiff and of cur had ceased, the grasshopper refused to pipe upon the dusty road, and the too distant bullfrog was no longer heard gurgling to its mates, but all was silent, lying as in a trance, both heaven and earth. And then he paused, and lapsing into meditation, stood unconscious of surrounding ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... have been, in the question of brute courage Dupont had yet to prove lacking. His every instinct was an Apache's: left to himself he would strike always from behind, and run like a cur to cover. But cornered, or exasperated by opposition to his vast powers—something which he seemed quite unable to understand—he could fight like a maniac. He was hardly better now, when he found himself thrown off and ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... dismissed this subject before he remarked: "Dum cur'ous that towline breaking. I overhauled every foot on't. I'd a bet my bottom fo'pence on its drawin' ten ton. Haul in the slack end 'n' let's hev ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... temptat insanos acuens furore dentes, 80 cur te, summe Deus, precemur unum. Vexamur, premimur, malis rotamur; oderunt, lacerant, trahunt, lacessunt, ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

... on her way from Cardiff to Rangoon, which we fell in with early on the voyage, the captain came on board the Hampshire to lunch, and afterwards several of our passengers returned the visit. One of them brought back a small cur, which made the fourth dog on board—rather too many, as they were always in the way. Their number was soon reduced 50 per cent. One day what was known as the "sailor's dog" mysteriously disappeared. Some thought it had been thrown overboard, but it probably fell over accidentally, ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton

... he had misjudged Charnock in one respect, but saw that he had not. The fellow was a cur and would not have married Sadie if he had known about Helen's money. But this did ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... goes) she makes a lovely corpse. Something quite childish and eternal in us, something which is shocked with the mere simplicity of death, quivers when we read of those repeated blows or see Sikes cursing the tell-tale cur who will follow his bloody foot-prints. And this strange, sublime, vulgar melodrama, which is melodrama and yet is painfully real, reaches its hideous height in that fine scene of the death of Sikes, the besieged house, the boy screaming within, the crowd screaming without, the murderer ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... unfurnished. He could raise scruples dark and nice, And after solve 'em in a trice; As if Divinity had catch'd 165 The itch, on purpose to be scratch'd; Or, like a mountebank, did wound And stab herself with doubts profound, Only to show with how small pain The sores of Faith are cur'd again; 170 Although by woeful proof we find, They always leave a scar behind. He knew the seat of Paradise, Could tell in what degree it lies; And, as he was dispos'd, could prove it, 175 Below the moon, or else above ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... pilot thee to the place yonder, if my fealty to the prior—that is—if—I mean—though I was never a groat the richer for his bounty; yet he may not like strangers to pry into his garners and store-houses, especially in these evil times, when every cur begins to yelp at the heels of our bountiful mother; and every beast to bray out its reproaches at her great ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... omnes Te deos oro, Robinson cur properes amando Perdere? cur apricum Oderit campum, patiens ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... the wild and lurid nationalists of every tribe disport themselves in frenzied movements of hate and antagonism. An irate old colonel (very gouty) said to me the other day: "A man who forgets his duties to his own country and settles in another is a damnable cur. So much for these dirty foreigners who ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... there is no object in the world, except your children or your own self; in which the meum is so powerful, and the tuum so weak. You caress your own dog, and kick a strange one; you are pleased with the clamorous barking of your own cur, and you curse the same noise from another. The feeling is as powerful, almost, as that of a mother, who thinks her own ugly cub a cherub compared to others, and its squallings the music of the spheres. It is because there is no being that administers so ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... waiting for his master, and his anxiety is disinterested. The biped cur was waiting for the first streak of dawn to slip away to some more distant and safe hiding-place and sally-port than the Dun Cow, kept by a woman who was devoted to Hope, to Walter, and to Mary, and had all her wits ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... have gone back to the city and, in fact, his father was writing for him. But he couldn't leave Beckwiths', apparently. At any rate he stayed on and met Nelly every day and cursed himself for a cad and a cur and a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... an authentic instance of the inconsolable grief displayed by a small cur-dog at the death of his master:—A poor tailor in the parish of St. Olave, having died, was attended to the grave by his dog, who had expressed every token of sorrow from the instant of his master's death, and seemed unwilling to quit the corpse even for a moment. After ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... intellect expended its last flickering powers in undignified gibes at the expense of Pitt and his regicide peace. Fate denied to him the privilege of seeing Malmesbury again expelled from France and whipped back "like a cur to his kennel." The great Irishman passed away, amidst inconceivable gloom, in his 68th year, at Beaconsfield (8th July 1797). In the view of Windham and other extreme Royalists, Burke was wholly right, and Pitt's weakness was the cause of all ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... hound took your money. Your dog barked and awakened the boy and he loaded the gun and followed. The fellow had a good start and he didn't get him until near daybreak. It's been a stiff pull for the youngster and he seems to feel it was his fault that this cowardly cur you sheltered learned where you kept your money. If that is true, I hope you won't be ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... and was about giving further elaboration to my favorite idea, when the door burst open. Master Billy came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a bloody nose, the traces of a few tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of cur dogs in ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... the whole business was that I left Hallville soon after this and went to San Antonio to take day report, and one day I picked up a paper, and read an account of how Bill Bradley had been assassinated by a cowardly cur who had a grudge against him. He was stabbed in the back, and thus ended the career of Bill Bradley, ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady

