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Beak   Listen
noun
Beak  n.  
1.
(Zool.)
(a)
The bill or nib of a bird, consisting of a horny sheath, covering the jaws. The form varies much according to the food and habits of the bird, and is largely used in the classification of birds.
(b)
A similar bill in other animals, as the turtles.
(c)
The long projecting sucking mouth of some insects, and other invertebrates, as in the Hemiptera.
(d)
The upper or projecting part of the shell, near the hinge of a bivalve.
(e)
The prolongation of certain univalve shells containing the canal.
2.
Anything projecting or ending in a point, like a beak, as a promontory of land.
3.
(Antiq.) A beam, shod or armed at the end with a metal head or point, and projecting from the prow of an ancient galley, in order to pierce the vessel of an enemy; a beakhead.
4.
(Naut.) That part of a ship, before the forecastle, which is fastened to the stem, and supported by the main knee.
5.
(Arch.) A continuous slight projection ending in an arris or narrow fillet; that part of a drip from which the water is thrown off.
6.
(Bot.) Any process somewhat like the beak of a bird, terminating the fruit or other parts of a plant.
7.
(Far.) A toe clip. See Clip, n. (Far.).
8.
A magistrate or policeman. (Slang, Eng.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Beak" Quotes from Famous Books



... moon, who hast companioned Man Through every darkness since the night's first fall! Hast thou, along thy foot-worn, azure wall, Ever seen seas so hard for hope to span, As this red surge, that in a spring so small, A bird could beak ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle

... because you cannot persuade me that you go to Jurand of Spychow for the sake of Bogdaniec and not for that duck's beak." ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... the bushes by the roadside. Out of them appeared a bare head, with a shock of tousled, matted, rain-soaked gray hair, a hatchet face, brow like a bare skull, bleared eyes, far apart and deepset on either side of a sharp hooked nose like the beak of a bird of prey, high cheekbones under the thin, dry, tight-drawn skin above the sunken cheeks, a wide, thin-lipped mouth and a chin like a ship's prow. The rain trickled down ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... last. The thing I had wished for in my boat, all those months ago, was a new flag. And here was the flag, made for me in secret by Mary's own hand! The ground was green silk, with a dove embroidered on it in white, carrying in its beak the typical olive-branch, wrought in gold thread. The work was the tremulous, uncertain work of a child's fingers. But how faithfully my little darling had remembered my wish! how patiently she had plied the needle over the traced lines of the pattern! how industriously ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins

... and mind and principle no more perfect Hellene ever lived in Hellas itself. When Heine came face to face with Goethe at Weimar, he tells us that he felt as if Goethe must be Jupiter, and that he involuntarily glanced aside to see whether the eagle was not there with the thunderbolt in his beak. He almost addressed him in Greek, but, finding he "understood German," he made the profound remark that the plums on the road were delicious. And now, hear how Heine draws the contrast between the Hellenic Teuton and himself, the ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... areas, remaining in this position a considerable time. Now it has taken a flight, and alighted on the roof of this house, directly over the window at which I sit, so that I can look up and see its head and beak, and the tips of its claws. The roofs of the low out-houses are black with moisture; the gutters are full of water, and there is a little puddle where there is a place for it in the hollow of a board. On the grass-plot are strewn the fallen ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... slimmer than the Bontoc blade, but its marked distinguishing feature is the shape of the cutting edge. The blade is ground on two straight lines joined together by a short curved line, giving the edge the striking form of the beak of a rapacious bird. The slender, graceful handle, always fitted with a long iron ferrule, has a process on the under side near the middle. The handle is also usually fitted with a decorated metal ferrule at the tip ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... new macaw, which I shall carry with me, and preserve the skin, if we get to water to-night. The front part of the neck and underneath the wings is of a beautiful crimson hue, the back is of a light lead colour, the tail square, the beak smaller than a cockatoo's, and the crest the same as a macaw's. After leaving this flat, we passed through some scrub, and came upon another of the same description. Here I narrowly escaped being killed. ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... 'Them eloocidations is meant to stiffen a gent's nerve an' do him good. Shore; no one needs encouragement nor has to train for a conflict with good luck; but it's when he's out ag'inst the iron an' the bad luck's swoopin' an' stoopin' at him, beak an' claw like forty hawks, that your remarks is doo to come to his aid an' uplift his sperits some. An' as you says a moment back, thar's bound in the long run to be a equilibr'um. The lower your bad luck, the taller your good luck when it strikes camp. It's the ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... struggle her neck extended, her turtle beak grasping the top of Radio City. She was still trying to pull herself up, as the buoyant gasses hissed and bubbled away through the gushing holes in her side. ...
— The Good Neighbors • Edgar Pangborn

