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Adder   Listen
noun
Adder  n.  
1.
A serpent. (Obs.) "The eddre seide to the woman."
2.
(Zool.)
(a)
A small venomous serpent of the genus Vipera. The common European adder is the Vipera berus or Pelias berus. The puff adders of Africa are species of Clotho.
(b)
In America, the term is commonly applied to several harmless snakes, as the milk adder, puffing adder, etc.
(c)
Same as Sea Adder. Note: In the sculptures the appellation is given to several venomous serpents, sometimes to the horned viper (Cerastles).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Adder" Quotes from Famous Books



... no vessel to dishonour born Is in my house; there all shall well adorn The walls whose stones the lapse of Time has laid. Behold again; this life great stories made; All cast aside for love, and then and then Love filched away; the world an adder-den, And all folk foes: and one, the one desire— —How shall we name it?—grown a poisoned fire, God once, God still, but God of wrong and shame A lying God, a curse without a name. So turneth love to hate, the wise world saith. —Folly—I say 'twixt love and ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... mine's double—fleeing thus the snare Of yon luxurious and unnerving down, And widowed from mine Eden. And why widowed? Because they tell me, love is of the flesh, And that's our house-bred foe, the adder in our bosoms, Which warmed to life, will sting us. They must know— I do confess mine ignorance, O Lord! Mine earnest will these painful limbs may prove. . . . . . And yet I swore to love him.—So I do No more than I have sworn. Am I to blame If God makes wedlock that, which if it ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... terrible fright a large picnic party, at which I assisted, was thrown into while lunching in the garden of a villa, almost in the town of Rio, by a lady jumping up from her seat with a deadly whip-snake hanging on her dress. I once myself sat on an adder who put his fangs through the woollen stuff of my inexpressibles and could not escape. The same thing happened with the lady's dress; in that case also we caught the snake, as it could ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... of the cult. The rattlesnake is "deadly." The copperhead and moccasin are "deadly." So is the wholly mythical puff adder. In hardly less degree is the tarantula "deadly," while varying lethal capacities are ascribed to the centipede, the scorpion, the kissing-bug, and sundry other forms of insect life. The whole matter is based upon the slenderest foundations. I don't mean, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... roughness of his staff still pricked his hand and forced him to recall his former fall. Instead, therefore, of turning aside, he looked into his book of light, and there he read in fiery letters, "Thou shalt go upon the lion and the adder; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou tread under thy feet:" and this gave him comfort. So, on he went, determining still to read in his book, and not to look at all at that which affrighted him: and so it was, that when he came to the place, he saw that it ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce

... the worse in most cases; that their means of subsistence are gradually more and more limited, and their numbers rapidly diminished: in short, in the simplicity of their hearts, they take the frozen adder in their bosom, and it stings them to death. They look for a benefit or blessing from European intercourse, and ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... buff-skinned savages were clothed, but some wore about their hips rude girdles of adder-skin or crackling undressed hide, from which depended little bags, not made, but torn from the paws of beasts, and carrying the rudely-dressed flints that were men's chief weapons and tools. And one woman, the ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... crown his brow. That cast an awful look below; Whose rugged sides the ivy creeps, And with her arms from falling keeps. 'Tis now the raven's bleak abode; 'Tis now th' apartment of the toad; And there the fox securely feeds. And there the poisonous adder breeds, Concealed in ruins, moss, and weeds; While ever and anon there fall Huge heaps of hoary, mouldered wall. Yet time has seen, that lifts the low And level lays the lofty brow,— Has seen this broken pile complete, Big with the vanity of state;— But transient ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... tell you, brother, according to the flesh: it is just as complete as the lark's is with the adder, no more so, nor ever can. Reconciled, forsooth! To what would I ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... remarkable for their colors. They are banded around their bodies with rings of bright colors. They will eat rats and mice and other snakes. The Milk Snake or "Checkered Adder" is popularly supposed to be fond of milk. Scientists tell us that this is a fallacy. It feeds on mice, rats, other snakes and lizards. The Red Milk Snake is prettily colored—red and yellow—and is the type found in ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas

... well its character—"Dan is a lion's whelp that leapeth forth from Bashan" on the Hermon;* "a serpent in the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider falleth backward."** The new position they had taken up enabled them to protect Galilee for centuries against the incursions ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... any old adder!" exclaimed Roland Yorke to Arthur, when they left Mr. Galloway alone. "The only possible way in which it can have gone, is through that post-office. The men have forked it; as they ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... therefore showed what strength there is in gospel-charms, if once the adder doth but hear them. Never man yet was able to resist them that well did know the meaning of them. They are mighty to make poor men obedient, and that in word and deed. These chains were such as were in the oracle, to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... me in your arms, lady, Into an esk and adder; But hold me fast, and fear me not, I am your ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

