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




Amuck   /əmˈək/   Listen
Amuck

adverb
1.
Wildly; without self-control.  Synonym: amok.
2.
In a murderous frenzy.  Synonyms: amok, murderously.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Amuck" Quotes from Famous Books



... output of ice. They were, indeed, "malefactors of great wealth"; at least we may guess the latter, and the animus of a more intelligent precedent may some day hopefully be directed to such definite evils, of which our ancestors were well aware, rather than blindly running amuck at all. The coal-dealers in Boston, by the way, made the same argument that is always made, and was made at Athens in the grain combination of the third century B.C.—to wit, that they put up the prices in order to prevent ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... his pictures, the painter looks at their faces, and must make many sad discoveries. Like other artists, he does not care nearly so much for the praise as he is dashed and discomfited by the slightest hint of blame. It is a wonder that irascible painters do not run amuck among their own canvases and their visitors on Show Sunday. That, at least, in Mr. Browning's phrase, is "how it strikes a contemporary." Were the artists to yield to the promptings of their lower nature, were they to hearken to the Old Man within them, fearful massacres ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... to Alton Shepard, a Keegan cattle breeder, has created considerable sensation by running amuck in a most peculiar manner. While seemingly more intelligent than heretofore, it has developed characteristics known to be utterly alien to this type ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... gone. After life's fitful fever they sleep (I trust) well; and in common candour, it ought never to be forgotten that whilst it has always been the fashion—until one memorable day Mr. Froude ran amuck of it—for biographers to shroud their biographees (the American Minister must bear the brunt of this word on his broad shoulders) in a crape veil of respectability, the records of the stage have been written in another spirit. We always know the worst of an actor, seldom his best. David Garrick ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell

... that is all the nearer to the absolutely comic for the earnestness, so to speak, of its unconsciousness. The reason is, partly no doubt, to be ascribed to its debonnaire self-satisfaction, its disposition to "lightly run amuck at an august thing," the traditions of centuries namely, to its bumptiousness, in a word. But chiefly, I think, the reason is to be found in its lack of anything properly to be called a philosophy. This is surely a fatal flaw in any system, because it involves a contradiction in terms; ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... broke—over a woman, I fancy. He's knocked about th' wurrld quite a piece since thin. Eyah! he talks av some quare parts he's been in. Fwhat doin'? Lord knows. Been up an' down the ladder some in this outfit—sarjint one week—full buck private next. Yen know th' way these ginthlemin-rankers run amuck?" ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... buffalo grazed along the foothills of the western mountains, two hardy prospectors fell in with a bull bison that seemed to have been separated from his kind and run amuck. One of the prospectors took to the branches of a tree and the other dived into a cave. The buffalo bellowed at the entrance to the cavern and then turned toward the tree. Out came the man from the cave, and the buffalo took after him again. ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... consistent enemy, but it was through Tublat that, when he was about thirteen, the persecution of his enemies suddenly ceased and he was left severely alone, except on the occasions when one of them ran amuck in the throes of one of those strange, wild fits of insane rage which attacks the males of many of the fiercer animals of the jungle. Then ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... "I will not presume to argue with you. We are here, I suppose, for some purpose or other. Whether we fulfil it or not may well be a matter of opinion. But that purpose is certainly not to look after any young idiot—you must excuse my speaking plainly—who runs amuck in this most fascinating city. In your case the Chief has gone out of his way to help you. He has interviewed the chief of police himself, brought his influence to bear in various quarters, and I can tell you conscientiously that everything which possibly can be done is being done at the present ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... England cheers The bruiser, not the bruised? And must she run, despite the tears And prayers of eighteen hundred years, Amuck in Slavery's crusade? ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... these is Loot. The dictionary says that it means "to plunder," but it holds more than that or any equivalent English word. Perhaps it has scarcely risen above the level of slang yet, but the phrase "to run amuck" is classical, having been used by both Pope and Dryden. The pedantic attempt made by some writers to change the common way of writing it because the original Malay term is a single word, "amok," comes too late in view of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... when it needed all his intelligence to keep him from springing on the keeper, and running amuck in the ward-room, simply for the sake of uttering a violent, brutal protest. Then there were hours when he was too exhausted to leave his cot. At such a time he wrote a letter, his first letter to his mother, and he made the keeper promise to have it mailed so that no one could possibly suspect ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various

