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Worm-eaten   /wərm-ˈitən/   Listen
Worm-eaten

adjective
1.
Infested with or damaged (as if eaten) by worms.  Synonyms: vermiculate, wormy.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Worm-eaten" Quotes from Famous Books



... fortune of training, been allowed to see the beauty of the old things must recognize that what the generation gains is more for its happiness than what it discards, as a new brass Birmingham bedstead is cleaner, healthier, and more desirable for a small crowded cottage than a worm-eaten old ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... hardest day of all to Fulk, for this was the only one on which he could not be busy enough to tire himself out. We were a mile from church, and when we got to the worm-eaten farm pew there was a smell, as Jaquey said, as if generations of farmers had been eating cheese there, and generations of mice eating after them; and she always longed to shut up ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge

... credit that you should have such feelings, I'm sure. But don't you think sentiment may be carried too far? Why, we should have no new furniture at all, and should have to put up with worm-eaten horrors. Besides, my dear, Hollingford will seem very dull to Cynthia, after pretty, gay France, and I want to make the first impressions attractive. I've a notion I can settle her down near here; ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... be thrown or may fall overboard during so long a passage, and thus find their way to land. But these are not mere conjectures and possibilities; for one of my people actually did see some wood in one of the houses at Wymoa, which he judged to be fir. It was worm-eaten, and the natives gave him to understand, that it had been driven ashore by the waves of the sea; and we had their own express testimony, that they had got the inconsiderable specimens of iron, found amongst them, from some ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... itself is clearly of inferior quality; industry, order, economy and labor have done everything. How great the contrast between all this and the aspect of a small town on the shores of the Mediterranean, so neglected and filthy, where the lower middle class exist like worms in a worm-eaten beam! ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... picking fruit before it is ripe! Allow me to remind you that very much fruit is never picked; some is nipped in the bud; some is worm-eaten and falls to the ground; some rots on the trees before it ripens; some, too slow in ripening, is bitten by the early frosts of autumn; while some rare, ripe apples hang until frozen and worthless on the leafless boughs! Really, Mr. Garfield, if after passing through the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... shone the Alps. My! they look steep and jagged. The sharp blue shadows on their western slopes emphasized the effect. One mighty group standing aloof to the west—Mount Blanc perhaps. Ah, there are quantities of worm-eaten fields my friends the trenches—and that town with the canal going through it must be M——. Right beside the capote of my engine, showing through the white cloth a ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... ask it, she will take down the great key from its nail, and swinging back the new doors of the meeting-house, will show you the old worm-eaten ones inside, which, pierced through and through with bullet-holes, once served as a rampart against the enemy. And she will tell you, in the quaint Friend's language, how her great-great-grandmother carried, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... perfectly free from grit and dirt, remove the black fur, and reject all those that are at all worm-eaten; put them into a stewpan with the above ingredients, but without water; shake them over a clear fire, till all the liquor is dried up, and be careful not to let them burn; arrange them on tins, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... street; then a few pots of dried, withered flowers—all was cracked, somber, moist. Only one or two hours during the day could the sun penetrate this loathsome spot; after that, the shadows took possession; then the sunshine fell upon the crazy walls, the worm-eaten balcony, the dull and tarnished glass, and upon the whirlwind of atoms floating in its golden rays, disturbed ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... baked, big olive-pyes thereto, And sallets mixed with sugar and cinnamon, White wine, rose-water, and candied eringoes. There, on the outlawed ship, whose very name Rang like a blasphemy in the imperial ears Of Spain (its every old worm-eaten plank Being scored with scorn and courage that not storm Nor death, nor all their Inquisition racks, The white-hot irons and bloody branding whips That scarred the backs of Rome's pale galley-slaves, Her captured English seamen, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... timbers, hewn out of the very forests they loved, cried out with all the old associations they bore and held them. The miniature citadel contained within the trenchant stockade, the old pelt stores, roofless and worm-eaten, the armory which still suggested the clank of half-armored men, who lived only for the joy of defying death. The factor's house, whence, in the days gone by, the orders for battle had been issued, and the sentence of life and death had been ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... does not like it. He is so set on his worm-eaten old tapestries and carved chairs, and he wanted momma to refurnish the palace to match, but not she! Louis Quinze, she said, and Louis Quinze it is, more or less. I tell the Marchese that if he is so fond of the musty Middle Ages he ought to go about in armour himself by rights. But the ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... his own landscape-painter, and engraver too. His pastoral scenes seem pricked on paper in little dotted lines. He describes the interior of a cottage like a person sent there to distrain for rent. He has an eye to the number of arms in an old worm-eaten chair, and takes care to inform himself and the reader whether a joint-stool stands upon three legs or upon four. If a settle by the fire-side stands awry, it gives him as much disturbance as a ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... polished till the whole house reeked of bees-wax and turpentine, to a degree that almost overpowered those pervading odours of damp and dry rot, which can curiously exist together. The old furniture had been made as bright as faded fabrics and worm-eaten wood could be made by labour; and the leaping light of blazing logs, reflected on the black oak panelling, gave a transient air of cheerfulness to the spacious dining-parlour where Sir John and his daughter took their first meal in the old home. And if to Angela's eye, accustomed ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... motto: 'Non solum toga', in favor of their race. But it did not seem as if these bearded ancestors looked with much gratitude upon this parliamentary flower added to their feudal crest. They appeared to look down from the height of their worm-eaten frames upon their enrobed descendants with that disdainful smile with which the peers of France used to greet men of law the first time they were called to sit by their side, after being for so long a time at ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... clavier sonatas, had made acquaintance with those of Paradies and of Alberti. These early Italian influences should be noted, for one is apt to think rather of the young composer as plodding through Fux's "Gradus" and playing Emanuel Bach's sonatas on his "little worm-eaten clavier." During his last years Haydn told his friend Griesinger that he had diligently studied Emanuel Bach, and that he owed very much to him. From the painter Dies, in his biographical notice of the ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock

... the hastier part of their thought, since what emboldened them to deny the poor world's faith was that they were too impatient to understand it. Indeed, the enlightenment common to young wits and worm-eaten old satirists, who plume themselves on detecting the scientific ineptitude of religion—something which the blindest half see—is not nearly enlightened enough: it points to notorious facts incompatible ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... like to read of brilliant rooms and gorgeous furniture would derive but little pleasure from a minute description of my simple dwelling. It is dear to me for the same reason that they would hold it in slight regard. Its worm-eaten doors, and low ceilings crossed by clumsy beams; its walls of wainscot, dark stairs, and gaping closets; its small chambers, communicating with each other by winding passages or narrow steps; its many nooks, scarce larger ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... it was done from, which is seldom seen in Hugo's works...." Zanetti, surprised by the fine quality of the first proof, proposed to pass it off on Mariette in Paris as an original da Carpi print. He even stained it and cut holes in it to give the impression of aged worm-eaten paper. At the same time Jackson executed another chiaroscuro, also based on a Parmigianino drawing, the Woman Standing Holding Jar on her Head. Zanetti, says ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen

... forming the boundary on this side of the garden of Jacques Ferrand, the notary, extended to a building situated on the street, of only one story and a garret. Two large brass plates, the sign of the notary's office, flanked the worm-eaten gate, the primitive appearance of which was no longer to be distinguished under the mud which covered it. This door led to a covered passage; on the right was the lodge of an old porter, half deaf, who was to the fraternity of tailors what Pipelet was to the boot-maker; on the left a ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... fetched his tool-basket, and set to work. The partition was strong, of good sound pine, neither rotton nor worm-eaten—inch-boards matched with groove and tongue, not quite easy to break through. But having, with a centre-bit and brace, bored several holes near each other, he knocked out the pieces between, and introducing a saw, soon made an opening ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... observe the orders given to Francisco Gali about the discovery of the route from these ports toward Nueva Espana. I will keep your Lordship's commands to the letter, and will try to advise you soon, although the ship "San Juan" is of no use, as it is worm-eaten and old. I shall have carpenters examine it, and if it will not serve, I shall have them inspect the ships which I have here, to see if any are fit, and to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair

... life so poorly, and love Art because she loves us." Benoni seated himself on the arm of one of the old chairs, and looked down across the worm-eaten table at the young singer. "We," he continued, "who have been wretchedly poor know better than others that Art is real, true, and enduring; medicine in sickness and food in famine; wings to the feet of ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford

... another horrid draught held to my lips, thirst telling me to drink, and disgust making me dash it on the ground—only to be back at my lips the next moment. Once I was a king sitting upon a great tarnished throne, dusty and worm-eaten, in a lofty room of state, the doors standing wide, and the spiders weaving webs across them, for nobody ever came in, and no sound shook the moat-filled air: on that throne I had to sit to all eternity, because I had said I was ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald

... some old Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud Which breaks to dust when once unroll'd; Or shredded perfume, like a cloud From closet long to quiet vow'd, With moth'd and dropping arras hung, Mouldering her lute and books among, As when a queen, long ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... this dungeon still I see. This drear, accursed masonry, Where even the welcome daylight strains But duskly through the painted panes. Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, gray with dust, Which to the vaulted ceiling creep, Against the smoky paper thrust,— With glasses, boxes, round me stacked, And instruments together hurled, Ancestral lumber, stuffed and packed— Such is my world: and what ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... his guest full liberty to investigate the personal annals of these pictured worthies, as well as all the rest of his progenitors; and ample materials were at hand in many chests of worm-eaten papers and yellow parchments, that had been gathering into larger and dustier piles ever since the dark ages. But, to confess the truth, the information afforded by these musty documents was so much more prosaic than what Kenyon acquired from Tomaso's legends, that even the superior ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... already. The stealthy, invaluable Attwood has told me about it. This Mr. Chester has made an investment in Richmond lots on information which he had no right to use. Never mind the details. If he follows that general direction, it will be a flashy success, a pretty worm-eaten crown of laurels." ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... the poorer quarters of St. Petersburg there is a street on a back canal, and over the street an arch. To the right of the arch is a flight of steps, ancient and worm-eaten, difficult of climbing by day by reason of a hole here, a worn place there, and the perilous tilting of the boards; at night well nigh impassable without a lantern. The steps wind and end in a tenement, once a palace, ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... he shrilled. "I am a lawyer, and I tell you it breaks my heart every time I go back to worm-eaten precedent. But I have to do it, because, if I didn't talk that language the judges wouldn't understand me. Do you know what precedent is? It is the opinion of some man a hundred years ago on a case tried a hundred years ago. Do we want that kind of an opinion? No. We want our own opinions ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... baleen of whales, vertebrate limbs, the laryngeal structures of the newborn kangaroo, the pedicellariae of Echinoderms, or for many of the facts of mimicry, and especially those last touches of mimetic perfection, where an insect not only mimics a leaf, but one worm-eaten and ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... and leads the way into his house under a rock. It is a mere hovel, but it has a wooden floor, and there are signs of personal dignity—what is known in England as 'respectability'—struggling with poverty. Perhaps the ancient clock, whose worm-eaten case reaches from the floor to the ceiling, and whose muffled but cheery tick-tack is like the voice of an old friend, impressed me in favour of this poor home as soon ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... pocket the little black nut, in which the best thing of all was said to be enclosed. He laid it carefully between the door and the door-post, and then shut the door so that the nut cracked directly. But there was not much kernel to be seen; it was what we should call hollow or worm-eaten, and looked as if it had been filled with tobacco or rich black earth. "It is just what I expected!" exclaimed Ib. "How should there be room in a little nut like this for the best thing of all? Christina will find her two nuts ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... knows for itself; so I wade in, heedless of wet trousers, and seize the shy lily by its slender stem. Thus I make prize of five or six, which are as many as usually blossom within my reach in a single morning;—some of them partially worm-eaten or blighted, like virgins with an eating sorrow at the heart; others as fair and perfect as Nature's own idea was, when she first imagined this lovely flower. A perfect pond-lily is the most satisfactory ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various

