"Gaffer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there, and Tom Ettles wished to take another gliff at it before he went on. But when he keeked into the pit, what should he see but a man attoppa a horse that could not get up or on: and says he, 'I think ye be at a dead-lift there, gaffer.' And wi' the word, up looks the man, and who sud it be but farmer Dykes himsel; and Tom Ettles saw him plain eneugh, and kenned the horse too for Black Captain, the farmer's aad beast, that broke his leg and was shot two years and more before the farmer died. 'Ay,' ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... "My gaffer will go farther with his 'sabots' than yours with their cast-iron contrivances that turn out mass books all day long," he would boast. "He is trying to find out a secret that will lick all the printing offices in ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... following are irregular words, in which the distinction of sex is chiefly made by the termination: amoroso, amorosa: archduke, archduchess; chamberlain, chambermaid; duke, duchess; gaffer, gammer; goodman, goody; hero, heroine; landgrave, landgravine; margrave, margravine; marquis, marchioness; palsgrave, palsgravine; sakeret, sakerhawk; sewer, sewster; sultan, sultana; tzar, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... triumph enough. I held back the triumph, however, wary of overconfidence. The gaffer laughed the high cackle of age, and Kyral broke in with a sharp, angry monosyllable by which I knew that my remark had indeed been repeated, and had lost nothing in the telling. But only the line of his jaw betrayed the anger as ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Let no one forget those lines with which Christy Mahon cries defiance to the Mayo folk who have known his greatness and his fall: "Ten thousand blessings upon all that's here, for you've turned me a likely gaffer in the end of all, the way I'll go romancing through a romping lifetime from this hour to the dawning of the judgment day." I do not deny that these words are in a sense wrung from the Playboy, but what I do hold is that they prove how vital was the genius of the man who wrote ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... snuffling by, With her three frowsy blowsy brats o' babes, The scum o' the kennel, cream o' the filth-heap—Faugh! Aie, aie, aie, aie! ot?t?t?t?toi, ('Stead which we blurt out Hoighty toighty now) - And the baker and candlestickmaker, and Jack and Gill, Blear'd Goody this and queasy Gaffer that. Ask the schoolmaster. Take ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... spectators standing behind them to advise or take a hand as occasion offered. Chook looked at the kip, a flat piece of wood, the size of a butter-pat, and the two pennies, blackened on the tail and polished on the face. A gaffer stepped into the ring and picked ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Giaffar (which is painfully like "Gaffer," i.e. good father) means either a rushing river ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... outside a village inn in that county of curious dialects, Loamshire. The inn is easily indicated by a round table bearing two mugs of liquid, while a fallen log emphasizes the rural nature of the scene. Gaffer Jarge and Gaffer Willyum are seated at the table, surrounded by a fringe of whisker, Jarge being slightly more of ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... away, dear Rose? On some errand of charity, as is thy wont? ROSE. A few gifts, dear aunt, for deserving villagers. Lo, here is some peppermint rock for old gaffer Gadderby, a set of false teeth for pretty little Ruth Rowbottom, and a pound of snuff for the poor orphan girl on the hill. HAN. Ah, Rose, pity that so much goodness should not help to make some gallant youth happy for life! Rose, why dost thou harden ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... of no mortal kind; Some God, my Noodle, stept into the place Of Gaffer Thumb, and more than [1]half begot ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... what the diggins the squire did it for, Gaffer Solomons?" asked one many-childed matron, with a baby in arms, an urchin of three years old clinging fast to her petticoat, and her hand maternally holding back a more adventurous hero of six, who had a great desire to thrust his head into one of the grisly apertures. ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wife, took care that the rogue did not carry away Perronel with him, as he was like to have done. To end my story, here am I, getting showers of gold coins one day and nought but kicks and gibes the next, while my good woman keeps house nigh here on the banks of the Thames with Gaffer Martin. Her Flemish thrift has set her to the washing and clear-starching of the lawyers' ruffs, whereby she makes enough to supply the defects of my scanty days, or when I have to follow my lord's grace out of her reach, sweet ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... handkerch'fs, (one cambrick) sewed on half a border of a lawn apron of aunt's, read part of the xxist chapter of Exodous, & a story in the Mother's Gift." Later she jotted in her book the loan of "3 of Cousin Charles' books to read, viz.—The puzzling Cap, the female Orators & the history of Gaffer Two Shoes." Little Miss Winslow, though only eleven years of age, was a typical child of the educated class in Boston, and, according to her journal, also followed the English custom of reading aloud "with Miss Winslow, the Generous Inconstant and Sir Charles Grandison." ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... "Gaffer said he's no more orders—couldn't keep us on. The shop's shut up. Know of a job, guv'nor?" he asked, with a momentary eagerness. "I've two characters in ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... as they had called out on me, and I thought that I should have to come and fetch your—that is, if it pleased you. But first I called, as is my wont, for porters. Now all that rabble sat in a row along a wall, and, by Baldur, when I looked, they had cleaned themselves! Whereupon an old gaffer, who has carried things once or twice for me when there has been no crowd and he has been able to come forward, lifted up his voice and asked how many men ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... my uncle complain to you of me? You are a favourite of that handsome, nice old gaffer's, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... expense," the landlady exclaimed at the sound of footsteps, as glibly as a child repeating the Catechism, while she peered over the stairs. "Oh, 'tis you, Mrs Durbeyfield—Lard—how you frightened me!—I thought it might be some gaffer ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... cried. That is too low, said Panurge; then took him by the ear, saying, Sing higher in Ge, sol, re, ut. So, so poor devil, thou hast a good throat; thou wert never so happy as to be no longer king. And Pantagruel made himself merry with all this; for I dare boldly say that he was the best little gaffer that was to be seen between this and the end of a staff. Thus was Anarchus made a good crier of green sauce. Two days thereafter Panurge married him with an old lantern-carrying hag, and he himself made the wedding with fine sheep's heads, brave haslets with ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... gone. She set herself to look at roadside things, cottage gardens, old housewives in doorways, gaffer goodman meeting his crony on the path, groups of boys and girls. She would take the girls, Matthew Weyburn the boys. She had lessons to give to girls, she had sympathy, pity, anticipation. That would be a life of happy service. It might be a fruitful ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
