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Taunt   /tɔnt/   Listen
Taunt

verb
(past & past part. taunted; pres. part. taunting)
1.
Harass with persistent criticism or carping.  Synonyms: bait, cod, rag, rally, razz, ride, tantalise, tantalize, tease, twit.  "Don't ride me so hard over my failure" , "His fellow workers razzed him when he wore a jacket and tie"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Taunt" Quotes from Famous Books



... a passage of King Henry VI. has sorely gravelled MR. COLLIER: twice over he essays, with equal success, to expound its purport. First, loc. cit., he finds fault with gird as being employed in rather an unusual manner; or, if taken in its common meaning of taunt or reproof, then that kindly is said ironically; because there seems to be a contradiction in terms. (Monck Mason's rank distortion of the words, there cited, I will not pain the reader's sight with.) MR. COLLIER'S note concludes with a supposition that gird may possibly be ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various

... hard for Ellen now to keep to what she thought right. Disagreeable feelings would rise when she remembered the impoliteness, the half-sneer, the whole taunt, and the real unkindness of several of the young party. She found herself ready to be irritated, inclined to dislike the sight of those, even wishing to visit some sort of punishment upon them. But Christian principle had taken strong hold in little Ellen's heart; she fought ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell

... The taunt to the down-trodden Marylanders—oppressed and suffering bravely for conscience sake—we must in justice to ourselves believe only the result of grief and disappointment. Men, like goods, can only be judged "by sample;" and, from the beginning to the end of the war, Maryland may point to Archer, ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... recognition, the poor shell of respectability and self-respect which, during his lonely years, had grown about him, was torn asunder, and he was what he knew the doctor believed him. To such, Mary McAdam's request seemed a cruel jest, a taunt to drive him into the open. And yet he knew that up to the last ditch he must hold to what he had secured for himself—the trust and friendship of these simple people. Hard and distasteful as the effort was he dared not turn himself from it. Full well he knew that Ledyard's magnifying ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... turkey-cocks. There was a contest who should run up the tallest flag-staff and display the broadest flag; all day long there was a furious rolling of drums and twanging of trumpets in either fortress, and, whichever had the wind in its favor, would keep up a continual firing of cannon, to taunt its antagonist with ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... may ask that question, and taunt me with my being single, and with my credulity, as you will, Master Openshaw. You'll get no answer from me. As for the brooch, and the story of theft and burglary; if any friend ever came to see me (which I defy you to prove, and deny), he'd be ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.

... recognized this friendly paragraph as the one which had had its kindness extracted, and been abbreviated and twisted into that cruel taunt which I had heard in my childhood from ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton

... still as fresh and buoyant and eager for the game as at the moment of beginning. He smoked and smoked continually, and followed the endless track around the billiard-table with the light step of youth. At three or four o'clock in the morning he would urge just one more game, and would taunt me for my weariness. I can truthfully testify that never until the last year of his life did he willingly lay down the billiard-cue, or show the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... that work nobly," I said to him. "I think that no one in future will venture to taunt you for your ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston

... Volunteers. The Orange flag is the symbol of conquest, confiscation, racial and religious ascendancy. It is not noble for Irishmen to celebrate annually a battle in which Ireland was defeated, or to taunt their Catholic compatriots with agrarian lawlessness to which their own forefathers were forced to resort, in order to obtain a privileged immunity from the same scandalous land laws. Ulstermen reached spiritual greatness when, like true patriots, they stood for tolerance, Parliamentary ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... same way back, and again ascended up to the skerry. Then she confided to him that the reason why her father had been so bitter against him was because he had mocked her with the taunt about church-cleansing when she had wanted to go to church—the name the folks down below wanted to know might, the Merman thought, be treasured up in Eilert's memory; but during their conversation on their way down to her father, she had perceived that he ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... Though you do scare me in your letter saying you are soon going to die, though you do taunt me with having rejected you, yet thank you all the same; I know perfectly well you are not going to die, and that no one ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... put love forth from his heart, And rode across the desert far away. "Woman shall have no place nor part In my lone life," men heard him say. He rode right on. The level rim Of the barren plain grew low and wide; It seemed to taunt and beckon him, To ride right ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... that the greatest mechanical skill in America is to be found among professional burglars who come here from England. Suppose one of these men were in prison, and we were to stand outside and taunt him through the window: "Here is a locomotive engine: why do you not mend or manage it? Here is a steam printing-press: if you know anything, set it up for me! You a mechanic, when you have not proved that you understand any of ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... had just touched one of their plaids." One of the King's Ministers said long afterwards that this passage touching the itch was worth two regiments of horse to the cause of Government. At this distance of time one doesn't see much wit in a scurrilous lampoon, of which the gist was to taunt one's neighbours with being afflicted with a disease of the skin: and, indeed, the lower ranks of English were, in those days, anything but free from similar ailments, and, in London at least, were ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... on the Duke. At her taunt about his not dining with her, he had stood still, clapping one hand to his brow. The events of the early evening swept back to him—his speech, its unforeseen and horrible reception. He saw again the preternaturally solemn face of Oover, and the flushed faces of the rest. He had thought, ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... on granite than have web feet and paddle in muck," retorted Uncle Trufant, ready with the ancient taunt as to the big bog that occupied ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... they might mark places, clues, perhaps, that had been overlooked. The whole—the whole document is a taunt, isn't it? The scaffold, and the axe, and 'not yet'; a piece ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... of the many things I have apologised for. You surely do not wish to taunt me with ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... with a gnawing hunger of heart, for any earthly good, or lamenting over the removal of creatural defences and joys, as if heaven were empty because some one's place here is, or as if God were dead because dear ones die, may well be a shame to us, and a taunt on the lips of our enemies? Let us learn again the lesson from this old story,—that if our faith in God is not the veriest sham, it demands and will produce, the abandonment sometimes and the subordination always, of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... 'putter'! have I lived to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English? This is enough to be the decay of lust and late-walking through ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent, and full of invention; taunt him with the license of ink; if thou thou'st him thrice, it shall nor be amiss; and as many lies as will lie on a sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enough for the bed of Ware in England, set 'em down; go, about it. Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... company, and thus find my triumph and revenge. A man rejected or scorned by a woman sometimes makes a great man of himself, with the motivation more or less developed to make her sorry or humiliated. Anger may prompt a man to go in to win his enemy's girl. A taunt or an insult sometimes spurs the victim of it to towering ambition to show the world and especially the abuser better, and to be able to despise him in return; and there are those who have been thus stung to attempt greatness and find the sweetest joy of success in the feeling that ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... down, watching the throng. He would take no hand in the matter, wherein he was wise. But those words of his came to Arnkel as a taunt, and his look at me ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler

... the Bitter taunt.] Or when we deride with a certaine seueritie, we may call it the bitter taunt [Sarcasmus] as Charles the fift Emperour aunswered the Duke of Arskot, beseeching him recompence of seruice done at the siege of Renty, against Henry the French king, where the Duke was taken prisoner, ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... a post,—a charred, bloodstained post to which others of his race have been bound before him. The women and children taunt him, jeer at him, strike him even. The warriors do not. They will presently do more than that. Some busy themselves building a fire near by; others bring pieces of flint, spear points, jagged fragments of rock, and heat them in it. The ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... thought their hands were about to close down upon him, that soon they would enjoy the sight of his writhings under the fagot and the stake, but always he slipped away at the fatal moment, and their savage hearts were filled with bitterness that a lone fugitive should taunt them so. His footsteps were those of the white man, but his wile and cunning were those of the red, and curiosity was added to the other motives that drew ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... never yet found her cupboard to be absolutely bare, or the bread-pan to be actually empty. But there are pangs to which, at the time, starvation itself would seem to be preferable. The angry eyes of unpaid tradesman, savage with anger which one knows to be justifiable; the taunt of the poor servant who wants her wages; the gradual relinquishment of habits which the soft nurture of earlier, kinder years had made second nature; the wan cheeks of the wife whose malady demands wine; the rags of the husband whose outward occupations ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... seemed a lifetime—an age of hopes and fears, and latterly of cold despair, which had now been warmed once more to hope only to freeze again. For was not this man, to whom he had looked for aid, his cruel foe come back to taunt him—to behold him already half-way toward death, and to make its slow approach more bitter? But great as was his agony Solomon held his peace, nor offered to this monarch of his fate the tribute ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... had been growing angrier with each taunt from across the Greek line, now became suddenly infuriated. Forgetting all prudence, forgetting all laws of neutrality, forgetting everything except the smiling face of Anthony Stubbs, American war correspondent, ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes

... an easy and romantic time carried the day, and Harry's practical common-sense reasoning was of no avail, and a taunt at his cowardice induced ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic

... you that I have been arrested and put in prison several times—always on account of my papers? I told you the truth, and you shouldn't taunt me ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... half Frenchman, had come to him from a sick-bed to tell him that Bucky had ruined his young wife. Rousseau, who should have been in bed with his fever, died two days later. Billy could still hear the taunt in Bucky's voice when he had cornered him with Rousseau's accusation, and the fight had followed. The thought that this man was now close after Isobel and Deane filled him with a sort of rage, and as Walker went ahead he laid a hand ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... that was half laugh, half taunt, rose from the stands. Then it quickly subsided. From his position Ken looked for the players of the old varsity, but they had not yet come upon the field. Of the few balls batted to Ken in practice he muffed only one, and he was just beginning to feel that he might acquit ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... clouded chambers of his brain, pointing like a mocking fiend now this way, then in an opposite direction; one instant assuring him that they had somewhere met before, the next torturing him with the triumphant taunt that he had hitherto never known any one half so lovely. Was it merely some lucky accident that had so unexpectedly brought them during that long flattering ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... held a taunt that brought angry flushes of color to the faces of the men opposing him, yet they made no definite movement toward attack. It seemed patent that Sandy Bourke was testing them. Trouble was in the air, two ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... Jeffrey Whiting had stood with his gun levelled upon the man whom Gadbeau had killed. But, try as she would to keep back the knowledge which she knew she must never under any circumstances reveal, those words came ringing upon her ears. And she knew that the secret would haunt her and taunt her always. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... "About this time I began to think of trying to bring out original American works. . . . The general impression was that we had not, and could not have, a literature. It was the precise point at which Sidney Smith had uttered that bitter taunt in the Edinburgh Review, 'Who reads an American book?' . . . It was positively injurious to the commercial credit of a bookseller to undertake American works." Washington Irving (1783-1859) was the first American author whose books, as books, obtained recognition abroad; whose name was ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... words, one by one, with infinite relish; and the mockery in the depths of those eyes seared me far more than my bonds. After watching the effect of his taunt he resumed his seat upon the stool, pulled the clasp towards him ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... apprehension that she would be seized and dragged away to be shut up and tortured as Miss Starbrow had desired. But suddenly this feeling gave place to another, to a burning resentment experienced for the first time against this woman who had made her suffer so cruelly, and now came to taunt her and mock at her misery. It suffocated and made her dumb for a time. Then she burst out: "You wicked bad woman! You beast—you beast, how I hate you! Oh, I wish God would strike ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... this has roused my apathy, That He who rules creation May change the dismal hap of thee, And hasten to restore thee In safety from thy danger, To thine own, in joy and glory, To save us from the stranger. With princely grace to give redress, Nor a taunt to suffer back again; The fell Monro has felt thy blow, And should he dare attack again, Then as he flew, he 'll run anew, The flames to quench he 'll labour on, Of castle fired—when Staghead ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... of Commons was made up of incongruous elements, whose interests were at variance on many questions. Peel actually came to the rescue of the ministers not once, but so many times as to give bitterness to the taunt hurled at them by a Radical orator: "Why! the right honorable member for Tamworth (Peel) governs England. The honorable and learned member for Dublin (O'Connell) governs England. The Whigs govern nothing but Downing Street. The right ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... The taunt was too much. Wheeling suddenly, Lidgerwood snapped out a summons to Jefferis: "Get aboard, Mr. Jefferis; ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... religion himself, so he attempted, if possible, to make her do so too. He would not suffer her to go out to the preaching of the word of Christ, nor to the rest of his appointments, for the health and salvation of her soul. He would now taunt at and reflectingly speak of her preachers, and would receive, yea, raise scandals of them, to her very great ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Gryson, who in appearance was a typical tough, and who in reality was a post-graduate of the hard school of violence and ruffianage obtaining in the lawless mining-camps of the Carnadine Hills, sauntered into Blount's office with his cigar at the belligerent angle and an insolent taunt in his mouth. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... solitary, spectacled stone-breaker; and you were only accompanied, as you went doggedly forward, by the gaunt telegraph- posts and the hum of the resonant wires in the keen sea-wind. To one who had learned to know their song in warm pleasant places by the Mediterranean, it seemed to taunt the country, and make it still bleaker by suggested contrast. Even the waste places by the side of the road were not, as Hawthorne liked to put it, 'taken back to Nature' by any decent covering of vegetation. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... said Christine, with a covert taunt in her tone, "that is a cheap way of making a reputation. I fear the impression will be given ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... to keep a clerk for my own pleasure, or because of my own wish, you provoking rascal!' said Mr Brass, putting his pen in his mouth, and grinning spitefully at his sister. 'What do you taunt me about going to keep ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... cruelest taunt, which she had brought out against her better feelings, seemed to have relieved her soul of a hundred-weight of care; she drew a deep breath, and turning to Philippus, went on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... taunt her rival later, and, skating around the bits of ice, won the heat before Agnes, much shaken and bruised, had climbed ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill

... about her turned desolate; an oppression of distress and bewilderment burdened them both. "Joan! Joan!" called Mother in her strong beautiful contralto, swelling the word forth in powerful music, and when she ceased the silence was like a taunt. It was not as if Joan were there and failed to answer; it was as if there were no longer any Joan anywhere. They came at last to the space of sparse trees ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... mirror, and unconsciously taking a china cup from the mantelpiece, clasped his hands around it as though praying. He saw her bosom rise and fall, her eyes darkening with anger, and taking no notice of the taunt, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... the young Indian, his face darkening with anger at the savage taunt. "A man's death for a man, but jackals shall die like jackals. With hearts of terror and blood turned to water in their fear, they shall die a death more horrible than the palefaces can ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... attribute of a hunter than cleverness in jumping, because the main object of the rider will then be, as a rule, to get over fields and through gates with a minimum of "lepping." Some of our Colonial sisters might taunt us for not trying to leap wire in the brave manner done by Miss Harding (Fig. 102) and other New Zealand and Australian horsewomen, but their conditions of country are entirely different from ours. In the Shires, for instance, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes

... Commentary, to the substance of which extract I give the most full assent. "The Greek Drama, we know, had its origin from the loose, licentious raillery of the rout of Bacchus, indulging to themselves the freest follies of taunt and invective, as would best suit to lawless natures, inspirited by festal mirth, and made extravagant by wine. Hence arose, and with a character answering to this original, the Satiric Drama; the ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace

... taunt—as though I were the common interrogation mark, the abuser of hospitality, the abominable Paul Pry. But I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... lower one, and over this door it was that she now knelt down, and began to deal with Him in whose strength she had undertaken the work of her children's education. She spread before Him those letters from the study table, and told Him of her husband's half scoffing taunt. She also reminded Him how her life had been redeemed from the very gates of death, for the children's sake, and then declared that she could not believe that He meant to forsake her at this juncture; she was willing to be the second ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... shall I render to the Lord?' The critics were not more beneficent, but less inflamed with love to Jesus, and the leader of them only wished that the proceeds of the ointment had come into his hands, where some of it would have stuck. We hear the same sort of taunt today,—What is the sense of all this money being spent on missions and religious objects? How much more useful it would be if expended on better dwellings for the poor or hospitals or technical schools! But there is a place in Christ's treasury for useless deeds, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... This good-natured taunt happened to hit most of those around, and the situation looked stormy until a little, awkward-looking man strolled up and ...
— The Rogue Elephant - The Boys' Big Game Series • Elliott Whitney

... color slightly as the taunt struck home, but he was skilled in the more aesthetic methods ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... lash. Furious, yet realizing the justice of the taunt, McGee again took off, determined not to come back until he could bring some real ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... "But still a King without a kingdom—a table without meat. A mockery of greatness after all. Why do you come to tell me this?" he cried turning fiercely on them. "Was I too contented as I was? It is not good to taunt a hungry man. To tell me that I am a crownless King without six feet of land to call my realm, is but to ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... a taunt so readily rebuttable will anti-Utilitarians be excited to speedier apprehension of the nature of the lien which corporate self-interest is presumed to have upon individual self-devotion. Not the less tenaciously may they cling to their belief in the right of every ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... latter part of his speech in a somewhat bitter tone, alluding to Hilda's smiles; but the jealous and sulky Glumm could appreciate no sunbeams save those that flashed from Ada's dark eyes. He understood the remark as a triumphant and ironical taunt, and, leaping fiercely into the ring formed by the ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... every coming hour, Shall brighten, and thy form shall tower; And when thy sisters, elder born, Would brand thy name with words of scorn, Before thine eye, Upon their lips the taunt shall die. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... him and embolden his fellows: "I promise you now from this place I will never Flee a foot-space, but forward will rush, Where I vow to revenge my vanquished lord. The stalwart warriors round Sturmere shall never 250 Taunt me and twit me for traitorous conduct, That lordless I fled when my leader had fallen, Ran from the war; rather may weapons, The iron points slay me." Full ireful he went; Fiercely he fought; flight he disdained. 255 Dunhere burst forth; ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... this taunt. A bitter struggle was tearing his manly, loving, loyal little heart—the claims of his old life and his own loneliness on the one side; the claims of Miss Lucy's generosity and her loneliness upon the other. He didn't need her, he thought; but she needed him. ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond

... and stooping over him to drive the taunt in] You lie! you have the bread and treacle in you that you come ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw

... zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because it forces so many really good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... replied Percy, "where ever he is; by whom surrounded. I would taunt him as a deceiving, heartless villain, and if he demand satisfaction, by heaven, it would be joy ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... been interested in "The Independent Theatre" and thus led to a situation in which consistency demanded that he write a play. It was his articles on the drama, gathered into "Impressions and Opinions" (1891), that provoked Mr. G.R. Sims to taunt him into "The Strike at Arlingford" (1893). In "Our Dramatists and their Literature," one of these papers, Mr. Moore, in hitting all the heads of all the contemporaneous dramatists, so stung Mr. Sims ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... a quick lift of the head, looked at him questioningly. Raven saw anger also in the look, at last anger ready to spring. Both men had the same thought. Tenney wondered if the owner of the wood was going to taunt him again with yelling like a catamount, and Raven did actually put aside an ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... a Biscayan captain called out, "Send your daughter to the brothel, and that will soon put you in funds!" This, was a favorite daughter named Elvira, whom Gonsalvo loved so tenderly, that he would not part with her, even in his campaigns. Although stung to the heart by this audacious taunt, he made no reply; but, without changing a muscle of his countenance, continued, in the same tone as before, to expostulate with the insurgents, who at length were prevailed on to draw off, and disperse to their quarters. The next morning, the appalling spectacle of the lifeless body of the Biscayan, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... highly fitting, as putting one in a "divine frenzy," partaking of the nature of the gods. Museus the semi-mythical poet is made out to teach that the reward of virtue will be something like perpetual intoxication in the next world. Aeschines the orator will, ere long, taunt his opponent Demosthenes in public with being a "water drinker"; and Socrates on many occasions has given proof that he possessed a very hard head. Yet naturally the Athenian has too acute a sense of things fit and dignified, too noble a perception of the natural ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... flushed with unwonted crimson at this unexpected taunt from the lips of his young lord. It was with difficulty that he restrained the tears which filled his eyes from overflowing, but turning ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... the concluding taunt, darted an indignant glance at him; but commanding himself as well as he could, entered upon a close examination of the documents, at which John Browdie assisted. There was nothing about them which could be called in question. The certificates ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... nearly done?" said Mr. Orme, with a sneer. "You missed your calling; you're a preacher." The hot tears were in Angus' eyes and he seemed to have forgotten that Orme was present, the taunt lost upon him. ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... lives to maintain a government which has never protected them, and a Constitution which has been practically interpreted in such a manner as to recognize and sanction their servitude? Do not, I implore you, answer these inquiries by that easy, but infamous taunt, so constantly on the lips of unscrupulous politicians in your party,—"Here comes the inevitable nigger again!" It is precisely because the awful and too long unavenged sufferings of the slave must be inevitable, while Slavery exists, that these questions must sooner or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... remorse upon the officer, the youth allowed the rage of the baffled to possess him. This cold officer upon a monument, who dropped epithets unconcernedly down, would be finer as a dead man, he thought. So grievous did he think it that he could never possess the secret right to taunt truly in answer. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane

... Rustem, hearing this taunt from the tongue of Akwan Diw, prepared for fight, and threw his kamund with such precision and force, that the demon was entangled in it, and then he struck him such a mighty blow with his sword, that it severed the head from the body. The severed head ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... mildly pointed out that one of men's universal customs was to have an altar, then my agnostic teachers turned clean round and told me that men had always been in darkness and the superstitions of savages. I found it was their daily taunt against Christianity that it was the light of one people and had left all others to die in the dark. But I also found that it was their special boast for themselves that science and progress were the discovery of one people, and that all other peoples ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... coward! You taunt me because you think I have no home. Do you flatter yourself that ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... him, but flung himself into the thickest of the battle. It was the Caliph who gave Oliver his death blow. 'Charles made a mistake when he left you to guard these defiles,' said he, 'but your life will pay for many that you have slain.' But Oliver was not dead yet, and the taunt of the Caliph stung his blood. With all the strength he had left, he swung his sword Hauteclair on high, and it came down upon the Caliph's helmet with a crash, cleaving it clean through. 'Ah, pagan,' said he, ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... taken possession of him, and with it came those promptings of the flesh which, but a few months ago, he easily subdued, but which the lapse of time had once more made perilous. To any who should have ventured to taunt him with forgetfulness of Veranilda, he would have fiercely given the lie; and with reason, for Veranilda's image was as vivid to him as on the day when he lost her, and she alone of women had the power to excite his deepest and tenderest emotions. Nevertheless, he had more than once ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... of my mind, I would not without blessing send thee forth Into the bleak wide world, whose voice unkind Perchance will mock at thee as nothing worth; For the cold critic's jealous eye may find In all thy purposed good little but ill, May taunt thy simple garb as quaintly wrought, And praise thee for no more than the small skill Of masquing as thine own another's thought: What then? count envious sneers as less than nought: Fair is thine aim,—and ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the darkness there would be a sense of something following close behind, and then all was over, and nothing to be seen but a panic-stricken little boy rushing along with his hands held over his ears. How foolish! you will say. Very foolish, indeed, and so said all the other children, adding many a taunt and jeer. ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton

... Nanna uttered her taunt in a good-natured tone, but she glanced furtively at her husband to see the effect of her words, for it was not always safe to ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... was not mad? The fool, who meant to insult him, I think, asks, are you mad, or do you but counterfeit? That is, you look like a madman, you talk like a madman: Is your madness real, or have you any secret design in it? This, to a man in poor Malvolio's state, was a severe taunt. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson

... Sharply as the taunt was pointed, it glanced off harmless. Mrs. Lecount had planted her sting once too often. Magdalen rose in complete possession of her assumed character and composedly terminated the interview. Ignorant as she was of what had happened ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... picture as we left her there in the swift gathering dusk of the calm tropical night, her long shapely hull, taunt spars, and milk-white canvas reflected upon the glassy surface of the sleeping wave upon which she oscillated ponderously to the long heave of the almost imperceptible swell; and it was grievous to think that the man—quite a young man, too, with all his best years apparently before him—who ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... our wind and, backing our main topsail, hove-to about a couple of cables' lengths to windward of the brig. She was as beautiful a craft as a seaman's eye had ever rested on: long and low upon the water, with a superbly-modelled hull, enormously lofty masts with a saucy rake aft to them, and very taunt heavy yards. She mounted seven guns of a side, apparently of the same description and weight as our own—long 18-pounders, and there was what looked suspiciously like a long 32-pounder on her forecastle. She was flying French colours, but she certainly looked ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... intelligence and moral sense of the free States, that it produced results altogether opposed to those designed by the men who invoked it. Instead of checking, the execrated judgment augmented enormously the existing excitement. Garrison's bitter taunt that "the Union is but another name for the iron reign of the slave-power," was driven home to the North, by the Dred Scott decision, with the logic of another unanswerable fact. Confidence in the independence and impartiality of the Supreme Court was seriously shaken, and widespread suspicion struck ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... view of the Kingdom of this world only; from the place called Calvary you can see the Kingdom of God as well. From this point of vantage alone the permanent values of life are visible; and to the taunt flung at us, the taunt so terrifying to the young, "You are losing life," the enigmatic reply from the Cross is that you have to lose life to gain it; that permanent and eternal values are acquired by those who have the self-restraint and the foresight not to sacrifice the ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... taunt, he had at length not a word to say, and supported by Hsi Jen and the other attendants on to the couch, they divested him of his clothes. But they failed to understand the drift of what Pao-y kept on still muttering, and all they could make out was an endless string of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... Harero? No! He felt himself, in courage, intellectual endowments, birth, ay, everything but the rank of a soldier, to be more than his equal. His heart beat quickly when he recollected that the latter taunt and threat had been given in the presence of Don Gonzales and his daughter. The malignity, the unfairness of this attack upon him at this time, was shameful, and deserved to be punished. Brooding upon these things ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray

... was pledged to the king and the other to the archbishop. Henry, like every one else, saw the futility of their mission, and "led them for a week," as one of them complained, "through many windings both of road and speech." With a scornful taunt that "he did not care an egg for them and their excommunications," he finally mounted his horse to ride off from the conference. "I see, I see!" he said to the frightened bishops who hurried after him ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green

