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Devourer   Listen
Devourer

noun
1.
Someone who eats greedily or voraciously.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Devourer" Quotes from Famous Books



... of Goldsmith. He is shy, awkward, and blundering in childhood, yet full of sensibility; he is a butt for the jeers and jokes of his companions, but apt to surprise and confound them by sudden and witty repartees; he is dull and stupid at his tasks, yet an eager and intelligent devourer of the traveling tales and campaigning stories of his half military pedagogue; he may be a dunce, but he is already a rhymer; and his early scintillations of poetry awaken the expectations of his friends. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... thought it impossible to escape, and having uttered a prayer for the happiness of his beloved, and repeated the testimony of martyrdom, he resigned himself to his fate, and waited the spring of his expected devourer. What was his surprise when the majestic animal, instead of making him his prey, on approaching close to him, having looked compassionately in his face, licked his hands, and turning round, walked gently onwards, moving his head, as if to signify the youth should follow him. Ins al Wujjood ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... they walked on awhile in silence. Grace kept her veil down, for her eyes were full of tears. She loved that man intensely, utterly. She did not seek to deny it to herself. God had given him to her, and hers he was. The very sea, the devourer whom she hated, who hungered to swallow up all young fair life, the very sea had yielded him up to her, alive from the dead. And yet that man, she knew, suspected her of a base and hateful crime. It was too dreadful! She could not exculpate ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... thy wisdom Than to sing it on the house-tops." Comes the hostess of Pohyola, Fleetly rushing through the door-way, To the centre of the court-room, And addresses thus the stranger: Formerly a dog lay watching, Was a cur of iron-color, Fond of flesh, a bone-devourer, Loved to lick the blood of strangers. Who then art thou of the heroes, Who of all the host of heroes, That thou art within my court-rooms, That thou comest to my dwelling, Was not seen without my portals, Was not scented by my ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... which appear by his innumerable marginal references to authors of all ages and characters) that this original, amusing, and now popular, author was an arrant book-hunter; or, as old Anthony hath it, "a devourer of authors." Rouse, the Librarian of Bodleian, is said to have liberally assisted Burton in furnishing him with choice books for the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... imagining herself restored to transcendent maiden ecstacies—the highest youthful poetic—had received some faint intimation when the blush flamed suddenly in her cheeks and her heart knelled like the towers of a city given over to the devourer. She had no wish to meet him again. Without telling herself why, she would have shunned the meeting. Disturbers that thwarted her simple happiness in sublime scenery were best avoided. She thought so the more ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... American scavenger is the peccary, a species of wild hog, whose home ranges from Texas to the Pampas of South America. He is a devourer of creatures more obnoxious than himself. He moves with great rapidity, is always on the alert, and stops at nothing from mountains to a flowing river. When he attacks an enemy he ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... who had been driven off his legs, had time to nurse his grain again; Widow Tapsy relapsed into the very worst of taps, having none to demand good beverage; and a new rat, sevenfold worse than the mighty net-devourer (whom Mordacks slew; but the chronicle has been cut out, for the sake of brevity), took possession of his galleries, and made them pay. All Flamborough yearned for the "gentleman as did things," itself being rather of the contemplative ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... you know, tiles can only be made during a few months in the year, between June and September. Is it not a pleasure to see all this activity? My tile-maker has done his share of the work in every building going, always busy—'the devourer,' they call him in ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... put up with no more than a minnow or a mouse he can do that for weeks in unriotous patience. In a spring in one of our Northampton gardens I saw a catfish swallow a frog so big that the hind toes stuck out of the devourer's mouth for four days; but they went in at last, and the fish, in his fishy fashion, from start to finish was happy. He was never demoralized. It is not so with us. We cannot much distend or contract our purely physical needs. Especially is any oversupply of them mischievous. They have ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... take their clothes and have them thawed. After that they had supper and were shown to bed. They were not long in falling asleep. Snow and frost held all the night through; all that night the Dog (devourer) of the elder-tree howled with unwearying jaws and worried the earth with grim fangs of cold. And when it began to grow light towards daybreak, a man got up to look out, and when he came in Thorgeir asked what sort ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... which the convenience of life requires, is the devourer and consumer of everything, and throws into confusion and destroys whatever it reaches. On the contrary, the corporeal heat is full of life, and salutary; and vivifies, preserves, cherishes, increases, and ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... woman they trump up a story about, as having been a perpetual source of jealousy to the neglected wife, and monopolizing all the tenderness and pretty speeches of the once faithful and still too conquering Misis? For our own part, we think it is a shocking instance of female audacity, for the devourer of such boat-loads of fish, and the visiter of M. and Madame Grimod, to affect jealousy of Julia or any one else. Let her be contented with her Grimods and oysters, and leave Julia to listen to the harpings of Apollo in peace. We have another letter, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... rain-cloud, in later times became the name of a devil. Of Vritra, who envelopes the mountains with vapour, it is said, "The darkness stood retaining the water, the mountains lay in the belly of Vritra." By degrees Vritra stood out more prominently as a dmon, and he is described as a "devourer" of gigantic proportions. In the same way Rkshasas obtained corporeal form and individuality. He is a misshapen giant "like to a cloud," with a red beard and red hair, with pointed protruding teeth, ready to lacerate and devour human ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... the old hag, In the Jarnved forest; And brings forth there Fenrer's offspring. There comes of them all One the worst, The moon's devourer In a troll's disguise. ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... the devourer and destroyer, that you are so fond of talking about: what, in such a position, do you do with that element of my nature? Ou le fourrez-vous?" she cried ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... religious attack was prompted and guided by the same social feeling that inspired the economic articles. The priest was the enemy of society, the patron of indolence, the hater of knowledge, the mutineer against the civil laws, the unprofitable devourer of the national substance, the persecutor. Sacerdotalism is the object of the encyclopaedic attack. To undermine this, it was necessary first to establish the principle of toleration, because the priest claims to be recognised as the exclusive possessor of saving doctrine. Second, it ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... men, the dwellings of the wretched, flamed. Fire, the devourer of halls, glowed in their granaries. The hapless throwers of the dart[72] fell near the swan-frequented plain,[73] while south from our floating pines[74] marched a host ...
— The Norwegian account of Haco's expedition against Scotland, A.D. MCCLXIII. • Sturla oretharson

