"Acrid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to get happiness; that is an inexorable law. He develops into a pessimist with an acrid, satirical disgust at all the simple, worth-while, real things ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... stopping when he felt the well of the deck rise as he approached the forecastle. Presently he saw a tiny point of light flare up and die away. Then he caught the spicy aroma of a native cigarette in the soft air charged with the acrid smell of new hemp, the resinous odour of the deck seams, the sweet reek of opium smoked by forgotten crews and the earthy flavour of the jungles ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... the scapegoat of defrauded nurses and indignant landladies, the dependent and drudge of her kinswoman's gynaeceum, the despised of her father? The flavour of these waters was very familiar to her lips. The draught was only a little more acrid, a little deeper, and habit had enabled her to drain the cup without complaining, if not in a spirit of resignation. To-day she had been betrayed into a brief outbreak of passion; but the storm had passed, and a more observant ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... horse under her, the reins in her hands, the stirrup at her foot. She moved in her saddle. The blood tingled in her veins fiercely, bitterly, as if it had become suddenly acrid. She felt as if her face were scarlet, as if her whole body flushed, and as if the flush could be seen by her companion. For a moment she was clothed from head to foot in a fiery garment of shame. But she faced Androvsky with calm eyes, and her ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... not be altogether avoidable to us in time coming, as one could have wished. Besides, he is Horace Walpole's friend and select London Wit: he contributed a good deal to the English notions about Friedrich; and has left considerable bits of acrid testimony on Friedrich, "clear words of an Eye-witness," men call them,—which are still read by everybody; the said Walpole, and others, having since printed them, in very dark condition. [In Walpole,—George the Second—(i. 448-461), the Pieces which regard ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... dedication, a blank page, a dedication, and so on. I saw no reason to change the title. It only remained to select the things, and the book was done. I set to work at once, and in a very little while my bibelot was selected. There were dedications fulsome and fluid, dedications acrid and uncharitable, dedications in verse and dedications in the dead languages: all sorts and conditions of dedications, even the simple "To J.H. Gabbles"—so suggestive of the modest white stones of the village churchyard. Altogether I picked out one hundred and three dedications. At last ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... them. But it is quite otherwise with oranges, shaddocks, bananas, plantains, mangoes, and pine-apples: those great tropical fruits can only be eaten properly with a knife and fork, after stripping off the hard and often acrid rind that guards and preserves them. They lay themselves out for dispersion by monkeys, toucans, and other relatively large and powerful fruit-eaters; and the rind is put there as a barrier against small thieves ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... shaking the earth—underground, in the dug-outs. We are all at once divided by huge clouds of smoke so thick that we are masked and can see nothing more. We struggle like drowning men through the acrid darkness of a fallen fragment of night. One stumbles against barriers of cowering clustered beings who bleed and howl in the bottom. Hardly can one make out the trench walls, straight up just here and made of white sandbags, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... cattle returning after their day's freedom in the fields, cow-bells tinkling contentedly. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked; and on the gentle breeze came the song of a hermit thrush, with an undertone of cooing pigeons. The acrid smell of burning ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... so little; avoiding the bright, crowded, and momentous fields of life where destiny awaits us. Upon the average book a writer may be silent; he may set it down to his ill-hap that when his own youth was in the acrid fermentation, he should have fallen and fed upon the cheerless fields of Obermann. Yet to Mr. Matthew Arnold, who led him to these pastures, he still bears a grudge. The day is perhaps not far off when people will begin to count "Moll Flanders," ay, or "The Country Wife," more wholesome and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... again, now quite abreast, vying with each other to reach the summit as if with the one thought only. Already the sting and smart of acrid fumes were in their eyes and nostrils; when they at last stood on level ground again, it was hidden by a thin film of grayish blue haze that seemed to be creeping along it. But above was the clear sky, seen through the interlacing boughs, and to their surprise—they who had just come from the breathless, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... wild species afford a tolerable substitute. The tender leaves are preferred as being less pungent. For the same reason domestic species are used in preference to the wild ones, these latter possessing a highly acrid taste. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... December appeared the first number of The Current. Yule had once or twice referred to the forthcoming magazine with acrid contempt, and of course he did ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... and pointed. The stalks, which are often three or four, all rise separately from the root, and run into long cylindrical heads, composed of small flowers. It has not only the appearance, but the watery acrid taste of the antiscorbutic plants, and yet differs materially from the whole tribe; so that we looked upon it as a production entirely peculiar to the place. We ate it frequently raw, and found it almost like the New Zealand ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... potato-haulms looked strangely discoloured, speckled and blackened, as if a shrivelling flame had run through them all, charring and strewing pale ashes. The air was full of a peculiar odour, heavy and acrid, the very life-breath of decay. The roads were deserted too. For miles nobody would be met, and then a small stationary crowd of people would appear, collected it would seem without any more purpose than cattle huddled together in a storm, and as dumb as they, ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... out and laid on a table covered with matting, where they are again rolled. The firing and rolling are sometimes repeated three or four times, according to the state of the leaves. The rolling is attended with some pain, as an acrid juice exudes from the leaves, which acts upon the hands; and the whole operation of tea-curing and packing is somewhat unpleasant, from the fine dust arising, and entering the nose and mouth,—to prevent which, the workmen often cover the lower part of the face with a cloth. The leaves are frequently ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Varick Street. Kenwitz, letting all his pessimism and rancor and hatred of the Octopus come to the surface, gibed at the moneyed side of his friend in an acrid torrent of words. Dan appeared to be listening, and then turned to Kenwitz and ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Corbin listened to the screech of tormented metal and shuddered. The heat was suffocating, and acrid fumes assailed his nostrils and burned his eyes until he almost cried ...
— No Hiding Place • Richard R. Smith
... suspiciously he crushed it slowly between his jaws. The fat was sweet. He was about to gulp it down when he detected another and less pleasant taste, and what remained in his mouth he spat out upon the snow. But the acrid bite of the poison remained upon his tongue and in his throat. It crept deeper—and he caught up a mouthful of snow and swallowed it to put out the burning sensation that was crawling ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... your pardon, good stranger!"—he murmured, with a kind of apologetic satire in his acrid voice,—"I crave it most abjectly! Yet to somewhat excuse the hastiness of my words, I would explain that a contempt for poets and poetry is now universal among persons of profound enlightenment ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... I was in proper person and not the spirit, she submitted to be kissed by me—it was not a fervent proceeding, I am bound to add—but it was evident the shock had sent her wits wool-gathering. Her hands were a bright brown from the butternut dye, and the pungent, acrid odor she brought in with her garments made unnecessary her halting explanation that she had been out in ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... throughout the closely-packed columns for any material upon which a criminal prosecution might be founded; for Mr. Mackenzie, whether by prudence or good fortune, contrived for some weeks to say very acrid things without rendering himself liable to an indictment. Among the persons who were compelled to pass through the fire of his criticism was the Honourable James Buchanan Macaulay, a gentleman who in after years attained the honour of knighthood, ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... lagging steps, They follow the garden-path, Crushing a leaf of box for its acrid smell, Discussing what they ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... the North Walk, which runs round the side of Hollerday Hill. The shadows are dewy in the early morning, and birds are singing from the green mass of the trees on either hand; there is a faint smell of wood-fires from the houses below, acrid and very pleasant; the chestnut leaves are just opening, and the sycamores have still the early flush of red on their tiny leaves; it is very cool and fresh under the trees. Then the wood stops abruptly, and the road runs out on the bare hillside and winds round ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Indian turnip was due to the presence of these crystals or raphides. This opinion was opposed by Prof. Burrill and other eminent botanists, who claimed that other plants, as the fuchsia, are not at all acrid, although they contain raphides as plentifully as the Indian turnip. Here the matter ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... 'Cyril' has been saved by being a Christian name. We may yet hope to retain y short in 'cylinder', 'cynosure', 'lycanthropy', 'mythology', 'pyramid', 'pyrotechnic', 'sycamore', 'synonym', 'typical'. As for 'h[y]brid' it seems as much a caprice as '[a]crid', a pronunciation often heard. Though 'acrid' is a false formation it ought to follow 'vivid' and 'florid'. The 'alias' rule enforces a long ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... acrid with the smell of burning. Blouses, pink and green, and cream, and blue, were stirred into a seething mass in the fireplace, as in a witch's cauldron, their fluffy laces burnt and blackened. Chiffon ...
— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson
... Hofbraeuhaus to "prove" the new bock. I was there last May in company with a Virginian weighing 190 pounds. He wept with joy when he smelled that heavenly brew. It had the coppery glint of old Falernian, the pungent bouquet of good port, the acrid grip of English ale, and the bubble and bounce of good champagne. A beer to drink reverently and silently, as if in the presence of something transcendental, ineffable—but not too slowly, for the supply ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... holes in the structure of the epic, in its episodes, in its theology, in its incidents, in its language, in its title. One censor required one alteration, and another demanded the contrary. This man seemed animated by an acrid spite; that veiled his malice in the flatteries of candid friendship. Antoniano was for cutting out the love passages: Armida, Sofronia, Erminia, Clorinda, were to vanish or to be adapted to conventual proprieties. It seemed to him more than doubtful whether the enchanted forest ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... by a rain of small beams, but I was warned and dropped my head beneath the sill. The rays flashed dangerously upward through the oval opening, hissed against our vaulted roof. The air snapped and tingled with a shower of blue-red sparks, and the acrid odor of the released ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... little turret. Immediately there came a deafening roar and a tremendous concussion, as the two 70-pounders hurled forth their shells at the Huascar, and a dense cloud of white smoke drifted down upon the conning-tower, filling it with acrid fumes and ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... in my memory as though it were yesterday—the dim light of our one candle, with the acrid smell of the wick that we had forgotten to snuff, the shadows in the corners of the 'lang, laigh, mirk chamber, perishing cauld,' the driving rain on the roof close above our heads, and the gusts of wind that shook our windows. The very sound of the names, 'Murdock Soulis, the Hangin' Shaw ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... than thirty-two per cent of saline matter, which is considerably more than the amount of such matter in the water of the Dead Sea. The surrounding plain is barren, in places marshy, and often covered with an incrustation of salt. The whole scene is one of desolation. The acrid waters support no animal organization; birds shun them; the plain grows nothing but a few stunted and sapless shrubs. The only signs of life which greet the traveller are the carts of the natives, which pass him laden with the salt that is obtained ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... that the "MacFlecknoe" appeared; not in 1689, as Dr. Johnson states, who, mistaking the date, also errs in assuming the cause of Dryden's wrath to have been the transfer of the laurel from his own to the brows of Shadwell. "MacFlecknoe" is by common consent the most perfect and perfectly acrid satire in English literature. The topics selected, the foibles attacked, the ingenious and remorseless ridicule with which they are overwhelmed, the comprehensive vindictiveness which converted every personal characteristic into an instrument for the more refined torment of the unhappy victim, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... duration of darkness, and the slow-growing awareness of other things and of another self. First of all, in this awareness, was dust. It was in my nostrils, dry and acrid. It was on my lips. It coated my face, my hands, and especially was it noticeable on the finger-tips when touched by the ball of ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Old Parties.—To this long program of measures the reformers added harsh and acrid criticism of the old parties and sometimes, it must be said, of established institutions of government. "We denounce," exclaimed the Labor party in 1888, "the Democratic and Republican parties as hopelessly and shamelessly ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... impregnated with the strong odor of the stuff and the boys' eyes smarted. Old Sikaso kept up his dance, bending lower and lower till it seemed that he must be actually inhaling the pungent, acrid smoke. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... mind into societies of similar spirits, from whence it cannot without difficulty be rescued; it also confirms itself in the body, by rendering the serum, and consequently the blood, viscous, tenacious, thick, slow, and acrid, a defect of strength also increases it; for the consequence of such defect is, that the mind cannot be elevated from its suspicious fancies; for the presence of strength elevates, and its absence depresses, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... impose on everybody their decrepit way of living.... The first of all virtues is joy. Virtue must be happy, free, and unconstrained. He who does good must give pleasure to himself. But this perpetual upstart Duty, this pedagogic tyranny, this peevishness, this futile discussion, this acrid, puerile quibbling, this ungraciousness, this charmless life, without politeness, without silence, this mean-spirited pessimism, which lets slip nothing that can make existence poorer than it is, this vainglorious unintelligence, which finds it easier to despise others than to understand them, all ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... apt