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Trencher   Listen
noun
Trencher  n.  
1.
One who trenches; esp., one who cuts or digs ditches.
2.
A large wooden plate or platter, as for table use.
3.
The table; hence, the pleasures of the table; food. "It could be no ordinary declension of nature that could bring some men, after an ingenuous education, to place their "summum bonum" upon their trenchers."
Trencher cap, the cap worn by studens at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, having a stiff, flat, square appendage at top. A similar cap used in the United States is called Oxford cap, mortar board, etc.
Trencher fly, a person who haunts the tables of others; a parasite. (R.)
Trencher friend, one who frequents the tables of others; a sponger.
Trencher mate, a table companion; a parasite; a trencher fly.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Trencher" Quotes from Famous Books



... Doctor, and I'd nothing else to do). Well, I never was more interested; fancy ferreting out Wycliffe, the Black Prince, our friend Sir Walter Raleigh, Pym, Hampden, Laud, Ireton, Butler, and Addison, in one afternoon. I walked about two inches taller in my trencher cap after it. Perhaps I may be going to make dear friends with some fellow who will change the history of England. Why shouldn't I? There must have been freshmen once who were chums of Wycliffe of Queen's, or Raleigh of Oriel. I mooned up and down the High-street, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... others of them that go ordinarily to Church and neuer pray to winne an opinion of holinesse: or pray still apace, but neuer do good deede, and geue a begger a penny and spend a pound on a harlot, to speake faire to a mans face, and foule behinde his backe, to set him at his trencher and yet sit on his skirts for so we vse to say by a fayned friend, then also to be rough and churlish in speach and apparance, but inwardly affectionate and fauouring, as I haue sene of the greatest podestates and grauest iudges and ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... wags—the central figure being the gorgeous, but truculent, Haroun Al Rashid, who is generally accompanied by Ja'afer and Masrur, and sometimes by the abandoned but irresistible Abu Nowas. What magnificent trencher-folk they all are! Even the love-lorn damsels. If you ask for a snack between meals they send in a trifle of 1,500 dishes. [458] Diamonds and amethysts are plentiful as blackberries. If you are a poet, and you make good verses, it is likely enough that some queen will stuff your mouth with balass ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... way when his master goes to dinner. Learn of him, you diminutive urchins, how to behave yourselves in your vocation: take not up your standings in a nut-tree, when you should be waiting on my lord's trencher. Shoot but a bit at butts; play but a span at points. Whatever you do, memento mori—remember to rise betimes ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... up, I relieved him, and continued the firing. As our balls bounded off the sloping iron rails like peas upon a trencher, utterly failing to make any impression, and as the shot from the Blakely gun came clear through our walls, Anderson directed that the men should cease firing at that particular place. I regretted very much that the upper tier ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday

... construed into an empty boast in presence of an old man of a peaceful profession; and as a sort of just and appropriate penance, resolved patiently to submit to the ridicule which he had incurred. He offered the cup and trencher to Maitre Pierre with a blush in his cheek, and a humiliation of countenance which endeavoured to disguise itself under ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... sounds like footsteps, rustling silks, falling coals, breaking bottles, and moving latches; allusion is made to the badger like and rabbit like apparition; and there is mention of a peculiar dancing of father's "trencher" without "anybody's stirring the table"; but the sum total makes very tame reading compared with the material to be found in the accounts written in after years and commonly utilized—as it has been utilized ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce

... brasse, fine linen, and thereto costlie cupbords of plate worth five or six hundred or a thousand pounds."[39] The lord of the manor no longer took his meals with all his retainers in the great hall, throwing the bones and scraps from his wooden trencher to his dogs. He withdrew into a separate apartment, and dined with a new refinement. A hitherto unknown variety of food covered the table, served on pewter, china, or silver, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... origin of wars in the great exaggeration of riches, and does not stick to say that in the days of the beechen trencher there was peace. But averse as I am by nature from all wars, the more as they have been especially fatal to libraries, I would have this one go on till we are reduced to wooden platters again, rather than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... at forfeits, an' we spun The trencher roun', an' meaede such fun! An' had a geaeme o' dree-ceaerd loo, An' then begun to hunt the shoe. An' all the wold vo'k zitten near, A-chatten roun' the vier pleaece, Did smile in woone another's feaece. An' sheaeke right hands wi' hearty cheer, An' let their left hands spill their beer, A keepen ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... the luscious huckleberries in tasteful baskets of her own braiding, and Tontz Main de Fer, the chivalric companion and friend of La Salle, was moved like Geraint, served by Enid, "to stoop and kiss the dainty little thumb that crossed the trencher." The salutation was received with unconscious dignity by little Marie; once only was Pere Francois Xavier annoyed by the absence of a display of childish pleasure in an ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... music, let there haunt around thee the service for the dead! I know that sprig of Mistletoe, O Spirit in the midst! Under it I swung the girl I loved—girl no more now than I am a boy—and kissed her spite of blush and pretty shriek. And thee, too, with fragrant trencher in hand, over which blue tongues of flame are playing, do I know—most ancient apparition of them all. I remember thy reigning night. Back to very days of childhood am I taken by the ghostly raisins simmering in a ghostly brandy flame. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... Jeffrey had returned to his own place. Thus on 27th March, Sukey writes to Sam, remarking that as Hetty and Emily are also writing "so particularly," she need not say much. "One thing I believe you do not know, that is, last Sunday, to my father's no small amazement, his trencher danced upon the table a pretty while, without anybody's stirring the table. . . . Send me some news for we are excluded from the sight or hearing of any ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang

... the delicate way Whereby, with the trencher and cup, Comes a hint of the matter of pay, In a counter laid blank ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... in his face, and tells him where he keeps; he reaches the tutor's rooms, finds the door sported, and knocks till his knuckles bleed. He talks of Newton to his tutor, and his tutor thinks him a fool. He sallies forth from Law's (the tailor's) for the first time in the academical toga and trencher, marches most majestically across the grass-plot in the quadrangle of his college, is summoned before the master, who had caught sight of him from the lodge-windows, and reprimanded. His gown is a spick-and-span new one, of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various

