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Lie about   /laɪ əbˈaʊt/   Listen
Lie about

verb
1.
Hang around idly.  Synonym: lie around.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lie about" Quotes from Famous Books



... pumpkins would be the ruin of them intirely. I says, and 'twas thrue for me, that I 'd me pumpkins planted the week before she'd dropped anny old melon seed into the ground, and the same bein' already dwining from so manny bugs. Oh, but she 's blackhearted to give me the lie about it, and say those poor things was all up, and she 'd thrown lime on 'em to keep away their inemies when she first see me come out betune me cabbage rows. How well she knew what I might be doing! Me cabbages grows far ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett

... in for it!" said Sally, ruefully, as they made room for him between them. "What shall we do? Jerry's got it for the Call—we couldn't LIE about it! And, oh, we CAN'T have it in print to-morrow! Can ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris

... friendless little children learn from living on the streets, with no one to care what they do or how they feel. She was saucy and bold, and used very bad words, and thought it smart to steal fruit and pea-nuts when she could; and she would tell a lie about her thefts, or indeed about anything else, as glibly as a toad swallows a fly. If you ever saw that done, you know that it is pretty swiftly done; and just as a toad, when it has swallowed a fly, looks as if it had never so much as heard of such an insect, so Katy, when she told a lie, would ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... wind the Senator was goin' to die, and so the Governor told that lie about having to go South just so he could step into the dead man's ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... said the man, breathing hard as he spoke, "I'm goin' away from here tonight. They never'll take me alive. It was this way. There was a man over where I lived that's most drunk himself under ground, but he ain't too fur gone to do mischief. He told a lie about me, an' lost me my place in the shoe shop. Then one night, I met him goin' home, an' we had words. I struck him. He fell like an ox. I killed him. I didn't go home no more. I didn't even see my wife. I couldn't tell her. I couldn't ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... to queer me and maybe they will, but I'm not going to lie about it. Listen. I came to Paris a year ago on account of a certain person. I thought I loved her and—I made a fool of myself. I gave up a good position in New York and—after I had been here a while I went ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... that lie about the patriarch!" thought Allen quickly. "If I'd slipped up on that, and told them he died at the very minute the sunlight struck him, it would have been all off, world without end. Hope it doesn't make a row later. But if it does, I'll face it. The main and only thing now is to get 'em ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... little distance off, observed a look of battle in Tom Tripe's eye, and smiled two seconds later as the commissioner let fall his monocle. Two things she was certain of at once: Tom Tripe would tell her at the first opportunity exactly what had happened, and Samson would lie about it glibly if provoked. She promised herself she would provoke him. As a matter of fact Tom gave her two or three versions afterward of what his words had been, their grandeur increasing as imagination flourished in the comfortable warmth ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... sad to hear little children lie about their home training pretending that "My mother makes me do this or that" when they know that the mother has failed to make a strong point of this ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... broils, and who had that very day cut his own brother's breast open in a dangerous manner with a small supper knife. He was a gentleman, however. I heard him tell some men so. He admitted it himself. And I don't think he would lie about a little ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... that are flung athwart the great lines of modern communication, we have disregarded the friction of tariffs, the peculiar groups of prejudices and irrational instincts that inspire one miscellany of shareholders, workers, financiers, and superfluous poor such as the English, to hate, exasperate, lie about, and injure another such miscellany as the French or the Germans. Moreover, we have taken very little account of the fact that, quite apart from nationality, each individual case of the new social order is developing within ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... his head. "I went into a drug store and asked a clerk that I know what was the best thing for toothache. He told me the best he knew was to smoke a pipe of opium, and told me where to find Chow Hop, and what to say to the chink. And it's all a lie about opium helping a sore tooth," cried the wretched midshipman, clapping a hand to his jaw, "for there goes that fiendish tooth again! But say! You fellows are not going to leak ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock

... my savings have gone that way, by the soul of my mother (the only author of my days that I ever knew), this is as true as that I live, and that this is the light of day, and may my coffee poison me if I lie about a farthing. Well, there is one up there that will die soon, eh? and he the richer of the two that I have treated like my own children. Would you believe it, my dear sir, I have told him over and over again for days past that he is at death's door (for Dr. Poulain has given him up), he could ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... still in a whisper. "I hate 'em. As a kid I thought they were tops, and did everything I could to get into their school. But I mighty quick found out how wrong I was. I was good and sick of 'em, and about ready to quit when they threw me out on that lie about cheating ... say, I knew more'n their knuckle-headed instructors, so why'd I need ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... what you told me a few days ago, Hook," he said, "but I really didn't need anyone to point out that I had made a fool of myself. Sorry I didn't wait to make sure rain was going to stop the game to-day. What makes it worse, I told my folks a lie about that game. I'll feel cheap enough when they fuf-find out the truth. Guess I'll be going, too. So ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott

... indisposition going over; and if it had been seasickness I should not hesitate a moment about coming right out and saying so. In these matters I believe in being absolutely frank and aboveboard. For the life of me I cannot understand why people will dissemble and lie about this thing of being seasick. To me their attitude is a source ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... open air, and not driven under the bed-quilt as in winter. We sup by daylight, and hardly know where the candlesticks are. In the bed-chamber the windows are open day and night, and likewise most of the doors, without danger. The oldest women stand by the window without a chill, and sew. Flowers lie about everywhere—by the ink-stand—on the lawyer's papers—on the justice's table, and the tradesman's counter. The children make a great noise, and one hears bowling of ninepin alleys half the night through our walks ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... about that chapel. It is a place where some might fear to be alone, for twice when I knelt there at my prayers I have heard odd sounds, and once, when there was no sun, a cold shadow fell upon me. Some ghost of the dead, I suppose, of whom so many lie about. Well, ghosts I never feared; and now I must away to fetch my lady's supper, for she eats ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... then returned to his own abode in the back part of the house, chuckling as he went, and murmuring to himself, "I think I have paid him now for throwing me into the horsepond, for just telling a little bit of a lie about Ellen, the laundry maid. He thought I had ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... aspect of the matter will be more clear as we proceed. We pause, however, to notice one difficulty of a metaphysical kind, which is best disposed of in passing. Whatever obscurity may lie about the thing which we call Time (philosophers not being able to agree what it is, or whether properly it is anything), the words past, present, future, do undoubtedly convey some definite idea with ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... simmering, so that when the emergency arises, a vigorous thrust of her giant poker brings them quickly to the boiling point, and she is ready to take her lifeboat in tow and tug her out to the famed and fatal Goodwin Sands, which lie about four miles off the ...
— Battles with the Sea • R.M. Ballantyne

... greatest accuracy. As the water enters the respiration chamber through a horizontal tube, the thermometers are so constructed and so placed in the horizontal tubes through which the water passes that the bulbs of the thermometers lie about in a plane with the copper wall, thus taking the temperature of the water immediately as it enters and as it leaves the chamber. For convenience in reading, the stem of the thermometer is bent at right angles and the graduations are ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict

... Very good trade, I should think? You must send me your paper, Felix; I want one I can trust to lie about the house.' ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... you have drawn near to hearken, O Brown Rock; you never lie about anything. Ha! Now I am about to seek for it. I have lost a hog and now tell me about where I shall find it. For is it not mine? My name ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... was not going to lie about that; he held his tongue stubbornly instead. He still believed in his own explanation, derived from one of his many doctors, and moreover already mentioned to this one, of the sudden cessation of his chronic complaint. He hated Baumgartner for forgetting that, and pretending for a moment ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... "do they grow on trees, then? How? Shall one then throw away one's money for confectionery, in order to see it lie about the streets? Pretty management ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... Fred said savagely, "would ... would—" For a second he was apparently lost for comparisons. Then he finished: "Would kill his own mother." He paused a second and added, in an even more savage voice: "And then lie about it!" ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... sending your MS. not to the editor of this or that magazine, but to some one who, as you have been told by some nincompoop, is the editor, and who is not. He may lose your book, or he may let it lie about for months, or he may send it on at once to the real editor with his bitter malison. The utmost possible vexation is thus inflicted on every hand, and a prejudice is established against you which the nature of your work is very unlikely to overcome. By all means bore many literary strangers ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang

... a million Hurrys! yes, he's worth all the young men who ever came upon the lake put together," said Judith, with an energy and positiveness that caused her sister to wonder. "He is true. There is no lie about Deerslayer. You, Hetty, may not know what a merit it is in a man to have truth, but when you get—no—I hope you will never know it. Why should one like you be ever made to learn the hard ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... if I sent him off—or tried to—that he would tell about my being in the Wayfarer's Lodge that night, and they would think I had been a tramp. I could have done it, but I thought he might tell some lie about me; and they might get ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... lesson," said Pinckney; "he went clean mad for the moment. Then there's the fact that I struck him. No, taking everything into consideration, we'll let it be. I don't feel any animosity against him, not half as much as if he'd stabbed me behind the back with a libel— He did tell a lie about me to-night but it was the stupid sort of lie a child might have told. The man has his good points as well as his bad and I don't want to ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... have been right, a thousand times right, if, instead of counting up all your petty benefits and sacrifices, you could have been in a position to say 'the girl I loved'... but you are too honest to lie about that!" Mariana trembled feverishly. "You have always hated me. And even now you are glad in the bottom of your heart—that same heart you have just mentioned—glad that I am justifying your constant predictions, covering myself with shame and scandal—you are only annoyed because part ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... gaunt officer. "So you are one of those Yankee muleteers in your uniform, and armed! It is sufficient that you are American. If it had not been for America this war would be ended! But it is not enough, apparently, that you come here with munitions and food, that you insult us at sea, that you lie about us and slander us and send your shells and cartridges to England to slay our people! No! Also you must come to insult us in your clown's uniform and with your pistol—" The man began to choke with fury, unable to continue, ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... fell over Crow Nest, and over the river and the heaped-up mountains that lie about West Point, and in the quiet room the boy's mother sat perplexed, uncertain, his letter in her hands; yet with a vague sense of coming comfort in her heart as she thought of the girl who would surely "find her and be good to ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... We are to assume the offensive. We are to climb up to the stars by microscopes. We are to measure this earth by our mathematics. We are to penetrate its depths and lift to the sun its costly treasures. We are to acquaint ourselves with the workings of the manifold laws which lie about us. If we would know ourselves, understand our relation to God, we must see after the requisite knowledge. Suppose that Duke William Anderson had despaired of ever receiving an education; sat down by the way in life and said: "There is no use of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... through their business training, or apprenticeship, instead of pursuing their avocation and rising in their business, will often lie about doing nothing. They say; "I have learned my business, but I am not going to be a hireling; what is the object of learning my trade or profession, ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum

... forsaken him. Hour after hour he lay listening to mysterious noises, strange crackings and creakings through the desolate house; sometimes he imagined the sound of footsteps in the bare rooms below; even hushed voices, from he knew not where, chilled his blood at midnight. Since crumbs had begun to lie about, mice were common; they scampered as if in revelry above the ceiling, and under the floor, and within the walls. Goldthorpe began to dislike this strange abode. He felt that under any circumstances it would be impossible for him to ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... comrade, "it is rayther ugly news the red-skinned devil's told me; but I don' know how much truth thar's in it; for I've foun' her out in more 'n one lie about this bizness. She's been wi' the carryvan, however, an' shed know all ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... longest continuous waterway in the world, and with two small cuttings Canada can bring ocean-going ships into the very heart of the continent. Second, water means climate rainfall, and there need be no fear of snow and frost while great bodies of open water lie about. And third, water power. Do you know that Canada stands first in the world in its water power? It possesses twice the water power of the United States (we like to get something in which we can excel our American cousins), and lying near the great centres of population too. ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... that he had been at first much pestered with Cats and Rats, the latter of which gnawed his feet and clothes, so that he was obliged to cherish the Cats with Goat's-flesh, and they grew so familiar with him as to lie about him in hundreds. But I cannot stay to recount half the wonderful Adventures of Mr. Selkirk. I knew him afterwards, a very old Man, lodging with one Mrs. Branbody, that kept a Chandler's Shop over against the Jews' Harp Tavern at Stepney. He was wont bitterly ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... day the Christopher went roome with the Cape, but we having a mery wind for England, and fearing the danger of the enemies, which ordinarily lie about the Cape: besides, not knowing the state of our countrey and Spaine, and although it were peace, yet there was little hope of friendship at their hands, considering the voyage that we had made, and we also being so weake, that ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... 'em about like buttons! He's been a crackin' o' cribs—he has. I ain't a goin' to interduce our Mattie to no sich blokes as him. No fathers or lovyers for me—says I!—But this here pebble o' Paradise!—What's to be done wi' the cherub? I can't tell her a lie about it, an' who'll break it up for a cove like me, lookin' jes' as if I'd been an' tarred myself and crep' through a rag-bag! They'd jug me. An' what 'ud Mattie say then? I wish I 'adn't 'a' touched it. I'm blowed if I don't toss it over a bridge!—Then the gent ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald

... the table, sliced up and fried, or boiled whole, or coming up roasted and gleaming with butter, with more outside capes and coats than an ideal English coachman of the olden times. Finocchi, too, are here, tasting like anisette, and good to mix in the salads. And great beans lie about in piles, the contadini twisting them out of their thick pods with their thumbs, to eat them raw. Nay, even the signoria of the noble families do the same, as they walk through the gardens, and think them such a luxury that they eat them ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... after hard work and waiting and our spending so much, and everything comes out exactly as we figured, you go and throw us down—not just yourself, but us and our rights! Now you talk straight stuff! Tell us, why did you refuse Sherwood when he proposed? And why did you tell me that lie about his not proposing?" ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott

... to my shop, and I saw directly I was nothing to him, and he owned it all to me; he had courted her, and she jilted him; so he said. Why should he tell me a lie about that? I'd lay my life 'tis true. And now you have sent him to her your own self; and, at sight of her, I shall be nothing again. Well, when this ship goes down, they can marry, and I hope he will be happy, happier than I can make him, that tried ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... gospel! Who want to make up lie about poor debble of nigger? Well, den, Masser Mile, in all dem 1700 year, did he ebber hear of a Clawbonny that want to be a free nigger? Tell me dat, once, an' I ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... do to lie about it: Cornelia had a natural if not a moral disinclination to falsehood, and was, moreover, acute enough to see how strong, in this case, would be the chances of detection. It was not likely that Sophie would accept upon hearsay any imputations ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... very beginning. He used to stand by me and watch while I fished in the lagoon, and go shares in anything I caught. And he was sensible, too. There were nasty green warty things, like pickled gherkins, used to lie about on the beach, and he tried one of these and it upset him. He never even looked at any of ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... contribution to our 'civilization' is the establishment of gluttonous dining clubs, so-called gymnastic societies, and pari-mutuel associations. Today the business man has but these aims, to exploit the working man, manufacture shoddy, lie about the quality of merchandise, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... fine country on the south-west, between four and five hundred miles distant from Charlestown, and the number of both the Upper and Lower nations does not exceed two thousand gun-men. The Chickesaw towns lie about six hundred miles due west from Charlestown, but the nation cannot send three hundred warriors to the field, owing to the incessant wars which they have carried on against the French, by which their number has been greatly diminished. The Choctaws ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt

... of it!" Long exploded. "That puts it up to me. I know you had reason for giving Gomez his, and I know this girl wouldn't lie about the other. But—well, I don't get you a-tall, Rathburn, and that's a fact. Something tells me I've got to give you a chance, and if I knew what tells me this I'd wring ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts

... concern. Don't lie about your poverty. You've a steady well-paid job, and plenty of money to throw away on drunken sprees, I'll bet. The weekly fee at the Hill Farm is only seven dollars. You can easily afford that—the price of ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill

... and die off depth beyond depth. Of the old mines nothing remains but the level cuttings in the sides of the fells, and here and there the washing-pits cut out of the rock at your feet. Fragments of stone lie about, glistening with veins of lead, but no sound of pick or hammer breaks the stillness, and no cart or truck trundles over the rough path. It is a solitude in which one might forget that the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... I'll do it again. I'll break up the bad practice. Their parents send them to school. They do a mean, dishonest thing and then they lie about it. Don't come ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... dragon, and is repeatedly convicted of treachery and taken back into confidence by Konig Marx, as one may read in Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte d'Arthur." Sachs follows an old conclusion of the story and gives Tristrant a second Iseult to wife, and she tells the lie about the sails. The first Iseult dies of a broken heart at the sight of her lover's bier, and the Herald in a speech draws ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... I have been waiting for all these days! I should have got it to-morrow. Now I shall never get it, never hear from her again, nor have another chance in this world or in the next. I don't say it was all your fault. You no more knew that she was there than I did. But you told me a deliberate lie about her people, and that I ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... holding their places at those lower levels—always reaching vainly and eagerly, but always reaching a little higher and a little further from them for that equality of opportunity which seemed to lie about them that first day when the town ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... districts, where Jewish families lived scattered, by special permission of the police, who were always changing their minds about letting them stay, the Gentiles made the Passover a time of horror for the Jews. Somebody would start up that lie about murdering Christian children, and the stupid peasants would get mad about it, and fill themselves with vodka, and set out to kill the Jews. They attacked them with knives and clubs and scythes and axes, killed them or tortured them, and burned their houses. This ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... Teach him that you have confidence in him. Make him think you have anyway, whether you have or not. Do not seek to get a whiff of his breath every ten minutes to see whether he has been drinking or not. If you keep doing that you will sock him into a drunkard's grave, sure pop. He will at first lie about it, then he will use disinfectants for the breath, and then he will stay away till he gets over it. The timid young man says, 'Pass the cloves, please. I've got to get ready to go home pretty soon.' The man whose wife really has fun with him says, 'Well, boys, good-night. I'm sorry for you.' Then ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... towards the capture of the forts at the Narrows. All round where I sit the ground is ploughed up with great holes, some beside this battery the largest of any, big enough to completely hide a horse and cart. Pieces of shell of several hundredweight lie about. The precision of our gunfire has to be seen otherwise one could not believe how accurately they can hit a small object miles off. The very birds have got accustomed to the din, and on the face of the rocks where I sit is a pair of exquisite birds—probably jays—flitting about as though ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson

... of Wales was born. The future of his policy was assured. The crown was not to pass to the head of the Protestant interest in Europe. James's enemies, says the imperial envoy, gave up their cause for lost. In their despair they at once invented the lie about the warming pan. James's opportunity had come. He could declare an amnesty for the event which had so profoundly changed his fortunes. The seven bishops could be released without a trial, and the impending catastrophe could ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... me, Frank. Tell me you forgive me. O God! you don't know what my life has been with him. When I found out that it was all a lie about your being killed at Cieneguilla, he beat me like a slave. He had to go and fight in the war. They made him; they conscripted him; and when he got back he brought me papers to show you were killed in one of the Virginia battles. I gave up hope then ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... on the 9th of November to visit the island of Saad el Din, the larger of the two patches of ground which lie about two miles north of the town. Reaching our destination, after an hour's lively sail, we passed through a thick belt of underwood tenanted by swarms of midges, with a damp chill air crying fever, and a fetor of decayed vegetation smelling death. To this ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... they found a Fisher-boat, whereinto they got and rowed into the sea to the Erle of Cumberlands shippes, which to their great fortune chanced at that time to come by the Island, and ankered with his ships about halfe a mile from the Road of Angra, hard by two small Islands, which lie about a bases shot from the Island and are full of Goats, Deere and Sheepe, belonging to the inhabitants of the Island of Tercera. Those Saylers knew it well, and thereupon they rowed vnto them with their ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt

... literary self-respect in these days compatible with the old trade of make-believe, with the production of the kind of fiction which is too much honored by classification with card-playing and horse-racing. But let fiction cease to lie about life; let it portray men and women as they are, actuated by the motives and the passions in the measure we all know; let it leave off painting dolls and working them by springs and wires; let it show the different interests in their true proportions; let ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... can, even with oneself, be perfectly open and not take fright at the whole truth. I will observe, in parenthesis, that Heine says that a true autobiography is almost an impossibility, and that man is bound to lie about himself. He considers that Rousseau certainly told lies about himself in his confessions, and even intentionally lied, out of vanity. I am convinced that Heine is right; I quite understand how sometimes one may, out of ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... home my little straw, or I'd have had the house thatched long ago." "Cannot you give me a plain answer to this plain question? Did it rain yesterday?" "Oh sure, I wouldn't go to tell your honour a lie about the matter. Sarrah much it rained yesterday after twelve o'clock, barring a few showers; but in the night there was a great fall of rain any how; and that was the reason prevented my going to Dublin yesterday, for fear the mistress's band-box should get wet upon my cars. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... smoke pipes with Jack and Tom, the grooms in the stables. Mrs. Newcome found me, I recollect, with one of those books; and thinking it might be by Mrs. Hannah More, or some of that sort, for it was a grave-looking volume: and though I wouldn't lie about that or anything else—never did, sir; never, before heaven, have I told more than three lies in my life—I kept my own counsel; I say, she took it herself to read one evening; and read on gravely—for she had no more idea of a joke than I have of Hebrew—until she ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... cultivation are needed to loosen the soil so that rain can soak in and not lie about in pools, and also to ...
— Lessons on Soil • E. J. Russell

... want you to listen to me for a minute. That is a lie about the French coming over the mountains,—every word of it. If Polete here, who, you know, is only a laborer like most of you, says he has seen them coming in a vision, why he's simply lying to you, or he doesn't know what he's talking about. There are not three hundred ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... and then goes to settle in Herefordshire. Her husband is a surly, ill-natured brute, and cares not she should see anybody. O Lord, see how I blundered, and left two lines short; it was that ugly score in the paper(17) that made me mistake.—I believe you lie about the story of the fire, only to make it more odd. Bernage must go to Spain; and I will see to recommend him to the Duke of Argyle, his General, when I see the Duke next: but the officers tell me it would be dishonourable in the ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... extending out of sight among the trees, is visible a portion of a Nishinam Indian camp. It is a temporary camp for the night. Small cooking fires smoulder. Standing about are withe-woven baskets for the carrying of supplies and dunnage. Spears and bows and quivers of arrows lie about. Boys drag in dry branches for firewood. Young women fill gourds with water from the stream and proceed about their camp tasks. A number of older women are pounding acorns in stone mortars with stone ...
— The Acorn-Planter - A California Forest Play (1916) • Jack London

... just pulled our coins out, and the engineer was backing the train in order to get her started, when Yussuf Dakmar arrived at our door, carrying his belongings, and claimed a seat on the strength of a lie about ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy

... that she had acted entirely in self-defence, not through malice, and she had not told a single lie about Peter. She had but said—in words—that some men were safer than others, which every one knew to be true; that Peter was rather foolish about women (so he was—ridiculously soft, not modern in his ideas at all!), and that it would be ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... Dicky Graham, don't you imagine it would have been easier for me to lie about all this? I didn't need to tell you anything. Another thing I want you to understand plainly and that is my reason for not telling Jack at first that I ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison

... his house. For my money, it's the butler. Now that Fleming's dead, he's the only one in the house who knows enough about arms to know what was worth stealing. He has constant access to the gunroom. I caught him in a lie about a book Fleming kept a record of his collection in, and now the book has vanished. And furthermore, and most important, if he'd been on the level, he would have spotted what was going on, long ago, ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper

... that? they asked. They had been thinking of letting little Stanislovas go to work. Well, there was no need to worry, Grandmother Majauszkiene said—the law made no difference except that it forced people to lie about the ages of their children. One would like to know what the lawmakers expected them to do; there were families that had no possible means of support except the children, and the law provided them no other way of getting a living. Very often a man could get no work in Packingtown for ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... creation of the State, namely, the sending out of the city all who had arrived at ten years of age, in order to expedite the business of education by a generation, are also truly Platonic. (For the last, compare the passage at the end of the third book, in which he expects the lie about the earthborn men to be believed in the ...
— The Republic • Plato

... raised platform at the further end make two beds. In that open box are hymn-book, liturgy-book, and some volumes of the Eskimo Bible. Next it are a set of very fair cups and saucers, but it seems incongruous for the china to stand on the mud floor. Various utensils lie about, but there ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe

... much difference in Jimmie's feelings when he read of German atrocities. To begin with, he did not believe in them; they were just a part of the poison-gas of war. When men were willing to stab one another with bayonets, and to blow one another to pieces with bombs, they would be willing to lie about one another, you might be sure; the governments would lie deliberately, as one of the ways of making the soldiers fight harder. What? argued Jimmie: tell him that Germans were a lot of savages? When he lived in a city with hundreds of them, ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... Strait of Magellan, and up along the western coast of Patagonia; but information received at Tristan d'Acunha induced him to steer to the southward, in the hope of falling in with some small islands said to lie about the parallel of 60 degrees S., longitude 41 degrees 20' W. In the event of his not discovering these lands, he designed, should the season prove favourable, to push on toward the pole. Accordingly, on ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... that ward that nobody could lie about and that was the twitches of pain we suffered in the mornings when the old dressings of the day before were changed ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... until the new ones swelled in the stem, one thought of the beauty of spring, when the hedges would be full of hawthorn, and the banks of cowslips, when cherry-blossom would fill the orchards, and the young lambs and calves lie about in the low, green meadows, and the sky would be great and vigorous above the quiescent earth. On the same day, a week later, Anne was in the dairy in the evening, packing her butter for the following day's market. The day just withdrawing had been golden from beginning ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone

... sides will charm your sight—flowers, the only gift she accepts, and those only from certain people, for nosegays live but a day; they give pleasure, and must be replaced; to her they are, as in the East, a symbol and a promise. The costly toys of fashion lie about, but not so as to suggest a museum or a curiosity shop. You will find her sitting by the fire in a low chair, from which she will not rise to greet you. Her talk will not now be what it was at the ball; there she was our ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac

... I rode with the missionaries to their large country-house, which is situated about six miles from the town, on some low hills. The valley through which we rode was very large, and altogether well cultivated and delightful. Although it is said to lie about 4,000 feet above the level of the sea, cotton, castor- oil plants, vines, tobacco, and every kind of fruit grow here as in South Germany. The castor-oil plant, indeed, is not more than four feet high, and the cotton but one foot; they produce, however, rather abundantly. Several villages are half ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... every few minutes with a fresh refusal, but the same excuse. It got so at last I could anticipate the excuse. The inn was full already—of assessors and their victims. The assessors had descended on the spot, it seemed, and the whole country-side had come to town to lie about the value of its land. I only wished the inhabitants might have chosen some other time for false swearing. For it was a sad tax on ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... gored by the horns of a bull, who, like the hawk, symbolizes the king. The royal bull has broken down the wall of a fortified enclosure, in which is the hut or tent of the Semite, and the bricks lie about promiscuously. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... know, of course it is a mortifying thing when a lady claims a gentleman's acquaintance, and the gentleman doesn't admit it. But what could I do? I couldn't tell a lie about it—could I?" ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... Dirk's voice was ominously gruff. It is a painful truth that by daylight he was ashamed of his part of the transaction. "I told you she sent it. It's noways likely that I'd take the trouble to make up a lie about that weed. How do I know what she wanted you to have it for? Maybe she thought it matched ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden

... a little while ago when I first told our old man that lie about his friend and the gold and the galley, I there and then stole the image from the citadel. Even then two fateful events were yet to come, and the town was still untaken. Later, on carrying the letter to the old man, I then slew my ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... enjoyable than this? Why should I not spend a few days at this inn, reading, studying, fishing? Here I wondered why that man told me such a lie about the fishing. If I wanted to exercise on my wheel I felt sure there were pretty roads hereabout. I had plenty of time before me—my whole vacation. Why should I be consumed by this restless desire to ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton

... of the spirit that have never been disbarred, as the foul blows of the prize-ring have been disbarred. (Would it not be preferable for a man to strike one full on the mouth with his fist than for him to tell a lie about one, or malign those that ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... brought a great deal of baggage with you. You, for instance," said our friend, turning to me, "packed up, I suppose, a heavy overcoat for cold weather, and a lighter one, and a good winter suit, and a good summer one, besides another for spring and fall, and an old suit to lie about in in the orange groves, and a dress suit, besides such convenient articles as old boots for tramping in, ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... should we not have the gold if it can be found? It belongs to nobody. We do not get it by robbery, or murder; nuggets are of no use to Portuguese who have been dead two hundred years, and whose heirs, if they have any, it is impossible to discover. Nor can it matter to them whether they lie about singly as they died or were placed after death, or piled together in a corner. Our fears were mere churchyard superstitions, which we have caught from that ghoul of a Molimo. Don't you agree ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... rings a hammering all day, And shingles lie about the doors; In orchards near and far away The grey wood-pecker taps and bores; The men are merry at their chores, And children earnest at ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... you an important letter by express on the three o'clock train," said the cashier. "Get it and read what I have written. Stay as long as you need to, but smash that pool, and teach Lamson not to lie about the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... could lie about his island, he would be capable of the theft of those pearls," admitted ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne

... us, and we found ourselves taking tea in the N.W. district, that is to say in one of those parts (there are millions of them) which lie about the Abbey Road. One of us had knitted belts for soldiers; another knew a hero who had received the D.S.O., and all of us had been brought into close connection with Belgian refugees whose cheerful courage under terrible suffering formed the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various

... to get his ball out of the grass. On his fifth shot the ball had a good lie about ten yards from the lane fence. He smashed at it with a brassie, but drove too low. The ball hit a fence post and bounded back fully seventy-five yards. In five strokes he had not gained a foot. After a combination of weird ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... However, it can't be helped now. No doubt he had some evil purpose all along, or he wouldn't have come to us with that lie about being sent ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... of some help to you," he said, carelessly. "It was a gospel to me when I first fell on it. You must not expect too much; but it may give you a centre round which to hang your ideas, instead of letting them lie about in a confusion that makes the head ache. We of this generation are not destined to eat and be satisfied as our fathers were; we must be content ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... remembered this Hermione was jealous, too, of the talent Vere must have, a talent she had longed for, but which had been denied to her. For even if Emile... and then again came the most hateful suspicion of all—but Emile could not lie about the things ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... the shop of Nazareth Pungent cedar haunts the breath. 'Tis a low Eastern room, Windowless, touched with gloom. Workman's bench and simple tools Line the walls. Chests and stools, Yoke of ox, and shaft of plow, Finished by the Carpenter Lie about the pavement now. ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... Custom-house on the rocks. You will go to a ball there to-night, and hear the boom of the surf as you dance." He turned with one of his sudden impatient motions. "Suppose we ride. The air is too sharp to lie about under the trees. This white horse mates your gown. Let us go ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... she had blushed in writing George Cannon's first lie about the printing of the first issue. She had accustomed herself to lies, and really without any difficulty or hesitation. Yes! She had even reached the level of being religiously proud of them! But now her bullied and crushed conscience leaped up again, and in the swift ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... interpretation of it derived through analysis: "The bear is a growler, i.e., his father, who has told him many a lie about the genesis of babies. He reviles him for it. He was a blockhead, he had a wooden head. The mighty tree is the phallus. The chain is marriage. He was a henpecked husband, a tamed bear. Mother held him by the chain. This chain (the bond ? of marriage) Omicron desired ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... sometimes you will see little child-crystals put to school like school-girls, and made to stand in rows; and taken the greatest care of, and taught how to hold themselves up, and behave: and sometimes you will see unhappy little child-crystals left to lie about in the dirt, and pick up their living, and learn manners, where they can. And sometimes you will see fat crystals eating up thin ones, like great capitalists and little labourers; and politico-economic crystals teaching the stupid ones how to eat each ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... breaches, by the steep edges of a set of banks, rudely arranged in a circle. These banks consist of sand, with a very little live coral; they vary in breadth from five to twelve miles, and on an average lie about sixteen fathoms beneath the surface; they are bordered by the steep edges of a third narrow and upper bank, which forms the rim to the whole. This rim is about a mile in width, and with the exception of two or three spots where islets have been formed, is submerged between five ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin

... are here. Maybe he was weak-minded | |through drink. He couldn't have known Gene or he | |wouldn't have killed him. Did they tell you at the | |Oak Street Station that the other policemen called | |Gene Happy Sheehan? Anything they told you about him| |is true, because no one would lie about him. He was | |always happy, and he was a fine-looking young man, | |and he always had to duck his helmet when he walked | |under the gas fixture in the hall, as he went out | |the door. | | | |"He was doing dance steps on the floor of the | |basement, after his dinner yesterday ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... lie about it, I beg of you,' said I; 'for we have found four of the dead titmice stuck on the thorns of a bush, and your people have been known to do such ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum

... fence with the truth. I have always seen it coming, and why should I lie about it, now that it is come? When one is as tired as I am, there is only one other thing which happens—one dies. You don't suppose I should have sent for you like this if ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... crossed the Line, in longitude about 160 deg.. We continue on a straight course, making an average of about 240 miles a day. It already begins to get cooler, as we are past the sun's greatest heat. It is a very idle, listless life; and I lie about on the hen-coops all day, reading, or sitting down now and then to write up this log, which has been written throughout amidst discomfort and under ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... do you both good," said Dick. "You shall lie about, and Miss Bird shall read to you. You will go back to the excitements of the ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... instead of preventing the need of disinfectants. Wherever men are congregated in large numbers,—in a caravan, at a fair in the East or a protracted camp-meeting in the far West, or as a military force anywhere, there is always animal refuse which should not be permitted to lie about for a day or an hour. Dead camels among Oriental merchants, dead horses among Western soldiers, are the cause of plague. It is to be hoped that there will never be a military encampment again without the appointment of officers whose business it shall be to see that all carrion, offal, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... as you have nothing to do, so you have nothing to lie about, and may cease lying, which is a ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... men in the British army," she repeated for the third time in triumph. "If the Captain says that there are more he lies. It is natural that he should lie about his own army. My grandfather's brother was at Cape Town in the time of Governor Smith, and he saw the whole British army. He counted them; there were exactly three thousand. I say that there are three thousand ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... you young imp, but take the horse. I'll not forget you when I come out. What's the matter with you, you fool; d'ye think I'd tell you a lie about it?" ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... is an incessant sound as if millions of phantom teams, with bells, were traveling through the upper air, at an enormous distance off. It is quite an oppressive circumstance, too, to come upon great tracks, where settlers have been burning down the trees; and where their wounded bodies lie about, like those of murdered creatures; while here and there some charred and blackened giant rears two bare arms aloft, and seems to curse his enemies. The prettiest sight I have seen was yesterday, when we—on the heights of the mountain, and in a keen wind—looked down into a valley full of light ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... Spaniards founded the city of Manila and reduced that island to peace, they learned that in some mountainous regions which lie about forty leguas from the city, in the province of Pangasinan, there were many mines of gold, according to the information which the Indians gave them; but that they were inhabited by warlike and barbarous Indians, who never permitted those of the plains to go up there. This was known because ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair

... trades-people living on their summer's gains, and, finally, fishermen. Those who pursue this last laborious calling are always lazy to the eye, for they are on shore only in lazy moments. They work by night or at early dawn, and by day they perhaps lie about on the rocks, or sit upon one heel beside a fish-house door. I knew a missionary who resigned his post at the Isles of Shoals because it was impossible to keep the Sunday worshippers from lying at full length on the seats. Our boatmen have the ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... believed him dead. "Ey, indeed," cried the landlady, "we were all of the same opinion, being as the report went, that poor Greaves Oakley was killed in battle." "Lord, mistress," said Oakley, "there wan't a word of truth in it, I'll assure you.—What, d'ye think I'd tell a lie about the matter? Hurt I was, to be sure, but that don't signify; we gave 'em as good as they brought, and so parted.— Well, if so be I can't see mother, I'll go and have some chat with Suky. —What d'ye look so glum for? she an't married, is she?" "No, no," replied the woman, "not married, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... read: "But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground." He stopped a moment for thought. The Lord God! The mist of error watered the false thought—the one lie about God—and out of it formed the man of flesh, the false concept which is held in the minds of mortals. Aye, it was the lie, posing as the Lord of creation, which had formed its false man out of the dust of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply avenged. Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... trenches and its clean puncturing bayonet thrust or rifle bullet. While the shells shriek and whirr through the air, heaps of humanity are distributed about the trenches, in the dug-outs, or in the reserve lines. The men sit or lie about for the most part, as unconcerned as if on holiday bent. The order to 'stand to' would bring them to their appointed places, from whence they would resist an invasion of their lines by the enemy, or launch an ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss

... asked him if I whispered to him; of course he ought not to lie about it. But he told of you at ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic

... and bite something now," cried the boatswain. "Come, my lad," he continued, turning to Don, "you've got too much stuff in you to lie about like this. Jump up, and come on ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... want you, not Juliet," she said. "I have sent for Dudley, but he has not come—I took the paper at the door by chance—and I find that Colonel Diggs has brought up that old dead lie about the governor. He dares to say that the people of Kingsborough believe it—the coward! They never believed it—it is false—as false as the lie itself. Oh, if I were a man I would kill him for it, but I am ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... kind of thing in terms of arithmetic. Now look at the parts in relation to each other. Grell leaves the club and gets you to lie about his absence. Coincidence number one. A man astonishingly like him is murdered in his study a short time afterwards. Coincidence number two. He is apparently dressed in Grell's clothes and has Grell's belongings in his pockets. Coincidence number three. Both Grell and ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest



Words linked to "Lie about" :   lie around, idle, slug, stagnate, laze



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