to make him appear a hardened cynic, inaccessible to the finer feelings, and indifferent whether he gave pain or pleasure. But now and then a remark escaped him—I say "escaped him," because he evidently preferred to wear the acrid tendencies of his character on the outside—which indicated that there was behind his cynicism a rich fund of human kindness and sympathy. And this was strongly confirmed by his neighbors at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, his ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... the path once lay open to the kindly, abundant reservoirs, that so invitingly offered their waxen and sugary mouths, there stands now a burning-bush all alive with poisonous, bristling stings. The atmosphere of the city is changed; in lieu of the friendly perfume of honey, the acrid odour of poison prevails; thousands of tiny drops glisten at the end of the stings, and diffuse rancour and hatred. Before the bewildered parasites are able to realise that the happy laws of the city have crumbled, dragging down in most inconceivable fashion their own plentiful destiny, each ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... use of killin' just to kill?" he murmured. His hold on the gun relaxed. A bolt of lightning slivered the rock above the wolf; there was an acrid odor of burning hair. The next flash showed the wolf stretched dead twenty feet below the cliff. "Well, I'll be damned!" the Ramblin' Kid whispered as he bowed his head before the gale, "that was funny! Guess God himself figured it was time for that ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... Second by second that huge mountain of muscle slipped and jellied and actually melted before the eyes of the humans. At the same time a curious acrid odor arose; Smith fell to coughing. The ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... she had seen their hands lifted in suspicion; heard their covert whispers as to why her husband did not come with her; why he had left her so soon after the honeymoon; why—a hundred things. She had even thought of Aunt Polly and her acrid tongue and made up her mind that whatever happened she did not want to ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... as above explained, the final cause, or convenience, of these organic actions are worthy our attention. In this case of an acrid drug swallowed into the stomach the reverted actions of the muscular fibres of the stomach tend to eject its enemy; the reverted actions of its lymphatics pour a great quantity of fluids into the stomach for the purpose of diluting or washing off the noxious drug; and the increased ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... scattered about the floor, but they had been trampled under foot and their beauty had suffered, their freshness was marred, and their perfume, rising acrid from bruised petals, greeted him unwholesomely after the fresh morning air, and rendered the atmosphere faint and oppressive. The stand with the flower pots, much disarranged, stood as he had left it when he pulled it roughly aside to get at the grate, and the fire ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... where you made a mistake: you should have told him to go to hell with his money!" was his acrid comment. And then: "How near can you come to ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... mechanical impulse to show her what was above set his foot upon the lower step, and he caught her waist. "You see," he muttered; "things for the store ... the men, wool stockings, handkerchiefs ... against their pay." The drumming rain was scarcely a foot above their heads; an acrid and musty odour rose from the boxes and canvas-sewed bales about the walls. "Ludowika," Howat said. He stopped—she had shut her eyes. All that was Howat Penny, that was individually sentient, left him with ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... chance he escaped falling headlong into the abyss. Catching sight, however, of the aperture just in time to spring across it, he did so; and glancing back for an instant on reaching the other side, he saw a broad expanse of glowing white-hot bales of wool, and, dimly through the acrid smoke and steam, the forms of the men who were plying the ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... happiness takes the unexpectedly genial form of plotting for their happiness, the disposition of our favorite writers becomes a matter of great importance to us. A surly, sour-tempered person, taking advantage of our confidence, can turn us against our best friends. If he has an acrid wit he may make us ashamed of our highest enthusiasms. He may so picture human life as to make the message "Peace on earth, good will to ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... and learned that his wife had seen him upon Kelpie, as if nothing had happened, he became furious, and, in this possession of the devil, was at the present moment wandering about the grounds, brooding on the words Malcolm had spoken. He could not get rid of them. They caused an acrid burning in his bosom, for they had in them truth, like which no ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... walked toward the ridge their feet made no sound on the soft tundra. They peered down hill into the shady recesses under the stunted alder and salmon-berry bushes. Jean's nostrils twitched as there was wafted up to her the strong, acrid odor which lingers about the places of nesting