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Crab   Listen
noun
Crab  n.  
1.
(Zool.) One of the brachyuran Crustacea. They are mostly marine, and usually have a broad, short body, covered with a strong shell or carapace. The abdomen is small and curled up beneath the body. Note: The name is applied to all the Brachyura, and to certain Anomura, as the hermit crabs. Formerly, it was sometimes applied to Crustacea in general. Many species are edible, the blue crab of the Atlantic coast being one of the most esteemed. The large European edible crab is Cancer padurus. Soft-shelled crabs are blue crabs that have recently cast their shells. See Cancer; also, Box crab, Fiddler crab, Hermit crab, Spider crab, etc., under Box, Fiddler. etc.
2.
The zodiacal constellation Cancer.
3.
(Bot.) A crab apple; so named from its harsh taste. "When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl."
4.
A cudgel made of the wood of the crab tree; a crabstick. (Obs.)
5.
(Mech.)
(a)
A movable winch or windlass with powerful gearing, used with derricks, etc.
(b)
A form of windlass, or geared capstan, for hauling ships into dock, etc.
(c)
A machine used in ropewalks to stretch the yarn.
(d)
A claw for anchoring a portable machine.
Calling crab. (Zool.) See Fiddler., n., 2.
Crab apple, a small, sour apple, of several kinds; also, the tree which bears it; as, the European crab apple (Pyrus Malus var. sylvestris); the Siberian crab apple (Pyrus baccata); and the American (Pyrus coronaria).
Crab grass. (Bot.)
(a)
A grass (Digitaria sanguinalis syn. Panicum sanguinalis); called also finger grass.
(b)
A grass of the genus Eleusine (Eleusine Indica); called also dog's-tail grass, wire grass, etc.
Crab louse (Zool.), a species of louse (Phthirius pubis), sometimes infesting the human body.
Crab plover (Zool.), an Asiatic plover (Dromas ardeola).
Crab's eyes, or Crab's stones, masses of calcareous matter found, at certain seasons of the year, on either side of the stomach of the European crawfishes, and formerly used in medicine for absorbent and antacid purposes; the gastroliths.
Crab spider (Zool.), one of a group of spiders (Laterigradae); called because they can run backwards or sideways like a crab.
Crab tree, the tree that bears crab applies.
Crab wood, a light cabinet wood obtained in Guiana, which takes a high polish.
To catch a crab (Naut.), a phrase used of a rower:
(a)
when he fails to raise his oar clear of the water;
(b)
when he misses the water altogether in making a stroke.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Crab" Quotes from Famous Books



... crab!" says Tom. "I'm namin' prices now. Look out, Peter! You're seventy-three. I'm fifty-three. Will you grant that I'd live t' be as old ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... will have its end. I have had to parry several presents of busts, and so forth. The funny thing was the airs of my little friend. We had a most affectionate parting—wet, wet cheeks on the lady's side.[395] The pebble-hearted cur shed as few tears as Crab of dogged memory.[396] ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... Miss Podge, the wife and daughter of the Principal of Lord Buckram's College, I don't know, but that reverend old gentleman was too profound a flunkey by nature ever for one minute to think that a child of his could marry a nobleman. He therefore hastened on his daughter's union with Professor Crab. ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... wrong that Flore Brazier should be queen over Jean-Jacques Rouget and his home. She protested against the immorality of the connection, and took a tone of injured virtue; the fact being that she was humiliated by having, at her age, a crab-girl for a mistress,—a child who had been brought barefoot into the house. Fanchette owned three hundred francs a year in the Funds, for the doctor made her invest her savings in that way, and he had left her as much more in an annuity; she ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... after another hermit-crab!" cried Leslie. "I was wondering where he could be." They both raced up to him and reached him just as he had apparently attained the end of his quest and backed ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman

... along a sandy beach, he found innumerable fruits, and many of them such as no plants which he had discovered in this country produced: Among others were some cocoa-nuts, which Tupia said had been opened by a kind of crab, which from his description we judged to be the same that the Dutch call Beurs Krabbe, and which we had not seen in these seas. All the vegetable substances which he found in this place were encrusted with marine productions, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... seein' no sojers. I t'ink some of ol' marster's boys went to de war but de ol' man didn' go. I dunno 'bout wedder dey come back or not 'cep'n' I 'member dat Crab Norsworthy ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... shells; and the matoutou falaise, or spider of the cliffs, of two varieties, red or almost black when adult, and bluish silvery tint when young,—less in size than the tarantula, but equally hairy and venomous; and the crabe-c'est-ma-faute (the "Through-my-fault Crab"), having one very small and one very large claw, which latter it carries folded up against its body, so as to have suggested the idea of a penitent striking his bosom, and uttering the sacramental words of the Catholic confession, "Through ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... fool to reject the help that would have opened some higher and less distasteful career to him, yet if he had accepted it he would never have known the extent of his own powers. He would have been a hermit-crab still, fitted with another shell by the kindness of his friends. Had he clearly understood what he was doing when he went to Brenthill, it was very likely that he might never have gone. He was almost glad that he had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... bushes, with their great pink flowers, "the pretty Thomisus, the little crab-spider, clad in satin," watches for the domestic bee, and suddenly kills it, seizing the back of the head, while the Philanthus, also seizing it by the head, plunges its sting under the chin, neither too high nor too low, but "exactly ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... the wasps so killed; ridding himself of fleas by gradually going into the water with a lock of wool in his mouth, and so driving the fleas up into it and then leaving it in the water; by catching crab fish with his tail, which he saith he himself was a witness of.—Derham's Physico-Theology, book iv. chap. 11., and Ol. Mag. Hist. lib. xviii. cap. 39, 40.—Peruse this ye incredulous lectors of Baron Munch-Hausen, and Colonel Nimrod. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... alone to be seen, As he sprawled like a crab on its back; While the waterman cried—"Ho! my lads! I think ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour

... earth), is called the ecliptic, which is divided into twelve equal parts, called signs, and are distinguished by the following names and marks, [again, the symbols for the signs can be seen in the HTML version] viz. Aries, the Ram; Taurus, the Bull; Gemini, the Twins; Cancer, the Crab; Leo, the Lion; Virgo, the Virgin; Libra, the Balance; Scorpio, the Scorpion; Sagittarius, the Archer; Capricornus, the Goat; Aquarius, the ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... replied, "some of the houses you occupied last spring are waiting for you, and you will find pleasant places on which to build new ones in Crab Apple Lane, Woodbine Walk, Maple ...
— Buttercup Gold and Other Stories • Ellen Robena Field

... single property of the aliment whereby the taste is produced. In the sense of seeming red to a spectator with normally constructed eyes, and green to one who is colour-blind, a ruby or a Siberian crab is at once both red and green, but the two colours which it causes to be perceived cannot be identical with the peculiar structure, or whatever else it be, whereby the ruby or Siberian crab communicates to circumambient ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... the stuff brushed ship side. One of the boys cried, "Ho, there is a crab!" It sat indeed on a criss-cross of broken reeds, and it seemed to stare at us solemnly. "Do not all see that it came from land, and land ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... reached out her hand and, to George's extreme astonishment, a little door swung open, revealing the foot of a winding staircase. Turning sideways in order to get her tray through the narrow opening, the little maid darted in with a rapid crab-like motion. The door closed behind her with a click. A minute later it opened again and the maid, without her tray, hurried back across the hall and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. George tried to recompose his thoughts, but ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... fish. By this time our stock was completely exhausted—indeed, for the last day it had been scarcely eatable. While two of the men remained on shore to collect salt from the rocks, the rest of us went off, and with the crab-bait soon caught a large quantity of fish. In two days we got as many as we could well carry. Some of these were salted, others were smoked over the fire. We didn't fail, as may be supposed, to pay frequent visits to our look-out ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston

... cautiously we approached, something would take fright. Perhaps it would be a little shore crab that betrayed itself by scuffling down amongst the corallite or sea-weed, perhaps a little fierce-looking bristly fish, which shot under a ledge of the rock all amongst the limpets, acorn barnacles, or the thousands of yellow and brown and striped snaily fellows that crawled about in ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... he getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel, and goes into the dungeon to them, and there first 5 falls to rating of them as if they were dogs, although they never gave him an unpleasant word. Then he fell upon them and beat them fearfully, in such sort that they were not ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... the youngest hollowed out beds in the sand with their hoofs or went to fetch coverings; instead of luzern, they had no food but crabs, which they caught on the strand and even in the sea; so that Theorus causes a Corinthian[81] crab to say, "'Tis a cruel fate, oh Posidon! neither my deep hiding-places, whether on land or at sea, can help me to escape ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... outside that narrow domain. Durrington, which was little more than ten miles away, was only a name to them. Many of them had not been as far as Leyland for months. They spent their days catching eels in the marsh canals, or in setting lobster and crab traps outside the breakwater. The agricultural labourers tilled the same patch of ground year after year. They had no recreations except an occasional night at the inn; their existence was a lifelong struggle with Nature for a bare ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... before the play ends, and I have to ask them out to supper. Then I am always greatly alarmed, for you never can tell what will happen, sir, with two ladies at supper and only twenty dollars in your pocket, and both ladies fond of game and crab-meat. It's really very trying. I sit and tremble as I watch them, and go home with only a feeble remnant of my salary, and next day I have ...
— 'Charge It' - Keeping Up With Harry • Irving Bacheller

... beside Felix, who with his safety inkstand planted in the sand, was at work condensing the parliamentary debates for the Pursuivant, and was glad to perceive that he was so far alive as to be leaning on his elbow, slowly shovelling the sand or smaller pebbles with the frail tenement of a late crab, and it was another good sign to hear his voice in a voluntary ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... fodder. The waste of those articles in the South, through shameful carelessness and neglect, is immense; as food for stock, they are most expensive articles. Oats, millet, peas (vine and all), broadcast corn, Bermuda and crab-grass hay, are all much cheaper and equally good. Any one of these crops, fed whilst green—the oats and millet as they begin to shoot, the peas to blossom, and the corn when tasseling—with a feed of dry oats, corn, or corn-chop at noon, will ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox

... that most succulent edible, the crab, when the poet Crabbe is mentioned in their presence—and who can resist an obvious pun—are not really far astray. There can be little doubt but that a remote ancestor of George Crabbe took his name from the "shellfish," as we all persist, in spite of the naturalist, ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter

... always, as he once wrote, his own desire 'to be concealed in the crowd even when the field of honour appeared to ripen' before him; and his nephew says of him: 'Whowbeit he was verie hat in all questiones, yet when it twitched his particular,[29] no man could crab him, contrare to the common custome.' No one of braver spirit or truer mould has been among us, and we need to allow but little for the colouring of affection to accept James Melville's judgment: ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison

... told me. She was born, he said, in the shipyards, and at the moment lived in the top of the rookery nearest the bridge. She had an only sister, who was ten years older; the mother was the wife of a crab fisherman who had died some years before; the two children and mother were cared for by a brother crab fisherman. His son Francesco, if report were true, was to marry the sister when she turned fifteen, Francesco being ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith

... broken, hilly field, five miles south of Crab Orchard. From Perryville to this place, there has been each day occasional cannonading; but this morning I have heard no guns. The Cumberland mountains are in sight. We are pushing forward as fast ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty

... car dust on my tailor-built khaki. Why, even them bold Liberty bond patriots who commute on the 8:03 are tired of asking me when I'm going to be sent over to tell Pershing how it ought to be done. But when it comes to an old crab of a swivel chair major chuckin' 'bomb-proofer' in my teeth—well, I guess that'll be about all. Here's where I get a ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford

... nose was all over as red as scarlet, particularly the point of it, which exactly resembled a large red cherry, or ripe Siberian crab-apple. Now just think of it—a very fair woman with a blood-red nose! Faugh! it is enough to sicken the most devoted admirer of the sex. Suppose any gentleman going to be married, and full of love and admiration, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... lined with costly Bridgeport tapestries in brown and black, picked out here and there with beads and tufts of gloriously coloured wool. The bed curtains were of soft Norwegian yellow, with massive tassels of crab mauve, while the carpet and upholstery were almost entirely Spanish crimson with head-rests of Liverpool plush! It was here, of course, that she ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... Cibinium, which is washed with the acid streams of the river Assagion. In the forum, or market-place, is the tomb (as I conjecture by the footsteps of some letters now remaining) of Apicius, that famous Roman, not very beautiful, but antique. It is engraved upon the shell of a sea-crab; and it might happen, notwithstanding what Seneca says, that this famous epicure, after having sought for larger shell-fish than the coast of Gallia could supply him with, and then going in vain to Africa ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... permitted': so said I to myself. Into the coldest water did I plunge with head and heart. Ah, how oft did I stand there naked on that account, like a red crab! ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... liked to tear his heart in two and place one-half in her hands and throw the other at Hoeflinger's feet. At the sympathetic glance of her brown eyes tears came into his own. He turned about sharply and saw the farm-hand struggle up crab-fashion from the grass. He gave the wheel another kick and got on his Wanderer. The couple also mounted their wheels. For a time they rode straggling across the whole width of the road facing the setting sun. Then village ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... of them is familiar to horsemen in the south of England under the name of forest-fly; and, to some, of side-fly, from its running sideways like a crab. It creeps under the tails, and about the groins, of horses, which, at their first coming out of the north, are rendered half frantic by the tickling sensation; while our own breed ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... meet with a tolerably rich variety of fish, of which the consumption was relatively larger in former times. The Saxons fished both with the basket and the net. Among the fish here enumerated are the whale (which was largely used for food), the dolphin, porpoise, crab, oyster, herring, cockle, smelt, and eel. But in the supplement to Alfric's vocabulary, and in another belonging to the same epoch, there are important additions to this list: the salmon, the trout, the lobster, the bleak, with the whelk and other ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt

... vigorously, and having smoothed the surface once more, he drew A after A with the greatest rapidity, scrambling along sideways like a crab, and using both hands indifferently, till the row stretched as far as the flour ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Crab catching at night on the Yaquina Bay by the coast Indians was a very picturesque scene. It was mostly done by the squaws and children, each equipped with a torch in one hand, and a sharp-pointed stick in the other to take and lift the fish into baskets slung on the back to receive them. I ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan

... use the proper title—including sweet peach pickles dimpled with cloves and melting away in their own sweetness, and watermelon-rind pickles cut into cubes just big enough to make one bite—that is to say in cubes about three inches square—and the various kinds of jellies—crab-apple, currant, grape and quince—quivering in an ecstacy as though at their very goodness, and casting upon the white cloth where the light catches them all the reflected, dancing tints of beryl and amethyst, ruby and garnet—crown-jewels in ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... to Gerald, he said it was called the "crab-eater." When living near water, it exists on crabs and other Crustacea; but it also feeds on small rodents, birds, and other creatures. Its body was scarcely a foot in length; but its tail, which was prehensile, ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... look at you every night. I have read a book that told about a traveler that offended a crab once, and he informed the other crabs, and they all made for him at night, and twenty thousand of them came that night and crept under his tent, and sat there and looked at him. And there he was in the middle of them, and you know their ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... by—those three swart ones—appeared From climes unknown; yet, surely, on high quest Of what that star proclaimed, bright on the breast First of the Ram, afterwards glittering thence Into the watery Trigon, where, intense, It lit the Crab, and burned the Fishes pale. Three Signiors, owning many a costly bale; Three travelled masters, by their bearing lords Of lands and slaves. The Indian silk affords, With many a folded braid of white and gold, Shade to their ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various

... made friends. One's never seen without the other.... It's a fact, indeed—where the horse puts its hoof, there the crab ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev

... whims, those acquainted with the picturesque narrative of Suetonius already know. They will remember not only how he caused his nephew Germanicus to be poisoned by the governor of Syria, but how he ordered a fisherman to be torn in pieces by the claws of a crab, simply because he met him, in one of his suspicious moods, when strolling in a sequestered garden of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... the bride, in whose eyes this elderly gentleman with the tight boots appeared a rosy winged Cupid, waved her handkerchief until the vehicle had sidled round the hill, resembling in its progress a very infirm crab in a hurry. ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... make a good figure; and many come to school without any hats, as though they had run away from home. Some wear the white gymnasium suit. There is one of Schoolmistress Delcati's boys who is red from head to foot, like a boiled crab. Several are ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... yew, Beneath whose ill shade no plant ever grew. Some say he's a birch, a thought very odd; For none but a dunce would come under his rod. But I'll tell the secret; and pray do not blab: He is an old stump, cut out of a crab; And England has put this crab to a hard use, To cudgel our bones, and for drink give us ver-juice; And therefore his witnesses justly may boast, That none are more properly knights of the post, But here Mr. Wood complains that we mock, Though he may ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... circumstances a little affect an author's writings, but only within a certain range. The apple-tree may produce a somewhat different apple; but it will never producn an orange, neither will it yield a crab. ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... have been much less customary than now to drink pure water. Walker emphatically mentions, among the sufferings of a clergyman's wife and family in the Great Rebellion, that they were forced to drink water, with crab-apples stamped in ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... (in plenty of water), and drain 2 lbs. of crab-shells without bruising them. Pare and core some well shaped apples. When these are well heated, add the spinach. Cut into neat slices a dish of lamb's fry, and fry it a nice brown in the bacon liquor. Boil all together till the syrup is ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various

... been gone longer than I intended, for the boiled ham took more time than all the rest of the things," replied Dory, as he and Corny deposited their joint burden on the forward deck of the Goldwing. "The Missisquoi was this side of Crab Island when I saw her, and she can't be ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic

... unholy decoctions, or such as the dreadful giants that formed the nightmare of my childhood might have used in preparing those Brobdignagian repasts among the ingredients of which a plump child held the same rank as a crab in ours. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... monsieur," he said pleasantly, grabbing a vicious crab by its flippers, and smiling at its wild attempts to bite. "You see I am busy, but make yourself ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... thing to do was to let down my crinoline, for I could only walk like a crab in it when it was fastened up for riding, kilt up my linsey gown, take off my hat and jacket, and set to work The curtains must be drawn close, and the chairs moved out from their symmetrical positions against the ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... classes of malignant neoplasms. There the names were formed from the fleshlike appearance of the one and the crablike proliferations of the other—namely, Sarcoma (sarksflesh), carcinoma (karkinoscrab). ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... absent from her aspect. The critical objection was that it seemed a plastered freshness and not true bloom; or rather it was a savage and a hard, not a sweet freshness. Hence perhaps the name which distinguished her la Lazzeruola (crab apple). It was a freshness that did not invite the bite; sour ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... table Genevieve Hassiebrock, with thirteen's crab-like silhouette of elbow, rigid plaits, and nose still hitched to the star of her nativity, wound an exceedingly long arm ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... then the old man would swim to New York with her. Not a bit of it! The Hunchback was only an ugly old steamboat, which was all hunched up in the middle; and scratched through the water like a great crab trying to ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... the castings were executed at the foundry (late Bramah and Robinson's) at Pimlico, and put together in the yard of the manufactory, prior to their removal to Jamaica, where the work was re-erected by a derrick and crab from the inside, without the aid of any ...
— Smeaton and Lighthouses - A Popular Biography, with an Historical Introduction and Sequel • John Smeaton

... ones, irreparably; just as things go on in the world. And sometimes you may see hypocritical crystals taking the shape of others, though they are nothing like in their minds; and vampire crystals eating out the hearts of others; and hermit-crab crystals living in the shells of others; and parasite crystals living on the means of others; and courtier crystals glittering in attendance upon others; and all these, besides the two great companies of war and peace, who ally themselves, resolutely to ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... of Lam Kai Oo; copra making; marvels of the cocoanut-groves; the sagacity of pigs; and a crab that ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... head; the face of the Creator is the Bull; the breast would be the Man-pair; the heart, the Crab; the Lion, the stomach; the Maid, the hip; the Balance-bearer, the belly; the eighth (Scorpion), the membrum; the Archer, his pair of thighs; the Makara, his pair of knees; the Pot, his pair of legs; the Fish-pair, his two feet." Another writer gives ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... opposite an American battery before the engagement commenced," which reads especially well in connection with Capt. Pring's official letter: "Lieut. Hicks, of the Finch, had the mortification to strike on a reef of rocks to the eastward of Crab Island about the middle of the engagement." [Footnote: The italics are mine. The letter is given in full in the "Naval Chronicle."] What James means cannot be imagined; no stretch of language will convert "about the middle of" into "before." The Finch struck on the reef in consequence of ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... pausing and anxiously looking around, She saw a stout crab-stick lie flat on the ground. "Kind stick," she exclaim'd, "I entreat you to flog "This cruel, regardless, unmannerly dog, "Who will not bite Piggy, though plainly you see "My pig will not stir, and there's no home for me." No reply made the stick, not a blow would it strike, ...
— The Remarkable Adventures of an Old Woman and Her Pig - An Ancient Tale in a Modern Dress • Anonymous

... one pint of crab flake 4 hard boiled eggs 2 level tablespoonfuls of butter 2 tablespoonfuls of soft bread crumbs 1 tablespoonful of flour 1 teaspoonful of salt 1 saltspoonful of grated nutmeg 1 teaspoonful of onion juice 1/2 pint of milk A dash ...
— Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings Together with - Refreshments for all Social Affairs • Mrs. S. T. Rorer

... her. I knew exactly how she felt. As for me, I had rush of luncheon to the head, a frightful effect, considering that I'd just eaten a soft-shelled crab. With the little I knew of affairs between them I was still instinctively sure that Pat and the Stormy Petrel had come to some sort of a vague understanding the day of rain at Bretton Woods. I thought that the rain had melted down the ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... very fond of shell-fish. He used to go down by the river and hunt along the edges for crabs and such things. And once, when he was hunting for crabs, he was so hungry that he put his paw into the water after a crab without looking first,—which you never should do! The minute he put in his paw, SNAP!—the big Alligator who lives in the mud down there had ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant

... the pier decrepit I do loiter yet, With my crafty crab-lines and my homespun net, Till the silver fishes in pools of twilight swam, And stars played round my bait in the coves ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... ardent oarswomen saw neither the beauty surrounding them nor the black clouds threatening. They were practising for a race. Neither spoke. They pulled with long steady strokes in perfect time. Suddenly Frieda's oar flopped and "caught a crab." The bow at the same moment struck the bank, and a great scrambling tearing sound followed. In a fright the girls huddled together in the bottom of the boat, ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett

... roof of "The Dove," or "The Crab," as the collegians called it when it skidded sideways, perched precariously that well-known, beloved youth, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. He clutched his pestersome banjo and was vigorously strumming the strings and apparently howling a ballad, lost in the unearthly turmoil. As the jitney-bus ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... a wicked old fraud, a miserly skinflint, a miserable land crab. Behold, your share for the year in all our partnership has been thousands of dollars. The head clerk has given me this paper. It says that in the year you have drawn just eighty-seven dollars and ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London

... Set the crab meat aside; put the under shell and the claws in a mortar with half a pound of butter and a cupful of cold boiled rice, and pound them as smooth as possible; then put this into a saucepan, and add a heaping teaspoonful ...
— Fifty Soups • Thomas J. Murrey

