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




Muddy   Listen
verb
Muddy  v. t.  (past & past part. muddied; pres. part. muddying)  
1.
To soil with mud; to dirty; to render turbid.
2.
(Fig.): To cloud; to make dull or heavy; to confuse.






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 |





"Muddy" Quotes from Famous Books



... genius of bad taste. Debussy is rather insipid. But Strauss is very unpleasant. One is a silvery thread of stagnant water, losing itself in the reeds, and giving off an unhealthy aroma. The other is a mighty muddy flood.... Ah! the musty base Italianism and neo-Meyerbeerism, the filthy masses of sentiment which are borne on by the torrent!... An odious masterpiece!... Salome, the daughter of Ysolde.... And whose mother will ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... they almost touched it. The boys made trips back and forth across the dam, and to and from the edge of the fall, till they got tired of it, and they were wanting something to happen, when Dave stuck his pole deep into the muddy bottom, and set his shoulder hard against the top of the pole, with a "Here she goes, boys, over the Falls of the Ohio!" and he ran along the edge of the raft from one ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells

... is dissolved in the hot feverish blood and circulates in and with it. The evaporation of the skin is increased, and with it the diseased matter is absorbed by the compresses, which consequently diffuse an unpleasant odor when removed, and when cleansed, give to the water a muddy appearance. Thus it may be observed to what extent the pack removes diseased matter ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... the utmost care and vigilance. This intricate and difficult navigation continued for nearly three hours, at the end of which time they suddenly emerged from the maze of islets and found themselves in a stream of thick, muddy water, averaging about a quarter of a mile in width, with low banks fringed by mangrove trees, beyond which it was occasionally possible to catch glimpses of more lofty vegetation. The water here was so deep that, except when close to the bank on either ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... moment motionless, and almost petrified with astonishment. All was changed around me: the enchanted panorama had disappeared, and I found myself in a small filthy crossway, at the entrance of a labyrinth of narrow, damp, dark, muddy streets. The houses which surrounded me, built as they were of disjointed planks, had a miserable aspect; time and rain had diluted their primitive red colour into numberless nameless tints. One of those minarets which from afar appeared so slender and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... the rain had ceased to fall, he sent out some birds, to see whether they would find any land, but the birds, having found neither food nor place to rest upon, returned to the ship. A few days later, Xisuthros once more sent the birds out; but they again came back to him, this time with muddy feet. On being sent out a third time, they did not return at all. Xisuthros then knew that the land was uncovered; made an opening in the roof of the ship and saw that it was stranded on the top of a mountain. He came out ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... space of about five feet. 'At one spot, there was a space several yards square, where the entire surface of the shale was irregular and jagged, owing to the number of the footsteps, not one of which could be distinctly traced, as when a flock of sheep have passed over a muddy road; but on withdrawing from this area, the confusion gradually ceased, and the tracks became more and more distinct.'[6] Professor Hitchcock had, up to that time, observed footprints of thirty species of birds on ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various

... meet me in Abraham's bosom too?' What think you she answered me? Why, this, my Bamboir: 'Why is't Adam loved his wife and swore her down before the Lord also, all in one moment?' Why Ma'm'selle Duvarney does this or that is not for muddy brains like ours. It is some whimsy. They say that women are more curious about the devil than about St. Jean Baptiste. Perhaps she got of him ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... manner was so violent, and he behaved all through his wedding in so mad and dreadful a manner, that Katharine trembled and went with him. He mounted her on a stumbling, lean, old horse, and they journeyed by rough muddy ways to Petruchio's house, he scolding and ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit

... at which I write, in these November days, I see a muddy, swollen river, spread over the meadows into a dingy lake; it is not a picturesque or a pretty stream, in spite of its Indian name. Beyond it the land slopes away into a range of long, low hills, which ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... field-cornets. After all the ward-commandos had arrived, the district-commando was set in motion toward that part of the frontier where its services were required; and a most unwarlike spectacle it presented as it rolled along over the muddy, slippery veld. In the van were the huge, lumbering waggons with hordes of hullabalooing natives cracking their long raw-hide whips and urging the sleek, long-horned oxen forward through the mud. Following the waggon-train came ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas

... articles as these persons had made way with. Had the avenue anything better to offer? I stopped under the gas-lamp at the corner to consider, notwithstanding Lena's gentle pull towards the drug-store. Looking to left and right and over the muddy crossings, I sought for inspiration. An almost obstinate belief in my own theory led me to insist in my own mind that they had encountered no old woman, and consequently had not dropped their bundles in the open street. I even entered into an argument ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... In disarray Sleep-suave limbs of a youth with long, smooth thighs Hutched up for warmth; the muddy rims Of trousers fray On the thin bare shins of a man who ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... succeeded the storm was beautiful and clear, everything in nature wearing a fresh and rosy look, as if refreshed by the needed shower. The current of the Salinas was as clear and crystal-like as though it had not received the muddy contents of a thousand brooks, rivulets and torrents gorged with the debris and ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis

... laborers, I entered the courtyard of the sugar-mill, where I caught sight of my youngster sitting on the ground, with his dog at his feet, looking with rapture at some ducks that were enjoying themselves in a muddy pool. ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... tugged at the muddy boots, though it was a task she disliked as much as she could dislike anything. She was rewarded by a gruff "Thank you," and when Geoff came down again in dry clothes, to find the table neatly prepared, and his little sister ready to pour out his tea, ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth

... Orange and crossing the Aygues, a torrent whose muddy waters are lost in the Rhne, but whose bed is dried by the July and August suns, leaving only a desert of pebbles, where the Mason-bee builds her pretty turrets of rock-work, we come presently to the Srignaise country; an arid, stony tract, planted with vines and olives, ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... heard the rector cry, "Bother!" in a tone which spoke volumes. I saw he had broken his hoe short off at the handle. I stopped work with alacrity, and gazed with commiserating interest, while I began wiping my muddy little fingers on my knickerbockers in bright anticipation of some new departure which should put a pause to ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts

... qualities entirely disappear in two or three generations of city life. Our city civilization is always in a process of decay, and would, in a few generations, become emasculated and effeminate were it not for the pure, crystal stream of country youth flowing steadily into and purifying the muddy, devitalized stream of city life. It would soon become so foul and degenerate as to threaten the physical and moral ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... features of this part of the country is the peculiarity of the rivers; these are full or empty, with every flux and reflux of the tide; for instance, when we crossed the Salmon, we saw only a high, broad, muddy ditch, drained to the very bottom. This is owing to the ocean tides, which, sweeping up the Bay of Fundy, pour into the Basin of Minas, and fill all its tributary streams; then, with prodigal reaction, sweeping forth again, leave only the vacant channels of the rivers—if they may be called ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... Lourdes miracles. Do you know it? Bouriette had been injured by an explosion during some blasting operations. The sight of his right eye was altogether destroyed, and he was even threatened with the loss of the left one. Well, one day he sent his daughter to fetch a bottleful of the muddy water of the source, which then scarcely bubbled up to the surface. He washed his eye with this muddy liquid, and prayed fervently. And, all at once, he raised a cry, for he could see, monsieur, see as well as you and I. The doctor who was attending ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... rill of Siloah. The sublime Siloah is now a muddy rill; you descend by steps to the fountain which is its source, and which is covered with an arch. Here the blind man received his sight; and, singular enough, to this very day the healing reputation of its waters prevails, and summons to its brink all those neighbouring Arabs who suffer from the ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... the undergrowth. In one the ugly snout of a small crocodile protruded from the muddy, noisome water, and the cold, unwinking eyes stared at elephant and man as they passed. The rank abundant foliage overhung the track and brushed or broke against Badshah's sides, as he ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... greatly improved and sometimes perfected by simply providing proper drainage for it. It is not sufficient to have ditches on each side of the road; for if the water stands in them it is liable to make the road muddy and to weaken its substratum. The ditches themselves should be thoroughly drained, and all the water which accumulates in them should be carried into the natural watercourses of the country, or at any rate beyond the ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... they were prepared to enjoy very much, a visit to such a lovely spot. Robert Hazlehurst, it is true, was indifferent to everything of the kind; he acknowledged himself a thorough utilitarian in taste, and avowed his preference for a muddy canal, running between fields, well covered with corn and pumpkins, turnips and potatoes, rather than the wildest lake, dotted with useless islands, and surrounded with inaccessible Alps; but as he frankly confessed his ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... others contended that the Covenant of the League of Nations was a "muddy, murky, and muddled document," so Mr. Williams of New York, in 1788, charged "ambiguity" against the proposed Constitution, saying that it was "absolutely impossible to know what we give up ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty

... consider a stone's resistance to abrasion, hardness, toughness, cementing value, absorption, and specific gravity. Limestone cements well, but in other qualities it is not desirable for heavy traffic. Shales are soft and clayey, and grind down to a mass which is dry and powdery, and muddy in wet weather. Basalt and related rocks resist abrasion, and cement well. Granites and other coarse-grained igneous rocks do not cement well and are not resistant to abrasion. Many sandstones are very hard and brittle and resist abrasion, but ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... white frocks, and told they might walk up and down the garden path till their mother joined them. "But don't go on the grass," she said, "or you may soil your frocks. It has been raining, and it is wet and muddy." For a short time they walked up and down the path as good as gold. Then Ada saw a frog hop away over the grass. She forgot her mother's command, and ran after it. The grass was slippery; she fell, and her clean frock was all smeared and spoilt ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre

... not be strictly true, but it well illustrates that there is always a lower depth in misfortune, and—that Western roads are often somewhat muddy.] ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger

... have found turn to leaves in their pocket. So up I walks, and bids 'em gie me a plate of beef and jack-pudding, and holds out my note for't. The maid—for 'twas a maid behind the counter—took it, and then she looks at it and then at me, for I were very wet and muddy; and then she carries it to the gaffer, and he shows it to his wife, who holds it up to the light, and then they all fall to talking, and showed it to a 'cise-man what was there marking ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... comical. It was a good month before he could see pudding taken away from table without a sigh of regret that he could not finish it as deputy for the Devonport household. The pranks of the little fellow, and his revel in a country life, and muddy wildness in it, amused Laetitia from morning to night. She, when she had caught him, taught him in the morning; Vernon, favoured by the chase, in the afternoon. Young Crossjay would have enlivened any household. He was not only indolent, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... unbroken. The swamp on either side of the road was filled with birds, who flew in and out and perched on the dry planks in the walks. An abandoned electric-car track, raised aloft on a high embankment, crossed the avenue. Here and there a useless hydrant thrust its head far above the muddy soil, sometimes out of the swamp itself. They had left the lake behind them, but the freshening evening breeze brought its damp breath ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... been the end of Bob Yancy when he was shot out into the muddy waters of the Elk River, had not Mr. Richard Keppel Cavendish, variously known as Long-Legged Dick, and Chills-and-Fever Cavendish, of Lincoln County, in the state of Tennessee, some months previously and after unprecedented mental ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... the rest of us, and often a little worse; because a common mind cannot properly digest such a discovery, nor ever know the true proportion of the great man's good and evil, nor how small a part of him it was that touched our muddy or dusty earth. Thence comes moral bewilderment, and even intellectual loss, in regard to what is best of him. When Shakespeare invoked a curse on the man who should stir his bones, he perhaps meant the larger share of it for him or them who should pry into his perishing earthliness, the defects ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the Missouri River—the Big Muddy—in North Dakota, almost within rifle shot of the town of Mandan, on the Northern Pacific Railroad, there existed in the '70s a military post named after the nation's great martyr President, Fort Abraham Lincoln. On the morning of ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... lost in Him. Nothing stops them, and no burdens are laid upon them. They rush on with a rapidity which alarms even the most confident. These torrents flow without order, here and there, wherever they can find a passage, having neither regular beds nor an orderly course. They sometimes become muddy by passing through ground which is not firm, and which they bear away with them by their rapidity. Sometimes they appear to be irrecoverably lost, then they reappear for a time, but it is only to precipitate themselves in another abyss, ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon

... a bad dream. It was cold and muddy, and the snow when it fell turned to mud so quickly that Guido believed they were one and the same. He did not dare to think of the place he know as home. And the sight of the colored advertisements of the steamship lines that hung in the windows of the Italian ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... dogs could laugh at human beings she would indignantly have repudiated any idea so fantastic, nevertheless, unanalysed and unconfronted, that was her conviction. The dog laughed at her, he insulted her by walking into her bedroom with his muddy feet and then pretending that he hadn't known that it was her bedroom, regarding her through his hair with an ironical and malicious glance, barking suddenly when she made some statement as though he enjoyed immensely an excellent joke, but, above ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole

... should decidedly say was much inferior to that of England, they are very fond of thick muddy back-grounds, their colouring partakes of the same dirty hue, there is generally a stiffness in the position, and much high finish without effect; there are certainly some exceptions to this rule, at the head of which is Madame Lezinska de Mirbel, whose miniatures ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... head and stern, and is fit for giving them any kind of repairs. The south side is formed by a low sandy neck, exceedingly narrow, on which the ostrog is built. The deepest water within is seven fathoms, and in every part over a muddy bottom. There is a watering-place at the head ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... came in sight of this basin and some of the estuaries and streams that run into it; that is, when the tide goes out; but they are only muddy ditches half the time. The Acadia College was pointed out to us at Wolfville by a person who said that it is a feeble institution, a remark we were sorry to hear of a place described as "one of the foremost seats of learning ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Commander might direct, and in 1915 a Brass-hat with a vast amount of knowledge and only a hundred buff slips or so to write it down on, is now Second in Command of his regiment. He tells me he is encamped with his little lot on the forward slope of a muddy and much pitted ravine. On the opposite slope are some nasty noisy guns, and at the bottom of the ravine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various

... whose achievements in eating and drinking at meals had seemed to him amazing. Almost all the middle-aged women in the hotel were too fat, and had lost their youth thereby, prematurely. Must the fairy herself—Euphrosyne—come to such a muddy vesture in the ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... clerks were marched out into the muddy street this morning in a cold rain, and stood there for hours, while the officers were making up their minds when to start for the boat to convey them to Drewry's Bluff, whence they are to march to Chaffin's Farm, provided the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... that we determined to push on to the Jordan. It was a hot, long ride, over a shadeless and barren plain; and when we came to the river papa declared himself very much disappointed. But I was not. Narrow and muddy as the stream was, it was also powerful in its rapid flood; no one could venture to bathe in it. The river was much swollen and had been yet more so; the tracks of wild animals which the floods had disturbed were everywhere to be seen. Papa and Mr. Dinwiddie reasoned ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... Norton's Abyssinian pumps, for which I had vainly applied at Cairo, would doubtless discover the prime necessary in the Wadys, many of the latter being still damp and muddy. Moreover, the crible continue grilles filtrantes, the invention of MM. Huet and Geyler, introduced, we are told, into the mechanical treatment of metals, a principle which greatly economizes fluid. Founded upon the fact that ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... arms I bounded over the muddy pathway; and just as I set down my little charge, the bundle slipped from her grasp, or rather its contents, leaving the empty paper in her hands, and an embroidered vest on the sidewalk. I picked ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... planet had weathered down to one great curving plain. It was mostly red sandstone, but here and there were reddish carpets of moss and grass. In the distance were a few gaunt trees. They had seen no rivers or seas before they landed. Odin learned later that there were many muddy ponds left upon the surface from the remains of stagnant seas. He also learned later that huge ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... command of the troops on the field, but from some cause seemed not to be able to combine his forces in such a manner as to bear effectually upon the lines of the enemy. One of the serious difficulties was getting artillery to the front. The roads had become very muddy from the rain during the night, and were blocked up with the immense multitude of wagons, so that artillery could not pass. Here was sadly exemplified the grand defect of ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... different, quite another thing; travelling in a coach. No putting on of mud boots when it is muddy. That I allow." And, in order to show how deep a respect he bore towards my presumptive office position, he drew his eyebrows up so high that his cap fell back ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... houses, a mill whose tall chimney and walls had been half destroyed by shells, but where one still read, in large black letters, these words, "Soap-maker to the Nobility;" and through this desolated country was a long and muddy road which led over to where the battle field lay, and in the midst of which, presenting a symbol of death, lay the dead body of ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee

... Pointe, round which the Mississippi used to whirl, and seethe, and foam, that it was horrid to behold. Big whirlpools would open and wheel about in the savage eddies under the low bank, and close up again, and others open, and spin, and disappear. Great circles of muddy surface would boil up from hundreds of feet below, and gloss over, and seem to float away,—sink, come back again under water, and with only a soft hiss surge up again, and again drift off, and vanish. Every few minutes ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... adhered to the fort, and in a short time I was receiving the hospitality of the inhabitants, who were grouped upon the sands near their hamlet. To quench the fires of my throat with about a gallon of muddy water, and to swallow a little of the food placed before me, was the work of few minutes, and before the astonishment of my hosts had even begun to subside, I was pursuing my onward journey. Suez, I found, was still ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... evening, when the hottest hours of the day are past, let us again take a boat and drift down slowly past the stone steps and jetties of Benares. Noiseless, muddy, and grey the sacred river streams along its bed. What quantities of reeking impurities there are in this water of salvation! Whole bundles of crushed and evil-smelling marigolds, refuse, rags and bits, bubbles and ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... gardens, the streets to-day all grass and gossip, as the scene of a local "season." She would have warrant for the assemblies, dinners, deep potations; for the smoked sconces in the dusky parlours; for the long muddy century of family coaches, "holsters," highwaymen. She would put a finger in short, just as he had done, on the vital spot—the rich humility of the whole thing, the fact that neither Flickerbridge in general ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James

... staring Through muddy impurity, As when with the daring Last look of despairing Fixed ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... came upon a strange spectacle,—a row of men with their backs to the trench-line, walking with extreme slowness and seriousness, in the most strict alignment, both as regards their front and the distances between them, across a piece of muddy pasture. The sun was just about to set, but the light was good and we could see in this row of intent backs that there was a subaltern in the middle and about eight or nine men on each side of him. In solemn silence they went on their way. I was just beginning to think within myself how very worthy ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... was so softened that, in spite of the light which fell on the ground, it was impossible to avoid the pools and muddy places. But the girl had become accustomed to the wet and the wading. Besides, the presence of her companion relieved her from the terrors with which the darkness and the solitude had tortured her. Instead of watching for new dangers, she listened while Valentin ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of her in a group, slack at the arms and shoulders, bent a little at the head, affronted for the first time with the full shame of our disaster. All my bright portents of the future seemed, as they flashed again before me, muddy in the hue, an unfaithful man's remembrance of his sins when they come before him at the bedside of his wife; the evasions of my friends revealed themselves what they were indeed, the shutting ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... sentiments, Frank went away, leaving his wife to wonder, as she had done more than once, if he, too, were not a little crazy, like his brother. But, she said no mare about Jerry's coming there, except to suggest that she might at least come in at the side door instead of the front, especially on muddy days when she was liable to soil the costly carpets. And Jerry, who cared but little how she entered the house, if she only got in, came through the kitchen after the second day, and wiped her feet upon the mat; and once, when her shoes were worse than usual, took them off, lest they should leave ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... out on an errand together moved by a mutual thought that it was the last opportunity they would have of indulging in unceremonious companionship. By the irony of fate, and the curious trick in Sue's nature of tempting Providence at critical times, she took his arm as they walked through the muddy street—a thing she had never done before in her life—and on turning the corner they found themselves close to a grey perpendicular church with a low-pitched roof—the church ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy

... moving onward towards life together. Later they reach sad, weary towns, black beneath a never-lifted pall of smoke, where day and night the clang of iron drowns all human voices, where the children play with ashes, where the men and women have dull, patient faces; and so on, muddy and stained, to the deep sea that ceaselessly calls to them. Here, however, their waters are fresh and clear, and their passing makes the only stir that the valley has ever known. Surely, of all peaceful places, this was the one where a tired ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... office, gazing dejectedly at the store across the street. He knew that his master had gone to St. Johns and would go to Stacey. He had been told all about that, and had followed Shoop to the automobile stage, where it stood, sand-scarred, muddy, and ragged as to tires, in front of the post-office. Bondsman had watched the driver rope the lean mail bags to the running-board, crank up the sturdy old road warrior of the desert, and step in beside the supervisor. There had been no other ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... the British, Le Glaxo's only excitement is the arrival of its one train per day. Ignoring the sensation caused by the detraining of four persons simultaneously, Percival led his party along a muddy rough lane. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various

... made a rise—out of 'spuds', of all the things in the world. It was Mary's idea. Down at the lower end of our selection—Mary called it 'the run'—was a shallow watercourse called Snake's Creek, dry most of the year, except for a muddy water-hole or two; and, just above the junction, where it ran into Lahey's Creek, was a low piece of good black-soil flat, on our side—about three acres. The flat was fairly clear when I came to the selection—save for a few logs that had been washed ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... intensely, immemorially African, flat-roofed, white-walled; the mules waiting outside in the wet might have been drooping there ever since the going down of the Flood, from which the river could have got its muddy yellow. ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... you, I'm all right," I answered, half inclined to laugh at Brooks scrambling up from the pavement and brushing himself, for it was a wet, slimy day and the pavements muddy. The newspaper ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties

... into saddle as fresh as if they had been sound asleep all night; to keep up with the pack the whole day in a fast burst or on a cold scent, or in whatever sport Fortune and the coverts gave them, till their second horses wound their way homeward through muddy, leafless lanes, when ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... twilight through the Northern suburb. The morning was sharp and cold, and the roads, which had been muddy and cut up the day before, were frozen terribly hard and rough. Our fellow-passengers were two Swedes, an unprepossessing young fellow who spoke a few words of English, and a silent old gentleman; we did not ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... as she scrambled to her feet. Her shoes and stockings were wet and muddy, her pretty blue linen dress was torn, and now she realized that her hat was gone, that she must have lost it in pushing her way through the undergrowth; but these things seemed of small consequence to Winifred just then; for the pony, with his forefeet planted firmly in the shallow water, ...
— A Little Maid of Old Philadelphia • Alice Turner Curtis

... them as shapes floating by in a dream, blurred and inconsequent. But between himself and the train, more clearly outlined to his gaze, he saw the worn face of his father tossed on the cold, dark waters, being swept down by the stream, the weak old hands clutching for some support in the muddy current, the white head with the chin held up sinking lower at each failure, then at last going under, gulping, to leave a little row of bubbles down ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... Nebi-Yunus, on which stood the palaces of the Sargonides, were so skilfully fortified that a single wall connecting the two sufficed to ward off all danger of attack on this side. The south wall, which was the shortest of the four, being only about 870 yards in length, was rendered inaccessible by a muddy stream, while the north wall, some 2150 yards long, was protected by a wide moat which could be filled from the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... man spoke, in towns and cities or country, for weeks the air was heavy with the smoke of rhetoric, and reasons, soggy and solid, and fuzzy logic and muddy proof were dragged like ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... great river. One of his officers tells us that the river was so wide at this point that if a man on the other side stood still, it could not be known whether he were a man or not; that the river was of great depth, and of a strong current; and that the water was always muddy. ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... tweed suit, carrying brown-paper parcels. That is what we met suddenly, at the bend of a muddy Dorsetshire lane, and the roan mare stared and obviously thought of a curtsey. The mare is road-shy, with intervals of stolidity, and there is no telling what she will pass and what she won't. We call her Redford. That was my first meeting with Judkin, and the ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)

... narrow isthmus of half-dried mud traversed the morass, and along this Mr. Draper proceeded to pick his way. The sergeant was about to follow, when suddenly he stopped short with his eyes riveted upon the muddy track. A single glance showed me the cause of his surprise, for on the stiff, putty-like surface, standing out with the sharp distinctness of a wax mould, were the fresh footprints of the man who had ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman

... borrowed tennis racquet out in the rain; who "dog ears" the books, leaves a cigarette on the edge of a table and burns a trench in its edge, who uses towels for boot rags, who stands a wet glass on polished wood, who tracks muddy shoes into the house, and leaves his room looking as though it had been through a cyclone. Nor are men the only offenders. Young women have been known to commit every one of these offenses and the additional one of bringing a pet dog ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post

... run of two hours, during which we examined the banks carefully in order to find a landing place, we lay to at the best possible place for seeing what the lower fauna had to offer. It was no easy matter to get to land. The ground was so muddy that we sank to the knees, and could make our way through the wood only by walking on an intermediate layer of palm leaves and fallen branches. The search for evertebrates did not yield very much. A half-score mollusca, among ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... like a statue in plaster of Paris, the surgeons decided, to the joy of his family, that the more serious injuries would be better recovered from in the fresh air of Vale Leston, than in the fishy, muddy ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... that's in us—that charming, conversible, infinite thing, the intensest thing we know. But you must treat the oracle civilly if you wish to make it speak. You mustn't stride into the temple in muddy jack-boots and with your hat on your head, as the Puritan troopers tramped into the dear old abbeys. One must do one's best to find out the right, and your criminality appears to be that you've not taken the ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... practical enough and now have used my allotted time and space. It may not be wholly out of place to further tax your time and patience, and ask you to lift your eyes from taking a critical view of defective drains, muddy ditches, and unattractive detail work, and look at the result of careful and thorough labor. As the years come and go with their changing seasons, your drained fields are ever your friends, always cheering you with a bountiful harvest, always answering ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... if meal it could be called, and was making some attempt at a toilet. While one serf knelt beside him, scrubbing at his muddy riding-boots with a wisp of wet grass, another held a gilt shield up for a mirror, and before this the Etheling was carefully parting his shining hair. His captive's eyes were not the only ones upon him, and the bright metal showed that he was laughing a little at ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... heard of him in the very hour of his downfall, during one of those State trials which astonish and puzzle the average plain man who reads the newspapers, by a glimpse of unsuspected intrigues. And in the stir of vaguely seen monstrosities, in that momentary, mysterious disturbance of muddy waters, Councillor Mikulin went under, dignified, with only a calm, emphatic protest of his innocence—nothing more. No disclosures damaging to a harassed autocracy, complete fidelity to the secrets of the miserable ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... reek of a pungent tobacco emerged an unsavoury smell of something which was not fuel, burning. Scattered about the red-brick floor were black feathers without number, and here and there amid the plumage appeared the muddy print of feet. Perched upon the logs was a pot bubbling, and by the side of the hearth an old pair of boots emitted wisps of steam. Lyveden himself was nowhere to ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... equally those selfish and partisan groups at home who wrap themselves in a false mantle of Americanism to promote their own economic, financial or political advantage, are now trying European tricks upon us, seeking to muddy the stream of our national thinking, weakening us in the face of danger, by trying to set our own people to fighting among themselves. Such tactics are what have helped to plunge Europe into war. We must combat ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt

... Lord Mayor's show, and no man in brass armour to look at. The rioters assembled outside No. 62, Fleet Street, were there harangued by some dirty-faced demagogue, and then marched westward. At Temple Bar the zealous new "Peelers" slammed the old muddy gates, to stop the threatening mob; but the City Marshal, red in the face at this breach of City privilege, re-opened them, and the mob roared approval from a thousand distorted mouths. The more pugnacious reformers now broke the scaffolding at the Law Institute into dangerous cudgels, and some 300 ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... to me that I ought to pay a good many visits in order to make new acquaintances, and to renew former ones. This is, however, impossible, from the distances being so great, and it is too muddy to go on foot, for really the mud in Paris is beyond all description. To go in a carriage entails spending four or five livres a day, and all for nothing; it is true the people say all kinds of civil things, ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... approaching to flesh meat. Of all sea and river fish, those are the best which live in rocky places. Next to these, in gravelly or sandy places, in sweet, clear, running water, where there is nothing offensive. Those which live in pools, muddy lakes, marshes, or stagnant water, are bad. Whether sea or river fish, those are the best which are not too large, whose flesh is not hard and dry, but crisp and tender; which taste and smell well, and have many ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... narrow associations had rendered it incapable of conveying sense to them on matters foreign to their habits. When used on a subject to which they were quite unaccustomed, it became like a stream which, though one and the same current, flows clear on the one side, and muddy (as we sometimes see for a space) on the other; and to them it was clear only at their own edge. And if thus even the plain popular language turned dark on their understandings when employed in explanation of religion, it is easy to imagine what had been the success of a more peculiarly theological ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... had, of course, her moments of despair about Eve. But these were mostly confined to that despairing period when most girls are nothing but arms and wrists and gawkiness and shyness; when their clear, bright complexions turn muddy, and they want to enter convents. Eve at this period in her life was unusually trying and nondescript. She announced that if she ever married it would be for love alone, but that she did not intend to marry. She would train to be a cholera ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... Tiber. So called by the ancients because of the yellowish, muddy appearance of its waters. [178] 21. Strange unloved uproar. At the time this poem was written,—1849,—the French army ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... concerning them), it shall not avail us to sit still and await their onset. For then may they not be withstood, when they have gathered head and burst out and over the folk that have been happy, even as the waters that overtop a dyke and cover with their muddy ruin the deep green grass and the flower-buds of spring. Therefore my rede is, as soon as may be to go seek these folk in the woodland and wheresoever else they may be wandering. ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... can be reported. He suggested that there might be men of genius in the lowest grades of life, however permanently humble and illiterate, who take their own view always, or do not pretend to see at all; who are as bottomless even as Walden Pond was thought to be, though they may be dark and muddy. ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... are lonesome and dreary, O! Muddy are the streams that gush'd down sae clearly, O! Silent are the rocks that echoed sae gladly, O! The wild melting strains o' my dear ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... stung and dulled my brain, a state Acute and slumbrous. It grew late. We stopped, a house stood silent, dark. The old man scratched a match, the spark Lit up the keyhole of a door, We entered straight upon a floor White with finest powdered sand Carefully sifted, one might stand Muddy and dripping, and yet no trace Would stain the boards of this kitchen-place. From the chimney, red eyes sparked the gloom, And a cricket's chirp filled all the room. My host threw pine-cones on ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... any wider than was necessary, giving him but poor encouragement in the way of farms and clearings. In short, I left on his mind some such opinion of this country, as a man gets of a spring of dirty water, with a path to it that is so muddy that one mires afore he sets out. He told me they hadn't got the spot down yet on their maps, though I conclude that is a mistake, for he showed me his parchment, and there is a lake down on it, where there is no lake in fact, and which is about fifty miles ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... we were able to get an idea of the country on either bank of the muddy river; it was low and marshy, every acre being planted in rice. Occasionally, on a slight elevation, would be seen a pagoda-shaped temple, standing lonely among the rice fields, where doubtless it ...
— Wanderings in the Orient • Albert M. Reese

... the twopenny bus as it drew up, she gathered her trim tailor-made skirt about her with neatness and decorum, being well used to getting in and out of twopenny buses and to making her way across muddy London streets. A woman whose tailor-made suit must last two or three years soon learns how to protect it from splashes, and how to aid it to retain the freshness of its folds. During her trudging about this morning in the wet, Emily Fox-Seton had been very careful, ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... stunned. "Footmarks!" he thought. "Had Tierney been so clumsy and careless as to enter the flat with muddy shoes?" Something had to be done to cover an awkward pause, and give him a chance to gather his wits, so Morgan took out the package of cigarettes. After helping himself to one, he tossed the package to Marsh. Morgan noted with satisfaction that the man took one ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne

... pours and pours; And swift and wide, With a muddy tide, Like a river down the gutter roars The rain, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... creature who had fallen into the ditch in trying to escape, for which he rewarded me by destroying my coat with his muddy paws in clinging to me. I started soon after the attack for Cholin, and got there on the 18th. The rebels had made a sortie since my departure, and had got into a pretty mess. Willes let them come up and then advanced on them; over sixty were killed, and several taken ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... fervent lover, whom I had the right to call my friend. Turn back the century a few decades, and we are together on a moonlight night, taking a short cut through the fields from the farm of Craigiebuckle. Buxom were Craigiebuckle's "dochters," and Jamie was Janet's accepted suitor. It was a muddy road through damp grass, and we picked our way silently over its ruts and pools. "I'm thinkin'," Jamie said at last, a little wistfully, "that I micht hae been as weel wi' Chirsty." Chirsty was Janet's sister, and Jamie had first thought of her. Craigiebuckle, ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... of the river mouth, on the starboard side of the yacht, it ran far up inside the island, and its waters were here distinctly sea-green, owing to the channels beyond the island. Where the yacht was, however, and to the south, the water was of a muddy brown color, proving that the river-current tended to empty toward the southward instead of diverging ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney

... was fishing in the brook; but the water kept getting muddy, and he did not know what was the matter. Then he went away, and he walked and walked. After he had gone some distance, he saw in the mud a big lion [131] that eats people. The Lion had been sleeping in the mud. He said to the man, "If you'll pull me out of the mud and ride me to my town, ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,

... had strolled to a bleak and cheerless part of the cliff above Aldeburgh, called The Marsh Hill, brooding as he went over the humiliating necessities of his condition, and plucking every now and then, I have no doubt, the hundredth specimen of some common weed. He stopped opposite a shallow, muddy piece of water, as desolate and gloomy as his own mind, called the Leech-pond, and 'it was while I gazed on it,' he said to my brother and me, one happy morning, 'that I determined to go ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger

... of the white man, and moving rapidly across the field of flax, dived into the forest again. Following the stream in its windings they came to where it debouched into a wide and muddy creek, which, in its turn, flowed into an expanse of water that lay like molten silver ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... rallied all her strength, and pausing a moment to shift the weight of her baby to the other arm, once more set off through the night. A little while later she found on the edge of the sidewalk the peeling of a banana. It had been trodden upon and it was muddy, but ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... as it could not run out or soak down through the clay. Bunny and Sue were allowed to go to the clay-pond because it was not deep, and not far away. But Mrs. Brown always told them to be careful not to slip down in the wet and sticky clay or muddy water. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope

... state of things began to change, and a worse one to succeed it; for now the snow came thundering down from roof, and rock, and ivied tree, and floods began to roar and foam in every trough and gulley. The drifts that had been so white and fair, looked yellow, and smirched, and muddy, and lost their graceful curves, and moulded lines, and airiness. But the strangest sight of all to me was in the bed of streams, and brooks, and especially of the Lynn river. It was worth going miles to behold such a thing, for a man might ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... people, to ignore libraries and village halls, and shriek for the right to get over a certain stile, or go down a muddy path that leads ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... there some blotches of red. I may tell you, however, that the lightning-eels change colour same as some of the lizards; partly according to their age, but as much from the sort of water they're found in—whether it be a clear running stream, or a muddy stagnant pond, such as the one Senor Cypriano has spoken of. Besides, there are several kinds of them, as we gauchos know; though, I believe, the naturalutas are not aware of the fact. The most ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... Nicaragua, in Central America, the imprints of human feet have been found, deeply buried over twenty feet below the present surface of the soil, under repeated deposits of volcanic rock. These impressions must have been made in soft muddy soil which was then covered by some geological convulsion occurring long ages ago. Even more striking discoveries have been made along the Pacific coast of South America. Near the mouth of the Esmeraldas river in Ecuador, over a stretch of some sixty ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock

... walking, and that is no trifle, especially under a heavy burden, or in slippery weather. In the second place, it may be said to be often cheaper than dirt, seeing that the soil and injury to clothing which it saves by avoiding a two miles' scamper through the muddy ways, would damage the purse of a decent man more than would the cost of several journeys. These are considerations which the humbler classes appreciate, and therefore they flock to the cheap boats, and spend their halfpence ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various

... I went down again at daybreak and sank a narrow hole in the center about two feet deep. The perspiration broke over me with uncontrollable excitement, and I trembled through every limb, when the water rushed up and began to fill the hole. Muddy though it was, I eagerly tasted it, lapping it with my trembling hand, and then I almost fell upon my knees in that muddy bottom as my heart burst up in praise to the Lord. It was water! It was fresh water. It was living water from Jehovah's well! True, it was a little brackish, ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... haversack, and was fumbling in it with unsteady hands. At last he found that which he sought. It was wrapped in a silk scarf that must have come from Cashmere to Moscow, and from Moscow in his haversack with pieces of horseflesh and muddy roots to Dantzig. With that awkwardness in giving and taking which belongs to his class, he held out to Desiree a little square "ikon" no bigger than a playing-card. It was of gold, set with diamonds, and the faces of the Virgin and Child ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman

... they were. We had to quarter, as Randal called it, nearly all the way along the deep- rutted, miry lanes; and the tremendous jolts I occasionally met with made my seat in the gig so unsteady that I could not look about me at all, I was so much occupied in holding on. The road was too muddy for me to walk without dirtying myself more than I liked to do, just before my first sight of my Lady Ludlow. But by-and-by, when we came to the fields in which the lane ended, I begged Randal to help me ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... and easily leap into the deep water. At a point near the middle of the river a great mass of drift-logs and sand had long ago formed a barrier which split the stream so that one current came heavily shoreward on the side next the town and swashed with its muddy foam, making a swirl and eddy just below where ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... sinks into one kind of apoplexy, and perishes. Many symptoms, which attend inirritative fevers, accompany this disease, as cold hands and feet at periodic times, scurf on the tongue, want of appetite, muddy urine, with pains of the head, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... you! . . . You posed as a flawless crystal, my muddy amber!" called one of the company, a fleshless individual with habitually contorted lips that seemed to spew ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... a couple of streets' lengths before he inquired the way to Granville Road. When at last he found that thoroughfare, in a new and muddy suburb, crowded with brick-heaps and half-finished streets, he took a slow walk along its entire length. It was a melancholy example of baffled enterprise. A row of a dozen or more shops had been built before any population had arrived to demand ...
— Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... the spot where the body of the unfortunate girl had been discovered, Garrick began a minute search. I do not think for a moment that he expected to find any weapon, or even the trace of one. It seemed hopeless also to attempt to pick out any of the footprints. The earth was soft and even muddy, but so many feet had trodden it down since the first alarm had been given that it would have been impossible to extricate one set of footprints from another, much less to tell whether any of them had been made by the perpetrators ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... and curiosity of ignorance, that out of a natural inclination to error will tempt its own punishment and help to abuse itself. He can put on as many shapes as the devil that set him on work, is one that fishes in muddy understandings, and will tickle a trout in his own element till he has him in his clutches, and after in his dish or the market. He runs down none but those which he is certain are fera natura, mere natural animals, that belong to him that can catch them. He can do ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... between that place and Wright's Creek, is neither so well grassed nor watered as that to the south of the Swamp; the land falls considerably as far as Cangapundy, and a great extent of it is subject to inundation. Nearly all the water met with was thick and muddy: it was met with in small clay pans, most of which would probably be dry in three weeks. This applies to all the places at which we found water, with the exception of Cannilta, Cangapundy, —and the four waterholes to ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... order and constructive art as might be expected from the webbed feet and clumsy bill of these birds, the latter better adapted for seizing fish than for forming a delicate nest. The long-legged, broad-billed flamingo, who is continually stalking over muddy flats in search of food, heaps up the mud into a conical stool, on the top of which it lays its eggs. The bird can thus sit upon them conveniently, and they are kept dry, out of ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace

... still within sound of the bleating killdeers when a rather large, greenish-gray bird flapped heavily but noiselessly from a muddy spot in the grass to the top of a stake and faced me. Here was a child of the marsh. Its bolt-upright attitude spoke the watcher in the grass; then as it stretched its neck toward me, bringing its body parallel to the ground, how the shape of the skulker showed! This ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... the great Colorado of canon celebrity in the north to another far south, which cuts a deep groove through the plains of Patagonia. All these streams have been so designated from the hue of their waters—muddy, with a pronounced tinge of red: this from the ochreous earth through which they have coursed, holding ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... Perhaps his faithful dog watches him, and runs about quite pleased to be going for a walk, even if it is in the middle of the night. Then the man starts off on his long, slow journey into London. Mile after mile over muddy or dusty roads, through villages where everyone is asleep, where not even a dog barks, on and on to London. It may be very cold, and the horse only goes slowly, so it cannot be very comfortable; but this is the man's work, and he must do it. Perhaps ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... look at his cows. In the spring and summer he drove them out to pasture, but during the winter they stood all the time in the dirty, dark stable, where the chinks in the wall were so big that the snow swept through almost in drifts. The ground was always muddy and wet; there was only one small window on the north side, where the sun only shone in for a short ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... mother and the daughter had followed the hearse; the Major, Tom and big Jim Taylor were driven in the family carriage. Louise was to go back to the desolate house. The Major stoutly opposed this, pleaded with her after she had seated herself in the buggy, clutched the spoke of a muddy wheel as if he would hold her back. She took the lines from her mother, tossed them upon the horse, folded her arms, ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... lived at New Wimpole, and used to come by the avenue to the 'Big House,' as it was always called, to measure us. These substantial thick boots and leather gaiters from the village shop, with short linsey skirts, formed our walking attire. And in the Christmas holiday we all tore about the muddy fields in 'paper-chases.' ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... every side of the town was approached through an avenue of limes or poplars. But in winter the sodden landscape was desolate beyond belief, these roads presenting just that aspect of a current of slime in a muddy sea which they suggested to the lonely horseman on the eve of Waterloo in that little classic of De Vigny's known to ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... Sauval, the singular historian of the "Antiquities of Paris," to the middle of the seventeenth century, preserved this generic name par excellence, and which exists to this day (Fig. 379). He says, "It is a place of considerable size, and is in an unhealthy, muddy, and irregular blind alley. Formerly it was situated on the outskirts of Paris, now it is in one of the worst built, dirtiest, and most out-of-the-way quarters of the town, between the Rue Montorgueil, the convent of the Filles-Dieu, and ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... there was often no better shelter than an old tarpaulin or sheet of corrugated iron stretched across the trench. At some 'posts' there was nothing better to sit on than the muddy 'fire-step' or at best half a duckboard or an old bomb box. Despite continuous efforts to keep one dry place to stand, the floor was several inches ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose

... how the young fop would look sitting in a pool of muddy water. How insufferable the young fellow's manners were! He sat quite close to Maimie, now and then whispering to her, evidently quite ignorant of how to behave in church. And Maimie, who ought to know better, was acting most disgracefully ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... over the wheel—and in spite of his care the rear wheels would slew gently from side to side. As she peered ahead she could see a yellow flood of water rushing down the road before them so that it did not look like a road at all but like an angry, muddy stream upon which they were floating. Once Claybrook leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. He had been as silent ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... the captives spent the night, rolled in blankets. It was cool without a campfire, but none was allowed them. Sore, stiff and disheartened, Rosemary and Floyd arose soon after the sun was up, and made a pretense at breakfast. They were given some tin cups of black, bitter and muddy coffee, without sugar, but ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker

... a long black, muddy-looking snout glided out of the water, followed by the head, shoulders and back of a hideous lizard-like creature, which glided over the carcass of the jaguar and disappeared, followed directly by ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... enough; and there they have altered their posture overnight (for Traun too has been awake); they lie now opposite our RIGHT flank; 'on a scarped height, at the foot of which, through swamps and quagmires, runs a muddy stream.' Unattackable on this side: their right flank and foot are safe enough. Creep round and see their left:—Nothing but copses, swampy intricacies! We may shoulder arms again, and go back to Konopischt: no fight here! [OEuvres de Frederic, iii. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... seemed to be lifted by it far into the sky, held, rocked, then dropped gently. I woke to find myself standing up in the trench, my hands to my ears. I was aware first that the sky had changed from blue into a muddy grey, then that dust and an ugly smell were in my eyes, my mouth, my nose. I remembered that I repeated stupidly, again and again: "What? what? what?" Then the grey sky slowly fell away as though it were pushed by some hand and I saw the faint evening blue, with (so strange and unreal they seemed) ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... back. Tom Swift was at his heels now, and seeing that it was impossible to grab the man, Tom did the next best thing. He stuck out his foot and tripped him, and tripped him right on the edge of the mud hole, so that the man fell in with a big splash, the muddy water flying all around, some ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton

... muddy water, too, The long-billed gentleman fishes; Our pious gentlemen we view Fingering ...
— Faust • Goethe