... sharp chisel, and in strong, clear, minute lines of black and white showed us the scene. There, on Mount Ida, with a castellated rock in the distance, the charger of Paris browses beneath some stunted larches; the Trojan knight's helmet, with its monstrous beak and plume, lies on the ground; and near it reclines Paris himself, lazy, in complete armour, with frizzled fashionable beard. To him, all wrinkled and grinning with brutal lust, comes another bearded knight, with wings to his vizored helmet, Sir Mercury, leading the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... Cupid giving her strength, and she hangs, an unwelcome companion, to the Gnossian ship. When her father beholds her, (for now he is hovering in the air, and he has lately been made a sea eagle, with tawny wings), he is going to tear her in pieces with his crooked beak. Through fear she quits the stern; but the light air seems to support her as she is falling, that she may not touch the sea. It is feathers {that support her}. With feathers, being changed into a bird, she is called ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... They ruffled and flew at each other without an instant's hesitation. The visitor, which five minutes before had been staring at the carpet so foolishly, was prompt enough now. For a moment they paused, beak to beak, eye to eye, furious, with necks outstretched and hackles stiff with the rage of battle. They began to rise and fall like two feathers tossing in the air, very quietly. But for the soft whir of wings there was no sound in the ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... only a stadtholder of Holland. Colonel Rutler was robust and tall; his face wore an expression of audacity, bordering on cruelty; his hair, lying in close, damp meshes, was of a deep red; his mustache of the same color hid a large mouth overshadowed by a hooked nose, resembling the beak ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... colors too deep and strong. Prometheus bound to the rock, with the beak of the vulture in his bleeding breast, suffering daily renewing pangs, his wounds healed only to be torn open afresh, is an emblem of the victim of that vulture passion, which the word of God declares to be cruel ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... "You have a beautiful beak," said the Caliph after a long pause of astonishment. "By the beard of the Prophet, I have never seen anything like ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... ye?" he seems to say, and with a suggestive onslaught against the window-pane, which betokens his satisfied quest, is out again at the window with a bluebottle-fly in the clutch of his powerful legs, or perhaps impaled on his horny beak. ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... half an inch or so, And, behold! what bevies break in;— Here some curst old Popish crow Pops his long and lickerish beak in; ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... Monredon was all-glorious, of course. She certainly looked like an old vulture, in a pelisse of gray velvet, with a chinchilla boa round her long, bare neck, and her big beak, with marabouts overshadowing it, of the same color. Monsieur de Talbrun —well! Monsieur de Talbrun was very bald, as bald as he could be. To make up for the want of hair on his head, he has plenty of it ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... said Jesse, idly shying a pebble at one great bird as it came screaming along close above them, to join its kind in the great flocks that circled around above the salmon, which they were helpless to feed upon, not being equipped with beak and talons ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough

... carries out further the work by which life organizes matter—so that we cannot say, as has often been shown, where organization ends and where instinct begins. When the little chick is breaking its shell with a peck of its beak, it is acting by instinct, and yet it does but carry on the movement which has borne it through embryonic life. Inversely, in the course of embryonic life itself (especially when the embryo lives freely in the form of a larva), many of the acts accomplished must be referred to instinct. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... her the cuckoo," said Mary Acton. "Do you remember the young one we found last spring, sprawling all over the nest, and opening its huge, gaping beak?" ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil

... I think the cat had upset Polly's food, or something of that kind. However, they seemed all right again. An hour or so after Polly was on her stand, she called out in a tone of extreme affection, "Pussy! Pussy! come here, Pussy." Pussy went and looked up innocently enough; Polly with her beak seized her tin of food and tipped its contents all over the cat, and then chuckled as poor Puss ran away half ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various

... old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet; Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak— Pray, how did you manage ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... of all you have done; Only think of all you can do; A false note is really fun From such a bird as you! Lift up your proud little crest, Open your musical beak; Other birds have to do their best, You ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... eye swoons as his broad beak slips Within her luscious lips. O but - I cannot see - I long to die Alike for wonder ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley

... hung over it, with a gilt eagle a-top, holding in his beak the knot of blue ribbon that tied up a curtain of muslin falling on either side of the table, where appeared little ivory-handled brushes, two slender silver candle-sticks, a porcelain match-box, several pretty trays for small matters, ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... Gemini simply nodded without getting up: Isabel could see she was a woman of high fashion. She was thin and dark and not at all pretty, having features that suggested some tropical bird—a long beak-like nose, small, quickly-moving eyes and a mouth and chin that receded extremely. Her expression, however, thanks to various intensities of emphasis and wonder, of horror and joy, was not inhuman, and, as regards her appearance, it was plain ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... laugh, even the Gobbler looking a little smiling around the beak on the side where his hanging wattle did not hide his face. When the Hen Turkeys on the smiling side saw that he was pleased, they began to smile too; and then the Hen Turkeys on the other side, who hadn't been sure that it was safe for them to do ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson

... same movement leant forward and sideways to peer, bringing my face near to the boat's rail. In the same instant, I found myself looking down into a white demoniac face, human save that the mouth and nose had greatly the appearance of a beak. The thing was gripping at the side of the boat with two flickering hands—gripping the bare, smooth outer surface, in a way that woke in my mind a sudden memory of the great devilfish which had clung to the side of the wreck we had passed in the previous dawn. I saw the ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson

... to the other—is one of the best of pointers a sportsman can follow, to ascertain where any animal has been carried away in an avalanche. He hovers over the spot, constantly alighting, and then taking wing again; but if once you observe him pecking with his beak you may proceed to the spot, and be certain of finding, a very short distance below the snow, the carcass of a wild sheep, as fresh as it was on the day on which it was carried away. Many a haunch of good mutton have I obtained in ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty

... the barber's accursed parrot. I could hear it tearing with its beak at the bars of its cage, as if struggling to pull off the ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... finish, but seized up a peculiar shaped instrument, like a huge hook, with a curved neck and sharp beak. Really it was composed of two metal tubes which ran into a cylinder or mixing chamber above the nozzle, while parallel to them ran another tube with a nozzle of ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... front in order to win a battle. The woman of fashion ceases to be a woman; she is neither mother, nor wife, nor lover. She is, medically speaking, sex in the brain. And your Marquise, too, has all the characteristics of her monstrosity, the beak of a bird of prey, the clear, cold eye, the gentle voice—she is as polished as the steel of a machine, she touches everything except ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... for the day was mild and sunny, hovered a moment in the air ere it dipped toward a great fir where doubtless it had built for years. Never, poor fowl, was it destined to build again, for as it turned its beak downward Dick's shaft pierced it through and through and bore it onward to ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard

... simplicities, the grander it is; and Turner likes to enclose all his broken crags by such a line as that at b, just as we saw the classical composer, in our first plate, enclose the griffin's beak with breadth of wing. Nevertheless, I cannot but attribute his somewhat wilful and marked rejection of what sublimity there is in the other form, to the influence of early affections; and sincerely regret ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... BEAK-HEAD. A piece of brass like a beak, fixed at the head of the ancient galleys, with which they pierced their enemies. Pisaeus is said to have first added the rostrum or beak-head. Later it was a small platform at the fore part of the upper ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... in illuminating and decorating the house-boat. He had the American shield in electric lights surmounted by the American Eagle holding in his beak a chain of electric bulbs which were festooned on each side down to the end of the boat and running down the poles to the water's edge. A band of red, white, and blue electric lights formed the balustrade of the upper deck, with a row of brilliant scarlet geraniums on the railing. The house-boat ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... vertical bands of green (hoist side), white, and red; the coat of arms (an eagle with a snake in its beak perched on a cactus) is centered in the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... says I. "Didn't I spot that peaked beak of his, just like yours? That's a fam'ly nose, ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... nature had meant him to be a wheel-horse. He had never had any hope of being chief of staff. Hawk-eyed, with a great beak nose and iron-gray hair, intensely and solemnly serious, lacking a sense of humor, he would have looked at home with his big, bony hands gripping a broadsword hilt and his lank body clothed in chain armor. He had a mastiff's devotion to its master ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... number of crosses since, but we have been very busy and the young trees of these crosses have just about perished through neglect. In this last lot we had a cross of the filbert on the beak or horn hazel[5], and of a cluster of three, had one to grow, which in turn was promptly eaten off by a rabbit or rodent of some description. The reason for this cross originally, was that, so far as we could see in the last fifteen years the male ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various

... the horses were climbing the steep acclivity which leads from the river to the castle, several shop-boys approached the last horse, from whose saddle-bow a number of birds were suspended by the beak. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... barriers,—rises a crag of a singular shape, jutting far out from the almost perpendicular strata beneath. Its form is precisely that of a gigantic helmet, hammered out by the fanciful artist into the likeness of an eagle, its wings partly outstretched, and its beak—the point of the crag—overshadowing the grim head of some gaunt warrior. With but little aid from the imagination, the whole features may be discerned; hence it was denominated, "The Eagle Crag." But another appellation, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... one summer day in seeing a bluebird feeding her young one in the shaded street of a large town. She had captured a cicada or harvest-fly, and, after bruising it awhile on the ground, flew with it to a tree and placed it in the beak of the young bird. It was a large morsel, and the mother seemed to have doubts of her chick's ability to dispose of it, for she stood near and watched its efforts with great solicitude. The young bird ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... he thought to himself, "what with Scheherazade, Golden Beard, and now Ali Baba—by jinx!—he certainly did have an Oriental voice!—and he looked the part, too, with a beak for a nose and a black moustache ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... you and in your ears will be the gurgling of yellow streams. Hungrily you will search in the darkened void, swiftly you will pounce on the silver shadow.... Then you will rise again, bearing in your beak the struggling prey, And your lousy lords, whose rings are upon your throats, will take from you the catch, giving in its place a puny wriggler which can pass the gates of straw. ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens

... the instant that saw Amiel lay a commending and fraternal hand on Jennie's curls, the Monster struck. Jealousy had no firmer grip of beak and talons on the Moor of Venice than on the crop-headed Dorothea. In absolute self- defense she did an unprecedented and wholly unexpected thing. Without warning she burst into song, even as Jennie was coyly preparing ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... tight-buttoned in his famous frock coat—he had donned it for the ceremonious afternoon, but Joanna (I think) had suppressed the purple cravat with the yellow spots—was talking to an elderly and bony female owning a great beak of a nose. I wondered how so unprepossessing a person could be admitted into a refined assembly, but I learned later that she was Lady Molyneux, one of the Great Personages of the county. The lady seemed ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... sort of natures these are who are to be philosophers and rulers. As you are a man of pleasure, you will not have forgotten how indiscriminate lovers are in their attachments; they love all, and turn blemishes into beauties. The snub-nosed youth is said to have a winning grace; the beak of another has a royal look; the featureless are faultless; the dark are manly, the fair angels; the sickly have a new term of endearment invented expressly for them, which is 'honey-pale.' Lovers of wine and lovers of ambition also desire the objects of their affection ...
— The Republic • Plato

... wail, and green Distress Sweeps o'er the pallid beak of loveliness: Where melancholy Sulphur holds her sway: And cliffs of ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... proper. So they chaps they said they wouldn't go to be drownded in winter—depending upon that 'ere Plimsoll man to see 'em through the court. They thought to have a bloomin' lark and two or three days' spree. And the beak giv' 'em six weeks—coss the ship warn't overloaded. Anyways they made it out in court that she wasn't. There wasn't one overloaded ship in Penarth Dock at all. 'Pears that old coon he was only on pay and allowance from some kind people, under ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... fly the birds of heaven, the small and the great; they twitter and they sing as best they may, each bird with his beak. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... caught them up at last, And read them both a lecture; And how he served them with his beak, ...
— Naughty Puppies • Anonymous

... man who seeks to lie hidden in his deeds of darkness. The cormorant, so constituted that it can stay a long time under water, denotes the glutton who plunges into the waters of pleasure. The ibis is an African bird with a long beak, and feeds on snakes; and perhaps it is the same as the stork: it signifies the envious man, who refreshes himself with the ills of others, as with snakes. The swan is bright in color, and by the aid of its long ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... nearly always of metal, tall, and, in old models, of graceful curve, with a slightly twisted ornamental beak in the form of an S, attached below the middle of the vessel. A handle ornamented in the same ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... flint work. The Eoliths are worn pebbles, chipped as if for scraping. The Rostro- carinate flints found at the base of the Crag are long bars with a beak-end, suited for breaking up earth. The human origin of both of these classes is contested. Flints of Strepy type are nodular and partly trimmed into cutting edges, the smooth surface being left as a handle. ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various

