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Beak   /bik/   Listen
Beak

verb
1.
Hit lightly with a picking motion.  Synonyms: peck, pick.



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"Beak" Quotes from Famous Books



... characteristic of thin lips. The set of his mouth, his chin, his jaw, was likewise firm or harsh, with all the fierceness and indomitableness of the male—the nose also. It was the nose of a being born to conquer and command. It just hinted of the eagle beak. It might have been Grecian, it might have been Roman, only it was a shade too massive for the one, a shade too delicate for the other. And while the whole face was the incarnation of fierceness and strength, the primal melancholy from ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... of a coin by the folding downward of the plica cricopharyngeus. The muscular contraction throws the beak of the esophagoscope upward while the interposed tissue prevents the tactile appreciation of contact of the foreign body with the side of the tube after the tip has passed over the foreign body. Other folds may in rare instances act similarly in hiding a foreign body from view. ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

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

... but a piece. You know what is behind you, but you have no knowledge of what is before you.' And picking up the tobacco in his beak, the raven flew away. ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

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

... called the red and green parrot, as it helped itself up the side of its zinc cage with beak ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... also—all round. He is not small or short. No; he is long and broad,—but he is thin, very thin, like the young ice at the beginning of winter. His eyes are the colour of the summer sky. His nose is like the eagle's beak, but not so long. His mouth—I know not what his mouth is like; it is hid in a nest of hair. His words I understand not. They seem to me nonsense, but his voice is soft ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... reflected sunlight, I now perceived that he was of more than average stature. He wore no crown and no helmet, but only a crop of stiff iron grey hair brushed boldly upright. His face was stern, his nose beak-like, and his small eyes grey and piercing. Over the high back of his chair was thrown his cape, and he was clad in a jacket of white cellulose velvet buttoned to the ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... a cow might come and look into the water, and put her yellow lips down; a kingfisher, like a blue arrow, might shoot through the dark alleys over the channel, or sit on a dipping withy-bough with his beak sunk into his breast-feathers; even an otter might float downstream likening himself to a log of wood, with his flat head flush with the water-top, and his oily eyes peering quietly; and yet no panic would seize other life, as it does when ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... this warning while ye fly, That if you nibble, click,{1} or clye,{2} My sight's so dim, I cannot see, Unless while you the blunt{3} tip me: Then stay, then stay; For I shall make this music speak,{4} And bring you up before the Beak,{5} ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... reptilia and mammalia; otherwise the first mammalia would have appeared before the first birds. For if we find the first real bones of birds only in the Jura and in the Chalk-formation, they are birds with tail-spines and with teeth in the beak—hence still related to the reptilia or the sauria. The first traces of mammalia to be found in the Upper Keuper formation, and in the Jura, belong to the order of opossums or marsupialia; i.e., to that order which (excepting the echidna and the ornithorhynchus ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... They became extremely tame, and would, after a time, follow the girls about, and stalk up to the house of their own accord to be fed, their food always being placed in water, as they never feed by picking upon the ground, for which, indeed, the peculiar construction of their beak is entirely unfitted. They were perfectly fearless of the dogs, which, on their part, were too well trained to touch them; and their funny way and their extreme tameness were a source of constant ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... with its flat head and duck's beak, darted after fish, and crept up to the surface of the earth through the slimy ways ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... planed past them on level wings, uttering their harsh cries, or for a flashing moment rested so close that the blot of blood-red above their curved yellow beaks showed vividly; out to sea a gannet hung a sheer two hundred feet in air, then dropped, beak downwards.... He hit the sea like a stone with his plumage-padded breast, a column of water shot up from his meteoric fall, and he reappeared almost before it subsided with his prey already down his shaken throat. Killigrew clapped his hands in ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... a bird Slips lightly oceanward— Sail feathering smooth o'er the bay And beak that drinks the wild spray. In his eyes beams cheerily A light like the sun's on the sea, As he watches the waning strand, Where the foam, like a waving hand Of one who mutely would tell Her ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... mavis, I sing on the branches early, And such my love of song, I sleep but half the night-tide rarely; No raven I, of greedy maw, no kite of bloody beak, No bird of devastating claw, but a woodland songster meek. I love the apple's infant bloom; my ancestry have fared For ages on the nourishment the orchard hath prepared: Their hey-day was the summer, their joy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Beak: any notable prolongation of the front of the head: the snout in Rhynchophora: specifically, the jointed structure covering the lancets in ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... shivering with rapture and with terror, mounts into the high saddle; cramps himself on, with knees, heels, hands and feet; and the horse gallops—whither it lists. That the Right Honorable Zero should attempt controlling the horse—Alas, alas, he, sticking on with beak and claws, is too happy if the horse will only gallop any-whither, and not throw him. Measure, polity, plan or scheme of public good or evil, is not in the head of Felicissimus; except, if he could but devise it, some measure that would please his horse for the moment, and encourage him to go ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... Goettingen, produced in 1828 a bass clarinet with a compass extending from Ab to F, nineteen keys and a fingering the same as that of the clarinet with but few exceptions. In form it resembled the fagotto and had a crook terminating in a beak mouthpiece. The Streitwolf bass clarinet was adopted in 1834 by the Prussian infantry as bass to the wood-wind.[5] Streitwolf's first bass clarinets were in C, but later he constructed instruments in Bb as well. Like the basset horn, Streitwolf's instruments had the four ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... be banished. Once she had made a pet of a magpie, but the bird's habits had forced her to dispose of it. She remembered the way it forever pried into things; how nothing was safe from that sharp beak and inquisitive eye. Its waking hours had been busied in a tireless, furtive search for forbidden objects. Now she could not help likening her mother to the bird, although the thought shocked her. There was the same sly angle ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... a sirloin of beef, which must have been one of the most common, and ending with a swan, which appeared on table in full plumage. This last was the triumph of cookery, inasmuch as it presented this magnificent bird to the eyes of the astonished guests just as if he were living and swimming. His beak was gilt, his body silvered, resting 'on a mass of brown pastry, painted green in order to represent a grass field. Eight banners of silk were placed round, and a cloth of the same material served as a carpet for the whole dish, which towered ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... one of the ferocious birds darted right at the balloon, with outstretched beak and claws, ready to rend ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... roughly constructed of sticks among the shrubs, were a number of frigate birds (the Tachypetes Aquila). He is a magnificent fellow, allied in some respect to the cormorant, but with shorter legs, and having a forked tail. His plumage is a rich empurpled black, and the beak, both mandibles of which are curved at the tips, is red. His wings are of immense length, and his power of flight is wonderful. He can fish perfectly well for himself, but he is a most irreclaimable pirate, and likes to watch till other birds have seized their prey, and ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... glory will never die. Have done; have done; show the sharp beak of the eagle where it is to devour my entrails. But hear me ... No, hear nothing; you ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

