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Scratch   Listen
verb
Scratch  v. i.  
1.
To use the claws or nails in tearing or in digging; to make scratches. "Dull, tame things,... that will neither bite nor scratch."
2.
(Billiards) To score, not by skillful play but by some fortunate chance of the game. (Cant, U. S.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Scratch" Quotes from Famous Books



... During my ministry I have published about 3,200 of these articles. Many of them have been gathered into books, many of them translated into Swedish, Spanish, Dutch, and other foreign tongues. They have made the scratch of a very humble pen audible to Christendom. The consecrated pen may be more powerful than the consecrated tongue. I devoutly thank God for having condescended to use my humble pen to the spread of his Gospel; and I purpose with His help to spend much ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... of the thicket and lay there close to the car. He was still panting. That glimpse full into the boy's face had almost undone him. He was hungry for food, and hungry for human companionship. He wanted to go to the car, to rear up on the side to scratch at the curtains. But yonder, a hundred feet away, back and forth before a fire they had built, moved the men. And against the box they had taken from the car leaned ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... all you want.' And making an extra scratch with a pencil, the female model surveyed the new-comers with a triumphant air, plainly saying: 'See there! I can write, but I ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various

... himself received a dangerous hurt under the right arm, in consequence of which his friends insisted on his remaining in camp during the action of the next day, but his spirit was too great to comply with this remonstrance. He declared it should never be said that a scratch, received in a private rencounter, had prevented him from doing his duty, when his country required his service; and he took the field with a fusil in his hand, though he was hardly able to carry his arms. In leading up his men to the enemy's intrenchment, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... Ghadamsee people present approved this way of going, and admired its wisdom, as removing all temptation to attack me, or to steal anything from me when I had nothing to steal. But the Touarick could not come up to the scratch, and was frightened to take upon himself the responsibility, observing, "You are a Christian; the people of Timbuctoo will kill you unless you confess Mahomet to ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... the occasional privilege of criticising, and a principal share in consuming, the good things which the common entertainment afforded. We have only to sum up this brief account of the learned Doctor, by informing the reader that he was a tall, lean, beetle-browed man, with an ill-made black scratch-wig, that stared out on either side from his lantern jaws. He resided nine months out of the twelve at St. Ronan's, and was supposed to make an indifferent good thing of it,—especially as he played ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... folks' souls, but never rescue their pore broken bodies. When you tell him you are the slave of a rich man like Judge Custis, he'll jump at the chance to do the Judge a favor, an' tell you that you do right to go back to your master. That's whair he's a liar, Mary—so he'll scratch your lie off." ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... had plenty of money, and determined to have another spell on shore, that I might get rid of it. Then I picked up Sue, and spliced again; but, Lord bless your heart, she turned out a regular-built Tartar—nothing but fight fight, scratch scratch, all day long, till I wished her at old Scratch. I was tired of her, and Sue had taken a fancy to another chap; so says she one day, "As we both be of the same mind, why don't you sell me, and then we may part in a respectable manner." ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... dugout," said Tom. "We're going back to work again after I've bandaged Jack's finger, for he gave it an ugly scratch when handling the gun, he doesn't himself know just how. Can we do anything further ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... in the spaces on the sheet, any names I pleased, writing but one name in each space. All the names were to be of living or fictitious persons except one, this one to be the name of some one I had known who was then dead. He said, "Be fair with me, and I will scratch out the dead person's name." These were his exact words, therefore I in no way tried to hide my writing from him, although he stood at a distance and did not appear to watch me. I took a pencil and began writing the names; being unprepared I had to think of the names I wished to ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... stuck the letter into a cleft forty feet from the ground, where it could do no harm. Warmed, sore, but happy, the ten returned to Jan Chinn next day, where he sat among uneasy Bhils, all looking at their right arms, and all bound under terror of their god's disfavour not to scratch. ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... "contrapshun," till at last he butts with his head, and that sticks too, whereupon Brer Fox, who all this time had "lain low," saunters out, and complains of Brer Rabbit that he is too stuck up. In the sequel Brer Rabbits begs Brer Fox that he may "drown me as deep ez you please, skin me, scratch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by the roots, en cut off my legs, but do don't fling me in dat brier patch;" which, of course, Brer Fox does, only to be informed by the cunning Brer Rabbit that he had been "bred en bawn in a brier patch." The story is a favourite one with the negroes: it ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Collected by Joseph Jacobs

... a white feather, a stone bead, and a piece of shell in her hair, for four days after the performance, abstaining during that time from flesh and from food containing salt, being careful, too, not to scratch herself with her fingers. At the end of this period she bathes, dons her usual clothing, and partakes of the ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis

... for that?" Belle blazed, before Garlock could begin to search his mind. "I'd scratch anybody's eyes out—if you'd thought of that idea as a woman instead of as a near-Ph.D. in anthropology you'd've thrown it into the converter before ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... years of age burnt for a Jew. She was taken from her mother as soon as she was born, in prison, her mother being condemned, and brought up in the Esperanca; although she never heard, as they did to me affirm, what a Jew was, she did daily scratch and whip the crucifixes, and run pins into them in private; and when discovered confessed it, and said she ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... rubber used should not be of a harsh grade, since that will roughen the face of the paper and probably cause the ink to run. The less rubbing out the better the learner will progress, and the more satisfaction he will receive from the results. If it becomes necessary to scratch out it is best done with a penknife well sharpened, and not applied too forcibly to the paper but somewhat lightly, and moved in different and not all in one direction. After the penknife the rubber may sometimes be used to advantage, since it will, if of a smooth grade, leave the paper ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose

... niece, which would hit you in the eye—you must tie a ribbon round it; there are doors which would creak and bang—you must pour oil on their hinges; there are dogs which would tear you in pieces—you must throw them these rolls; there is a cat which would scratch your eyes out—you must give it ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... it slowly, as Mr Carker wrote it down. Rob even spelt it over a second time, letter by letter, as if he thought that the omission of a dot or scratch would lead to his destruction. Mr Carker then handed him out of the room; and Rob, keeping his round eyes fixed upon his patron to the last, vanished for ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... There was a scratch and a splutter, and the match flared bravely. Its yellow rays illumined a cellar very much like any other cellar. It was walled with stonework, well cemented, and there were two or three small windows at the sides. But these, which at first filled Roy with a flush of hope, proved, ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham

... gormandize seems unlimited, and the number of insects they can swallow without protest is almost incredible. They will keep a small garden quite free from slugs and other pests. They have no bad habits, do not bark at night, or chase cats, or bite, or steal, or insist upon coming into the house, or scratch up the flower-beds. Some accuse them of causing warts, but this is not true. When handled, they sometimes give forth an acrid liquid from the skin, which stings the mouths of tormenting dogs and smears meddling fingers. But this, though unpleasant, ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley

... Bill, his goose is cooked! Mark that. There is not a surer shot, or a deadlier foe on earth then Persimmon Bill. He has defied the whole border for the past three years—ridden right into a military post and shot men down, and got away without a scratch. They say he has been adopted by the Sioux, and if he has, with such backing he'll do more mischief ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline

... again; and now he had a chance to make another discovery. He had felt sharp stinging sensations which caused him to scratch himself frantically. Then suddenly he realized that he was lying upon a mattress infested ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... kind. A pair of boot-hooks will be required for putting them on, and a boot-jack for taking them off. A little Lucca oil used occasionally prevents patent leather from cracking. The dry mud should be brushed off soiled boots with a soft brush that will not scratch the leather, and they should then be sponged over with a damp sponge and polished with a selvyt or chamois leather. Patent leather, which has lost its brightness from wear, can be polished with Harris's Harness Polish or any similar preparation ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... he will give up the whole game to the district attorney. That would be fun, wouldn't it? The district attorney wouldn't waste much time on Arthur P. Hawkins if he could land Gottlieb & Quibble in jail for subornation of perjury, would he—eh? We've got to scratch ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train

... expression of perplexity on the faces of those that surrounded him, blue and red, bearded figures began to sigh, scratch themselves, shift themselves from one foot to another. Others cast a hopeless glance at ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... looking for matches," said I, my blood kindling at his accustomed insolence; "but if I shot it would be both men at scratch." ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... were wounded. As for the ——th, it fared a little better, not heading a column; but its loss was fearful. Bulstrode was seriously wounded, early in the attack, though his hurt was never supposed to be dangerous. Billings was left dead on the field, and Harris got a scratch that served him to ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper

... and elegancies of the table are now attended to; cooks write out their recipes in English; stewards draw up in the same language protocols concerning precedence, and the rules which a well-trained servant should observe. Such a one does not scratch his head, and avoids sneezing in the dish; he abstains from wiping the plates with his tongue, and in carving takes the meat in his left hand and the knife in his right, forks being then unknown; he gives each one ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... and I shall not have any time in the morning, so must scratch a word as well as I can tonight — you know my fingers are not very well accustomed to handling the pen. It gives me the greatest pleasure I can have in this world when I hear that you are getting along so well — except I could hear one other ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... he'd done it well, And presto! his head began to swell; Bigger and bigger the poor thing grew— A wonder it didn't split in two. In size a balloon could scarcely match it; He needed a fishing-pole to scratch it;—- But six and a half was the size of his hat, And it rattled around on his head ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... Charles and Marc Klaw were riding in the elevator at the Monongahela House in Pittsburg when the cable broke and the car dropped four stories. It had just been equipped with an air cushion, and the men escaped without a scratch. ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... the existence of any, that we may take his good opinion as almost final and without appeal. One author, for whose opinion I have already exprest a very high respect, says that he was but a wild man of the woods to the last; polished over skin-deep with Roman civilization; 'Scratch him, and you found the barbarian underneath {101}.' It may be true. If it be true, it is a very high compliment. It was not from his Roman civilization, but from his 'barbarian' mother and father, that he drew the 'vive intelligence des choses morales, et ces inspirations elevees ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... when he broke away from his ring-tailed antagonist. He struck out across the yard and landed midway up the clothes-post with a single bound. And Mux? He ambled on around the yard, as calm and unconcerned as if he had only stopped to scratch himself. ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... veterinary instead of a doctor," Dave smiled. "I guess I've got some horse blood in me. See!" Montrosa had thrust her head under his arm and was waiting for him to scratch ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... "that I ought to know what concerns your life's happiness. You don't know how anxious I've been about you while you were sick...." If there seemed a tiny scratch in that, the next remark was more like a purr: "People say that he did something perfectly terrible, and you threw ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... that Joe showed wonderful adroitness. In his naked feet, so as not to scratch the covering, he succeeded by the aid of the network, and in spite of the oscillations of the balloon, in climbing to the upper extremity, and after a thousand difficulties, in holding on with one hand to that slippery surface, while he detached the outside screws ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... they were on an island in the middle of Clam River, with the tide rising, just get a big, clean stone and put it down in the middle of your bathtub. If you try this you had better put a piece of paper under the stone, so it will not scratch the clean, ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cousin Tom's • Laura Lee Hope

... their midst were withdrawn, and the political power were remanded in full to the local authorities; and, in respect to the States farther South, and wholly committed to the institution, it is certain that Slavery has hardly received what would prove a serious scratch upon its epidermis, if such changes ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Old Man of the Dee, Who was sadly annoyed by a Flea; When he said, "I will scratch it!" they gave him a hatchet, Which grieved that ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... witchwork. But, if he's the devil himself, as I believe he is, I'll shoot him. I won't be kept out of my natural sleep by such a devil's brat as that. He's been keeping up such a growling and a scrowling on the hen-house roof all night, that I thought it was Old Scratch come for you, and getting impatient. If you must keep an imp of Satan in the house, get a mole, or a rat, or some quiet beast of that sort, and not such a ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... you will be scratched off the list.' Feeling exceedingly hurt at such treatment, at a moment when I expected encouragement for having maintained the honour of my country while acting as a naval officer should have done, I wrote to him, 'You may scratch and be d——d.' This letter was, I think, very unfairly quoted against me some time afterwards in the House of Commons. However, my name was erased from the list of naval officers, and was not replaced ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... happened to the Glutts party. They found the cadets who had been spilled picking themselves up and brushing the snow from their garments. One was nursing a bruised ankle, and another a bruised elbow, while Bill Glutts was wiping some blood from a scratch on his chin. ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... want to scratch me head or blow me nose? Or what if an earwig shud chance to have got inside this iron pot, and take a fancy to go ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne

... you are a thoroughgoing anarchist. They too think that all is done if one man is killed. But if they kill me, hang me, break me on the wheel, there will come another purer than I. Where there's an itch, there is always somebody to scratch it! Yes, sister! If not I, then someone else, and (clenching his fist) it will fare ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... touch them, and even if they were cleaned, some of the poison would remain in the fabric. Then, the next time you were caught in the rain with a scratch on your leg, Walt, here, would write you one ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... Without scratch, or hindrance of any kind, Elersley reached the ground, and as he buttoned up his overcoat, matters commenced to look beautifully smooth and easy. He half-expected that the jolly dogs had started on their trip without him, but he was ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... said, with a sigh, "What becomes of old people being better than young ones, now? Are you and I bears and lions? Do we scratch out each other's eyes? It is all puzzle, puzzle, puzzle. I wish I was dead! Nurse says, when I'm dead I shall understand it all. But I don't know; I saw a dead cat once, and she didn't seem to know as much as before; puzzle, puzzle. Compton, do ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... that handkerchief of hers as if her hand was a bird's claw. I can't get a blue jay or a canary out of my head when I see her. Did you ever see a bird scratch its eye with its ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... every thing partaking of the nature of a scratch, most conjugal squabbles are quickly healed; for if they healed not, they would never anew break out: which is the beauty of the thing. So at length they made up but the treaty stipulations of Annatoo told much against the interests of Samoa. Nevertheless, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... had been? What will but felt the fleshly screen? 60 We ride and I see her bosom heave. There's many a crown for who can reach. Ten lines, a statesman's life in each! The flag stuck on a heap of bones, A soldier's doing! what atones? They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones. My riding is better, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... beads, the spaces between which correspond to the periods of extinction. Fine scratches drawn upon glass or polished metal reflect the waves of light from their sides; and some, being reflected from the opposite sides of the same scratch, interfere with and quench each other. But the obliquity of reflection which extinguishes the shorter waves does not extinguish the longer ones, hence the phenomena of colours. These are called the colours of striated ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... youth in such juvenile cataclysms feel forced to seek new fields in making the fresh start? Shame for having failed, I suppose. An unwillingness to toe the scratch under the handicap of having his neighbors know it is his ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... jungle knife with a compass inlaid in the handle. A helmet of clear plastic with a small mesh-covered opening in the face covered each boy's head. Dressed as they were, they could walk through the worst part of the jungles and not get so much as a scratch. ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell

... morning we walked on, our hands badly torn by brambles. Even Muriel's thick gloves did not wholly protect her, and once when she received a nasty scratch across the cheek, she stopped and ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux

... on the ground and waves his arms like a whirligig, and 'That's all right,' says he. Then he and Carnehan takes the big boss of each village by the arm, and walks them down the valley, and shows them how to scratch a line with a spear right down the valley, and gives each a sod of turf from both sides of the line. Then all the people comes down and shouts like the devil and all, and Dravot says, 'Go and dig the land, and be fruitful and multiply,' which they did, though they didn't understand. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... narrative; next as Freud applying the reductive method; then as Jung employing the constructive method; and finally explaining the dream, as I would myself prefer, by the use of what I may call the reconstitutive method. The dream itself, for reasons, that will be obvious, I call the "Scratch-Reflex Dream." ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... not crying, however, but thinking, thinking, thinking, and trying to find some way out, when he heard a little scratch, scratching on the corner of the shed. He sat up and listened. The scratching went on. He held his breath. Could it be that some one was trying to get in to help him? Nonsense, of course it was only a rat. Next moment a voice spoke ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit

... the poison. He knew Captain Gunner's habits. He knew that he played a harmonica. This man also had a cat. He knew that cats hated the sound of a harmonica. He had often seen this particular cat fly at Captain Gunner and scratch him when he played. He took the cat and covered its claws with the poison. And then he left it in the room with Captain Gunner. He knew ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse

... sometimes friendly and sometimes unexpectedly and unreasonably hostile. We feared that Little Wanderobo Dog would have some bad moments with the little Tana River monkey, and their first meeting was awaited with keen interest. We thought the monkey would scratch all the gentleness out of the Little Wanderobo Dog's eyes and that the two animals ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... such a horrible state from the most ridiculous trifles. "I suppose I knock my knee a dozen times a week, but my knee doesn't swell up and get disgusting. You're always reading in the paper about common people getting stung by wasps, or getting a scratch from a nail, and dying the next day. They must be in a horrible state. It always makes me ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... a partridge's nest with sixteen eggs in the home field, upon which the farmer went out and broke them all, saying that he did not choose to rear birds upon his corn which he was not allowed to scratch, but must leave to some qualified sportsman, who would besides break down his fences ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... his wife and himself, and, when they came to dig among the ruins, they excavated at last the ancient couple, protected by the framework of a window in the embrasure of which they had been seated, without a scratch or a bruise. He was a Biscayan by descent, but born in Medina del Campo. A strict disciplinarian, very resolute and pertinacious, he had the good fortune to be beloved by his inferiors, his equals, and his superiors. He was called the father ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... did not. He lived in a tent. "But," you continue, "what did he do about drinking?" Well, it was Mahmoud's habit to go to a place where he knew that by scratching a little he would find bad water, and there he would scratch a little and find it, and, being an abstemious man, he needed ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... works with amazing rapidity, but it is impossible to see the direction it will take. There are little insects known to our childish days as skip-jacks. Scratch them with the end of a piece of grass, and they reward you for your pains—they will jump—bound with one spasmodic leap and vanish. So is the working of a woman's mind. You can be almost certain of the jump—but ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... cannot fail to encounter what the gallant fire-laddies have rescued from the devouring element. There is the piano with a deep scratch across the upper part, and the top lid hanging by one hinge. It caught in the door, and the boys were kind of in a hurry. There is the parlor carpet, plucked up by the roots, as it were; and two tubs, the washboard and a ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... a little unfortunate that Aida should have been given on the night of the Guards' march through London, for the parade of the Pharaoh's scratch soldiery suffered badly by comparison. The priesthood of Isis, too, furnished more humour than could, I think, have been designed, and I doubt if even Mr. WEEDON GROSSMITH could have given us anything ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various

... his head a good scratch, And his face lighted up with a smile; "It is getting quite dark, but with my cheery spark I will lengthen the day ...
— Fun and Nonsense • Willard Bonte

... "Only a scratch," she whispered, but Harkness saw her eyes glazing. He dropped to his knees and caught her ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... can't be bothered with babies," sneered Christopher in reply. "You'd fall down, most likely, and scratch your knees on the briers, and then you'd run straight home ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... the stage, to keep me alive and happy. So I've come back to claim my old place again. I hope you haven't found any one else to fill it; though of course I know that you couldn't get anybody to really replace me. If you had I should scratch her eyes out, that I promise you, for I am a real little devil when my rights are encroached upon, though you ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... ornamentation. Barndale had hung over it when he smoked it first with the care of an affectionate nurse over a baby. It had rewarded his cares by colouring magnificently until it had grown a deep equable ebony everywhere. Not a trace of burn or scratch defaced its surface, and no touch of its first beauty was destroyed by use. Apart from its memories, Barndale would not have sold that pipe except at some astounding figure, which nobody would ever have been likely to bid for it. The precious souvenir was in his pocket, ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray

... Chemist, "what I saw staggered even my own imagination. With trembling hands I put the ring in place, looking directly down into that scratch. For a moment I saw nothing. I was like a person coming suddenly out of the sunlight into a darkened room. I knew there was something visible in my view, but my eyes did not seem able to receive the impressions. I realize ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings

... will be so good as to return my nosegay?" "Your nosegay!" she exclaimed. "There is Mrs. Tenbruggen's letter," I replied, "if you would like to look at it." She did look at it. All the bile in her body flew up into her eyes, and turned them green; she looked as if she longed to scratch my face. I gave the flowers afterward to Maria; Miss Jillgall's nose ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... in, and stood staring hopelessly. Then he began to scratch his head, and looked altogether so stupid that Mrs. Ferguson administered him a good shaking, and demanded of him what ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... wanigan for the rear crew was built. The foremen and walking boss had been picked out. Everything was in readiness. Orde was satisfied with the situation except that he found himself rather short-handed. He had counted on three hundred men for his crews, but scrape and scratch as he would, he was unable to gather over two hundred and fifty. This matter was not so serious, however, as later, when the woods camps should break up, he would be able to pick up ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... higher centres, for example, seem to exert a constant inhibitive influence on the excitability of those below. The reflexes of an animal with its hemispheres wholly or in part removed become exaggerated. You all know that common reflex in dogs, whereby, if you scratch the animal's side, the corresponding hind leg will begin to make scratching movements, usually in the air. Now in dogs with mutilated hemispheres this scratching reflex is so incessant that, as Goltz first described them, the hair gets all worn off their ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James

... prepared for the flowing process, if the wagon is to stand the scrutiny of critical eyes. Too often the paint is laid on thickly—perhaps too thickly—over indifferent material, and the first shock or scratch makes it scale and ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... him into an indigo vat with a big dog jackal once, and he whipped the jackal single-handed. He did not kill it, but he worried it till the jackal shammed dead and would not 'come to the scratch.' 'Pincher's' ears were perfect shreds, and his scars were as numerous almost as his hairs. My gallant 'Pincher!' His was a sad end. He got eaten up by an alligator in the 'Dhans,' a sluggish stream in Bhaugulpore. I had all my pack in the boat with me, the stream ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... parts—and the north-east wind cut like several razors. But Gulo did not seem to care. Wrapped up in his ragged, long, untidy, uncleanly-looking, brown-black cloak—just his gray-sided, black fiend's face poking out—he seemed warm enough. When he lifted one paw to scratch, one saw that the murderous, scraping, long claws of him were nearly white; and as he set his lips in a devilish grin, his fangs glistened ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... of her look made me ashamed. "You are suspicious of me," she said a little sadly. "That was not a scratch, monsieur. I said what I mean; I prefer to leave the decision ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... dragon to the ground with his armlet, and began to pitch into him. The dragon scolded and screamed. "There the old worm flounders about," said Notscha, "and does not care how hard he is beaten! I will scratch off some of his scales." And with these words he began to tear open the dragon's festal garments, and rip off some of the scales beneath his left arm, so that the red blood dripped out. Then the dragon could no longer stand the pain and begged for mercy. But first he ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... The scratch was so sudden, so fierce, so feline that for a moment Lady St. Craye could only look blankly at her hostess. Then she recovered herself ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... forehanded. She raised the Plymouth Rocks fine, too! She was a born stepmother. Well, she got shut out one night, and froze her feet, and lost some good claws, too; but I knew she'd manage some way, and of course I did not let her set, because she could not scratch with these stumpy feet of hers. But she found a job all right! She stole chickens from the other hens. I often wondered what she promised them, but she got them someway, and only took those that were big ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung

... a great while since I wrote to you; and I am afraid this letter will be a great while in reaching you. I hope you are a very good little girl; and I am sure you never get into a passion, and never scream, and never scratch and strike your dear Nurse or your dear sister Una. Oh no! my little Rosebud would never do such naughty things as those. It would grieve me very much if I were to hear of her doing such things. When you come back to England, I shall ask Mamma whether you have been a good little ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... "couldn't you put a ball through this for me?"—"'Tis riddled enough in all conscience, but here goes," said the highwayman, firing off a pistol at it.—"Here's my ould caubeen now, and I'll just give my face a scratch to draw the blood if you put a hole through that too." The hat was riddled for him in the same way. "Well, now, that's grand; but I think if the other skirt was tore, they couldn't say a word then."—"Why, you omadhaun! haven't you enough of it? Give me the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... gets in with a hay-maker and I picks up another sleep-producer from the floor and hands it him, and he takes the count all right.' . . Crisp, lucid, and to the point. That is what the public wants. If this does not bring Comrade Garvin up to the scratch, nothing will." ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks. "Aha!" she cried mockingly, "thou wouldst fetch thy dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out thy eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to thee; thou wilt never see her more." The King's son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes. Then he ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... sweet and disciplined from top to toe, that the finest sense of all—the joyous sense of bodily well-being—comes only with exercises and restraints and fine living. There I think lies the way of my disposition. I do not want to live in the sensual sty, but I also do not want to scratch in the ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... Quong Lee, exhibiting the regulation tiny phial of romance containing a few drops of a white liquid, 'here is a poison ten-fold more subtle and deadly than that ejected from the fangs of the cruel serpent of the plain. The merest scratch from a weapon dipped in it will effect instant death. The victim curls up as a tender leaf in the midday sun. Yet it may be taken into the stomach with impunity. Strange, is it not? The minute quantity that you see here is all that I possess, and I shall feel honored if you will accept it. But,' ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... N. shallowness &c adj.; shoals; mere scratch. Adj. shallow, slight, superficial; skin deep, ankle deep, knee deep; just enough to wet ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Henry Worley, striker of the Amaranth! My mother lives in St. Louis. Tell her a lie for a poor devil's sake, please. Say I was killed in an instant and never knew what hurt me—though God knows I've neither scratch nor bruise this moment! It's hard to burn up in a coop like this with the whole wide world so near. Good-bye boys—we've all got to come to it at ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... had at last put himself beyond the reach of the law. There was no tourniquet that would confine the poison now in the scratch across his face. Back of those lack-lustre eyes he heard and knew, but could not move or speak. His voice was gone, his limbs, his face, his chest, and, last, his eyes. I wondered if it were possible to conceive a more dreadful ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... She was sixteen; how strange she looked, with her rather elongated face! she savoured of the open air, of the grass, of mother earth. And so accurate was his recollection of her that he could once more see a scratch upon one of her supple wrists, a rosy scar on her white skin. Why did she laugh like that when she looked at him with her blue eyes? He was engulfed in her laugh as in a sonorous wave which resounded and pressed close to him on every side; he ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... the Constitution. I have only been able to suggest very impressionistically what they are and the lessons to be drawn from them. If I were able to deliver a dozen addresses on the subject in this historic Hall and with this indulgent audience I would not scratch even the surface. To understand the Constitution of the United States you must not only read the text but the thousands of opinions rendered in the last 130 years by the Supreme Court in its great task of interpreting this ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... such matters went on increasing till about the seventh decade of the century. After that time a number of remonstrances and protests may be found against the brown coats, the plaid or white waistcoats, the white stockings, the leathern breeches, the scratch wigs, and so forth, in which clerical fops on the one hand, and clerical slovens on the other, were often wont to appear. A writer at the very end of the century pointed his remarks on the subject by calling the attention of his brother clergy to the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... connective tissue of the integument, intermuscular septa, tendon sheaths, or other structures. Infection always takes place through a breach of the surface, although this may be superficial and insignificant, such as a pin-prick, a scratch, or a crack under a nail, and the wound may have been healed for some time before the inflammation becomes manifest. The cellulitis, also, may develop at some distance from the seat of inoculation, the organisms having travelled ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... terrible fighter, Hamilton," he said. "I have never seen or dreamed of your equal. Why not merely oppose to them a massive resistance? Why be continually on the warpath? They give you a tentative scratch, and you reply with a blow under the jaw, from which they rise with a sullener determination to ruin you, than ever. When you are alone with your pen and the needs of the country, you might have the wisdom of a thousand years in your brain, and I ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... of magnolia leaves Rasps with the crackling scratch of old brocade, The low bird-voices ripple like the laugh Of Watteau beauties coiffured, with pomade; Here ribboned dandies offered scented snuffs To other ghosts, beneath the giant trees— Was that a flash of rose-flamingo stuffs— Azaleas?—was a ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... have been had they stopped. From time to time Mademoiselle du Guenic took a long knitting needle which she kept in the bosom of her gown, and passed it between her hood and her hair to poke or scratch her white locks. A stranger would have laughed to see the careless manner in which she thrust back the needle without the slightest fear of wounding herself. She was straight as a steeple. Her erect and imposing carriage might pass for one ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... be committing a breach of trust, as he had undertaken to guard the game alive until Gleeson came back with the cart. So he tried to fight the pig with his boots, kicking him on the jaws right and left. But the pig proved a stubborn fighter, and kept coming up to the scratch again and again, until Philip felt he had got into a serious difficulty. He began to think as ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale

... reason ever to expect that from us! In short, to me it is mystery! But how could you not tell me some particulars? Have I so little interested myself with Florence, that you should think I can be satisfied without knowing the least particulars? I must know names. Who are these wretches that I am to scratch out of my list? I shall give them a black blot the moment I know who have behaved ill to you. Is Casa Ferroni of the number? I suspect it:-that was of your first attachments. Are the prince and princess dirty?-the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... near and has as good as saluted me. When he saw I was only a Captain (and a temporary Captain at that) he tried to cover his mistake; but he didn't deceive me; he didn't need to take his pipe out of his mouth in order to scratch his head, did he? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various

... know what to say; fighting is a rough trade, and I am by no means certain that you are calculated for the scratch. It is not every one who has been brought up in the school of Mr. Petulengro and Tawno Chikno. All I can say is, that if I were an Armenian, and had two hundred thousand pounds to back me, I would ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... last bandage). It's a stout heart you have in you, Phelimy Driscoll—you to be crying out for a scratch. It's better you would have been, you and the like of you, to be stopping at home ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... silent nest His wasted limbes now lye full soft That myrie steps have trodden oft. Blesses himself to think upon his dangers past, and travails done. The burning sun no more shall heat Nor stormy raines on him shall beat. The bryars and thornes no more shall scratch, nor hungry wolves at him shall catch He erring pathes no more shall tread nor wilde fruits eate, instead of bread for waters cold he doth not long for thirst no more shall parch his tongue. No rugged stones his feet shall gaule, nor stumps nor rocks cause him to fall. All ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... are. You shall let me speak. I say again, that I have some thousands quite at your service. And though you are not a Hazeldean, still you are my mother's son; and now that I am about to alter my will, I can as well scratch in the name of Egerton as that of Leslie. Cheer up, cheer up: you are younger than I am, and you have no child; so you will live longer than ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a splinter of shell in his left thigh. He'd been through the whole campaign without a scratch ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... Snooks, Thomas Noakes, and the like. For every name a man instantly answered and took a certificate. Finally, seeing a person scratching his head, the judge called out, 'George Scratchem!' 'Here,' responded a voice. 'Take that man outside to scratch,' said his honour to an usher, and resumed the more regular ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... ran away. I did not sneak on him, of course, and I made them all keep quiet, so it shouldn't come to the ears of the masters. I didn't even tell my mother till it had healed up. And the wound was a mere scratch. And then I heard that the same day he'd been throwing stones and had bitten your finger—but you understand now what a state he was in! Well, it can't be helped: it was stupid of me not to come and forgive him—that ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... Stealing! You, who are not fit to tie his shoes! And do you want to know why he was here that morning? I can tell you; but no, I won't tell you! I won't speak to you! I'll never speak to you again; and if you try to kiss me as you did the other day, I'll—I'll scratch out every single one of your eyes! You twit Harold for being poor, and call him a charity! What are you but a charity yourself, I'd like to know! Is this your house? No, sir! It is Mr. Arthur's! Everything is Mr. Arthur's, and if you ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... patterns; They do it sometimes when I let come what's there. Thoughts take pattern—then the pattern is the thing. But let me tell you how it is with me. (it flows again) All that I do or say—it is to what it comes from, A drop lifted from the sea. I want to lie upon the earth and know. But—scratch a little dirt and make a flower; Scratch a bit of brain—something like a poem. (covering her face) Stop doing that. Help me stop ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell

... break that time," he said when we had gone downstairs. "Never give away information unless you're getting a return for it! If you'd left Yussuf Dakmar to scratch that door after he recovered consciousness, he'd have invented a pack of lies to tell his friends, and they'd have been no wiser than before. Now they'll know he never scratched it. They'll deduce, unless they're lunatics, that someone overheard their conference last ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... being burdened with all manner of vices, and dreading and shuddering at its own interior, sallies forth and wanders abroad, feeding and fattening its malignity there. For as a hen, when its food stands near its coop,[614] will frequently slip off into a corner and scratch up, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... Several people interposed, but, when he informed them of its being an affair of honour, they retired, and left us to decide the battle by ourselves. I sustained his onset with little damage, having only received a small scratch on my right shoulder, and, seeing his breath and vigour almost exhausted, assaulted him in my turn, closed with him, and wrested his sword out of his hand in the struggle. Having thus acquired the victory, I desired him to beg his life; ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... the Chimaera, and Bellerophon aimed another downright stroke at one of the two remaining heads, as he shot by. But this time, neither he nor Pegasus escaped so well as at first. With one of its claws, the Chimaera had given the young man a deep scratch in his shoulder, and had slightly damaged the left wing of the flying steed with the other. On his part, Bellerophon had mortally wounded the lion's head of the monster, insomuch that it now hung downward, with its fire almost extinguished, and sending ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... fit for skull That's empty when the moon is full; 160 Such as take lodgings in a head That's to be let unfurnished. He could raise scruples dark and nice, And after solve 'em in a trice; As if Divinity had catch'd 165 The itch, on purpose to be scratch'd; Or, like a mountebank, did wound And stab herself with doubts profound, Only to show with how small pain The sores of Faith are cur'd again; 170 Although by woeful proof we find, They always leave ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... all they know about it. Churchgoing sometimes fails to bring the female mind into a proper frame. But you see they are ready to scratch out even my eyes at the thought that I have been rubbing her down the wrong way. No matter: I know what I know, and they need not try to make me believe that these things will go right ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol

... baggage and wagons. The Americans, with their fowling-pieces, defended this place for five hours against two hundred regular French troops, six hundred Canadians, and as many Indians. Johnson received a scratch early in the engagement, and made it an excuse to retire; and Lyman assumed direction. Dieskau bravely led the French regulars, nearly all of whom were killed; he was four times wounded; the Canadians were intimidated. At length, about half past four in the afternoon, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... the contortions and convulsions of the patient. It is a great satisfaction to them to compare the slight touch of ague they once had when they were young with the raging sickness of a breaking heart; to see a resemblance between the tiny scratch upon themselves, which they delight in irritating, and the ghastly wound by which the tortured soul has sped ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... religion, they have the Christian, Jewish, and Mahometan, and they who live in the mountains and fields with their flocke [sic], which are a great number, have hardly any at all. When any one dies, his friends have women that cry and scratch their faces, and take on seemingly with great grief for the deceased. They live mostly on rice, beef, veal, mutton; but wine is ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... said Ling Chu, and drew four straight lines across the other's breast. The keen razor edge seemed scarcely to touch the flesh, yet where the knife had passed was a thin red mark like a scratch. ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace

... Man may scratch the hillsides, but cannot mar the majesty of the mountains; they were unchanged. The map he carried was the one his father made on the spot more than a generation before. It had been well made and ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... the garden and he was glad enough to escape so, a little shaken, but without a scratch. The group composed of Feodor and his friends were strangely protected by the lightness of the datcha's construction. The iron staircase, which, so to speak, almost hung to the two floors, being barely attached at top and bottom, raised under them and then threw them off as it ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... knows anything about, and which are much easier to dispose of than the perplexing details of private life. He has to vote several times a day; for giving a decision is really casting a vote; but that is much easier than to scratch around in all the anxieties of a retail business. Many men who would make very respectable Presidents of the United States could not successfully run a retail grocery store. The anxieties of the grocery ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... her eyes in astonishment. The other added in her ear, as one confides a sweet and intimate secret: "It is to kill my brother-in-law." And smiling, she hastily unwound the bandages around the helpless arm, and showing her firm, white skin with the scratch of a stiletto across it, now almost healed, she said: "If I had not been almost as strong as he is, he would have killed me. My husband is not jealous, he knows me; and, besides, he is ill, you know, and that quiets your blood. And, besides, madame, I am an honest woman; but my brother-in-law ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... wait until to-morrow morning. I hate night trains. My best razors are, of course, at the bottom of some unidentifiable trunk. It is a plot to drive me to bay rum and a monologueing, thumb-handed barber. Give me a pen that doesn't scratch. I hate pens ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry

... excuse of good nursing and he would live through injuries which must be fatal to a bilious, suspicious man, or one who had been guilty of any excess. A tobacco chewer or smoker died on small provocation. A drunkard or debauchee was killed by a scratch. ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... garments torn by bullets and bayonet thrusts, his hat battered and rent, he encouraged the people by word and example, constantly shouting "Vive la Republique," and contending for liberty with the bravery of a lion and a persistency that never flagged. He, however, escaped without a single scratch, returning to the paternal mansion utterly worn out, but altogether unhurt, proud of having done his duty as a man and a patriot, and of having sustained the glorious cause for which his father ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... from the matinee at the Hyperion Theatre, our wittiest students paced on all fours up and down behind this grill and roared for raw beef. E—— was the wag of the building and he could climb up to a high place and scratch himself like a monkey—an entertainment of more humor than elegance. Elated with success, he and a companion later chartered a street-organ—a doleful one-legged affair—and as man and monkey they gathered ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... All about a myriad insects were making night giddy with their ghostly fires, while underground and from the labyrinths of matted roots came quaint sounds of rustling snakes and forest pigs, and all the lesser things that dig and scratch and growl. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... scratch with a shrapnel splinter," I said, bitterly, "not worth plastering." I took from him the letter with my discharge, presented him with my camp outfit, instruments, horses, etc., and kept nothing but one of the waggons and a pair of horses for my journey homeward—that ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... saw the blade flash in its flight, I recalled seeing precisely the same thing long before in Heidelberg. There was a famous duellist who had fought sixty or seventy times and never received a scratch. One day he was acting as second, when the blade of his principal, becoming broken at the hilt by a violent blow, flew across the room, rebounded, and cut the second's lip entirely open. It was remarkable that I should twice in my life have seen such a thing, in both instances accompanied by ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland



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