... one or other," said that individual, by this time pink with anger, "and if you think because I am what I am you can safely taunt me, you are wrong. See! I have a sting," and like a thwarted child my companion half drew from the folds of the yellow tunic-dress the daintiest, most harmless-looking little dagger that was ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold

... sprightly conversation would be too much for any man, and mercifully divide the two. And this leaves them helpless before a little American girl, laughing, talking, jesting, teasing, till, bewildered by such a phenomenon, they are swept down so easily that one is reminded of Attila's taunt to the Romans, "The thicker the grass, the quicker it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various

... I swear it,' said Marina. 'To the rest he has been driven by the clamour of the soldiers, who taunt him with stealing treasure that he has never found. But of this last wickedness he ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard

... The taunt was followed by another prolonged silence. Carmena smiled and tossed down first a bare corn cob ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... tradesman heaps up money, he is apt to believe that his wealth makes him free of the company of letters, and a fellow craftsman of the poets. The mark of his style is an excessive and pretentious allusiveness. It was he whom the satirist designed in that taunt, Scire tuum nihil est nisi te scire hoc sciat alter—"My knowledge of thy knowledge is the knowledge thou covetest." His allusions and learned periphrases elucidate nothing; they put an idle labour on the reader who understands them, and extort from ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... "Your taunt is unjust and untrue. In a general way we accept most people for what they are, out here. But one has to draw the line somewhere, even in India. If I were Deputy-Commissioner, the Kresneys would be asked along with the rest. But, in my position, ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... and every careless taunt Rischenheim's resolve to prove himself a man grew stronger. He snatched up a revolver that lay on the mantelpiece and put it ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... sits; Untouched by mirth she sees and hears, Her smile is sadder than her tears. But cruel eyes have found her out, And cruel lips repeat her name, And taunt ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... flashed death across the barriere, in a combat where only one might live, though the root of the quarrel had been nothing more than a toss too much of brandy, a puff of tobacco smoke construed into insult, or a fille de joie's maliciously cast fire-brand of taunt or laugh. Hours of severe discipline, of relentless routine, of bitter deprivation, of campaigns hard as steel in the endurance they needed, in the miseries they entailed; of military subjection, stern and unbending, a ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... gae zour black errand, Though it be to zour cost; Sen ze by me will nae be warn'd, In it ze sail find frost. The baron he is a man of might, He neir could bide to taunt, As ze will see before its nicht, How ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols

... As a taunt to Caiaphas, Calcol echoed, "Behold your king!" and raising a stalk of hyssop, on which was a sponge that he had dipped in the posca, the thin wine the soldiers drink, he offered it ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus

... chorister boys made him feel that his youth had slipped from him, and left him alone with his intellect and his epigrams. Sometimes he shivered with cold among those epigrams. He was tired of them. He knew them so well, and then so many of them had foreign blood in their veins, and were inclined to taunt him with being English. Ah! youth with its simple puns and its full-blooded pleasures, when there is no gold dust in the hair and no wrinkles about the eyes, when the sources of an epigram, like the sources of the Nile, are undiscoverable, and the joy of being led into sin has not ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens

... he had no doubt. The cover was darned and patched—as only the virtuous poor of fiction do darn and do patch—and he made no doubt the stuffing was nothing better than brown wool; and with that coarse taunt the coarser broker dug his clasp-knife into the cushion against which grandfatherly backs had leaned in happier days, and lo! an avalanche of banknotes fell out of the much-maligned horse-hair, and the family ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... men, and in perfect harmony with that mischievous interference by which the enemies of our race have ever sought to sow discord among us, to prove a natural contempt for the Negro and repugnance to his leadership, then taunt us with incapacity for self-government. These flambeaus and rockets directed with unerring precision, taking effect in the very centre of our magazine, did not cause, in those for whom it was intended, a falter nor a wince ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany

... more eloquent tongues than that of the poet of Poitiers. Dante and Petrarch had held them up to immortal contempt. Boccaccio had made them the subject of ridicule in his popular stories. But neither remonstrance nor taunt had effectually abated the prevailing corruption. It remained that a new remedy should be tried, and the time for its application was ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird



Words linked to "Taunt" :   banter, mock, tantalize, barrack, tease, bemock, aggravation, tantalise, josh, jolly, scoff, gibe, jeer, irritation, kid, flout, provocation, chaff



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