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Tattoo   Listen
noun
Tattoo  n.  (Mil.) A beat of drum, or sound of a trumpet or bugle, at night, giving notice to soldiers to retreat, or to repair to their quarters in garrison, or to their tents in camp.
The Devil's tattoo. See under Devil.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tattoo" Quotes from Famous Books



... the men taken when the schooner "Brothers" was attacked at Kennedy Bay in 1815. Bishop Williams sets up the theory that Rutherford was a deserter from a vessel which visited New Zealand, that he induced the Maoris to tattoo him in order that he might escape detection after he had returned to civilization, and that he concocted the story of the capture of the "Agnes" to account for his reappearance amongst Europeans. The weakness of this theory is that he evidently did not ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... on condition that he be permitted to mark each error in the composition by striking his lap-stone. The humorous consequences can be imagined. Beckmesser becomes enraged at Sachs, sings more and more falsely, until Sachs is occupied in beating a veritable tattoo on his lap-stone. To add to Beckmesser's discomfiture, David, Sachs's apprentice and Magdalena's sweetheart, thinking the serenade intended for his love, begins to belabor the singer with a chub; neighbors join in the brawl, which proceeds right merrily until interrupted by the horn of ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... voice at my elbow. It was old Blake. His mahogany face shone with the effects of the first soap and water he had been able to use for weeks, for we had been very short of water; and even his arms showed the tattoo-marks that were usually hidden by the grime inseparable to life ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... waited very impatient for the squall to pass; and as he went to the window and beat a little tattoo on it with his finger nail, I noticed he was all dressed up like I'd never seen him before. Then he came back, looking at me very steadfast, and says: "Well, Ben, you're out of ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... starless night. Tattoo-beat had long been heard, and Hay's Brigade, weary after a long day's march, rested beneath the dewy boughs of gigantic oaks in a dense forest near the placid Rappahannock. No sound broke the stillness of the night. The troops were lying ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... Jacques sat and smiled; but he is a modest man, and his fingers were beating a nervous tattoo on the table. The young officer stood and read, glancing up now and then to smile at his chief's embarrassment. The wind howled outside, setting the sacks at the ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... often seven guests to breakfast, instead of two. It was good to hear them, the lively tink, tink-a-tink of their little bills on the tin plate in a merry tattoo, as I ate my own tea and trout thankfully. I had only to raise my eyes to see them in a bobbing brown ring about my bounty; and, just beyond them, the lap of ripples on the beach, the lake glinting far away in the sunshine, and a bark canoe fretting at ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... in they had to come again. Flop-flop went the fish on the bottom-boards as we jerked them carelessly off the hooks. Every moment or two one of them would dance up and flip its tail wildly; beat on the bottom-boards a tattoo which spattered us with scales; then sink back among the glistening mass that was fast losing its beauty of colour, its opalescent pinks and steely blues, even as it died ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... Jessie, and Lucile's hand went out instinctively to silence the interruption. "Sh-h!" she warned, but the Frenchman seemed not to have heard and continued his narrative, while his hand beat a nervous tattoo on the ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... of the Irawadi. This agrees with Martini's indication of the seat of the Kin-Chi as north of Yung-ch'ang. One of Hannay's notices of Singpho customs should also be compared with the interpolation from Ramusio about tattooing: "The men tattoo their limbs slightly, and all married females are tattooed on both legs from the ankle to the knee, in broad horizontal circular bands. Both sexes also wear rings below the knee of fine shreds of rattan varnished black" (p. 18). These rings appear on the Kakhyen ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... That night, after tattoo had sounded, and the soldiers had retired to their respective quarters, a small mounted party was seen to issue from the gateway of the Presidio, and take a road that led in the direction of the mountains. The party consisted of three individuals. One, closely ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... which in cannibal-land is considered good form. He could not, however, bring himself to admire Gondebiza, though the Monsieur Worth of Fanland had done his utmost for her. Still, she must have looked really engaging in a thin pattern of tattoo, a gauze work of oil and camwood, a dwarf pigeon tail of fan palm for an apron, and copper bracelets and anklets. The much talked of gorilla Burton found to be a less formidable creature than previous travellers ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... summoned to carry on board the chest which the servants had brought. Having seen it carried safely inside the spacer, the aliens departed, but Van Rycke was frowning and Jellico's fingers were beating a tattoo on his belt as ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... door swung open, and from behind it came a noise of rattling, bumping and clattering. Something soft and heavy thumped on to the floor, and a cloud of floury dust arose. A bottle of bovril embedded itself quietly there without damage, and a tin of Bath Oliver biscuits beat a fierce tattoo on one of corned beef. Innumerable dried apricots from the burst package flew about like shrapnel, and tapped at the tins. A jar of prunes, breaking its fall on the flour, rolled merrily out into the ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson

... went to the military tattoo, at which, by an unpardonable indifference, I have not regularly been present, although these patriotic demonstrations have been organized by Monsieur Joseph Boneas and his League of Avengers. A long-drawn shudder, shrill and ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... now rent the skies, and presently afterwards was heard the vile scraping of a fiddle, accompanied by the tattoo of a drum. Approaching Turpin, a host of gipsies elevated the highwayman upon their shoulders, and in this way he was carried to the centre of the green, where the long oaken table, which had once served the Franciscans for ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... strained his gaze to make out more than the vague outline of a shadow-shape. Then slowly she came down the stairs and out onto the moonlit lawn, walking meditatively in the direction of Stuart Farquaharson's hiding place. The boy's heart leaped into a heightened tattoo and he bent eagerly forward with his lips parted. She moved lightly through the luminance of a world which the moon had burnished into tints of platinum and silver, and she was very lovely, he thought, in her child-beauty and slenderness, the budding and virginal freshness ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... uncultivated tree Bombax, and their color is white, blue, or red. The custom of boring the ears, the nose, and the under lip, for the insertion of some ornament, is much practised, particularly by the Panos, Shipeos, and Pirras. They paint their bodies, but not exactly in the tattoo manner; they confine themselves to single stripes. The Sensis women draw two stripes from the shoulder, over each breast, down to the pit of the stomach; the Pirras women paint a band in the form of a girdle round the ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... direction or from every direction at once. Applause was intermingled with hissing, violent discussions were in progress between individual members of the audience, sticks were brandished threateningly, others beat a tattoo on the floor, and the interrupters were greeted with yells of 'Put him out!' or ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... and no heeltaps, and we were full to the throat. Then to the nard; and enter to us guitar and light fantastic toe. Thereafter, one shinned up the ladder, on post-prandial japery intent, another beat the devil's tattoo, a third writhed cachinnatory. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... closely the invention displayed is truly remarkable; but at a distance they give a dingy, dusky appearance to the men, as if they were daubed with an inky sponge. Nature having denied them beards, they tattoo curly locks along their faces, always bordered by a vandyke fringe, which must task their utmost ingenuity. Tanee, who has followed us with some of his warriors, is the very exquisite of a Kenowit. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... But in passing I'll venture a little prophecy. You're down on your luck now, and a bit hot-hearted in consequence; but some day you will strike it right and come out on top. When you do, you'll be a hard master; tattoo that on your arm somewhere so ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... a loud tattoo and the trumpeter blew a call that startled the squaws and the children into shrieks; the braves were quicker in hiding their astonishment. Then Smith and Newport walked forward, Newport ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... chance to use it. Like a famished wolf he seized his enemy by the throat, throttling him, and, dropping his cane, with his clenched fist he dealt him several fearful blows on forehead and mouth, winding up with a tattoo that sounded like the beating of a drum on the man's skull. A violent push made Roth stumble ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg

... as though in her presence I were other than a son of Adam. And I stood looking at her and whenever she raised her wrist to take up a morsel, the dimple[FN133] became manifest from without, and upon the skin was a tattoo of green colour and about it jewelled ornaments[FN134] and armlets of red gold and a pink dye appeared upon the whiteness of her hand: so glory be to Him who created her and she was naught but a seduction to whoso espied her and blessed be Allah the best of Creators. May the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... while the little brain was at work. "Goin' to Angel's mamma,—her goin' to her mamma," suddenly the child broke forth as Norma hurried along the hot streets, and the little hand beat a gleeful tattoo as it rested on ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin

... humming-bird, green-backed and glittering, hung and tasted for a moment, then flashed to where the larkspurs were. A red-headed woodpecker swung downward on the wing to the white-brown side of a dead elm, sounded a brief tattoo upon the surface, then dived at a passing insect. A phoebe bird was singing somewhere. A red squirrel sat perched squarely on the drooping limb of a hickory tree and chewed into a plucked nut, so green that the kernel was not formed, then dropped it ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... dismal, gray morning; he had returned from his second visit to Sybil Burrill at a late hour, and after sitting beside his fire, pondering long over many things, had retired, to sleep soundly, and to wake late. What first rouses him is a knocking upon his door, a regular tattoo, beaten by his housekeeper, grown impatient over coffee too long brewed, and ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... laughed, Tilly and Timothy Toad chuckled, Gerty Gartersnake giggled, Wallie Woodpecker beat a tattoo on wood, Billie Bumblebee buzzed and Winnie Woodchuck ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle

... The tattoo beats,—the lights are gone, The camp around in slumber lies, The night with solemn pace moves on, The shadows thicken o'er the skies; But sleep my weary eyes hath flown, And sad, uneasy ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... working their wells, for which they lack patience. Their women, whom they do not confine, will, it is said, do more field-work than the men; indeed, one often finds women at work in the crops when the men are lying down. Like the women of low Hindu castes they tattoo their bodies, a practice disapproved by Musalmans in general. Abul Fazl writes that the Meos were in his time famous runners, and one thousand of them were employed by Akbar as ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... In this case, strange to say, it had its effect. After some parleying, it was agreed to share the booty equally between the guard and ourselves. They helped us cut brush and cover it nicely, and after tattoo all were to return and divide up. We did not know the guards personally, but knew their command. And so we returned to the camp to await the return of our pickets and night. It was soon noised in camp that there was a fine fat porker to be distributed after tattoo, and no little eagerness ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... Gordon needed a knockout. Frankie had only to stay on his feet to be home safe. But when was Milt going to let him go? Milt had turned in a masterpiece of defensive fighting. The left had deadly accuracy and now the openings were truck-sized as Monroe had come to ignore the light tattoo of ...
— Vital Ingredient • Gerald Vance