... fallen asleep under a fig-tree, owing to the heat, with his arms over his face. And there came an adder and bit him in the neck, so that Zarathustra screamed with pain. When he had taken his arm from his face he looked at the serpent; and then did it recognise the eyes of Zarathustra, wriggled awkwardly, and tried to get away. "Not at all," said Zarathustra, "as yet hast thou not received ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... impatiently up and down, and as he came to the letter he spurned it with his foot, like a poisonous adder, too loathsome to touch. "I have deserved this punishment," cried he, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... prepared from a glandular secretion of the Chinese swamp-adder is also beyond price. Again-the case upon the pedestal yonder contains five perfect bulbs, three already in flower, as you observe, of an orchid discovered by our chief chemist in certain forests of Burma. It only occurs at extremely ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer

... skirted the Wolflake, and came to a hut, painted gray, that stood clear of the ground, upon the bones of four great birds' feet. Upon the four corners of the hunt were carved severally the figures of a lion, a dragon, a cockatrice and an adder, to proclaim the miseries of carnal and intellectual sin, and of ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... of all that this letter would have taught him, and so far from dying, living to a very great age. And this instance shows, that the most dangerous of enemies is the one that never threatens till he actually strikes, resembling not the cobra, but the adder, as Shatrunjaya discovered to his cost, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain

... opinion the world of the good has of her and of me; I thought we ran under a common brand. There are gradations. I went to throw myself at the feet of my great-aunt; good old great-aunt Lady de Culme, who is a power in the land. I let her suppose I came for myself, and she reproached me with Lord Adder. I confessed to him and ten others. She is a dear, she's ticklish, and at eighty-four she laughed! She looked into my eyes and saw a field with never a man in it—just the shadow of a man. She admitted the ten cancelled the one, and exactly named ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... dancing down with tinkling feet from the sky-dividing hills; There to the pails the she-goats come, without a master's word, And home with udders brimming broad returns the friendly herd. There round the fold no surly bear its midnight prowl doth make, Nor teems the rank and heaving soil with the adder and the snake; There no contagion smites the flocks, nor blight of any star With fury of remorseless heat the sweltering herds doth mar. Nor this the only bliss that waits us there, where drenching rains By watery Eurus swept along ne'er devastate ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... being made of some kind of dark brown, mottled wood, bearing a marked resemblance to a snake's skin; and the top of the cane was carved in conformity, to represent the head of what I took to be a puff-adder, fragments of stone, or beads, being inserted to represent the eyes, and the whole thing being finished with ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright,'—say, like sparkling Champagne.—'At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange wonders, and thine heart shall utter perverse things; yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth on the top of a mast. They have stricken ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... while things went well enough; it takes ladies a few weeks to find out each other's weak points. But then the new Mrs. Tunnygate unexpectedly yet undeniably began to exhibit the serpent's tooth, the adder's tongue or the cloven hoof—as the reader's literary traditions may lead him to prefer. For no obvious reason at all she conceived a violent hatred of Mrs. Appleboy, a hatred that waxed all the more virulent on account of its object's innocently obstinate refusal to comprehend or recognize ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... with the chords of your life. Profit by the example of the miserable sinner that has passed from us, and embrace the means of grace while it is called to-day 'ere your conscience is seared as with a fire-brand, and your ears deafened like those of the adder, and your heart hardened like the nether mill-stone. Up, then, and be doing—wrestle and overcome; resist, and the enemy shall flee from you—Watch and pray, lest ye fall into temptation, and let the stumbling of others ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... it—it will have it. If not found at home, it will be found in the streets, and oh, what danger lurks there! Fathers and mothers—see to it, that if your child's heart cease to beat, your own break not with the remembrance of words and looks, that bite like a serpent and sting like an adder! ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... know something of political fights that will divide a state into two armed camps, getting hotter and hotter until old slumbering animosities come crawling out into the open, like poison snakes from under a rock, and new lively ones hatch from the shell every hour or so in a multiplying adder brood. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... already involved to De Boeffleurs; I became still more so, in gaining from him the means of satisfying all claims against me. Alas! I found I had sold myself to a devil, a very devil, with a heart like an adder's. Incapable of a stray generous sensation, he has looked upon mankind during his whole life with the eyes of a bully of a gaming-house. I still struggled to free myself from this man; and I indemnified him for his advances by procuring him a place ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... the door and stretched out his arms into the cupboard. He touched something that moved beneath his hand, a stiff, short crop of hair, the hair of a man's head. He drew his arm away as though an adder had stung it; he did not utter a cry or make a movement. He stood for a moment paralysed, and during that moment a strong hand ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... "An adder is a small thing to sting a man," said Ingvar in his grim voice. "Nor will it always hurt him much. Yet if a man is so close among many that he must needs tread on one, and it bites him, and in fleeing that he must set foot on another, and again another, and then ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... insatiably greedy of such fleshly comforts as had ever come within her knowledge—soft cushions, heavily sweetened dishes, finer clothing than her neighbors. She had cold eyes, and nature had formed her mouth and jaw like the little silver-striped adder that I found one day, mangled by some passing cart, in the yellow dust of the road. Her lips were stretched for ever in that same flat, immutable smile. When she moved her head, you caught the gleam of a string of gold beads, half-hidden in a crease of her stout throat. She had ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich

... mind As she plann'd how to thrall me with beauty, and bind My soul to her charms,—and her long tresses play'd From shade into shine and from shine into shade, Like a day in mid-autumn,—first fair, O how fair! With long snaky locks of the adder-black hair That clung round her neck,—those dark locks that I prize, For the sake of a maid that once loved me with eyes Of that fathomless hue,—but they changed as they roll'd, And brighten'd, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... wide enough to contain within it a winding footpath, or a rough cart-track. Under its shelter the earliest primroses, anemones, and wild hyacinths were to be found; sometimes the first bird's nest; and, now and then, the unwelcome adder. Two such hedgerows radiated, as it were, from the parsonage garden. One, a continuation of the turf terrace, proceeded westward, forming the southern boundary of the home meadows; and was formed into a rustic shrubbery, with occasional seats, entitled "The Wood Walk." ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... not, taste not, handle not: Drink will make the dark, dark blot, Like an adder it will sting, And at last to ruin bring, They who ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... monastery, where with hunger and sorrow he pined away to death? Who so ill-favouredly and monstrously put the Emperor Frederick's neck under his feet, and, as though that were not sufficient, added further this text out of the Psalms, "Thou shalt go upon the adder and cockatrice, and shalt tread the lion and dragon under thy feet"? Such an example of scorning and contemning a prince's majesty, as never before that was heard tell of in any remembrance; except, I ween, either of Tamerlane's, ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel

... would burst upon him with an awful explosion of passion. The old man had evidently been a reckless desperado in other days, and many in the village suspected strongly that he had once been a pirate. He was addicted to drinking, and now and then, when bitten by the adder, would talk strangely. He would commence narrating some wonderful hurricane he had experienced on the Spanish Main, and would launch out upon the number of times he had headed boarding parties, and once, in a state of great intoxication at the village tavern, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... And when it came to the end of nine months, there came a voice to him and said, Go to the tomb of that woman, and open it and behold what thou hast begotten on her; and if thou let to go, thou shalt have a great harm. And he yede and opened the tomb, and there flew out an adder right hideous to see; the which as swithe flew about the city and the country, and soon after the city sank down. And there be ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown

... the hawk loves the harmless dove, as the tyger loves the trembling kid. And is this the man in whose favour I should ever have been weak enough to entertain a partiality? I would tear him from my bosom like an adder. I would crush him like ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... strawberries that grow So near the ground, fly hence, boys, get you gone! There's a cold adder ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil

... into the forest, weeping bitterly, and the Star-Child was glad and ran back to his playmates. But when they saw him coming they ran away from him in fear. He went to the well and looked in. Lo, his face was as the face of a toad and his body was scaled like an adder. He flung himself down on ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

... inflicts its torture without discrimination upon all who dare invade its domain. Snakes lurk in the fetid swamps and lagoons, the brilliant coral and the deadly mapina. Beneath the forest leaves coils the brown adder, whose sting proves fatal within ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... up over the cliffs with my children, after their return from school at noon, to gather wild flowers, it being May-day. We came in with the spring beauty, called miscodeed by the Indians, the adder's ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... diligently, is easie enough to be perceiv'd; and from several particulars, I suppose the Animal has a power of displaying them, and shutting them in again as it pleases, as a Cat does its claws, or as an Adder or Viper can its teeth ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... one, and he bites your boot, what then? He cannot hurt you. But suppose you are out after the deer, and you are crawling along the heather with your face to the ground, and all at once you see the two small eyes of an adder looking at you and ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black

