Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Briar   /brˈaɪər/   Listen
Briar

noun
1.
Eurasian rose with prickly stems and fragrant leaves and bright pink flowers followed by scarlet hips.  Synonyms: brier, eglantine, Rosa eglanteria, sweetbriar, sweetbrier.
2.
A very prickly woody vine of the eastern United States growing in tangled masses having tough round stems with shiny leathery leaves and small greenish flowers followed by clusters of inedible shiny black berries.  Synonyms: brier, bullbrier, catbrier, greenbrier, horse-brier, horse brier, Smilax rotundifolia.
3.
Evergreen treelike Mediterranean shrub having fragrant white flowers in large terminal panicles and hard woody roots used to make tobacco pipes.  Synonyms: brier, Erica arborea, tree heath.
4.
A pipe made from the root (briarroot) of the tree heath.  Synonym: briar pipe.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Briar" Quotes from Famous Books



... another settlement in America, and for colonists he would have all these down-trodden and oppressed. He would gather, if he might, only those who when helped would help themselves—who when given opportunity would rise out of old slough and briar. He was personally open to the appeal of still another class of unfortunate men. He had seen upon the Continent the distress of the poor and humble Protestants in Catholic countries. Folk of this kind—from France, from Germany—had been ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... you will agree that tribulation is every such thing as troubleth and grieveth a man either in body or mind, and is as it were the prick of a thorn, a bramble, or a briar thrust into his flesh or into his mind. And surely, cousin, the prick that very sore pricketh the mind surpasseth in pain the grief that paineth the body, almost as far as doth a thorn sticking in the heart ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... believe you," said the other, a stolid Englishman with a briar pipe, "he struck me as an exceptionally ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... Sophia was helping her. Peace and tranquility brooded over the Glen; the sky was fleeced over with silvery, shining clouds. Rainbow Valley lay in a soft, autumnal haze of fairy purple. The maple grove was a burning bush of colour and the hedge of sweet-briar around the kitchen yard was a thing of wonder in its subtle tintings. It did not seem that strife could be in the world, and Susan's faithful heart was lulled into a brief forgetfulness, although she had lain ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... where he sat I found Mr. Fethertonge the agent wid him: he had a night-cap on, an' was sittin' in a big armchair, wid one of his feet an' a leg swaythed wid flannel. I thought he was goin' to write or sign papers. 'Well, M'Mahon,' says he—for he was always as keen as a briar, an' knew me at once—'what do you want? an' what has brought you from the country?' I then spoke to him about the new lease; an' he said to Fethertonge, 'prepare M'Mahon's lease, Fothertonge;—you shall have a new lease, M'Mahon. ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... "A little briar-torn, I'm afraid. Those big beech woods are rather a puzzle to anybody who is not familiar with the country. No wonder she became frightened when it ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... hundred times had met On hill-path or at crossing of the weir, Her beauty broke on him like some rare flower That was not yesterday. Ev'n so the Spring Unclasps the girdle of its loveliness Abruptly, in the North here: long the drifts Linger in hollows, long on bough and briar No slight leaf ventures, lest the frost's keen tooth Nip it, and then all suddenly the earth Is nought but scent and bloom. So unto him Griselda's grace unclosed. Where lagged his wit That guessed not of the bud that slept in stem, ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... high-backed, rooted about, and chickens clucked noisily as they picked at the refuse scattered here and there. Three or four natives were lounging about the verandah. When Lawson asked for Brevald the old man's cracked voice called out to him, and he found him in the sitting-room smoking an old briar pipe. ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... more than they had puzzled Archie in the morning; for she wanted to keep her way, which he did not. She lost it, however, continually. Her eyes were scratched by boughs and brambles, the tree roots tripped her up, her dress caught in a briar and was torn. "Archie! Archie!" she cried, as she went along. Her voice came back from the forest in strange echoing tones which made her start. At last, after winding and turning for a long time, she found herself again upon the main path, not ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... Katharine Dear Lady Bountiful My Love's but a Lassie The Briar Bush Maid The House on the Bogs The Heiress of Wyke Pat the Adventurer The Wild Adventure Miss Phipps The Face ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... about the lower portion of the Raven Hill estate we stumbled quite by accident into Dark Forest, vaguely hinted at by the negroes as a place to be avoided. This Dark Forest is a large tract of scrub oak, birch and holly, with dense undergrowths of briar; the haunt of innumerable small birds that dart in and out, chirping faintly. In its depressed portions the 'forest' has degenerated into a marsh through which a sluggish stream wends it way to the distant river. Slimy reptiles bask in the warm sun and glide lazily over the ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... straying fingerlets, that clutched At good and bad, they so did glove, That they might pick the flowers of love, Unscathed, from every briar ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... that would take him from his engine—from the open fields and free, wide world in which they lived and moved together—to the cares and anxieties of a stuffy office. He had been contented and happy with Blackwings, his books and his briar-root pipe. He did not share the troubles of his less fortunate brothers, who hugged and exaggerated their grievances until they became, to them, unbearable. But when they quit he climbed down, took off his overclothes, folded them carefully and carried them away with him. ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman

... aye, thrice daily—well, call it six, then—do I make burnt offering. Now some use censers of clay, others employ censers of rare white earth finely carved and decked with silver and gold. My particular censer, as you see, is a plain, honest briar, a root dug from the banks of the blue Garonne, whose only glory is its grain and color. The original tint, if you remember, was like that of new-cut cedar, but use—I've been smoking this one only two years now—has given it gloss and depth of tone ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... in the lower chancel, And William in the higher: Out of her brest there sprang a rose, And out of his a briar. ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards

... the sky once more a pure lucid blue above me—all around me, in fact, since I am standing high on the top of the ancient stupendous earthwork, grown over with oak wood and underwood of holly and thorn and hazel with tangle of ivy and bramble and briar. It is marvellously still; no sound from the village reaches me; I only hear the faint rustle of the dead leaves as they fall, and the robin, for one spied me here and has come to keep me company. At ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... antelope hide pouch of native workmanship. He emptied out a little pile of greenish-brown flakes into the palm of his hand. It was curious, dusty-looking stuff, suggestive of discoloured bran. This he poured into the bowl of a well-worn briar, the mouthpiece of which he carefully and with accuracy adjusted into the corner ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... off the beat, isn't it?" mused my acquaintance, as sheltered from the keen wind I began to load my briar. "Very inconvenient I've always thought it for a gentleman who gets about ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... the following measures may be taken as nearly correct; it is simply impossible to determine any exact rule, even for bituminous coal of the same district: Briar Hill coal, 44.8 cubic feet per ton of 2,240 pounds; Pittsburgh, 47.8; Wilmington, Ill., 47; Indiana block coal, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... stream is overhung and invisible, or dammed and left in soak, breeding frogs, gnats, and flies. The trees are always tall and beautifully grown, whatever their age, for the moisture and warmth force vertical growth; the smaller bushes—hawthorn, briar, and wild guelder-rose—also assume graceful forms unhidden, for they always bow their heads towards the sun-reflecting stream. Part of the charm of the transformation of these brookside jungles into the brookside garden lies in the gradual and experimental method ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... field which is called Lower Haycock, lying one mile to the westward of the village of Withyham, upon the Kent and Sussex border. It was on the fifteenth of September last that an agricultural labourer, James Flynn, in the employment of Mathew Dodd, farmer, of the Chauntry Farm, Withyham, perceived a briar pipe lying near the footpath which skirts the hedge in Lower Haycock. A few paces farther on he picked up a pair of broken binocular glasses. Finally, among some nettles in the ditch, he caught sight of a flat, canvas-backed book, ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... sat on the edge of the dear Old Briar-patch, staring up into the sky with his head tipped back until it made his neck ache. Way, way up in the sky was a black speck sailing across the snowy white face of a cloud. It didn't seem possible that it could be alive way up there. But it was. Peter knew that it was, and he ...
— Mother West Wind "How" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess

... pine | in my grove | is there seen, But with ten | -drils of wood | -bine is bound; Not a beech | 's more beau | -tiful green, But a sweet | -briar twines | it around, Not my fields | in the prime | of the year More charms | than my cat | -tle unfold; Not a brook | that is lim | -pid and clear, But it glit | -ters with fish ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... in the darkness and the mire, through clumps of whin and stray bushes of wild briar. On, always on, driven and lashed into action by the resistless desire to get away from himself. He knew not the direction he had taken. He had lost his bearings on the moor; the darkness had completely hidden the landmarks, and even had he been conscious of his actions, he could not have told ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... never struck a blow. Here and there the forest monarchs had fallen from old age, and where they had left a vacancy hazel stubs flourished, springing up gaily, and revelling on the rotten wood and dead leaves which covered the ground, and among which grew patches of nuts and briar, with the dark ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... think that every one has had his share of it but me," was the reply. "All England hath paid his taxes with my patrimony: I was a sheep that left my wool on every briar." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hot sun and the hurry of her heart. Then she looked about a moment confusedly, for she called to mind that in her nakedness she had neither knife, nor scissors, nor bodkin to let her blood withal. But even therewith close to hand she saw hanging down a stem of half-dead briar-rose with big thorns upon it; she hastily tore off a length thereof and scratched her left arm till the blood flowed, and stepped lightly first to stem and then to stern, and besmeared them therewith. Then she sat down on the ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... money, some equal distribution of property, some annihilation of debts, some rebate of all taxes, and all clamoured against law and government." The disorder spread to Virginia. "In several counties the prisons and court houses and clerks' offices have been wilfully burnt. In Green Briar, the course of justice has been mutinously stopped and associations are entered into against the payment of taxes," wrote Madison ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... him—trying to, because the old man, who hated to see anybody or anything but himself have his way, had chained a heavy block to him to keep him from doing what nature had intended him to do—roam the woods and poke his long nose in every briar patch ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux

... a perfectly commonplace sort of individual, dressed in a perfectly commonplace fashion, and he carried a perfectly commonplace briar pipe in his hand. Moreover, Tommy recognized him. He had seen pictures of him often enough, and he was Professor Edward Denham, entitled to put practically all the letters of the alphabet after his name, the author of "Polymerization of the Pseudo-Metallic ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... I am like a briar—I die where I grow; only, instead of your finding me, as you did the first time, on the first or second floor, you will have to look for me on the fifth or sixth, seeing that, by a very natural see-saw movement, as my funds lower I ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... a wilderness of wilted maize fields, and mud or wattle-built villages, one's eyes rested with affection upon slender trees laden with rosy pomegranates—the pomegranate on the branch is a lovely rusty-brown fruit, and the tree is like a briar with large berries. Then the ancient Drandsky Monastery was a fair sight, white-walled and green-roofed against the background of black mountains, the mountains in turn shown off against the snowy ranges of the interior Caucasus. The clouds hung unevenly ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... the Tract with him; and shortly after, Josephine saw him sitting in the garden, behind a hedge of sweet- briar, reading it attentively. ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury

... approbation. Oh! pleasant is the riding, highly-seated on the rail, And worthy of the wooden horse, the rascal that we ride; Let us see the mighty shoulders that will never, never fail. To lift him high, and plant him, on the crooked rail astride. The seven-sided pine rail, the pleasant bed of briar, The little touch of hickory law, with ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... a country charge, to Sefton Park Presbyterian Church, Liverpool, where he was a popular preacher, and took a prominent part in the social and religious life of the city. He wrote, under the name of "Ian Maclaren," several novels belonging to the "Kailyard" school, including Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush and The Days of Auld Lang Syne, which had great popularity both at home and in America. He also wrote religious works, of which The Mind of the Master ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... Stanton raised the page to his face. Unmistakably, up from the paper rose the strong, vivid scent—of a briar-wood pipe. ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... from Uncle John broke in on his meditations. Then there was a clatter as a briar pipe dropped on to the floor of the boat, and his ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... he put his bare heels, protruding from his Chinese slippers, up on the edge of the mahogany reading-table in his living-room, and began to pull at a long, evil-smelling, briar ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess

... all them, for he was lacking of arms; but amidst all that he slew three, and five were left, who fell upon him and slew his palfrey, and took the knight and stripped him to the shirt, and bound him hand and foot, and cast him into a briar-bush: and the Lady they stripped, and took from her her palfrey. They beheld the Lady, and saw that she was full fair, and each one would have her. At the last, they accorded betwixt them hereto, that they should lie with her, and they had their will of ...
— Old French Romances • William Morris