... each hand. By extending her arms at full width she gave the impression of wings and flapped wildly round the lawn, the illusion being furthered by a brown-paper head-dress with a long twist to resemble a beak. ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil

... thought she had hit upon a good plan, and I should have thought so too. It was a good idea to mention the discovery of Agricola Baudoin in the madcap's room, for it made the Indian tiger roar with savage jealousy. Yes: but then the dove began to coo, and hold out her pretty beak, and the foolish tiger sheathed his claws, and rolled on the ground before her. It's a pity, for there was some sense ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... a brave chick,' said the old biddy, as she went clucking through the grass, with her gray turban wagging in the wind. Speckle had hopped away from a toad with a startled chirp, which caused aunt to utter that remark. The words had hardly left her beak, when a shadow above made her look up, give one loud croak of alarm, and then scuttle away, as fast as legs ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... inevitable; but its Moorish commander, Mirat, though an infidel, was, for his nobility of character, in special favor with the Virgin,—Notre Dame de Puy.[23] In this extremity, she sent to him an eagle bearing in its beak a live fish; and Mirat promptly sent it to Charlemagne, to show his heavenly succor. The king, knowing that there was no possible fishing on the castle hill, perceived that it was a miracle; and lessening his ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... that the chicken grows the horny tip to its beak with which it ultimately pecks its way out of its shell, because it remembers having grown it before, and the use it made of it. We say that it made it on the same principles as a man makes a spade or a hammer, that is to say, as the joint result both of desire and ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