... newsboy's paper, thrust to him, offered him the glaring lie in great black letters for a penny. He had torn the thing across, flinging it away angrily. There would be a libel suit to-morrow and such an apology as this editorial cur had never dreamed he had it in him to write. He heard men talk of it in the subway and laugh, and saw them turn wondering eyes to meet his glare. He made short his trip home, anxious to enlist under his father's ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... making money at this business when, in an evil moment, I was induced to merge it in the Cur-Spattering—a somewhat analogous, but, by no means, so respectable a profession. My location, to be sure, was an excellent one, being central, and I had capital blacking and brushes. My little dog, too, was quite fat and up to all varieties ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... feet. "And you have known this three months and never told us! Is that any way to treat your friends? Do you suppose we want to lie by and see you licked off this dam like a yellow cur? It's no use for you to ask this to be kept quiet, Boss. I won't ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... but some farmer or other found his flock reduced in this way, until the whole neighbourhood was roused to excited indignation against the whole dog tribe. Suspicion fell in turn upon almost every poor cur of the neighbourhood, and many a poor canine innocent was done to death, some by drowning, others by poison, and more by shooting; until it seemed as if all the sheep and dogs of the countryside would be ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... to pass a knot of boys just come out of school. At once one of the urchins took up a stone and threw it at him, the others clapped their hands, and hooted after him, "Hit him! Knock him over! Mad dog!" Away ran the unhappy cur, and all the boys yelling after him, throwing dirt, and striking at him with sticks. What next? Everyone in the street ran to the door, and saw the brute tearing down the way, with his tail between his legs. ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... quoting another and a bigger Jock than himself. "But it's a pity. That fellow is not only a puppy, he is a cur. I never saw anybody who needed a thrashing more." And he went and coiled himself in a hammock, ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards

... short-haired, sharp-eared, gaunt, and sinewy, with long legs and body. In height and length he ranges from a fair-sized fox terrier to a collie. I fail to see anything in him resembling the Australian dingo or the "yellow cur" of the States. The Ibilao have the same dog in two colors, the black and the "brindle" — the brown and black striped. In fact, a dog of the same general characteristics occurs throughout northern Luzon. No matter what may ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... it. There are in the Quiver of the God a great many different Darts; some that wound for a Day, and others for a Year; they are all fine, painted, glittering Darts, and shew as well as those made of the noblest Metal; but the Wounds they make reach the Desire only, and are cur'd by possessing, while the short-liv'd Passion betrays the Cheat. But 'tis that refin'd and illustrious Passion of the Soul, whose Aim is Virtue, and whose end is Honour, that has the Power of changing Nature, and is capable ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... brush like a dog shaking a groundhog, Brackett told me that he never felt so surprised and hurt in his life. He hadn't cal'lated on that bear coming out for a good two minutes more; but mebbe the bear had stronger objections to smoking than Brackett knew. If it hadn't been for Brackett's little cur dog, that he supposed wasn't fit for nothing but barking at chipmunks, I reckon the bear would have chawed and thumped the life out of him. The cur seemed to tumble to the situation right away, and ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... ignaris etiam servilium literarum libri non studiorum instrumenta sed coenationum ornamenta sunt. Paretur itaque librorum quantum satis sit, nihil in adparatum. "Honestius" inquis "hoc impensis quas in Corinthia pictasque tabulas effuderim." Vitiosum est ubique quod nimium est. Quid habes cur ignoscas homini armaria citro atque ebore captanti, corpora conquirenti aut ignotorum auctorum aut improbatorum et inter tot milia librorum oscitanti, cui voluminum suorum frontes maxime placent titulique? Apud desidiosissimos ergo videbis quicquid orationum historiarumque est, tecto tenus ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... inch, not a stone;" "war to the knife;" "one grand effort," etc. But the very best talkers were speedily discouraged by the shrugging of shoulders and ugly glances of the soldiers, that were like those of a snarling cur. ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... though it is probably, an error of the transcribers. The real name Cyrus could not be unknown to Plutarch. In the text of Appianus (Mithridatic War, c. 103) the name is erroneously written Cyrtus; in Dion Cassius, it is Cyrnus. The Cyrus, now the Cur, flows from the higher regions of the Caucasus through Iberia and Albania, and is joined by the Araxes, Aras, above the point where the united stream enters the Caspian on the west coast. The ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... "My cur-like son," he replied, "cannot presume to such bountiful praise and golden commendation; but if, by the virtue of your Highness' excess of happiness, he does indeed realise your words, he will be a source of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... of the room feeling like a whipped cur. "Why, she is a perfect savage!" I thought. "But then what else can ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... not touch him, Bryan! [To the Presbyterians.] Whichever cur of you will carry this Escapes his fellow's fate. None ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... him to do such a foolish action. It was a hair-brained business altogether, sir; and I am glad you had the wisdom, Fred, to keep out of it. The idea of two lives being risked to save that of a wretched cur is too absurd; if you had offered the girl who owned it five shillings to buy another it would have ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... he such a lumpish, leaden, Aching thing, in place of a heart? He is sad sometimes, and would weep, if he could, No doubt, remembering things that were,— A virtuous kennel, with plenty of food, And himself a sober, respectable cur. ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... about skipping out, Paul?" Bobolink exclaimed. "Oh! I hope now, you won't do anything like that. I'd feel dreadfully mean to sneak away. Always did hate to see a cur dog do that, with his tail between ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... ensued—a pistol was discharged that lit up rock and bush for a period, and showed two figures grappling together—all was then darker than ever. The contest continued—the combatants clenched each other, and panted and groaned, and rolled among the rocks. There was snarling and growling as of a cur, mingled with curses in which Wolfert fancied he could recognize the voice of the buccaneer. He would fain have fled, but he was on the brink of a precipice and ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... kings; and, as each of them left his throne to his descendants, Sparta had two kings, instead of one, from this time on. One member of the royal family, although he never bore the name of king, is the most noted man in Spartan history. This is Ly-cur'gus, the son of one ruler, the brother of another, and the guardian of an ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... participation. What is it when the detection of the secret involves open shame and penal servitude? Can a man of genuine courage be a thief? Is not courage after all at the very bottom of all manly honour, of all sound honesty, all true self-respect? How shall a thief be other than a lurking cur, whose whole soul, such as it is, is bent to a mean suspicion that he is suspected, a continuous terror-stricken watchfulness, a sleeping and waking dread of an awful hand-clap on the shoulder? There are constitutional differences in thieves, ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray

... that extraordinary letter, I should have supposed you had been actuated by a mad infatuation for the cur, Levison; its tenor gave the matter a different aspect. To what did you allude when you asserted that your husband had driven ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... "Copernicus. Cur ergo hesitamus adhuc, mobilitatem illi formae suae a natura congruentem concedere, magisquam quod totus labatur mundus, cujus finis ignoratur, scirique nequit, neque fateamur ipsius cotidianae revolutionis ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... the office of Le Combat in order to seize Pyat and consign him to durance, but he was an adept in the art of escaping arrest, and contrived to get away by a back door. At the Hotel-de-Ville Rochefort, on being interviewed, described Pyat as a cur, and declared that there was no truth whatever in his story. Public confidence completely revived on the following morning, when the official journal formally declared that Metz had not capitulated; and, in the evening, Paris became quite jubilant at ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... You needn't look at me. I've tried my luck before now, and it was damned bad luck. So here I am, a musty old curmudgeon; and there's Ayre, a snarling old cur!" ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope

... sexu, rarum non esse feram, id quod omnium votis dignissimum est. Nam cum sapientia tantum generis humani ornamentum sit, ut ad omnes et singulos (quoad quidem per sortem cujusque liceat) extendi jure debeat, non vidi, cur virgini, in qua excolendi sese ornandique sedulitatem admittimus, non conveniat mundus hic omnium longe pulcherrimus."—ANNAE MARIAE ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... "You—cur!" she cried, with the fury of one beating barehanded at a barred door. "You had no right to do such a thing ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... he answered nothing. "Then, as I said, you are a coward and a cur, who insults peaceable men and weak women. If I know Viking right, it has no room for you." Then he picked up his coat, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... how far we have come, after all, and from that gathers courage for the rest of the way. Thirty-two years have passed since I slept in a police station lodging house, a lonely lad, and was robbed, beaten, and thrown out for protesting; and when the vagrant cur that had joined its homelessness to mine, and had sat all night at the door waiting for me to come out,—it had been clubbed away the night before,—snarled and showed its teeth at the doorman, raging ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... met Abruptly, the horns of a cow That mooed, while the cur, At her heels, turned from her, And aimed ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould

... pedigreed yellow pup I grew up to be an anonymous yellow cur looking like a cross between an Angora cat and a box of lemons. But my mistress never tumbled. She thought that the two primeval pups that Noah chased into the ark were but a collateral branch of my ancestors. It took two policemen to keep her from entering me at the Madison Square ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... those three coming out down the steps of stone and into the street; to wit the dwarf, the maiden, and the stately lady: but when he stood still to abide their coming, and looked toward them, lo! there was nothing before him save the goodly house of Bartholomew Golden, and three children and a cur dog playing about the steps thereof, and about him were four or five passers-by going about their business. Then was he all confused in his mind, and knew not what to make of it, whether those whom he had seemed to see pass aboard ship were but images of a ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris

... 'n' on,—this party whose name I ain't a-mentionin'. He wuz in pol'tics too. Likewise run a quarry an' s'm'other things t' num'rous t' mention. 'Twas in the quarry I worked, mostly erbout 'lection time. Cur'ous, ain't it, whut good pay a feller'll git fer light work erbout 'lection time? Wall, this year I ain't hed proper treatment. This party 'lows money is tight, an' he's filled his quarry up with dagoes, damned ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... Man of Kamschatka, Who possessed a remarkably fat Cur; His gait and his waddle were held as a model To all the fat dogs ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... young jail-bird will stand in my way. Ah, my fine fellow, it's no such secret where your grandfather spent twenty-one years of his life; and you'll have a sup of the same broth some day. You don't keep a dog like that yelping cur for nothing; and I'll tell the gamekeeper to have his ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton

... a cur'ous person, and I'd like to hear something more about you. But it's high time we should wet our whistles, and it's but dry talking without something to wash a clear way for the slack. So, boys, be up, and fish up the jemmi-john—I ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... gotter live some. Dar, it done struck five bells—dat mean ten-thirty, unerstan'—an' you's gotter git half-a-dozen ob yo' bob-tailed nags ready fo' de ridin' lessons yo' tells me yo' gives de yo'ng ladies at six bells,—dat's eleben o'clock,—Sattidy mawnin's. I's pintedly cur'us fer ter see dem lessons, I is. Lak 'nough befo' de mawnin's ober yo'll take a lesson yo'-self," and Jess ended his tirade by throwing an arm across each silky neck and saying to ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... hopes, joys, and sorrows, if he had any, behind a vacant grin, as Mitchell hid his behind a quizzical one. He never resented alleged satire—perhaps he couldn't see it—and therefore he got the name of being a cur. As a rule, he was careful with his money, and was called mean—not, however, by the Oracle, whose philosophy was simple, and whose sympathy could not realise a limit; nor yet by ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson

... ever prided himself on his truth-fronting intellect, and had freely uttered his scorn of the credulous mob! He who was his own criterion of moral right and wrong! No wonder he felt like a whipped cur. It was the ancestral vice in his blood, brought out by over-tempting circumstance. The long line of base-born predecessors, the grovelling hinds and mechanics of his genealogy, were responsible for this. Oh for a name ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... David, all his storms blown o're, Wafted by Prodigies to Jordans shore, (So swift a Revolution, yet so calm) Had cur'd an Ages wounds with one days Balm; Here the returning Absolon his vows With Israel joyns, and at their Altars bows. Perhaps surpriz'd at such strange blessings showr'd, Such wonders shewn both t'Israels Faith, and Lord, His Restoration-Miracle he thought Could ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... discover not a way to sadness, Nearer than I have in me, our two sorrows Work like two eager Hawks, who shall get highest; How shall I lessen thine? for mine I fear Is easier known than cur'd. ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... tua pervideas oculis mala lippus inunctis, Cur in amicorum vitiis tam cernis acutum, Quam aut aquila, aut serpens ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various

... aliis tu unquam feceris; an hoc tibi nunc fieri dignum sit? severus aliis, indulgens tibi, cur. ab uxore exigis ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... old he-goat, the one-eyed, what shall be My saying of a knave, his fashion and degree? I rede thee vaunt thee not of praise from us, for lo! Even as a docktailed cur thou art esteemed of me. By Allah, without fail, to-morrow thou shalt see Me with ox-leather dress and ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... to the woman who was ten thousand times too good to be his wife-torturing her with his cruelties, degrading her with his infidelities, subjecting her to the domination of his paramour, and finally striking her in the face like a coward and a cur. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... lives most the life of Jesus in this age and declares best the power of Christian Science, will drink of his Master's cup. Resistance to 317:9 Truth will haunt his steps, and he will in- cur the hatred of sinners, till "wisdom is justified of her children." These blessed benedictions rest upon 317:12 Jesus' followers: "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you;" "Lo, I am with you alway," - that is, not only in all time, but in all ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... "Cur animam in ista luce detineam amplius, Morerque, nihil est. Cuncta jam amisi bona, Mentem, arma, famem, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... number of dogs which had strayed in through the open doorway. When an attendant (in shirt-sleeves) proceeded to walk round and sprinkle the rough boards with resin, the dancers fairly yelled with delight, for a hungry cur closely followed him, greedily devouring the stuff as it fell! But although in those days the Yukon gold-digger was as tough a customer as ever rocked a cradle in the wildest days of Colorado, there was a rough and friendly bonhomie amongst the inhabitants of ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... 278, and Cimber et Danjou, Archives cur., vi. 167. As by this time both Papists and Huguenots knew Catharine de' Medici to be a woman utterly devoid of moral principle, it may fairly be considered an open question whether there was any one in France more deceived than she was in supposing ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... groups before the church dissolved. Some returned to their houses, after picking up all the news that was going; others, before departing, were for spending an hour in one of the two gathering places of the village; the cur's house or the general store. Those who came from the back concessions, stretching along the very border of the forest, one by one untied their horses from the row and brought their sleighs to the foot of the steps for their ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon

... drowning kitten, whenever he can. Notwithstanding all this, his music gains ground, for it walks with him from end to end of the street. He is your only performer that requires not many entreaties for a song; for he will chant, without asking, to a street cur, or a parish post. His only backwardness is to a stave after dinner, seeing that he never dines; for he sings for bread, and though corn has ears, sings very commonly in vain. As for his country, he is an Englishman, that by his birthright may sing whether he can or not. To conclude, he is reckoned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various

... don't mean to forsake it; that will be but a kind of mongrel cur's trick. Well, are you for ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... disgrace ours and theirs? When you kick a mongrel cur it lies down on its back and holds up its paws, whining. But the thoroughbred acts quite otherwise; you may kill it, but you cannot conquer it. We would not lie supine under the assault of the blundering bully. Disgrace cannot be inflicted from without,—it can only come to a man ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... founded as it were Upon the Decalogue, He classes with the minister, The rural pedagogue, And as a sort of angel-cur Regards his ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... his temper). Cur! [Exit, to enlist, into cupboard. Before he has time to realise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various

... found a waving foot with his right hand; wrenched it mightily. There was a sharp snap and the foot dangled limp in his fingers. He had broken the ankle. With a howl of pain his assailant let go and dropped to the floor to crawl away like a whipped cur. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... Pope, he said, is the Church of Rome; the Romish Church is the Universal Christian Church; whoever disputes the right of the Romish Church to act entirely as she may, is a heretic. In this way he treated as contemptuously as he could the obscure German, whose theses, that 'bite like a cur,' as he expressed it, he only wished to dismiss with ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... attributed, to the Natural Life, and, which God bestows upon such his Servants as he pleases. But the condition of those who have attain'd to the UNION, to whom God has given that which I told you could not be properly express'd by the word POWER, is that second State of the Blind-man cur'd. Take notice by the way, that our Similitude is not exactly applicable in every case; for there is very seldom any one found that is born with his Eyes open, that can attain to these things without any ...
— The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan • Ibn Tufail

... slowly, and there was little detail in it. The Reign of Terror had come and gone, its high priests swallowed in the fury which they had created. Danton had died like a man, Robespierre like a cur; and then the end—cannon clearing the mob from the streets of Paris. A new era had dawned for France, but the future was yet on the knees of the gods. Had Raymond Latour escaped the final catastrophe? Were Sabatier, ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner

... fell a-pondering over all the comfort and help that I might have been and that I might have had, if I had been but a little of a trembling cur to creep and crawl before abbot and bishop and baron and bailiff, came the thought over me of the evil of the world wherewith I, John Ball, the rascal hedge-priest, had fought and striven in the Fellowship of the saints in heaven and poor men ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... "but you don't. And whether you strike it or I win it, it's about the same. It's all luck. But it's mighty cur'o's about Chrismiss,—ain't it? Why do ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... He has cur'd since his coming thither, in less than a Fortnight, Four Scaramouches, a Mountebank Doctor, Two Turkish Bassas, Three ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... moral courage and returned to the ranch. When a man looses his last grip on his self-respect he sinks with cruel rapidity. "Poker" John told himself that he was betraying his niece's affection, and with this assurance he told himself that he was the lowest-down cur in the country. The natural consequence to a man of his habit and propensity was—drink. The one time in his life when he should have refrained from indulgence he drank; and with each drink he made the fatal promise to himself that it ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... grandes. The French translation has gros carlins, "large pug-dogs." Bernaldez calls these dogs, gozcos pequenos, "small curs." "Cur" is the common meaning for gozque or gosque. See Oviedo, lib. XII., cap. V., for a description of these native dogs which ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... resolve itself presently into straight rows of lamps. Few people were in the streets at that hour, and when I reached the dim building of the Old Market, I found it cold and deserted, except for a stray cur or two that snarled at Samuel from a heap of trodden straw under a covered wagon. Despite the fact that I was for all immediate purposes as homeless as the snarling curs, I was not without the quickened pulses which attend any situation that a boy may turn to an adventure. A ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... 'The lying cur! Serve him right for cheating us. He has plenty of guards. Why can't the fool take care ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... clock, the pendulum swung back and forth, the ticking went on, and its white old-fashioned face, looked out in calm serenity; but the dog was gone. It was all natural as life. The lighting of the gas had frightened the cur back to his yard, and as the forty-fourth tick ceased, his bow wow! was heard again, and it lasted while the pendulum swung back and forth just fifteen times. I took a cooling draft, and counted in feverish agony forty-four, and fifteen, till the daylight ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... wife can seldom be seen. When, on Sunday, the pair went to church through the main street of Kisfalu, an insignificant village in the Pesth county, every one looked after them, though every child, nay, every cur in the hamlet, knew them and, during the five years since their marriage, might have become accustomed to the spectacle. But it seemed as though it produced an ever new and surprising effect upon the by no means sensitive inhabitants of Kisfalu, who imposed no constraint ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... sheltering thorn they sit, Divide the simple meal, and drain the cask: The swinging cradle lulls the whimpering babe Meantime; while growling round, if at the tread Of hasty passenger alarm'd, as of their store Protective, stalks the cur with bristling back, To guard the scanty ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... with passion. "If? If? Head of God, man! do you dare talk to me in 'ifs'? Philip de Commines, when you were little in your own eyes, when you were the humble fetcher and carrier to that Bully of Burgundy whom I crushed, when you were the very hound and cur of his pleasure, fawning on him for the scraps of life, I took you up, I!—I! Now you are Lord of Argenton, now you are Seneschal of Poitou, now you are Prince of Talmont, and I have made you all these, I!—I! and you answer me with an 'if'! But the hand which raised you up can drag ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond

... and the question arose, what mode of composition was likely to be the most lucrative? Were he to continue to indite panegyrical verses, like those to Clarendon, he stood a chance of having a few guineas tossed to him now and then by a patron, like a crust to an unfortunate cur. Were he to translate, or write prefaces for the booksellers, he might pay his bill for salt, if diligent enough. For Satires as yet there was little demand. The follies of the more fanatical of the Puritans were too recent, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... this time, you cur of a Mick," were, expurgated of unprintable blasphemy, the exact words of the semi-savage lord of the frontier, "but by the God that made us both I'll get you before another moon, dash dash you, and when I do I'll cut out your blackguard heart and ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King

... observe, also, a little, insignificant looking dog, who is apparently asleep, and, for aught I know, dreaming about the exploits of the day. You will no doubt smile, and wonder what exploits such a cur is able to perform; but I assure you that if he is at all like some of the gipsy dogs I have heard of, he has been taught a good many very shrewd tricks. The dogs of the gipsies are sometimes trained ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... the other lower his eyes, or alter the expression of his countenance; "Well, what do you stare at? Oh! I forgot—you may well stare. It is the first time that you have seen an Asturian caballero beaten at any thing by a cur of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... more objectionable trick was his habit not only of asking preposterous or indiscreet questions, but of setting people by the ears out of sheer curiosity. The appearance of so queer a satellite excited astonishment among Johnson's friends. "Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?" asked some one. "He is not a cur," replied Goldsmith; "he is only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking." The bur stuck till the end of Johnson's life. Boswell visited London whenever he could, and soon began ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen



Words linked to "Cur" :   pariah dog, mongrel, caitiff, dog, domestic dog, pye-dog, coward, feist, fice, Canis familiaris



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com