... adder strike, and a friend, who is dead but seems to be lying down and breathing, rises partly to a sitting position when the adder strikes at him, and then both disappearing into some bushes nearby, denotes that you will be greatly distressed over the ill ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... as a possible, or rather probable, source of danger. In four and a half months, in all kinds of country, much of the time on foot, I saw only six live snakes. They were all small and only two, a puff adder and a little viper, were known to be venomous. Our porters, with bare feet and legs, penetrated all kinds of snaky-looking spots and yet not one was bitten. In fact, I have never heard of any one being bitten by snakes in ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... sharp sickle-edged grass which we used to feed out to the young cattle in midwinter when the bitter cold gave them appetite for even such fodder. I had an almost Irish hatred of snakes, and these meadows were full of them,—striped, green, dingy water- snakes, and now and then an ugly spotted adder by no means pleasant to touch with bare feet. There were great black snakes, too, in the ledges of the neighboring knolls; and on one occasion in early spring I found myself in the midst of a score at least of them,—holding ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... I could not bear even that much of it which was impossible to avoid. But the very first time such talk was begun in my dormitory I spoke out. What I said I don't know, but I felt as if I was trampling on a slimy poisonous adder, and, at any rate, I showed such pain and distress that the fellows dropped it at the time. Since then I have absolutely refused to stay in the room if ever such talk is begun. So it never is now, and I do think the fellows are very ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... man shall be like "the deaf adder" (Psal. lviii. 4, 5,) which will not be taken by the voice of the charmers, "charming never so wisely." Let the helm of reason be stirred as well as you can imagine, if there be a contrary wind in the sails of the affections, the ship will not answer ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... "Sirrah," he cried, "here is your nightly haunt, these are your companions,—come with me, sir, come,—ah, will you resist your"—father he was about to say, but he recoiled from the word as from an adder, and, casting upon his son a look of unspeakable disdain, he shook the writhing criminal, who the next moment escaped from his hold, and slunk away, still looking backward over his shoulder and muttering curses upon ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... concerning things within the power of others, is free from sorrow and amazement no longer than his enemy shall give him leave; and it is ten to one but he shall be smitten then and there where it shall most trouble him; for so the adder teaches us where to strike, by her curious and fearful defending of her head. The old Stoics, when you told them of a sad story, would still answer, "What is that to me?" Yes, for the tyrant hath sentenced you also to prison. Well, what ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... wolvish: she has tied sharp-toothed unkindness like a vulture on her father's breast: for her husband she is a gilded serpent: to Gloster her cruelty seems to have the fangs of a boar. She and Regan are dog-hearted: they are tigers, not daughters: each is an adder to the other: the flesh of each is covered with the fell of a beast. Oswald is a mongrel, and the son and heir of a mongrel: ducking to everyone in power, he is a wag-tail: white with fear, he is a goose. Gloster, for Regan, is an ingrateful ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... accents: "I ask, O king, for my life, and that of my people. If we had all been sold as bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue, great as the evil would have been to thee." The king started, as if stung by an adder, and with a brow dark as wrath, and a voice that sent Haman to his feet, exclaimed: "Thy life! my queen? Who is he? where is he that dare even harbor such a thought in his heart? He who strikes at thy life, radiant creature, plants his presumptuous blow on his monarch's bosom." "That ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley

... contractors was knocked down within easy reach, I was half tempted to turn him loose. The "major-domo" had singled out Sponsilier and was trying issues with him, Bob Quirk was dropping them right and left, when the deposed commandant sprang upon a table, and in a voice like the hiss of an adder, commanded peace, and the disorder ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... a rock adder—one of the deadliest of African snakes. Barely more than three inches in length, and a dull gray in color, it was small wonder that Harry in his excitement had not seen it as he was about ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... A painstaking adder of figures, I have audited the gentleman's accounts and found them correct to the farthing. He must pay for his terrier's sickness and have four guineas in hand against the dog's board and lodging, in case, after all, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... after a moment's pause, "I had told him that if ever we should meet where his life would cost me nothing, I would kill him as I would set my heel upon an adder—and he only smiled as though I had paid him some delicate compliment. And that night, Guy, a hundred yards from your cottage, he sidled up to me in that lonely road, and bade me direct him to the abode of Mr. Guy Ducaine. A moment after ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... were capable of affording better fun. Some seasons afterwards, when our Hunt was disbanded, the shopkeepers' apprentices continued, with the youngsters, to work our mongrel hounds; but eventually Joker's death from the bite of an adder put an end to their pastime, for the bobtail and the terrier were the only possible ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... hoodlum, hood, plug-ugly*, pug-ugly* [U.S.], Red Skin, tough [U. S.]; Mohawk, Mo-hock, Mo-hawk; bludgeon man, bully, rough, hooligan, larrikin[obs3], dangerous classes, ugly customer; thief &c. 792. cockatrice, scorpion, hornet. snake, viper, adder, snake in the grass; serpent, cobra, asp, rattlesnake, anaconda|!. canker-worm, wire-worm; locust, Colorado beetle; alacran[obs3], alligator, caymon[obs3], crocodile, mosquito, mugger, octopus; torpedo; bane &c. 663. cutthroat &c. (killer) 461. cannibal; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... sting; they bite. They've got poisoned fangs. You can see an adder along here sometimes. Perhaps we shall see one to-day, warming ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... usurper of my hearth is nothing whatever to me, unless perhaps the object of my entire abhorrence. Yet am I none the less compelled to justify the ensuing action before an irrational audience, which faces common logic in very much the attitude of Augustine's famed adder! Decidedly I think that, on the whole, I would ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... feathers new she sings; The turtle to her make hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hung his old head on the pale; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings; The fishes flete with new repaired scale. The adder all her slough away she slings; The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale; The busy bee her honey now she mings; Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale. And thus I see among these pleasant things Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs. HENRY ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... least doubt of it. He was in my eyes at that moment a crawling adder, whose fangs were liable to penetrate the flesh of some one if he was not put out of the way. But I am more than glad I was spared the infliction ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... own or were also derived, as seems probable, from an edition of Fergusson. Such proverbs as "Drunken wife gat ay the drunken penny" (Pappity Stampoy, p. 17), "Eat and drink measurely, and defie the mediciners" (p. 18), and "Put your hand into the creel, and you will get either an adder, or an Eele" (p. 43) do not appear in the 1641 edition, but may be present in a later one. In any event, The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs vouches for the currency of the last two proverbs in the sixteenth century. ...
— A Collection of Scotch Proverbs • Pappity Stampoy