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

... tobacco, who sat stiffly in a great high chair because his hip was broken. He was probably a bit lazy and given to wassail. At any rate, grandmother had a shrewish tongue and often berated him. This grandmother was Sarah—"Aunt Sally"—a stern, tall, Dutch-African woman, beak-nosed, but beautiful-eyed and golden-skinned. Ten or more children were theirs, of whom the ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... watched the bold swimmer and the savage reptile. There could be little doubt that the creature weighed a hundred pounds. It is the strongest for its size and the fiercest of all reptiles. Its jaws, though toothless, have cutting edges, a sharp beak, and power to the crushing of bones. Its armour makes it invulnerable to birds and beasts of prey. Like a log it lay on the beach, with its long alligator tail stretched up the bank and its serpentine head and tiny wicked eyes vigilantly watching the shore. Its shell, broad and ancient, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

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

... flavoured sauce. Give your lord the left wing, and if he wantit, the right one too. Pheasants, &c.: take off the wings, put them in the dish, then the legs. Woodcocks, Heronshaws, Brew, &c. break the pinions, neck, and beak. Cut off the legs, then the wings, lay the body between them. Crane: take off the wings, but not the trompe in his breast. Peacocks, &c.: carve like you do the Crane, keeping their feeton. Quails, larks, pigeons: ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... black-birds, woodcocks, little partridges, plovers, curlieus and turtle-doves, in great numbers; and also incredible flocks of wild geese, ducks, teal, snipes, and rice-birds. There has been found here, nigh rivers, a bird of an amazing size, some think it a species of the pelican. Under its beak, which is very long, it is furnished with a large bag, which it contracts or lets loose at pleasure, to answer the necessities or conveniences of life. The summer duck is a well known and beautiful creature, and has got this name to distinguish it from others of the same ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... clock. It had been nine minutes, and I could n't think what to do the other dreadful minutes till Miss Denison should come back. At last my eye fell on the blackboard, and that gave me an idea. I drew a hen's beak and then a duck's, a hen's foot and then a duck's, to show them the difference. Just then Miss Denison came in softly, and I confess I was bursting with pride and delight. There was the blackboard with the sketches, not very good ones, it is true, the clay hen ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... who during the whole of that day had seemed to take little interest in the proceedings, here rose from his seat, and I knew at once that he had got a tit-bit in the way of a 'point' up his sleeve. Gaunt, and unusually tall, and with his beak-like nose, he always looks strangely impressive when he seriously tackles a witness. He did it this time with a vengeance, I can tell you. He was all over the pompous little jeweller ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... lies: The film is on his gentle eyes; His pretty beak is parted wide, And blood is ...
— The Tiny Story Book. • Anonymous

... neighbor: "Good morning, pretty lady, always pretty; I, a pretty lady, always pretty, come from that pretty lady, always pretty" (here she points to the girl on her left), "to tell you that she owns an eagle with a golden beak." ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman

... Sue, who happened to be wearing a red dress, came near the yard, a big turkey gobbler, who seemed to be the king of the barnyard, rushed to the gate, managed to push his way through the crack, and, a moment later, was attacking Sue, biting her legs with his strong beak, now pulling at her red dress, and occasionally flying up from the ground trying to strike his claws ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope

... confusion; toy canoes from Kamchatka and the Southern seas; wooden masks from the burial places of the Alaskan Indians and the Theban Tombs of the Nile Kings; rude fish-hooks that had been dropped in the coral seas; sharks' teeth; and the strong beak of an albatross whose webbed feet were tobacco pouches and whose hollow wing-bones were the long jointed stem of a pipe; spears and war-clubs were there, brought from the gleaming shores of reef-girdled islands; ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard

... avoiding the unpleasant alternative of being eaten, is a motive that goes far and explains much. The haps and mishaps of the hungry make up natural history. The eye of the eagle is developed that it may see its prey from afar, its wings are strong that it may pounce upon it, its beak and talons are sharpened that it may tear it in pieces. By right of these superiorities, the eagle reigns as king ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers

... prophet, "and fall on your knees and pray! Yes, pray! for I tell you the Holy Ghost appeared to me, His wings dripping with blood, and in His burning and flaming beak He held this picture which ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... Harpy, she, a Bird of Prey, Who on her slaughtering skyey way, Beak-striketh and claw-clutcheth. But Ladies who own not her sway, Will you not lift white hands to stay The shameless slaughter which to-day Your sex's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various

