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Chafe   /tʃeɪf/   Listen
Chafe

verb
(past & past part. chafed; pres. part. chafing)
1.
Become or make sore by or as if by rubbing.  Synonyms: fret, gall.
2.
Feel extreme irritation or anger.
3.
Cause annoyance in; disturb, especially by minor irritations.  Synonyms: annoy, bother, devil, get at, get to, gravel, irritate, nark, nettle, rag, rile, vex.  "It irritates me that she never closes the door after she leaves"
4.
Tear or wear off the skin or make sore by abrading.  Synonym: excoriate.
5.
Cause friction.  Synonyms: fray, fret, rub, scratch.
6.
Warm by rubbing, as with the hands.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Chafe" Quotes from Famous Books



... thin mouth, "This camp mattress, Doctor," he slowly replied, "I find a little thin. The slats beneath chafe my poor bones. I've a frail body—though in my youth and young manhood, while soldiering in the West, I have done some rough camping and campaigning. There was flesh then to cover ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... admiration of the entire population of Sandy Cove. The child spread it over the seaman's chest, and tucked it carefully down at his sides, between his body and the wet garments. Then the three sat down beside him, and, each seizing a limb, began to rub and chafe with a degree of energy that nothing could resist. At any rate it put life into John Bumpus; for that hardy mariner gradually began to ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne

... angry, and ill affected towards him, who by nature is so near unto me? for we are all born to be fellow-workers, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids; as the rows of the upper and under teeth: for such therefore to be in opposition, is against nature; and what is it to chafe at, and to be averse from, ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... and Reason chafe, There came a voice without reply,— 'Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... shot to death for a rape: the maid [sic] in favour of his life was content to beg him for her husband. Which being condiscended unto by the Judge, according to the lawe of Spaine in that behalfe: in steps me the hangman all in a chafe and said unto the Judge. Howe (I pray you, sir) can that be, seeing the stake is already in the ground, the rope, the arrowes, the Archers all in a readines, and heere I am come for him." (Anthony Copley's Wits, Fits, and Fancies, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various

... gettin' a bit tired. I wondher, Heller, if some av these other islands wouldn't furnish us a change of diet? If we could find pataties an' grapes, it ud be a blessin' to body an' sowl. Surely it ud be a good deed to bring all this archypilago into the thrue faith. Couldn't the chafe, now, take an army out in his doubled-barrelled canoes, an' commince the work av convarsion? Tell him if he'll do that same, I'll grant him all the indulgences he ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... laughing, "into what an unprofitable chafe you have put yourself! An Italian fuoruscito, when he desires a parley with you, takes aim from behind a wall, with his long gun, and prefaces his conference with Posso tirare. So does your man-of-war fire a gun across the bows of a Hansmogan Indiaman, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... months seemed to disappear. Instinctively he knew what a baby means to a mother,—and she must be its mother. He understood that the agony of loss which was hers was far greater even than the agony which her faithlessness had meant for him. Gently, almost tenderly, he went again to the bed, to chafe the cold, thin wrists, to watch anxiously the eyes, then at last to bend forward. The woman was looking at him, staring with fright in her gaze, ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... immediately hallooed with all our might. The wind again began to chafe, and swell, and seemed to mock at our distress. Still we repeated our efforts, whenever the wind paused: but, instead of voices intending to answer our calls, we heard shrill whistlings; which certainly ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... ALAR. What should chafe me, child, And when should hearts be light, if mine be dull? Is not mine exile over? Is it nought To breathe in the same house where we were born, And sleep where slept ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli

... alone. The government generously dispensed to the capitalists tariff protection and bounties in the form of profitable orders, but insisted on keeping industry under its thumb. And though they might chafe, still the capitalists never neglected to make the best of the situation. For instance, when the sugar producers found themselves running into a hole from cut-throat competition, they appealed ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... Lord was with Joseph.' That is one of the eloquent 'buts' of Scripture. The prison is light when God is there, and chains do not chafe if He wraps His love round them. Many a prisoner for God since Joseph's time has had his experience repeated, and received tenderer tokens from Him in a dungeon than ever before. Paul the prisoner, John in Patmos, Bunyan in Bedford jail, George Fox in Lancaster Castle, Rutherford in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... performance. His equipment was perfect to the least detail. The reflection from a lady's looking-glass was no brighter than the silver spurs he jingled on his sprightly heels. Strikingly handsome in a dark, sinister way, one would say at first sight, and later would chafe at the justice of a verdict not to ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine

... things. I know well enough that, in reading this, you laugh at the old drinker, and hold this exposition of colours to be very extravagant, and utterly disagreeable to reason, because white is said to signify faith, and blue constancy. But without moving, vexing, heating, or putting you in a chafe (for the weather is dangerous), answer me, if it please you; for no other compulsory way of arguing will I use towards you, or any else; only now and then I will mention a word or two of my bottle. What is it that induceth you, what stirs ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... looking upon all this, and only looking, unable to go near; seeing all the preparations for war, but unable to mingle with the warriors. To pace up and down all day; to shake their fists at the scene; to fret, and fume, and chafe with irrepressible impatience; to scold, to rave, to swear—this was the lot of ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... themselves a metaphysical mantle of infallibility, sinking to minor cerebral phenomena for quiet contemplation. She had no notion how they did this. And, it must be added, that they might, had they felt so disposed, have stood as pressing concretions which chafe body and soul—a most disagreeable state of things, peculiar to the miserably passive existence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various

... content: 'tis I must work the mean To make her yield, whether she will or no. My Lord of Kent is gone hence in a chafe, And now I purpose that she shall be yours, Yet to herself unknown; for she shall think That Musgrave is the man, but it shall be you: Seem you still discontented, and no more. Go, Mariana, call thy mistress hither. Now, when she comes, dissemble what you know, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... occurred which he could not fathom. Graydon's manner at parting and since, during business hours, had confirmed this impression. He was almost as grave and reticent as the banker himself, and the latter began to chafe and grow irritable over the problem which he was bent on seeing solved in but one way. He looked askance and discontentedly at Graydon during dinner in the evening. When they were alone he was fidgety and rather ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe

... institutions. To say nothing of the rest, consider that huge domain which at this hour confronts the troubled principalities of Europe. It stretches itself out over three continents. The waves of three oceans chafe against its shaggy sides. The energies of innumerable tribes are throbbing in its breast. It clasps regions yet raw in history as well as those that are grey with tradition, and incloses in one empire the bones of the Siberian mammoth and the valleys of Circassian flowers. And it is great not only ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... proceeded in this way about a mile, and the sound of the hunt had quite died away behind us, and I was beginning to chafe, as well as marvel, at conduct so singular, when at last I saw that he was slackening his pace. My horse, which was on the point of failing, began, in turn, to overhaul his, while I looked out with sharpened ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman

... to sprinkle wine, from the flask he carried, on the brow of the fainting traveller, and to chafe his temples with it. The man at last slowly opened his eyes and said, "I had hoped the morning dew would not again have fallen on me, but that unknown and unlamented I might have perished here in the desert, as ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque

... then, however, she was in the full blaze of her glory; she had been suspected, it is true, of equivocal conduct; but suspicion, while it is still suspicion and not proof, marks a woman out with the kind of distinction which slander gives to a man. Nonentities are never slandered; they chafe because they are left in peace. This woman was, in fact, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, a daughter of the d'Uxelles; her father-in-law was still alive; she was not to be the Princesse de Cadignan for some years ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... dear children, let us away; Down and away below! Now my brothers call from the bay, Now the great winds shoreward blow, Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray. Children dear, let us ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... absolute freedom were permitted information might be made public that would be helpful to the enemy, and propaganda started that would be dangerous to the public safety. But even in war time, the people of a democracy chafe under restrictions upon free speech and a free press, and it is often a delicate question to determine how far such restriction ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... brook at its source, and the agitation is terrible, and the ripples chafe madly their narrowed banks;—throw in a pebble when the brook has become a river, and you see a few circles, widening and widening and widening, until they are lost in the gentle ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... to the production of certain bad works in the service of 'Moloch,' meaning, of course, L.N. Oh! and did anyone tell you how Harriet Martineau, in her political letters to America, set me down with her air of serene superiority? But such things never chafe me—never. They don't even quicken my pulsation. And the place we are passing the summer in is very calm—a great lonely villa, in the midst of purple hills and vineyards, olive-trees and fig-trees like forest-trees; a deep soothing silence. A mile off we have friends, and my dear ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... ride on to the ranche. They still chafe at being thwarted of a vengeance; by every man of them keenly felt, after learning the criminality of the Lancer Colonel. Such unheard of atrocity could not help kindling within their breasts indignation of ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... with the courage and imperturbable good-nature of a born gentleman. It is when men are starving, when the plating of romance is worn off by the chafe of severe and continued suffering,—it is then that "blood tells." Winthrop had evidently that keen relish for rough life which the gently nurtured and highly cultivated man has oftener than his rude neighbor, partly because, in his case, contrast lends a zest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... thinke I heare the lukewarme worldling of our times, fume & chafe, and aske what needs all this adoe for zeale, as if all Gods people ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward

... would have been a woful match for both. In a certain sense he would be like the ambitious mouse that espoused the lioness. The polished and selfish idler, with a career devoted to elegant nothings, would fret and chafe such a nature as hers into almost frenzy, had ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... had brought away from the hulk along with the canvas. This rope was then passed over the bows and in through the painter ring, and thence to the forrard thwarts, where it was made fast, and we gave attention to parcel it with odd strips of canvas against danger of chafe. And the same was done in both of the boats, for we could not put our trust in the painters, besides which they had not sufficient length to secure ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson

... say that—no, I'll not say that; for many's the jollification at which the fighting is the chafe amusement. But we likes thumping on ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... that horror-haunted place!" And she threw her arms about my neck, drew me to her and kissed me. "Come, love," she said, "let us be going! I am sore athirst, and—ah! so very weary! The gems, too, chafe my breast! Never was wealth so hardly won! Come, let us be going from the shadow of this ghostly spot! See the faint lights glancing from the wings of Dawn. How beautiful they are, and how sweet to behold! Never, in those Halls of Eternal Night, did I think to look upon the blush of dawn again! ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... hours' bride made the widow look up suddenly. To the question in her eyes his glance gave no answer, and for the moment a feeling of despair overcame her. Had she given him up only to the end that his life should be miserable; had she forced him into a marriage whose bonds would gall and chafe him with more deadly and festering ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... of many generations who have been carried from their sides to serve in ploughs or waggons on the Lombard plain. Others are yearling calves, intractable and ignorant of labour. In order to subdue them to the yoke, it is requisite to take them very early from their native glades, or else they chafe and pine away with weariness. Then there is a sullen canal, which flows through the forest from the marshes to the sea; it is alive with frogs and newts and snakes. You may see these serpents basking on the surface among thickets of the flowering rush, or coiled about the lily leaves and flowers—lithe ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... for one day, every day, a year of days—years. He's twenty-five now, feeling the thews of his strength; twenty-seven, twenty-nine, still the old daily round. Did no temptation come those years to chafe a bit and fret and wonder and yearn after the great outside world? Who that knows such a life, and knows the tempter, thinks he missed those years, and their subtle opportunity? Who that knows Jesus thinks that He missed such an opportunity ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... flames with the majesty of truth, May be part-blinded through excess of light, As one who eyes too long the naked sun, Setting in rayless glory, turns and finds Outlines confused, familiar colors changed, All objects branded with one blood-bright spot. Nor chafe at Baruch's homely sense; truth floats Midway between the stars and the abyss. We, by God's grace, have found a special nest I' the dangerous rock, screened against wind and hawk; Free burghers of a free town, blessed moreover With the peculiar ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... quit, Polite apostates from God's grace to wit; When men grow great from their revenue spent, And fly from bailiffs into parliament; When dying sinners, to blot out their score, Bequeath the church the leavings of a whore; To chafe our spleen, when themes like these increase, Shall panegyric reign, and censure cease? Shall poesy, like law, turn wrong to right, And dedications wash an AEthiop white, Set up each senseless wretch for nature's boast, On whom praise ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young

... earnestly into the face of the speaker; then, to Dick's stupefaction, Stukely replied in apparently the same tongue, bent over and rapidly loosed the thongs which bound the old fellow's hands and feet together, and proceeded gently to chafe ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... are more wearing than the toil of writing; I know I find it so. Then I accomplish something; here I work myself into nervous frenzies, and chafe and pant for nothing. I can feel how it weakens me; I can feel that I have less elasticity, less lan every day. Ah, God, ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair

... mean place. Even the orchard over the hill brought him no comfort now. Blossom would not care for orchards. She would be ashamed of her stupid old father and the barren farm. She would hate White Sands, and chafe at the dull existence, and look down on everything that went to make up his ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... The poor girls were nearly crying with vexation. There was no appeal, however. Miss Frazer escorted them into their bedroom, and stood over them, giving directions, until each pair of stockings or pocket-handkerchief was disposed according to her ideas of neatness. They might chafe and fret inwardly at the delay, but outwardly they were obliged to behave ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil

... second time the trumpeter went, he did treat them a little more roughly. For after sound of trumpet, he told them, 'That their continuing in their rebellion did but chafe and heat the spirit of the captains, and that they were resolved to make a conquest of Mansoul, or to lay their bones before the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... following him close with his eyes wherever he goes, "your spirits are hasty, and I am sorry for it on your account. Excuse me if I recommend you not to chafe so much, not to be so impetuous, not to wear yourself out so. You should have more patience. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... benevolence that a diligent reader of his pages is, as it were, perforce imbued by it. Indeed, we know of few writers whom we can point to with more confidence as calculated, in antidote to the fret and chafe inseparable from existence in our day, to induce a tone of repose and resignation in ourselves, and a disposition to take charity as our watchword in our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... nonsense leaning, Means not, but blunders round about a meaning: And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad, It is not poetry, but prose run mad: All these, my modest satire bade translate, And owned that nine such poets made a Tate. How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe And swear not Addison himself was safe. Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires; Blessed with each talent and each art to please, And born to ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... so closely bind Scarce can the Tweed his passage find, Though much he fret, and chafe, and toil, Till all his ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... repine and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply: 'T is man's perdition to be safe When for the truth he ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer

... added Miss Delany, quickly. "If there is anything I chafe to see it is a strong, hearty man shirking his burdens, putting them on the shoulders of his wife, and taking ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... start without his brother. And when all that was finished the old man was not ready; and so they are waiting and waiting, and autumn is here in all its beauty, and Hayoue and Zashue, Zashue as well as Hayoue, begin to chafe; but it is of no ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier

... bade his home good-bye and set out to return to the field of his labors, he was conscious that henceforth he was to have his father's family on his hands as pensioners; but he did not allow himself to chafe at the thought, for he reasoned that his father had dealt by him with a free hand and a loving one all his life, and now that hard fortune had broken his spirit it ought to be a pleasure, not a pain, to work for ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... that people—her own cousins in particular—were looking upon her with cold and critical eyes; she knew, down in her heart, that she could throw a bomb among them at any time by the mere utterance of a single word. It mattered as little that Edith was beginning to chafe miserably under the strain of waiting and deception; the novelty had worn off for the wife of Roxbury; she was despairingly in love, and she was pining for the day to come when she could laugh again with real ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon

... day till, in spite of all the social attractions of Baltimore, I began to chafe bitterly under the delay. I never could get rid of a half-guilty consciousness that I ought to be somewhere else, and that somewhere—far away. On the morning of 17th February, I was in the office of my friend and chief counselor, above mentioned, discussing the propriety ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... He, whose fustian's so sublimely bad, 185 It is not Poetry, but prose run mad: All these, my modest Satire bade translate, And own'd that nine such Poets made a Tate. How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe! And swear, not ADDISON himself ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... Chafe's sister—Mrs Chafe, you know, is my aunt," Hesketh reminded him. "I say, Murchison, I left old Chafe wilder than ever. Wallingham's committee keep sending him leaflets and things. They take it for granted ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan

... and others were enabled to smuggle their goods in under various pretences, and by various devices; while the traders who were without such corrupt influence or knowledge found this river commerce hazardous in the extreme. It was small wonder that the Kentuckians should chafe under such arbitrary and unequal restraints, and should threaten to break through them by force. [Footnote: Va. ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... no one stirred—nothing stirred in all that frozen world. Then, feeling the cold begin to creep in upon him in the stillness, Kane had to lift his thick-gloved hands to chafe his ears. He did it cautiously, but the caution was superfluous. The great wolf apparently had no objection to his moving as much as he liked. Once, indeed, those green, lambent eyes flamed over him, but casually, in making a swift circuit of the shores of the lake and ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. Our boats, tied to a common, stake, chafe each other as they are tossed by the fretful river. They ride high and buoyant, for their loads are lighter than we could desire. We have but a month's rations remaining. The flour has been resifted through the mosquito-net sieve; the spoiled ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... elbowed aside so unceremoniously that his temper gave way. Hozier lifted Iris's head gently and unfastened the neck-hooks of her blouse. He began to chafe her cold hands tenderly, and pressed back the hair from her damp forehead. The "chief," not flattered by his own reflections, thought fit to sneer at these ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... maiden, whose beauty outshone hers as sunrise outdoes the lighting of a candle, this wanton Greek was capable of despising him in good earnest, and Basil had never been of those who sit easy under scorn. He felt something chafe and grow hot within him, and recalled the days when he, and not Heliodora, had indulged contempt—to his mind a much more natural posture of affairs, The animal that is in every man had begun to stir; it urged him to master and crush and tame this woman, whom, indeed, he held rather ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... moved on toward the parsonage, and as the evil-doer guessed that a bad half-hour awaited him there, he had serious thoughts of making his escape while it was possible, but Braesig came as close up to him as if he had known what he was thinking of, and that only made him rage and chafe the more inwardly. When Braesig asked Mrs. Behrens who it was that had come up in the nick of time, and she had answered that it was Frank, Triddelfitz stood still and shaking his fist in the direction of Puempelhagen, said fiercely "I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... the pass, and as it started to snow in stinging gusts (and I was so obviously one of the "sheep"), I began to chafe at the delay. ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp

... at this time extremely cold, and when the divers got into the boats, they seemed greatly benumbed; and it is usual with them after this exercise, if they are near enough their wigwams, to run to the fire, to which presenting one side, they rub and chafe it for some time; then turning the other, use it in the same manner till the circulation of the blood is restored. This practice, if it has no worse effect, must occasion their being more susceptible of the impressions of cold than ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... table land. Great thanks are due to M. Bierstadt for the almost herculean labors he must have undergone in presenting to us these living fossils. Keeping them in a good humor must have been one of his most serious tasks, as they doubtless encountered many contrarieties calculated to chafe hot blood and annoy men unaccustomed to the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... narrows its bed between high banks, and for some three miles—from Hollywood cemetery down to "Rockett's" landing—the shallow current dashes over its rocky bed with the force and chafe of a mountain torrent; now swirling, churned into foamy rapids, again gliding swiftly smooth around larger patches of islands that dot its surface. On the right hand hills, behind us, rises the suburb village of Manchester, already of considerable ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... plainly now What we shall all see plainly, soon enough. The man is dead, and they are bearing him As if he were a log. Quick! Stir the fire, And clear the settle! We must lay him there. I will bring cordials, and flannel stuffs With which to chafe him; open wide ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland

... provinces had been untroubled by the general confusion. Later they were loyal to Galba. But when they heard that Otho and Vitellius were engaged in a wicked contest for the possession of the Roman world, the troops began to chafe at the thought that the prizes of empire should fall to others, while their own lot was mere compulsory submission. They began to take stock of their strength. Syria and Judaea had seven legions on the spot with a vast ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... vain did the distressed lad attempt to restore him. He had little idea of what to do, there was no water at hand, and to his ignorance it seemed as if the man must be dying. He lifted one of the limp hands to chafe it, and started with amazement at the sight of a diamond ring that had cut its way through the torn and blackened kid glove in which the ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... not reach that goal today, or tomorrow. We may not reach it in our own lifetime. But the quest is the greatest adventure of our century. We sometimes chafe at the burden of our obligations, the complexity of our decisions, the agony of our choices. But there is no comfort or security for us in evasion, no solution in abdication, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy

... brief halt is too quickly at an end, and after a ten minutes' rest the advance again sounds down the line from bugler to bugler. All at once fall in, arms are unpiled, and, enlivened by our band, we again step out; now feet begin to ache, and boots to chafe; but the cheery music of the bands, bugles, or drums and fifes of the regiments marching next to us, generally the Rifles, infuses energy into the most footsore. We make three halts in a march of thirteen or fourteen ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... followed the truce had seen her Karl's spy in Livonia. She had undertaken it that the burden of gratitude should be on him—a false step, for men chafe under the necessity ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... Poor I must eat acorns or berries from the tree. But if I be found slack in the suit following, Or if I do fail in blowing or hallooing; Or if I lack my staff or my horn by my side: He will be quick enough to fume, chafe, and chide. Am I not well at ease such a master to serve, As must have such service, and yet will let me starve? But, in faith, his fashions displease mo than me, And will have but a mad end one day, we shall see. He passeth nothing on Rebecca his mother, And much less passeth he on Jacob ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley

... who suffered himself to be carried back into the parlour without speaking a word. — Being instantly accommodated with dry clothes and flannels, comforted with a cordial, and replaced in statu quo, one of the maids was ordered to chafe his lower extremities, an operation in consequence of which his senses seemed to return and his good humour to revive. — As we had followed him into the room, he looked at every individual in his turn, with a certain ludicrous expression ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... thongs, but they were too stout either to loosen or to break. I wormed my way out on to the river-bank and tried to chafe them against a rock, but only succeeded in bruising my flesh. The sun came out and shone down upon me till my thirst grew agonising. It seemed to me that at last I had run to the end of my tether. Then a thought occurred to me; wriggling toward the fire, I found that it still smouldered. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... united navies of France and Spain were annihilated by a far inferior force; but that force was British, and was directed by one of the most remarkable men of the age, and perhaps the greatest hero of any time. Huge fragments of wreck still frequently emerge from the watery gulf whose billows chafe the rocky sides of Trafalgar: they are relies of the enormous ships which were burnt and sunk on that terrible day, when the heroic champion of Britain concluded his work and died. I never heard but one individual ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... deep verandas recalled the old monastic gloom of the Spanish house, which even the presence of a lounging officer or waiting orderly could not entirely dissipate, and the scent of the rose and jasmine from his windows overcame him with sad memories. He began to chafe under this inaction, and long again for the excitement of the march and bivouac, in which, for the past four years, he had ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... and cut the cords which bound me with eager haste. "Another draught of wine," she said, still in the same hurried, almost insane manner. "You have work to do! Now, while I secure the door, do you rub and chafe your stiffened joints." The door was soon fastened, and then she assisted in restoring the circulation to my partially benumbed limbs. This was at last accomplished, and Marie Duquesne drew me toward a window, which she softly opened. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... Rerechild were doing their best, and poor Miss Trefoil sat at the head of her father's bed, longing, as in such cases daughters do long, to be allowed to do something to show her love—if it were only to chafe his feet with her hands, or wait in menial offices on those autocratic doctors—anything so that now in the time of need she ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... met a party of half-drunken marines, who began to chafe them, and Sukey, though slow to wrath, was about to give them an exhibition of frontier muscle, when his friend got him away, and they hastened to a better part ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... upon a democratic basis, and that poor white men, first, and black men next, should reach a level representing the true measure of their talents and their ambition. But it was perhaps equally inevitable that for a generation or two those who had suffered most from the readjustment, should chafe under ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... he saw that by neither meane he could doo good, in a great chafe he brake foorth of the house vpon Kineard, and went verie neere to haue killed him: but being compassed about with multitude of enimies, whilest he stood at defense, thinking it a dishonour for [Sidenote: Kinewulfe slaine by conspirators.] ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed

... put on vest and coat, and liver pad and lung pad and stomach pad, and a porous plaster, and a chemise shirt between the two others, and rub on some liniment, and put a bunch of keys and a jack-knife and a button-hook and a pocket-book and a pistol and a plug of tobacco in your pockets, so they will chafe your person, and then go and drink a few whisky cocktails, and walk around in the sun with tight boots on, sis, and then you will know what ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck

... recur again and again. England always succeeds in maintaining herself, though not without some reverses, on the sea. In the end the power of the master of legions, Philip, Louis, Napoleon, and shall we say William, crumbles and melts; his ambitions are too costly to endure, his people chafe under his lash, and his kingdom falls into insignificance or is transformed ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... murmur left my lips upon a later occasion—looking at me sorrowfully as she spoke, and with something incomprehensible to me in her expression that affected me strangely: "Wait until you are of age, Miriam: all can be arranged definitely then; but now, the waves might as well chafe against the rocks that bind them in their bed, as you against your condition;" adding with a tragic look and tone, half playful, of course, "Votre sort, c'est moi. You remember what Louis XIV. said, 'L'Etat, c'est moi;' now be pacified, I implore you—all will ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... between the speaker and the Lord of whom he speaks. But as this practice is the most difficult, it is the most blessed in its reflex influence. To lead another to Jesus is to get nearer Him. To chafe the limbs of some frozen companion is to send the warm blood rushing through your own veins. To go after one lost sheep is to share the shepherd's joy. Whether by letters addressed to relatives or companions, or by personal and direct appeal, let each one of us adopt the sacred practice, which ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... or some word of pathos or fun from the old friends who have endenizened themselves in everybody's home. You want something, in fact, to lift you out of this crowded, tobacco-stained commonplace, to kindle and chafe and glow in you. I want you to dig into this commonplace, this vulgar American life, and see what is in it. Sometimes I think it has a new and awful significance that we ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis

... happy things are meeting There, in endless sunshine free! And the airs on those hills greeting, How reviving must they be! But me checks yon raving river That betwixt doth chafe and roll; And its dark waves rising ever Strike a ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald

... by which to measure time, but he knew that precious hours which he might have utilized for escape were passing. He began to chafe at the delay. With the impulse of youth to be active, he longed to be out, where he could at least use his feet. His clothes had dried upon him; in spite of his hunger he was refreshed by his night's sleep; he was convinced ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... the current; but be mild, Ye waves, and spare the helpless Child! If ye in anger fret or chafe, A Bee-hive would be ship as safe As that ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... The next night he brought forward his Chancery Reform measure in a speech of three hours, which, however luminous, was too long for their Lordships, and before the end of it the House had melted away to nothing. But, notwithstanding this success, he must inwardly chafe at being removed from his natural element and proper sphere of action, and he must burn with vexation at seeing Peel riot and revel in his unopposed power, like Hector when Achilles would not fight, though this Achilles can never fight again, but he would give a great deal to go ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... keep him on his horse, out of the slough; He'll fall again, if he be driven to speak, And then, where are we, for a second week? Why, lifting up his heavy drunken corse! Tell on thy tale, and look we to his horse. Yet, Manciple, in faith thou art too nice Thus openly to chafe him for his vice. Perchance some day he'll do as much for thee, And bring thy baker's bills in jeopardy, Thy black jacks also, and thy butcher's matters, And whether they square ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... the gratings over the drains, and of the acres of orderly forest in a mysterious and seemingly enchanted realm. Intimacy with domains was new to him, and he began to experience an involuntary feeling of restraint which was new to him likewise, and made him chafe in spite of himself. The estate seemed to be the visible semblance of a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... if he is leaving them without the means of pecuniary support. Their brothers may go out into society and gain position and competency; but for them there is but little choice of employment, and, too often, they are left with repressed and crippled energies to pine and chafe under the bitter sense of poverty ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... well; she had already been shopping twice in the Rue Fabrique, and her recovery was now chiefly retarded by the dress-maker's delays in making up a silk too precious to be risked in the piece with the customs officers, at the frontier. Moreover, although the colonel was beginning to chafe, she was not loath to linger yet a few days for the sake of an affair to which her suffering had been a willing sacrifice. In return for her indefatigable self-devotion, Kitty had lately done very little. She ungratefully shrunk ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... grandsire's oath— Let Rome and England do their worst; Rowe'er attainted and accursed, If Bruce shall e'er find friends again, Once more to brave a battle-plain, If Douglas couch again his lance, Or Randolph dare another chance, Old Torquil will not be to lack With twice a thousand at his back; Nay, chafe not at my bearing bold, Good abbot! for thou knowest of old, Torquil's rude thought and stubborn will Smack of the wild Norwegian still Nor will I barter freedom's cause For ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... be, Yet jointly here they both in one agree. The whole's a sacrifice of salt and fire; So does the humour of the age require, To chafe the touch, and so foment desire. As doctrine-dangling preachers lull asleep Their unattentive pent-up fold of sheep; The opiated milk glues up the brain, And th' babes of grace are in their cradles lain; ( xxiv) While mounted Andrews, bawdy, bold, and loud, Like cocks, alarm all the drowsy crowd, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... are two strange beings. There is in the one angelic beauty animated with a soul of giant proportions, large in love, large in hate, and grandly large in its aspirations; and yet it is chained to a rock with fetters that chafe at every motion. The other cold, emotionless, with a reserved severity of manner, which is the offspring of a heart as malignant and sinister as Satan himself may boast of. They hate each other, but how different that hatred! The one is an emotion fierce ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... all the Fops of empty Heads and Pockets may know where to be sure of a Cully; and may they rook ye till ye lose, and fret, and chafe, and rail those youthful Eyes to sinking; watch your fair Face to pale ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... watch, when we came below, we took off our clothes and wrung them out; two taking hold of a pair of trowsers,—one at each end,—and jackets in the same way. Stockings, mittens, and all, were wrung out also and then hung up to drain and chafe dry against the bulk-heads. Then, feeling of all our clothes, we picked out those which were the least wet, and put them on, so as to be ready for a call, and turned-in, covered ourselves up with blankets, and slept ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... unaffectedly happy. When I think of them now, I think of them only as they were during that time, and wonder how many of the married people about me could say as much. Their means were small, and they lived a quiet life, which had few luxuries. But as time went on, my father began to chafe at the petty economies which the smallness of their income rendered necessary. He had been bred amid the luxuries of a great estate, where the house was open to every passer-by, and it vexed him ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... my last years in America belong to history. It was with a truly personal delight that I hailed the peace which proclaimed the United States a free nation. I had begun to chafe at my long absence from France; my passion had been growing ever greater, and left no room for the intoxication of military glory. Before my departure I went to take leave of Arthur. Then I sailed with the worthy Marcasse, divided between sorrow at parting from my only friend, and joy at ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... we, my friend! ... Not till we find each other tiresome, . . not till we prove that our spirits, like over-mettlesome steeds, do chafe and fret one another too rudely in the harness of custom, . . wherefore then, and then only, 'twill be time to break loose at a gallop, and seek each one a wider pasture-land! Meanwhile, here's to thee!"—and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... original offence, and in spite of his rank he was not at all certain that if he were put on his trial even now he would escape scot free, much less if a new offence were added to the indictment. So, however much he might chafe against the bit, he felt he ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... that judgest all things, stay my thoughts, My thoughts, that labour to persuade my soul Some violent hands were laid on Humphrey's life! If my suspect be false, forgive me, God, For judgment only doth belong to thee. Fain would I go to chafe his paly lips With twenty thousand kisses, and to drain Upon his face an ocean of salt tears To tell my love unto his dumb deaf trunk, And with my fingers feel his hand unfeeling; But all in vain are these mean obsequies; And to survey ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... conceal, "thou hast fairly challenged us to run a tilt with thee, not of sword and lance, but of all knightly and generous courtesy. I were no true knight to condemn, nor king to mistrust thee; yet, of a truth, the fruit of thy rash act might chafe a cooler mood than ours. Knowest thou Sir John Comyn is murdered—murdered by the arch traitor thou ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... remonstrance Carroll allowed Shock to lift the lifeless child and carry him into the open air, where, laying him on the ground, he began to vigorously chafe his hands and feet. After some minutes of bathing and rubbing the eyelids began to flutter and the breath ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... it willingly or under compulsion? Apparently the matter is decided for them by their parents, who send them when boys to some lamassery where they are duly and meagrely trained; but they do not seem to chafe at their condition when they grow up, for the advantages are very real. The parents save in not having to buy wives for their sons, while the lama himself is always sure of support if he goes back to his lamassery, and he is free from all demands by ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... I clap, I feele, I view at will, Yett dead he lyes, not thinking good or ill. "Unhappie me," quoth shee, "and wilt' not stand? Com, lett me rubb and chafe it with my ...
— The Choise of Valentines - Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo • Thomas Nash