... but, in truth, as the Parliament then only made itself more powerful, it has only become more odious. As we see that the Barons, the Church, the King, have in turn devoured each other, and that the Parliament, the last devourer, remains, it is impossible to resist the impression that this body also is doomed to be destroyed; and he is a sagacious statesman who may detect in what form and in what quarter ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... easier in the shade indoors, soon tells us that, though the devoured is always the wretched Mason-bee, the devourer belongs to two different species. In the one case, the cylindrical form, the creamy-white colouring and the little nipple constituting the head reveal to us the larva of the Anthrax, which does not concern us at present; ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... taught him a secret, kinsman," said Giles Gosling, "to decoct, an that be the word, his pound into a penny and his webs into a thread.—Take a fool's advice, neighbour Goldthred. Tempt not the sea, for she is a devourer. Let cards and cockatrices do their worst, thy father's bales may bide a banging for a year or two ere thou comest to the Spital; but the sea hath a bottomless appetite,—she would swallow the wealth of Lombard Street ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... Punic Temple, while frantic forms, ragged and famished, wasted and shameless, leapt and pranced around them. There too was a choir of Bacchanals, ready at a moment with songs as noisy as they were unutterable. And there was the priest of the Punic Saturn, the child-devourer, a sort of Moloch, to whom the martyrdom of Christians was a sacred rite; he and all his attendants in fiery-coloured garments, as became a sanguinary religion. And there, moreover, was a band of fanatics, devotees of Cybele or of the Syrian goddess, if indeed the two rites ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... Montreal. "I have laid Oswego in ashes," said Vaudreuil; "the English quail before me. Why do you nourish serpents in your bosom? They mean only to enslave you." The deputies trampled under foot the medals the English had given them, and promised the "Devourer of Villages," for so they styled the Governor, that they would never more lift the hatchet against his children. The chief difficulty was to get rid of them; for, being clothed and fed at the expense of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... large. I believe, I have seen one with as much Meat on him, as a Pullet, if he had been dress'd. The small green Frogs get upon Trees, and make a Noise. There are several other colour'd small Frogs; but the Common Land-Frog is likest a Toad, only he leaps, and is not poisonous. He is a great Devourer of Ants, and the Snakes devour him. These Frogs baked and beat to Powder, and taken ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... regret, Nor be assailed by any ill consequences or blame, Nor be constrained to apology for inconsideration. O God, fulfill for us this our desire, And put us in possession of this our earnest wish, And exclude us not from thy ample shade, Nor leave us to become the prey of the devourer: For we stretch to thee the hand of entreaty, And profess entire submission to thee, and contrition of spirit, And seek with humble supplication and appliances of hope The descent of thy vast grace and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... interval occurred inoccupied by his princely duties, Alfred stole into the quietude of his study to seek comfort and instruction from the pages of those choice volumes, which comprised his library. But Alfred was not a mere bookworm, a devourer of knowledge without purpose or without meditation of his own, he thought with a student's soul well and deeply upon what he read, and drew from his books those principles of philanthropy, and those high resolves, which ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... should be so, and, indeed, heartily rejoice at it, when we see works of fiction spun out by indefatigable French manufacturers into interminable series, through which, at twelve hours a-day, the most insatiable devourer of the romantic needs a month to toil. Following the fashion of the times, and encouraged by the example of his successfully diffuse brethren, M. de Bernard, weary of launching trim corvettes and dashing frigates, has taken to build line-of-battle ships. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... with. Whether the reckoning will be to all tastes is another matter; I incline to think not. Four hundred closely printed pages, in which hardly anything happens to the bodies of the characters, but a great deal to their spirits—this perhaps is toughish meat for the ordinary devourer of fiction. But for the others this study of the passing of an epoch, the time of the Old Society, as symbolised by the figure of the Duchess, will be a delight. You might suppose from this (if you were unfamiliar with your author) that we had here a social comedy. Nothing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various

... adoration,—they may forget to pay their vows to the Sun, but never to Nagaya, who is looked upon as the emblem of Eternal Wisdom, the only pleader whose persuasions avail to soften the tyrannic humor of the Invincible Devourer of all things. We know how men hate Wisdom and cannot endure to be instructed, and yet they prostrate themselves in abject crowds before Wisdom's symbol every day in the Sacred Temple yonder,— though I much doubt whether such constant devotional ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... proved to be, not a meek purveyor of fleets, but a devourer of French armies, there was the more need of a close accord with the Czar. Napoleon desired, not only to assure a further postponement of the Turkish enterprise, but also to hold Austria and Germany in check. The former Power, seeing Napoleon in difficulties, pushed on ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose



Words linked to "Devourer" :   feeder, eater, devour



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