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Hornet   Listen
noun
Hornet  n.  (Zool.) A large, strong wasp. The European species (Vespa crabro) is of a dark brown and yellow color. It is very pugnacious, and its sting is very severe. Its nest is constructed of a paperlike material, and the layers of comb are hung together by columns. The American white-faced hornet (Vespa maculata) is larger and has similar habits.
Hornet fly (Zool.), any dipterous insect of the genus Asilus, and allied genera, of which there are numerous species. They are large and fierce flies which capture bees and other insects, often larger than themselves, and suck their blood. Called also hawk fly, robber fly.
To stir up a hornet's nest, to provoke the attack of a swarm of spiteful enemies or spirited critics. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hornet" Quotes from Famous Books



... people in confusion, Heard of all the misdemeanors, All the malice and the mischief, 5 Of the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis. Hard his breath came through his nostrils, Through his teeth he buzzed and muttered Words of anger and resentment, Hot and humming like a hornet. 10 "I will slay this Pau-Puk-Keewis, Slay this mischief-maker!" said he. "Not so long and wide the world is, Not so rude and rough the way is, That my wrath shall not attain him, 15 That my vengeance shall ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... the man who had called himself Solus Smithers did not offer any resistance, and he was quickly made a prisoner. When he found later that one man, assisted by a parcel of Boy Scouts, had captured three desperate characters, he was about as mad as a hornet; but it was too ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... we take things quietly, as we did when we were boys? I expect I had a rather comfortable time of it then, though I did get whipped for tearing my clothes, and killing flies, which I used to do worse than any bald hornet. ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... I-told-you-so air, but softly, for many of his comrades were wounded, though he was not, as usual, for all his seven feet of perpendicular target. But "the Doc," of Benton, was, of course. Getting wounded was the greatest trouble with Doc. If he attacked a hornet's nest, he would contrive some way to get a leg shot off. But with him such things had become to be a matter of course, so now he crated himself together enough to move around and attend to the others. Driscoll was most innumerably ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... as mad as a hornet," was Phil's comment. "Well, it served him right, for the way he ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... hornet's nest with a vengeance. They were mad as March hares, most of them. For five minutes I sat amazed, listening to the wildest talk it had ever been my lot to hear. The Guelphs would be driven out. The good old days would be restored; there would be no more whiggery and ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... as a hornet ef I don't get any of ye," he remarked, sadly. "She's paid Sam Cotting fer this courtin' suit, an' he won't take back the gloves on no 'count arter they've been wore; an' thet'll set ma crazy. Miss Patsy, ef ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne

... the doctor said; "I'd about as soon argue with a hornet as a mother. She's nearly crazy! I'll tell you the situation." He told it, and ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

... had incurred some ridicule by his readiness in proposing constitutions. His antagonist, like a hornet, instantly fixed his sting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... day (June 21, 1866) there came word of the arrival at Sanpahoe, on the island of Hawaii, of an open boat containing fifteen starving wretches, who on short, ten-day rations had been buffeting a stormy sea for forty-three days! A vessel, the Hornet, from New York, had taken fire and burned "on the line," and since early in May, on that meager sustenance, they had been battling with hundreds of leagues of adverse billows, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... swept with their rich booty, night and day. Five other prizes, one for every ship, Out of the seas of Spain they suddenly caught And carried with them, laughing as they went— "Now, now indeed the Rubicon is crossed; Now have we singed the eyelids and the beard Of Spain; now have we roused the hornet's nest; Now shall we sail against a world in arms; Now we have nought between us and black death But our own hands, five ships, and three score guns." So laughed they, plunging through the bay of storms, Biscay, and past Gibraltar, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... showed me the door, an' give me to understan' that she couldn't think er hevin' a man that warn't a church-member, that hadn't experienced religion, or even ben struck with conviction, an' all the rest on't. Ef anny one hed a wanted tew hev seen a walkin' hornet's nest, they could hev done it cheap that night, as I went hum. I jest stramed intew the kitchen, chucked my hat intew one corner, my coat intew 'nother, kicked the cat, cussed the fire, drawed up a chair, and set scaoulin' like sixty, bein' tew mad for talkin'. The young woman that was ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott

... bullet breezed by his head, droning like a hornet, and glanced sullenly against a flat rock. Immediately afterward, The Kid heard the sharp bark of a .45. He knew by the sound of the bullet and by the elapsed time between it and the sound of the gun that he was within dangerous range. Crouching low in his saddle, he wheeled ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... fear, Roger watched the blip as it sped down like a maddened hornet toward the Polaris resting on its directional fins in the green jungle. He could hear the hatch slam closed below as Loring re-entered the ship, but he continued to ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell

... from thenceforth like a bee-hive into which a hornet had entered. Our lesson hours were curtailed, so that we might have time to make festoons of roses and lilies. The wide, tall arm-chair of carved wood was uncushioned, so that it might be varnished and polished. We made lamp-shades ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... forest jungle are the Bhowra or ground bees, which are more properly a kind of hornet. If by evil chance your elephant should tread on their mound-like nest, instantly an angry swarm of venomous and enraged hornets comes buzzing about your ears. Your only chance is to squat down, and envelope yourself completely in a blanket. Old sportsmen, shooting in forest jungle, invariably ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... fair. i was all sweled up with hornet bites but they dident hurt enny, i looked jest like Beany when he had the mumps. ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute

... it arose from the help I've been giving the grade teachers in their nature work. They are trying to teach the children something, and half the instructors don't know a blue jay from a king-fisher, a beech leaf from an elm, or a wasp from a hornet." ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... H. Parker, 13th US Infantry, Late Commanding Gatling Guns at Santiago. (Frontispiece) Map—Santiago and Surrounding Area. Skirmish Drill at Tampa. Skirmish Drill at Tampa. Field Bakery. Awaiting Turn to Embark. Baiquiri. The "Hornet." Waiting. Wrecked Locomotives and Machine Shops at Baiquiri. The Landing. Pack Train. Calvary Picket Line. San Juan Hill. Cuban Soldiers as They Were. Wagon Train. Gatling Battery under Artillery Fire at El Poso. Gatling Gun on Firing-Line ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... ear; the hornet's nest is stirred. Your field of poppies and daisies, O Khalid, is miraculously transformed into a pit of furious grey spectres and howling red spirits. And still you wait in the tribune until the storm subside? Fool, fool! ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... Within his rocky nest, the knight, Against us have conspired, and all Firmly to hold their own unite. Impatient is the hireling now, With vehemence he claims his due; And did we owe him naught, I trow, Off he would run, nor bid adieu. Who thwarts what fondly all expect, He bath disturbed a hornet's nest; The empire which they should protect, It lieth plundered and oppress'd. Their furious rage may none restrain; Already half the world's undone; Abroad there still are kings who reign— None thinks 'tis his concern, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... which are in pari materia, some not; some contradictory and some mere repetitions. It amends acts by later acts and, before they have gone into effect, wipes them out by substitutions. It hitches on extraneous matters and it amends past legislation by mere inference. Like a hornet it stings in the end, where revolutionary changes are introduced by altering or adding a word or two in sections a page long, and it ends with the cheerful but too usual statement that "all laws and parts of laws in conflict with provisions of this act are hereby repealed." As a result no one ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... surveying the result a moment he seemed to feel that he had insulted a helpless object, for he took the hat off, spat into it, and kicked it into shapeless pulp. Then he came back to the house and grimly asked his wife if she had anything handy to take the poison out of hornet stings. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... last, Sir, Graham, having now got to about the pitch of looking at one man, and talking to another, said Doctor, &c.' 'What effect (Dr. Johnson used to add) this had on Goldsmith, who was as irascible as a hornet, may ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... unwritten belief that no alien ruler, enthroned at Delhi, shall endure. Hence the dismay of many loyal Indians when the British Government deserted Calcutta for the Queen of the North. And here, already, were her endless, secretive byways rivalling Calcutta suburbs as hornet-nests of sedition and intrigue. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... represented by specimens of gold-bearing rhyolite from the granite slopes north of the city, as well as by samples of fire clay of high quality; found partly within the city limits. From the Black Hornet and Curlew Creek districts came quartz specimens containing gold and silver. From Bear Creek were cuttings from the dike formation of low-grade ores that may mean much to Boise if they ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... back to the plate, red in the face, mad as a hornet, and he sidestepped every time Rube pitched a ball. He never even ticked one and retired in disgust, limping and swearing. Ashwell was next. He did not show much alacrity. On Rube's first pitch down went Ashwell flat in the dust. ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey

... said, "a nest of revolutionists—and quite a hornet's nest it would seem. Well, you won't abide here long, ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... the enormous couch and Robina looked at her brother. "Jason, Ah'm real sorry. Ah went an' stirred up a hornet's nest of trouble ...
— The Premiere • Richard Sabia

... "But the hornet, Bird of Hiisi, Looked around him, and he listened, Gazing from beside the roof-tree, Looking from below the birchbark, At the tempering of the Iron, And ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... however, is one case, where, owing to the lucky accident of an examination given in detail, one can observe in one nest, every variety of the species and of its appetites, the dozen or fifteen types of the Jacobin hornet, each abstracting what suits him from whatever he lights on, each indulging in his favorite sort of rapine.—At Nantes, "Pinard, the great purveyor of the Committee,[33142] orders everything that each member needs ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the ground-nut trails its vine, Where the wood grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans! For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks Part and parcel of her joy. ...
— Twilight Stories • Various

... with an odd expression. They were aground on Sirene VIII, on which no human ship had ever landed before them, and they had stirred up a hornet's nest on Sirene IV, which had orbital eighty-gee rocket missiles in orbit around it with bust bomb heads and all the other advantages of civilization. The Aldeb was on the way with a fifteen-man crew. And seventeen men, altogether, must pit themselves ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... fury, plunged the pin into his wrist. It stung like a hornet; and with a gasp of pain, Craig leaped back out ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... of a rapt saint as he told this story, but my contemplation of his countenance was suddenly arrested by Toddie, who, disapproving of the unexciting nature of his brother's recital, had strayed into the garden, investigated a hornet's nest, been stung, and set up a piercing shriek. He ran in to me, and as I hastily picked him ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various

... going, Bobby," confessed the finally-convinced Biff Bates after a visit of inspection. "Here's where you put the hornet on one Silas Tight-Wad Trimmer all right, all right. But the bones don't roll right that the side bet don't go for Johnson instead of Applegoat. He's a shine, for me. I think he's all to the canary color inside, but this ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... on we'll be in the saddle; and if such a thing should jess accidentally happen to happen, which I hope it won't, to be sho', that I should happen to sort o' absent-mindedly yell out 'Go!' like as if a hornet had stabbed me, you jess come down with that switch, and make the critter under you run like a scared dog, ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... slopping over. We used to wonder by what magic this strange principle worked, and who first invented the crosses, and whether he got a peerage for it. But indeed the well was a centre of mystery, for a hornet's nest was somewhere hard by, and the very thought was fearsome. Wasps we knew well and disdained, storming them in their fastnesses. But these great Beasts, vestured in angry orange, three stings from which—so 't was averred—would ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... a moment, and a mocking laugh was heard from among the clouds, for it was a little hornet that had asked to go out and meet the power of the ruler of ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook

... as hot as a hornet. His gorge rose—his freeborn, independent American gorge. It rose clear to the ceiling and threw off sparks and red clinkers. He sent for the manager. The manager came, all bows and graciousness and rumply shirtfront; and when he heard what was to be said he became all apologies and indignation. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... exclaimed a voice, "we had better look out for ourselves! We have got into a very hornet's nest! If this is the place where the Martians come to dig gold, and if this is the height of their season, as you say, they are not likely to leave ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... out his orders, the Englishman was working his hold up past the floundering guard's waist. Madden's grip was about to break under the strain the Teuton put on it, but his fingers clung desperately to the fellow's throat, for one shout would bring a hornet's nest around the fugitives. Just then Malone ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... be any garrison. On making enquiries, I find there is a garrison of seven men. It is getting dusk and mosquitoes are coming out by hundreds, they have not annoyed me before, but I think I must use my net to-night. I lie on my bed after dinner smoking with a lighted candle by my side. A hornet flies in and settles on my hand, then a large beetle comes with a buzz and a thud against me, making me start. Sundry moths, small flies, and beetles, are playing innocently round the flame. In half an hour I shall be able to make ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster

... drank so much that our senses clean forsook us. As to my indiscreet speech touching your majesty, neither disrespect nor disloyalty were intended by it. I was goaded to the rejoinder by the sharp sting of this hornet." ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... knitting bag the bottle of blackberry cordial without which we rarely travel, as we find it excellent in case of chilling, or indigestion, and even to rub on hornet stings. I was placing the suitcase, in which it is our custom to carry the chestnuts, in the back of the car, when I spied a very small parcel. Aggie saw ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Pacific Coast, and also up more than one of the rivers, he has heard a similar sound, attributed by the natives to a fish which they call 'The Siren,' or 'Musico.' At first, he says, he thought it was produced by a fly, or hornet of extraordinary size; but afterwards, having advanced a little farther, he heard a multitude of different voices, which harmonised together, imitating a church organ to great perfection. The good people ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... from him by the broad river, and were dismounted, a condition which always appeals to a cavalryman's strongest sympathies; they might at any moment, he feared, be attacked by overwhelming forces, for he did not know what was upon the other side, or how large a swarm Hines had stirred up in the hornet's nest. He himself might be attacked, if delayed too long, by the enemy that he well knew must be following his track. Independently of all considerations of immediate danger, he was impatient at delay and anxious to try his fortune in the new field ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... Mecklenberg claims to have issued the first declaration of independence, and, at the centennial celebration of this event in May, 1875, proudly accepted for itself the derisive name given this region by Tarleton's officers, "The Hornet's Nest of America." This name—first bestowed by British officers upon Mrs. Brevard's mansion, then Tarleton's headquarters, where that lady's fiery patriotism and stinging wit discomfited this General in many ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... them to stop, and declaring that if turkey should ever be put upon the table again he would eat nothing but the stuffing. When Donald found that the wishbones were sticking into his neck like so many hornet stings, he made up his mind that he would run for the house. Finally the wishbone tattoo stopped, and when he looked around, the gobbler, who was twenty feet away, said: "When a Thanksgiving turkey dies, his ghost comes down here to ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... simile, he thought of a flash of lightning, a steel hoop lying on its side, a hornet's nest—but none of these quite suited him. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... still more alarming by the recollection of certain misadventures of which I had been the victim when seeking to observe too closely the combs of the Hornet (Vespa crabro), I felt a shiver of ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... perhaps she would still be kneeling before the Virgin's image if the maid-servant hadn't blundered in to carry a bouquet which Herr Peter Schlumperger's servant had brought. Then Barbara started up as if a hornet had stung her. And how she looked at me! Once—I knew it instantly—I had gazed into such a marvellously beautiful face, such helpless blue eyes. Afterward I remembered who and where it had been. God ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Darwin's inability to make the aphides yield their secretion after many experiments. A large number of hornets were flying about the tree, but seemed afraid of the ants; for when they attempted to alight, an ant would at once rush to the spot, and the hornet would get ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... to have noticed any signaling, and if she did she certainly ignored it. Perhaps she believed that her hornet's nest of women could stand off any invasion or interference from without. At any rate, she went on unfolding her instructions to ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... drunken man addressing a lamp-post. The rest of the sentence (she acted her words in dumb-show, of course) was lost in a fit of the fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy chewing a string, a clumsy woman in a side-saddle, a hen with her head cut off, or a cow stung by a hornet, exactly as the whims of ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... standing by the side of a wine vat, and if he have any loan upon it?" "It is forbidden." "If he have no loan on it?" "It is allowed." "Has he fallen into the vat and come out again, or measured it with a cane; has he driven away a hornet with a cane; or has he given a slap to the fermentation on the top of the barrel?" All these things once happened, and the (Sages) decided, "Let it be sold." But R. Simon "allowed it." He took the barrel and flung it in a rage into the ...
— Hebrew Literature