... of ocean sweep, In vain the billows roar That chafe the wild and stormy steep Of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... way; and though Sir Roger Scatcherd was at present a great and rich man, Dr Fillgrave had remembered him a very small and a very poor man. He now began to think of Sir Roger as the stone-mason, and to chafe somewhat more violently at being so ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... their presence meant very little, a fact which caused him to puzzle, to chafe and, finally, as was fairly natural, to grow irritated. After he and Janet had explored the house and garden, there seemed nothing left to do for Oliver but to stroll up and down the drive, stare through the tall gates at the motors going by, or to ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs

... workers, always foremost in good deeds, and on the whole the most efficient civilizing class, working downwards from knowledge to ignorance, that is,—not so much upwards, perhaps,—that we have. The trouble is, that so many of 'em work in harness, and it is pretty sure to chafe somewhere. They feed us on canned meats mostly. They cripple our instincts and reason, and give us a crutch of doctrine. I have talked with a great many of 'em of all sorts of belief, and I don't think they are quite ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... intervals, forming a sort of cross within the wheel, were quite sufficient, Tom thought, for his purpose. It was necessary to shave the edges of the shingles somewhat, after they were in place, so that they would not chafe against the axle-bars. But this was also the hurried work of a few seconds, and then Tom moved his machine to the old mooring float and lifted it ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... reticent about herself, and took pains to seem indifferent in regard to his life and plans, but she was beginning to chafe under what she characterized as his "inaction." Giving to hospitals and military charities and buying United-States bonds counted ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... went down to the stables and interviewed Washington Bones and several of the other drivers present, and all agreed that it would not be possible to get very far beyond the town limits. This news made the young folks chafe considerably, but there was nothing to be done; so for another day they had to content themselves as best they could. During that time the boys did their best to send some message to Crumville, but without success, for all of the telephone and telegraph ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer

... rough seat in the Chimney, began to chafe at the delay. He did not overlook the fact that the Breezes were merry fellows, and that, though they took no liberties while they were under his eye, and talked only in whispers among themselves when they perched in the ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield



Words linked to "Chafe" :   get, experience, peeve, antagonise, plague, exasperation, rub off, aggravation, abrade, pique, eat into, provoke, feel, beset, touch, ire, antagonize, ruffle, harassment, harass, rankle, contact, chivvy, tenderness, chivy, soreness, get at, rub down, temper, warm, displease, anger, molest, chevy, displeasure, hassle, adjoin, irritate, frustration, irritation, harry, abrase, fret, rile, get under one's skin, grate, corrade, torment, choler, meet, rawness, chevvy



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