... not with enmity toward a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible Government which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... practice: fine house, carriage and pair, white-haired butler—everything correct, except myself. It was of no use. I can hold myself in for a month or two; then I break out, the old original savage that I am under my frock coat. I feel I must run amuck, stabbing, hacking at the prim, smiling Lies mincing round about me. I can fool a silly woman for half-a-dozen visits; bow and rub my hands, purr round her sympathetically. All the while I am longing to tell ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... the soldier, "that man will some day drive me amuck. What do you think? One night, on a tiger hunt, he got me into an argument like this. A brute of a beast jumped into the middle of it. Courtlandt shot him on the second bound, and turned to me with—'Well, as I was saying!' I don't ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... me so that I could run amuck down this street, shooting everybody I saw," Jean flared out suddenly, "is the sickening injustice of it. Dad never did that; you know he never did it." She turned upon him fiercely. "Do you think he did?" she demanded, her eyes boring ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... fighting for it—as Scotchmen and Irishmen and Englishmen and Americans have fought and bled for freedom wherever they have lived. A people unused to freedom suddenly plunged in freedom need not surprise us if they run amuck. ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... "rogue;" but I did not know before that whalemen believe that certain old bull whales are just as savage and revengeful as tigers. Indeed, among all wild creatures—either on land or in the sea—there seem to be ancient bulls that go off from their kind and sulk. They easily "run amuck"—perhaps are really insane. To attack them is far more perilous than to attack a ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... some days in the neighbourhood what is called "a rogue elephant"—an elephant which, for some reason known only in elephant councils has been driven out of the herd, and is so enraged by his expulsion that he is ready to run amuck at every person and animal he sees. This was not pleasant intelligence. We found native carts at the place, ready to proceed in the morning to a market to be held at the foot of the hills; and after a very uncomfortable night, much disturbed by the cries of the beasts ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... late hour before the girls retired for the night. There was so much to talk over, and when they did finally lay themselves down to rest, it was with the conviction that Captain Forest was not quite so mad as they had supposed. He was at least a harmless lunatic and in no danger of running amuck. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown

... them! And I know their father, a brute, a sort of brute beast with an intolerant loud voice, a creature who has ran amuck in our all too merciful world for the last thirty years and more. An engineer! To him all that we hold dear and sacred is nothing. Nothing! The splendid traditions of our race and land, the noble institutions, the venerable order, the broad slow march from precedent to precedent that has ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... harbour. There can be little doubt that the cause of the fishers' frenzy was the quiet, inoffensive bottle-nosed whale, leisurely prowling about the Sound in search of a living, and, in fact, none other than the one that my friend had supposed to be a reef. These creatures rarely run amuck until the harpoon is thrust into them. They usually roll about the sea in the most harmless way. No doubt the sight of a huge creature in localities unaccustomed to it creates an impression of dull alarm, and, strange though it be, some minds ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... them who is, without positively evil qualities, so absolutely intolerable as Marius.[103] Others have more such qualities; but he has no good ones. His very bravery is a sort of moral and intellectual running amuck because he thinks he shall not get Cosette. Having, apparently, for many years thought and cared nothing about his father, he becomes frantically filial on discovering that he has inherited from him, as above, a very doubtful and certainly ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... They are of middle size and robust, of very active, enterprising nature and of a complexion slightly lighter than the average Malay. In disposition they are brave, haughty and fierce, and are said to be more predisposed towards "running amuck" than any other Malayans. They speak a language allied to that of the Macassars, and write it with similar characters. It has been studied, and its letters reproduced in type by Dr B.F. Mathes of the Netherlands Bible Society. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... guy-rope snap with a sound like a pistol-shot, and a great stone swung to a boom and weighing tons should begin running amuck through piles of cement, machinery, and men, and some one of the working gang, seeing the danger, should, with the quickness and sureness of a mountain-goat, spring straight for the stone, clutching the end of the guy and bounding off again, twisting the bight round some improvised snubbing-post ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... said, lazily, "of course they do; but we have got our revolvers handy, and our guns are within reach of our hands. We should make precious short work of any Ghazis who were to run amuck among us. ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty

... draft of the material sciences upon the thought and energy of the century, it has not monopolized them. No trifling resources have been left for mere abstract investigation. If meta-physics stands, despite the labors of Stewart, Hamilton, Hegel, Comte, very much where it did when Socrates ran amuck among the casuistical Quixotes of his day, and left the philosophic tilters of Greece, the knights-errant in search of the supreme good, in the same plight with the chivalry of Spain after Cervantes, the science of mind, and particularly mental pathology, has made some steps forward on crutches ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... well ordered, no emotion so thoroughly controlled, but that under sudden pressure—click!—the mechanism slips a cog and runs amuck. Just that thing happened inside the Unspeakable Perk's smooth-running, scientific brain upon incitement of his flag's desecration and his lady's grief. To her it seemed that he shot past her horizontally like a human dart. The next second he was over the ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... the fellow who's taking these women about and our Schomberg. Signor Zangiacomo ran amuck in the morning, and went for our worthy friend. I tell you, they were rolling on the floor together on this very veranda, after chasing each other all over the house, doors slamming, women screaming, seventeen of them, in the dining-room; ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... meeting was stunning in its entire unexpectedness. The landscape went off in protest, exploded in pyrotechnic marvels; the earth spun and cavorted; the solar system was disrupted and planets ran amuck with din unbelievable. But he was used to these cataclysms now, and out of the roar of breakage he heard a voice much like his own ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... leaders it always follows the one who is longest on vague and brilliant words and shortest on sense. Thus the man in office, if he would be free to carry on his duties in anything approaching freedom and comfort, must adopt measures against that tendency to run amuck. ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... tragedy was lost for Leonard in another, more appalling scene. The right central battleship had lost control of her steering gear, and now she ran wildly amuck in the fleeing line like a ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... I put my old Spad through every antic we two had ever done together. The observers in the balloons must have thought me crazy, a pilot running amuck from aerial shell shock. I had discovered a new meaning for that "grand and glorious feeling" which is so often the subject of ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall

... It would have been a terrible anxiety if you had been there. A policeman was killed just beside us. There was a man with a revolver running amuck. He just missed French by ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... thunderstorm. berserk, berserker; fury, dragon, demon, tiger, beldame, Tisiphone^, Megaera, Alecto^, madcap, wild beast; fire eater &c (blusterer) 887. V. be violent &c adj.; run high; ferment, effervesce; romp, rampage, go on a rampage; run wild, run amuck, run riot; break the peace; rush, tear; rush headlong, rush foremost; raise a storm, make a riot; rough house [Slang]; riot, storm; wreak, bear down, ride roughshod, out Herod, Herod; spread like wildfire (person). [shout or act in anger at something], explode, make a row, kick up ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... I'd as lief her throat were cut! She almost ripped my bowels up, I vow, Running amuck with horns well set to butt: Nathless I've locked her in the stall below: She's blown with grass, I tell you, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... feeling from thinking and doing. Every thought and every act has in it something of all three elements. An emotion is not an isolated phenomenon; it is bound up on the one hand with ideas and on the other with bodily states and conduct. Whoever runs amuck in his emotions runs amuck in his whole being. The nervous invalid with his exhausted and sensitive body, his upset mind and irrational conduct is a living illustration of the central place of the emotions in ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... stories in the Old Testament. The best of all children's books—"Grimm's Fairy Tales" itself—takes no deeper hold upon the youthful mind. Mr. Kipling's genius which in his other work is constantly "dropping bricks" as the expressive phrase has it, and running amuck through strenuous banalities, rises in the Jungle-Book to heights of poetic and imaginative suggestion which will give him an undying position among the great writers ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys

... always at the head of the class. The laziest and dullest formed a league against him: every day, when school broke up, he was assaulted with a brutality equal to that of an English public school, but which certainly would not have been roused against him there by the same cause. He had to run amuck through the courtyard to the gate, where a servant was waiting for him, often reaching it with torn clothes and a bloody face. This persecution was stopped by his old playfellow, Orlando Furioso, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... fingers through his hair to grope for an answer. It had never been brought to him before that fighting might be a private preserve. But his face cleared straightway. In this second skirmish, due momentarily, he would be a legitimate belligerent and not a trespasser, because since he had stumbled amuck of Maximilian's authority, another joust was needed to correct the first. It all depended on whether Miss—Miss—if the senorita—still ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... course there are a thousand and one things in the nature of aids to the underwriter—things whose proper action he doesn't directly control, although he has to keep a father's eye on them to see that they don't run amuck." ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... thought his wife and child in danger. I remember, one day a Malay was being tried in the court-house, when he, by a sudden spring, escaped from the police, and snatching a sword from a bystander, ran amuck through the bazaar, wounding two or three people he met. The hue and cry in the town fired the imaginations of the timid. People came running to the house for shelter, bringing their goods and chattels, and all sorts of tales—"The Chinese were coming from Sambas," and all sorts of nonsense. Then, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... you see the dame," returned Roger. "Charley, I can't have her staying the night here and I don't dare to send her up to your place. She might run amuck." ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie

... mild term for the embracing, the prancing, the Carmagnole-like ecstasy of the half-clad madmen running amuck in the almost unendurable joy of liberation. Barney knew that this condition of things would never do. All who bore commissions in the army were selected from the men. The highest in rank, who proved to be a colonel, was invested with the command, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... Malays drunk with bhang and running amuck, a company of howling dervishes, may possibly, in our own day, go through similar frantic vagaries; but I doubt if any civilized European people but the French would permit and enjoy such scenes. Yet our neighbors see little shame in them; and it is very true that men of all classes, high and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... heavy benches were used, it being thought that in the hands of violent patients, chairs might become a menace to others. In the dining room, however, there were chairs of a substantial type, for patients seldom run amuck at meal time. Nevertheless, one of these dining-room ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... a bear. Otherwise they would tear everything to pieces. Such forceful restraint cannot be regarded as righteousness, rather as an indication of unrighteousness. As a wild beast is tied to keep it from running amuck, so the Law bridles mad and furious man to keep him from running wild. The need for restraint shows plainly enough that those who need the Law are not righteous, but wicked men who are fit to be tied. No, the Law ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... II. and the threatened overthrow of Christendom, and even down to our own war of 1812. Others, again, scorned superstition, and entertained merely practical misgivings concerning the weight, density, and temperature of the comet, lest the eccentric aerial wanderer should run amuck of the earth in some confusion touching the right of ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... one of our officers was shot. A row occurred in a restaurant, which ended in two young toughs drawing their revolvers and literally running amuck, shooting two or three men. A policeman, attracted by the noise, ran up and seized one of them, whereupon the other shot him in the mouth, wounding him badly. Nevertheless, the officer kept his prisoner ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... started to tell me, and then your dog ran amuck and began butting perfect strangers all over ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... the civil administrator. "Keeping his men in hand is what he has to do! They're running amuck all over Panama, getting into fights with the Spiggoty police, bringing the uniform into contempt. As for the climate, it's the same climate for all of us. Look at Butler's marines and Barber's Zone police. The climate hasn't hurt them. They're as smart ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... came near to making a widower of me. Made a rush for Zarinska, but she whisked her skirts in his face and escaped with the loss of the same and a good roll in the snow. Then he took to the woods again. Hope he don't come back. Lost any yourself?' 'One—the best one of the pack—Shookum. Started amuck this morning, but didn't get very far. Ran foul of Sitka Charley's team, and they scattered him all over the street. And now two of them are loose, and raging mad; so you see he got his work in. The dog census will be small in the spring if we don't ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London