... prisoners to green [v]cassocks and black [v]vizors," answered Wamba. "They all lie tumbled about on the green, like the crab-apples that you shake down to your swine. And I would laugh at it," added the honest jester, "if ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... for Hercules—namely, the destroying a serpent with nine heads, called Hydra, whose lair was the marsh of Lerna. Hercules went to the battle, and managed to crush one head with his club, but that moment two sprang up in its place; moreover, a huge crab came out of the swamp, and began to pinch his heels. Still he did not lose heart, but, calling his friend Iolaus, he bade him take a fire-brand and burn the necks as fast as he cut off the heads; and thus at last they killed the creature, and Hercules dipped his arrows in its poisonous blood, ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge

... fault, and you're the one who's hurt. Why didn't you girls stop me sooner—call to me to go round the other way? I was in a hurry and didn't see or hear you up there." Then she sat down on the crust beside Betty. "Forgive me for laughing," she said, "but you did look so exactly like a giant crab sidling along on that ridiculous dust-pan. Have you sprained your wrist? Then you must come straight over to my room ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton

... best use of this opportunity for escape, he commenced a sort of prying adventure on his own account—a temptation he could not resist—by walking, or rather shuffling, into the guard-room, where his own peculiar crab-like sinuosities were particularly available. A number of soldiers were jabbering some unintelligible jargon, too much occupied with their own clamour to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... towards the source of the Nile, and seemed to warn the husbandman against the coming waters, he compared this action to that of the animal who, by his barking, gives notice of danger, and he called this star the dog, the barker (Sirius). In the same manner he named the stars of the crab, those where the sun, having arrived at the tropic, retreated by a slow retrograde motion like the crab or cancer. He named stars of the wild goat, or Capricorn, those where the sun, having reached the highest ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... steamers sat next me, and seeing my distress over a plateful of very large oysters, whispered, "you need not eat them." We had carefully abstained from luncheon, as dinner was at four o'clock, and this was the menu for dinner: soup, big oysters, boiled cod, then devilled crab (which I ate, and it was very good), then very tough stewed beef-steak, large blocks of ice-cream, and peaches, and that was all! So my dinner consisted of crab, and I was obliged to have something to eat on our return to the hotel. ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh

... legs—modified so as to act as claspers to the inside of the mollusk-shell; while the tail-end of the part in question is twisted into the form of a spiral, which fits into the spiral of the mollusk-shell. Now, in Keeling Island there is a large kind of crab called Birgus latro, which lives upon land and there feeds upon cocoa-nuts. The whole structure of this crab, it seems to me, unmistakeably resembles the structure of a hermit-crab (see drawings on the ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... becomes a different being. His quiet eyes kindle, his face becomes full of life—you wonder that you ever thought it heavy or commonplace. Then the world interrupts in some way, and, just as a hermit-crab draws down its shell with a comically rapid movement, so Derrick suddenly retires ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall

... and also mimic their surroundings. The latter protection is especially needful, because certain big fishes, like the cod, are in the habit of swallowing crabs whole. In this case the armour is of no use, while the protective resemblance saves the crab. ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... a magnificins house, twice as big as this, with the roof bent like an elefin's back, an' three windows in it—rale dormant windows, that looks like three eyes outen a crab, and a gabil end three rows of windows high, and four high chimneys. The rope-walker said it was fit to be a rueyal palace. Then thar's the kitchen an' colonnade built on to it. It's the biggest house, I reckon, about Sinepuxin. ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... crab grows, a new, soft shell forms, and the old, hard one is shed. Thus comes the soft-shelled crab. In about three days the shell begins to harden again. In Maryland there are ponds for raising these crabs, so that now the supply is surer than in former years. Crabs are a great luxury, ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... gods? who being but one, yet bestow all things on all men. For first, what is more sweet or more precious than life? And yet from whom can it more properly be said to come than from me? For neither the crab-favoured Pallas' spear nor the cloud-gathering Jupiter's shield either beget or propagate mankind; but even he himself, the father of gods and king of men at whose very beck the heavens shake, must lay by his forked thunder and those looks wherewith he conquered the giants and with ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... do not imply that they must necessarily remain useless. Where Nature simply creates a genus, cultivation extends the species, and from an insignificant parent stock we propagate our finest varieties of both animals and vegetables. Witness the wild kale, parsnip, carrot, crab-apple, sloe, etc., all utterly worthless, but nevertheless the first parents of ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... that morning—more green crab-apples probably. Aunt Elsie's gout. Oliver's marriage—she had been so relieved about Nancy ever since she had met her, though it had been hard to reconcile domestic virtues with Nancy's bobbed hair. She would make Oliver happy, though, and that was the main thing. ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... during which we were in perpetual danger. Being on shore, Father Francis and I walked along by the sea-side, towards the town of Tamalo, and had already walked about 500 paces, when both of us beheld, arising out of the sea, a crab fish, which carried betwixt his claws the same crucifix raised on high. I saw the crab fish come directly to the Father, by whose side I was, and stopped before him. The Father, falling on his knees, ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various

... globular object, of the size of a crab-apple, is lying half-buried in the sand. Taking it in your hand, you find it to be a univalve shell, the inhabitant of which is concealed behind a closely-fitting door, resembling a flake ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... We'll probably have quite a long wait. I've found it takes some little time to wake the head of the house and get him to the 'phone. And say, he's the darndest grouch I've ever tackled. Get's sore as a crab. But we've got him where we want him. He knows darned well if he kicks up a row, she'll quit and his wife couldn't get anybody in her place for love or money these days. I was sayin' only the other night—" Again lowering his voice: "Is this Plaza ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon

... time been effected?—Nay! what advance has been effected since the time, over two thousand years, of his great predecessor, Aristotle? I confidently submit that what progress is now being made in this most erudite of sciences is in the nature of that of the crab—backwards! In the discussions of Aristotle, the problem in view was, how to bring about government by the wisest,—that is, the most observant and expert. In other words, government, the object of politics, was by Aristotle treated in a scientific spirit. And ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams

... in a gossip's bowl In very likeness of a roasted Crab; And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, And on her wither'd ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... better to come for a visit when the spring of next year is a little advanced, and if you renew your hospitable proposition then, I shall probably be glad to accept it; though I have now been a hermit so long, that the thought affects me somewhat as it would to invite a lobster or a crab to step out ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... a perch, and clinging to it as he drew in his line was a large, hard-shelled, long-clawed crab. Tom put the crab in the basket, knowing well what delicious white meat was in the fellow's legs ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... the pathway gradually descending, till we are not more than twenty or thirty feet above sea level, and notice that a spur of land hooks out into the sea, forming quite a little bay, very rugged, and very rocky, but still very convenient as a haven in light weather. Here I keep my crab and lobster pots, as it is easily accessible from the house. I call it Baie ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... have had many little spasmodic "movements" back to the land these last few years. But what do they amount to? Whereas in 1901 the proportion of town to country population in England and Wales was 3 10/37—1, in 1911 it was 3 17/20—1; very distinctly greater! At this crab's march we shall be some time getting "back to the land." Our effort, so far, has been something like our revival of Morris dancing, very pleasant and sthetic, but without real economic basis or strength to stand up against the lure of the ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... myself, to prove this testimony a libel. Here is a child more homeless than this carpenter, Joseph's, without the false pretence of coming of David's line. Its mother tainted with negro blood, like the slaves I have imported. Its father the obscurest preacher of his sect. I will rob the shark and the crab of a repast. It shall be my child and a Hebrew. Yea, if I can make it ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... the Caesarian outline on a medallion, and his eyes were deep wells of impenetrable thought; his finely cut lips rarely smiled, they had always upon them an expression of bitterness, as though the apple of life in its eating had been harsh and hard as a crab. ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... two servants, an old woman named Affery, and Flintwinch, her husband, a short, bald man, who was both clerk and footman, and who carried his head awry and walked in a one-sided crab-like way, as though he were falling and needed propping up like the house. Flintwinch was cunning and without conscience. Very few secrets his mistress had which he did not ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... in place of the garden?" asked George. "The boys down at the dock say they can make lots of money selling soft crabs. They get from sixty to seventy-five cents a dozen, and, oh, mother, if Bert and me could only have a net and a boat and a crab car, and roll up our pants like Nat Springer, we'd just bring you so much money that you needn't hardly sew at all!" and in his enthusiasm George's eyes sparkled, and he ruthlessly trampled upon every rule of grammar he had ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... stay!" sighed the Lory, and an old Crab took the opportunity of saying to its daughter "Ah, my dear! let this be a lesson to you never to lose your temper!" "Hold your tongue, Ma!" said the young Crab, a little snappishly, "you're enough to try the ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll

... me up, and trying to make me walk two ways at once, like a crab: very good fun for a crab, but it brought me flat, as you see, and has nearly frightened out of my head a fine story I have heard, about the consequences of an odd speech your friend Harry, the little old gentleman in the story of Lillie, made to a ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... he has abandoned remains distended with artificial ashes, dead dry protections against the exposures he so unaccountably fears. Will he go on shrinking, I wonder?—become at last a mere lurking atomy in his own recesses, a kind of hermit crab, the bulk of him a complex mechanism, a thing of rags and tatters and papier-mache, stolen from the earth and the plant-world and his fellow beasts? And at last may he not disappear altogether, none missing him, and a democracy of honest machinery, neatly clad and loaded up with sound ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... complain, That hypnotic suggestion is on me again; I was mesmerised once and behold, since that time, I have yielded myself to suggestions of crime: I have compassed the death of an innocent "dab," And attempted to poison an elderly crab. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various

... thought this was the spot he had been told about and turned the boat. She would not float to the bank and he and his four men got out and lifted the coffin. They sank in treacherous mud, but reached a belt of sand riddled by land-crab's holes. All was very quiet except for the ripple of the tide and the noise made by the scuttling crabs. The sand, however, was dry and warm and they sat down to wait for morning ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss

... "you don't understand. There's more in this than meets the eye, Chris. I didn't get on to this crab salad ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price

... frog, being guided by its grunts and croaks. Then off it went again, its tremendous leap carrying it far into the fog. Suddenly, Cap'n Bill tripped and would have fallen flat had not Trot and Button-Bright held him up. Then he saw that he had stumbled over the claw of a gigantic land-crab, which lay sprawled out ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum

... rich man yet," remarked the American, gloomily. "Asbestos mines are piling in dollars, I can tell you. It's a shame, to my mind, that a snapping crab-stick like that old Bates should have it all." He rose as with the irritation of the idea, but appeared arrested as he looked down at the dead man. "And when I think how them poor ladies got their white skirts draggled, I do declare I feel cut up ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... felt everywhere with her whole hand, even putting her fingers into the tiniest crannies, where a crab could hardly have ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... in local gossip (and it is said, I think truly, that "There is never any smoke without fire") he had lived a very queer life. Indeed, he was held in such universal awe and abhorrence that we used to fly at his approach, and never spoke of him amongst ourselves saving in such terms as "Auld dour crab," or "The ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... natures of each earth, What fruits from each most properly take birth: And with what arts to enrich every mould, The dry to moisten, and to warm the cold. 590 But when we graft, or buds inoculate, Nature by art we nobly meliorate; As Orpheus' music wildest beasts did tame, From the sour crab the sweetest apple came: The mother to the daughter goes to school, The species changed, doth her law overrule; Nature herself doth from herself depart, (Strange transmigration!) by the power of art. How little things give law to great! ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... "land crab" will serve as a typical medium for describing the method of preparing specimens of ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray

... were nearly reached ere much was said by anybody but Sam. His good humour and mirth were irrepressible, and soon it became contagious. He had tried his hand at a big oar, and, "catching a crab," had tumbled back amid some boxes, much to ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young