... he awoke, exceeding hungry, and looking forth into the court he had it in his mind to carve meat from the dead boar. But he was astounded beyond measure to find that it was not there. In its place was a great trencher of steaming hot collops of meat, and toasted bread, with ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... perfume of a woman's dress. At the entrance of a college they glanced in at the cool grey patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of a window flowerbox—secluded, mysteriously calm—a narrow vision of the sacred past. Pale and trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face and random nose, grabbing at his cloven gown, was gazing at the noticeboard. The college porter—large man, fresh-faced, and small-mouthed—stood at his lodge door in a frank and deferential attitude. An image of routine, he looked like one ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of bread whiter than hoar-frost, and piles of purple and golden fruit followed, while the half-starved boy warmed his fingers at the blaze, and then ate and drank his fill of such viands as he had never before tasted, even in dreams. But when he could do no more good trencher-service, and the little old woman reminded him of the wish he was to ask the Dwarf-king to grant, he sat a long time pondering this ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... my uncle and aunt Wight, and two of their cousins, and an old woman, and Mr. Mills and his wife; and a good dinner, and all our plate out, and mighty fine and merry, only I a little vexed at burning a new table-cloth myself, with one of my trencher-salts. Dinner done, I out with W. Hewer and Mr. Spong, who by accident come to dine with me, and good talk with him: to White Hall by coach, and there left him, and I with my Lord Brouncker to attend the Duke of York, and then up and down the House till the evening, hearing how the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... without labour. As these persons wore different PRINCIPLES, i.e. HATS, frequent dissensions grew among them. There were particularly two parties, viz., those who wore hats FIERCELY cocked, and those who preferred the NAB or trencher hat, with the brim flapping over their eyes. The former were called CAVALIERS and TORY RORY RANTER BOYS, &c.; the latter went by the several names of WAGS, roundheads, shakebags, old-nolls, and several others. ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... Jonathan with him in bonds. Simon also met him with his army at the city Adida, which is upon a hill, and beneath it lie the plains of Judea. And when Trypho knew that Simon was by the Jews made their governor, he sent to him, and would have imposed upon him by deceit and trencher, and desired, if he would have his brother Jonathan released, that he would send him a hundred talents of silver, and two of Jonathan's sons as hostages, that when he shall be released, he may not make Judea ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... aliquid potum: upon which the poor girl smiled, perhaps at the badness of the Latin, and, when her mistress cast her eyes on her, blushed, possibly with a consciousness of having laughed at her master. Mrs Partridge, upon this, immediately fell into a fury, and discharged the trencher on which she was eating, at the head of poor Jenny, crying out, "You impudent whore, do you play tricks with my husband before my face?" and at the same instant rose from her chair with a knife in her hand, with which, most probably, she would have executed ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... of Flowers well picked and beaten in a Mortar, and put them into a Syrup, so much as the Flowers will stain, boil them, and stir them till you see it will turn Sugar again, then pour it upon a wet trencher, and when it is cold cut it into Lozenges, and that which remaineth in the bottom of the Posnet scrape it clean out, and beat it and searce it, then work it with some Gum Dragon steeped in Rosewater and a little Ambergreece, so make it into what shape ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley

... feeling towards her had never been so strong or so distinct as since her refusal to kiss the 'candlestick.' He was on the point of speaking, of saying something explicitly tender, when the wooden trencher which the party were using at their play, came bowling between him and Sylvia, and spun out its little period right betwixt them. Every one was moving from chair to chair, and when the bustle was over Sylvia was seated at some distance ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... dark sentences, Pleasing to factious brains: And every other where place me a Jest, Whose high abuse shall more torment than blows: Then I my self (quicker than Lightning) Will fly me to a puissant magistrate, And weighting with a Trencher at his back, In midst of jollity, rehearse those gauls, (With some additions) So lately vented in your Theater. He, upon this, cannot but make complaint, To your great danger, or ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... of highest place, nay Queens themselves Disdain not to be serv'd by such as are Of meanest Birth: and I shall be most happie, To be emploi'd when you please to command me Even in the coursest office, as your Page, I can wait on your trencher, fill your wine, Carry your pantofles, and be sometimes bless'd In all humilitie to touch your feet: Or if that you esteem that too much grace, I can run by your Coach: observe your looks, And hope to gain a fortune by my service, With your good favour, which now, as ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... more dams I'll make for fish; Nor fetch in firing 170 At requiring; Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish: 'Ban, 'Ban, Cacaliban Has a new master:—get a ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... forks—nobody used those! Every one ate with his fingers. Think how primitive it must have been to go to a banquet of the Lord-Mayor of London arrayed in your silk or velvet costume, and eat roasted ox with your fingers from a trencher, or square slab of wood! Yet such a procedure was considered entirely proper ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... quiet which is apt to linger about the palate long after the cravings of the appetite have been appeased. He had seated himself on one of the trunks of Borroughcliffe, utterly disdaining the use of a chair; and, with the trencher in his lap, was using his own jack-knife on the dilapidated fragment of the ox, with something of that nicety with which the female ghoul of the Arabian Tales might be supposed to pick her rice with the point of her bodkin. The captain drew a seat ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... devolved his whole cares on Jenny as prime minister, Niel Blane and the ci-devant laird, once his patron, but now glad to be his trencher-companion, sate down to enjoy themselves for the remainder of the evening, remote from the bustle of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... instant three sturdy waiters had just succeeded in depositing safely upon the table an enormous dish, or trencher, containing what I supposed to be the "monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." A closer scrutiny assured me, however, that it was only a small calf roasted whole, and set upon its knees, with an apple in its mouth, as is the English fashion ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... kuracado. Treaty kontrakto, traktajxo. Tree arbo. Trefoil trifolio. Trellis palisplektajxo. Tremble tremi. Trembling tremo—ado. Tremendous grandega. Tremor tremeto, skueto. Tremulous trema, skueta. Trench fosajxo. Trenchant akra. Trencher lignotelero. Trepidation tremeco, tremado. Trespass transpasxo, ofendo. Tress (hair) harligo. Tress plektajxo. Trestle (bench) stablo. Trial (an attempt) provo—ajxo—ado. Triangle triangulo. Tribe gento. Tribulation doloro, malgxojo, suferado. Tribunal (place) jugxejo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... to be eighteen million dollars, etc. The word "banquet" occurs twenty times in this short story and only twenty times in all the remaining thirty-eight books of the Old Testament. In other words, Ahasuerus and his trencher-mates ate and drank as much in five days as had been eaten and drunk by all the other Old Testament characters from "Genesis" ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... moment, but the Vicar was not to be cheated out of this new chance of helping another. Striding into the kitchen, he laid hands upon the pewter dishes, of whose polish Sally Lawrence was so proud, and handed them to the widow with the remark that "a wooden trencher served better." ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen

... of the banquet, the trencher cuts, foh! nankeen displays: as intersticed with many a brilliant drop to friendly beck and clubbish hail, to moisten the viands or cool the incipient cayenne. No unfamished livery-man would desire better dishes, or high-tasted courtier better wines. With men that ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... I lived in days of yore, When outlaws bold were rife, The days of dagger and of bowl, Of dungeon and of strife. Oh! for the days when forks were not, On skewers came the meat; When from one trencher ate three foes: Oh! but those times were sweet! When hooded hawks sat overhead, And underfoot was straw Where hounds and beggars fought for ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... King Henry's blood, The honourable blood of Lancaster, Must not be shed by such a jaded groom. Hast thou not kiss'd thy hand and held my stirrup? Bare-headed plodded by my foot-cloth mule And thought thee happy when I shook my head? How often hast thou waited at my cup, Fed from my trencher, kneel'd down at the board, When I have feasted with Queen Margaret? Remember it and let it make thee crest-fallen, Ay, and allay thus thy abortive pride, How in our voiding lobby hast thou stood And duly waited for my coming forth. This hand of mine hath writ in ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... believe, unparallell'd (sic) all over the world. They are always promised very young; but the espoused never see one another, till three days after their marriage. The bride is carried to church, with a cap on her head, in the fashion of a large trencher, and over it a red silken veil, which covers her all over to her feet. The priest asks the bridegroom, Whether he is contented to marry that woman, be she deaf, be she blind? These are the literal words: to which having answered, yes, ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... a saving woman, took the money, for I heard it rattle in her hand, hung the jars about my shoulders, and gave Martina the meat and corn in a basket. The flat cakes, however, she carried herself on a wooden trencher, because, as she said, she feared lest we should break them and anger the ghosts, who liked their food to be well served. So we started, and presently entered the mouth of that awful valley which, Martina told me, looked as though it had been riven through ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... from [Greek: abax]; which signifies a square Trencher: In French it's called Talloir; it's that quadrangular Piece commonly accompanied with a Cymatium, and serves instead of a Drip or Corona to the Capital. It supports the nether Face of the Architrave ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius

... dinner according to the usage, which was this:—A number of oak and birch trees were felled, and over every two and two there was spread a tablecloth—that is, the warm skin of a deer or wild-boar; into this, as into a wooden trencher, was poured the warm blood of the wild animals, which the hounds lapped up, while forty huntsmen played a march with drums and trumpets, which was re-echoed from the neighbouring wood, to the great delight of all the listeners. When the hounds had lapped up all the blood, they began to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... stout trencher man; one who has a good appetite, or, as the term is, plays a good ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... up to the pretty little bedroom he was to occupy—one which opened out of the room set apart for Harry and Philip; and soon after he was down in the dining-room eating a meal that called forth the remarks and comparisons of his cousins, who were dreadful trencher-men. They told him that he must learn what a country appetite meant, and so, by way of teaching him, they dragged him off, as soon as dinner was over, to look at all the wonders of the place. First over the flower-garden, and round by the aviary, where Mamma's gold and silver ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... conviction that only fortified by learning could be a blessing—gave of their scanty stock and their warm hearts, one man his sheep, another his nine shillings' worth of cotton cloth, a third his pewter flagon, and so on down to the fruit-dish, the sugar-spoon, the silver-tipt jug, and the trencher-salt; but a generation that is not astonished when a man pays six thousand dollars for a few feet land to bury himself in, is without excuse in not providing for its sons a dignified and respectable home during the four years of their ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... loved this hour, nor yet forgot Each joy domestic of my little cot. For at this hour my wife with watchful care Was wont each humbler dainty to prepare, The keenest sauce by hunger was supplied And my poor children prattled at my side. Methinks I see the old oak table spread, The clean white trencher and the good brown bread, The cheese my daily food which Mary made, For Mary knew full well the housewife's trade: The jug of cyder,—cyder I could make, And then the knives—I won 'em at the wake. Another has them now! I toiling here Look backward ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... Christmas: And for the whole year through, at every place, Where there is play, present him with the chair; The best attendance, the best drink; sometimes Two glasses of Canary, and pay nothing; The purest linen, and the sharpest knife, The partridge next his trencher: and somewhere The dainty bed, in private, with the dainty. You shall have your ordinaries bid for him, As play-houses for a poet; and the master Pray him aloud to name what dish he affects, Which must be butter'd shrimps: and those that drink To no mouth else, will drink to his, as being ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... Michael, the "trencher favorite" of Arden of Feversham, in love with Maria, sister of Mosby. A weak man, who both loves and honors Arden, but is inveigled by Mosby to admit ruffians into Arden's house to murder him.—Geo. Lillo, Arden ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... the Rhone, near Lyons," but the natives worked their boats like gondolas, standing, one rowing and another steering with oars, that were like half a lance in shape, a pace and a half long, with a round board like a trencher tied at the end. "And with these they make very good pace, being great coasting voyagers, but not venturing far out to sea or away from their own country, lest they should be seized and sold for ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... stimulating company of Miss Maitland; and in this delightful, highly coloured atmosphere, surrounded by agreeable companions, he fished, joked, flirted, and appeared to have shed his formal Oxford manner, along with his Oxford trencher and gown. He remembered Shafto's father and, on the strength of this memory, the two became excellent friends, and Shafto gave him assistance in the way of adjusting his puttees, helping him over awkward places, advising him what food to avoid ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... nothing Quince to mind—a vain, official knave, in and out, to and fro, play or pleasure; and old Sam Snout, the wanton! Lad's days and all—'twas life, Tittany; and I was ever foremost. They'd bob and crook to me like spaniels at a trencher. Mine was the prettiest conceit, this way, that way, past all unravelling till envy stretched mine ears. Now I'm old dreams. Gone all men's joy, your worships, since Bully Bottom took to moonshine. Where floats your ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... these lazy ones delighted in filth. Again and again have I seen one or another throw the scrapings of the trencher bowls just outside the door of the tent or hut, where those who came or went must of a necessity tread upon them, and one need not struggle hard to realize what soon was ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis

... Betty, "that's his gift. But a poor trencher-man; and I declare I'm ashamed to eat all the vittels that are eaten here, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... in thy fame's pledge, thy son. Thus, like a Roman Tribune, thou thy gate Early sets ope to feast, and late; Keeping no currish waiter to affright, With blasting eye, the appetite, Which fain would waste upon thy cates, but that The trencher creature marketh what Best and more suppling piece he cuts, and by Some private pinch tells dangers nigh, A hand too desp'rate, or a knife that bites Skin-deep into the pork, or lights Upon some part ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... might they be?" Her curiosity was reaching the breaking-point. "If ye bring out another thing from that basket I'll believe ye're in league with Bodh Dearg himself, or ye've stolen the faeries' trencher of plenty." ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer

... Either for table-cloth, or sheeting; There is likewise a pair of breeches, But patch'd, and fallen in the stitches, Hung up in study very little, Plaster'd with cobweb and spittle, An airy prospect all so pleasing, From my light window without glazing, A trencher and a College bottle, Piled up on Locke and Aristotle. A prayer-book, which he seldom handles A save-all and two farthing candles. A smutty ballad, musty libel, A Burgersdicius[2] and a Bible. The C****[3] Seasons and the Senses By Overton, to save expenses. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... water, then strain all the liquor from the Pulp, then take a pint of that liquor, and half a pound of Sugar, and boil it till it be a quaking gelly on the back of a spoon; so then pour it on your moulds, being taken out of fair water; then being cold turn them on a wet trencher, and so slide them into the boxes, and if you would have it ruddy colour, then boil it leasurely close covered, till it be as red as Claret Wine, so may you conceive, the difference is in the boiling of it; ...
— A Queens Delight • Anonymous

... from Jacqueline's victims. He was a singular-looking old man, clad in worn butternut jeans; an uncouth, uncombed, manifestly unwashed person at whose side on the floor rested a peddler's pack. He was doing some alarming trencher-work with his knife, and kept a supply of food convenient in his cheek while he greeted Channing ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... grown up around me. That morning, for the first time, I was left to dress myself; and when I crept down to the parlour, I found no breakfast laid out for me—no silver tankard of new milk with a clove in it, no manchet of sweet diet bread, no egg on a trencher in a little heap of salt. I asked for my breakfast, and was told, for a young cub, that I might get it in the kitchen. It would have gone hard with me if, in my Grandmother's time, I had entered that place ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... our recommendation to the consular agent. A second string was added to our bow by a worthy Armenian of Smyrna. He kindly assisted our intention by a letter to a compatriot of his at Magnesia, of whom the least that we could expect was, that he would receive us to the fellowship of trencher and hearth; that is, should we present our introduction, for, in the first instance, our purpose was to seek the man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... sou{er}aynes bred thow choppe, & at it be newe & able; se all{e} o{er} bred a day old or {o}u choppe to e table; all{e} howsold bred iij. dayes old / so it is p{ro}fitable; and trencher bred iiij. dayes is co{n}venyent ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... looke backe to Eighty Eight, That Spanish glasse shall tell you, shew each wrinckle. England that yeare was but a bit pickd out To be layd on their Kinges Trencher. Who were their Cookes? Marry, sir, his Grandees and great Dons of Spaine, A Navy was provided, a royall fleete, Infinite for the bravery of Admiralls, Viceadmirall [sic], Generalls, Colonells and Commanders, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... evidently fashioned by hand. Then remembering something that Westbury had told me, I recognized these bowls as trenchers, the kind used in New England when pioneer homes were rather short in the matter of tableware. The trencher stood in the middle of the table and contained the dinner—oftenest a boiled dinner, I suppose—and members of the family helped themselves from it—I hesitate to say with their fingers, but evidence as to table cutlery in the pioneer home of that period is very scanty. And, ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine

... grated window. Embedded in the wall was a huge iron ring, and chained to it was a gaunt skeleton, that was stretched out at full length on the stone floor, and seemed to be trying to grasp with its long fleshless fingers an old-fashioned trencher and ewer, that were placed just out of its reach. The jug had evidently been once filled with water, as it was covered inside with green mold. There was nothing on the trencher but a pile of dust. Virginia knelt down beside the skeleton, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... supper was served, but when every man had his trencher filled Rainouart entered the hall, armed with his staff, and stood leaning against a pillar, watching the noble company. 'Sir,' said Aimeri, the man whom the Saracens most dreaded, 'who is it that I see standing there holding a piece of wood that five ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... all that goodnesse; and why? for a little letchery of revenge? it's a lye: the Burre that stickes in your throat is a throane: let him out of his messe of Kingdomes cut out but one, and lay Sicilia, Arragon, Naples or any else upon your trencher, and you'll prayse Bastard[196] for the sweetest wine in the world and call for another quart of it. 'Tis not because the man has left you but because you are not the woman you would be, that mads you: a ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... perfected his instrument, the body and brain. Because this instrument is temporal, it has a height and limitation to reach. There is a year in which the sutures close. That man is a master, who has fulfilled his possibilities—whether tile-trencher, stone-mason, writer, or a carpenter hammering his periods with nails. Real manhood makes lowly gifts significant; the work of such a man softens and finishes him, renders him plastic ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... astonished how his ways were ............ Behold she opened her mouth saying unto Enkidu:— "At home with a family [to dwell??] is the fate of mankind. Thou shouldest design boundaries(??) for a city. The trencher-basket put (upon thy head). .... ......an abode of comfort. For the king of Erech of the wide places open, addressing thy speech as unto a husband. Unto Gilgamish king of Erech of the wide places open, addressing thy speech as unto a husband. He cohabits with the ...
— The Epic of Gilgamish - A Fragment of the Gilgamish Legend in Old-Babylonian Cuneiform • Stephen Langdon

... room; at one end of this was laid a cloth, with a few trenchers on it, and horn cups, surrounding a barley loaf and a cheese, this meagre irregular supper being considered as a sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats which had abounded at Beaulieu. John Birkenholt sat at the table with a trencher and horn before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble, rather than cut, his bread. His wife, a thin, pale, shrewish-looking woman, was warming her child's feet at the fire, before putting him to bed, and an old woman sat spinning and nodding on a settle ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... pursued her work till her own sensations warned her that it was time to prepare her husband's morning or rather day meal; for by the height of the sun it should now be many hours past noon. So she put down her pot of potatoes; and when they were boiled, took out a wooden trencher full of them, and a mug of sour milk, to Jer, determined not to summon him from his useful occupation of restoring the pints and quarts to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... about the rooms, and out of one room into the other, as thrown with some great force. Captain Hart, being in a slumber, was taken by the shoulder and shaked until he did sit up in his bed, thinking that it had been one of his fellows, when suddenly he was taken on the pate with a trencher, that it made him shrink down into the bed-clothes, and all of them, in both rooms, kept their heads at least within their sheets, so fiercely did three dozen of trenchers fly about the rooms; yet Captain Hart ventured again to peep out to see what was the matter, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... knowing reader, that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapors of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher-fury of a riming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... articles for setting the table was the trencher. These were made of wood, and often were only a block of wood, about ten or twelve inches square and three or four deep, hollowed down into a sort of bowl in the middle. In this the food was placed,—porridge, meat, vegetables, etc. Each ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... (that we may take the provinces in their order), were it not for a temperament peculiar to the place, is rather of the hottest to produce those who are properly called good trencher-men. Its utmost point, which other geographers call the Promontory of the Terra Australis, is of the same latitude as the most southerly parts of Castile, and is about forty-two degrees distant from the equator. The inhabitants have curled hair and dusky complexions, and regard ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... among which was the Holy Grail. Arthur and all the knights of the Round Table were present at his coronation, and paid him a yearly visit. When he died, "the Sangreal, the sacred lance, and the silver trencher or paten which covered the Grail, were carried up to the holy heavens in presence of the attendants, and since that time have never anywhere ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... smites, nor even know the quarter from whence it comes. Build high your walls and your bulwarks; they shall but prove the greater peril when they crumble under the impact of our lord's hammer. You will believe; yes, when trencher-mate and bedfellow are stricken at your side, and yet no man shall be able to say at what instant the avenger's shadow passed between, or catch the faintest sound of his retreating footsteps. All in ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... wooden bowl? I am just come from the Borough, Will you buy a pudding stirrer. I hope I am not too soon, For you to buy a wooden spoon. I've come quick as I was able, Thinking you might want a ladle, And if I'm not too late, Buy a trencher or wood plate. Or if not it's no great matter, So you take a wooden platter. It may help us both to dinner, If you'll buy a wooden skimmer. Come, neighbours, don't be shy, for I deal just and fair, Come, quickly come and buy, all sorts ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... Shelton sat at the foot of his sister's table dispensing its hospitalities chiefly to himself. Through some law unknown to science, all dishes seemed to gravitate toward the main center of Dicky's trencher, thereby leaving the rest of the table ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... Green saying quietly, "Well, the tidings shall be told when our fellowship is greater; fall-to now on the meat, brother, that we may the sooner have thy tale." As he spoke the blue-clad damsel bestirred herself and brought me a clean trencher—that is, a square piece of thin oak board scraped clean—and a pewter pot of liquor. So without more ado, and as one used to it, I drew my knife out of my girdle and cut myself what I would of the flesh and bread on the table. But Will Green mocked at me as I cut, and said, "Certes, brother, thou ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... man set before him some mouldy bread on a trencher and said, 'Eat,' and some brackish water in a cup and said, 'Drink,' and when he had eaten and drunk, the old man went out, locking the door behind him and fastening it ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde

... all came the Van Bummels, who inhabit the pleasant borders of the Bronx. These were short, fat men, wearing exceeding large trunk-breeches, and are renowned for feats of the trencher; they were the first inventors of suppawn, or mush and milk.... Lastly came the Knickerbockers, of the great town of Schahticoke, where the folks lay stones upon the houses in windy weather, lest they should be blown away. These derive their name, as some ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... of thought and activity, he tested their abilities. But he particularly considered their behavior at the banquet-table. From first to last they were sumptuously entertained, and their demeanor over the trencher-board and the wine-cup was ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... I seldom saw, as she generally entertained them in what she called her "cabinet," a small den of a place adjoining the kitchen, and descending into it by one or two steps. On these steps, by-the-by, I have not unfrequently seen Madame Pelet seated with a trencher on her knee, engaged in the threefold employment of eating her dinner, gossiping with her favourite servant, the housemaid, and scolding her antagonist, the cook; she never dined, and seldom indeed took any meal with her son; ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... hunting costume, on his favorite horse; there was a sticking-plaster silhouette of him in the widow's bedroom, and a miniature in the drawing-room, where he was drawn in a gown of black and gold, holding a gold-tasselled trencher cap with one hand, and with the other pointing to a diagram of Pons Asinorum. This likeness was taken when he was a fellow-commoner at St. John's College, Cambridge, and before the growth of that blue beard which was the ornament of his manhood, and a part of which now formed a beautiful blue neck-chain ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... like an inverted cornucopia, or wiredrawn extinguisher; and one will cross it with a dash, and another with a loop; while another will make a letter wholly different—something that shall look like a pudding leaning against a trencher set on edge—something that is only a great 'A' by courtesy, being in fact nothing but an overgrown little 'a;' bearing the same proportion to a common 'a' as an alderman does to a common man, and looking as if it ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various