... o'clock on a bright spring night, and Abercrombie Smith lay back in his arm-chair, his feet upon the fender, and his briar-root pipe between his lips. In a similar chair, and equally at his ease, there lounged on the other side of the fireplace his old school friend Jephro Hastie. Both men were in flannels, for they ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... spot about the house gave perhaps half an acre of good garden ground; from the very edge of that, the grey rising ledges of granite and rank greensward between held their undisputed domain. There the wild roses planted themselves; there many a flourishing sweet-briar flaunted in native gracefulness, or climbed up and hung about an old cedar as if like a wilful child determined that only itself should be seen. Nature grew them and nature trained them; and sweet wreaths, fluttering in the wind, gently warned the passer-by that nature ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... blue tweed dress, her pretty, flushed face bent over her work, to all appearances the most industrious of Cinderellas, while the pendulum of the old oak clock clicked noisily to and fro, and through the open door came a whiff of clean cool air, laden with the scent of flowers and sweet-briar, with the pungent aromatic odour of growing herbs, with the heavy sweetness of ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... Tallente, nervously as well as physically exhausted with the long climb from the Manor, turned aside from the straight, dusty road and seated himself upon a lichen-covered boulder. He threw his cap on the ground, filled and lighted an old briar pipe, and gazed with a queer mixture of feelings across the moorland to where Woolhanger spread itself, a queer medley of dwelling house and farm buildings, strangely situated at the far end of the table-land he was crossing, where the moor leaned ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... coloured paper, and the garden ablaze with paper roses and flags. From every tree fluttered a flag, more or less inappropriate, and on every bush and plant, poppy and rose, sage and phlox, laurel and sweet briar, blossomed roses of a size and colour to make a florist's heart rejoice—had they been real. Suspended across the gateway hung an old white sheet, with 'Many happy returns,' in red letters, sewn ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... conceded, abandoning his demolished cherry tart and pulling out his briar. "And if the locket proves the duplicate of the other it indicates that it's a portrait of Madame Delcasse, but it doesn't indicate what has become of Madame Delcasse.... Though in a general way," McLean deduced with Scotch judicialness, "it supports ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... sprawled in front of the fire-place. This was very simple, with rough iron fire-dogs; the low mantel was scattered with cigarettes, cigars in Chinese bronze vases at either end, and midway a medley of pipes, long-stemmed in clay and stubbed in briar-wood. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... slope, then up the hillock climb, Where every molehill is a bed of thyme; There panting stop; yet scarcely can refrain; A bird, a leaf, will set them off again: Or, if a gale with strength unusual blow, Scatt'ring the wild-briar roses into snow, Their little limbs increasing efforts try, Like the torn flower the fair assemblage fly. Ah, fallen rose! sad emblem of their doom; Frail as thyself, they perish while they bloom! Though unoffending innocence may plead, Though frantic ewes may mourn the ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... Balham days, and the huge amount of bird's-eye we used to smoke together. For his motto now is, "Delenda est Balhamia"—I speak of course figuratively—and half-crown havannahs have usurped the place of the honest briar. I know the poor wretch is making up his mind to cut me, but I must bear ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various

... sigh have puffed him down; the weight of a frown had staggered him, a wrinkle made him lose his balance. But on he went, scrambling upon those airy stilts of his, with Robin Good-Fellow, "thorough brake, thorough briar," reckless of a scratched face ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... discovered—once by a planter, and again by a number of white children, who, attended by their nurse, and a pack of curs, approached within a few feet of their hiding-place. Our friends gradually edged themselves towards a thicket, which was distant about four miles from Briar Creek, the latter being eighteen miles from Millen—the junction of the Augusta branch and the main line of the Central Railway ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... of his connection with one of the leading political papers of the day. It was a duel between sheer skill and confident foreknowledge. When Mr. Bodery spoke, Sidney Carew leant back in his chair and puffed vigorously at his briar pipe. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... outwitted as well as outrun. A few words will explain Martin's conduct. We arrive at causes by noting coincidences; yet, now and then, coincidences are deceitful. As we have all seen a hare tumble over a briar just as the gun went off, and so raise expectations, then dash them to earth by scudding away untouched, so the burgomaster's mule put her foot in a rabbit-hole at or about the time the crossbow bolt whizzed innocuous over her head: she fell and threw both her riders. Gerard caught Margaret, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... to the next-door building and opened the front door with his key. Inside, a night watchman lounged behind a desk, smoking a blackened briar. He ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)

... love the Heavenly Father Leads the chosen child; Oftener through realm of briar Than the ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