... fury. And after the thunder came a, shower; and of a truth I tell thee, Kay, that it was such a shower as neither man nor beast could endure and live. I turned my horse's flank toward the shower, and placed the beak of my shield over his head and neck, while I held the upper part of it over my own neck. And thus I withstood the shower. And presently the sky became clear, and with that, behold, the birds lighted upon the tree, and sang. And truly, Kay, I never heard ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... looked after him, sighed, walked up to a golden wire cage, on one side of which a green parrot was carefully holding on with its beak and claws. She teased it a little with the tip of her finger, then dropped on to a narrow couch, and picking up a number of the "Revue des Deux Mondes" from a round carved table, began turning ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev

... duckling get into mortal trouble, its mother will just signify her sorrow by an extra "quack," or so, and a flapping of her wings; but touch a wild duck's little one if you dare! she will buffet you with her broad wings, and dash boldly at your face with her stout beak. If you search for her nest amongst the long grass, she will try no end of manoeuvres to lure you from it, her favourite ruse being to pretend lameness, to delude you into the notion that you have only to pursue her vigorously, and her capture is certain; so you persevere for half ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... though, when I looked across the table, for at the side of the poet was an odious individual, Paul de St. Victor. His cheeks looked like two bladders from which the oil they contained was oozing out. His nose was sharp and like a crow's beak, his eyes evil-looking and hard; his arms were too short, and he was too stout. He ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... onocratylus, or pelican, a fowl between a stork and a swan—a melancholy water-fowl brought from Astracan by the Russian ambassador." This writer tells us, "It was diverting to see how the pelican would toss up and turn a flat fish, plaice or flounder, to get it right into its gullet at its lower beak, which being filmy stretches to a prodigious wideness when it devours a great fish. Here was also a small water-fowl, not bigger than a more-hen, that went almost quite erect like the penguin of America. It would eate as much ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... her gorgeous wings wearily. Now that I saw her awake and moving I noticed what a superior, well-bred manner she had. There were tears in her eyes and her beak was trembling. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting

... down and peering into chinks for him; and all for the luxury—not of knowledge, but of love and marriage. The mocking-bird had no rest whatever. Back and forth from dawn to dark, back and forth across and across Grande Pointe clearing, always one way empty and the other way with his beak full of marketing; and then sitting up on an average half the night—sometimes the whole of it—at his own concert. And with military duties too; patrolling the earth below, a large part of it, and all the upper air; driving off the weasel, the black snake, the hawk, the jay, the buzzard, the ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable

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

... description. The usual length is about twenty-five feet, and one of this size carries from seven to ten people. The body is formed by the hollowed-out trunk of a tree, tapering and rising at each end, short and rounded behind, but in front run out into a long beak. A stout plank on each side raises the canoe a foot, forming a gunwale secured by knees, the seam at the junction being payed over with a black pitch-like substance. This gunwale is open at the ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... an isolated fact. From the fish was evolved the amphibian. From this came the lizard. From the lizard came the bird. The lizard has solid teeth in its mouth. The bird has no teeth in its beak. That is to say, it has none to-day. But it had when it was a lizard. Here, then we have an intermediate stage between the fish and the bird. We must expect that the bird embryo in the egg will show some trace ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte

... there was a horny beak, like a parrot's, in the mouth, and that on the under side of the head was a ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... Philemon in greater numbers than anywhere else. The best places were quickly taken, the hollows in the trees, the holes in the walls, the forks of the apple-trees and the elms, and you could see a brown beak, like the point of a sword, sticking out of a wisp of straw between all the rafters of the roof. One year, when all the places were taken, I suppose, a tomtit, in her embarrassment, spied the slit of the letter-box protected by its little roof, at the right of ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various