... knees worked. His frame became agitated with one continued movement, swaying backwards and forwards, almost to falling;—and his inarticulate complaints became terrific. I attempted to steady him by an exertion of strength—I spoke kindly to him, but he writhed in my grasp like an adder, and as an adder was deaf; grief and fear had horrible possession. Myself, almost in a state of desperation—for the sight was pitiful. I at last endeavoured to awe him into a momentary quiescence, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various

... work hard to keep their attention to the object they had in view, for nature seemed to be laying endless traps for them, especially for Macey, who certainly felt Vane's disappearance most at heart, but was continually forgetting him on coming face to face with something fresh. Now it was an adder coiled up in the warm sunshine on a little dry bare clump among some dead furze. It was evidently watching him but making no effort to get ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... up against the right hand corner of the room, there sat the Pasha, his limbs gathered in, the whole creature coiled up like an adder. His cheeks were deadly pale, and his lips perhaps had turned white, for without moving a muscle the man impressed me with an immense idea of the wrath within him. He kept his eyes inexorably fixed as if upon vacancy, and with the ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake

... her heart was filled with shame and rage, and her lips with bitter venom; and her eyes became so terrible that whosoever looks on them is turned to stone; and her children are the winged horse and the giant of the golden sword; and her grandchildren are Echidna the witch-adder, and Geryon the three-headed tyrant, who feeds his herds beside the herds of hell. So she became the sister of the Gorgons, Stheino and Euryte the abhorred, the daughters of the Queen of the Sea. Touch them not, for they are immortal; but bring me ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley

... a single adder bit me, it would go farther to convince me that the next adder would bite me too than if fifty young Buffons told me ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... foot, and biting me on the ankle vanished in the swamp. It must have been some sort of a water-snake, but I did not know. All I knew was that I had been bitten by a snake that might be poisonous. It could easily have been an adder, or a karait—even a cobra—though I had not a minute in which to observe a hood or any distinctive marks. I immediately collected my faculties to think what was the best thing to do. I knew I had no time to lose. Mother was ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... no virtue, but the policy Of those who fain must deal perforce with vice: As such I recommend it, as I would 350 To one whose foot was on an adder's path. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... not to catch hold of the tail of a puff adder," he exclaimed, as Percy again dismounted. "They are pretty numerous hereabouts, and you may chance to put your hand close to one of their holes while ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... they were not an inspiring spectacle. A soldier, stripped of his arms and held by his foes, becomes of a sudden a pitiable, almost a contemptible object. You think instinctively of an adder that has lost its fangs, or of a wild cat that, being shorn of teeth to bite with and claws to tear with, is now a more helpless, more impotent thing than if it had been created without teeth and claws in the first place. These similes are poor ones, I'm afraid, but I ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... been known—perhaps, from time immemorial," answered Macallan. "The comparisons of Scripture are all derived from eastern scenery and eastern customs. Do you not recollect the words of the Psalmist, who compareth the wicked to the deaf adder, who 'will not harken to the voice of the charmer, charm he never ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... that Lamb had no sense of the rhythmical in prose composition. Rhythmus, or pomp of cadence, or sonorous ascent of clauses, in the structure of sentences, were effects of art as much thrown away upon him as the voice of the charmer upon the deaf adder. We ourselves, occupying the very station of polar opposition to that of Lamb, being as morbidly, perhaps, in the one excess as he in the other, naturally detected this omission in Lamb's nature at an early stage of our acquaintance. Not the fabled Regulus, with his eyelids torn ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... experiencing an amount of beatitude which was evidently too cordial for philosophical enjoyment. A long tongue of flame had crept under the cage, completely singing every hair from the cat's body. The felicitous adder was slowly burning in two and busily engaged in impregnating his organic system with his own venom. The joyful rat had lost his tail by a falling bar of iron; and the beatific rabbit, perforated by a red-hot nail, looked as if nothing ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... patches of rock that appear upon its mighty spire, where the sides are too precipitous to allow of the snow lying on them; then on past the lonely lake Baringo, where one of our two remaining Askari, having unfortunately trodden on a puff-adder, died of snake-bite, in spite of all our efforts to save him. Thence we proceeded a distance of about a hundred and fifty miles to another magnificent snow-clad mountain called Lekakisera, which has never, to the best of my belief, been visited before by a European, but which I cannot now stop ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... displays of natural feelings of any sort this comfortless evil spirit ever curls the lip. Inhabiting modern young ladies, it is especially superior to the maternal instinct, and cringes from a baby in a railway carriage as from an adder. At the dropping of an 'h' it shrinks as though the weighty letter had fallen upon its great toe, and it will forgive anything rather than a provincial accent. It lives entirely in the surfaces of things, and, as the surface of life is frequently rough and prickly, it is frequently uncomfortable. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... hand, And, backward borne upon the lea, Brought the proud Chieftain to his knee. "Now, yield thee, or, by Him who made The world, thy heart's blood dyes my blade!"— "Thy threats, thy mercy, I defy! Let recreant yield, who fears to die."— Like adder darting from his coil, Like wolf that dashes through the toil, Like mountain-cat who guards her young, Full at Fitz-James's throat he sprung, Received, but reck'd not of a wound, And locked his arms his foeman round.— Now gallant Saxon, hold ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... this morning near a tree my head was just one yard off a good-sized cobra, coiled up in the sprouts at its root, but it was benumbed with cold: a very pretty little puff-adder lay in the path, also benumbed; it is seldom that any harm is done by these reptiles here, although it is different in India. We bought up all the food we could get; but it did not suffice for the marches we expect to make to get to the Chambeze, where food is said to be abundant, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... from the rough countryman, but hardly had they been uttered, when Viola sprang from her chair, as though an adder had stung her. "Uncle," she cried, and a small fist hovered before Gabriel's eyes in such a threatening manner that he involuntarily closed them. But the child, whose features reminded him so strongly of his dead sister, could ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert

... who could prefer the most brilliant ball-rooms to a scene like this?" but we checked the impulse; for perhaps, thought we, the "still small voice," which speaks from all around us, is even now whispering to her heart. But never, we believe, was adder more deaf to the accents of the "charmer" than was Emily at that moment to those of nature. Her mind, we are pretty sure, was still running, and all the faster as she approached it, on that fancy ball. Perhaps she suspected that ours was following the same turn, ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

... be innocent that sparkles to betray, that charms at first, but later will bite like an adder and ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... don't tell such things about their friends in public conveyances," exclaimed Mistigris. "As for me, I'm not listening to you; I'm deaf: 'discretion plays the better part of adder.'" ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... exchanging rigid courtesies. One's hand was on his stony heart; his other pledged a lord who held a hollow beaker. Another sat, with earnest face beneath a mitred brow. He seemed to whisper in the ear of one who listened trustingly. But on the chest of him who wore the miter, an adder ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... of the trail, she's over to the post office constant. None of us says anything, not even to ourselves; but when it gets to whar she shoves you away from the letter place, an' begins talkin' milk and honey to him right under your nose, onless you're as blind as steeple bats, an' as deaf as the adder of scriptoore which stoppeth her y'ear, you're shore bound to do ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... goodly swain to be a princess' fere, A lovely partner of a lady's bed, A noble head a golden crown to wear: His glosing sire his errand daily said, And sugared speeches whispered in mine ear To make me take this darling in mine arms, But still the adder stopt her ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... Robert, "as I wouldn't wind a serpent around my throat, I don't want to put something inside of it which will bite like a serpent and sting as an adder." ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... peasant-girl. Anguish has driven her from the ingle-nook of home to the white-shrouded and icy hills. Crouched under the "cauld drift," she recalls every image of horror—"the yellow-wymed ask," "the hairy adder," "the auld moon-bowing tyke," "the ghaist at e'en,", "the sour bullister," "the milk on the taed's back." She hates these, but "waur ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... was laying down his aunt to come and hear, she rushed up the stairs with, "And it is all your doing, you unnatural, good-for-nothing varmint! That was what you were after all night, you and your aunt, the adder that I have warmed at my bosom! Turning against your own poor father, to set them bloody-minded soldiers on him! And now he'll be taken and hanged, and I shall be a poor miserable widow ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge

... own father's heart. The adder! Oh, the charms of hell o'erpowered me He dwelt within me, to my inmost soul Still to and fro he passed, suspected never. On the wide ocean, in the starry heaven Did mine eyes seek the enemy, whom I In my heart's heart had folded! Had I been To Ferdinand what Octavio was to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... asinging; And in a twinkling I was swinging Across the windy hills, lighthearted. A kestrel at my footstep started, Just pouncing on a frightened mouse, And hung o'er head with wings a-hover; Through rustling heath an adder darted: A hundred rabbits bobbed to cover: A weasel, sleek and rusty-red, Popped out of sight as quick as winking: I saw a grizzled vixen slinking Behind a clucking brood of grouse That rose and cackled at my coming: And all about my way ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... words of the aged thane, and she hated Agitha because of them. The spirit of evil spread his darkness over her soul. He filled her breast with the poison of asps, her eyes with the venom of the adder that ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... those anxieties, have food in abundance and need not struggle to obtain it. Such is the Gentle, who swims blissfully in the broth of the putrefying adder. Others—and, by a strange irony of fate, these are generally the most gifted—only manage to eat by ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... us, in such abundance lies our choice, 620 As leaves a greater store of Fruit untoucht, Still hanging incorruptible, till men Grow up to thir provision, and more hands Help to disburden Nature of her Bearth. To whom the wilie Adder, blithe and glad. Empress, the way is readie, and not long, Beyond a row of Myrtles, on a Flat, Fast by a Fountain, one small Thicket past Of blowing Myrrh and Balme; if thou accept My conduct, I can bring thee thither soon. 630 Lead then, said Eve. Hee leading swiftly rowld In tangles, and make ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... if he preferred Cristel. He hobbled up to his lodger, and shook his infirm fists, and screamed at the highest pitch of his old cracked voice: "Let her be, or I won't have you here no longer! You deaf adder, ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright," started him down a course which made him learn from a terrible experience that "at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Does any one call a glass of wine a small thing? Read Tom's story and then call it small, if you dare! Whatever he did was done with his might, drinking not excepted. He boasted of his power to drink much ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... most zealous advocate, is the work of God for the instruction of man. Plutarch has observed, that the medical science would be brought to the utmost perfection, when poison should be converted into physic. Thus, in the mortal disease of Judaism and idolatry, our blessed Lord converted the adder's venom of Saul the persecutor, into that cement which made Paul the chosen vessel. That manly activity, that restless ardor, that burning zeal for the law of his fathers, that ardent thirst for the blood of Christians, did the Son of God find necessary in the man who was one day to become ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... the place of coachman. Polson's mind did not go back to a time when he did not remember Duncan, and to Irene he was like a fixed part of the scheme of nature. He had one defect which at this instant made him invaluable. He resented any imputation of the fact angrily, but he had been deaf as an adder for years. ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

... part of the sculptured figure of a faun still remains on the proscenium; wild shrubs shade a great part of the ruin, and where manhood and beauty once sat, listening to the tragedies of an Eschylus or Euripides, the adder and the lizards sun themselves. The next ruins we visited were those of Selinunte, anciently Selinus or Selinuntium, which lies on the southern coast of the island. This city was founded by a colony of Greeks about twenty-five hundred years ago. It was taken ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... words were uttered I sat up upon the topmost step of the gallery; for some time I felt stunned in somewhat the same manner as I once subsequently felt after being stung by an adder. I soon arose, however, and retired to my bed, where, notwithstanding what I had done, I was ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... she passed from the sight. When Roger Montrose sought his pillow that night, 'Twas to dream of La Travers. He thought she became A burning red rose, with each leaf like a flame. He stooped down and plucked it, and woke with a start, As it turned to an adder and struck ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... account for their formation. This is the more likely, as rings or beads of glass found in tumuli in Wales, Cornwall, and the Highlands are called "serpents' glass" (glain naidr), and are believed to be formed in the same way as the "egg." These, as well as old spindle-whorls called "adder stones" in the Highlands, are held to have magical virtues, e.g. against the bite of a serpent, and are highly prized ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... and with the Agazonbae, who are dog-faced; and with the Sibans, who have horses' feet, and run more swiftly than horses. A third of our company died in battle, and a third died of want. The rest murmured against me, and said that I had brought them an evil fortune. I took a horned adder from beneath a stone and let it sting me. When they saw that I did ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... or seeming to have the will of a demon. For a moment this colossal locust would beat against the low ceiling overhead, then it would come down on its four wheels like a tiger on its four paws, and begin to run at the man. He, supple, nimble, expert, writhed away like an adder from all these lightning movements. He avoided a collision, but the blows which he parried fell against the, vessel, and ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... adder-stone Gender'd 'fore the autumnal moon When in undulating twine The foaming snakes ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... delight. They stuffed themselves with wild strawberries that hung on the bushes, large as pine cones. One of them played with a litter of young hares; another ran a race with some young crows, which had hopped from their nest before they were really ready; a third caught up an adder from the ground and wound it around his neck ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith

... think as much iv ye as we did whin ye'er name was first mintioned be th' stanch an' faithful press. Set here, ol' la-ad, an' warrum ye'er toes by th' fire. Set here an' r-rest fr'm th' gratichood iv ye'er fellow-counthrymen, that, as Shakspere says, biteth like an asp an' stingeth like an adder. R-rest here, as ye might r-rest at th' hearth iv millyons iv people that cud give ye no ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... tone in which this was spoken, John saw the necessity of acquiescence. "I did but jest," he said; "and you turn upon me like an adder! Name whom you will, in the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... care not to be deluded that, though he sat by to see fair play, yet it was always with his elbows on the table and his fingers in his ears, regardless of appearing to the priest in the character of the deaf adder. After all, he was not the object, and good Pere Bonami at first thought the day his own, when he found that almost all his arguments against Calvinism were equally impressed upon Berenger's mind, but the differences soon revealed themselves; and the priest, though a good man, was not ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that he was glad to be freed from the fantastic humors of Furibon. One day as he was walking in the garden, finding the heat increase, he retired into a shady grove and began to play upon the flute to amuse himself. As he played, he felt something wind about his leg, and looking down saw a great adder: he took his handkerchief, and catching it by the head was going to kill it. But the adder, looking steadfastly in his face, seemed to beg his pardon. At this instant one of the gardeners happened to come to the place where Leander was, and spying the snake, cried out to his master: "Hold him fast, ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik

... protected the rights and nursed the virtues of her great husband and his family, were good enough for her, for her children, and for all. Her ear was closed against the sound of Christianity, as naturally as an adder's against all sound. She could not, and never did hear it. From her I received my principles and first impressions. Not even the history, nor so much as a word of the sufferings, of the Christians ever fell on my ear. I grew up in all things a Piso; the true child ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... is depraved in mind; and now I am certain the little adder has wound herself round the colonel. She has heard us say he was a baron. To be a baroness! little fool! Ah! I'll get rid of her, I'll apprentice her out, and ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac

... that is human he comes, he shudders and crawls to my side; As an adder that biteth the foot, his clutch on my flesh doth abide. O Earth, O my mother! O Zeus, thou king of the earth, and her child! Turn back, we pray thee, from us his clamour and ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... has the touch, ineffable, final, absolute, of the supreme Beauty. And over it all, over the ardours and ecstasies, hangs the shadow of Death; and in the heart of it, an adder in the deep drugged cup, coiled and waiting, the poisonous bite of incurable anguish! We may stand mesmerized, spell-bound, amid "the hushed cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed" watching Psyche sleep. We may open those "charmed magic casements" towards "the perilous foam." We may linger ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... a post,—as said before - And as deaf as twenty similes more, Including the adder, that deafest of snakes, Which never hears the ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... Erasmus on his part irritated him furtively. He reveals in this whole dispute a lack of self-control and dignity which shows his weakest side. Usually so anxious as to decorum he now lapses into invectives: The British adder, Satan, even the old taunt ascribing a tail to Englishmen has to serve once more. The points at issue disappear altogether behind the bitter mutual reproaches. In his unrestrained anger, Erasmus avails himself ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga

... thy own father's heart. The adder! O, the charms of hell o'erpowered me; He dwelt within me, to my inmost soul Still to and fro he pass'd, suspected never On the wide ocean, in the starry heaven Did mine eyes seek the enemy, whom I In my heart's heart had folded! Had I been To Ferdinand what ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)

... winter green, whose bright scarlet berries look like clusters of coral on the snow, now seem even brighter than they were—the blue violet rises among the sheltered moss by the old tree roots, and the broad-leaved adder tongue gives out its orange and purple blossoms to gladden the brown earth, while the trees are yet all black and barren, save the various species of pine and spruce, which now wear a fringe of softer green. The May flowers of New Brunswick ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... departed from them: sin has a smooth tongue; if thou hearken to its enchanting language, ten thousand to one but thou art entangled. Take heed, therefore, of listening to the charms wherewith sin enchanteth the soul. In this, be like the deaf adder; stop thine ear, plug it up to sin, and let it only be open to hear the words ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin



Words linked to "Adder" :   yellow adder's tongue, viper, genus Vipera, green adder's mouth, Vipera, reckoner, estimator, computer, banded adder, calculating machine, common viper, puff adder, add, figurer, calculator, Vipera berus, checkered adder



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