... feeling seems to have survived in a more or less vague and unconscious form in mediaeval Europe. "In the tenth century," according to Dufour (Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. VI., p. 11), "shoes a la poulaine, with a claw or beak, pursued for more than four centuries by the anathemas of popes and the invectives of preachers, were always regarded by mediaeval casuists as the most abominable emblems of immodesty. At a first glance it is not easy to see why these shoes—terminating in a lion's ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... that he would drive Solomon out of his snug house and live in it himself. But he soon changed Solomon Owl—so Fatty discovered—had sharp, strong claws and a sharp, strong beak as well, which curled over his face ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey

... wheat. He was hungry and saw no reason why he should not pick them up. As he flew down, a snare was drawn about him. The wheat had been put there to tempt pigeons so that they might get caught. It was well for Blue-feather that the snare had been in use a long time and was rotten. By using his beak and wings he got loose, but he lost a few feathers ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry

... the heron exerted all his powers of speed to escape from an enemy so formidable. Plying his almost unequalled strength of wing, he ascended high and higher in the air, by short gyrations, that the hawk might gain no vantage ground for pouncing at him; while his spiked beak, at the extremity of so long a neck as enabled him to strike an object at a yard's distance in every direction, possessed for any less spirited assailant all the ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... truth broke upon Major Brent. It broke so suddenly that he fairly yelped as the Dione poked her white beak seaward. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... habit of pondering over everything. I think about the beak of the ship, which buries itself in each new wave. I think about the laughter of the steerage passengers, those poor, poor people, who, I am sure, scarcely have a gay time of it. My sousing was a treat ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... considerable size, and splendid colouring, frequents the banks of the streams. A grey heron perches on the lower boughs of the trees, and fishes in the ponds. A small-winged woodpecker, and a large red-headed species, climb up and down the trees in sequestered places, and a thrush with a yellow beak and black head utters a sweet note among the bamboo groves and thickets; while owls, falcons, eagles and other birds of ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... general form of body, the same manner of flight, colouring and voice. It was classed, until recently, in the same genus— Picus—with all other woodpeckers, but now has been ranked as a distinct genus amongst the Picidae. It differs from the typical Picus only in the beak, not being quite so strong, and in the upper mandible being slightly arched. I think these facts fully justify my statement that it is "in all essential parts of its organisation" ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... Using beak, wings and spurs they jumped, flew and struck at one another as opportunity afforded, until Joffre got a strangle hold on Von Kluck and buried his spurs again and again into the prostrate body until he finally struck a vital spot and the combat was over. Then, stretching himself, ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith

... with Jack and a pipe to keep off the Tory mosquitos, while I fell to reading the letter. The same buzzing Tories were busy about me also with bugle and beak, but when, as I glanced at the letter, I caught Darthea's name on the second page, I forgot them and hesitated. "Still," thought I, "others have read it, and it may be well that I should do so." It was no longer private. I went on to learn what it said. It was from ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... Upper regions, the drab color of the body being varied by fragments of pure turkois inserted into the eyes, breast, and back. A notch in the top and front of the head probably indicates that the specimen was once supplied with a beak, either of turkois or of white shell. It is perforated lengthwise ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing

... was dressed in soft bright down when she first crept out of her egg-shell. She had a sharp beak ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various

... when some danger lies O'er her young brood, and, with wild eyes, Straight at the sudden foe she flies, Her full soul spurred To battle with the gnashing beak— A roaring tiger is more meek; And somehow one is bound to speak Well of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various

... do so as Mr Fosset was there, although he really couldn't possibly see anything aft from that position on the port side, on account of the wheel-house and funnel, which were of course abaft the bridge, blocking the view. The cantankerous little beggar sniffed his beak of a nose in the air as if trying to look down on me, though he was half a head shorter, and spoke in that nasty sneering way of his that always made me mad. He did enjoy growling at any one when he had the chance; and so he went on snarling now, like a cat ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... trip, Mister Kirby?" Stein peered at him over a pair of old-fashioned, steel-bowed spectacles which perched on his sharp parrot's beak of a nose. ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... control. On Thracia's hills the Lord of War Has curb'd the fury of his car And dropt his thirsty lance at thy command. Perching on the sceptred hand Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king With ruffled plumes, and flagging wing: Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie The terror of his beak, and lightnings of ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... one funny thing. That was a wooden shoe, in which was a fuzzy little yellow chicken hardly four days old. It had been playing in the shoe, when the floods came and swept it off from under the very beak of the old hen, that, with all her other chicks, ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis

... eagle-hawk, which, though flying at an enormous height, is always on the watch; but it is only when the wallaby lets itself out, on to the stony open, that the enemy can swoop down upon it. The eagle trusses it with his talons, smashes its head with its beak to quiet it, and, finally, if a female, flies away with the victim to its nest for food for its young, or if a male bird, to some lonely rock or secluded tarn, to gorge its fill alone. I have frequently seen these eagles swoop on ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... in Fig. 206. Although certainly not intended to represent a human figure with accuracy, it is furnished with a crown, as are the figures in gold and stone, and is covered with devices that seem to refer to costume. The features are extremely grotesque, the nose resembling the beak of a bird and the mouth being a mere ridge, without indications of the lips. The face and the chest are painted with curious devices in red. The funnel and body of the vase are decorated with subjects that seem to have no connection with ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes

... find he had cried the words aloud. He sat up in bed. A white pigeon was on the sill outside his window, tapping with its beak on ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore

... in a brief interview he had stated that Barthes must cross the frontier within forty-eight hours if he did not wish to be arrested. Thereupon the old man gravely rose, with his white fleece, his eagle beak and his bright eyes still sparkling with the fire of youth. And he wished to go off at once. "What!" said he, "you have known all this since yesterday, and have still kept me here at the risk of my compromising you even more than I had done already! You must forgive me, I did not ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... etc., including Mrs. Tuite, put by for future description. Second day: Wollaston, Dr. and Miss Holland. Harriet sat beside Wollaston at dinner, and he talked unusually, veiling for her the terror of his beak and lightning of his eye. He has indeed been very kind and amiable in distinguishing your ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... which turn to flesh flies. The reptile used to come forth every evening from an hole under the garden-steps; and was taken up, after supper, on the table to be fed. But at last a tame raven, kenning him as he put forth his head, gave him such a severe stroke with his horny beak as put out one eye. After this accident the creature languished for ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White

... ice. The branches rattled together as he moved among them and the icicles that dangled down rang and clicked as they struck one another. The ice-storm had locked in Chick's breakfast eggs, and, try as he would with his little beak, he couldn't get ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... above middle age, with thin lemon-colored hair, a curling mustache, a tufted chin of the same hue, and a high craggy face, all running to a great hook of the nose, like the beak of an eagle. His skin was tanned a brown-red by much exposure to the wind and sun. In height he was tall, and his figure was thin and loose-jointed, but stringy and hard-bitten. One eye was entirely covered by its lid, which lay flat over an empty socket, but the other danced ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... considerable quantities without deleterious result—all the poison that could be extracted from a half dozen of the largest and most virile reptiles was powerless in any way to affect an unfledged bird when poured into its open beak. Chemistry is not only powerless to solve the enigma of its action, and the microscope to detect its presence, but pathology is at fault to explain the reason of its deadly effect; and all that we know is that when introduced ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... son, his Royal Highness the Duke, a very corpulent Prince, with a coat and face of blazing scarlet: behind them came various gentlemen and officers of state; among whom George at once recognised the famous Mr. Secretary Pitt, by his tall stature, his eagle eye and beak, his grave and majestic presence. As I see that solemn figure passing, even a hundred years off, I protest I feel a present awe, and a desire to take my hat off. I am not frightened at George the Second; nor are my eyes dazzled by the portentous appearance of his Royal ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the motes were dancing; the fierce bird down on the floor in the darkest corner, horns up, eyes gleaming, feathers all a-bristle till he looked big as a bushel basket in the dim light, standing on his game with one foot and tearing it savagely to pieces with the other, snapping his beak and gobbling up feathers, bones and all, in great hungry mouthfuls; and, over the scuttle, two or three small boys staring in eager curiosity, but clinging to each other's coats fearfully, ready to tumble down the ladder with a yell at the ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... evinced in rising again, until he is a few feet above the waves, when once more he sails with or against the wind, upon outspread, immovable wings. With no apparent inclination or occasion for pugnacity, the albatross is yet armed with a tremendous beak, certainly the most terrible of its kind possessed by any of the feathered tribe. It is from six to eight inches long, and ends in a sharp-pointed hook extremely strong and hard. It has been humorously ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... the alley and beheld a young sparrow, with a yellow ring around its beak and down on its head. It had fallen from the nest (the wind was rocking the trees of the alley violently), and sat motionless, impotently ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... varnished buds of Spring; When the loosed current, as its folds uncoil, Slides in the channels of the mellowed soil; When the young hyacinth returns to seek The air and sunshine with her emerald beak; When the light snowdrops, starting from their cells, Hang each pagoda with its silver bells; When the frail willow twines her trailing bow With pallid leaves that sweep the soil below; When the broad elm, sole empress of the plain, Whose circling shadow speaks a century's reign, Wreathes in ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... acquaintance could be proved adequate to Her Majesty's Commissioners of the Civil Service) would inevitably make a man of me. For the opinion is rooted deep in many minds that to surrender one's wings, to clip one's claws, to put a cork in one's raptorial beak, and masquerade in a commercial barnyard, is to be a very ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... the slave, Whose life was his soul's grave; So, pale or red with change of fast and feast, The sanguine-sandalled priest; So the Austrian, when his fortune came to flood, And the warm wave was blood; With wings that widened and with beak that smote, So shrieked through either throat From the hot horror of its northern nest That double-headed pest; So, triple-crowned with fear and fraud and shame, He of whom treason came, The herdsman of the Gadarean swine; So all his ravening kine, Made fat with ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... steersman lost his nerve, and shrank from the coming shock. The galley's helm went up to port, and her beak slid all but harmless along Amyas's bow; a long dull grind, and then loud crack on crack, as the Rose sawed slowly through the bank of oars from stem to stern, hurling the wretched slaves in heaps upon each other; and ere her mate on the other side could swing ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... a demon; or like a maniac who was consumed with humorous scorn over a cheap and degraded pun. It was a very human laugh. If he had been out of sight I could have believed that the laughter came from a man. It is an odd-looking bird, with a head and beak that are much too large for its body. In time man will exterminate the rest of the wild creatures of Australia, but this one will probably survive, for man is his friend and lets him alone. Man always has a good reason ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... had omitted to provide themselves with wheat! All their labour seemed in vain, and they were greatly distressed as to what they would do for food if they had no harvest to look forward to, when suddenly they saw, perched on a little wayside cross, a tiny robin redbreast holding in its beak an ear of wheat! The monks joyfully took the grain, and, sowing it, reaped an abundant harvest! Accounts vary somewhat in the details of this story. Some say that the bird led the monks to a store of grain, and others question the fact that the bird was a robin, but the popular idea is that the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... drink and talk about the world. He was always so friendly that people thought that he must wish for things in return, but he never asked for anything, nor did he speak about himself at all. As for his portrait, he had a pale face, a big beak nose, very black hair that hung over his forehead and was always untidy, a blue velvet jacket, black trousers, green ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... tears. La Bougival closed the old man's eyes and straightened him on the bed; then she ran to call Savinien; but the heirs, who stood at the corner of the street, like crows watching till a horse is buried before they scratch at the ground and turn it over with beak and claw, flocked in with the celerity ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac

... give as regards the way in which wild animals readily become domesticated, and eventually seem to prefer the society of man to that of their own species. In this case my pet was a hornbill, a bird of discordant note, and with a huge beak, and a box-like crowned head. This creature was also totally unrestrained, but showed a most decided preference for the society of man. One day it joined some of its species which made their appearance in the jungle near my house, but soon got tired of or disgusted ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... Mr. Wiggett, and one or two others he knew, and was talking pleasantly with them, when Peakslow pushed the inverted cut-water of his curved beak through the crowd, ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... landscape of manifest life. Where are they—all the dying, all the dead, of the populous woods? Where do they hide their little last hours, where are they buried? Where is the violence concealed? Under what gay custom and decent habit? You may see, it is true, an earth-worm in a robin's beak, and may hear a thrush breaking a snail's shell; but these little things are, as it were, passed by with a kind of twinkle for apology, as by a well-bred man who does openly some little solecism which is too slight for direct mention, ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell

... comfortably in the best part of the drawing-room. The owl and his belongings he leaves severely alone; but whether from a doubt as to the legality of distraining upon the goods of a lodger, or from a certainty as to the lodger's goods including claws and a beak, naturalists do not say. Personally, I incline very much to the claw-and-beak theory, having seen an owl kill a snake in a very neat and workmanlike manner; and, indeed, the rattlesnake sometimes catches a Tartar even in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... many sorts, making a confused screaming, and crying every one according to his usual note; but not one of them of any kind that I knew. As for the creature I killed, I took it to be a kind of a hawk, its color and beak resembling it, but it had no talons or claws more than common; its flesh was ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... indifference did not please the olive-sided, but he alighted on a branch below and bided his time; it came soon, when the goldenwing took flight, and he came down upon him like a kingbird on a crow. I heard the snap of the woodpecker's beak as he passed into the thick woods, but nobody was hurt, and the flycatcher returned to ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... weapon of his class,—the folded, torn yellow paper, ready to fall to pieces as you open it,—in short, the respectable beggar's certificate of character. With another bow (which gave his nose the aspect of the beak of a bird of prey making a pick at me) he handed the document. I found that it was dated in Milwaukee, and signed by the mayor of that city, two physicians, three clergymen, and an editor, who ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... centre of the room facing the hearth-place; his huge arms were bare—for bare-armed he always worked—his black beard was knotted into little curls, his face was so broad that you hardly remarked that his nose was hooked like an owl's beak. And about the man there was an air of sombreness and mystery. He had certain papers on his lectern, and several sheets of the great Bible that he was then printing by the Archbishop's license and command. They sang all together and with loud ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... little minute,'" she said, with a coaxing touch of mimicry. "You haven't quite parted company with the baby I remember so well, even yet. I used to call you my downy owl, with solemn saucer eyes and fierce little beak. You were extraordinarily, really perplexingly like your father then. A miniature edition, but so faithful to the original it used, sometimes, to give me ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... too. The band came in with a wild, trailing strain, that was positively heart-breaking. The party just mentioned was, as I said, old, and a gentleman, but he was tall, robust, broad-shouldered, with eagle-like beak, and keen gray eyes that were fitting accompaniments to so distinguished a feature. His dress was rather careless, but his air and the expression of his face evinced a mixture of eccentricity and a sense of superiority. At least, it had evinced this until the singing of Tara. Then ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... that she had never heard such hymns as they were singing. A burst of song from the lilac bush under the parlor window drew her eyes thither, and there was the paternal redbreast pouring out the very soul of ecstasy. From the nest beneath him rose the black head and yellow beak of his brooding mate. "How contented and happy she looks!" Alida murmured, "how happy they both are! And the secret of it is HOME. And to think that I, who was a friendless waif, am at home, also! At home with Eden-like beauty and peace before my eyes. But if it hadn't been ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... preliminary words of introduction, I produced the jewellery for Madame Combrisson's inspection. She was a small wiry woman, with hard, covetous grey eyes, grizzled hair screwed up in a tight knot on the top of her head, a nose like the beak of a bird of prey, and thin blue lips. Her eyes lit up as her hands turned over the little diamond brooch and finely-chased gold bracelet which I submitted to ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... fill up!" cried Ted, energetically; "eh, if you dunnot gi' it no more nor that, Victoria met jest as well be a bantam. He'll noan as mich as wet that great yaller beak of his wi' ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... had a gown worthy of the Roman Empress she looks, with that beak nose and nutcracker chin. 'Twas a black velvet petticoat, embroidered in chenille, the pattern a great gold wicker basket filled to spilling over with ramping flowers that climbed and grew all about her person. A design ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... 'bang-bangs,' murdered numbers of us. Then we flew back, and some were hurt and bleeding, and died of their wounds, and none of us have dared to get a drink since." Dot could see that the poor pigeon was suffering great thirst, for its wings were drooping, and its poor dry beak was open. ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... a cock-grouse thundering skyward. Crack! Crack! Whirling over and over through a cloud of floating feathers, a heavy weight struck the springy earth. There lay the big mottled bird, splendid silky ruffs spread, dead eyes closing, a single tiny crimson bead twinkling like a ruby on the gaping beak. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... the lilac, Not far beyond the Nets, Upon a spray of purple His beak severely whets: He hears the players calling, He wonders what they're at, As thunder frequent Yorkers Against the ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale

... beautiful, powdered with tiny freckles; especially under the eyes, which were of a deep, tranquil blue-grey. She half sat, half lay on her left side; whilst before her, quite close, strutted up and down on the grass, a bird, with blue plumage, coral-red beak, and bright, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... gets as red as a rear light on an automobile or the beak of a Park Row panhandler. Your knees knock together like a man who sees a collector for an installment house. The only things it don't attack is your corns. They should rename it mucilage flu because it certainly is a sticker; you have as much ...
— Love Letters of a Rookie to Julie • Barney Stone

... laid their eggs, tried their wings in short flights in circles; and then flew away out to sea. I thought that they were gone; but I was deceived, for they returned in about a quarter of an hour, each with a fish in its beak, which they laid down before their mates. I was much pleased at this, and I resolved that in future they should supply their own food, which they did; and not their own food only, but enough for the seal ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat

... unreceived 290 Totter heart-broken from the closing gates Of the full Lazar-house; or, gazing, stand, Sick with despair! O ye to Glory's field Forced or ensnared, who, as ye gasp in death, Bleed with new wounds beneath the vulture's beak! 295 O thou poor widow, who in dreams dost view Thy husband's mangled corse, and from short doze Start'st with a shriek; or in thy half-thatched cot Waked by the wintry night-storm, wet and cold Cow'rst o'er thy screaming baby! Rest awhile ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... claws grabbed him around the neck and clutched him like a vise, shutting off his last, startled squawk. Then Cap'n Kidd darted forward that knobby head with its ugly beak, and tore off Peter's caput with one ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... I had but little opportunity of observing him, for he had ridden all the way wrapped up in his great common soldier's cloak with its big collar turned up until it obscured every feature but his eyes and the mere point of a beak-like nose. Now, as he lay in an attitude of exhaustion, I went to assist him to a position of more comfort. I took the hook-and-eye which fastened the collar of the cloak and drew them apart; and ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... of her pinchbeck times. Nothing would please her—she was cross with her governess at breakfast, she quarrelled with her bread-and-milk; and even when her favourite tame Rook, Cawcus, came hopping on her shoulder, she refused to give it anything to eat, but hit it on the beak with her spoon. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 1, 1892 • Various

... big drum makes reply! Ere this hath Lucas marched, with his gallant cavaliers, And the bray of Rupert's trumpets grows fainter in our ears. To horse! to horse! Sir Nicholas! White Guy is at the door, And the raven whets his beak o'er the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... here. The swan can be made more interesting by moving the arm which forms his neck as if he were prinking and pluming, an effect which is much heightened by ruffling up and smoothing down the hair with the fingers forming his beak. To get a clear shadow it is necessary to have only one light, and that fairly close to ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... disrespect toward the Bench, That I should chuckle when your pitch was short Or smile to see you in the sanded trench; But Golf (so I extenuate my sin) Brings all men level, like the greens they putt on; One common bunker makes the whole world kin, And Bar may scrap with Beak, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various

... deposits a single egg in an oblong slit, about one eighth of an inch long, which it has previously formed with its beak in the stalk of the potato. The larva subsequently hatches out, and bores into the heart of the stalk, always proceeding downward toward the root. When full grown, it is a little more than one fourth ...
— The $100 Prize Essay on the Cultivation of the Potato; and How to Cook the Potato • D. H. Compton and Pierre Blot

... like you, Sinclair. You love fighting, you see. You're made for fighting. You make me think of that hawk. All beak and talons, made to tear, ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... up to the boughs overhead. The Bush Robin watched the miracle, but it was the yellow flame which riveted his attention. The lighted match had been thrown away, and before the smoker could put his foot on it, the little bird darted forward, seized the white stem and, with the burning match in his beak, flitted to ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... inland peak, Robed half in mist, bedewed with snowy rills, Array'd in many a dun and purple streak, Arise; and, as the clouds along them break, Disclose the dwelling of the mountaineer: Here roams the wolf, the eagle whets his beak, Birds, beasts of prey, and wilder men appear, And gathering storms around convulse ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... of the costumes are very rich and expensive, of satin and velvet heavy with gold. I have seen a distinguished diplomatist in the guise of a gigantic canary-bird, hopping briskly about in the mud with bedraggled tail-feathers, shrieking well-bred sarcasms with his yellow beak. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... all about her, on head and shoulders and arms, all unafraid, all content; then all fluttering with their clipped wings, about her lips, except a grey parrot who rubbed his beak ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... each were dark and hollow: pale Their visage, and so lean withal, the bones Stood staring thro' the skin. I do not think Thus dry and meagre Erisicthon show'd, When pinc'ed by sharp-set famine to the quick. "Lo!" to myself I mus'd, "the race, who lost Jerusalem, when Mary with dire beak Prey'd on her child." The sockets seem'd as rings, From which the gems were drops. Who reads the name Of man upon his forehead, there the M Had trac'd most plainly. Who would deem, that scent Of water and an apple, could have prov'd Powerful to generate ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... arms, of which it had ten radiating from its body, varied in length and thickness—the longest being about twenty-four feet, and the shortest about eight. The under sides of these arms were supplied with innumerable suckers, while from the body there projected a horny beak, like the beak ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... man," said the priest, with a smile, "shudders at the rustling of the wind or the chattering of a stork's beak; a murderer's conscience preys upon his mind till he sees what is not. Poverty drives a man to crimes which he repents of in his wealth. How true is the doctrine of Moshi [Mencius], that the heart of man, pure by ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... he went on turning over the pages, and presently came to another that arrested him, though in quite a different way. It was a bright and cheerful picture—a pretty arbor, on the outer boughs of which hung a star for a sign. On the star sat, with ruffled neck and open beak, a little bird singing. Inside the arbor was to be seen, about a rough rustic table, a small group of young men, students or roving journeymen, who chatted and drank a good wine out of cheerful-looking bottles. To one side of the picture was visible ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... had him on other wise, it is so great a grief to me that I cannot oblige you therein that methinketh I shall never forgive myself therefor.' So saying, in witness of this, he let cast before her the falcon's feathers and feet and beak. ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... Brennon his work-out. Spike had laboured to develop other talent in Newbern, but with ill success. When you got 'em learned a little about the game they acted like a lot of sissies over a broken nose or a couple of front teeth out or something. What he wanted was lads that would get the beak straightened, pretty near as good as new, or proper gold ones put in, and come back looking for more trouble. Wilbur Cowan alone he had ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... the beak," said the policeman; "he is sure to believe it. Come, my bloke. I knew who was my bird the moment I clapped eyes on the two. 'Tain't his first job, gents, you take my word. We shall find his photo in some jail or other in time for ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade

... iron, was gathering cobwebs in disuse. All this lay within Mary Louise's field of vision from the summerhouse and yet she saw it not. She was staring abstractedly at a wary robin that had stopped to rest on a fence post, his beak all frowzy with the debris from a recent drilling. The McCallum house—her father's—stood at the other end of the row of maples on the same side of the street as the meeting house and a hundred yards or so distant. There was quite an expanse of greening lawn ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... was jet black, its curving legs, three to a side, chrome yellow. The round head ended in a sharp beak and it had large, many-faceted eyes. The wings, which lazily tested the air, were ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North

... distinguished Chumbo's voice crying for help. I hurried on, and soon saw him before me, struggling with a large bird, which he had grasped round the neck, trying to keep it at arm's length, while it endeavoured to attack him with its talons and beak. Numberless other birds of the same description were perched on the boughs of the neighbouring trees, apparently watching the fight. I was afraid to risk a shot at the one with which Chumbo was engaged in combat, ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston

... Roland—the major-domo's mouth was as crooked as a hawk's beak for the whole morning afterwards, and any other page in your room would have tasted the discipline of the porter's lodge for it. But my Lady's favour stood between your skin and many a jerking—Lord send you may be the better for her protection in ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... Cedarquist and Magnus, continued the conversation a little further. The manufacturer's idea was new to the Governor. He was greatly interested. He withdrew from the conversation. Thoughtful, he leaned back in his place, stroking the bridge of his beak-like ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... Countess, with a curt laugh. "My Lady Foljambe is vastly pleasant, trow. Asking her caged bird's leave to set another bird in the cage! Well, little brown nightingale, what sayest? Art feared lest the old eagle bite, or canst trust the hooked beak ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... known By sighs, and tears, and grief alone. I greet her as the fiend, to whom belong The vulture's ravening beak, the raven's funereal song! She tells of time misspent, of comfort lost, Of fair occasions gone forever by; Of hopes too fondly nursed, too rudely crossed, Of many a cause to wish, yet fear to die; For what, except the instinctive fear ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... we are superior to all as soon as we set our tools at work. If the rodents with their sharp teeth cut wood better than we can, we do it still better with the ax, the chisel, the saw. Some birds, with the help of a strong beak, by repeated blows, penetrate the trunk of a tree: but the auger, the gimlet, the wimble do the same work better and more quickly. The knife is superior to the carnivore's teeth for tearing meat; the hoe better ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... cock's-comb shaded his fresh young face and displayed a long and terrific mane that swept his back. His red jacket was cut short and square, barely reaching to the waist, the better to show off his elegant figure. In his girdle he carried an enormous sabre, the hilt of which was a glittering eagle's beak. A pair of flapped breeches of sky blue moulded the fine muscles of his legs and was braided in rich arabesques of a darker blue on the thighs. He might have been a dancer dressed for some warlike and dashing role, in Achilles at Scyros or Alexander's Wedding-feast, in a costume designed ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... sheep, a turkey, two doves, a pony, and sundry fragments. She had fastened the jessamine sprigs to the tops of their heads by a tiny daub of wet clay, and had evidently been surprised trying to put a sprig into the mouth of one of the doves, for it hung by a little thread of clay from the beak. He detached it and put it in his buttonhole. Poor little Sylvia! she took things awfully to heart. He would be as nice as ever he could to her all day. And, balancing on his stool, he stared fixedly at the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... before they came out of the egg. But much of the time she sat on the edge, while her partner came and went, always lingering a moment to look in. It was pretty to see him making up his mind where to put the morsel, so small that it did not show in the beak. He turned his head one side and then the other, considered, decided, and at last thrust it ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... hands! for ever on your plain Must the gorged vulture clog his beak with blood? For ever must your Nigers tainted flood Roll to the ravenous shark his banquet slain? Hold your mad hands! what daemon prompts to rear The arm of Slaughter? on your savage shore Can hell-sprung ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... brought up to Edinburgh for Danvers's defense. I found this renowned gentleman of a slight, wiry build, below the medium height, with a distinguished head, covered with thick silver hair, hawk eyes, and a nose which turned downward like a beak. There was a Sabbath calm in his manner; his voice was gentle and suave, and his most pertinent statements came as mere suggestions. He had, I noticed, the very rare quality of fixing his whole attention on the one to whom he listened, and of putting his ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... Becco, from whence the French bec, and English beak; with, probably, the family names of Bec or Bek. This distinguished provincial, under his Latin name of Antoninus Primus, commanded the seventh legion in Gaul. His character is well drawn by Tacitus, in his usual terse style, Hist. XI. ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus



Words linked to "Beak" :   nose, schnozzle, US, schnoz, bird, tip, snoot, U.S.A., pecker, strike, peck, pick, mouth, neb, nib, USA, olfactory organ, bill, hooter, U.S., the States, United States of America, cere, honker, snout, America



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