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Chaff   Listen
verb
Chaff  v. i.  (past & past part. chaffed; pres. part. chaffing)  To use light, idle language by way of fun or ridicule; to banter.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Chaff" Quotes from Famous Books



... that all the Negroes from whom any assistance could reasonably be expected, behaved like so many Heroes of Antiquity; risking their lives and limbs for us and our property, while their own poor houses were flying like chaff before the hurricane. There are few White people here who can say as much for their Black dependents; and the force and value of the relation between Master and Slave has been tried by the late ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... she known it, Kingozi was getting what he required. Information came to him a word now, a word then; promises came to him in single phrases lost in empty gossip. He collected what he wanted grain by grain from bushels of chaff. The whole sum of his new knowledge could have been expressed in a paragraph, took him a week to get, but was just what he wanted. If he had asked categorical questions, he would have received lies. If he had attempted to hurry matters, ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... know so much about that," replied MacGregor confidently. "The fellows up at Umfuli often used to chaff me, saying that I had eyes like a cat. Believe I have. At any rate I'll risk it, and if I'm not back an hour before ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

... ommost malancholy when he saw it, but Mary nobbut laft, an started on an' blackleeaded it, an' in a varry little time he wor set i'th' 'Quiet Corner,' wi as handsome a peg leg as tha'd wish to see. They chaff him a gooid bit abaat weddin Mary, but he taks it all i' gooid part, an' they've sent all sooarts o' presents to him. One day last week they sent him a creddle, an' Mary wor soa mad wol shoo gate th' blocker an' wor baan to chop it into ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... that all these events lie in the realm of chance and error! It is, however, just this which proves that the important thing is not what happens, but what is willed. Accordingly, let the incidents of life be left to the play of chance and error, to demonstrate to man that he is as chaff before the wind. ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... sir," answered Joe, in much lower tones than my own, obviously with the intention of putting me on my guard. "You see, sir, them chaps for'ard are pretty cute; they're too old birds to be caught with chaff; and I knew that if I was to get on the blind side of 'em, it'd have to be by means of throwin' you into a genuine, downright passion with me. Besides, if you'll excuse me for sayin' of it, Captain Saint Leger, you ain't much of a hactor, sir; you're altogether too ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... light complexion, blue eyes, and about twenty-three years of age. He was much lamented by his many friends. His fall, shocking as it was to the command, being our first fatal casualty, only seemed to nerve the men for bold revenge. And we had it. Like chaff before the whirlwind the outpost was quickly scattered, and the whole regiment entered upon its first charge with a will, a charge which continued for several miles with wild excitement. Picket reliefs and reserves were swept away like forest ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier

... reticence and pose, was wholly free from solemnity, and when he heard or saw what was ludicrous was not afraid to laugh at it. Sir Robert Peel was an excellent hand at what our fathers called banter and we call chaff. A prig or a pedant was his favourite butt, and the performance was rendered all the more effective by his elaborate assumption of the grand seigneur's manner. The victim was dimly conscious that he was being laughed at, but comically uncertain about the best means of reprisal. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... described at length in the Vita Endei (VSH, ii, 71-2). We are there told that he was seven years in Aran, serving faithfully in the monastic threshing-barn, so that in the chaff-heaps it would have been impossible to discover a single grain; and that the walls of his threshing-barn were still standing in Aran when the hagiographer wrote. He then saw the vision of the tree, which, however, ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous

... his logic, his wit? What had become of his disputatious and learned associates that not one of them stood up to plead for the life of Socrates now? Why, the first breath of adversity had blown them away as though they were but mist; and, with these false friends scattered like the coward chaff they were, grim old Socrates ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field

... a hollow in the ground, which was filled with water. Beside it lay a pile of bait and husks and chaff; and she bade them make the most of these. "We have had a severe snow-winter this year, on the island," she said. "The peasants who own us came out to us with hay and oaten straw, so we shouldn't starve to death. And this trash is all there is left ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... he made it, that it was not a very able retort, but he was feeling too limp for satisfactory repartee. Criticisms in the Bureau, dealing with his alleged solidity of skull, he did not resent. He attributed them to man's natural desire to chaff his fellow-man. But to be unmasked by the general public in this way was another matter. It struck at the root ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... ... it's night now. (Reading, feverishly) "The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind ...
— Night Must Fall • Williams, Emlyn