... brings my afternoon tea to the Stadthaus! Of them I may write more hereafter. They are symbolized to people's minds in general by the dagger called a kris, and by the peculiar form of frenzy which has given rise to the phrase "running amuck." ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... weevils in a stone. He is your friend only so long as you have a stick in your hand. If he cannot harm you he will leave a bad smell as he goes by. To be civil to him is like giving treacle to a donkey. If he runs amuck it takes God to hold him. A Jat's laugh would break an ordinary man's ribs. When he learns manners, he blows his nose with a mat, and there is a great run on the garlic. His baby has a plowtail for a plaything. The Jat stood on his own corn heap and called out to the King's elephant-drivers, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... never forsook him, and the ladies of Naapu liked him. Even good Madame Mauer, who squinted, squinted more painfully at Follet than at any one else. But his idleness was beginning to tell on him; occasionally he had moody fits, and there were times when he broke out and ran amuck among beach-combers and tipsy natives along the water-front. More than once, Ching Po sought him out ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... than the sterner sex—the noble, the wise, the cultivated, the beautiful, are murdered in cold blood. The September Massacres shock moderates everywhere with the feeling that France is at last running amuck—the mad ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... did not take his eyes from those of the captive youth. Henry's blood chilled, and for a moment stopped its circulation. Then it flowed in its wonted tide, but he understood. Yahnundasis was seeing red. Like the Malay he was amuck. At any moment he might throw the glittering hatchet at the prisoner. Henry recognized the imminence of his danger, but he steeled his nerves. He saw, too, that much depended upon himself, upon the power of the spirit that radiated from his eyes. Hence, he, ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... cannon, and the judges who awarded the prize to the Prince, were presented by him with estates comprising hundreds of peasants. Maimon began to shout in imitation of the cannon, in imagination he ran amuck in a synagogue, as he had seen the prince do, smashing and wrecking everything, tearing the Holy Scrolls from the Ark and trampling upon them. Yes, they deserved it, the cowardly bigots. Down with the law, to hell with the Rabbis. A-a-a-h! He would grind the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... preach about it next Sunday.... Well, a swishing isn't a likely thing anyhow. But I would.... There isn't a master here I'd stand a thrashing from—not one.... And because I choose to say what I think!... I'd run amuck." ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... more. Enough to know that all the world was run amuck! With a glad whoop, I sped after the others, and only drew up when I stood on the threshold of ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche

... nostrils, his thin, bitter lips, his bare brawny arms, tattooed with strange devices. How clean he kept his teeth and nails! There was the stamp of the thoroughbred all over him. In what strange parts of the world had he run amuck? What fair, gracious women mourned for him in ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... fertile soil in the worst of Lucien's nature, and spread corruption in his heart; for him, when his desires were hot, all means were admissible. But—failure is high treason against society; and when the fallen conqueror has run amuck through bourgeois virtues, and pulled down the pillars of society, small wonder that society, finding Marius seated among the ruins, should drive him forth in abhorrence. All unconsciously Lucien stood with ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... and brought back anything but an edifying account of the state of things. Every single man and woman appeared to be drunk, reeling about the place. One young Samoyede in particular had made an ineffaceable impression on them. He mounted a sledge, lashed at the reindeer, and drove "amuck" in among the tents, over the tied-up dogs, foxes, and whatever came in his way; he himself fell off the sledge, was caught in the reins, and dragged behind, shrieking, through sand and clay. Good St. Elias must be much flattered by such homage. ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... sudden tumult of a bell; a bell that told as plainly as though it clamored with a human tongue, that the hand that rang it was driven with fear; fear of fire, fear of thieves, fear of a mad-man with a knife in his hand running amuck; perhaps at that moment creeping ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis

... alienating as little sympathy as possible, for novel and extremely unpopular opinions. He was not one of those who strive to spread new faiths by brilliant swordplay with buttoned foils, and he was not one of those who run amuck among the idols of the tribe and the market-place and the theatre. He knew how to kindle the energy of all who were likely to be persuaded by his reasoning, without stimulating in a corresponding degree the energy of persons whose ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3 (of 3) - Essay 2: The Death of Mr Mill - Essay 3: Mr Mill's Autobiography • John Morley