... saints to hope, and to rejoice in hope of the glory of God, notwithstanding present tribulations. This is our seed-time, our winter; afflictions are to try us of what mettle we are made; yea, and to shake off worm-eaten fruit, and such as are rotten at core. Troubles for Christ's sake are but like the prick of an awl in the tip of the ear, in order to hang ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... to make you pay double, triple, and more for it. And then we have to see so much, notably a cartoon of twelve designs by old masters, which Ardea did not even suspect he had, and which Fossati discovered—would you believe?—worm-eaten, in a cupboard in one of ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... went up to her bedroom at the top of the house. It had served as a nursery for many generations of Caresfoots; indeed, during the last three centuries, hundreds of little feet had pattered over the old worm-eaten boards. But the little feet had long since gone to dust, and the only signs of children's play and merriment left about the place were the numberless scratches, nicks, and letters cut in the old panelling, and even on the beams ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... had fostered the conviction in me that, outside of the family, the human world was as brutally selfish as the jungle, and that it was worm-eaten with hypocrisy into the bargain. From time to time the newspapers published sensational revelations concerning some pillar of society who had turned out to be a common thief on an uncommon scale. I saw ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... the Great House next day, instead of finding Lady Constantine in bed, as formerly, she discovered her in the library, poring over what astronomical works she had been able to unearth from the worm-eaten shelves. As these publications were, for a science of such rapid development, somewhat venerable, there was not much help of a practical kind to be gained from them. Nevertheless, the equatorial retained a hold upon her fancy, till she became as eager ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... old Buffoon, that is, a Lover turn'd ridiculous by Age, consider thy self a mere rouling Tun of Nantz,—a walking Chimney, ever smoaking with nasty Mundungus, and then thou hast a Countenance like an old worm-eaten Cheese. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... beans must not be mingled together. There are four sorts of cacao in every crop; the ripe and in good condition, the green but sound, the worm-eaten, and the rotten. The first quality is best, the second is not bad; but the two ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... perfect silence would have done, the child loitered from grave to grave, now stopping to replace with careful hands the bramble which had started from some green mound it helped to keep in shape, and now peeping through one of the low latticed windows into the church, with its worm-eaten books upon the desks, and baize of whitened-green mouldering from the pew sides and leaving the naked wood to view. There were the seats where the poor old people sat, worn spare, and yellow like themselves; the rugged font where children ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... within earshot, ready to reply to our summons as soon as we deign to call them; we may even anticipate the joy they will evince when these sumptuous ornaments are restored to them, and we need to glance at the worm-eaten coffins which contain their stiff and disfigured mummies to recall our imagination to the stern reality of fact. Two other pyramids, but in this case of stone, still exist further south, to the left of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... too! It consisted chiefly of worm-eaten grain. A pint was served out daily for each man, and this boiled and made into a sort of porridge formed their chief food. Their drink was cold water. For tea and coffee were unknown in those days, and beer they ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... sees heaven laid open and beholds the angels, is something far below the power of the old monk who points them out to him. The ex-steward was like the old monk; he would have given his life to defend a worm-eaten shrine. ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac

... proceedings were altogether free from contemporaneous criticism; a venerable crow sitting on a branch above him displayed great interest in his occupation, and, hopping down a few moments afterwards, disposed of some worm-eaten nuts, a few larvae, and an insect or two, with languid dignity and without prejudice. Certain incumbrances, however, still resisted the squirrel's general eviction; among them a folded square of paper ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte

... addition to the ravages of time, it had not been further damaged in the year 1560, through the fathers who, not being able to use the chapter-house on account of the damp, and throwing down the little that remained of the paintings of this man, in replacing a worm-eaten floor by vaulting. About the same time Simone painted in tempera on a panel Our Lady and a St Luke with other saints, which is to-day in the chapel of the Gondi in S. Maria Novella, signed with his name. Simone afterwards did three sides of the chapter-house of S. Maria Novella very successfully. ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari

... followed. A small blank dreary room without furniture—a few empty boxes and hampers in a corner—a small window—the shutters closed—not even a fireplace—no other door but that by which we had entered—no carpet on the floor, and the floor seemed very old, uneven, worm-eaten, mended here and there, as was shown by the whiter patches on the wood; but no living being, and no visible place in which a living being could have hidden. As we stood gazing around, the door by which we had entered closed as quietly as it had ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... old Fort Falconbridge. A worm-eaten gun or two, far more dangerous to those in rear than to those in front, rises en barbette. The affair would fall in half an hour before the mildest of gunboats. Yet by fortifying three points at an expense of some 6,000L to 8,000L Sa Leone might be decently defended. The first is Lighthouse Point, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... stairs, the dark and dirty stairs, worm-eaten. A draught came through a broken pane in the skylight, and the walls were dripping. Jean-Christophe sat on one of the greasy steps; his heart was beating wildly with anger and emotion. In a low voice he ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... worm-eaten steps groaned beneath our weight, like a sensitive woman under a new disillusion. At the top was a room with a door that closed on the outside with a hook. We slept there. The plaster on the once yellow ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... near a large, half-ruined barn, built against a very tall bank. Its worm-eaten doors seemed merely balanced on their hinges. He went up and looked through a crack in the wood. Inside the windowless barn was in semi-darkness, for but little light came through the openings stopped up with straw, especially as the day was beginning to wane. He was able to distinguish a heap of ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... aboard; wherefore I hoisted out the pinnace and sent her to take up some of this driftwood. In a little time she came aboard with a great tree in a tow, which we could hardly hoist in with all our tackles. We cut up the tree and split it for firewood. It was much worm-eaten and had in it some live worms above an inch long, and about the bigness of a goose-quill, and having their heads crusted over with a ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier

... from the Old World, hovering around the richest and silliest women, their eyes glittering with eager avarice for a chance at their millions. It seemed a joke that any sane American mother could conceive the idea of selling her daughter to these wretches in exchange for the empty sham of a worm-eaten dishonoured title. And yet it had become so common that the drain on the national resources from this cause constitutes a ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... recently published. A prebendary of Perigord, travelling through this province to make researches relative to its history, arrived at the ancient chateau of Montaigne, in possession of a descendant of this great man. He inquired for the archives, if there had been any. He was shown an old worm-eaten coffer, which had long held papers untouched by the incurious generations of Montaigne. Stifled in clouds of dust, he drew out the original manuscript of the travels of Montaigne. Two-thirds of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... had thought possible in so old a tree; for the faces of two children laughed at us out of an opening in the trunk, which had become hollow with long decay. On one side of the yew stood a framework of worm-eaten timber, the use and meaning of which puzzled me exceedingly, till I made it out to be the village-stocks: a public institution that, in its day, had doubtless hampered many a pair of shank-bones, now crumbling in the adjacent church-yard. It is not to be supposed, however, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... ramparts, and behind, rows of houses. We were posted in covered roads, near this gate, which the sappers had strongly barricaded. Captain Vidal then commanded the battalion, reduced to three hundred and twenty-five men. A few worm-eaten palisades served us for intrenchments, and, on all the roads before us, the enemy were advancing. This time they wore white coats and flat caps, with a raised piece in front, on which we could see the two-headed ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... never loved the rooms—and now I hate them. It seems to me it was another woman who lived in them—in another world. 'Tis so long ago that 'tis ghostly. Make ready the old red chambers for me," to her woman; "I will live there. They have been long closed, and are worm-eaten and mouldy perchance; but a great fire will warm them. And I will have furnishings from London to make ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... doorway and in a few moments returned with a black box of worm-eaten wood, covered with inscriptions in the form of birds, beasts, and ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... made a good fire. The roof collapsed and with the incantations of the cowboys, the stout walls, worm-eaten and bullet-splintered, falling ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman

... fault," she answered, tapping the worm-eaten arms of the old chair with both her white hands, for she herself was still annoyed and irritated. "Do not make me ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... market-people, cloaked and furred, went by on the water or on the banks; the deep woods of the shores were black and gray and brown. Poor August could see nothing of a scene that would have delighted him; as the stove was now set, he could only see the old worm-eaten wood of the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... internals are like the kernels within as to their soundness and goodness, encompassed with their usual and natural husk; with the wicked, the case is altogether different, their internals are like kernels which are either not eatable from their bitterness, or rotten, or worm-eaten; whereas their externals are like the shells or husks of those kernels, either like the natural shells or husks, or shining bright like shell-fish, or speckled like the stones called irises, Such is the ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... well as the thought, that when provision is to be made for bringing help, everything will be provided,[405-1] made me decide upon leaving. I departed, in the name of the Holy Trinity, on Easter night,[405-2] with the ships rotten, worm-eaten and full of holes. One of them I left at Belen, with a supply of necessaries; I did the same at Belpuerto. I then had only two left, and they in the same state as the others. I was without boats or provisions, and in this condition I had to cross seven thousand miles ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... bottle it, and tie a bladder over the cork. In three months boil it again with fresh spice, and it will then keep a twelvemonth.—Another way. Fill a stewpan with large flap mushrooms, that are not worm-eaten, and the skins and fringe of such as have been pickled. Throw a handful of salt among them, and set them by a slow fire. They will produce a great deal of liquor, which must be strained; then add four ounces of shalots, two cloves of garlic, a good deal of whole pepper, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... Yada to follow him, and led the way up the stairs to the very top of the house. He conducted the Japanese into the small room in which were some ancient moth-and-worm-eaten bits of furniture, an old chest or two, and a plenitude of dust—and carefully closed the door when he and his captive had ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher

... dignity that stands on the lying breaths of winking courtiers? What is this farcical, factitious glamour that will not bear the light of day? The Grace of God? Ay, give me god-like manhood, and I will bend the knee. But to ask me to worship a stuffed purple robe on a worm-eaten throne! 'Tis an insult to manhood and reason. Hereditary kingship! When you can breed souls as you breed racehorses it will be time to consider that. Stand here by my side before this mirror. Is not that a ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... season, get their glow and perfume long after the frost and snow have done their worst with the orchards. Beware of rash criticisms; the rough and stringent fruit you condemn may be an autumn or a winter pear, and that which you picked up beneath the same bough in August may have been only its worm-eaten windfalls. Milton was a Saint-Germain with a graft of the roseate Early-Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, russet skinned old Chaucer was an Easter-Beurre; the buds of a new summer were swelling when ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... the many sacks, in which certainly there is only wheat. "Well, I hope it's moldy enough," remarks the inspector. "Probably there is only wheat in the other sacks, and very likely even more worm-eaten." ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... the Administration, having ascertained the state of the picture, it was unanimously agreed that the only mean of saving it would be to remove it from the worm-eaten pannel on which it was painted. It was, besides, necessary to ascertain the safety of the process, in order that, without, exciting the apprehensions of the lovers of the arts, it might be applied to ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... beside her, stooped on one knee and kissed the fingers that rested on the old worm-eaten bench. She looked up suddenly, blushing scarlet, and they both rose to their feet and stood quite still, looking into each other's eyes. They did not speak; there was nothing to say, except "I love you," and words were not necessary for that. At first there ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... another; which other had, in truth, some preeminence of titles and alliances above the ordinary gentry. Upon the debate of this prerogative, every one, to make himself equal to him, alleged, this one extraction, that another; this, the near resemblance of name, that, of arms; another, an old worm-eaten patent; the very least of them was great-grandchild to some foreign king. When they came to sit down, to dinner, my friend, instead of taking his place amongst them, retiring with most profound conges, entreated the company to excuse ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... roughly put together; now they were worm-eaten, bare, save for a thick carpet of greasy dust, which deadened the sound of booted feet. The place only boasted of a couple of chairs, both of which had to be propped against the wall lest they should break, and bring the sitter down upon the floor; otherwise a number ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... and the sky was blue to the verge of the horizon. The Norman farms scattered through the plain seemed at a distance like little woods inclosed each in a circle of thin beech-trees. Coming closer, on opening the worm-eaten stile, one fancied that he saw a giant garden, for all the old apple-trees, as knotted as the peasants, were in blossom. The weather-beaten black trunks, crooked, twisted, ranged along the inclosure, displayed beneath the sky their glittering ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant

... bed, turned the key, and tightened the bolts herself. It was true that their sockets in the brick floor were almost worn away; and the lock-case seemed scarcely to hold upon the rotten wood. The wood-work, indeed, throughout the whole villa was not only old and worm-eaten, but it had been originally of the rudest description, meant for summer uses, and a villeggiatura existence in which privacy was of small account. The Malestrini who had reared the villa above the Campagna in the late seventeenth century had no money to waste on ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... these fields stood an old wooden house which was not inhabited, for both wind and rain penetrated its roof and walls. On this especial night, however, any one familiar with the locality would have been astonished to see a light gleam through the worm-eaten shutters. In one room was a chair and a table. On the table was a lamp, but there was no ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... that good cider only should be on sale as it is to the fruit-growing industry that good fruit only should be sent to market. The juice of the apple is naturally affected by the condition of the fruit itself, and if this be unripe, unsound or worm-eaten the cider made from it will be inferior to that made from full-grown, ripe and sound fruit. If such fruit be not good enough to send to market, neither will the cider made from it be good enough to place before the public. Nevertheless, it may furnish a sufficiently palatable ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... a curious worm-eaten bit of reddish brown wood, rudely ornamented with carved figures in relief. Old Sancho took it and turned it about, examining it with narrowed ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... alive. "I cannot help it," she said. "I ought no longer to be here, but it seems I do not know anything. I do not know even how to die!" The grey, tall houses of Old Cairo do not know how to die. So there they stand, showing their haggard facades, which are broken by protruding, worm-eaten, wooden lattices not unlike the shaggy, protuberant eyebrows which sometimes sprout above bleared eyes that have seen too much. No one looked out from these lattices. Was there, could there be, any ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... was larger than it had appeared from the outside, but it looked poor and dilapidated. The bare pine walls were worm-eaten, and the beams were blackened by smoke. There were no curtains at the windows, and no cover on the table. It was evident that Strong Ingmar lived by himself. His children had all left him and gone to America, and the only pleasure ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof

... man put his shoulder to the worm-eaten door, and in a moment the lock gave way. The bystanders shrank instinctively back; they were frightened. The door was wide open, and masses of vapors rolled out. Soon, however, curiosity triumphed over fear. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau

... province; for the heart of early New England always found voice through her pulpits. Before me lies a bundle of these sermons, rescued from sixscore years of dust, scrawled on their title-pages with names of owners dead long ago, worm-eaten, dingy, stained with the damps of time, and uttering in quaint old letterpress the emotions of a buried and forgotten past. Triumph, gratulation, hope, breathe in every line, but no ill-will against a fallen enemy. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... was no danger," he muttered wrathfully. "Madonna! I would lose the use of another limb rather than hurt a hair of her head. Is she not my good angel? Has she not drawn me back from the gate of hell? Risk her life! Are people saying that because a worm-eaten wheel went to pieces ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... a broad line of silver light into the dusty worm-eaten apartment, and danced and gleamed in horrid mockery upon a stream of dark liquid which was slowly spreading itself over the floor. And there, extended upon the brick pavement, his features shockingly distorted, his hands still clenched, and his white locks dabbled ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... cook. These were not likely to respect his desire for quiet, but the mere fact of his having a room all to himself made him oblivious of external annoyances. As he expressed it, he was "too happy to envy the lot of kings." He had his old, worm-eaten spinet, and his health and his good spirits; and although he was still poor and unknown, he was "making himself all the time," like Sir Walter ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... angel of life winds them up once for all, closes the case, and gives the key into the hand of the resurrection angel." And when I read it I thought, what a stupendous task awaits the angel of the resurrection, when all the countless millions of old rickety, rusty, worm-eaten clocks are to be resurrected, and wiped, and dusted, and repaired, for mansions in the skies! There will be every kind and character of clock and clockwork resurrected on that day. There will be the Catholic clock with his beads, ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... weathered, weather-beaten; stale, passe, shaken, dilapidated, frayed, faded, wilted, shabby, secondhand, threadbare; worn, worn to a thread, worn to a shadow, worn to the stump, worn to rags; reduced, reduced to a skeleton; far gone; tacky [U. S.*]. decayed &c. v.; moth-eaten, worm-eaten; mildewed, rusty, moldy, spotted, seedy, time-worn, moss-grown; discolored; effete, wasted, crumbling, moldering, rotten, cankered, blighted, tainted; depraved &c. (vicious) 945; decrepid[obs3], decrepit; broke, busted, broken, out ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... between the various consumers, great and little, all of whom play their part in this world. If it is good that the blackbird should flute and rejoice in the burgeoning of the spring, then it is no bad thing that acorns should be worm-eaten. In the acorn the dessert of the blackbird is prepared; the Balaninus, the tasty mouthful that puts flesh upon his flanks and music into ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... they passed down the dusty aisle between the worm-eaten and decaying benches and through the outside door, which Lutchester closed and locked behind them. The rush of cold air was like new life ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Staff was quartered at Radzivilow Castle, and I explored the place while the Prince and Monsieur Goochkoff did their business. The old, dark hall, with armour hanging on the walls and worm-eaten furniture covered with priceless tapestry, would have made a splendid picture. A huge log fire burning on the open hearth lighted up the dark faces of the two Turkestan soldiers who were standing on guard at the door. In one corner a young lieutenant was taking ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan

... apartment, preserved almost entirely in its original state. The two principal beams of the ceiling, and the three visible cross-beams of support, had not even been whitewashed, and they were blackened by smoke and worm-eaten, while, through the openings of the broken plaster, here and there, the laths of the inner joists could be seen. On one of the stone corbels, which supported the beams, was the date 1463, without doubt the date of the construction of the building. The chimney-piece, also in stone, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola

... a mighty act if in their Latin orations they can but shuffle in some ends of Greek like mosaic work, though altogether by head and shoulders and less to the purpose. And if they want hard words, they run over some worm-eaten manuscript and pick out half a dozen of the most old and obsolete to confound their reader, believing, no doubt, that they that understand their meaning will like it the better, and they that do not will admire it ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... of bottles, whose thick mantle of dust and cobwebs spoke volumes for the ripe and racy nature of their contents. A large chest of cedar-wood stood in the innermost nook of the cellar, with raised lid, disclosing a quantity of cigars, worm-eaten and musty from extreme age. In the massive wall, forming one end of the vault, and which was in fact the foundation of the outer wall of the convent, was a large doorway; but the door had been removed, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various

... plenty of good rice and excellent silkworms' eggs, but he was such a miser that he did not want to lend them. At the same time, he felt ashamed to refuse his brother's request, so he gave him some worm-eaten musty rice and some dead eggs, which he felt sure ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... spoke, he raised the lid of a worm-eaten old chest, and, smiling the while, took out the instrument, placed the green baize-covered bag under one arm, arranged the long pipes over his shoulder, and, inflating his cheeks, seemed to mount guard over the doorway, making Max a complete prisoner, and sending a thrill of misery through him, ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... floor and a wide old fireplace on one side. Though so low-ceilinged it was very large and good to be in when I returned from a long ramble on the downs, sometimes wet and cold, to sit by a wood fire and warm myself. At night when I climbed to my bedroom by means of the narrow, crooked, worm-eaten staircase, with two difficult and dangerous corners to get round, I would lie awake staring at the small square patch of greyness in the black interior made by the latticed window; and listening to the wind and rain outside, would remember that the sordid, owlish old man had slept ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... us, as he expressed it. We had no credit; we went in, called for food and ate it. We paid or we did not pay. We had confidence in Cypher's sullenness end smouldering ferocity. Deep down in his sunless soul he was either a prince, a fool or an artist. He sat at a worm-eaten desk, covered with files of waiters' checks so old that I was sure the bottomest one was for clams that Hendrik Hudson had eaten and paid for. Cypher had the power, in common with Napoleon III. and the goggle-eyed perch, of throwing a film over his eyes, rendering ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... which brings a very great quantity of it from Germany, not to mention that no small amount comes from Sclavonia. It is much the custom in Venice, then, to paint on canvas, either because it does not split and does not grow worm-eaten, or because it enables pictures to be made of any size that is desired, or because, as was said elsewhere, they can be sent easily and conveniently wherever they are wanted, with very little expense and labour. Be the reason what it may, Jacopo and Gentile, as was said above, made their first ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari

... small, firm hand she would catch hold of me with when I hurt her. By Jove, if she had been a man, she would have made her mark in the world! She had a will and a way with her! If it hadn't been that she loved me—me, do you hear, you dog!—though there's nobody left to care a worm-eaten nut about me, it makes me proud as Lucifer merely to think of it! I don't care if there's never another to love me to all eternity! I have been loved as never man was loved! All for my own sake, mind you! In the way of money I was no great catch; and for the rank, she never ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... "This is new," said he; "I never knew them to be so wary and suspicious before." We now found ourselves within the walls of the fortress. A shabby wooden cafe was opposite to us; a mosque of the same material rose with its worm-eaten carpentry to our right. The cadi, a pompous vulgar old man, now met us, and signified that we might as well repose at his chardak, but from inhospitality or fanaticism, gave us neither pipes nor coffee. His worship was so proud, that he ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... for the commencement of his great expedition, resolved to make what he called "a preliminary canter." So he and Speke set out on a cruise northward in a crazy old Arab "beden" with ragged sails and worm-eaten timbers. They carried with them, however, a galvanised iron life-boat, "The Louisa," named after Burton's old love, and so felt ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... apartments the very floors had given way; — the hangings were parted from the walls, and shaking in mouldy remnants; the glasses were dropping out of their frames; — the family-pictures were covered with dust. and all the chairs and tables worm-eaten and crazy. — There was not a bed in the house that could be used, except one old-fashioned machine, with a high gilt tester and fringed curtains of yellow mohair, which had been, for aught I know, two centuries in the family. — In short, there was ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... mishap at the start! I'm afraid the omen isn't a good one. However, I must kill time some way. I can't lay up here, like a ship in ordinary; better be shaken by storms or covered with barnacles at sea than be housed up, worm-eaten or crumbled into powder ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... and spent some considerable portion of his life in idleness—if that time can be said to have been idly spent which he devoted to torturing the Admiralty with applications, remonstrances, and appeals. Then he was rated as third lieutenant on the books of some worm-eaten old man-of-war at Portsmouth, and gave up his time to looking after the stowage of anchors, and counting fathoms of rope. At last he was again sent afloat as senior lieutenant in a ten-gun brig, and cruised for some time off the coast of Africa, hunting for slavers; and returning after a while ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... very long, and that thirty years after the decease of the Father she was in being, and was used for the traffic of the Indies, they never failed of lading her with an extraordinary cargo, all worn and worm-eaten as she was. The owners into whose hands she came, during the space of those thirty years, took only this one precaution, which was to keep her off from shore; so that when she was to be refitted, that work was constantly done upon the sea. As to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... date. The crook is set with precious stones, rubies, turquoises, aquamarine, and lapis lazuli. Within is the Lamb holding a cross; under it the whorl finishes with a dragon. A much older bishop's staff is of worm-eaten wood—set in metal at a later date to preserve it from destruction—said to have been given to S. Hermagoras by S. Peter or S. Mark. There is also a great crucifix of gilded silver on a wood basis worked with a rough naturalism free from Byzantine influence. The cross is made into a tree, from which ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson

... to a little triangular cupboard of old worm-eaten walnut-wood fixed high in a corner of the room. Mrs. Lecount tried the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... a wheelbarrow, an old-fashioned square arm-chair, a book-case, an old oak chest, a Dutch cradle, and many other articles of furniture can be imitated. In selecting copies for imitation it is best to choose those of old date, made of oak, for the cork resembles old worm-eaten oak when its first freshness has gone and its complexion becomes darker. A very pretty and uncommon object to copy is that of an old-fashioned clock, a veritable "my grandfather's clock," an upright tall eight-day clock that has a ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... silver-gilt wagon and tun, covered with arabesques and enamels, of sixteenth century work. The hall was originally decorated with carvings; the main stem of deal, the fruit, flowers, &c., of lime, pear, and beech. These becoming worm-eaten, were long since removed from the panelling and put aside; but they have been restored by Mr. Henry Crace, who thus ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... there was a lad who was walking along a road cracking nuts, so he found one that was worm-eaten, and just at that very moment ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... also are like you, and wait to be completed,'—it seemed as if he heard a rustle of leaves. Then, one by one, the books came down from their places to the floor, as if shifted by invisible hands, opened their worm-eaten covers, and from between the pages of each the hunchback saw issue forth a curious throng of little people that danced here and there through the apartment. Each one of these little creatures was shaped so as to bear resemblance to some ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... his Due! Why, thou base Lacquerer of worm-eaten proverbs, [And] wherefore dost thou not tell us at once 200 What the Chancellor said ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... communion-table of John Knox. The frame of the former, if I remember aright, is complete; but one or two of the panels are knocked out and lost, and, on the whole, it looks as if it had been shaken to pieces by the thunder of his holdings forth,—much worm-eaten, too, is the old oak wood, as well it may be, for the letters MD (1500) are carved on its front. The communion-table is polished, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... gave rise to a discussion that sent its reverberation all over the civilized world. Men of the present generation who in childhood rummaged in their grandmothers' cosy garrets cannot fail to have come across scores of musty and worm-eaten pamphlets, their yellow pages crowded with italics and exclamation points, inveighing in passionate language against the wicked and dangerous society of the Cincinnati. Just before the army was disbanded, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... there. It was the song. But the old man got there first, and crumpled the beautiful paper in his hand. 'What does this mean?' he said. 'Who is this fellow?' 'He is one of the gentlemen from the chancery,' she replied, throwing a worm-eaten pea a little farther away than the rest. 'A gentleman from the chancery,' he cried, 'in the dark, without a hat?' I accounted for the absence of a hat by explaining that I lived close by; at the same time I designated the house. 'I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... spoils of foreign collections, and had suffered unheard-of agonies from the millionaire's insisting upon a handsome uniform binding that should deprive certain precious but musty tomes of their crumbling, worm-eaten coverings; how the very gentle, clerical-looking stranger, mildest of a noisy, disputing crowd at the other table, was a notorious duelist and dead shot; how the only gentleman at the table who retained a flannel shirt and high boots was not a late-coming mountaineer, but a ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte

... or jelly. An excellent way to keep them for winter use is to dry them. It gives a little trouble, but one is well repaid for it, for the home-dried apples are superior in flavour to any bought apple-rings or pippins. Peel your apples, cut away the cores and all the worm-eaten parts—for nearly the whole of the windfalls are more or less worm-eaten. The good parts cut into thin pieces, spread them on large sheets of paper in the sun. In the evening (before the dew falls), they should be taken ...
— The Allinson Vegetarian Cookery Book • Thomas R. Allinson