... show his gratitude to me, so I thanked him, and examined the bird. It was larger and longer in the body than a common duck—a species of gannet—with a brown body, and under-part white, and a long beak; its expression of countenance indicating, I declared, the excessive stupidity it is said to possess. Several of the passengers crowded round to have a look at the stranger, and while thus engaged I was startled by hearing Mr Waller, who ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... approval, and drew from the depths of her cupboard a little glass inkstand, a rusty penholder, and a sheet of paper, at the top of which was a dove with a twig in its beak. ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... several against each other is sufficient to send off a number of ripe fruits in every direction. Like many other plants we have seen, this has more than one way of scattering seeds, and often more than two ways. Observe the slender, stiff beak, terminating in two recurved points. Let a person or some animal pass into a patch of these plants, and at once numerous fruits catch on wherever there is a chance, and some are shot upon or into the fleeces of animals, there to ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal

... visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected a typical country practitioner. He was a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak, which jutted out between two keen, gray eyes, set closely together and sparkling brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly fashion, for his frock-coat was dingy and ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle

... stretched his wings, pressing against her cheek with his breast, tipping forward on his pink feet, until his beak reached the crumb and he ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... An ostrich's beak is short and blunt; its neck slender and covered with gray down. Its eyes are large and bright, and the sense of sight so keen that it can readily see a distance of from four to six miles. It hears and sees equally well, and can only ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... compartment was again a cage, containing a bird, and on the branch of a tree under which the cage was placed, perched another bird, with fluttering wings and open beak; underneath was written— ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... he reported to Cochrane when he slipped from the sling in the airlock. "There's no question about it when you are close. It's more nearly a bird than anything else. It was warm-blooded. It has a beak. There are penguins on Earth that have ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... all-glorious, of course. She certainly looked like an old vulture, in a pelisse of gray velvet, with a chinchilla boa round her long, bare neck, and her big beak, with marabouts overshadowing it, of the same color. Monsieur de Talbrun —well! Monsieur de Talbrun was very bald, as bald as he could be. To make up for the want of hair on his head, he has plenty of it on his hands. It is horrid, and it makes him look like an animal. You have no idea how ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon

... lighting on the stock, Stood chattering with incessant din: And with her beak gave many a knock, To rouse and ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... wings, and with a dive swooped into the glade. He alighted near Deering's dead body. He was a dark, uncanny bird, with long, scraggy, bare neck, a wreath of white, grizzled feathers, a cruel, hooked beak, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... time that a caricature was circulated in Rome, representing Sixtus as King Stork and the Romans as frogs vainly attempting to escape from his devouring beak. Merito haec patimur, "We suffer deservedly," was the legend of the picture, and the moral it conveyed was a true one. Rome was in such a state as to require the harshest applications, and the despotic severity of Sixtus did much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... preserved a finished elegance and dignity, and regained at times its full perfection when some effort of the soul restored its pristine purity. The most noticeable feature in this strong face was the nose, aquiline as the beak of an eagle, and so sharply curved at the middle as to give the idea of an interior malformation; yet there was an air of indescribable delicacy about it, and the partition between the nostrils was so thin that a rosy ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... late in the afternoon when the case was called on after a number of others, but the sixth chamber was crowded with journalists and barristers, as it always was on Fridays, when Delesvaux—a man with hawk-like features and a flaming complexion—would sit "tearing up newspaper articles with beak and talons," as Emile de Girardin said of him. Just before Gambetta rose, Delesvaux observed, "I suppose you have not much to say; so it will hardly be worth while to have the gas lighted." "Never mind the gas, sir, I will throw light enough on this affair," answered Gambetta; and it was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... not so fair Or bright as one the ripe midsummer brings. The first faint note the forest warbler sings Is not as rich with feeling, or so rare As when, full master of his art, the air Drowns in the liquid sea of song he flings Like silver spray from beak, and breast, and wings. The artist's earliest effort, wrought with care, The bard's first ballad, written in his tears, Set by his later toil, seems poor and tame, And into nothing dwindles at the test. So with the passions of maturer years. Let those who will demand the first fond flame, Give ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

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

... a fox to a crane, "That face, ma'am of yours is remarkably plain; That beak that you wear is so frightful a feature, It makes you appear a most singular creature." The crane, much offended at what she had heard, March'd off at full speed, without saying a word: "Oh dear!" said the fox, "Mrs. Crane, I protest You misunderstand ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park