... is a very interesting moth, and it was common at Aldington; the larva feeds on the wood of the black poplar. The colouring of the moth so resembles the hornet, that at first sight it is easily mistaken for the latter. It is an excellent example of "mimicry," whereby a harmless insect acquires the distinctive appearance of a harmful one, and so secures immunity from the ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... his nostrils, Through his teeth he buzzed and muttered Words of anger and resentment, Hot and humming, like a hornet. "I will slay this Pau-Puk-Keewis, Slay this mischief-maker!" said he. "Not so long and wide the world is, Not so rude and rough the way is, That my wrath shall not attain him, That my vengeance shall ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow

... corn-market as a flying machine would create at Charing Cross. The farmers crowded round it, women drew near it, children crept under and into it. The machine was painted in bright hues of green, yellow, and red, and it resembled as a whole a compound of hornet, grasshopper, and shrimp, magnified enormously. Or it might have been likened to an upright musical instrument with the front gone. That was how it struck Lucetta. "Why, it is a sort of agricultural piano," ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... dawnin' an' ut would be betther not to slip your boots. How do I know that? By the light av pure reason. Here are three companies av us ever so far inside av the enemy's flank an' a crowd av roarin', tarin', squealin' cavalry gone on just to turn out the whole hornet's nest av them. Av course the enemy will pursue, by brigades like as not, an' thin we'll have to run for ut. Mark my words. I am av the opinion av Polonius whin he said, 'Don't fight wid ivry scutt for the pure joy av fightin', but if you do, knock the nose av him first an' frequint.'. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... and shares have I translated into Hebrew, with new words which will at once be accepted by the Hebraists of the world and added to the vocabulary of modern Hebrew. Oh! I am terrible in satire. I sting like the hornet; witty as Immanuel, but mordant as his friend Dante. It will appear in the Mizpeh to-morrow. I will show this Anglo-Jewish community that I am a man to be reckoned with. I will crush it—not ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... running up with such a noise that the earth trembled. The willow-wren with his army also came flying through the air with such a humming, and whirring, and swarming that every one was uneasy and afraid, and on both sides they advanced against each other. But the willow-wren sent down the hornet, with orders to settle beneath the fox's tail, and sting with all his might. When the fox felt the first string, he started so that he lifted one leg, from pain, but he bore it, and still kept his tail high ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm

... who has not his mosquito curtains; and I have already mentioned that the Malays light fires under their houses to smoke them away. Last night a malignant and hideous insect, above an inch long, of the bug species, appeared. The bite of this is as severe as the sting of a hornet. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... that swept the decks with a merciless lash in its grip and whipped into submission all who vaingloriously sought to defy its chill dominion. Not rain, but spray from huge, swashing billows, clouded the decks, biting and cutting like countless needles, each drop with the sting of a hornet behind it. Now the end of the world seemed far away, and the jumping off place was a rickety wall of white and black, leaning against a cold, ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... As the sun gets strong we hear the drone of a swarm of great creatures like prodigious wasps with legs like stilts, which fly around the sweet-scented blooms. In ancient inscriptions this wasp, or hornet, was used as the sign of Northern or Lower Egypt. Across the flower-beds run miniature canals of stone, by means of which the water from the life-giving river is carried all over the ground, so that ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... Oken had invaded every centre of scientific activity; and yet, what is there left of it? I trust to outlive this mania also. As usual, I do not ask beforehand what you think of it, and I may have put my hand into a hornet's nest; but you know your old friend Agass, and will forgive him if he hits a tender spot. ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... ants survive the winter as mature forms, either in their nests in the ground or huddled groups in half rotten logs and stumps; while here and there beneath logs a solitary queen bumble-bee, bald hornet, or yellow jacket is found—the sole ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... case one should follow us. But when I had fouled the trail so that I myself hardly knew it again, Mang, the Bat, came hawking between the trees, and hung up above me." Said Mang, "The village of the Man-Pack, where they cast out the Man-cub, hums like a hornet's nest." ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling

... he answered simply; "but I'll get myself into a hornet's nest. These young people don't like to be told what's good for them," he added with a laugh, rising from his seat. "And after that you'll permit me to slip away without telling anybody, won't you? My last minute has come," and he glanced at ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... SINGETH] John, Master of the Temple of God, 10 Falling to sin the Unknown Sin, What he bought of Emperor Aldabrod, He sold it to Sultan Saladin: Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there, Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive, And clipt of his wings in Paris square, They bring him now to be burned alive. [And wanteth there grace of lute or clavicithern, ye shall say to confirm him who singeth— We bring John now to be ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... of the citadel at Perugia you can guess what a hornet's nest that grey stronghold of the Baglioni must have been. It commands the great plain and bars the way to Rome. Westward, on a spur of rock, stands Magione and a lonely tower: this was their outpost towards Siena. Eastward there ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... mad as a hornet if he had much trouble finding his boat," said Snap, in talking the situation over. "And the first thing he'll think of will ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill

... limitations of the Convention were disregarded. Short of armed intervention there was no machinery for enforcing them, and the Boers knew perfectly well that there was no real desire on the part of an embarrassed Government to raise a hornet's nest by making the attempt. The British resident, with his nominally autocratic powers, was a mere impotent laughing stock. The ruined loyalists left the country, or remained to become the most embittered enemies of the British Government. In three years a new ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... there procured, and we barricaded Cowgill House so as to make it at once a decoy and a hornet's nest. I despise war and men of war so much that I have somewhat studied their campaigns, and I suggested, friend Clayton, that the stairway was a good tactical defensive position—is that the vain term?—to send a volley out the main door, and a flank ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... laying close siege; that my lines of circumvallation do not proceed quite so rapidly as my desires; but that I have just blown up the main bastion; or, in other words, have prevailed on Sir Arthur to send this hornet, this Frank Henley, back to England. The fellow's aspiring insolence is not to be endured. His merit is said to be uncommon. 'Tis certain he strains after the sublime; and in fact is too deep a thinker, nay I suspect too deep a plotter, not to ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... Sent from the dark infernal region, In him they lodge, and make him legion. Of brethren he's a false accuser; A slanderer, traitor, and seducer; A fawning, base, trepanning liar; The marks peculiar of his sire. Or, grant him but a drone at best; A drone can raise a hornet's nest. The Dean had felt their stings before; And must their malice ne'er give o'er? Still swarm and buzz about his nose? But Ireland's friends ne'er wanted foes. A patriot is a dangerous post, When wanted by his country most; Perversely comes in evil ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... are bright red. When at rest, with the red and purple tints concealed, it is only a very pretty grasshopper, but the instant it takes wing it becomes the fac-simile of a very common wasp of the genus Pepris. These wasps vary greatly in size, some being as large as the hornet; they are solitary, and feed on the honey of flowers and on fruit, and, besides being furnished with stings like other wasps—though their sting is nok so venomous as in other genera—they also, when angry, emit a most abominable odour, and are thus doubly protected against their ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... delighted to see you, Fleetwood. From the accounts we received we thought it was all up with you; and I came more with the hope of avenging you, than of seeing you alive; but now you shall have that satisfaction yourself. By Jove! we must blow up the hornet's nest without delay. When did you propose ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... anxious to learn the precise particulars of the battle. It is to be feared that too many of Bragg's men were ordered to reinforce Pemberton. If that blunder should prove disastrous, the authorities here will have a hornet's nest about their ears. The President arrived yesterday, and his patriotic and cheering speech at Jackson, Miss., appeared in all ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... the 31st our right wing seemed to have run against a hornet's nest, and we could hear the musketry and cannon speak out real spiteful, but nothing came down our way. We had struck the railroad leading south from Atlanta to Macon, and began tearing it up. The jollity at Atlanta was stopped right in the middle by the appalling news that ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... Baby, is easily puzzled," smiled Raymonde serenely. "It's meant to wear fluffy curls, and not to engage itself in abstruse problems. I don't advise you to worry yourself over this, unless you can turn it to some account. If the Hornet should ask you for an original example, you might begin: 'Let A represent a fountain pen, and B my schoolmate, C standing for an ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... forest paths it is necessary to be on the look-out for the wood-ticks, which are very difficult to get rid of if once firmly attached; also for the huge black ants, an inch and a half in length, with stings like a hornet's; and the saueba ant, without sting, but armed with nippers like a pair of surgical bone-forceps, which are running about everywhere. One may sometimes chance upon a column of the dreaded "fire-ants," marching ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... know that; I rather think he'll find he has no such power. Let him try it, and see what the press will say. For once we shall have the popular cry on our side. But Proudie, ass as he is, knows the world too well to get such a hornet's ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... led us at first through a natural meadow, overgrown with waist-high grass, and very spongy to the tread. Hornet-haunted also was this meadow, and therefore no place for idle dalliance or unwary digression, for the sting of the hornet is one of the saddest and most humiliating surprises of ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... masks like those worn by Inquisitors, the eye-holes being filled with glass. The sleeves of the jacket were made long, so as to cover our hands. Our sea boots and breeches we knew to be impervious to hornet stings, and, thus equipped, we hoped to succeed in carrying away the treasure which the Lamakera ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... glory that our ancestors Have not been over-prudish with our kings; It is no fall to pick up handkerchiefs When on the handkerchief a lily's broidered. But honor never will accept a rag Which bears the Bonapartist weed and hornet, Woe to the ...
— L'Aiglon • Edmond Rostand

... be so foolish, Thomas. As if a man what's been stung by a wasp would care to sit himself down on a hornet's nest. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin

... Who carried the Emmet, his friend, on his back; And there was the Gnat, and the Dragon-fly too, And all their relations, green, orange, and blue. And then came the Moth, with her plumage of down, And the Hornet, in jacket of yellow and brown; Who with him the Wasp, his companion, did bring, But they promised that evening to lay by their sting. Then the shy little Dormouse peeped out of his hole, And led to the feast his blind cousin, the Mole; And the Snail, with her horns peeping ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... now master of the situation, and he directed ten thousand bees under General Bumble, and another ten thousand wasps under Colonel Hornet, to fall on the robber and cruel Sigli and sting them to death. But this was hardly necessary, as the wriggling of their bodies so fixed them to the figure ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others

... were just like beasts stung with a hornet. They ran they knew not whither, they knew not wherefore. They were under such consternation that the English did even what they would upon them. I shall never forget the expressions which a desperate, fighting sort of fellow, one of their generals, ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... and to her audience there was nothing amusing about this prescription. Stranger remedies than that had been ordered by the wise doctors of the day: a broth of beetle's legs, crab's eyes, the heads of mice, bruised flies to cure the sting of a hornet! ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips

... where the killing had taken place. Perchance if he had stopped as he was minded, the tragedy might have been averted. Nobody seemed to know just how it came about. The thing was most unfortunate politically. King would stir up a hornet's nest of public opinion. Broderick reached his lodgings and at once retired. His sleep was fitful. He dreamed that Alice Windham and Sheriff Scannell ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... embargo seems to have been resolved upon, because at the moment they did not know what else to do. The cabinet wished only sixty days—the senate made it ninety. Our government leaves no room to expect a repeal of the order in council, yet they wait for the return of the Hornet. Something decisive must then be known; perhaps when they become completely convinced of Bonaparte's playing upon them, it will end in declaring against France. The question of adjournment was lost, notwithstanding there was an absolute majority known a few ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... Tim said, to show him the true light. I seed she was listenin' an' that he had hold uv 'er some, but I kinder thought she wusn't as easy prey as he 'lowed, fer he broke down once in awhile an' had a sort o' sickly, quivery look about the mouth. All at once he turned to me as mad as a hornet. Sez he: 'It's that dern bonnet,'—no, he didn't say that exactly. I heer Luke say them things so much 'at his words slip in when I'm in a hurry—'it's that bonnet o' her'n, Sister Bradley,' sez he. 'I'll never git 'er in a wearin' way as long as that poke keeps bobbin' up an' down twixt ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... a mutt I was not to get myself jabbed for typhoid before I came here! It would have been worth the money. Today my arm feels like a hornet's nest, with roots up into my shoulder and down my ribs. And my head is light and wavy—that's fever. I saw one guy keel over stiff when the doctor stuck him, and the poor corp of our squad says he'd swap jobs ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... and the wasps were there. The old queen bee, with fiendish glee, Was pulling a hornet's hair. The monkey thought 'twas rough; He took a pinch of snuff, And then the bees began to sneeze, ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... gave him no concern. No men in the mountains understood better or were more expert in the technicalities of the law of self-defense than the gunmen of Calabasas. The killing of de Spain they well knew would, in spite of everything, raise a hornet's nest in Sleepy Cat, and they wished to be prepared for it. Their manoeuvring on this score caused no disquiet to their slender, compactly built victim. "You'll wait a long time, if you wait for service here, Morgan," he said, commenting with composure ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... war in France; Everywhere men bang and blunder, Sweat and swear and worship Chance, Creep and blink through cannon thunder. Rifles crack and bullets flick, Sing and hum like hornet-swarms. Bones are smashed and buried quick. Yet, through stunning battle storms. All the while I watch the spark Lit to guide me; for I know Dreams will triumph, though the dark Scowls above me ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon

... a two-edged way, for another arrow darted by him with a buzz like that of an angry hornet, at the same time that a yell arose, for he saw the man at whom he had fired trying to scramble up from the earth and falling again, while his horse after throwing its rider had reared up, to stand pawing the air frantically for some moments, before coming down on all fours, and then tearing ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... which he had a lien was a joint family possession, with the shares so inextricably mixed up that he could neither trace the property mortgaged to him nor discover who was liable for the proportion of profit derived from it. As well poke one's fingers into a hornet's nest as into a joint family estate! Sham Babu was glad to accept an offer of Rs. 5,000 from Gopal's co-sharers, in return for a surrender of his claims. Despite his heavy loss, enough remained to preserve him from penury; and he was even able to start Susil in a small way of business. Great ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea

... there is some circumstance or other attends it that makes it, when charged home by God's law, bigger and sharper and more venomous and poisonous to the soul, than if it could be committed without them; and this is the sting of the hornet, the great sting. I sinned without a cause, to please a base lust, to gratify the devil: here is the sting. Again, I preferred sin before holiness, death before life, hell before heaven, the devil before God, and damnation before ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... greed for empire, in their readiness to strike a blow for their own profit whenever war is in the land. If the seigneurs of such cities gave cause for dissatisfaction, they found that they had brought a hornet's nest about their ears. In the struggle for liberties the popular party displayed a high courage which rose superior to defeat, though in the hour of triumph it was too often sullied by ferocious acts ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... of Glasgow woke up one fine morning to find that the minister of the Barony recommended in almost so many words that the Decalogue, inasmuch as it was a Judaical institution, was not for modern Christians. Of course the rev. gentleman brought a hornet's nest about his ears; and he had to explain away, as best he could, the "damnable and pernicious doctrine." There are more learned men in the Church of Scotland, but none have a greater share of sagacity, penetration, and strong, pungent, mother wit. Another distinguishing ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans

... season of the year? It is then that the spring bonnet of the workaday world crosses the earth's orbit and makes the bank account of the husband and father look fatigued. The low shoe and the low hum of the bumble-bee are again with us. The little striped hornet heats his nose with a spirit lamp and goes forth searching for the man with the linen pantaloons. All nature is full of life and activity. So is the man with the linen pantaloons. Anon, the thrush will sing in the underbrush, and ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... this hornet's nest of theirs abuzz so suddenly?" I whispered, when the smoke-choke gave us liberty to speak without coughing ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... he began. "Very well, let's get down to business. It's unfortunate the Com officer gossiped so loosely. He stirred up a hornet's nest." Coffin saw that few understood the idiom. "He made discontent which threatens this whole project, and which ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... liberality: but it is enough to have been chargeable to you when in France. I have never done you any service, though I made an offer of myself. But it would not be proper that I should now live like a hornet on the goods of other men. I shall never forget, however, the kindness of so great a King, and the good ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... replied, "especially the humming-bird episode, and the mocking-bird digression, to say nothing of the doings of the hornet and ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt

... I have; and I will give you the whole Gulf of Mexico if it isn't a big thing," replied Dave with his most expansive smile. "You done get into a hornet's nest, ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic

... robin feeds her young, How the oriole's nest is hung; Where the whitest lilies blow, Where the freshest berries grow, Where the groundnut trails its vine, Where the wood-grape's clusters shine; Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay, And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans!— For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks; Hand in hand with her he walks, Face to face with her he talks, Part and parcel of her joy,— ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... met the Jew," returned the hornet; "he wears the garb of a priest, and is at a tavern in the Street of the Dyers, because he has learned that two Peruleros[50] are now stopping there. He wishes to try if he cannot do business with them, even though ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... publication, however, the author disturbed a hornet's nest. Dispassionate, but still entirely adverse is Professor Plate's review in the "Biologisches Zentralblatt," while the "Umschau" publishes two criticisms, one by Professor von Wagner, the other by Dr. Reh, ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... yells Jabez, hot as a hornet, "I'm a man an' you ain't, an' that makes a heap o' difference. I had to give up cussin' on your account, but I don't intend to go to wearin' dresses complete, just ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... man—one of a class whose faults I can hardly recall while remembering their sense of duty, their utter disregard of danger, and the reliance with which you can lead them on to attack anything, from a hornet's ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... blind film before my eyes, there was a still stranger hum in my head, as if a hornet were there; and I thought to myself, Great God! this is Death! Yet these thoughts were unmixed with alarm. Like frost-work that flashes and shifts its scared hues in the sun, all my braided, blended emotions were in themselves icy cold ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... streams nowhere. He was not a revolutionist,—not even a socialist,—but there were times when he could have taken the neck of the Prince between his strong fingers and choked out his worthless life. These attacks of envy were short-lived—he could not ascribe them to the reading of the little hornet-like anarchist sheet, Pere Peinard, which the other waiters lent him; rather was it an excess of bile provoked by the coveted beauty ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... hop up like that, mad as a hornet, at me. I'm not the one hints and shrugs. It's the whole lot of your precious 'boys'—boys; indeed! and needing spanking more'n they ever ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... can never do any thing but good. But you and I are now at that time of life when our call to another state of being cannot be distant, and may be near. Besides, your government is in the habit of seizing papers without notice. These letters might thus get into hands, which, like the hornet which extracts poison from the same flower that yields honey to the bee, might make them the ground of blowing up a flame between our two countries, and make our friendship and confidence in each other effect exactly the reverse of ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... he gritted. "That fresh bunch of Boche officers is bound to knock our plans silly. They'll stir things up again, and we can't get away. Then perhaps some one will discover the doors of the two rooms are unfastened, and that'll start a hornet's ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach

... will, besides, be pleasanter for you and the mother not to have us both—the father and me—there at one time, but relieving each other, so that you may be lonely for a shorter time. * * * Your father will tell you how I stirred up the hornet's-nest of the volunteers here lately, and the angry hornets came buzzing to attack me; on the other hand, I had as compensation that many of the older and more intelligent people drew near to me—people I did not know at all—and assured me that I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... is a complete, independent bud; it has the nutriment of the young plant within itself, as the egg holds several good lunches for the young chick. When the spider, or the wasp, or the carpenter bee, or the sand hornet lays an egg in a cell, and deposits food near it for the young when hatched, it does just what nature does in every kernel of corn or wheat, or bean, or nut. Around or within the chit or germ, she stores ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... as second in command on board the sloop Hornet, of ten guns, one of two vessels then preparing for a cruise under Commodore Hopkins, for this was in the early part of the revolution. The sloop fell in with a British tender, which she might have captured, but for the timidity of the American captain. The tender, mistaking her enemy, ran alongside ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... strength He couched him in a thicket hoar And thought his toils and perils o'er:— 'Of all my rash adventures past, This frantic feat must prove the last! Who e'er so mad but might have guessed That all this Highland hornet's nest Would muster up in swarms so soon As e'er they heard of bands at Doune?— Like bloodhounds now they search me out,— Hark, to the whistle and the shout!— If farther through the wilds I go, I only fall upon the foe: I'll couch me here ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... grandmother's cabin and she tell us it am so. We look scared, lak mules in de midst of a hornet nest, as we stood dere. We didn't wait long, for old Mistress Sligh she come 'long and say: 'Sho' it am so, you am free.' Many of de slaves, 'cludin' me, tell her we love to stay on and work as usual 'til de big white folks come. She smile and say: ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... yell, when the column of smoke went high in the air from our exploded caisson. Well, all the satisfaction we got out of the affair, was that "We found out, what the enemy had over there," and we did not stir up that hornet's nest again. Occasionally, they would plug at us, but we would lie low and not reply. One of their 24-lb. rifled parrot shells ricochetted over from the front one day with out exploding. Some of the men got it unscrewed the percussion ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little

... softest sound you ever heard—she was mad as a hornet, too." The General's swift chuckle caught him. "'Hyer,' she said it," he repeated. "'Hyer.'" He liked to say it, evidently. "I stood holding my cap in my hand, so tame by this time you could have put me on a perch in a cage, for the pluck of the girl was ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... was taking a nap under a tree, my chum and me looked around and found a hornets' nest on the lower limb of the tree we were sitting under, and my chum said it would be a good joke to get a pole and run it into the hornet's nest, and then run. Honest, I didn't think about Pa being under the tree, and I went into a field and got a hop pole, and put the small end up into the nest, and gouged the nest a couple of times, and when the boss hornet came out of the hole and ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck

... the House by his agitated colleague, recognised that his old Parliamentary hand had got into a hornet's nest, and promptly withdrew it. To the best of my recollection this is the first time on record that a Government measure has perished before its first reading. Conceived in secrecy and delivered in pain, its epitaph will be that of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various

... to mount, and this action was hurried because he hardly knew what to make of the restless actions of Domino. The animal seemed to be dancing up and down as though he had stirred up a hornet's nest, and the little insects were charging his ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson

... a few minutes after you took off, but when I refused him a ship he got mad as a hornet, bawled out the light crew and—and me, and then jumped back in his car and ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... "shooing" him out. He took the matter good naturedly, grinning in a sheepish sort of way, but my mother had evidently impressed him as being pretty fierce, for among all the Indians of the neighborhood she became known as the "Little Hornet." ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various

... for the war. And it is likely that the Sultan may soon have so many enemies to fight that he will wish the Powers had allowed him to arrange the Cretan matters for himself, without interfering and bringing this hornet's nest about his ears. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 26, May 6, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... growl from the great red gorilla, that had felt something sting him, and on feeling it threw up his paw to scratch the place, no doubt fancying it to be but the bite of a mosquito or hornet. The piece of stick broken off by his fingers may have seemed to him rather strange, but not enough so to arouse him ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... Walter, mopping his brow as he stood at the little gate of Mrs. Elmer's yard, returning thither, after his fruitless searching, in the hope of finding his brother among the familiar faces. "Mad ez a hornet, I'll be bound, an' lef' me in the lurch. Beat arter all, ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... almost ships of the line in disguise, and that their superior size and armament carried an unfair advantage. The same plea could not be offered in explanation of the victories won by American sloops, in the case of the American Hornet and British Peacock, of about equal strength, while the American Wasp was considerably inferior in guns and weight of metal to the British Frolic. Master-Commandant James Lawrence, of the Hornet, captured the Peacock in eleven minutes from the beginning of the action, the American ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... didn't finish what he was going to say. Instead he jumped back as though he had been stung by a hornet, ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum

... in tones like a hornet stinging slowly and often. "Mr. Diggs, I have put up with many things, and am expecting to put up with many more. But you'd behave better if you consorted ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister

... the same time took the very particular pleasure of introducing the Captain to several of the young bloods, as he called them, while they walked to and from the boxes. At length the Captain found himself in a perfect hornet's nest, surrounded by vicious young secessionists, so perfectly nullified in the growth that they were all ready to shoulder muskets, pitchforks, and daggers, and to fire pistols at poor old Uncle Sam, if he should poke his nose in South Carolina. The picture presented was that of an unruly ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams

... car. It had been set in on the siding, and the engine, uncoupled, had disappeared, but she could see shifting lights moving near. One, the bright, green-hooded light, her eyes followed. She watched the furious snow drive and sting hornet-like at its rays as it rose or swung or circled from a long arm. Her straining eyes had watched its coming and going every moment since he left her. When his figure vanished her breath followed it, and when the green light flickered ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman

... seven sea miles distant from the Dean Tail Buoy. Within ten minutes of the receipt of the wireless she was on the spot—one of the very first of a regular hornet flotilla bent upon adding yet another of Von Tirpitz's pets to ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... she wailed; "here's this horrid, hateful old snowstorm, and we can't go outdoors or anything! I'm mad as a hornet, as a hatter, as a wet hen, as a March hare, as a—as hops, as—what ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells

... say to the crab, Fly. The crab says, Give me wings; I say, Give me back my health and my youth. If I write calmly against Luther I shall be called lukewarm; if I write as he does, I shall stir a hornet's nest. People think he can be put down by force. The more force you try, the stronger he will grow. Such disorders cannot be cured in that way. The Wickliffites in England were put down, ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... only the smallest thing you learn. You learn how to be patient when what you want to do is to chew somebody up and spit him into the gutter. You learn to control your temper when it is on the high speed, with the throttle jerked wide open and buzzing like a hornet convention. You learn, by having it told you, just how small and foolish and insignificant you are, and how well this earth could stagger along without you if some one were to take a fly-killer and mash you ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... be real uneek to cook one, or a hornet's nest, and would be a rarity for the Jonesvillians, and in the winter, if we run out of bird's-nest, you could ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... within half-gunshot of the fort, sheltered a large body of Indians, who from this point of vantage directed a particularly galling fire at the loop-holes in the palisades. By it several of the defenders were wounded, until finally a cannon was brought to bear upon the hornet's nest, and a quantity of red-hot spikes were thrust into its muzzle. A minute after its discharge flames burst from the buildings, and the savages who had occupied them were in precipitate flight, followed by jeering shouts and a parting ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... lot of things about true politeness—things that I wasn't living up to worth mentioning. He yelled to the postmaster to grab me, and the fellow tried it. I backed into a corner and held old King in front of me as a bulwark, warranted bullet proof, and wondered what kind of a hornet's-nest I'd got into. The waiter and the postmaster were both looking for an opening, and I remembered that I was on old King's territory, and that they were after holding ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower

... have suddenly stepped into a hornet's nest may have some conception of Peggy's and Durand's sensations. Peggy looked absolutely, hopelessly blank at this volley. Durand's face was first a thunder-cloud and then became crimson, but not on ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson

... as I thought that I had finished, and was only too glad that I had laid this question to sleep, and was reflecting how fortunate I was in your acceptance of what I then said, you ask me to begin again at the very foundation, ignorant of what a hornet's nest of words you are stirring. Now I foresaw this gathering trouble, ...
— The Republic • Plato

... lay before Palestrina, and still the banners of the Barons waved over its unconquered walls. In truth, the Italians employed half their time in brawls amongst themselves; the Velletritrani had feuds with the people of Tivoli, and the Romans were still afraid of conquering the Barons;—"The hornet," said they, "stings worse after he is dead; and neither an Orsini, a Savelli, nor a Colonna, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton



Words linked to "Hornet" :   yellow jacket, bald-faced hornet, Vespa crabro, vespid wasp, vespid, hornet's nest, yellow hornet, Vespula maculifrons, giant hornet, Vespula maculata, white-faced hornet



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