... Enamoured of study, to the last rational moment of his existence, Leland seems to have been born for the "Laborious Journey" which he undertook in search of truth, as she was to be discovered among mouldering records, and worm-eaten volumes. Uniting the active talents of a statist with the painful research of an antiquary, he thought nothing too insignificant for observation. The confined streamlet or the capacious river—the obscure village or the populous town—were, with parchment rolls and oaken-covered ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... in Trinity church-yard. Andrew S. Norwood, who was a boy during the Revolution, deposed that he used to carry food to John Van Dyke, in this prison. The other prisoners would try to wrest away the food, as they were driven mad by hunger. They were frequently fed with bread made from old, worm-eaten ship biscuits, reground into meal and offensive to the smell. Many of the prisoners died, and some were put into oblong boxes, sometimes two in a box, and buried in Trinity church-yard, and the boy, himself, witnessed some ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... board fence around it, which leaned inward in places, and outward the rest of the time, but stood upright nowhere. Grass and weeds grew rank over the whole cemetery. All the old graves were sunken in, there was not a tombstone on the place; round-topped, worm-eaten boards staggered over the graves, leaning for support and finding none. "Sacred to the memory of" So-and-So had been painted on them once, but it could no longer have been read, on the most of them, now, even if ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... disease similar in many respects which is very prevalent in Virgina, especially along the eastern border, is commonly known by the name of "blind staggers," and in many of the Southern States this has been attributed to the consumption of worm-eaten, corn. Horses of all ages and mules ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... purpose. The greater speed of the French as a body is somewhat hard to account for, because, though undoubtedly with far better lines, the practice of coppering the bottom had not become so general in France as in England, and among the French there were several uncoppered and worm-eaten ships.[213] The better sailing of the French was, however, remarked by the English officers, though the great gain mentioned must have been in part owing to Rodney's lying-by, after the action of the 9th, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... felt when, on returning to our own room, and hastily turning the pages, only an old, battered worm-eaten Latin work greeted my eyes! Without loss of time I retraced my steps. Just when I was about to replace the book I heard a noise in the corridor outside, and the sound of footsteps approaching. Fumblingly I hastened to complete what I was about, but the tiresome book had become so tightly ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... nights, working by day on rock-pile or in field, sleeping by night in the corner of a friendly fence of worm-eaten rails, fanned by the delicate hair of the pale blue grasses, he ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... when he felt a tongue licking his hands. He turned, and Homo was behind him. Gwynplaine uttered a cry. Homo wagged his tail. Then the wolf led the way down a narrow platform to the wharf, and Gwynplaine followed him. On the vessel alongside the wharf was the old wooden tenement, very worm-eaten and rotten now, in which Ursus lived when the boy first came to him at Weymouth. Gwynplaine listened. It was Ursus ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... the astuteness of his malady, had long marked out this chamber for the scene of his operations; he had observed that the framework in which the bars were set seemed old and worm-eaten; that the window was but a few feet from the ground; that the noise made in the winter nights by the sighing branches of the old tree without would deaden the sound of the lone workman. Now, then, his ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VIII • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... could well believe was haunted, for she had never seen another equally gloomy. The ceiling was low and sloping, the window tiny, and the walls exhibited all sorts of odd nooks and crannies. A bed, antique and worm-eaten, stood in one recess, a black oak chest in another, and at right angles with the door, in another recess, stood a wardrobe that used to creak and groan alarmingly every time Letty walked a long the passage. ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... wintered, [311] since there are still, a league up the river, remains of what seems to have been a chimney, the foundation of which has been found, and indications of there having been ditches surrounding their dwelling, which was small. We found, also, large pieces of hewn, worm-eaten timber, and some three or four cannon-balls. All these things show clearly that there was a settlement there founded by Christians; and what leads me to say and believe that it was that of Jacques Cartier is the fact that there is no evidence whatever that any one ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... next world. As for pure stinginess, I don't believe he'd find his match if he scoured the country. Why, they say his granddaughter barely gets enough to eat. Look here! What are you putting in that bad leaf for. It's worm-eaten all over." ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... four, and the lower nine, per cent. of tolerably pure brimstone. The shortest cut from the dock-harbour lies up the southern Wady Ha'rr, with its strangely weathered sandstone rocks, soft modern grits that look worm-eaten. Amongst them is a ledge-like block with undermined base projecting from the left bank: both the upper and the lower parts are scattered over with Wasm, or Arab tribal marks. On our return from El-Wijh we found this sandstone ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... slowly and bitterly. "You think I care for the world? Then you read me wrongly at the very outset of our interview, and your once reputed skill as a Seer goes for naught! To me the world is a graveyard full of dead, worm-eaten things, and its supposititious Creator, whom you have so be praised in your orisons to-night, is the Sexton who entombs, and the Ghoul who devours his own hapless Creation! I myself am one of the tortured and dying, and I have sought you simply that you ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... and full of malice and spite.[584] Formerly it sufficed to purchase a ring marked with the same sign for three obols, to open the most securely sealed-up door;[585] but now this pestilent Euripides has taught men to hang seals of worm-eaten wood about their necks.[586] My opinion, therefore, is that we should rid ourselves of our enemy by poison or by any other means, provided he dies. That is what I announce publicly; as to certain points, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... seated himself also on an old worm-eaten Gothic chest, rumpling and chafing the golden or tinselled threads of the embroidered silk, so rare and so time-worn, flung over the Gothic chest, so ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... our Worm-eaten Plank, and clapt on new, by the beginning of December 1686, our Ships bottom was sheathed and tallowed, and the 10th Day went over the Bar, and took aboard the Iron and Lead that we could not sell, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various

... stranger on horseback rode up the straggling red road that formed the principal business thoroughfare of Gullettsville, and made his way toward the establishment known as the Gullettsville Hotel. The chief advertisement of the hotel was the lack of one. A tall worm-eaten post stood in front of the building, but the frame in which the sign had swung was empty. This post, with its empty frame, was as significant as the art of blazonry could have made it. At any rate, the stranger on horseback—a ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... There is a strangely modern ring in his remarks upon this subject, in the 73d section of the Legacy: "Virtuous men have said, both in poetry and in classic works, that houses of debauch, for women of pleasure and for street-walkers, are the worm-eaten spots of cities and towns. But these are necessary evils, and if they be forcibly abolished, men of unrighteous principles will become like ravelled thread, and there will be no end to daily punishments and floggings." In many castle-towns, however, such ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn

... high-shouldered, worm-eaten seat, With a creaking old back, and twisted old feet; But since the fair morning when FANNY sat there, I bless thee and love thee, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... thin wafer, the wood is commonly taken entirely from it. Should a thin fragment be left, however, or a crack made in the paint, it is considered of no great moment. The Wouvermans alluded to, was pure paint, however, and I was shown the pieces of wood, much worm-eaten, that had been removed. When the wood is away, glue is applied to the back of the paint, and to the canvass on which it is intended the picture shall remain. The latter is then laid on the paint; new weights are placed above it, and they are left two or three days longer, ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... there were more hints for sadness than I should willingly surround myself by in a residence. The harsh grating of a heavy door behind roused me; I turned and beheld an old man in a species of tarnished and worm-eaten livery, who, holding the door, again gazed at me with a mingled expression of fear and curiosity. Having briefly explained the circumstances which had befallen me, and appealed to the broken caleche upon the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... of the shop, a worm-eaten wooden staircase led to the two upper floors which were in turn surmounted by an attic. The house, backing against two adjoining houses, had no depth and derived all its light from the front and side windows. Each floor had ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... rested for weeks in the darkest corner of the shed, Frederick Plunger, Esq. was reposing. It had been selected as the most suitable hiding-place by the conspirators. It was large and commodious, and there were so many cracks and crannies in the worm-eaten, dilapidated lid that there was ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... the opportunity of studying the dusty volumes of the learned, the bones of the dead will not reveal their secrets, nor will the crumbling pediments of naos and cenotaph, the obliterated tombstones, or the worm-eaten parchments, tell us their story. To-night, however, we are privileged; for Professor Blank will open the doors for us that we may gaze for a moment upon that solemn charnel-house of the Past in which he has sat for so many ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... the liveliest modern dressing-gowns and morning-wrappers hanging all about them. The man in armor had a collection of smart little boots and shoes dangling by laces and ribbons round his iron legs. A worm-eaten, steel-clasped casket, dragged out of a corner, frowned on the upholsterer's brand-new toilet-table, and held a miscellaneous assortment of combs, hairpins, and brushes. Here stood a gloomy antique chair, the patriarch of ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... the porter, uncle and nephew went through the rooms on the ground floor. As happens in all untenanted houses, the damp had wrought terrible havoc. The flooring, worm-eaten, creaked under their feet, the carpets had large damp spots on them, the paper hung loose on the walls, while the furniture was covered with a thick ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain

... contented himself by saying, "Oh!" absently, got a drink of water out of a pitcher standing there, and leaving Cornelius a prey to some inexplicable emotion—that made him embrace with both arms the worm-eaten rail of the verandah as if his legs had failed—went in again and lay down on his mat to think. By-and-by he heard stealthy footsteps. They stopped. A voice whispered tremulously through the wall, "Are you asleep?" "No! What is ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... traversed. It was the most noisome quarter of London, where every thing wore the worst impress of the most deplorable poverty, and of the most desperate crime. By the dim light of an accidental lamp, tall, antique, worm-eaten, wooden tenements were seen tottering to their fall, in directions so many and capricious that scarce the semblance of a passage was discernible between them. The paving-stones lay at random, displaced from their beds by the rankly-growing grass. Horrible filth ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... back to the misused days when he had friends, and a position, and character; when he was a householder and vestryman, and even dreamt ambitiously of a churchwardenship. He could see distinctly his own pew, with the gray, worm-eaten panels, where he had sat many and many a warm afternoon, resisting sternly, as became a man of mark in the parish, treacherous inclinations to slumber. He saw the ponderous brown gallery—eyesore to archaeologists—which held the village choir: there they were, with the sun streaming in on ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... mills, a Portuguese trader arrived with a quantity of worm-eaten logs of this cedar, which he had gathered from the floating timber in the current of the main Amazons. The tree producing this wood, which is named cedar on account of the similarity of its aroma to that of the true cedars, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... glisten from the red parchment leaves. We see ancient Icelandic manuscripts, from de la Gardie's refined French saloon, and Thauberg's Japanese manuscripts. By merely looking at these books, their bindings and names, one at last becomes, as it were, quite worm-eaten in spirit, and longs to be out in the free air—and we are there; by Upsala's ancient hills. Thither do thou lead us, remembrance's elf, out of the city, out on the far extended plain, where Denmark's church stands—the church that was erected from the booty which the Swedes gained ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... original color; a large table, half covered with an unbleached linen table-cloth in which a loaf was wrapped, the other half being strewed pell-mell with papers and books; and, lastly, a rickety, worm-eaten four-post bedstead, with its blue serge curtains looped back to admit the rays of the sun, and the ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... a sagging old frame house (from which the original paint had long ago peeled in great scrofulous patches) on an unimportant street in Chippewa. There was a worm-eaten russet apple tree in the yard; an untidy tangle of wild-cucumber vine over the front porch; and an uncut brush of sunburnt grass and weeds all about. From May until September you never passed the Decker place without hearing the plunketty-plink of a mandolin from somewhere ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... "I'll get it off." He raised his heavily booted foot, as Frank drew back, and brought it down with a crash on the massive brasswork. With a rending and tearing of the worm-eaten wood the lock ripped loose and the lid, operated by some concealed ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... nine in the company of the prisoner of darkness, and she was beginning to look forward to it as the event of the day. She scarcely expected to be sent for on Sunday evening, but Jumbo came as usual with the invitation, and she was far from sorry to quit a worm-eaten Baxter's Saints' Rest which she had ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... who helped to develop their taste for poetry and good literature. "One of our keenest pleasures," writes one of the family, "was to go in a body to the old book-shops, and on Sunday morning to the 'Thieves Market', to rummage for treasures; and many were the Elzevirs and worm-eaten, vellum-bound volumes from the old convent libraries that fell into our hands. At that time we issued a home magazine called 'The Prophet', in honour of a large painting that we had acquired and chose to consider as the patron of our household. ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... through them. He saw into her hold,—a horrible place of stench and filth and darkness,—a place where hounds would not have kenneled. Men and women were there who cursed and fought for the scanty, worm-eaten food that was thrown them. Some wore gyves: they were heavy upon the wrists and ankles of the man of his vision. He saw a face looking down upon this man, a handsome supercilious face, with insolent amusement in the languid eyes and in the curves of the lips. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... times, the Castle serued the Earle of Cornwall for one of his houses; but now, that later is worm-eaten out of date and vse. Coynages, Fayres, and markets, (as vitall spirits in a decayed bodie) keepe the inner partes of the towne aliue, while the ruyned skirtes accuse the iniurie of time, and ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... called the Lump, for want of tar to pay her bottom, was worm-eaten; but, being a serviceable boat, it was intended to repair ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins

... Caston Church, Northamptonshire, a large clumsy-looking instrument, the use of which was not apparent at first sight, being a number of rough pieces of timber, put together as roughly. On nearer inspection, however, it turned out to be a plough, worm-eaten and decayed, I should think at least three times as large and heavy as the common ploughs of the time when I saw the one in question. I have often wondered at the rudeness and apparent antiquity of that plough, and whether on "Plough Monday" it had ever ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various

... as they shook hands, and Ethne wondered why. She followed the direction of his eyes towards the violin which lay upon a table at her side. It was pale in colour; there was a mark, too, close to the bridge, where a morsel of worm-eaten ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason

... every variety of damp discoloration. Neither chair nor table were there—an old stool and a box were the only seats. In the corner farthest from the light, and where the ceiling sloped down to the floor, was the only thing that could claim the name of a bedstead. Low and curtainless, its crazy, worm-eaten frame groaned and creaked ominously under the tossings to and fro of the poor sufferer, who occupied the mass of ragged coverings spread upon it. In the opposite corner was a heap of mingled shavings, straw, and sacking, the present couch of the aged tenant of this ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... display the pure and full shape of her well-turned leg, in its red cotton, gray and blue clocked, stocking. At three paces from her, seated in a chair which he balanced on two legs, leaning his elbow on an old worm-eaten table, was a tall young man of twenty, or two-and-twenty, who was looking at her with an air in which vexation and uneasiness were mingled. He questioned her with his eyes, but the firm and steady gaze of the young girl ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere



Words linked to "Worm-eaten" :   worn, vermiculate



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