... appreciate snow, but they are very fond of iced beverages. A tom-tit, who often drinks water from a saucer which we put on our window-sill, one day found the water frozen. What did the intelligent creature do? Why, it rapped on the window-pane with its beak till the window was opened, then hopped on to the sideboard, and began trying to peck the cork out of a whiskey bottle! I took the hint, and poured some of the spirit into the saucer; the bird drank it greedily! My wife's comment on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various

... naught its superb visual alertness, the sand crab has a special enemy in the bird policeman which patrols the beach. Vigilant and obnoxiously interfering, the policeman has a long and curiously curved beak, designed for probing into the affairs of crabs, and unless the "hatter" has hastily stopped the mouth of its shaft with a bundle of loose sand—which to the prying bird signifies "Out! Please return after lunch!"—will be ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... than as actively pursuing them, for the females seemed themselves almost as active agents in the sport of being wooed as were their lovers in wooing them. The male bird first dipped down his head till his beak just touched the water, then raised it again in a constrained and tense manner,—the curious rigid action so frequent in the nuptial antics of birds,—at the same time uttering his strange haunting note. The air became filled with it; every moment one or other of the birds—sometimes ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... stripped branches of a hornbeam, an orange-tinted woodpecker was darting to and fro, as though caught in the mesh of foliage, and, in company with a troupe of nimble titmice and blue tree-creepers (visitors from the far-distant North), tapping the bark of the stem with a black beak, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... obey. I make it that he was only to use this if after long examination it was found by a wise, just man that I had done after my enemies' hopes. I make it that here across Ocean-Sea, far, far from Spain, he chose not to wait. He clucked to him all the disaffected and flew with a strong beak at the eyes of my friends." He moved his arms and his chains clanked. "I make it that this severity is Don Francisco de Bobadilla's, not King Ferdinand's, not—oh, ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... against one of the ship's boats. I seized the gunwale and said, 'Steady her, please, while I climb in,' but had no answer. The boat, apparently, had torn loose from her davits and gone voyaging alone. But as I made to climb in I was fiercely attacked in the face by the wings, beak, and claws of Jaffray's graceless parrot. In the first surprise and discomfiture I let go and sank. Coming up, choking with brine and fury, I overcame resistance with a backhanded blow, and tumbled over the gunwale into the ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... I approach the bird, His beak Lorito opens; Lorito's wings outspread, Lorito opens his beak, A little piece of parsley ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica

... pluck a few feathers from the under part of the leg; if the skin is not discolored the bird is fresh. The age may be known by placing the thumb into the beak, and holding the bird up with the jaw apart; if it breaks it is young; if not, it is old, and requires longer keeping ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil

... liquid which was, of course, replaced at once by air. We then reversed the flask with the opening under the mercury, and shook it every ten minutes for more than an hour. Wishing to make sure, to begin with, that the oxygen had been absorbed we connected under the mercury the beak of the flask by means of a thin india-rubber tube filled with water, with a small flask, the neck of which had been drawn out and was filled with water; we then raised the large flask with the smaller kept above ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... and scent, Right to his mark the monster went— Ah, Muse! forbear to speak Minute the horror that ensued; His teeth were strong, the cage was wood— He left poor Bully's beak. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... the rafters of the roof with the flat of his palms. The peat fire was smouldering on the floor, and the reek made its way out at the rigging. Alastair himself, a tall stooped man with a red beard and a thin beak of a nose, brought peats and threw ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... of the article quoted: "The justice of these remarks cannot, I think, be disputed. If, for instance, a bird of some {60} kind could procure its food more easily by having its beak curved, and if one were born with its beak strongly curved, and which consequently flourished, nevertheless there would be a very poor chance of this one individual perpetuating its kind to the exclusion of the common form." This admission seems almost to amount to a ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... with roses and honeysuckles. They were gathered irregularly about a gate of curious old ironwork, opening on the churchyard, but more like an entrance to the grounds behind the church, for it told of ancient state, bearing on each of its pillars a great stone heron with a fish in its beak. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... Silence! Deep silence! Save for the chortle of the night-jar, the tap of the snipe's beak against the tree-trunks, the snores of a weary game-keeper, the chirp of the burying-beetle, the croak of the bat, the wild laughter of the owl and the boom, boom of the frog, deep silence reigned. The crescent moon stole silently above the horizon. Wonderful, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... words (of the king), the Muni controlling his outer senses entered into meditation, sitting in the shade of that very mango tree where he was. And there fell upon the lap of the seated Muni a mango that was juicy and untouched by the beak of a parrot or any other bird. That best of Munis, taking up the fruit and mentally pronouncing certain mantras over it, gave it unto the king as the means of his obtaining an incomparable offspring. And the great Muni, possessed also of extraordinary wisdom, addressing the monarch, said,—"Return, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... no session of the Chamber that day,—Marianne was seated in her little salon. She was warming the tips of her slippers, that furtively peeped from beneath the lace of her skirt as a little bird might protrude its beak from a nest, her right leg crossed over the other, and she appeared to be musing, her chin ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... a common fowl. It is an active creature which runs about and sometimes flies. It has a body covered with feathers, provided with two wings and two legs, and ending at one end in a neck terminated by a head with a beak, between the two parts of which the mouth is placed. The hen lays eggs, each of which is inclosed in a hard shell. If you break an egg the contents flow out and are seen to consist of the colorless glairy "white" and the yellow "yolk." ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... net, behold, the male bird's foot caught in the meshes and he began to struggle; whereupon all the other birds took fright and flew away. But presently his mate came back and hovered over him, then alighted on the toils unobserved by the fowler, and fell to pecking with her beak and pulling at the mesh in which the male bird's foot was tangled, till she released the toes and they flew away together. Then the fowler came up, mended his net and seated himself afar off. After an hour or so the birds flew back and the female pigeon was caught in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... entrance, he rose and faced them. When he stood erect the sturdiness of his build became accentuated, and they saw he was a man of medium height, but so muscular that he looked much shorter. A pair of large tortoise-shell spectacles straddled a big beak-like nose, and he wore a heavyish blond moustache with its points trained upwards and outwards rather after the fashion made famous in the Fatherland by William Hohenzollern. In his ill-cut suit of cheap-looking ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine

... of the Fire Spirits. She had a long way to go, for the Fire-King held his court in the very centre of the earth, and she might have lost herself in the dark passages had not the glowworm lent her his lamp. She had saved him once when a hungry bird would have carried him off in her beak, and from that time the glowworm had loved the gentle fairy, and always burned brightest when she ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker

... than a hundred well-marked races. The most noteworthy of these races are, the four great stocks known to the "fancy" as tumblers, pouters, carriers, and fantails; birds which not only differ most singularly in size, colour, and habits, but in the form of the beak and of the skull: in the proportions of the beak to the skull; in the number of tail-feathers; in the absolute and relative size of the feet; in the presence or absence of the uropygial gland; in the number of vertebrae in the back; in short, in precisely those characters ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley

... curiosity, then with hate, then with terror, and lastly—how can I express myself?—with a sort of hellish humor that in another moment might have broken into something like a laugh, if the bird, which I had failed to observe up to this moment, had not waked in its high cage, and, thrusting its beak between the bars, shrilled out in the most alarming of tones: 'Remember Evelyn!' That startled the old man even more than the sight on the floor had done. He turned round, and I saw his fist rise as if against some menacing intruder, but it quickly fell again as his eyes encountered ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... the ground Crept a movement; rose a sound: Everywhere the silence ticked As with hands of things that picked At the loam, or in the dew,— Elvish sounds that crept or flew,— Beak-like, pushing ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein

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

... Pomyeshchick, A very old man Wearing long white moustaches (He seems to be all white); His cap, broad and high-crowned, Is white, with a peak, In the front, of red satin. His body is lean 160 As a hare's in the winter, His nose like a hawk's beak, His eyes—well, they differ: The one sharp and shining, The other—the left eye— Is sightless and blank, Like a dull leaden farthing. Some woolly white poodles With tufts on their ankles Are ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... of the ibis is this:—it is a deep black all over, and has legs like those of a crane and a very curved beak, and in size it is about equal to a rail: this is the appearance of the black kind which fight with the serpents, but of those which most crowd round men's feet (for there are two several kinds of ibises) the head is bare and also the whole of the throat, and it is white in feathering ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus

... dollar or the little carnelian ring, which were tightly clenched in one hand, I sprang down from the bureau. Running up the wire flower-stand below the cage, I shook my fist directly under his beak. It only made him noisier than ever, and he flew about ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston

... things. A sleepy child will rather believe that the Queen of the Fairies is acting sentry upon the knob of the bedpost than that an angel stands at the head of the cot with great wings spread in protection—wings which suggest the probability of claws and a beak to match. ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... in, a tall, slim, withered old man, with a nose like an eagle's beak, and eyes that still burned in their deep sockets, under white and bushy brows. His mouth, toothless but still refined, was lost to sight between his moustaches and snowy beard; and his hair, crowning him whitely like an aureola, fell in curls over his shoulders. Behind him with all ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... a fresh bark and darted towards a gigantic bird which had swooped down. It was a vulture. When Serko ran towards it, it rose, but returning struck at the dog. The latter leapt up at it. A blow from the formidable beak alighted on his head, and this time Serko fell back lifeless on ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... Just at that moment there was a cry of "cock forward." I thought it meant a cock pheasant, and was astonished when I saw a beautiful brown bird with a long beak flitting towards me through the tops of ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... the heifer dead and bleeding fresh And sees fast by a butcher with an axe But will suspect 't was he that made the slaughter? Who finds the partridge in the puttock's nest But may imagine how the bird was dead, Although the kite soar with unbloodied beak? Even so ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... you tell me no one had been here? (Shakes his finger at her.) My little song-bird must never do that again. A song-bird must have a clean beak to chirp with—no false notes! (Puts his arm round her waist.) That is so, isn't it? Yes, I am sure it is. (Lets her go.) We will say no more about it. (Sits down by the stove.) How warm and snug it is ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen

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

... the secret garden that morning, and in the midst of them came a delight more delightful than all, because it was more wonderful. Swiftly something flew across the wall and darted through the trees to a close grown corner, a little flare of red-breasted bird with something hanging from its beak. Dickon stood quite still and put his hand on Mary almost as if they had suddenly found ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... This thriving beak, drew the attention of the legislature, who were determined to prune the exorbitant shoot. For in 1465 we find an order of council, prohibiting the growth of the shoe toe, to more than two inches, under the ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... at the smoked image on the wall, and collecting, between his thumb and finger, a pinch of hair on his upper lip began to saw at it with his knife. His large yellow teeth were displayed, and the appearance of a beak was so effectively presented by the protruded lip that words came from behind it with the uncanny sound of a parrot; but it did not occur ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... to sweep it with torch and spear, they succeeded in capturing, in a dark alder-o'ershaded pool, a monstrous individual, nearly three feet in length, and proportionally bulky, with a snout bent over the lower jaw at its symphysis, like the beak of a hawk, and as deeply tinged (though with more of brown in its complexion) as the blackest coal-fish I ever saw. It must have been a bull-trout, a visitor from the neighbouring river; but we all concluded at the time, from the extreme dinginess of its coat, that it had lived ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... floating feathers, a heavy weight struck the springy earth. There lay the big mottled bird, splendid silky ruffs spread, dead eyes closing, a single tiny crimson bead twinkling like a ruby on the gaping beak. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... black-bearded, dark-eyed, beak-nosed native strolled into the Lahore Museum, in the Punjab; he carried a massive five-foot-long stick with a crook handle, and studded with short brass-headed nails from handle to ferrule. He sauntered about until he came to a case containing ancient daggers and swords, which arrested ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... in its black and chestnut coat on the fresh green sward; and thinking it numbed by the cold I picked it up. It moved its legs feebly, but alas! its enemy had found and struck it down, and with its hard, sharp little beak had drilled a hole in one of the upper plates of its abdomen, and from that small opening had cunningly extracted all the meat. Though still alive it was empty as a blown eggshell. Poor queen and mother, you survived the winter in vain, and went abroad ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... their austerities in a future life. One such was pointed out to us, who had never left the Eremo for more than fifty years, a tall, very gaunt, very meagre old man with white hair, hollow cheeks, and parchment skin, a nose like an eagle's beak, and deep-set burning eyes—as typical a figure, in its way, as the rosy mountain of a man whom we met travelling down ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... a drake, and he had once been white, but old age and Arrowfield soot and the dirty little black yard where he generally lived had changed his tint most terribly, and though he plunged in, and bobbed and jerked the water all over his back, and rubbed the sides of his head and his beak all among his ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn



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