... it was good; then, observing that little Oscar had just finished his fourth venison steak, he politely handed him the trencher. The greasy-fingered boy gravely helped himself to number five, and assailed it as if he had only just begun to terminate a ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... great man's darling, And your ladies' sport and pleasure; Tongue and bauble are his treasure. E'en his face begetteth laughter, And he speaks truth free from slaughter; He's the grace of every feast, And sometimes the chiefest guest; Hath his trencher and his stool, When wit waits upon the fool: O, who would not ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson

... philosophy into the circle of his ring, having learned sufficient Latin to understand the proverbial motto of "Tu tibi cura!" The husband was reminded of his lordly authority when he only looked into his trencher, one of its learned aphorisms having descended ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... within its joints. Another start, another arrival; and before the motion was over, a flash of sunny looks had glanced before the sisters' eyes. There was Lance, perfectly radiant, under his square trencher cap— hair, eyes, cheeks, blue bow, boots, and all, seeming to sparkle with delight as he ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... feast. In a book giving instructions for the serving of the Royal table, is this direction, which always interested me: 'First set forth mustard with brawn; take your knife in your hand, and cut the brawn in the dish, as it lieth, and lay on your Sovereign's trencher, and see that there be mustard.' As you see, they were exceedingly fond of mustard. Richard Tarleton, an actor of Queen Elizabeth's time, who was much at Court as jester, is reported as having called mustard 'a ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson

... was furnished with long wooden tables and benches; each person was provided with a trencher, a jug of water, and a cup, having on it the name of the brother to whom it is appropriated, as Frere Paul, Frere Francois, &c. which name they assume on taking the vow. Their supper consisted of bread soaked in water, a little salt, and two raw carrots, ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes

... always retain the same opinion of me," answered Van de Werff as he drank, "at the trencher or in ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... Hours; then boil them very tender till a Pin will easily go into them; then drain them well from the Water, and put them into your preserving Pan, putting as much clarified Sugar to them as will cover them, laying some Trencher or Plate on them to keep them down; then set them over a Fire, and by Degrees heat them till they boil; then let them have a quick boil till the Sugar comes all over them in a Froth; then set them by till next Day, when you must drain ...
— The Art of Confectionary • Edward Lambert

... wolves in his own northern mountains in the winter solstice. For seven days he had only been able to crush a crust of hard black bread between his teeth. For twenty hours he had not done even so much as this. The trencher on his tressel was empty; and he had not ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... vacuum flask, Petri dish, microtiter tray, centrifuge tube. bail, beaker, billy, canakin; catch basin, catch drain; chatti, lota, mussuk, schooner [U.S.], spider, terrine, toby, urceus. plate, platter, dish, trencher, calabash, porringer, potager, saucer, pan, crucible; glassware, tableware; vitrics. compote, gravy boat, creamer, sugar bowl, butter dish, mug, pitcher, punch bowl, chafing dish. shovel, trowel, spoon, spatula, ladle, dipper, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... small windows which characterized the rest of the house. A table in the centre of the room took up the chief of the space, and at this table sat a bronzed and stalwart man, whom Corinne instantly recognized as her protector in that forest adventure of long ago. He was seated with a trencher before him, and was doing an justice to the fare set out; but he was also in earnest conversation with Madame Drucour, who was seated opposite, her elbows lightly resting upon the table, and her chin upon ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... serving boy! I knew him, at Caius' trencher, when for hire He prostituted his abused body To that great gormond, fat Apicius; And was the noted ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson

... a greater bore than a bagnet, depend on't; and it's my mind, it's better to die in a trench than afore an empty trencher—I'll list." ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... loggerheads about her—would be decidedly bettered by this discipline under Mise Fougueiroun: whose name long has been one to conjure with in all the kitchens between Saint-Remy and the Rhone. For the Provencaux are famous trencher-men, and the way that leads through their gullets is not the longest way to ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... a trance?" said d'Aubricour. "Waken, and carry this trencher of beef to your brother. Best that you should do it," he added in a low voice, taking up a flask of wine, "and save our comrade from at once ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge

... fell good Orpheus, that would rather be King of a mole hill, then a Keysars slaue: Better it is mongst fidlers to be chiefe, Then at plaiers trencher beg reliefe. But ist not strange this mimick apes should prize Vnhappy Schollers at a hireling rate. Vile world, that lifts them vp to hye degree, And treades vs downe in groueling misery. England affordes ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... entreat him to come in; but, I dare say, I had hard work to do it. At last he came in; and I will say that for my Lord, He carried it wonderfully lovingly to him. There were but a few good bits at the table, but some of it was laid upon his trencher. Then he presented the note, and my Lord looked thereon, and said his desire should he granted. So, when he had been there a good while, he seemed to get some heart, and to be a little more comfortable; for my Master, you must know, is one of very tender bowels, especially to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... excellent quality, and deserves its reputation. The monastery bread, made from the wheat grown by the monks, was of the substantial and honest kind which in England would probably be called 'farmhouse bread,' although the great wheel or trencher-shaped loaves of the French provinces might cause some surprise there. My meal, therefore, might have been worse than it was, and as it was given to me for nothing, it would have been very bad manners ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... us till the return of the other chief; and that the Chayennes were a wild people, afraid to go. He invited Captain Clark to his house, and gave him two carrots of tobacco, two beaver-skins, and a trencher of boiled corn and beans. It is the custom of all the nations on the Missouri to offer to every white man food and refreshment when ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... eighteen pence a week. Your sensitive spirit would revolt against taking service under anyone of Mr. Mammon's myrmidons, and even if it didn't, I am sure he would not employ you. Like Caliban no longer will you 'scrape trencher nor wash dish'—at least in the Lotus Club—for from this hour I dismiss you from ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... of a rare flavor withal, this raccoon," said Waldo, "and methinks the King at Westminster hath no better trencher meat. Hath the old savage asked of thee yet ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... the hind, "for seasonable weather at last. Every man to his trencher! the broth is ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... on to name number two, which, with some agitation, but with clear, resonant voice, he read out as "Arthurus Penrhyn Stanley." Immediately there ensued a scene of the wildest confusion. On the Placet side, cheers and waving of trencher-caps; on the Non-Placet side feeble hisses; and from all sides, undergraduate as well as graduate, mingled shouts of Placet and Non, with an accompaniment of cheers and hisses; until the ringing voice of Dean Liddell pronounced ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... blood and bayonet; and march o' nights if need, and limber up the guns if need, and shoe a horse if need, and draw a cork if need, and cook a potato if need; and be a hussar, or a tirailleur, or a trencher, or a general, if need. But yes, that's it; no pride but the love of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... You once thought a great matter, And tied it so pretty and neat; Now see how 'tis crumpled, No trencher is flatter, It grieves your ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... emptied the little milk jug also, stirred all well up together, and left it for a few minutes to cool, what time he took the cottage loaf from the white, well-scrubbed trencher, pulled it in two, took a handful of bread out of one half, and raising the lump of fresh Somersetshire butter on the point of a knife, he dabbed it into the hole he had made in the centre, shut it up by replacing the other half of the bread, and then taking out his handkerchief ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... which my Dutch relatives predicted would of necessity prove annoying. We were hungry, and the hotel supper was anything but satisfying. As everyone knows, the New Netherlanders are hearty good trencher-folk. At our house, we always had a full table, and at Grandpa Van Der Zee's there had to be more on the board than could possibly be consumed or there was not enough to please the Baas. At the Massasoit, there was a fair show in the dining-room, but on trial the things provided were not ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears

... managed to ingratiate himself, scenting the flesh-pots. For he belonged to the tribe to whom a patron never comes amiss. Captain Vyell was amused by the man; knew him for a sycophant; but tolerated him at table and promoted him (in Batty Langton's phrase) to be his trencher chaplain. He and Langton took an easy malicious delight, over their wine, in shocking Mr. Silk with their free thought and seeing ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... their rags ripped again! There was a knight of old times who built the dining-hall of his castle across the highway, so that every wayfarer must perforce pass through; there the traveler, rich or poor, found always a trencher and wherewithal to fill it. Three times a day in my own chair at my own table, do I envy that knight and wish that I might do as ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... Mr. Amyas is as good as three to his trencher: but still there's crumbs, Mr. Brimblecombe, crumbs; and waste not want not is my doctrine; so you and I may have a somewhat to stay our stomachs, about an ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... toss up her cup: but for the better certainty, the Mistriss commands her to draw some Wine in a glass that was very clean rinsed; which she no sooner brought back, but the Mistriss observed that greasy lips had been at it; yet before she sent her the second time, she takes a trencher and holds it over the smoke of a Candle to grow black, then with her finger rubs that soot upon the edge or hollow part of the glass; and commanded her, as she did before, to draw some Wine; but when she came back again, the Mistriss then perceived ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... as their internal accommodations must have been, it remains a matter of perplexity to me to this day to determine by what mysterious process they managed to stow away one-half of what they devoured. I have repeatedly watched one of these overgrown animals seat himself before a wooden trencher, some three-quarters of a yard broad, and clear from it, as if by magic, a mess piled up to the greatest capacity of the vessel, and consisting of rice, garnished at the top with a couple of pounds or so of curried meat or fish; after which, glaring around him in a hungry and dissatisfied ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... Trencher, n. [trncher] Trinchero; la mesa; las viandas; la comida. Tagagaw ng trinchera; ang dulang; ang ulam; ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon

... the school-children. The juveniles were in a state of alarm at having lost you. They had been playing the game in severe silence, and at a turn in the grove missed you altogether. Oh, here comes Scobel, with his trencher on the ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... treasure.' As he repeated these words many times, Brother Maximus made answer: 'Father, how can you talk of treasures when there is such great poverty and such lack of all things needful? Here is neither napkin nor knife, neither board nor trencher, neither house nor table, neither man-servant nor maid-servant.' St. Francis replied: 'And this is what I reckon a great treasure, where naught is made ready by human industry, but all that is here is prepared by Divine Providence, as is ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... that in the old buffalo days the daily ration per head at the Company's prairie posts was eight pounds of fresh meat, which was all eaten, its equivalent being two pounds of pemmican, the enormity of this Gargantuan feast may be imagined. But we ourselves were not bad hands at the trencher. In fact, we were always hungry. So I do not reproduce the foregoing facts as a reproach, but rather as a meagre tribute to the prowess of the great of ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... but for so doing he was thrown into prison again. Here his mind continued as active as ever, and he poured out treatises, poems, and satires—sometimes, when pen and ink were denied him, inscribing his thoughts with red ochre upon a trencher. After three years, he was, in 1663, released from Newgate, under bond for good behaviour; and four years afterwards he died in London. This was on the 2d of May 1667. He was buried between the east door and the south end of the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... kindly and humane temperament. But jolly Dan poured oil—not to say ale—on the wounds and eased them. As it was neither dinner-time nor supper-time, the sailor ordered a repast ample enough for both, and fell to his trencher with hearty good will. His companion did his best to emulate him, and for a spare man did excellently. ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... of powder be next driven in and rammed down, care however being taken that the powder in ramming be not bruised, because that weakens its effect; that a little quantity of paper, lint, or the like, be rammed over it, and then the ball be intruded. If the ball be red hot, a tompion, or trencher of green wood, is to be driven in before it. Also, in martial law, an indictment or specification of the crime of which a prisoner stands accused. Also, in evolutions, the brisk advance of a body to attack an ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... another mode of opening the conversation, they had arrived at the church, and here, in front of the open door, there lay the most singular contribution that ever was offered to the cause of Christianity. Many dozens of church-door plates rolled into one enormous trencher would have been insufficient to contain it, for it was given not in money (of course) but in kind. There were a number of lengths of hollow bamboo containing cocoa-nut oil, various fine mats and pieces of native cloth, and sundry articles of an ornamental character, besides a large ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... the mere cup and trencher, we no doubt Fared passing well; but as for merriment 10 And sport, without which salt and sauces season The cheer but scantily, our sizings ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... more excellent quality than is commonly set before others; and, calling to mind the falcon which you now ask of me, and his excellence, I judged him meet food for you, and so you have had him roasted on the trencher this morning; and well indeed I thought I had bestowed him; but, as now I see that you would fain have had him in another guise, so mortified am I that I am not able to serve you, that I doubt I shall ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... and leather bestow On the cleaners of trencher and platter." The Lady to give him fresh clothes was not slow, And of sammet and silk were the latter. "Yes, these will I wear," bold Ramund he said, "They beseem me right ...
— The Fountain of Maribo - and other ballads • Anonymous