... the position of the sun in winter: It moves to the south because of the cold which drives it into the warm parts of the heavens over Libya. Or listen to Saint Augustine's speculations: "Who gave to chaff such power to freeze that it preserves snow buried under it, and such power to warm that it ripens green fruit? Who can explain the strange properties of fire itself, which blackens all that it ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... girl who did this movement with peculiar grace. She wore a black velveteen dress, although it was very hot weather, and I called her "Hamlet." I used to chaff her about wearing such a grand dress at rehearsals, but she was never to be seen in any other. The girls at the theater told me that she was very poor, and that underneath her black velveteen dress, which she wore summer and winter, she had nothing but a pair of stockings and a chemise. ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... it's simply bad taste in me to chaff him, Tavy. But you're wrong. This man takes more trouble to drop his aiches than ever his father did to pick them up. It's a mark of caste to him. I have never met anybody more swollen with the pride ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... bell, they should be required to hasten, without a moment's delay, to their head-quarters. A mob could hardly be gathered and commence work before this solid body of disciplined, reliable men would be upon them. These five hundred men would scatter five thousand rioters like chaff before them. It would be more efficient than two entire regiments, even if assembled, and would be worth more than the whole military of the city for ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... be involved in purely domestic disputes among Catholic theologians or to be guided by the advice of those who sought to secure peace by means of dishonourable compromises, the Fathers of Trent set themselves calmly but resolutely to sift the chaff from the wheat, to examine the theories of Luther in the light of the teaching of the Scriptures and the tradition of the Church as contained in the writings of the Fathers, and to give to the world a clear-cut exposition of the dogmas that had been attacked by ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... early Franciscans was, as was that of St. Paul, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And in a book intended primarily for young readers of the Church of England, it is perhaps allowable to suppress features which would perplex youthful minds before they have the power of discriminating between the chaff and the wheat; while it is not thereby intended to deny that they really existed. The objectionable side of the teaching of the medieval Church of England has been dwelt upon with such little charity, by certain Protestant writers, that their youthful readers ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... towns, there is, or used to be, a delicate Christmas custom of offering to a lady a brooch or a pair of earings in a truss of hay. The house-door of the person to be complimented is pushed open, and there is thrown into the house a truss of hay or straw, a sheaf of corn, or a bag of chaff. In some part of this "bottle of hay" envelope, there is a "needle" as a present to be hunted for. A friend of mine once received from her betrothed, according to the Christmas custom, an exceedingly large brown paper parcel, which, on being opened, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... have utterly failed. What couldst thou have done?—nay, or the Christian Probus? But I will not taunt thee. I will rather hope. The wind became more and more violent. The sand was driven before it like chaff. Sometimes the tempest immediately around us would abate, but it only served to fill us with new apprehensions, by revealing to us the tossings of this great deep, in the distance. At one of these moments, as I was taking occasion to speak a word of comfort to the half dead mother, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... have not troubled each other for a long time. I suppose I am fortunate in being left alone." She was silent a few minutes, and then she told him kindly: "Hal says they always chaff you about marrying an heiress, for the sake of being rich without any need to work; but take my advice, and don't force the hand of Fate before she has had time to give you good things in her ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... up the sunbeams Lying all around our path; Let us keep the wheat and roses, Casting out the thorns and chaff; Let us find our sweetest comfort In the blessings of to-day, With a patient hand removing All the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... house, with machinery for extracting the juice from the cane, the refining rooms, the places where it is dried, etc., all on a large scale. If the hacienda is, as here, a coffee plantation also, then there is the great mill for separating the beans from the chaff, and sometimes also there are buildings where they make brandy. Here there are four hundred men employed, exclusive of boys, one hundred horses, and a number of mules. The property is generally very extensive, containing the fields of sugar-cane, plains for ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... and twisted by a terrible squall; here and there, between the distorted stalks, the muddy earth of the rice-swamp was visible; there were even little pools of water, produced by bits of the transparent lacquer on which tiny particles of gold seemed to float about like chaff in a thick liquid; two or three insects, which required a microscope to be well seen, were clinging in a terrified manner to the rushes, and the whole picture was no ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... intention of yielding; her mind and her feet were braced against any divergence from the straight road now; but the man Janet Payne had called Gregory Jessup said something that scattered her resolutions like so much chaff. ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer

... Gulls dipped and screamed over the wake of the ferryboat that carried the Pages to Oakland, and after the warm cabin and the heated train, they all shivered miserably as they got out at the appointed corner. Oakland looked bleak and dreary, the wind was blowing chaff and papers against ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris

... ape-man was down and a dozen black soldiers were upon his back. When he regained consciousness he found himself securely bound, as was Werper also. The Belgian officer, success having crowned his efforts, was in good humor, and inclined to chaff his prisoners about the ease with which they had been captured; but from Tarzan of the Apes he elicited no response. Werper, however, was voluble in his protests. He explained that Tarzan was an English lord; but the ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... that the historian who comes after him will sift the wheat from his chaff, and leave him no better reputation than that of the quarry from which the marble of the statue comes. He must tell a consecutive story, but must eschew all redundancy, furnish no more supports for his bridge than its stability requires, prune ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... the little lady should have his own bed—a chaff- stuffed mattress, covered with a woollen rug, in the recess behind the projecting hearth—a strange luxury for a farm boy; and Doll yielded very unwillingly when he spoke in a tone that savoured of command. ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... lives, and out of our united efforts to advance it will grow a firm, indissoluble union. Now, then, Germans! Be resolved, all of you, to attain the same goal, and your will shall be a storm-wind scattering like chaff whatever is old and rotten. In your struggle for a free country, you will have as allies the army of mighty minds that have suffered for right and liberty in the past. Now you are split up into tribes and clans, held together only by the bond of language and a classic literature. You ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... while the iron was hot: hence his visit to Grey Abbey. His pretended ignorance of the young man's death, when he found he could not see Miss Wyndham, was a ruse; but an old bird like Lord Cashel was not to be caught with chaff. And then, how indelicate of him to come and press his suit immediately after news of so distressing a nature had reached Miss Wyndham! How very impolitic, thought Lord Cashel, to show such a hurry to take possession of the fortune!—How completely ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... occasional words of wisdom that fell from the lips of the few far-seeing statesmen of the South, were as chaff before the storm of Disunion raised by the turbulent Fire-eaters, and were blown far from the South, where they might have done some good for the Union cause, away up to the North, where they contributed to aid the success of the contemplated Treason and Rebellion, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... "That's right; chaff away," cried Smith. "Look at the place we're in! There isn't a sign of a town. What would bring ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... American did not fit into her niche at Pendlemere without encountering a certain amount of what her schoolmates considered necessary discipline for a novice. She had to go through an ordeal of chaff and banter. She was known by the sobriquet of "Stars and Stripes", or "The Yank", and good-natured fun was poked at her transatlantic accent. She took it good-temperedly, but with a readiness of repartee that laid ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... into the various houses in search of relics. As elsewhere, we were impressed with the independent bearing and freeness of the Zapotec woman. She talks with everyone, on any subject, shrewdly. She loves to chaff, and is willing to take sarcasm, as freely as she gives it. In one house we had a specially interesting time, being shown a lot of things. The woman had some broken pottery figures of ancient times, but also produced some interesting ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... red to the ears, not knowing whether it were wiser for a lady's-maid to run away, or to take the rough chaff good-humouredly, and make the best of it. I fluttered, undecided, never thinking of the old adage concerning the woman ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... up, you see! Fellow you call the gyp wanted to make me believe you were out—thought I looked too like a governor to be let in, I suppose; but it wouldn't do, sir; old birds are not to be caught with chaff; and he spoke with an air of such intense honesty that I felt sure he was lying, and told him so.—Don't get up, boy, don't get up; you look as jaded as a hunted antelope. Why, you've never touched your breakfast; ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. A second man I honor, and still more highly: him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of life. These two in all their degrees I honor; all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth. We must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde

... the whole force of whose life is turned to peaceful pursuits. These arrogant conspirators against government, with Chinese vanity, believed that they could blow away these self-respecting citizens as chaff from the battlefield. Few of them are left alive to ponder their mistake! Here, then, are the roots of this civil war. It was not a quarrel of wild beasts, it was an inflection of the strife of ages, between power and right, between ambition and equity. ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... this people out of Egypt, making a path for them through the depths of the sea, reining back its foaming waves as a rider his white-maned steed; giving to the thirsty—water from the rock, to the hungry—bread from the skies, and scattering the foes of Israel before them, as chaff is driven by the wind. I have heard of the sun's fiery chariot arrested in its course by the voice of a man, speaking with authority given to him by an inspiring Deity. Tell me what is the name of the ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... so queer," said the lad, taking out and examining one of his mushrooms. "I just came out for a walk, and to pick some of these to have cooked for breakfast; and just as I've got a nice basketful, I come upon you fellows, and you begin to chaff and play larks, and the next moment I might have been knocking all the skin off my knuckles against Distin's face, if I hadn't backed out—like a coward," he added, after ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn

... Autumn breeze's bugle sound, Various and vague the dry leaves dance their round; Or, from the garner-door, on ether borne, The chaff flies devious from the winnow'd corn; So vague, so devious, at the breath of heaven, From their fix'd ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... reached them were true, given to the company of loose women. She had striven with all her might that such a one should not be allowed to take her daughter from her, and had striven in vain. He had succeeded;—but his character was not changed by his success. Did she not know him to be chaff that must be separated by the wind from the corn and then consumed in the fire? His character was not altered because that human being whom she loved the best in all the world had fallen into his power. He was not the less chaff,—the ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... be likened to men reaping wheat, of which the Purists take the fine flour, and the Sensualists the chaff and straw, but the Naturalists take all home, and make their cake of the one, and their couch ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... prospective departure,—at least they affected to be,—and were variously sprawled about the parlor when Mrs. Clancy descended, and the inflamed condition of her eyes and nose became apparent to all. There was much chaff and fun, therefore, when Mrs. Rayner finally appeared, over the supposed affliction of the big Irishwoman at the prospect of parting with her patroness. Miss Travers saw with singular sensations that both the captain ...
— The Deserter • Charles King

... One day he went with a friend to call on an older acquaintance, named Smoot, who was almost as dry a joker as himself, but Smoot had more of this world's goods than the young legislator-elect. Lincoln began at once to chaff ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... alone, and overhearing a loud burst of laughter at the fore part of the steamer, Nigel went forward to see what was going on. He found a group of sailors round his comrade Moses, apparently engaged in good-natured "chaff." ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... cut down into it and scrape out all de char, and den put de rice in dere and beat and poun' it with a pestle till we had all de grain beat out de heads. Den we'd pour de rice out on a cloth and de chaff and ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... the most fulsome prayers. And Hogginarmo promised speedily to pay his humble homage at his august master's throne, of which he begged leave to be counted the most loyal and constant defender. Such a WARY old BIRD as King Padella was not to be caught by Master Hogginarmo's CHAFF and we shall hear presently how the tyrant treated his upstart vassal. No, no; depend on't, two such rogues ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... twelfth century, meets the undiscerning critic more than half-way. Let none judge, he writes, till he be capable of separating the grain from the chaff; 'for the fool makes haste to condemn, and the ignorant only pretends to know all things, and muses on the wonders that are ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... not misfortune that teaches us our friends. Now are we sifted and the chaff is known! ... LeVal! ... But ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan

... here; no earth Mocked for its gifts; but Ceres' festive grove: With willow wickerwork 'twas set around, New cups of clay by revolutions shaped Of lowly wheel. For honey soft, a bowl; Platters of green bark wickerwork, a jar Stained by the lifeblood of the God of Wine; The walls around with chaff and spattered clay Were covered. Flanging from protruding nails Were slender stalks of the green rush; and then Suspended from the smoky beam, the stores Of this poor cottage. Service berries soft, Entwined in fragrant wreaths hung down, Dried savory and raisins ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... said Panton warmly, "it is too bad. I was disposed to chaff you, Lane, because you threw the hatchet a little about your adventures. It would be madness to cross ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... passed along Till that eventful day When all the labor of our hands Like chaff was swept away: We saw our home made desolate, Our pleasant cottage sold; Men called us poor, but we were rich In better ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson

... need all the strength; the plant and tuber are tender, and a little frost will kill the vines and cause the potatoes to decay. They may be kept for use until January by packing, when dug in a warm day, in the soil in which they grew;—kept through winter, packed in straw or chaff, in boxes that will contain about two or three bushels each, and kept in a room with a fire: the room should be at a temperature of from forty to sixty degrees; fifty-five is best, though seventy will not destroy them; more or less ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... figures—officers, men who had been at the front—detached themselves and came towards the group of likely youths. These wavered a little, were silent, sniggered, stood their ground—the khaki-clad figures passed among them. Hackneyed words, jests, the touch of flattery, changing swiftly to chaff—all the customary performance, hollow and pathetic; and then the two figures re-emerged, their hands clenched, their eyes shifting here and there, their lips drawn back in fixed smiles. They had failed, and were trying to hide it. They must not show contempt—the young slackers might yet come ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... palate, in short, all the grosser tastes. All that is not only like savages, but like animals. They are merry and contented at the prospect of a savory meal, and they are fond of playing tricks on each other—both sexes chaff and tease constantly. I believe that the development of our larger brain is the intellectual work of man during hundreds and thousands of years, and it would gratify me to see it raised to a still greater ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... was known as the "Laundryman," a name in which respect was mixed with chaff. Ernestine did not care. She knew that she had "made good," and it was pleasant. She could afford now to have a home of her own, and so she had installed herself in this apartment, far out of the dirt and the noise in which she had lived her life. She filled it with a strange ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... to give. "But if we would follow the Lord in these days," he wrote to a friend, "we must evidently be prepared to renounce all things for His sake and cast out all these heathen worries for dross and chaff with which we as ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg

... in civilian attire had captured two of the balls one afternoon and was flying at his most vigorous speed for another. Primrose had paused for a moment while her brother stopped to chaff a companion. The ball rolled swiftly along, and from some slight inequality in the ice deflected. The arm was outstretched to catch it, and she could not quite remember afterward whether she had stooped, but he came against her with sufficient force to knock her over. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... lie like sheaves upon our fields; the ruins of your castles fly like chaff beneath the flail of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... this time he no longer knew. She never spoke of it to him; never nowadays complained of loneliness. When he saw her she appeared to be cheerful. But this very cheerfulness made him uneasy, and at times, through the murk of the chaff of wheat, through the bellow of the Pit, and the crash of collapsing fortunes there reached him a suspicion that all was ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... their rock as our rock; how else shall a thousand fly before one, and two put ten thousand to the flight! I dreamed it in the visions of the night, and the voice said, 'Habakkuk, take thy fan and purge the wheat from the chaff, that they be not both consumed with the fire of indignation and the lightning of fury.' Wherefore, I say, take this Henry Morton—this wretched Achan, who hath brought the accursed thing among ye, and made ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... they will here," said Nancy. "Everybody chaffs everybody else in this house pretty freely. What you must do is to chaff back; but if you don't feel equal to that just at first, just grin, and let them think you ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... And I do these wild things in sheer despite, And play the fooleries you catch me at, In pure rage! The old mill-horse, out at grass After hard years, throws up his stiff heels so, Although the miller does not preach to him The only good of grass is to make chaff. What would men have? Do they like grass or no— May they or may n't they? all I want's the thing Settled forever one way. As it is, 260 You tell too many lies and hurt yourself: You don't like what you only like too much, You do like what, if given you at your word, You find ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... dull, but the powerful bending gondoliers urging their frail craft along with tremendous strokes in unison were a magnificent spectacle. The excitement was intense towards the end, but there was no close finish. Between the races the exchange of chaff ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... him that the corn and the chaff had to be separated; as yet both were lying in one heap, right up to the roof. Hans began to take up a little and sift it in his hands, but he soon saw that this would never do. He soon thought of a plan, however; he opened both barn-doors, and then lay down at one end and ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various

... of the trees, and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit will be hewn down and cast into the fire. The threshing-floor will be thoroughly purged, and the wheat will be gathered into the garner, while the chaff will be ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody

... the self-applied test of courage which swept away so much chaff. According to Deuteronomy xx. 8, the standing enactment was that such a proclamation as that in verse 3 should precede every battle. Much difficulty has been raised about the mention of Mount Gilead here, as the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... he felt would be a way of pain, and probably sorrow, yet he could not stop her. All the experience of his life was worthless to her. All that he knew of men, all that he feared of her lover, were as chaff in the scales ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... The boys turned to chaff Chris, but he had slipped away at the first words of the explanation. Soon he reappeared with an armful of dry wood. His face was still ashen, but his teeth had ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... undo it. What we have to do now is to fight for our lives. Even if these poor devils have right on their side, it is not a matter to stop and discuss, now. So keep your breath for fighting. I doubt not that we shall soon scatter them like chaff." ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... from the chaff. By the "wheat," in the view of this writer, is meant the aggregate of those who persevered in their recusant policy up to the practical result of secession. All who stopped short of that consummation, (on whatever plea,) are the "chaff." The writer is something of an incendiary, or something of a fanatic; but he is consistent with regard to his own principles, and so elaborately careful in his details as to extort admiration of his energy and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... newspaper at Washington. By extending the laws of Georgia over the country and people of the Cherokees, the constitution, laws, and treaties, of the United States, were quoad hoc set aside. They were chaff before the wind. In pursuance of these laws of Georgia, a Cherokee Indian is prosecuted for the murder of another Indian, before a state court of Georgia, tried by a jury of white men, and sentenced to death. He applies to a chief justice of the Court of the United States, who issues ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... the cell for this other bed. "Come," said he, "you must not chaff the officers. The governor will serve you out enough without your giving us ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... correlations and individual traits? It seems almost surprising that this overwhelmingly rich harvest of prescientific psychology has never been examined from the standpoint of scientific psychology, and that no one has sifted the wheat from the chaff. The very best would be not only to gather such material, but to combine the sayings of the naive psychologists in a rounded system of psychology. In all ages they surely must have been among the best observers of mankind, as even what is not ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... the gold remains. Of course a pleasant breeze, that will carry away the dust, is a great assistance to the operation. Sometimes two men have a hide or a blanket, with which they throw up the dirt. The process is very similar to the ancient method of separating grain from chaff. The miner who devotes himself to dry washing must be very particular to take only rich dirt, so he scrapes the bed-rock carefully. He never digs very deep—not more than twenty feet; and when he goes beyond seven or eight feet he "coyotes," or burrows after the pay-dirt. He may coyote ...
— Hittel on Gold Mines and Mining • John S. Hittell

... behind him, and showed him tripping lightly over a bullock's broad back. Then he was up on the manger-edge, had paused to make sure, and was down in the manger, picking up crumbs and dust of linseed-cake and chaff. Three mice were doing the same thing, but fled at his approach; but he did not trouble about that, for the cattle had not left even him and his wife a full meal, having blown what was left of the chaff away, and licked up practically all of the cake-crumbs and dust. However, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... away to titter, forgot Lake's grapes; so he helped himself, and leaning against the table, looked superciliously upon Sir Harry, who was not to be deterred by the drowsy gaze of contempt with which the captain retorted his angry 'chaff.' ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... absurd at times,' said Scott. 'You see I didn't know much about milking or babies. They'll chaff my head off, if the tale ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... not quite sure about Christina. She laughed at so many things. He was to meet her at seven, and of late he had lost sleep wondering how she would receive his first appearance in the kilt. He dreaded her chaff more than any horrors of war that lay ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell

... it up; for they're too poor, and the times is hard, and the agent's harder than the times: there's two of them, the under and the upper; and they grind the substance of one between them, and then blow one away like chaff; but we'll not be talking of that, to spoil your honour's night's rest. The room's ready, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

... visits to Burra, seems to have considered it quite unnecessary to inquire whether they were true or false before committing them to paper; and apparently from a desire to make out a case of oppression, he has been ready to receive all that could help to it without separating the chaff ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... his hand in that he adopted a tone of serious chaff to Mr. Norbury, such as some people think a well-chosen one towards children, to their great embarrassment. He replied to that most responsible of butlers with some pomposity of manner. "The question before the house," said ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... He did not lie outrageously in selling his horses. He did not cheat at cards. As long as he had a drop of drink left in his flask, he would share it with any friend. He never boasted. He was much given to chaff, but his chaff was good-humoured. He was generous with his cigars. Such were his virtues. That he had no adequate means of his own and that he never earned a penny, that he lived chiefly by gambling, that he had no pursuit in life ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... ye go tell your Aunt Mary I have been in an eelevator handlin' grain, and I'm covered wi' fine dust and chaff that sticks me. I canna come until I've had a bath, and put on clean clothing. Tell her ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter

... Persia, Phœnicia, and Syria, from Greece and Egypt, and from the Holy Books of the Jews. Hence we are called Knights of the East and West, because their doctrines came from both. And these doctrines, the wheat sifted from the chaff, the Truth separated from Error, Masonry has garnered up in her heart of hearts, and through the fires of persecution, and the storms of calamity, has brought them and delivered them unto us. That God is One, immutable, unchangeable, infinitely just and good; that Light will finally ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... at her worst has always been better—she always will be better—than her enemies allow. The same is true of preaching. Still it is wise to ask ourselves, when a criticism is laid against either Church or preacher, whether there may not be a grain or two of truth to the bushel of chaff. It would be a misfortune if in our contempt for this same chaff we should lose the corn hidden there. Where there is smoke it is well to remember there is always, at least, a smoulder of fire. Grant ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... leaving him dark as to their distinctive qualities applied remedially. What should he do? Run with the prescription to old Taylor in the next street, a chemist of forty years? Alas! at his tender age he had not omitted to chaff that reverend rival persistently and publicly. Humble his establishment before the King Street one? Sooner perish drugs, and come eternal cricket! And after all, why not? Drummer-boys, and powder-monkeys, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... with dimes on the eyes walking, To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning, Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going, Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for payment receiving, A few idly owning, and they ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. Behold I will make thee [make thee to be] a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel." ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows

... glory is past, Vanished and fled for ever. Homeless and scattered, thy race is cast Like chaff in the breath of the sweeping blast, To rally or ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... in spite of his assertion, earlier on, that he "preferred his own company," he seemed thoroughly to enjoy the little home-like diner a trois. There was something about the cosy room and the gay, good-humoured chaff and laughter of brother and sister which conveyed a sense of welcome—partaking of that truest kind of hospitality which creates no special atmosphere of ceremony for a guest but encompasses him with a frank, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... explained a little more it went away, and we turned the handle of the chaff-cutting machine, and nobody got hurt, though the head HAD said we should cut our fingers off ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit

... our conversation while Dennis idly examined the knife, opening it and studying the blade absently. Presently Fuller, noticing his absorption, began to chaff him about it. ...
— The Mystery of the Green Ray • William Le Queux

... idea of making straight for any particular opening in the dense ranks, but picking out the smaller parties of the enemy—that is to say, mobs not more than double our own strength; and when we could get within striking distance they were punished and scattered like chaff before the wind, in spite of the scattered volleys they sent at us ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... dreams were scatter'd, As chaff is toss'd by the wind, The faith has been rudely shattered That listen'd with credence blind; Things were to have been, and therefore They were, and they are to be, And will be;—we must prepare for The doom we ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... become when he is minded to play White of Selborne with a smile. And all the while it is the word that he is intent upon. You may trace his reading by some fine word that has not escaped him, but has been garnered for use when his fan has been quick to purge away the chaff of commonplace. He is thus fastidious and alert in many languages. You wonder at the delicacy of the sense whereby he perceives a choice rhyme in the Anglo-Norman of Marie de France or a clang of arms in the brief verse ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... Why were they kept lying there in idleness? Why were they not pushed forward to do their part? They looked into each other's faces. God! They were three hundred now; they could sweep aside like chaff that fringe of red skirmishers if only they got the word! With hearts throbbing, every nerve tense, they waited, each trooper crouched for the spring. Officer after officer, unable to restrain his impatience, strode ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... was tolerably wide, and ran round the whole of the building, at about every six feet it was broken by spaces of about ten paces. The fire was spreading and growing, and glowing sparks flew round him and his companion like chaff from the winnowing fan. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of their leader the whole fighting class, weighing some ten tons in battle trim, vanished like chaff before the spirit of one Freshie co-ed. By twos and threes they slouched away, trying to ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field

... recognizing his despoiler of old, abuses as a shameless thief, taunting him with the helpless way in which all his boasted power is tied up with the laws and bargains recorded on the heft of his spear, which, says Alberic truly, would crumble like chaff in his hands if he dared use it for his own real ends. Wotan, having already had to kill his own son with it, knows that very well; but it troubles him no more; for he is now at last rising to abhorrence of his own artificial power, and looking to the coming ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw

... at me reproachfully. I was about to say that "Blackman's Warbler" was the local name for the Chiff-chaff in our part of Flint, when the Authority ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various

... gone. The pity of it, the grief of it; all that she held dearest; her fine and confident steadfastness; the great love that had brought such happiness into her life—that had been her inspiration, all torn from her and tossed aside like chaff. And her patient—Ferriss, the man who loved her, who had undergone such suffering, such hardship, who trusted her and whom it was her duty to nurse back to life and health—if he should perish for want of her ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... deeds in the body reach over into another life in another world, determining there our eternal state of happiness or pain, that is the most momentous fact conceivable. It is the only momentous fact; all others are chaff and rags. A man who, believing it to be a fact, does not make it the one purpose of his life to save his soul and the souls of others that are willing to be saved is a fool and a rogue. If he think that any part of this only needful work can be done by turning a newspaper into ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... things right— night brands and chokes, as if destruction broke over furze and stone and crop of myrtle-shoot and field-wort, destroyed with flakes of iron, the bracken-stone, where tender roots were sown blight, chaff, and wash of darkness ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... the fantastic contents of his mind, odd vagaries, recondite trash, and all. He was always getting away from Farquharson, but, then, he was unfailingly bound to come back to him. We had only to wait and catch the solid grains that now and then fell in the winnowing of that unending stream of chaff. It was a tedious and exasperating process, but it had its compensations. At times Leavitt could be as uncannily brilliant as he was dull and boresome. The conviction grew upon me that he had become a little ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Paterfamilias, sitting in the family pew, is not so enamoured of that idea of accomplishing those threescore years and ten which the young parson, fresh from Cambridge, is describing as such a lucky number in life's lottery. The attempt to paint it so is well-meaning, no doubt, 'the vacant chaff well meant for grain;' and it is touching to see how men generally (knowing that they themselves have to go through with it) are wont to portray it in ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... in which Raleigh lived, and the element in which he moved. This sort of talk is happily dying out just now; but no one can approach the history of the Elizabethan age (perhaps of any age) without finding that truth is all but buried under mountains of dirt and chaff—an Augaean stable, which, perhaps, will never be swept clean. Yet I have seen, with great delight, several attempts toward removal of the said superstratum of dirt and chaff from the Elizabethan histories, in several articles, all evidently from the same pen (and that ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... any good. Allan was very sorry for Tom, and took more than a fair share of the blame, saying he ought to have been more careful; but he was rather distressed when he found that he had a black eye, and that it could not be well before the cricket match, when the boys would be sure to chaff him. ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous

... must think of Neolithic man noticing the big seeds of this Hermon grass, gathering some of the heads, breaking the brittle spikelet-bearing axis in his fingers, knocking off the rough awns or bruising the spikelets in his hand till the glumes or chaff separated off and could be blown away, chewing a mouthful of the seeds—and resolving to ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... to like to talk to me," he answered simply. "She seems to me to have rather a remarkable mind, Doctor Mary." (She was "Doctor Mary" to all the Old Place party now, in affection, with a touch of chaff.) ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... that sort of a tale before," Masters answered, with a sneer. "Job Masters is too old a bird to be caught by such chaff. I'll take my risks, gentlemen. I'll ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... What follows? Chaff follows, a kind of intimacy, a supper, perhaps, after the play, if an actor seems to be good company. This is quite natural; the most modish young gallants are not so very dainty as to stand aloof from any amusing company. They found it among prize- fighters, when Byron was young, and extremely ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... Even if I do encounter it, no misfortune will happen unto me but such as is common unto men. Of all the souls of this generation, the number that will sift through the meshes of the years is infinitesimately small. The overwhelming majority of names will turn out to be chaff, and be blown away. I shall be forgotten, but I shall be forgotten in very good company. The greater part of my kin-folk and acquaintance, your own self, my critic, and your family and friends, will go down in the same darkness which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... find it in the jeering of a jest, Or distil it from the folly of a fool. I can teach you with a quip, if I've a mind; I can trick you into learning with a laugh; Oh, winnow all my folly, and you'll find A grain or two of truth among the chaff! ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... than ever also. It was on July 12 that I said to a sister, being led to it by the certain prospect of one of the dear labourers in the Orphan-Houses going to leave; "Well, my soul is at peace. The Lord's time is not yet come, but, when it is come, He will blow away all these obstacles, as chaff is blown away before the wind." It was only ONE QUARTER OF AN HOUR after, when the following paper was put into my hands, whereby I obtained power ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller

... expect me to enter any free-for-all inebriates' competition—you know that, 'Gene! It may have been a little extreme as a joke; but if you'd laughed it off as you always do, nobody would have thought anything of it except to chaff you about it. But what do you do? You make as serious a thing of it as if you hadn't been trotting with our crowd for five years or so. You set this old—my learned friend from the West—briefing it up, and you ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... that ran through the lower ground over the entire property, and even to the topmost storey of his house. He laid a light tramway across the widest part of his estate, and sent the labourers to and fro their work in trucks. The chaff-cutters, root-pulpers, the winnowing-machine—everything was driven by steam. Teams of horses and waggons seemed to be always going to the canal wharf for coal, which he ordered ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... I'm too old a bird to be caught with chaff. It's a dirty shame, of course, about this man Henderson, but I'm not running the criminal jurisprudence ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... in mind of what the divine Miss HARLOWE once said to me, talking of friendship, and what my friendship to you required of me: 'Depend upon it, Mr. Belford,' said she, 'that one day you will be convinced, that what you call friendship, is chaff and stubble; and that nothing is worthy of ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... be abused with all the calumnious epithets which the ingenuity of angry men can devise, because he is exercising that ingenuity the possession of which on his part is the foundation of fox-hunting. There you will remain, nursing your horse, listening to chaff, and hoping. But even when the fox does go, your difficulties ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope

... She needed no encouragement for when she was once on a subject she generally threshed it so thoroughly that nothing but chaff remained. ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird

... guardians, the active monitors of our duty, the true supporters of all liberal and manly morals. We have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags and paltry blurred shreds of paper about the rights of man. We preserve the whole of our feelings still native and entire, unsophisticated by pedantry and infidelity. We have real hearts of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms. We fear God; we look up with awe ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... to find and fall into his place in the procession, and we turn off to secure our seats in the grand stand. But before we take them I must go and look at the wheelbarrow and spade, and above all at the "first sod." For some weeks past it has been a favorite chaff with us Maritzburgians to offer to bring a nice fresh, lively sod down with us, but we were assured D'Urban could furnish one. Here it is exactly under the triumphal arch, looking very faded and depressed, with a little sunburned grass growing feebly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various

... or of such princely estates as Eumaeus managed in the Ionian seas. Flaxman has certainly not given him the look of a large proprietor in his outlines: his toilet is severely scant, and the old gentleman appears to have lost two of his fingers in a chaff-cutter. As for Perses, who is represented as listening to the sage,[A] his dress is in the extreme of classic scantiness,—being, in fact, a mere night-shirt, and a tight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... there is an ant called by him the Agricultural Ant, which not only lays up stores of grain, but prepares the soil for the crop; plants the seed (of a certain plant called ant-rice); keeps the ground free from weeds; and finally reaps the harvest, and separating the chaff from the grain, packs away the latter, and throws the chaff outside of the plantation. In "Wood's Bible Animals" you can read a full account of this ant, and I think that after hearing of its exploits, we can believe almost anything ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... Irishman a latherin' away with both arms, as if he was tryin' to thrash out wheat, and see how bothered he looked, as if he couldn't find nothin' but dust and chaff in the straw? Well, that critter was agin the Bill, in course, and Irish like, used every argument in favour of it. Like a pig swimmin' agin stream, every time he struck out, he was a cuttin' of his own throat. He then blob blob ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... "Oh, stop your chaff! No, but I daresay Kharrak Singh has insisted on coming, and she has sent him in a closed howdah, so as to be safer. He was uncommon set on coming with me. I wouldn't hear of it, but he may have teased her into ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... which were springing up again in the minds of his father and mother, intercepting the little significant glances which passed between them when Mary went away on some errand and he told her not to be long, when they exchanged gentle chaff, or she arranged the cushions under his head. The neighbours had asked to visit him, but this he resolutely declined, and appealed to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... once there rose so wild a yell Within that dark and narrow dell, As all the fiends from heaven that fell Had peal'd the banner-cry of Hell! Forth from the pass, in tumult driven, Like chaff before the wind of heaven, The archery appear; For life! for life! their plight they ply, And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry, And plaids and bonnets waving high, And broadswords flashing to the sky, Are maddening ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... kept the chink, And all the cash Collectors; With hundreds of that class, so kindly credulous, Without whose help, no charlatan alive, Or Bubble Company could hope to thrive, Or busy Chevalier, however sedulous— Those good and easy innocents in fact, Who willingly receiving chaff for corn, As pointed out by Butler's tact, Still find a secret pleasure in the act Of being pluck'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... the product of a long line of erroneous theory and zigzag development, but the wheat has largely been sifted and the chaff thrown to the winds of antiquity. Its therapeutic and psychological value is duly recognized ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten

... very admirable book:—whereupon the god asked him for the beauties of the work. He replied that he only busied himself about the errors. On hearing this, Apollo, handing him a sack of unwinnowed wheat, bade him pick out all the chaff for his reward. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... that," interposed Benjamin, with a knowing smile. "Who will ever know the difference if a quarter part of the total weight is chaff and clay? It will all grind up into excellent flour, and when the soldier eats his barley bread or his rye loaf it will taste all the better to him. There is nearly half a million florins' clear profit in the transaction, at ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai

... True it is, that their great size sometimes defeats its object—the valuable portion of the material is sometimes buried under the comparatively worthless heap that surrounds it—the golden grains lost amid the chaff. But in a case of this kind, the error of redundancy is one on the safe side; let a subject in all its bearings be thoroughly and fully brought up, and it is the fault or failing of him who sets about the study of it, if he is appalled at the amount of information on which he has to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various

... law courts, the King's Bench and the Court of Common Pleas, are of less direct historical value than those of the Chancery and the Exchequer. Extraordinarily bulky, they require a good deal of sifting to sort the wheat from the chaff. As yet a very small proportion of them has been printed, and few have even been calendared. A brief index of them has been compiled in the useful List of Plea Rolls (1894, P.R.O. Lists and Indexes, No. iv.). Of the various types of these records the FEET OF FINES ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... and arithmetic. I frequently astonished or appalled the literary men and artists who were my father's guests. I hated being continually asked what I should like to be when I grew up, and the slightest chaff threw me into a perfect paroxysm of passion. Whilst, however, I was resentful of the authority of others, I was greatly inclined to exercise authority myself—to such a degree, indeed, that my father's servants generally spoke of me as "the young master," ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... that I am bodied forth under the character of Harry Benson, and am, in consequence, a handsome young man, who can do a little of every thing instead of——but never mind what; your actor has not yet sufficient standing to come down before the footlights, and have his little bit of private chaff with the audience. Only this will I say, so help me N. P. Willis, I mean to go on with these sketches till they are finished, provided always that Fraser will take them so long and that you continue to read them, or fall into a sweet and soothing slumber over ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... with a sheet under coverlets made of dagswaine or hopharlots, (I use their own terms,) and a good round log under their head instead of a bolster. If it were so, that the father or the goodman of the house had a matrass or flock-bed, and thereto a sack of chaff to rest his head upon, he thought himself to be as well lodged as the lord of the town, so well were they contented. Pillows, said they, were thought meet only for women in childbed. As for servants, if they had any sheet above ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... near the ships as possible. In fact it was actually under the shadow of a big black-looking vessel which loomed large through the fog, and to and from which men were coming and going as usual. With several of these the old woman interchanged some good-humoured chaff as she settled herself in her place, and bade ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... household, turned the conversation to something else—especially to Nora's first attempts at golf, in which he had been her teacher. Nora, whose reasonableness was abnormal, very soon took the hint, and after five minutes' "chaff" with Winnington, to whom she was devoted, she took up her work and went ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of the way. Other laborers stood at the back part of the thresher, where the straw came out, and, with pitch-forks in hand, tossed it about until the foundation for a stack was formed. Then they stood on the stack, rising higher as it rose, trampling the straw and pitching it into place. The chaff and dust flew upon them until their faces, their hat-brims, and the shoulders of their colored shirts were covered, and the perspiration streamed from every pore. No wonder that the wives and mothers ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... That to dyscerne I purpose not to dele Soo large by my wyll it longeth not to me were hit dreme or vysyon for your owne wele All that shall hit rede here rad or se Take thereof the best & let the worst be Try out the corne clene from the chaff And then may ye say ye ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous

... All this was only chaff and fun, for all the fairies were in good humor. They were only talking, to fill up the interval until the ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis

... his hands became a far-reaching club. And, swinging it like a fiercely driven flail, he rushed into the crowd of savages, scattering them like chaff in a gale. The smashing blows fell on heads that split under their superlative force, and the ground about him became like a shambles. In a moment he discovered another figure in the shadowy darkness, fighting in a similar fashion, and he knew by the crude, disjointed oaths which ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... not a brilliant man, but he had a fine instinct for other people's corns and prejudices. Everybody agreed that his remarks were able; there were no dissenting voices. He concluded with an apt and solemnly impressive reference to the wheat and the chaff, the garnering and the casting into furnace, leaving the application concerning the deceased wholly to his audience. That completed his success. When he sat down there was a ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... won't for he is shaking his head and pointing at me and here they come. The farmer is holding out his hand as if he had something in it for me to eat. Oh, no, Mr. Farmer, I am too old a goat to be caught with chaff. However, I will stand still on this side of the stream and ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery



Words linked to "Chaff" :   kid, tantalise, razz, husk, plant substance, rag, tease, rally, jolly, plant material, foil, ride, bait, banter, taunt, cod, tantalize, chaffy, bran, shuck, straw, twit



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