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Robin   Listen
noun
Robin  n.  (Zool.)
(a)
A small European singing bird (Erythacus rubecula), having a reddish breast; called also robin redbreast, robinet, and ruddock.
(b)
An American singing bird (Merula migratoria), having the breast chestnut, or dull red. The upper parts are olive-gray, the head and tail blackish. Called also robin redbreast, and migratory thrush.
(c)
Any one of several species of Australian warblers of the genera Petroica, Melanadrays, and allied genera; as, the scarlet-breasted robin (Petroica mullticolor).
(d)
Any one of several Asiatic birds; as, the Indian robins. See Indian robin, below.
Beach robin (Zool.), the robin snipe, or knot. See Knot.
Blue-throated robin. (Zool.) See Bluethroat.
Canada robin (Zool.), the cedar bird.
Golden robin (Zool.), the Baltimore oriole.
Ground robin (Zool.), the chewink.
Indian robin (Zool.), any one of several species of Asiatic saxoline birds of the genera Thamnobia and Pratincola. They are mostly black, usually with some white on the wings.
Magrie robin (Zool.), an Asiatic singing bird (Corsycus saularis), having the back, head, neck, and breast black glossed with blue, the wings black, and the belly white.
Ragged robin. (Bot.) See under Ragged.
Robin accentor (Zool.), a small Asiatic singing bird (Accentor rubeculoides), somewhat resembling the European robin.
Robin redbreast. (Zool.)
(a)
The European robin.
(b)
The American robin.
(c)
The American bluebird.
Robin snipe. (Zool.)
(a)
The red-breasted snipe, or dowitcher.
(b)
The red-breasted sandpiper, or knot.
Robin's plantain. (Bot.) See under Plantain.
Sea robin. (Zool.)
(a)
Any one of several species of American gurnards of the genus Prionotus. They are excellent food fishes. Called also wingfish. The name is also applied to a European gurnard.
(b)
The red-breasted merganser, or sheldrake. (Local, U.S.)
Water robin (Zool.), a redstart (Ruticulla fuliginosa), native of India.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Robin" Quotes from Famous Books



... city could not afford to linger long on Egdon Heath. That she would behold face to face the owner of the awakening voice within the limits of such a holiday was most unlikely, unless she were to haunt the environs of his mother's house like a robin, to do ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... knowing the taste of it, and a pair of forceps for picking it up, tipped and cased with horn, is the whole of its dining furniture. For the bill of a bird, primarily and essentially, is that and nothing else. In the chickens and the sparrows that come to steal their food, and the robin that looks on, and all the little dicky-birds, you may see it in its simplicity. The size and shape may vary, as a Canadian axe differs from a Scotch axe; some are short and stout and have a sharp edge ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... as she dressed with the shrill sweetness of a robin. She had never seen such garments; she hardly knew how to put some of them on. She brushed her hair till it shone like a tiger-lily, and piled it on her small head in great plaits. When her white muslin ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... think him happy in having a lovely wife, happy in her decorating his paper-baskets so charmingly? The colors are red and black, like Robin Goodfellow. If ever I marry, I only hope that twelve years after, my wife's embroidered baskets ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... Tom Robin, matelot de Douvre, Au Phare nous abandonna Pour aller voir si l'on decouvre Satan, que l'archange enchaina, Quand un baillement noir entr'ouvre La gueule ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... romances and pretty fancies, which, since he was a small boy, held little meaning for him, or charm, beyond a delight in the swing of the rhythm, for Johnny had a feeling for music. It was when he read of Robin Hood, the bold Robin Hood, with his dubious ethics but his certain and unquenchable interest, that Johnny Trumbull became intent. He had the volume in his own room, being somewhat doubtful as to whether ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... grand folks make poor labourers suffer, to keep themselves in power and great glory. I tell ye, 'tarn't per-practicable at all, to ax the Queen for anything; she's afeard of her life on 'em. You just take my advice, and sign a round-robin to the squires—you tell 'em as you're willing to till the land for 'em, if they'll let you. There's draining and digging enough to be done as 'ud keep ye ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... to the top of the hill and sit down on your sleds," said Dick. "Or, better still, go into the barn, like the robin in the song, and keep warm. Then I'll look for ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope

... the marshes lay New York, and behind its walls and the broad sweep of the waters the British army rested safe, while the army of the patriots, scattered among the forests, woods, and hills of Jersey and New York, lived, like Robin Hood's followers of old, and waited while ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson

... scratched an' bleedin'—thar war tiny socks an' shoes on 'em. Thar war tears in her big blue eyes an' on her purty cheeks, but she warn't cryin' none, then. No, sir; she war jest erstandin' an' erlookin' up ter whar a robin war singin' in an oak tree, an' her leetle mouth war open fer all ther world like a rosebud. Wall, es I stood thar, erwatchin' like I'd seen er fairy, she smiles—yo' know thet smile of her'n, like a rainbow ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... of some stately tree; the horse, with his arching neck and prancing movements; the fond dog; the gentle sheep; the peacock, with its plumes of blue, and green, and gold; the majestic snow-white swan; the little linnet; the robin-redbreast; and that most beautiful, tiny creature, the humming-bird; the gay butterfly; the bee. It is impossible to go over the names of even what we know by sight, of the good creatures of God, ...
— Kindness to Animals - Or, The Sin of Cruelty Exposed and Rebuked • Charlotte Elizabeth

... day's advance in the boats was made, the water becoming too swift to be stemmed, This day Cary got the second ducking of the trip—a very good record in view of the roughness of the work and the smallness of the boats. During this and the day previous an otter, a crow and a robin were seen. As a rule the river was almost entirely deserted ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley

... traditional thieves the most noted in England, or perhaps in any country, is Robin Hood, a name which popular affection has encircled with a peculiar halo. "He robbed the rich to give to the poor;" and his reward has been an immortality of fame, a tithe of which would be thought more than sufficient to recompense a benefactor of his species. Romance and poetry ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... somewhere, my dear, In the midnight black or the midday blue: The robin pipes when the sun is here, And the cricket chirrups the whole night through; The buds may blow and the fruit may grow, And the autumn leaves drop crisp and sere: But whether the sun or the rain or the snow, There is ever a ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... arched over the narrow path, and a wild canary, singing in the sun, hopped from bough to bough. A robin's cheery chirp came from another tree, and the clear notes of a thrush, with a mottled breast, were answered by another in ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed

... of dust, sun, and fatigue; moreover, we quite neglected to notice or admire her picturesque rambling dress, which inadvertency provoked her into telling us that the gentlemen at Ballston, or some other fashionable watering-place, had declared she looked in it quite like Robin Hood's maid Marian. The gorgeous summer sunsets and clear moonlight nights, soon wearied her—for we were too much occupied with the beauties of nature to notice her fine attitudes, or beautiful eyes cast up imploringly to heaven, while ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... be wise, Maiden, reading with a rage, Envy fluttereth round the page Whereupon thy downward eyes Rove and rest, and melt maybe— Virgin eyes one may not see, Gathering as the bee Takes from cherry tree; As the robin's bill Frets the window sill, Maiden, bird, and bee, Three from me half hid, Doing what we did When ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... Home Journal began to strike a definite musical note. It first caught the eye and ear of its public by presenting the popular new marches by John Philip Sousa; and when the comic opera of "Robin Hood" became the favorite of the day, it secured all the new compositions by Reginald de Koven. Following these, it introduced its readers to new compositions by Sir Arthur Sullivan, Tosti, Moszkowski, Richard Strauss, Paderewski, Josef Hofmann, ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok

... how Bob Robin found Jenny Robin, don't you? You remember mamma told you how Bob came up from the southland early in the spring and asked Jenny in lovely bird song to come and be his very own wife? How he promised her he would feed her on cherries, and currants ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... Triplett, and dashed a tear, the size of a robin's egg, from his furrowed cheek. In that ghastly light we ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock

... man, was gay and handsome, and generally off on any and every job that took him abroad, from buying a pig to selling his own senses for a few mugs of cider. Farmer Lear was usually out in the fields, and Mrs. Lear, wrinkled like a winter apple and tuneful as a winter robin, was as a rule alone in the big kitchen or cool dairy, for small help did her daughter-in-law ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse

... (Byrd) In crystal towers and turrets richly set (Byrd) In darkness let me dwell, the ground shall sorrow be (Coprario) In midst of woods or pleasant grove (Mundy) In pride of May (Weelkes) In Sherwood lived stout Robin Hood (Jones) In the merry month of May (Este) Inconstant Laura makes me death to crave (Greaves) Injurious hours, whilst any joy doth bless me (Lichfild) Is Love a boy,—what means he then to strike (Byrd) It was the frog in ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... Robin Hood's Barn, "began at the beginning" of her story, and told everything—her betrothal to Traverse Rocke; the sudden death of her father; the decision of the Orphans' Court; the departure of Traverse ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... explanation that the Coquillards were, after all, not nearly such villains as our contemporary milk-adulterators and sweaters of women. He is inclined to think they may have been good fellows, like Robin Hood and his men or the gentlemen of the road in a later century. This may well be, but a gang of Robin Hoods, infesting a hundred taverns in the town and quarrelling in the streets over loose women, is dangerous company for an impressionable ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... seized twenty-seven fair, forlorn princesses whom he had made his serving-maids. They could be freed only by a magic ring worn by a gallant knight who did not know about their danger. Anne stopped in the middle of her story, keeping mouse-still so as not to frighten a robin beside the hedge. ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin

... year has but one June, dear friend; The year has but one June; And when that perfect month doth end, The robin's song, though loud, though long, ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... Robin down the logging-road whistles, "Come to me!" Spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free; All the winds of Canada call the ploughing-rain. Take the flower and turn the hour, ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... can't be bothered about robins just now. I assure you all the best Christmas stories begin like this nowadays. We may get to a robin later; I ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne

... last, and then let it be choked up after a single eruption. There are rows of blocks standing around the walls of my workshop, waiting to be chiselled. They won't be Apollos,—but even Puck is a Robin Goodfellow, since, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... kiss was lost in jest, Robin's lost in play, But the kiss in Colin's eyes Haunts me ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale

... ear, the instinct, the first beatings of the heart. The faces of brothers and sisters, and the loved father and mother, the laugh of playmates, the old willow tree and well and school-house, the bees at work in the spring, the note of the robin at evening, the lullaby, the cows coming home, the singing-book, the visits of neighbors, the general training—all things which make childhood ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... to insinuate John Calvin; by Antinous, Martin Luther; by the Lotophagi, Protestants in general; and, by the Harpies, the Dutch. Our more modern Scholiasts are equally acute. These fellows demonstrate a hidden meaning in "The Antediluvians," a parable in Powhatan, "new views in Cock Robin," and transcendentalism in "Hop O' My Thumb." In short, it has been shown that no man can sit down to write without a very profound design. Thus to authors in general much trouble is spared. A novelist, for example, need have no care of his moral. It is there—that ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... tabor, fife, sacbut, rebec, and tambourine. Then followed the Queen of the May, walking by herself,—a rustic beauty, hight Gillian Greenford,—fancifully and prettily arrayed for the occasion, and attended, at a little distance, by Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, the Hobby-horse, and a band of morrice-dancers. Then came the crowd, pellmell, laughing, shouting, and huzzaing,—most of the young men and women bearing green branches of birch and ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... way deftly, daintily over the rocky way. She did not stop at the house, but went on to the beach. A fish-hawk was chasing a robin, that suddenly veered round as if asking her protection, and picking up a sharp stone, she took aim at the hawk and stunned him for an instant, so ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas

... cord attached to the clapper, by which I toll it, now and then slides through my fingers, slippery with wet. Here I am, in my slouched black hat, like the "bull that could pull," announcing the decease of the lamented Cock-Robin. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... call the red ones 'wake-robin' in New England," said Uncle Robert. "I thought they came ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm

... about them. Hardly a leaf stirred, and even the flight of the birds was noiseless and touched with the universal feeling of hush. The begonias and dahlias and flaming autumn flowers in the broad border below the southern terrace wall had lost half their colour in the grey afternoon, and a robin alighted softly on the window-sill and, putting his head on one side, looked into the library at the pair sitting on ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... forward with great pleasure to many hours' communion with you on lonely seas—a lover might as well sigh for more than his affianced as I for any but you. A twitch of conscience here. You ploughman bard, who are so much to me, are you then forgotten? No, no, Robin, no need of taking you in my trunk; I have you in my heart, from "A man's a man for a that" to ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... interested; it stopped in front of the house, the door-bell rang loudly, the new-comer was admitted. All this being nothing to me, my vacant attention soon found livelier attraction in the spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and chirruped on the twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the casement. The remains of my breakfast of bread and milk stood on the table, and having crumbled a morsel of roll, I was tugging at the sash to put out the crumbs on the window-sill, when Bessie ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... on the wall, Of Joan of France, and English Moll, Fair Rosamond, and Robin Hood, The little Children in the Wood, Now seemed to look abundance better, Improved in picture, size, and letter; And, high in order placed, describe The heraldry ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... of commerce and convention. Even this coal-black tribute to ceremony has discredited me with some, who argue that I am not a plain man because I do not prefer to dine in the same old pepper-and-salt. Verily the only bits of warm color in my wardrobe have been a robin's-egg-blue neck-tie, which I have never dared to wear except once at a wedding, and a pair of pajamas reserved for very occasional jaunts on yachts and sleeping cars. And now that I had the doctor's orders to take more exercise, I had been ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... terrified state of body and mind, was re-called on the 5th of June. She implicated twenty Negroes, whom she declared were present at the house of Comfort, whetting their knives, and avowing that "they would kill white people." On the 6th of June, Robin, Caesar, Cook, Cuffee, and Jack, another Cuffee, and Jamaica were arrested, and put upon trial on the 8th of June. It is a sad fact to record, even at this distance, that these poor blacks, without counsel, friends, or money, were tried and convicted upon the evidence of a poor ignorant, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... pudding's in the eating. But wait till you see how thick the snow is. Come—in!" This is very staccato. Jane was knocking at the door with cans of really hot water this time. "I said come in before. Merry Christmas and happy New Year, Jane!... Oh, I say! What a dear little robin! He's such a little duck, I hope that cat won't get him!" And Sally, who is huddled up in a thick dressing-gown and is shivering, is so excited that she goes on looking through the blind, and the peep-hole ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... heroic age must just be mentioned, in this professedly inadequate summary. It is the kind which occurs quite locally and on a petty scale, with causes obscurer than ever. The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age. Here the households of gentry take the place of courts, and the poetry in vogue there is perhaps instantly taken up by the taverns; ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie

... Bathe had practically given up hope, and had seen some one else.' Mr. Bathe drooped his head, and blushed. 'Brooke laughed. Indeed we all laughed, though we felt rather foolish. But what are we to do? Should we write her a Round Robin? Bathe says he ought to be the man, because he was first man in, and I say I ought to be the man, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... before—viz., to pass the day with him. He was sorry that he had been deprived of their company at his own abode, but he could make himself quite comfortable where he was. About eleven o'clock at night the doctor thought it strange that Robin had not brought his pony over, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... with a Robin Hood—the slender one in billiard-cloth green—there being no fewer than four of them, variously rounded, diversely clad, when the Scot approached her where she stood with her gallant near the ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... Mabberly again visited the deck, he found the skipper standing on the same spot where he had left him, apparently in the same attitude, and with the same grave, sleepless expression on his cast-iron features. The boy, Robin Tips, was at the helm, looking very sleepy. He was an English boy, smart, active, and wide-awake—in the slang sense—in which sense also we may add ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... Robin?" which I knew by heart before I could read, and I learned to read (entirely "without tears") by picking out the letters in the familiar words. I remember the Lark dressed as a clerk, but what a clerk might be I did ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown

... swing, Of a plaintive note, and long; 'Tis a note no human throat could sing, No harp with its dulcet golden string,— Nor lute, nor lyre with liquid ring, Is sweet as the robin's song. ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... robin alighted on the limb of a tree and began picking at the buds. Then he held his head up straight, swelled out his brownish red breast, and poured forth such a volume of melody that the effort fairly made him dance with joy. Spring had surely ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... excellence the ballad land: Lowland Scotland—particularly the Lothians—and the English bordering counties, Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Cumberland; with Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, in which were Barndale and Sherwood Forests, Robin Hood's haunts. It is not possible to assign exact dates to these songs. They were seldom reduced to writing till many years after they were composed. In the Middle Ages they were sung to the harp by wandering ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... pack, called "yell hounds," afterwards corrupted to "hell hounds," composed of the souls of unbaptized children, which could not rest, but roamed and howled through the woods all night.23 A touching popular myth said, the robin's breast is so red because it flies into hell with drops of water in its bill to relieve the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... known fact. Nature has sent him abroad in that character, and has advised all creatures of it. Not so with the shrike; here she has concealed the character of a murderer under a form as innocent as that of the robin. Feet, wings, tail, color, head, and general form and size are all those of a song-bird,—very much like that master songster, the mockingbird,—yet this bird is a regular Bluebeard among its kind. Its only characteristic feature is its beak, the upper mandible having two sharp processes and ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... her before he was an hour older. The terms cost him his heart, perhaps, but there was a life at stake, and Betty, who had not a touch of the coquette in her nature, would have flirted open-eyed with the rector could she have saved a robin from the shot. As for Diggs, he might have been a family portrait or a Christmas garland for all ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... robin called. Felicity's eyes opened. They looked calm and dewy, like a child's. She raised her head—the robin called again. Felicity looked about her, at the flowers in her hand, the trees, the sky. Her face broke into smiles, she rose tall, ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale

... Odahbaun, n. a sled Ongwahmezin, be ye faithful Oogaah, n. pickerel Ogejebeeg, surface of the water Ozhahwahnoong, n. south Okayahwis, n. herring Oojeeg, n. a fisher Ogah, n. mother Oose, n. father Opecheh, n. a robin Onesheshid, a clever one Ookoozhe, n. a beak Oskezegookahjegun, n. spectacle Onahgooshig, n. the evening Okahquon, n. shin Ogeeozheaun, he made them Ogeeozhetoon, he made it Oskunzhekahjegun, n. a ...
— Sketch of Grammar of the Chippeway Languages - To Which is Added a Vocabulary of some of the Most Common Words • John Summerfield

... was asked his opinion of a new singer that had appeared at Covent Garden, "Why," said Charles, "he may be Robin Hood this season, but he will be robbing Harris (the manager) ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... Its pristine glories since the days when bold Robin Hood and his merrie men held sway within its borders, and levied taxes from the passers-by, had sadly dwindled even in the year 1696, when our history commences. The woodman's axe had been busy and the plough had gone over the land, and mansions and homesteads had arisen ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... of the elves; they waded in the brook, hoping to catch a water-sprite; they ran after thistle-down, fancying a fairy might be astride; they searched the flowers and ferns, questioned sun and wind, listened to robin and thrush; but no one could tell them any thing of the little people, though all had gay and charming bits of news about themselves. And Daisy thought the world got younger and happier ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... they were speaking, back came Mr. and Mrs. Robin, whirring through the green shadows of the apple tree; and thereupon all the five little red mouths flew open, and the birds put something ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Mifflin was well astride his hobby: he had started to tell the children about Robin Hood, but I had the sense to give him a wink. We had to be getting along or surely Andrew might be on us. So while Mifflin was putting Pegasus into the shafts again I picked out seven or eight books that I thought would fit the needs of the Masons. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley

... tail, Kai's busy feet, Were known to all the village-street. "What, poor Kai dead?" say all I meet; "A loss indeed!" O for the croon pathetic, sweet, Of Robin's reed![37] ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... "Interpreter's House," especially those expounded to Christiana and her boys. As in that "house of imagery" things of the most common sort, the sweeping of a room, the burning of a fire, the drinking of a chicken, a robin with a spider in his mouth, are made the vehicle of religious teaching; so in this "Book for Boys and Girls," a mole burrowing in the ground, a swallow soaring in the air, the cuckoo which can do nothing but utter two notes, a flaming and a blinking ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... isolated existence, far from cities, "in the bush". (today: a "bushy") bushranger: an Australian "highwayman", who lived in the 'bush'— scrub—and attacked especially gold carrying coaches and banks. Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures—cf. Ned ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... it is easier to say "My Gawd!" and "Where t' hell's Ida!" than "I 'ain't got none." Any way round, you never do get over being conscious of your grammar. If it is correct, it is lonesome as the first robin. If it is properly awful, there are those school-teacher upbringers. I am just wondering if one might not be dining with the head of the university philosophy department and his academic guests some night and hear one's voice uttering down a suddenly silent table, "She ain't livin' at that address ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... black squirrels and pigeons come here on account of the springs like this one, and I get 'em with a bow and arrow. I didn't call myself Robin Hood and Daniel Boone not for nothin' when I was knee-high to a grasshopper." He drew from a rough cupboard some cold game, and put it on the table, with some scones and a pannikin of water. Then he brought out a small jug of whiskey and placed it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... it is Pierre Badieu, mercer of the parish, who says that a year or thereabouts ago, he saw, in the domain de Rais, 'two little children of the age of nine who were brothers and the children of Robin Pavot of the aforesaid place, and since that time neither have they been seen neither doth any know ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread; The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay, And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various

... becoming increasingly difficult. The country fields and the city streets are full of singing birds; and after a few more springs have awakened the earth, it may become as impossible to distinguish the note of a new imagist as the note of an individual robin. When the publishers advertise the initial appearance of a poet, we simply say Another! The versifiers and their friends who study them through a magnifying glass may ultimately force us to classify the songsters into ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... only a provincial hero, the more or less happy defender of a little country, all peoples would not have adopted him, any more than they have adopted the Marco of the Serbs, [Footnote: A Servian ballad-hero.] or the Robin Hood of the Saxons. The Arthur who has charmed the world is the head of an order of equality, in which all sit at the same table, in which a man's worth depends upon his valour and his natural gifts. What mattered to the world the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... under an English aspect and dress, are yet so manifestly the product of other skies. They affect us like translations; the very fauna and flora are alien, remote; the dog's-tooth violet is but an ill substitute for the rathe primrose, nor can we ever believe that the wood-robin sings as sweetly in April as the English ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... Philip, and dragged the sledge on which he was lying still nearer to the fire. Then he threw on a fresh armful of dry sticks and from a pocket of his coat drew forth something small and red and frozen, which was the carcass of a bird about the size of a robin. DeBar held it up between his forefinger and thumb, and looking at Philip, the flash of a smile passed for an instant over ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... Alice Gordon. Alden's Lawyer's Daughter. Alden's Young Schoolmistress. Burdett's Arthur Martin. The Dying Robin. Ellen Herbert; or, Family Changes. Mayhew's Good Genius that turned every thing into Gold. William the Cottager. Mayhew's Magic ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... the man wha first did shape [Woe to] That vile wanchancie thing—a rape! [dangerous] It maks guid fellows girn an' gape, [growl] Wi' chokin' dread; An' Robin's bonnet wave wi' crape For ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... barracks by the Germans in retaliation for English treatment of German submarine crews shows the names of seven Captains and thirty-two Lieutenants, included being the names of Lieutenant Goschen, son of a former Ambassador to Berlin; Robin Grey, a nephew of Sir Edward Grey, and many ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... men sat in silence for some minutes, watching a fat robin hop about on the little seedy lawn; at the end of which they heard a vehicle stop on the other side of the garden-wall and the voices of occupants alighting. "Here they come, the dear creatures," said Basil Dashwood without moving; and from where they ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... at the time was a peasant called Robin Mielleux, a man pleasant to the rich and powerful, but hard towards the poor, a man of small courage and ignorant of his own interests. In a public declaration he guaranteed Maubec's innocence and honour, and presented the seven hundred Pyrotists: ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... see this robin now, Like a red apple on the bough, And question why he sings so strong, For love, or for the love of song; Or sings, maybe, for that sweet rill Whose silver tongue is ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... Sparrow. Winsome Bluebird's sweet, almost plaintive, whistle seemed to fairly float in the air, so that it was hard to say just where it did come from, and in the top of the Big Hickory-tree, Welcome Robin was singing as if his heart were bursting with joy. Even Sammy Jay was adding a beautiful, bell-like note instead of his usual harsh scream. As for the Smiling Pool, it seemed as if the very water itself sang, ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess

... been favorite heroes of frontier story,—as much so as ever were Robin Hood and Little John in England. Both lived to a great age, and did and saw many strange things, and in the backwoods cabins the tale of their deeds has been handed down in traditional form from father ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt

... weeks; the snow ran from the brown fields, and melted at length even in the moist crotches under the hemlocks of the northern slopes; the robin and bluebird came, the hillsides were mottled with exquisite shades of green, and the scent of fruit blossom and balm of Gilead was in the air. June came as a maiden and grew into womanhood. But Jethro Bass did ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... still her woes at midnight rise. Brave prick-song! who is't now we hear? It is the lark so shrill and clear: against heaven's gate he claps his wings, the morn not waking till he sings. Hark, too, with what a pretty note poor Robin Redbreast tunes his throat: Hark how the jolly cuckoos sing "Cuckoo" to welcome in the Spring: "Cuckoo" to welcome in the Spring.' This is very English, and pleasant, I think: and so I hope you will. I could ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... The story of Robin Hood is from the old English ballads of the courteous outlaw, whose feast, in Scotland, fell in the early days of May. His alleged date varies between the ages of Richard I. and Edward II., but all the labours of the learned have thrown no light on ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... becomes a master who would make his lessons easy to children, teaches by parables and pictures. In reading Ferishtah's Fancies we might suppose that we were in the Interpreter's House, and that the Interpreter himself was pointing a moral with the robin that has a spider in his mouth, or the hen walking in a fourfold method towards her chickens. The discourses of the Dervish are in the main theological or philosophical; the lyrics, which are interposed between the discourses or discussions, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... every sound, anxious, uncomfortable, dreading he knew not what. A big, fat, gray squirrel racing noisily across the fallen leaves gave him a shock. A number of birds came to look at him—or so it appeared to him, for in the inquisitive scrutiny of a robin he fancied he divined sardonic meaning, and in the blank yellow stare of a purple grackle, a sinister significance out of all proportion to ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers

... a young fellow. Then you had to catch your own fish, or go without; but now the law is that after a bird has stood on one foot half an hour, two fish jump down his throat, and three more go the same way at the end of an hour. Mr. Robin Red-Breast forgot all about the new law the other day, and, because his left foot was sore, he stood on the right one till two big pickerel made a leap for his mouth. Either of them was seven times as big as he is, and it's a wonder ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice

... a hearty yeoman play; the time represented, the reign of one of the Edwards. The plot revolves about the rebellion of an Earl of Kendal. The principal figure is just such a stout typical hero of a countryside as Robin Hood himself, but more law-abiding. His rough honest loyalty is up in arms at once on the least disrespect to the crown. When Sir Nicholas Mannering, on behalf of the rebel Earl of Kendal, insolently demands a contribution of provisions from Wakefield, George ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... fence, near the drawing-room. If I were playing, she would stand perfectly still, yielding her milk without any trouble, and would remain until I ceased. As long as I played plaintive music—the "Land o' the Leal," "Home, Sweet Home," "Robin Adair," any sweet, tender air—she seemed entranced. I have tried her, and changed to martial music, whereupon she ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... agrees Plantagenet, eagerly. "The longest I ever heard. That man deserves to be suppressed or excommunicated; and the parishioners ought to send him a round robin to that effect. Odd, too, how much at sea one feels with a strange prayer-book. One looks for one's prayer at the top of the page, where it always used to be in one's own particular edition, and, lo! one finds it at ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... HOOD. Adapted from "Book of Romance," edited by Andrew Lang; including a version of the popular ballad, "Robin Hood ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... glassy reflection of a faded moon on the water, and daybreak came rustling through the trees which nodded and swayed overhead. A twittering of winged things arose in the branches, first only the cadence of a robin's call, an oriole's flute-whistle, the stirring wren's mellow note. Then, suddenly, out burst from the leafed sprays a chorus of song that might have rivaled angels' melodies. The robin's call was a gust of triumph. The ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... towards the darkening hills; and in the little silence that followed they heard the sweet, high tenor of a vaquero somewhere, singing plaintively a Spanish love-song. When the voice trailed into a mournful, minor "Adios, adios," a robin down in the orchard added a brief, throaty ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... than the missing cherries. The yellow warbler, sometimes called the wild canary, flits through bush and tree and trills its gay notes in town and country. Song-sparrows, thrushes, and bluebirds warble far and near, while the red-winged blackbird makes music in wet, swampy places. The robin, who comes to city gardens in the winter, has a summer home in the mountains or redwoods. There, too, the saucy jay screams and chatters, and flashes his blue wings as he flies, ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton

... see if any of you does not do his duty.' Though he fought at Culloden, James appears to have patched up a peace with the Government, and probably eked out a livelihood by cattle-stealing and spying, till, on December 8, 1750, he helped his brother Robin to abduct a young widow of some property. {231b} Soon after he was arrested, tried, and lodged, first in the Tolbooth, next, for more ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... when animals are bled, or felled, as well as strangled, there is often abundant emission, rich in spermatozoa, but without erection, though accompanied by the same movements of the tail as during copulation. Robin (art. "Fecondation," Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales), who quotes this observation, has the following remarks on this subject: "Ejaculation occurring at the moment when the circulation, maintained artificially, stops is a fact of significance. It shows ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... detached themselves from the little office, the scattered bricks of which are now lying in the ruined garden between the blighted yew tree and the uprooted box. I can see them still circling like vague faces around the green lamp, under which Dr. Theophilus sits, with his brown and white pointer, Robin, asleep at his feet. Sometimes there was a saucer of fresh raspberry jam brought in by Mrs. Clay, the widowed sister; sometimes a basket of winesap apples; and once a year, on the night before Christmas, a large slice of ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... who will take you to Londesborough, where you must live with her and her husband till there is peace again in the land, which we will both earnestly pray for. And you must remember, my child, that you are to pass for Maud's own son, and that you are to call her mother, and her husband, Robin, the shepherd, father. I have already explained to you what would be the terrible consequences should you ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... Collectorates. It appears particularly partial to the Angan forest, and, as far as I remember, all the many nests I have seen have been in forks of angan trees. The nest is a pretty firm platform composed of fine roots; and the eggs, which much resemble those of the Magpie-Robin, are three in number." ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... national phrases are kept, and all others successively picked out and thrown away. Something like the same process had gone on, long before, with the originals of these books. The world takes liberties with world-books. Vedas, Aesop's Fables, Pilpay, Arabian Nights, Cid, Iliad, Robin Hood, Scottish Minstrelsy, are not the work of single men. In the composition of such works the time thinks, the market thinks, the mason, the carpenter, the merchant, the farmer, the fop, all think for us. Every book supplies its time with one good word; every municipal ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... or Robin Adair. Both seem to stand an equal chance. Well, I declare!" exclaimed Gardiner, in the same breath, "if there isn't Queen Bess! It's laughable to see her entered for the race. She's very speedy, but she isn't game. I have ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... dirty pen, What we can we will be, Honest Englishmen. Do the work that's nearest, Though it's dull at whiles, Helping, when we meet them, Lame dogs over stiles; See in every hedgerow Marks of angels' feet, Epics in each pebble Underneath our feet; Once a year, like schoolboys, Robin-Hooding go, Leaving fops and fogies A ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley

... every two minutes, either near at hand or yonder a bird darts out just at the level of the grass, hovers a second with labouring wings, and returns as swiftly to the cover. Sometimes it is a flycatcher, sometimes a greenfinch, or chaffinch, now and then a robin, in one place a shrike, perhaps another is a redstart. They are fly-fishing all of them, seizing insects from the sorrel tips and grass, as the kingfisher takes a roach from the water. A blackbird slips up into the oak and a dove descends in the corner by the chestnut ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... is the way; here is the gate, This little creaking wicket; Here robin calls his truant mate From out the lilac-thicket. The walks are bordered all with box,— Oh! come this way a minute; The snowball-bush, beyond the phlox, Has chippy's nest hid in it. Look at this mound of blooming pinks, This balm, these mountain daisies; And can ...
— The Nursery, No. 107, November, 1875, Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... build their own nest, father. The cock-robin does not go to his parents, and the hen robin to her parents, and say, 'Give us all the straw you can, and put it down at the foot of our tree; but don't dare to peep into the branches, or offer us any suggestions about the nest, or expect to have ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... a pearl almost as large as a robin's egg. It possessed the faint yellowish tinge which is recognized in the East as belonging ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis

... either side of the way. Many are of comparatively recent origin, others are quite new, and a few—a very few—are old; but none have any architectural pretensions or any claims to picturesqueness, and only a few have the neat and respectable look one is accustomed to expect after seeing Robin ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... was unobtrusively shining; then it rained, and there was rather a bitter wind; but presently it was sunny again, and you felt secure of the spring, for the birds were singing: the birds of literature, the lark, the golden-billed blackbird, the true robin, and the various finches; and round and over all the rooks were calling like voices in a dream. Full of this certainty of spring you went ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... this fellow from the leaf, it is such a bright, fresh green. Woe to the katydid if it were anything but this bright green! Just think how easily the birds would find them. What nice salad Katy would make for a young robin!" ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... mortar. The green fields at that time were not far away from Spenser's birthplace. And thus, not without knowledge and symnpathy, but with appreciative variations, Spenser could re-echo Marot's 'Eglogue au Roy sous les noms de Pan et Robin,' and its descriptions of a boy's rural wanderings and delights. See ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales

... partnering Lady Margaret's maid against Mrs. Heever, the housekeeper, and Robert, the chauffeur, at a friendly game of bridge. And they even boomed distantly into the far-away billiard-room and broke into the talk which Robin Greve ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... pour water upon all the anger in Mr. Pidgen's heart. His eyes expressed scorn, but not now for Mr. Lasher—for himself. His whole figure drooped and was bowed like a robin ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole

... Roger's latest present, a limousine car, so silent and so swift that it travelled like a cloud-shadow. Outside the car was dark blue; inside, the pale azure of a robin's egg. Beverley told the chauffeur to drive to Moreton and Payntor's, avoiding traffic because she was in a hurry. To do this, he approached the shop by passing through a side street in which was the ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... are expressed. This is seen in the ode, elegy, sonnet, and ballad; in which a single idea perhaps, or familiar occurrence, is invested by the poet with pathos or dignity. The ballad of Old Robin Gray will serve, for an instance, out of a multitude; again, Lord Byron's Hebrew Melody, beginning 'Were my bosom as false', &c.; or Cowper's Lines on his Mother's Picture; or Milman's 'Funeral Hymn' in the Martyr of Antioch; or Milton's Sonnet on his Blindness; ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... know but what he was a-dreaming, though his eyes were now wide open and he could see a robin hopping on the sod. "What is it you mean ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... in that valley of mine, Loud-voiced on a leafless spray, How the robin sings, flushed with his holly-wine, Of ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... present scene and occupation, chronicles of the fashionable arrivals of the white clouds before the window, of a bunch of violets, or a new book; the fashionable departure of the headache, the fire, or a robin; notices that tom-tits were whetting their saws on the next tree, or of the domestic proceedings of the rooks who were building their house opposite to Mrs. Frederick Langford's window, and whom she watched so much that ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge

... satisfaction in the picture, he had some pride in the artist, though he would rather I should have written a sermon than painted like Rembrandt or like Raphael. Those winter days, with the gleams of sunshine coming through the chapel-windows, and cheered by the notes of the robin-redbreast in our garden (that 'ever in the haunch of winter sings'),—as my afternoon's work drew to a close,—were among the happiest of my life. When I gave the effect I intended to any part of the picture for which I had prepared my colours; ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... the prophets, there have been the almanack makers, Lilly, Poor Robin, Partridge, and Francis Moore, physician, in England, and Matthew Laensbergh, in France and Belgium. But great as were their pretensions, they were modesty itself in comparison with Merlin, Shipton, and Nixon, who fixed their minds upon higher ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... him, with her head a little on one side and her eyes shining brightly, like an expectant motherly robin ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... said the Scot, "by minstrels and pilgrims, that your outlawed yeomen have formed great bands in the shires of York and Nottingham, having at their head a most stout archer, called Robin Hood, with his lieutenant, Little John. Methinks it were better that Richard relaxed his forest-code in England, than endeavour to enforce it in the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... only ugly songs are really persistent. Haven't you noticed, for instance, that a peacock, or a cat on the wall, or a baby with a tin trumpet, will give their services most generously for hours on end, while a robin on a snowy tree, or a nightingale, or ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... the yeomanry succeeded to the ideal character of the knighthood; Robin Hood and his merry companions took the place in the popular mind which belonged to King Arthur and his knights of the Table Round. The yeomen of England were imbued with a spirit of courage and liberty unknown to the same class on the continent of Europe, and their love of freedom ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... did not last long. One brief spring, musical with the song of robin and mocking-bird, one summer rich in fruit and roses, one autumn of gold and crimson sped by and left their gifts at the feet of an eager, delighted child. Then, in the dreary month of February, came the illness which closed ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... say this," said Pledge: "that I never saw three boys imitate guilt better. If they hadn't done it, I should like to ask them why they quaked in their shoes whenever they met me, and why they sent me a round robin, asking me not ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed



Words linked to "Robin" :   genus Turdus, Erithacus rubecola, Turdus migratorius, genus Erithacus, Turdus, clay-colored robin, round robin, American robin, wake-robin, Old World robin, robin's plantain, sea robin, runaway robin, redbreast, flying robin, northern sea robin, thrush, prairie wake-robin, Robin Goodfellow, early wake-robin, Erithacus, ragged robin



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