... that flowed From lakes of favor—pulled with all his force And found each river sweeter than the source. Like rats, obscure beneath a kitchen floor, Gnawing and rising till obscure no more, He ate his way to eminence, and Fame Inscribes in gravy his immortal name. A trencher-knight, he, mounted on his belly, So spurred his charger that its sides were jelly. Grown desperate at last, it reared and threw him, And Indigestion, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... the proceedings of those who were not such may be discreetly left to imagination. The second table was served in a much more ordinary manner. In this instance the knife was iron and the spoon pewter, the plate a wooden trencher (never changed), and the drinking-cup of horn. In the midst of the table stood a pewter salt-cellar, formed like a castle, and very much larger ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... squire would gladly entertain Into his house some trencher-chaplain; Some willing man that might instruct his sons, And that would stand to good conditions. First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed, Whilst his young master lieth o'er his head. Secondly, that he do, on no default, Ever presume to sit above the salt. ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... hurry, gudewife," said the butler, suffering himself to be dragged to a seat without much resistance; "and as to eating," for he observed the mistress of the dwelling bustling about to place a trencher for him—"as for eating—lack-a-day, we are just killed up yonder wi' eating frae morning to night! It's shamefu' epicurism; but that's what we hae gotten frae the English pock-puddings." "Hout, never mind the English pock-puddings," said Luckie Lightbody; "try our puddings, Mr. Balderstone; ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... A wooden trencher, scoured white as ivory, separates the friends, leaving them face to face. In supping they have reached what we ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... Ireton, 'tis you who are the true lover and the gentleman; and I am naught but a selfish churl with my face in my own trencher!" he burst out, wringing my hand yet again. "'Tis as you say; yet I will not be driven from this; for aught you have told me to prove it otherwise, Madge has yet to choose between us, and she shall have that choice, fairly and squarely, and ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... valiant trencher-men, whatever else they were, and promptly assaulted the meat-pie fort, as from its size and shape it deserved to ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... after this, steered his course for Oxford, where he visited Messrs. Treby, Stanford, Cooke, and other collegians, his particular friends, of whom he got a trencher-cap.—Having staid at Oxford as long as was agreeable to his inclinations, he set out for Abington, and from thence to Marlborough, having put on a pair of white stockings, a grey waistcoat, and the trencher-cap. Thus equipped, he pretended to be disordered ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... land. He is a fair guest, and a fair inviter, and can excuse his good cheer in the accustomed apology. He has some faculty in mangling of a rabbit, and the distribution of his morsel to a neighbour's trencher. He apprehends a jest by seeing men smile, and laughs orderly himself, when it comes to his turn. His businesses with his friends are to visit them, and whilst the business is no more, he can perform this well enough. His discourse is the news that he hath gathered in his walk, and for ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... million, paid only four or five pounds. The collectors were empowered to examine the interior of every house in the realm, to disturb families at meals, to force the doors of bedrooms, and, if the sum demanded were not punctually paid, to sell the trencher on which the barley loaf was divided among the poor children, and the pillow from under the head of the lying-in woman. Nor could the Treasury effectually restrain the chimneyman from using his powers with harshness: for the tax was farmed; and the government was consequently ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... he enjoyed himself amazingly, and made more marks than ever on the white table-cloth; for he began jumping about like a pea on a trencher, in order to make his particularly ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock

... time—spin down the hill, my boy—let me get in as they're at supper, and 'faith they'll want it, after coming off a coach such a night as this, to say nothing of some of them being aldermen in expectancy perhaps, and of course obliged to play trencher-men as often as they can, as a requisite rehearsal for the parts they ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... then your only way is to desist from your sport, about two or three days: and in the meantime, on the place you late baited, and again intend to bait, you shall take a turf of green but short grass, as big or bigger than a round trencher; to the top of this turf, on the green side, you shall, with a needle and green thread, fasten one by one, as many little red worms as will near cover all the turf: then take a round board or trencher, make a hole in the middle thereof, and through the turf placed ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... back part of the head is moulded by having an oval trencher sort of vessel, deeper than half the head, and generally made of plaster, and boiled in oil. The back of the head being oiled, and this trencher partially filled with liquid plaster of Paris, the head is lowered into it, and the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summersault several times together upon a trencher,[20] fixed on a rope, which is no thicker than a common packthread in England. My friend Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial, the second after the treasurer; the rest of the great officers are ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift



Words linked to "Trencher" :   board, trench, digger



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