... quarter close to us about a bird, and both boys ran away. The Arab boy is missing still I suppose, but Mabrook was brought back by force, swelling with passion, and with his clothes most scripturally 'rent.' He had regularly 'run amuck.' Sheykh Yussuf lectured him on his insolence to the people of the quarter, and I wound up by saying, 'Oh my son! whither dost thou wish to go? I cannot let thee wander about like a beggar, with torn clothes and no money, that the police may take thee and put thee in the army; ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... I mean; for individual members were constantly working themselves up the summit of resolution to rush headlong and regardless down the other side and out of our sight. When a man had reached a certain pitch of excitement he ran amuck. He sold anything, deserted anything, broke through anything in the way of family, responsibility, or financial lacks in order to go. But, as I say, occasionally one of these clubs pooled its individual resources and bought some old tub of a whaler, or outfitted a wagon train, and started off. ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... committed any overt act, had retired to a camp near by with his high explosives. But Constable Wight got an information sworn out against him for having an explosive in his possession with intent to endanger life, which was putting it mildly enough when he was in fact dealing with a man running amuck with dynamite playthings. However, this served the purpose of Constable Wight, who rode out to the camp and arrested the man, explosives and all. It was not a very pleasant undertaking, but that did not count for anything with a wearer of ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... Let the wind shriek through the wire stays and the waves roar and burst about and over the submarine chaser as they listed, none of these dangers equaled that of the depth charge which had run amuck. ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... were distributed all over Penrod, both upon his body and upon his spirit. Driven by subtle forces, he had dipped his hands in catastrophe and disaster: it was not for a Georgie Bassett to beard him. Penrod was about to run amuck. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... frequently there was the glitter of whizzing spokes from a runabout or a sporting buggy, and the sharp, decisive hoof-beats of a trotter. Then, like a cowboy shooting up a peaceful camp, a frantic devil would hurtle out of the distance, bellowing, exhaust racketing like a machine gun gone amuck—and at these horrid sounds the surreys and buggies would hug the curbstone, and the bicycles scatter to cover, cursing; while children rushed from the sidewalks to drag pet dogs from the street. The thing would roar by, leaving a long wake of turbulence; ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... conventional, and she the incarnation of passionate revolt against the restraints of class and form and custom which he not only conformed to but religiously believed in. And she set stirring in him all kinds of vague, wild longings to run amuck socially and politically—longings that, if indulged, would ruin him for any ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... I never meant a word I said!" he began, with exaggerated trepidation. "Why the dickens didn't you murder the whole yapping bunch of us, Grant?" He clapped his hand affectionately upon the other's shoulder. "We kinda run amuck yesterday afternoon," he confessed cheerfully, "but it sure was fun while ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower

... had been saved, the fire at this point not being permitted to creep farther east than Main Street. Another series of fatalities occurred, caused by the stampeding of a herd of cattle at Sixth and Folsom Streets. Three hundred of the panic-stricken animals ran amuck when they saw and felt the flames and charged wildly down the street, trampling under foot all who were in the way. One man was gored through and through by a maddened bull. At least a dozen persons', it is said, were killed, though probably this is an overestimate. ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... swept overboard every atom of the bridge aboard the leading ship of a flotilla—with compass, chart-house, engine-room-telegraph, steering wheel, and every soul on duty there—the men on "monkey's island," just above the bridge, never knew their ship was even hit till she began to run amuck and rammed another ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... happy smile in them, firmly-cut lips half hidden by the thick brown beard, a face that would have looked well under a lifted helmet—such a face as the scared Saxons must have seen among the bold followers of William the Norman, when those hardy Norse warriors ran amuck in Dover town. ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... into his bunk, his legs swaying perpendicularly in the air like two derricks gone amuck. From the depths of his involuntary position he heard the silvery pealing of Dolly's laughter. When he rose again though, Dolly had ceased laughing, and Bison Billiam's face had a gravity which somehow vaguely impressed Charles-Norton as without solidity, ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper

... teachers and rebellious students, the propaganda against my reign which has honeycombed the Empire with sedition might have been checked in time to prevent this dissolution,—for it is more than a "revolution." It is idealism run amuck. France, England, the people of America, have been duped by the intelligentia—the Kadets—who never seemed to realize that in order to hold this Empire together not only FORCE but SUPERSTITION was required,—'si mundus ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe

... bring himself to consider the impossible idea that the convention would bolt—would run amuck, no matter who addressed it—no matter what contingency arose. But to have the convention even tolerate this brazen interloper troubled his sense of mastery; the convention had been too ready to permit the stranger to speak. It wasn't ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day

... future," continued the Doctor, as he handed Dave two strange-looking spheres, the size of a man's head, "the work of sheriffs, policemen and other officers of the law is not going to be quite so hazardous. When a criminal runs amuck, he will not kill a half-score of brave men before he is captured. The officers of the law will do what we will soon be doing, and a child can do the rest. Only," he continued, "watch your step going up that hill. It doesn't ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell

... silent a moment, smiling a little to himself. "What a simpleton is this Saint Felix!" he thought. "What a fool to run amuck at his own chances ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... have compassed the instantaneous transference of bodies from place to place. In either case, the holders of these secrets have laudably refused to publish them, lest avarice and malice should run amuck in human society. A similar fear might well visit the conscience of one who should dream that he had divulged to the world at large what can be done with language. Of this there is no danger; rhetoric, it is true, does put fluency, emphasis, and other warlike ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... at once brutish, terrible, Homeric; the fellow's reserves of strength seemed immense; sheer animal rage drove him; he ran amuck with lust to kill. He beat, rushed, strove to close. His opponent's lithe body evaded a clutch that might have ended the contest. John Steele fought without sign of anger, like a machine, wonderfully trained; ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... Schiller statue. She would visibly shrink at those remarks, though they were sometimes so excruciatingly funny that she had to laugh, and feel dreadful immediately after. She saw that he resented her shrinking; it seemed to excite him to run amuck the more. But she could not help it. Once she got up and walked away. He followed her, sat on the floor beside her knees, and thrust his head, like a great cat, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... proclamation that I have a depraved desire to turn Heaven's creatures into swine and wild beasts! In all such cases your movers, and your seconders, and your supporters —your regular Professors of all degrees, run amuck like so many mad Malays; habitually attributing the lowest and basest motives with the utmost recklessness (let me call your attention to a recent instance in yourself for which you should blush), and quoting figures ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... about, driving carriages through the streets, giving wine parties to crowds of men and women, playing cards for high stakes and keeping mistresses whose wardrobes cost him hundreds of dollars. One night at a resort called Cedar Point, he got into a fight and ran amuck like a wild thing. With his fist he broke a large mirror in the wash room of a hotel and later went about smashing windows and breaking chairs in dance halls for the joy of hearing the glass rattle on the floor and seeing the terror in the eyes of clerks who had come from Sandusky to spend ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... twelve or thirteen made a spring at the driver's seat. With a yelp of mischievous glee he proved his daring to his comrades by snatching at the starting-lever. He was quick as a flash of summer lightning, but if I hadn't been quicker, the big car might have leaped into life, and run amuck through the most crowded street in busy Marseilles. I felt myself go cold and hot, horribly uncertain whether my interference might work harm or good, but before I quite knew what I did, I had sent the boy flying with a ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... capitalists. In the demoralization that ensued all restraints fell away. The entire social fabric, from groundwork to summit, was rent, and society, convulsed with bestial passions, tore its own members to pieces. Russia ran amuck among the nations. That was the height of war frenzy. Since then, the document went on, passion had abated sensibly and a number of well-intentioned men who had been swept onward by the current were fast coming to their senses, while others were already sane, eager to stem it and anxious ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... realizing how this candidacy threatened his hopes, "run if you want to. But I'll see to it that these delegates know how you're running—cutting under a man that's made an honest canvass!" He started for the door, tossing his arms above his head—a politician beginning to run amuck. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... Freedom is not congenial to Germans. Had Germany won she hoped to impose her type of civilization everywhere, and she saw little harm in the fact of imposition. Inferior nations ought to be raised to Germany's cultural level by force, and they ought to be prevented from running amuck internationally, also by force. The German mind viewed complacently the bondage of the small nations in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It did not think that Czechs or Poles lost anything by being governed from Vienna. Its only reservation was that it might ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... as politely as possible; 'it was I that first found the casks were loose, and by the accident that the rim of the full one struck me pretty sharply, in the night, between the shoulder-blades. I got it trigged up, as you see, before it ran amuck to do further damage. In securing it I found that it had lost its bung and was almost empty: but that hardly seemed worth mentioning, with such a flood of rainwater washing around. There was nothing to be done at the moment; the breaker in a way was refilling ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... a fit in the dining room of the contract hotel this morning (I don't blame him, do you?) and they hauled him out by the feet. We run amuck with another advance car, the other day, but nobody got into a fight. I thought rival cars always—excuse the typewriter, it doesn't know any better— got into a fight ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... time to draw guns, no time to prepare a defense. His brain on fire from the liquor he had drunk and his overpowering terror, Beaudry was a berserk gone mad with the lust of battle. He ran amuck like a maniac, using the stool as a weapon to hammer down the heads of his foes. It crashed first upon one, ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... fames that I had accepted as proofs of power treated as factitious, and witnessed a frankness concerning authorship, far and near, that I had not dreamed of authors using. When Doctor Holmes understood that I wrote for the 'Saturday Press', which was running amuck among some Bostonian immortalities of the day, he seemed willing that I should know they were not thought so very undying in Boston, and that I should not take the notion of a Mutual Admiration Society too seriously, or accept the New York Bohemian view of Boston as true. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... his wife Balinsogo. This couple love blood and for this reason cause men and women to fight or to run amuck. ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole

... he thought to warn the other scouts, so that they might take due precautions when suddenly brought face to face with the Italian woman who was running amuck. ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas

... fewer than seven different sweets shall be served. Mise Fougueiroun, however, was not the person to stand upon the parsimonious letter of any eating law. Here had been her opportunity, and she had run amuck through all the ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... and extravagance, Ransome had never seen anything to beat the Poly. There was no end to it, no end to the privileges you enjoyed. He positively ran amuck among his privileges—those, that is to say, offered him by the Poly. Swimming Bath and the Poly. Gym. As he said, he "fair abused 'em." But he considered that the Poly. "got home again" on his exceptionally moderate use of the Circulating ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... many coyotes such as Cripp, with the hair slipped from their hides,—the ones that had survived a dose of poison but were unable to shake off its devastating after effects. Hydrophobia broke out among these and they ran amuck, striking alike at friends and foes. Sound coyotes were turned into frothing fiends that helped to spread the wave of madness that swept across three States. Horses and cows died by hundreds and it was no unusual thing for one mad coyote to bite fifty head ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... When the Germans ran amuck in 1914 Smuts was Minister of Defense of the Union of South Africa. The Nationalists immediately began to make life uncomfortable for him. Balked in their attempt to keep the Union out of the struggle they took another tack. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... was true that matters—always according to Mr. Greyne's letters home—slightly improved. While walking near the quay, in active search for nautical outrage, he saw an Arab dock labourer, who had been over-smoking kief, run amuck, and knock down a couple of respectable snake-charmers who were on the point of embarkation for Tunis with their reptiles. This incident had filed up a half-score of pages in exercise-book number one, and had flooded Mr. Greyne with ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... declared Mrs. Conrad. "I don't put much faith in this regiment business. I think Pachuca has simply gone back to first principles and run amuck." ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... the break and, in a moment, the two merged and the thread ran on. Now her fingers touched the spindles, as a musician touches the keys, and at a moment's pressure the machine obeyed and the yarn flew on its way obedient. Now she cleared a snarl, or catch, where a spindle appeared to have run amuck or created hopeless confusion; now she readjusted the weights that kept a drag on the humming bobbins. Her twinkling hands touched and calmed and fed the monster. She knew its whims, corrected its errors, brought to her insensate machine the complement ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... surprise awaited me. The noise, which had hitherto been loud, now became deafening, and I realised that, contrary to Eunice Westonhaugh's expectation, the supper had been spread in the kitchen, and that I was likely to run amuck of the whole despicable crowd in any effort I might make to get a ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... Genoese leader. "Can you honestly say that there are no starving people in Genoa? No inadequately housed, no sick without hope of adequate medicine? Do you have economic setbacks in which poorly planned production goes amuck and depressions follow ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... walked on. Certainly he would soon run amuck if he did not get over feeling like that, if he did not master these impulses which bordered on insanity. He wondered if that inner ferment would ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... time his Hair outgrew the Legislature. He was on whispering terms with a clean majority of all the Partisans in three connecting Counties, so he bought one Gross of the White String Kind and a pair of Gum Sneakers and began to run amuck ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... of Germany, and the kings of England and of Italy, had all voluntarily abdicated in favour of a republican form of government. Europe and Asia had run amuck, hysterical with fear and blood. As well try to pacify a pack of mad and fighting dogs as these frenzied myriads with their half-crazed generals. They lay, these armies, across the fair bosom of the earth like dying monsters, crimson in ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... Sermonetta declared that he had some wild horses in his stud which no cowboys in the world could ride. The challenge was promptly taken up by the daring riders of the plains, and the Prince sent for his wild steeds. That they might not run amuck and injure the spectators, specially prepared booths ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore

... dog runs amuck in a village it is the duty of every farmer to get his gun and destroy it, not to lock himself indoors and toward the dog and the men who face him ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis

... of peril on the killing beds was when a steer broke loose. Sometimes, in the haste of speeding-up, they would dump one of the animals out on the floor before it was fully stunned, and it would get upon its feet and run amuck. Then there would be a yell of warning—the men would drop everything and dash for the nearest pillar, slipping here and there on the floor, and tumbling over each other. This was bad enough in the summer, when a man could see; in wintertime ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... you are," said he. "No, you're not, boy. If I catch you down there I'll play the game as you've mapped it out for me. I'll grab Jerry's axe or pitchfork and run amuck, blest if I don't. You'll wake up and find ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... of wheelmen came, and from a cloud of dust the winner of the mile bicycle-race shot past the tape. The difficulty in the carabao event was to stick on to the broad, clumsy animal, during the gallop around the course. One of the beasts, excited by the shouts, began to run amuck, and cut a swathe in the distracted crowd as clean as an ungovernable automobile might ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... America with spies, plotting constantly against her peace and her honour. She had run amuck upon the seas, and by her submarine warfare endangered the lives and welfare of all mankind. She had become a menace to the world's freedom. The President loves peace even as the soul of America loves peace. ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... was comprehensive and not without comfort. The Bell River Indians had certainly taken to the war-path. But it was only in defence of their fishing on the river which meant their whole existence. They were defending it successfully, but, in their success, their savage instincts had run amuck. Not content with slaying the invaders they had annexed their enemy's property and squaws. Then, with characteristic ruthlessness, they had set about carrying war far and near, but only amongst the Indians. Their efforts undoubtedly had a dual purpose, The primary object was ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... fellow grain growers, the five years that followed were years of continuous struggle for E. A. Partridge. The railway came and the country commenced to settle quickly. The days of prairie fires that ran amuck gave way to thriving crops; but at thirty and forty cents per bushel the thriving of those who sowed them ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse

... babyhood. I advised your father before you were born. You have, by the chance of birth, come into the control of great wealth. The world of finance is of delicate balance. Squabbles in certain directorates may throw the Street into panic. Suddenly, you emerge from decent quiet, and run amuck in the china-shop, bellowing and tossing your horns. You make war on those whose interests are your own. You seem bent on hari-kari. You have toys enough to amuse you. Why couldn't ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... pity was that he did not trust to your honour, but he seems to have worked himself into the state of mind when young men run amuck. I saw his colonel, Lydiard, and the captain and sergeant of his company, who had from the first seen that he was a man of a higher class under a cloud, and had expected further inquiry, though, even from the little that had been seen of him, there was a readiness to take his word. As the sergeant ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... him about Howard again, did you?" Mrs. Carnarvon was indignant. "You are old enough to know better, Marian. You carry frankness entirely too far. There is such a thing as truth running amuck." ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... amuck!" some one cried, and in an instant there was an uproar of terror as the people left their seats and surged back to higher tiers where they hoped the elephant could not ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell

... agree with our simple lives. I could feel myself deteriorating, morally and intellectually. I had a desire to beat the Precious Ones (who were certainly well behaved for children shut up in two stuffy rooms) or better still to set the house afire, and run amuck killing and slaying down four flights of stairs—to do something very terrible in fact—something deadly and horrible and final that would put an end forever to this melancholy haunt of Tuesday stews and ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine

... away to demand instant surrender. But the Spanish admiral was Don Pedro de Valdes, a very gallant commander and a very proud grandee, who demanded terms; and, though his flagship (which had been in collision with a run-amuck) seemed likely to sink, he was quite ready to go down fighting. Yet the moment he heard that his summoner was Drake he surrendered at discretion, feeling it a personal honor, according to the ideas of the age, to yield his sword to the greatest seaman in ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... anything is going to be done, it had better be soon or not at all. It wouldn't take much to send me clean off my chump," said Holmes dejectedly. "Every day I feel more inclined to break out—to run amuck in a crowd, if only for the sake of a little excitement. Anything for ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... the dense masses of Germans, the gallant machine leaped upon them like a thing of life, hurling them off on all sides, and running amuck over their prostrate forms. Then, with another sudden turn to the left, it sped directly toward a group of officers, who stood nearby directing the firing. So sudden was this unexpected turn that the officers were run down before they ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes

... Printing House Square. To a man they agreed in calling him Utopian, altruistic, visionary. What milder epithets should be applied to one who, with sufficient literary talent—not to say genius—to make himself a working name in the ordinary way, must needs run amuck among the theories and write a novel with a purpose? a novel, moreover, in which the purpose so overshadowed the story as to make the book ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... astronomy, zoology, biology, geography, chemistry, physics, anatomy, philology, archaeology, history, ethics, religion, etc. There is not one chance in a million that a writer of a fictitious account would not have run amuck among many of these sciences, if, like Moses, he had ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams

... Mrs. Dermot? For God's sake get into the house. There's a man running amuck. Wargrave's killed. I'm wanted"; and the doctor, taking no thought of danger to himself when there was need of his skill, ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... old Mose. Now, there's a man that'll drink whisky as long as it's made, if he can get it. I wouldn't trust that old devil as far as I can throw him, and that's a fact. I have to watch pretty close, to keep it off the ranch, and him on. It's the only way to get along with him—he's apt to run amuck, if he gets full enough; and good cooks are as scarce as good foremen." A heartening smile went with the ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower

... certainly runs amuck when he buys his vests. He must have about fifty, and the quietest one in the lot would make a leopard skin look like a piker." Again her ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... those fashionable finishing schools which no sane country should permit. But even these wild and unbroken colts and fillies, she believed, had excuses. They were the natural results of a complete lack of parental discipline and school training. They ran amuck, advertised by the press and applauded by the hawks who pounced upon their wallets. They were more to be pitied than condemned, far more foolish and ridiculous than decadent. They were not unique, either, or ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... myself often enough," he resumed presently in a low voice. "I've been pulled up by something inside of me when I was plunging ahead with the bit in my teeth, and it's been just exactly as if this something said: 'Go steady or you'll run amuck and bu'st up the whole blooming show.' You can't talk about it. It sounds like plain foolishness when you put it into words, but when it comes to you, no matter where you are, you have to stand still ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... the chain and his wrists encased in steel, and this time it was as if Don Pablo's head had been caught between a hammer and an anvil. The negro's strength, exceptional at all times, was multiplied tenfold; he had run amuck. When he arose the machete was in his grasp and Don Pablo's brains were ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach



Words linked to "Amuck" :   insane



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com