... armour would sometimes keep me awake. But they were well watched by my dog; and if any one ventured to approach, he was sure to be suddenly siezed, and thrown to a more respectful distance; or if a crab of more tremendous appearance deterred the dog from exposing his nose to its claws, he would bark and frighten it away, by which, however, I was often more seriously alarmed than the occasion required. Many a comfortable night's rest have I had in these sepulchral dormitories, when ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel

... Club, rendered immense services to astronomy. Thanks to its penetrative power, the depths of the heavens were sounded to the utmost extent; the apparent diameter of a great number of stars was accurately measured; and Mr. Clark, of the Cambridge staff, resolved the Crab nebula in Taurus, which the reflector of Lord Rosse had ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... been already said, the Assiniboine River flows within a hundred yards of the gate of Fort Garry. The two men, in their combat, had approached pretty near to the bank, at a place where it descends somewhat precipitately into the stream. It was towards this bank that Hugh Mathison was now retreating, crab fashion, followed by Mr. Kennedy, and both of them so taken up with each other that neither perceived the fact until Hugh's heel struck against a stone just at the moment that Mr. Kennedy raised his clenched fist in ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... Lexington, toward Cumberland Gap and Ford, which are occupied by a force of rebel Tennesseeans, under the command of Zollicoffer. Thomas occupies the position at London, in front of two roads which lead to the fertile part of Kentucky, the one by Richmond, and the other by Crab Orchard, with his reserve at Camp Dick Robinson, eight miles south of the Kentucky River. His provisions and stores go by railroad from Cincinnati to Nicholasville, and thence in wagons to his several regiments. He ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... addition to the day's rations. This custom is in contradiction to the feeding of the body through a tube, and proves that quite contradictory customs can exist simultaneously, without the natives noticing it. Half-way up the volcano sits a monster with two immense shears, like a crab. If no pigs have been sacrificed for the soul by the fifth day, the poor soul is alone and the monster swallows it; but if the sacrifice has been performed, the souls of the sacrificed pigs follow after the human soul, and as the monster prefers pig, the human has ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... of architecture does not, then a bird's nest is a house: and human occupancy is not the standard to judge by, because we speak of dogs' houses; nor material, because we speak of snow houses of Eskimos—or a shell is a house to a hermit crab—or was to the mollusk that made it—or things seemingly so positively different as the White House at Washington and a shell on the seashore ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... covered with years of dust and cobwebs, hence the name. Around and over these played bears, monkeys, parrots, cats, and dogs, and whatever sort of bird or animal that could be accommodated until it had the appearance of a small menagerie. Warner served crab in various ways and clams. In the rear room, which was reached by a devious path through the debris, he had a bar where he served the finest of imported liquors, French brandy, Spanish wines, English ale, all in the original wood. He served ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords

... evidently looked upon pulling as no joke. Branling gave us a steady stroke, and Cotton of Balliol steered us admirably; the rest did as well as they could. The old boys had a very pretty boat—ours was a tub—but we beat them. They gave us a stern-chase for the first hundred yards, for I cut a crab at starting; but we had plenty of pluck, and came in winners by a length. Of course we were the favourites—the "Dolphins" were all but one married—and hearty were the congratulations with which we were greeted on landing. Clara Phillips' eyes had a most dangerous light in them, as she shook hands ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... all her borders but's a precious stone; None common, nor o' th' baser sort are here, Nor rough, but squar'd and polish'd everywhere; Her beams are cedars, fir her rafters be, Her terraces are of the algum-tree; The thorn or crab-tree here are not of us; Who thinks them here utensils, puts abuse Upon the place, yea, on the builder too; Would they be thus controll'd in what they do? With carved-work of lily, and palm-tree, With cherubims and chains adorned ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... lifted my wings they only dragged me down; I lay in the water with bound feet, and the stronger I strove to keep up the deeper I worked myself down, down, until I sank to the bottom, where you lay like a giant crab to clutch me in your claws—and there I am ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg

... obtained permission to go out together and be gone the entire afternoon. We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an old shoebox, and then strolled hand-in-hand across that most delightful of New York breathing ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... pulling in the line. There, hanging on the meat with two awful claws, was a great big greenish crab. His eyes bulged out, and altogether he looked so fierce that Beth was somewhat frightened at him, but she wished to surprise Harvey. Therefore she overcame her fear, and continued pulling up the line. For a wonder, the crab hung on all the way from the water to the wharf. Beth was delighted ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine

... year or two after the close of the Revolutionary war, a Mr. Woods was living near Crab Orchard, Kentucky, with his wife, one daughter (said to be ten years old), and a lame Negro man. Early one morning, her husband being away, Mrs. Woods when a short distance from the house, discovered seven ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... street," commenced the old Troll abruptly, "out of the green gate, along the road to the open country. Turn your shoe into a horse, and don't stop till you reach the Crab-boy's hut. He will ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry

... where is he? (He goes to the window and gives a low whistle. A stranger in knickerbockers jumps in and advances with a crab-like movement.) Good! here you are. Allow me to present you ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... gods, and palaces and temples on the way. On the contrary, the road is through the midst of frightful monsters. You pass by the horns of the Bull, in front of the Archer, and near the Lion's jaws, and where the Scorpion stretches its arms in one direction and the Crab in another. Nor will you find it easy to guide those horses, with their breasts full of fire that they breathe forth from their mouths and nostrils. I can scarcely govern them myself, when they are unruly and resist the reins. Beware, my son, lest I ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... it's nothing but a baby crab," said Regy. "I can get a peck of them in an hour, over ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... a companion; but somehow I preferred being without her. One great comfort was good news about Connie, who was getting on famously. But even this moved me so little that I began to think I was turning into a crab, utterly incased in the shell of my own selfishness. The thought made me cry. The fact that I could cry consoled me, for how could I be heartless so long as I could cry? But then came the thought it was for myself, my own hard-heartedness I was crying,—not ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... straw hat and no neckcloth, was observed to be in a fearful perspiration, and failing visibly. Nor was the general consternation diminished at this instant by the same gentleman (in the performance of an accidental aquatic feat, termed 'catching a crab') plunging suddenly backward, and displaying nothing of himself to the company, but two violently struggling legs. Mrs. Leaver shrieked again several times, and cried piteously—'Is he dead? Tell me the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... Don Quixote's renowned Rosinante; but she had one peculiarity which is not put down in the description of Rosinante, to wit, the faculty of diagonal or oblique locomotion. This mare of Peter's went forward something after the manner of a crab, and a little like a ship with the wind abeam, as the sailors say. It was a standing topic of dispute among us boys, whether the animal went head foremost or not. But that did not matter much, so that ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth

... occurred that naturalists can hardly avoid employing language having this plain signification. According to the views here maintained, such language may be used literally; and the wonderful fact of the jaws, for instance, of a crab retaining numerous characters, which they probably would have retained through inheritance, if they had really been metamorphosed from true though extremely simple legs, ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... the kitchen of Mrs. Owen's house on Waupegan. The August afternoon sun struck goldenly upon battalions of glasses and jars in the broad, screened veranda, an extension of the kitchen itself. The newly affixed labels announced peach, crab-apple, plum, and watermelon preserves (if the mention of this last item gives you no thrill, so much the worse for you!); jellies of many tints and flavors, and tiny cucumber pickles showing dark green amid the gayer ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... Some are rapidly borne along On the mailed shrimp or the prickly prong, Some on the blood-red leeches glide, Some on the stony star-fish ride, Some on the back of the lancing squab, Some on the sideling soldier-crab, And some on the jellied quarl that flings At once a thousand streamy stings. They cut the wave with the living oar, And hurry on to the moonlight shore, To guard their realms and chase away The footsteps ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... little clams. Dey have oyster-stew. Dey have roast oysters, den de raw oysters. An' dey have dey fried oysters! Dat sure is good. Dey fish from de boat, dey fish from de log, an' dey fish 'long de edge of de water wid a net. When de tide go down you kin walk along an' jes pick up de crab. You could get a bucket full in no time. We'd like to go up an' down an' pick up de pretty shells. I got one here on de mantel now. It ain't sech a big one, but ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... box-flat, full of melon-holes, and with many small holes in the ground, which caused our horses and cattle to stumble at almost every step. The dry melon-holes were covered with dead Paludinas, with shells of a large crab, and of the fresh water turtle. At about seven miles, we passed a strip of Blackwood forest, with many Nonda trees; and crossed a small creek. The latter part of the stage was again over a large box-flat, intersected by shallow grassy ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... she clove a devious course, Moved crab-like, in a strange diagonal, And, driving, crossed the frontiers. Thither came The bold Sir Referee, and shrilled abroad The tremulous, momentary 'touch.' But she, Heaving with unaccustomed exercise, Blinded and baffled, wild with all despair, Stood sweeping, as a churl that sweeps ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)

... simultaneously one may enjoy the rare combination of the unobstructed ocean, an inland sea, and trout streams lined with giant firs and cedars, which all but encroach upon the dominions of the waters. Here the oyster, the clam and the crab seemingly try to outdo one another and the mighty forest, in yielding splendid profits to the people, who lend every encouragement ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles

... all," retorted Peterkin. "If anybody gave utterance to the sentiment before, it was Shelley, and he must have been on the sea-shore at the time with a crotchet, if not a crab, inside of him.—But ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne

... attendance. But what the painted warrior was looking for was a crystal box on a shelf to Raf's left. When he had pointed that out to an underling he was off again, and Raf was free to continue his crab's progress. ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... that is seeded with crab-grass should not be selected, as the pulling up of the grass injures the growth of the onions. Onions feed near the surface; in fact, the larger portion of the bulb grows on top of the soil, and as a natural consequence the plant food should be well ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... Cumberland River. A brother of mine had gone with them, and I had made him a visit. I thought then, and think now, that there is no region on which the sun shines, more desirable to live in than the region of the Cumberland Mountains. At Crab Orchard I found a man that was born in the State of New York. He had been a soldier at Hull's surrender, at Detroit, in the war of 1812, with Great Britain. From Detroit he had made his way into Kentucky, had married a rich wife with ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... in the Doctor's prospectus, and Miss Zoe Birch—(a pretty blossom it is, fifty-five years old, during two score of which she has dosed herself with pills; with a nose as red and a face as sour as a crab-apple)—this is all mighty well in a prospectus. But I should like to know who would take Miss Zoe for a mother, or would ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... meat from a crab, cut it up as for salad, mix a tablespoonful of bread-crumbs with it, mix together a saltspoonful each of pepper, mustard and salt, with a tablespoonful of vinegar and two tablespoonfuls of salad oil, mix all with the crab, put it back in the shell, cover it lightly ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various

... to get 'em down on theirr knees beforre you make a treaty with 'em," boasted Archer. "You can see yourself they'rre no good when they haven't got any commanderr—or any arrms. When Uncle Sam makes a treaty with that gang, crab-apples, but I hope he gets ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... Torres Straits before this book is published. Here again I find interesting records of imitative dancing. One dance imitates the swimming movements of the large lizard (Varanus), another is an imitation of the movements of a crab, another imitates those of a pigeon, and another those of a pelican. At a dance which I witnessed in the Roro village of Seria a party from Delena danced the "Cassowary" dance; and Father Egedi says it is certainly so called ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson

... I'll gee tha tuther penny, an zummet besides!" exclaimed Farmer Tidball, leaping down the bank, with a stout sliver of a crab-tree in his hand.—The sequel may ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings

... long as I thought 'twood," said Aunt Milly, when she heard what was going on. "Ile and crab-apple vinegar won't mix, nohow, and if before the year's up old miss don't worry the life out of that poor little sickly critter, that looks now like a picked chicken, my ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes



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