... his wife's wardrobe. Then after slipping his braces off his shoulders he pulled up violently the venetian blind, and leaned his forehead against the cold window-pane—a fragile film of glass stretched between him and the enormity of cold, black, wet, muddy, inhospitable accumulation of bricks, slates, and stones, things in themselves unlovely ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... writing, the avalanche that swept away the bridge last winter is lying now, dripping away, dank and dirty, like a rotting whale. I can see it from my window, green beech-boughs nodding over it, forlorn larches bending their tattered branches by its side, splinters of broken pine protruding from its muddy caves, the boulders on its flank, and the hoarse hungry torrent tossing up its tongues to lick the ragged edge of snow. Close by, the meadows, spangled with yellow flowers and red and blue, look even more ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... but little pains to remove the earth-stains, one's garments gradually acquire, even when clean, a uniform bordering of dingy red. All the water at this time of year is red too, as the rivers are stirred up by the heavy summer rains, and resemble angry muddy ditches more than fresh-water streams. I miss at every turn the abundance of clear, clean, sparkling water in the creeks and rivers of my dear New Zealand, and it is only after heavy rain, when every bath and large vessel has been turned into a receptacle during the downpour, that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... given in the Memoirs of the Duke of Rovigo, the carriage of Pius VII. stopped, and the pontiff in his white robes got out by the left-hand door. The road was muddy, and he was averse to stepping into it with his white silk slippers; but there was nothing to be done. Napoleon got off his horse to receive him, and sprang cordially into his arms. These two famous men, who, although they were entire strangers, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... him, his lips stuck together, the facial muscles refusing their office. He dropped his hands to his sides and stared into the glass, noting the ghastly pallor that had come over his face—the dull, whitish yellow of muddy marble. He could not turn, his legs were quivering. He knew it was conscience—only that. And yet Corrigan's ominous silence continued. And now he caught his breath with a shuddering gasp, for he saw Corrigan's face reflected in the glass, looking ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Maluka's hopes always died hard. "There's still the Government yacht," he said, going to a huge iron punt that lay far above high-water mark. Mac called it a forlorn hope, and it looked it, as it lay deeply sunk in the muddy bank. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... passengers and goods between Granada and San Carlos, at the head of the river San Juan. We arrived at San Ubaldo at two o'clock, and found our mules safe but foot-sore, through travelling over the rocky hills from Santo Claro. The San Jose plains were in a dreadfully muddy state, and for five miles we went plunging through the swamps. Most of the mules fell several times, and we had great difficulty in getting them up again. We passed two travellers with their mules up to their girths in mud, and incapable of ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... him, stirring in him a forgotten world of old ideas and perfumes; while the two women prattled and displayed their gowns, he had drawn near the window and had seen, through the dusty panes, the muddy street sprawling before him, and had heard the repeated sounds of galoches over the puddles of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... many as you want," said he, "but I've got a lot to do this afternoon. There is the phaeton to be washed, that I don't want the doctor to come home and find muddy yet; and I ought to have done it this morning, madam, when I was walking about the garden with you, a tellin' you what I had and a hearin' what ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton

... opera house in the muddy street Jack goes home to his third floor back, or his chambers in the Albany, according to his caste, and wonders when the time will come when he will be able to support a wife. And Jill climbs on a penny 'bus, or steps into the family brougham, and dreams with regret of a lost garden, where ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... indulging in the sport, for the long and narrow strip of ice remaining was quite black with figures. At the end of the bridge Jerry decided to take the river path, for a glance at his shoes and stockings convinced him that it was no longer necessary to consider them; they were already as wet and muddy as it was possible for them to be. He felt rather more cheerful after his tramp, and told himself that if there was time he would run up to the room, leave his purchases, get his skates, and join the group on the ice. By the time he had covered half ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... which comes into his head, which thought is not lyrical enough in itself to exhale in a more lyrical measure? The difficulty of the sonnet metre in English is a good excuse for the dull didactic thoughts which naturally incline towards it: fellows know there is no danger of decanting their muddy stuff ever so slowly: they are neither prose nor poetry. I have rather a wish to tie old Wordsworth's volume about his neck and pitch him into one of the deepest holes ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... and pickerel; in another place a swifter and profounder current conceals the great sturgeon and lion-like maskinonge; while among certain shallower, less active corners, the bottom is clothed with muddy cat fish. ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... which he said was getting lonesome. This pleased Dick and the boys spent half a day finding an inhabited cave, when they secured its occupant with no trouble excepting that, as the alligator came out of his hole, Dick slipped on the muddy turf and was dragged into the pond. The 'gator was soon brought out on the prairie and its jaws tied. It was larger than the one first captured, and Dick didn't try to carry it on his back, but led and dragged ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... where the posters bearing his name and those of his friends, half-demolished by the rain, flapped dismally in the wind. Before the mayor's office, little groups were gathered, peaceful folk; a gendarme paced slowly to and fro, and bulletins littered the muddy thoroughfare. But there was no excitement. Nothing more. Not even a quickened pulse-beat was felt by those stolid men upon whose votes depended the fate of the nation. Sulpice could not help marvelling at so much indifference, but he ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... "Monseigneur's" carriage, the cure and chief dignitaries of the town, accompanied by a brass band, a detachment of firemen, and a small regiment of women—decked in hoods of blue or red or white—passed down the muddy street, bearing banners, and a gilded canopy with white plumes. In a few moments they returned, the band playing, the banners waving, the abbes and choir singing, and in the centre of the throng, with two cures in front of him under ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... come playin' the 'anky with us, same as they used to! It's Nice Mister Working-man This and Nice Mister Working-man That, will yer be so 'ighly hobliging as to 'and over your dear little voting-paper—you poor, sweet, muddy-nosed old Idiot, as can't spot your natural enemy when yer see 'im! That orter mek some on 'em ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy

... the hearts of his countrymen. But he saw that in the home of Haskalah, the Biur, and the Meassefim, apostasy increased, Hebrew was almost forgotten, and Judaism was declining, and he blamed the pellucid water at the source of the stream for the muddy pool at its mouth. Mendelssohn, however, lacked no defenders among his Russo-Jewish coreligionists, and their sentiments were voiced by Abraham Baer Gottlober in an opposition periodical, The Light of Day (Ha-Boker Or, Lublin, 1876). "Why," exclaimed the editor, "were it not for him and his ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... to the water's edge. Where Juliet sat there was a muddy bit of gravel shelving to the river. She did not know what made this break in the bank. It had been formed by cows and horses coming down to drink. In the field there were now no animals; had there been she would have hesitated about remaining in it. ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison

... in the mouth, or rather at the eastern end of the mouth, of a long and wide depression among the hills, through which a sluggish river wins its muddy consummation. This river once went far along the sea-brink, without entering (like a child who is afraid to bathe), as the Adur does at Shoreham, and as many other rivers do. And in those days the mouth and harbor were under the cliff at ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore



Words linked to "Muddy" :   confuse, marshy, muddied, sloughy, boggy, dirty, begrime, murky, obnubilate, colly, obscure, squashy, muddy up, dingy, wet, cloudy, impure, miry, soil, opaque, unclean



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com