... from head to foot, and his gaze was returned with stolid defiance. Nicholas did not flinch, but for the first time he felt ashamed of his ugliness, of his coarse clothes, of his briar-scratched legs, of his freckles, and of the unalterable colour of his hair. He wished with all his heart that he were safely in the field with his father, driving the one-horse harrow across upturned furrows. He didn't ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... abducted in a wooden trough. Gaily the pure water, air's first cousin, fleeted along the rude aqueduct, whose sides and floor it had made green with grasses. The path, bearing it close company, threaded a wilderness of briar and wild-rose. And presently, a little in front, the brown top of a mill and the tall mill-wheel, spraying diamonds, arose in the narrows of the glen; at the same time the snoring music of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of old, laid his lance in rest and tilted against the prickly briar hedge that had grown up around the Sleeping Beauty, Romance. But he could not win through and wake the princess. And although Burns and Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey, all knowing it or not, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... and as it is most readily cultivated in pots, its fragrance may be conveyed to the parlour of the recluse, or the chamber of the valetudinarian; its perfume, though not so refreshing perhaps as that of the Sweet-Briar, is not apt to offend on continuance the ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. I - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis

... for bark-gathering was past, another source of industry presented itself. The bottom lands of the great river were found to be covered with a network of underwood, and among this underwood the principal plant was a well-known briar, Smilax officinalis. This is the creeping plant that yields the celebrated "sarsaparilla;" and Don Pablo, having made an analysis of some roots, discovered it to be the most valuable species—for it is to be remembered, that, like the cinchona, a whole genus, or ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... had sunk behind a tor, but the warmth kept rising from the ground, and the sweet-briar on a cottage bathed them with its spicy perfume. From the converging lanes figures passed now and then, lounged by, staring at the strangers, gossiping amongst themselves, and vanished into the cottages that headed the incline. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... discuss without passion or fear With the aim of instructing the listeners here; And haply some few who instruction require May profit derive like the bee from the briar. ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... and briar-thorn, Wire, briar, limber-lock, Three geese in one flock; One flew east and one flew west And one ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson

... the climate was colder and the woodlands reached as far as the now barren seashore. To the firs succeeded long stretches of odorous pines interspersed with Mediterranean heath (brayere), which here grows to a height of twelve feet; one thinks of the number of briar pipes that could be cut out of its knotty roots. A British Vice-Consul at Reggio, Mr. Kerrich, started this industry about the year 1899; he collected the roots, which were sawn into blocks and then sent to France and America to be made into pipes. This Calabrian briar was considered superior to ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... is sweet which we inspire When it is free to come and go; And sound of brook and scent of briar Rise freshest where the breezes blow, That feed our breath and ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland

... singing on briar and reed, Near to the nest of his little dame, Over the mountain-side or mead, Robert of Lincoln is telling his name: 'Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link! Spink, spank, spink! Snug and safe is that nest of ours, Hidden among the summer flowers, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... thence forward, all summer, in the sound of the sea, And at night, under the full of moon, in calmer weather, Over the hoarse surging of the sea, Or flitting from briar to briar by day, I saw, I heard at ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various

... alighting on a bush black with ripe berries will clear the bunches in a very short time. Haws, or peggles, which often quite cover the hawthorn bushes, are not so general a food as the fruit of the briar. Hips are preferred; at least, the fruit of the briar is the first of the two to disappear. The hip is pecked open (by thrushes, redwings, and blackbirds) at the tip, the seeds extracted, and the part where it is attached to the stalk left, just as if the contents had been sucked out. Greenfinches, ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies

... through several villages, whose inhabitants that day seemed to have but one care upon their minds, like the famous Scilly Islanders, to gain a precarious livelihood by taking each other's washing. On every bush and briar fluttered the household linen and the family apparel, of various textures and in different states of despair; and with that strict observance of utility which is the chief characteristic of the French peasant, the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... that God has given us in allowing us to visit each other. We can help so much by it if we will. Wasn't that a lovely visit that the old school master made to Marget that time in "Beside the Bonny Briar Bush" when he came to tell her that she had a "laddie of parts"? And wasn't it still more beautiful when he came later, rugged old Scotchman that he was, to burst into tears of wild joy over the good news he brought ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free: To hear the lark begin his flight, And, singing, startle the dull night, From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to come, in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good-morrow, Through the sweet-briar or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine; While the cock, with lively din, Scatters the rear of darkness thin, And to the stack, or the barn-door, Stoutly struts his dames before: Oft listening how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumbering morn, From the side of some ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton

... shed, used to put away farming implements, odd cart-wheels, performed for us the same service as the classic grotto which sheltered Eneas and Dido under similar circumstances. The wild branches of the hawthorn and sweet-briar added to the rusticity of ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... followed a wonderful story of Giles Collins, who loved a lady: Giles and the lady both died of true love; Giles was laid in the lower chancel, and the lady in the higher; from the one grave grew a milk-white rose, and from the other a briar, both of which climbed up to the church top, and there tied themselves into a true-lover's knot, which made all the parish admire. At this part, Anna was seen looking up at the ceiling; but the rest had no eyes but for Mrs Enderby, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... think o' the briar pattern around the edge? I know it's some worruk, but it's a bonnie border to lie under, an' it's not so tedious whan there's plenty o' folks ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... they made their chattering entry. The rows of books—that had gone with the Hall like the family portraits—stretched silently away, but amid the smell of leather and learning, Eileen's lively nostrils detected the whiff of the weed, and sure enough on the top of a stepladder reposed a plain briar pipe ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill

... but a little. He was plannin' to take on more, but somehow it never seemed as if he could die, he so big and strong, and we put it off until he got so he couldn't pass the examination. When the insurance money come I took it to Jedge Briar, a mighty good friend of Jubal's and mine and the one that held the mortgage on the house, and I told him I wanted to pay off the mortgage with it, so's I'd have the house free and clear. But the Jedge advised me not to, said the mortgage was costin' me ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... He would talk to himself in English, ruffling his hands through his hair: "And then, at three o'clock I must go with Andrey Vassilievitch ..." or "I wonder whether she'll mind if I ask—" He had a large briar pipe at which he puffed furiously, but could not smoke without an endless procession of matches that afterwards littered the floor around him. "The tobacco's damp," he explained to us a hundred ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... said Charles pleasantly, refilling his foul old briar—"the great day when Fleet Street ran with blood and the pipe-smokers put up barricades in the Strand, and Piccadilly became a reeking shambles. Have you got ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 10th, 1920 • Various

... the 1st West India Regiment, was raised. Numerous royalists joined the British camp and were formed into various corps;[2] and the South Carolina Regiment is first mentioned as taking part in the action at Briar Creek on the 3rd of March, 1779,[3] the corps then being, according to Major-General Prevost's despatch, about 100 strong. The action at Briar Creek ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis

... thought; "and I hope that that rotund old lady, whose face beams under the shadow of her deep bonnet like a harvest moon through a fleecy cloud, will feel moved to speak." I plucked a few buds from the sweet-briar bush, fastened them in my button-hole, and promptly followed the old lady into the meeting-house. Having found a vacant pew I sat down, and looked around with serene content. But I soon observed that something was amiss, for the men folk looked at each other and then at me. At last an elderly ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... his labours, his home, his confidence and his largess, have come to a wild and barren pasture for such sweet flowers; and yet there was love between us, love which ever radiated from him as it were sunshine and caused many a briar-rose to blossom in the thorny tangle of my life. I knew him also before you, in the summer of 1503, at Siena; and it is of certain pranks in that early comradeship that I will now write. Raphael was then a youth of scarce twenty years. He had come fresh from his apprenticeship to that old pietist ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... April-coloured year! "Courage, brothers!" cried the leader. "On the slope of yonder peak There are tracts of herb and shadow, and the channels of the creek!" So they made one last great effort— haled their beasts through brake and briar, Set their feet on spurs of furnace, grappled spikes and crags of fire, Fought the stubborn mountain forces, smote down naked, natural powers, Till they gazed from thrones of Morning on a ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... of man. "As far as possible;" that is, as far as is consistent with the fulfilment of the sentence of condemnation on the whole earth. Death must be upon the hills; and the cruelty of the tempests smite them, and the briar and thorn spring up upon them: but they so smite, as to bring their rocks into the fairest forms; and so spring, as to make the very desert blossom as the rose. Even among our own hills of Scotland and Cumberland, though ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... said he "mought as well dig for plug terbaccer there;" but Philip had great faith in the uniformity of nature's operations in ages past, and he had no doubt that he should strike at this spot the rich vein that had made the fortune of the Golden Briar Company. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... you can see, but I'm never too busy to teach those who really want to learn. We'll have a lesson here every morning just at sun-up. I can't be bothered any more to-day, because it is late. Run along home to the dear Old Briar-patch and think up some questions to ask me to-morrow morning. And, by the way, Peter, I will ask YOU some questions. For one thing I shall ask you to tell me all you know about your own family. Now scamper along and be here ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess

... tramped, over bush and bog and briar; the dogs running before and scenting round among the bushes. All day, no luck. Night came on, and still no luck; so they "camped out," and started fresh again ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... above the general din, calling "Fair lemons and oranges, oranges and citrons!" "Cherries, sweet cherries, ripe and red!" "New flounders and great plaice; buy my dish of great eels!" "Rosemary and sweet briar; who'll buy my lavender?" "Fresh cheese and cream!" "Lily-white vinegar!" "Dainty sausages!" which calls, being frequently intoned to staves of melody, fell with pleasant sounds upon the ear. [These hawkers ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... den he smoked many pipes. Twice he cleaned the old briar; still there was no improvement. He poured a pinch of tobacco into his palm and sniffed. The weed was all right. Probably something he had eaten. He was always forgetting that his tummy was ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... Campbell to invade Georgia. Campbell routed the Americans and took Savannah; and General Prevost, who joined him from Florida, easily obtained possession of the province. Lincoln's attempt to regain it was defeated at Briar creek on March 3, 1779, and Prevost penetrated into South Carolina. He finally retired to Georgia, leaving a garrison at Port Royal, which secured his access to the sea and gave him a footing in South Carolina, as well as a base for covering Georgia. The campaign was a promising opening ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... a view of the calf of his leg, or as if he fancied he felt something trailing at his foot. So probable, from his motion, did the latter supposition seem, that Hugh changed sides to satisfy himself whether or not there was some dragging briar or straw annoying him; but no follower ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald

... as good as cheese And honest as a briar, Sue tells her love what he's thinking of,— But my ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... isn't it? I don't mind it myself; I'm used to it. Born and bred in de briar patch, like Br'er Rabbit. I've been trying to place you for a long time; I think I must have met ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather

... came to the other side of the wood. Apparently Tommy Brock had turned the same way. Upon the top of the wall, there were again the marks of badger; and some ravellings of a sack had caught on a briar. ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter

... thing that we are longing for when the beauty of nature makes us feel sad with a longing we know not for what. I thought it would change life's dusty paths into golden pavements, and earth's commonest bramble-bush into a magic briar-rose." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... from her, and saw that out of his own shirt, washed and bleached, she had made a lovely garment. And round it, from the hem upward, ran a climbing briar of exquisite delicacy, and with a beautiful design of spines and leaves; but the only flower upon it was a golden rose, worked on the heart of the smock in her own gold hair. And Hobb took it from her and ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... seemed completely restored by his repose. He ate more than his share of the eggs and bacon, and drank five cups of tea. Then he stretched himself, lit a clay pipe, and offered us his tobacco box, from which the Reverend filled his briar. I remained true to my packet of "Queen of the Harem." I shall think twice before chucking up cig. smoking as long as "Queen of the Harem" don't ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... at this time, are exceedingly aggravating. They consult you, they ask your advice upon the best way of concealing the stem of a rose, of giving a graceful fall to a bunch of briar, or a happy turn to a scarf. As a neat English expression has it, "they fish for compliments," and ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac

... a twig of wild cherry, gathered up my boxes, and wandered along the faint path, back of the patch of brush where, I knew, Jonathan was cheerfully threading his line through tangles of twig, briar, and vine, compared with which the needle's eye is as a yawning barn door. Jonathan's attitude toward brush-fishing is something which I respect without understanding. Down one long field I went, where the brook ran in shallow gayety, and there, ahead, was the bend, a sudden curve of water, deepening ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge

... was saying to McLean, "Here we are, all three of us turned out into the world like a lot of little sparrows pitched out of the nest, and what are we going to do? Of course it's easy enough for you, McLean, but what are my grave friend with the nasty black briar, and I, your humble servant, to do? In what wilderness are we to pitch our tents and where is our ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... up and down the nut bushes; but Nutkin gathered robin's pin-cushions off a briar bush, and stuck ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter

... reel, and reel, O hear me; Change us both upon the instant: I'll become a wild rose-briar, And my love a rose ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... Peter and me cigars, and we sat ourselves in armchairs in front of the blaze. Sandy squatted cross-legged on the hearthrug and lit a foul old briar pipe, which he extricated from some pouch among his skins. And so began that conversation which had never been out of my thoughts for ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... would meet him in the same place the next day. In the mean time, he began to suspect there might be some fraud in the place, as it was shady, dark, and fit for echoes or other delusions. The next day, therefore, he takes him to an open plain, where there was neither bush nor briar; but there, notwithstanding all his precaution, he hears the same story, with this addition, that he should forthwith deliver Brabantius six thousand franks, and purchase three masses daily to be said for him, or else the miserable soul of his father could not be freed. Cornutus, ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor

... In this garden every old-fashioned flower imaginable bloomed and thrived, and reared its graceful head. The Major walked down through great lines of tall hollyhocks and peonies of every color and description. Then he passed under a sweet-briar hedge and then along a further hedge of Scotch roses, red and white; and the scent from mignonette and sweet peas and the sweet-briar and the roses came up to his nostrils. Never to the longest day of his life did the Major ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... smoking my faithful briar pipe, indulging in the fragrance of my tobacco as I look out on the campus from my many-paned window, and things are different with me from the way they were way back in Freshman year. I can see now how boyish in many ways ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... which they were to go was a narrow path, with a rough place now and then, and now and then a briar or sharp stone upon it, but for the most part it was a pleasant way. The travelers hastened joyfully along it and all went well with them until, one day, they met a man whose face was turned toward the land from which they had ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay

... a woman. One to whom heav'n gave beauty, when it grafted roses on a briar. You are the reflection of heav'n in a pond, and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white, a sheet of lovely, spotless paper, when you first are born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve

... good night and went to his room. A fire was burning in the grate. At the window there was a rattle of sleet. He lighted his old briar-root pipe and sat down. He had, as usual, ceased to argue with himself; he simply mused. He acknowledged his weakness, and sought a counteracting strength, but found none. But why should he fight against good fortune? It was not his fault that certain conditions existed. Why not starve the past ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read

... you, I'll lead you about a round, Thro' bog, thro' bush, thro' brake, thro' briar; Sometimes a horse I'll be, sometimes a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometimes a fire, And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare

... she scanned the scene beneath, made small her eyes to focus the distance, and so pursued a survey of meadow and woodland, yet without seeing what she sought. Beneath and beyond, separated from her standpoint by grasslands and a hedge of hazel, tangled thickets of blackthorn, of bracken, and of briar sank to the valley bottom. Therein wound tinkling Teign through the gorges of Fingle to the sea; and above it, where the land climbed upward on the other side, spread the Park of Whiddou, with expanses of sweet, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... now is the Summer's last Rose, That reigned like a queen on the briar? 'T is faded! and o'er its grave glows The glad warmth of Winter's ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... rose to fill and light a briar pipe, his inseparable companion, before grappling with ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... and gnarled; the cane-vines, with pretty star-like flowers; the muscadine grape-vines, with their dark purple clusters; the bignonias, with trumpet-shaped corollas; the smilacae, among which are conspicuous the Smilax rotundifolia, the thick bamboo-briar, and ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... Princess. He rode for many months without discovering a trace of her; but instead of growing tired of his search he only became the more anxious to find her. One day, as he was riding through a wood, he came upon a sweet-smelling hedge, all made of honeysuckle and sweet-briar, so high that he could not climb it, and so thick that he could not see ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp

... not to hear, and a few minutes later he hopped away towards the dear Old Briar-patch, lipperty-lipperty-lip. Happy Jack watched him go, and there was a puzzled look ...
— Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories • Thornton W. Burgess

... is quick and green with briar, From their sand the conies creep; And all the birds that fly in heaven Flock singing home ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various

... green colour that elsewhere beautifies the earth. There to this day it lies where it fell—a mantle of moist vivid green, powdered with silver and gold, embroidered with all floral hues; all reds from the faint blush on the petals of the briar-rose to the deep crimson of the red trifolium; and all yellows, and blues, ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson



Words linked to "Briar" :   vine, erica, rose, tobacco pipe, rosebush, genus Smilax, pipe, briary, true heath, smilax



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com