... made according to tribal custom and law, become tribal marks (tattoo), and are then essential to one's standing in the community. This custom is general in Polynesia and in parts of North America.[238] The use of oil and other unguents early established itself as a custom of savage society. They were probably ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... finish of the race. First came four horses, well bunched; after them the stragglers. Last of all a chestnut with four white stockings and a blaze galloped heavily through the dust, snorting his indignation. Last Chance had been hopelessly last all the way in spite of a rawhide tattoo on his flanks. ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... betwixt old Red and me, nothin' at all—'cept this iron wall," and he would drum a vicious tattoo on the thin wall with the heel of his boot. Or when he heard the creak of the Red Fox's hammock as he droned his Bible aloud, he would say ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... of the Alleghany, vigorously waving her hand and hailing the youthful navigator. The forward end of the one by twelve inch board was reluctantly headed for shore, and slowly idled in. As the child reached land, he was grasped by the angry and anxious mother, who beat a merry tattoo on a tender portion his body with ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton

... hours in times like these. All depends on the promptness of our decision. You, Picart, go to the cure and order him to ring the alarm-bell, in order to get together the people, to whom I am going to announce the news. You, Torchebeuf beat the tattoo throughout the whole neighborhood as far as the hamlets of Gerisaie and Salmare, in order to assemble the militia in the public square. You, Pommel, get your uniform on quickly, just the coat and cap. We are going to the town-hall to demand Monsieur de Varnetot to surrender his powers to me. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... handkerchief. As she did so her eyes fell upon a tattoo-mark, an anchor inside a true-lover's knot. It was an ordinary enough tattoo-mark, but the sight of it struck at Mollie for she had seen it before. The odd impression of last night, which she had forgotten in the various exigences of the situation, came rushing back into her mind. ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton

... have already had a child wear two in front, one over the other. A similar remark applies to tattooing and kindred ornamentations of the body and its members. Among the women of the Bajansi on the middle Congo, for example, a certain form of tattoo indicated that the woman had ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... inwardly in ecstasies. So much so, that she could not wait to beat the tattoo and effect any alterations. But having succeeded, while conversing with her cousins, in devising a stanza in her mind, she promptly inscribed it on the first piece of paper that came to hand. "I have," she ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... wanderers who live in tents, and are regarded with contempt even by the peasantry. Their women tell fortunes, tattoo, {189} and sell small-wares; the men work in iron (quincaillerie). They are all adroit thieves, and noted as such. The men may sometimes be seen going around the country with monkeys; in fact, they appear to be in all respects the same ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... ceremonies this one lacks the music of the agongs,[27] for only bamboo guitars, flutes, and the bolang-bolang are permitted at this time. The last named instrument is made by placing a board on a rice mortar; the women gather around it with their wooden pestles and beat a rythmical[sic] tattoo. This concludes the festival proper, but many guests will remain for two or three days to enjoy the hospitality ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole

... hospitality had stirred in each youthful breast. But many reasons could be found to exculpate Elijah—not omitting their own sins—and now, when Ben Amram nodded to his wife to open the door, expectation stood on tip-toe, credulous as ever, and the young hearts beat tattoo. ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... and became energetic infantry soldiers. Others hovered above the fight, their men ever and again firing shots down at some chance exposure below. The firing came in paroxysms; now there would be a watchful lull and now a rapid tattoo of shots, rising to a roar. Once or twice flying machines, as they circled warily, came right overhead, and for a time Bert gave himself body and soul ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... the Khasis tattoo; the only people in the hills who tattoo are certain tribes of the Bhoi country which are really Mikir. These tattoo females on the forehead when they attain the age of puberty, a straight horizontal line being drawn from the parting of the hair down the forehead and nose. The line ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon

... a perpetual tattoo to no purpose. The talking and the interruptions from all quarters go on with the utmost license. Everyone esteems himself as good as his neighbor, and puts in his oar, apparently as often for love of riot and confusion as for anything else.... The Speaker orders a member whom he ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... But it don't matter. Joseph, serve the Doctor,"—beating a tattoo on the counter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... subject to the orders of their superior officers. All must obey the general in command. You march, drill, eat, sleep, go to bed, and get up by order. At sunrise you hear the reveille, and at nine o'clock in the evening the tattoo. Then the candle, which has been burning in your tent with a bayonet for a candlestick, must be put out. In the dead of night, while sleeping soundly and dreaming of home, you hear the drum-beat. It is the long roll. There is a rattle of musketry. The pickets ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... shiny something like a monstrous leech rolling up and down as it travelled in the stream. Quonab whispered, "Otter," and made ready his gun, but it dived and showed itself no more. At one of the camps they were awakened by an extraordinary tattoo in the middle of the night—a harsh rattle close by their heads; and they got up to find that a porcupine was rattling his teeth on the frying-pan in an effort to increase the amount of salt that he could ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... deep rivers, the breadth of broad isles. Upon the highest pinnacles of commanding capes and promontories, he loved to hoist his flag. He circled Mardi with his watch-towers: and the distant voyager passing wild rocks in the remotest waters, was startled by hearing the tattoo, or the reveille, beating from hump- backed Bello's omnipresent drum. Among Antartic glaciers, his shrill bugle calls mingled with the scream of the gulls; and so impressed seemed universal nature with the sense of his dominion, that the very ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... dashed up the stairs to her own little room which looked out over the whole of Ramble Valley. It was warm with the March sunshine and the leafless boughs of the creeper that covered the end of the house were tapping a gay tattoo on the window panes to the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... there was a chill in the air that might betoken snow. Pamela Wolcott stood in the sitting-room window and sighed softly, as she gazed out at the November landscape, letting her fingers beat soft tattoo against the lozenge-shaped pane. ...
— An Unwilling Maid • Jeanie Gould Lincoln

... lost Home Rule by allowing themselves to be stampeded. Their English friends, the enemy, playing upon their prejudices, they became drunk with hate, and then their shillalahs resounded a tattoo upon the head of their leader. Nations and people who turn upon their best friends are too common ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... whom he professed to have such a tender interest. The hypocrite was looking and listening with all his might in the direction of George's apartments, striding about the room, upsetting the chairs, beating the tattoo, biting his nails, and showing other signs of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sleep came down again on Cassel; but an hour or two later the hush was broken by a roar like the last trump. This time it was no question of mitrailleuses. The Wild Man rocked on its base, and every pane in my windows beat a tattoo. What was that incredible unimagined sound? Why, it could be nothing, of course, but the voice of the big siege-gun of Dixmude! Five times, while I was dressing, the thunder shook my windows, and the air was ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... institution. Later, a demonstration of six thousand children was attended and a Reception held in the evening. The next day was devoted to shooting and to seeing an exhibition of sheep-shearing, bullock-riding and buck-jumping, with a military Tattoo in the evening and the usual spectacle of brilliant illuminations. The last day, but one, in South Australia included in its programme the laying of a foundation-stone for a Maternity Home in memory of Queen Victoria, and the review of four thousand troops with a state concert ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... under the arm that rested across her forehead, realized how her last night's breach of authority had impressed each one of them. And secretly rejoicing at her triumph, she kept up a brisk tattoo. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates

... it to her. 'Madam! might I observe that if you won't condescend to notice that we're here your front door will run the risk of being severely injured!—She don't care for me any more than if I was nothing at all,—sound another tattoo upon that knocker. Perhaps she's so deaf that nothing short of a cataclysmal uproar will reach ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... plate, smashed it up, and there she was dancing the Romalis, and making the bits of broken crockery rattle as well as if they had been ebony and ivory castanets. That girl was good company, I can tell you! Evening fell, and I heard the drums beating tattoo. ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee

... two little, futile, frenzied fists began to beat a mad tattoo on Jo Hertz's broad back. Jo tried to turn in the crowd, all indignant ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... lost in my eyes the legendary light in which I had enveloped it; and when George suggested to me carelessly one spring afternoon that I should stop by his house and have a look at his uncle's classical library, I felt my cheeks burn, while my heart beat an excited tattoo against my ribs. The house I knew by sight, a grave, low-browed mansion, with a fringe of purple wistaria draping the long porch; and it was under a pendulous shower of blossoms that we found the General seated with the evening newspaper in his hand and his bandaged foot on a wicker stool. As ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... de Boiscoran cannot leave by the gate. At tattoo, at eight o'clock, the soldiers on guard at this season of the year go inside the prison, and until reveille in the morning, or, in others words, till five o'clock, I can neither open nor shut the gates without calling the sergeant in ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau

... creatures, who suffered not a little from their finery! The eyebrows and eyelids are dyed black while the children are very young, and they frequently paint themselves with dark-blue streaks of a finger's breadth over the eyebrows, and with spots on the forehead. The adult women tattoo their breasts, foreheads, noses, or temples with red, white, or yellow colours, according as they are particularly attached to one or the other deity. Many wear amulets or miniatures hung round their necks, so that I at first thought they were Catholics, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... did Anna and those sisters (and many and many a wife and mother from Callender House to Carrollton), the vast, stealthy, fireless bivouac at fall of night, in ear-shot of the enemy's tattoo, unsheltered from the midnight storm save by raked-up leaves: Saw, just in the bivouac's tortuous front, softly reddening the low wet sky, that huge, rude semicircle of camps in the dark ridged and gullied forests about Shiloh's log meeting-house, where the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... where all that is proper to painting is ignored:—plane always preferred to line, the constructive details, perceptible only as projection, not as colour or value (like the insertion of the leg and the thigh), marked by deep lines that look like tattoo marks; and perspective almost entirely ignored, at least till a late period. It is necessary thus to examine Greek painting[16] in order to appreciate, by comparison with this negative art, the very positive influence of mediaeval painting ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... the window, and began to pace his room with his head down and his hands behind his back. Little by little he raised his head, drooped his hands, flung himself into a chair, beat the devil's tattoo on the table, ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... was roaring like a bull and plunging wildly under my brother's fingers, his clubfoot beating a thunderous tattoo on the parquet floor. In his fall Clubfoot's left arm had been bent under him and was now pinioned to the ground by his great weight. With his free right arm he strove fiercely to force off my brother's fingers as Francis fought to get a grip on the man's throat ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... all "raw"; and my duty, with others, consisted in "licking them into shape". It was drill, drill, from morning till night; and, by early tattoo, I was always glad to crawl into my tent and go to sleep—such sleep as a man can get among scorpions, lizards, and soldier-crabs; for the little islet seemed to have within its boundaries a specimen of every reptile that came safely out of ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... England bringing General William Howe, General Henry Clinton, and General John Burgoyne, with several thousand troops to carry on the war. Every morning Miss Newville heard the drums beating the reveille and in the evening the tattoo. Many officers called at the hospitable home of Honorable Theodore Newville to enjoy the society of his charming daughter, who received them with ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... off birds.[11] In early political society most recognition is guided by such symbols. One cannot make a new king, who may be a boy, in all respects like his predecessor, who may have been an old man. But one can tattoo both of them with the same pattern. It is even more easy and less painful to attach a symbol to a king which is not a part of the man himself, a royal staff for instance, which may be decorated and enlarged ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas

... of an emblem, but it ain't. He told me the old monks that used to carve things—no matter what they carved you could always find a cross, or something like a cross in it. 'Cause they think that way, see? The same as sailors always tattoo fishes and ships and things on their arms. He said some places in the Black Forest the toymakers are French peasants and you can always tell if a fancy thing is carved by them on account of the shape of ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... Private Tom Clary, "I belave we can do bist by oursilves. Me afthernoon's lave ixpires at tattoo, but if, as me shuparior officers, ye'll allow me to be out of camp a bit longer, I think we ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis

... up the hill road, beating a tattoo of new life upon the soft, breathing air of the ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... took a good look at the victim a minute later. We found him in the car ahead, sitting on the edge of the seat and looking as if he expected to be eaten alive, without salt, any minute. You could have told that he was from extremely elsewhere at first glance. He was as different as if he had worn tattoo-marks for trousers. He was a stout party with black-rimmed eyeglasses, side whiskers that you wouldn't have believed even if you had seen them, and slabs of iron-gray hair with a pepper-and-salt traveling cap stuck on top of his head like a ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... to live in, than a soporific one. But, O my dear Sir, I must adopt your patriotism-Is not it laudable to be revived with the revival of British glory? Can I be an indifferent spectator of the triumphs of my country'? Can I help feeling a tattoo at my heart, when the Duke of Newcastle makes as great a figure in history as Burleigh or Godolphin-nay, as Queen Bess herself! She gained no battles in person; she was only the actuating genius. You seem ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... momentarily was beyond speech. The decanter from which he was trying to pour himself a drink played a musical tattoo upon his glass; his face had ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... accustomed serenity of the Queen City given place to noisy military life. Its by-ways and suburbs were dotted with tents, the phantom homes of soldiers. Men who yesterday were gentlemen, were to-day only vassals, whose existence was marked by the morning rveille and the evening tattoo. The drilling, drilling, drilling, still hourly went on; but not that peaceful exercise the inhabitants had been wont to observe in Citadel Square in days agone. Marching, guarding, countermarching, watching, were the order of the day. Some hearts were wild with enthusiasm, others dark ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott

... early days was conducted with a ceremony such as kings might have practised in international treaty. Dressed in regimentals, with coloured velvet capes lined with silk, swords clanking, buglers and drummers rattling a tattoo, the white trader walked out to meet the Indian chief. The Indian prostrated himself and presented the kingly white man with priceless furs. The white man kneeled and whiffed pipes and thanked the Sun for the privilege ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... the girl's eyes had grown bright with interest. She leaned forward, listening with eager attention. As Jack ceased, apparently she was about to speak, but there came a tattoo of knuckles on the door which caused ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge

... Tapp awoke after not more than one hour of fitful sleep. The door to the garage apartment shook under the tattoo of a heavy fist. Miss Tapp's heart thudded somewhere inside her thirty-eight-inch bosom. She lay rigid in darkness penetrated only by the glimmer ...
— Stopover Planet • Robert E. Gilbert

... muffled drum's sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo— No more on earth's parade shall meet That brave and fallen few. On Fame's eternal camping ground Their silent tents are spread And glory guards with solemn sound The ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... "Dick Tattoo" was shouted quick enough along the deck, for everyone now saw that not a moment was to be lost, as the ship had just then heeled over still more. The moment the drummer was called, all hands began tumbling ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston

... camp-fire was lighted in a grove of such trees the evening effect was a thing to remember for a lifetime. The regimental camps were all alive with diversions of different sorts from the time of the halt at the end of a march till tattoo sounded. Each had its trained pet animals, and the soldiers exhausted their skill and patience in teaching these varied tricks. One regiment had a pair of bull-terrier dogs that played a game which ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... strip-sloping bottom, came away easily, without damage to windlass or hawse-pipes. Slowly as we disappeared into Sound, the light in the hut died away. At 11.30 p.m. the ice around us started to break up, the floes playing tattoo on the ship's sides. We were out in the Sound and catching the full force of the wind. The moon broke through the clouds after midnight and showed us the pack, stretching continuously to northward, and about one mile to the south. As the pack from the southward ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... on which we first introduced them to our readers. Then taking her seat by the brightly burning lamp, she drew the letter from her pocket and read it aloud, while Alice drummed an occasional note upon the piano and Eugenia beat a tattoo upon the carpet ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes

... relieved a moment later by the brute's own strange behaviour. Suddenly, without the slightest warning, Neche plumped down upon his hind-quarters. His pricked ears drooped, and his two fore paws began to beat a sort of tattoo upon the floor. Then followed a broken whine, tremulous and blandishing, and the great head moved from side to side with that curious movement which only dogs use to express their gladness. Then the strange, three-legged beast went further. Down he threw himself full ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... toward the foot of the bed, where he regarded his mother with stolid eyes, and beat a tattoo on the bed-rail with ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... The painter, who had taken his place by her side, felt decidedly chilly and embarrassed beside his extraordinary neighbor, who amused herself "so entirely inside." Suddenly he began to beat a tattoo with his knife against his glass, drowning the uproar of the party, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... with primitive man, in Oceania and elsewhere, have imbued me with a deplorable taste for tattoo work; and I had wished to carry away on me, as a curiosity, an ornament, a specimen of the work of the Japanese tattooers, who have a delicacy ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... tribe of North American Indians, now some 3000 in number, living around the mouth of the Skeena river, British Columbia, and on the islands near the coast. They are a powerfully built people, who tattoo and wear labrets and rings in noses and ears. They are skilful fishermen, and live in large communal houses. They are divided into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... perhaps once fair, her charms had seen their prime, and the system of circles and circlets which composed her personnel had assumed a tremulous and gravitating tendency. She was habited in the height of Fan fashion. Her body was modestly invested in a thin pattern of tattoo, and a gauze-work of oil and camwood; the rest of the toilette was a dwarf pigeon-tail of fan- palm, like that of the men, and a manner of apron, white beads, and tree bark, greasy and reddened: the ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... furiously does the man also scratch his though he takes much more pains over his hair, combing and smoothing it in order to divide it well in front and display the tattoo which ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... side of his face was a curious discoloration in the skin and a long, crooked, cruel scar that ran diagonally across forehead and temple and cheek in a white, jagged seam. This discoloration was of a livid blue, about the tint of a tattoo mark. It made a patch the size of a man's hand, lying across the cheek and the side of the neck. Hiram could not keep his eyes from this mark and the white ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... men on the dead man's chest. Hey! ho! and a bottle of rum!" Faith, that's a chorus I can rattle off with zest. Gratefully it clatters upon DAVY'S tym-pa-num, Like a devil's tattoo from Death's drum! Fi! Fo! Fum! These be very parlous times for old legends of the sea. VANDERDECKEN is taboo'd, the Sea Sarpint is pooh-pooh'd, but 'tis plain as any pikestaff they can't disestablish Me! DADDY NEPTUNE may delight in the Island trim and tight, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various

... The "Lora Tattoo," or the Time of Tattooing, will be long remembered. An enthusiastic sitter celebrated the event in verse. Several lines were repeated to us by Hardy, some of which, in a sort of colloquial chant he ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... who, except for an entire want of animation, looks much like what he did in the railway-carriage—the same strong-looking man with well-marked cheek-bones, very thick brown hair and bushy brows, a skin rather tanned, and a scar on the bridge of the nose; very strong hands with a tattoo-mark showing on the wrist and an abnormal crop of hair on the back, running on to the fingers, but flawed by a scar or two. Add to this the chief thing you would recollect him by, an Elizabethan beard, and you will have all the particulars ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... heart skipped a beat and then fell to hammering a fierce tattoo as a gust of the highwayman's madness swept over me. The man had taken out a huge pocket roll of bank-notes and was running the bills over to see if there were one small enough to serve the cab-paying purpose. Obviously there was not, and with a grunt of impatience he searched again, this time ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... were happening in Troy. On the eighth morning of his eclipse Admiral Buzza was startled by a brisk step upon the stairs; the devil's tattoo was neatly struck upon his bed-room door, and the head ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... uniforms and novel ways; the sight of the ships and the use of a vocabulary that ever smacks of the sea; the call by drum and trumpet to every act of the day, from bed-rising, prayers, and breakfast, through study, recitation, drill, and recreation hours, to tattoo and taps, when every student is expected to be in bed,—was a transformation wonderful indeed; but the flow of discipline and routine are so regular and imperative that their currents are imperceptibly ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... anything a bit too slender—a bit too graceful; and he was, if anything, a bit too well groomed. He had light hair, and moustache. He had cold eyes that smiled; cold lips that smiled. He stood in the doorway, trying to accustom his eyes to the gloom within, the while playing a deft tattoo upon his booted calf with light crop that he carried in his ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne

... cocoa-nut fibre round their waists were their only clothing, but some had wreaths of flowers and green leaves round their heads, and most of them wore mother-of-pearl shells, beads, &c., round their necks and in their ears. They do not tattoo, but brand their skins. All five came, and presently three more, and then another; but seeing a large double canoe with perhaps twenty men in her coming close, we stood away. Two of our visitors chose to stay, and we have them on board now: Alsoff, a man of perhaps ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... examining some Dinka negroes brought from the White Nile, remark: "As to their psychology, what struck us first was the exaggeration of their modesty; not in a single case would the men allow us to examine their genital organs or the women their breasts; we examined the tattoo-marks on the chest of one of the women, and she remained sad and irritable for two days afterward." They add that in sexual and all other respects these people are highly moral. (Lombroso and Carrara, Archivio di Psichiatria, 1896, vol. xvii, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... said Amelia, beating a tattoo of impatience, with one hand, on the door. "You've ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... penalty of his everlasting wrath—to break down? Forbade you at your peril, to allow your frightened heart to beat the long-roll, or the tattoo?" ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... island not nearly so friendly as other savages we had met with. The men were larger, and bore a ferocious aspect. The chief wore a necklace of whales' teeth, his hair frizzled into a mop, which stood out from his head, coloured to a reddish-brown. His skin was a light brown, with no tattoo marks upon it, but shiny, as if rubbed with oil. He carried a club and spear of elaborate workmanship, and wore a cloth petticoat made from the bark of a tree, and painted with some skill in its design. His followers were similarly, but not so strikingly, ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... tell you about it? It belongs to the man that takes care of our furnace; he's got a peach of a tattoo mark on his arm. My mother told me I had to wear a sweater so I grabbed that as I went through the back hall. I always go out through the kitchen, do ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... citizens are gathered about the bivouac of the battalion at the water-works while the trumpets are sounding tattoo. A few squares away the familiar notes come floating in through the open windows of a room where Jim Drummond is lying on a most comfortable sofa, which has been rolled close to the casement, where every ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... public crier had finished his tattoo he called forth in a jerky voice, pausing in ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... room, sent no gloom to his soul. It had been a happy evening. It had cost him a hard struggle to restrain the emotion which he had felt at times; and when he withdrew, soon after the trumpets sounded tattoo, and the ladies fell to discussing him, as women will, there was but one ...
— The Deserter • Charles King

... started and continued in all the neighboring islands. Those islands are inhabited by people, natives of the same islands, called Vicayas; or by another name, Pintados—for the more prominent of the men, from their youth, tattoo their whole bodies, by pricking them wherever they are marked and then throwing certain black powders over the bleeding surface, the figures becoming indelible. But, as the chief seat of the government, and the principal ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... your friends," he began tentatively, "in the streets, you know." He paused and looked down at his own hands; he turned one palm up, showing the faint tattoo on the wrist. "I'm only a rough seafaring man," he went on. "They might think it strange—might wonder whom you had ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... no birthmarks," ses the woman, speaking very slow—and I could see she was afraid of making a mistake and losing me—"but he's got tattoo marks. He's got ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... the side-table, where I had been eating, to enjoy the sport of the search. On the first page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a man with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or practice. One was the same as the tattoo mark, "Billy Bones his fancy"; then there was "Mr. W. Bones, mate," "No more rum," "Off Palm Key he got itt," and some other snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible. I could not help wondering who it was that had "got itt," and what "itt" was that he got. ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hieroglyphics are to them as significant as our alphabetical characters. The ink with which these characters are impressed, is a sort of lampblack, prepared from the soot of burning pine, which they catch by causing it to pass through a sort of greased funnel. Having prepared this lampblack, they tattoo it into the skin, by punctures made with thorns or the teeth of fish. The young prisoners, if they seem capable of activity and service, and if they preserve an intrepid and unmoved countenance, are generally spared, unless condemned to death by the ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint

... out upon the quarter-deck beneath the awning, he pulled a large tub from under a boat turned upside down over the deck cabin; and then, while the young monkey had scrambled round to his back, and was beating a tattoo with his tiny fists on his shoulders, Banou caught up a bucket and proceeded to draw water from over the side, which he dashed into the tub. When he had nearly filled the tub he felt around with his black paws as delicately as if he was about to seize a musquito, and, clutching ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... the last lump, he thought, and the gold would be gone soon, too. But there was another and greater necessity than either of those driving him on, and, opening the gate, he quickly knocked upon the door. It was low but heavy, a repeated and insistent knock, like the muffled tattoo of a drum, and at last Miss Grayson answered, opening the door a scant four inches and staring out ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... the fearful cry of "Fire! fire!" was raised. He hurried on deck, where Jack and all the officers and crew quickly assembled. The drum beat to quarters. The men flew to their stations. The soldiers, who well knew the meaning of the tattoo, hastened on deck and fell in, according to their officers' orders, ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... in a musing mood, playing the Devil's tattoo on the library table; at last he raised his eyes, and said in a low whisper, "Are you so certain that I can ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... There was a quiet, cynical smile on his face as he sat there beating a tattoo on his ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... BULMER to me, while he inserted his thumbs in the arm-openings of his waistcoats, and drummed an approving tattoo upon his shining shirt-front, "my dear boy, I have always been your friend, and nobody knows it better than you. Many a time have I proved it to you, and I can honestly assure you that nothing gives me greater pleasure than to welcome you in ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand

... we have lost," said Athos, quietly, drawing four pistoles from his pocket and throwing them upon the table. "Come, gentlemen," said he, "they are beating the tattoo. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... like the click of a withdrawn bolt, and came first from the case at his side. A second sharp rap replied from the other raised casket, then an echoing tattoo of metallic impacts rattled and clattered in the resounding room. Each of the hundreds of caskets was adding its voice to the ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... ghost, who inhabited the Drummers' Hall, a room between the towers over the porter's lodge, and sent forth a mysterious tattoo. Sometimes he left his hall, this devilish musician, and strode along the battlements drumming and drumming, a terrible figure nine feet high. Most people were frightened, but there were those who said that the drummer was nothing more nor less than a gardener in league ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... tumbled; whistles sounded distantly; a trench mortar crashed; then the accentless tattoo of machine ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers

... were lit up like a chandelier; there was a staccato rattle of horseshoes in the stable yard, and the great gates were opening as we skimmed past in the nick of time. In another minute we were skulking in the shadow of the kitchen-garden wall while the high-road rang with the dying tattoo of galloping hoofs. ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... seems to be beyond doubt that men and women began to ornament, mutilate, paint, and tattoo themselves chiefly in order to make themselves attractive to the opposite sex—that they might court successfully, or ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... states that "a sometime headman of Senendan had two square tattoo marks on his back. This was because he ran away in a fight, and showed his back to the enemy." This explanation seems ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall

... still raged and the old house shook and creaked in the blast. The rain swirled furiously against the windows, and a swift rush of hailstones beat a fierce tattoo on the roof. Built on the summit of a hill and with only a few trees near it, the Judson mansion was but poorly protected ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... upon this staircase: in renewed excitement he hurried down the hall and, regardless of the consequence, beat a quick tattoo with his knuckles upon ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... herself back in her chair and showed them a scornful shoulder, compressing indignant lips to a straight, unlovely line, and beating out the devil's tattoo with her slipper. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... cohabitation. When a Coolie reaches the age of twenty-one, he is allowed to choose his own "Loubra." Every male who then takes unto himself a helpmate, loses a front tooth, which is knocked out of him. The natives generally tattoo their arms and breasts, but not their faces; many carry a long white wooden pin, or a feather, pierced through the thin part of the nose; and they all twist kangaroo teeth and the bones of fishes more or less in their hair. Every thing small and diminutive they call "Pickaninnie," ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... now that tore the air with this clattering bedlam of shots: the planes of the 91st Squadron were diving from the heights. They came on a steep slant that seemed marking them for crashing death against the huge cylinder flashing past. And their stabbing needles of machine-gun fire made a drumming tattoo, till the planes, with the swiftness of hawks, swept aside, formed to groups, tore on down toward the ground and then curved in great circles of speed to climb back to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... where swallows build their nests from year to year. A wilderness of weeds, tall and luxuriant, springs up to hide the stone over which Jacob Cochrane stepped daily when he issued from his door; and the polished stick with which three-year-old Patty beats a tattoo may be a round from the very chair in which he sat, expounding the Bible according to his own vision. The thickets of sweet clover and red-tipped grasses, of waving ferns and young alder bushes hide all of ugliness that belongs ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... circled the cabin, sniffing explosively at the cracks between the logs. Shady was seized with a fit of excessive shivering induced by these dread sounds, and Collins heard her hind leg-joints beating a spasmodic tattoo on the cabin floor. Then he turned ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... large legacy, even from the modest standpoint of Henri Deplis, but it impelled him towards some seemingly harmless extravagances. In particular it led him to patronize local art as represented by the tattoo-needles of Signor Andreas Pincini. Signor Pincini was, perhaps, the most brilliant master of tattoo craft that Italy had ever known, but his circumstances were decidedly impoverished, and for the sum of six hundred francs he gladly undertook to cover his client's back, from the ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... heard that he wished to see her, she thought her heart could beat no faster, but his words made that small organ tattoo against her sides like the flutter of a bird's wing in fright. She could do something for him! Oh, what joy! ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White



Words linked to "Tattoo" :   military machine, prick, prickle, drumbeat, stain, armed services, design, decoration, war machine



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