birds. As her eyes became accustomed to the dimness, she ventured a remark which died abruptly as she caught her breath. Beneath the low canopy of branches the ground was ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... or castoreum, as it is commercially known, was obtained principally from the beaver himself. The basis of it was an acrid secretion with a musky odor of great power, found in two glands just under the root of the beaver's tail. Each gland was from one and one half to two inches in length. The boys cut out these glands and squeezed the contents into an empty tin can. This at first was of a yellowish-red ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... this feeling. The world is a hard school, and men must strike alone everywhere. In the struggle, it is almost impossible to prevent the mind from gathering those bitter experiences which soil it. It is so hard not to hate so tremendous a task, to strangle that harsh and acrid emotion of contempt, which is so apt to subdue us, and make the mind the hue of what it works in, 'like the dyer's hand.' Men feel the necessity of something purer than themselves, on which to lean; and this they find in woman, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... she left the house. She wanted to reach Oldclough before one whit of her anger cooled down; though, somehow, she felt quite sure, that, even when her anger died out, her courage would not take flight with it. Mr. Dugald Binnie had not proved to be a very fascinating person. He was an acrid, dictatorial old man: he contradicted Lady Theobald flatly every five minutes, and bullied his man-servant. But it was not against him that Lucia's indignation was aroused. She felt that Lady Theobald was quite capable of suggesting to him that Francis ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sounds in many directions; the same whistling (behind me now), heavy footsteps in front, and somewhere beyond—fifty yards away, I reckoned—a buzz of guttural conversation; from the same quarter there drifted to my nostrils the acrid odour of coarse tobacco. ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... sermons and their doctrines as confectioners' children do about candy. Another would have to own that he got his religious belief, not from his father, but from his mother. That would account for a great deal, for the milk in a woman's veins sweetens, or at least, dilutes an acrid doctrine, as the blood of the motherly cow softens the virulence of small-pox, so that its mark survives only as the seal of immunity. Another would plead atavism, and say he got his religious instincts from his great-grandfather, as some do their complexion or their temper. Others would ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... reminded him somewhat of Ellery Channing, was the most notable writer he met there. There was, however, very little speech-making, and plenty of good conversation. Unfortunately, he offended Jerrold, by using the word "acrid" as applied to his writing, instead of some other word, which he could not think of at the moment. The difficulty, however, was made up over a fresh bottle of Burgundy, and with the help of Hawthorne's ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... shoulder Dennis and Dan crept forward across that No Man's Land, the wind rustling in the tangled grass, bringing with it the acrid odour of unburied corpses. Dan's hand encountered one of them, and he nudged his cousin to work ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... and written by Bessie, said that she would be back soon; standing under the portico of the Post Office, surrounded by the flower sellers with their bunches of exuberant waratah, feathery wattle and sweet, sober-looking boronia, she let her mind travel back to Lashnagar and the acrid smoke of the green-wood fires, the pungency of the fish, the sharp tang of the salt winds pushed the heavy perfume of flowers aside. In a moment the last six weeks of mad, unhappy dreaming and hoping vanished; ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... it gave no breath. All the lush green-stuff seemed to be issuing its sap, till the air was deathly, sickly with the smell of greenness. There was the perfume of clover, like pure honey and bees. Then there grew a faint acrid tang—they were near the beeches; and then a queer clattering noise, and a suffocating, hideous smell; they were passing a flock of sheep, a shepherd in a black smock, holding his crook. Why should the sheep huddle together ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... our governess. "It was just one of these seemingly irresistible impulses that have so often proved disastrous for all concerned. If your father knew—" she bit off the words as though they had a pleasant, if acrid taste—"if your poor father knew of your criminal proclivities, he would be a crushed man. ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... flame. It burned slowly, at first a thin blue flame tipped with yellow, then, eating its way with a small fine crackling, a widening, destroying blaze that left behind it black ash and destruction. The acrid odor of burning filled the room. Not until it was consumed, and the black ash fell into the saucer of the candlestick, did Carlotta speak ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of simples Cocted in Stygian shades— Acids of wrinkles and pimples From faces of ancient maids— Acrid precipitates sunken From tempers of scolding wives Whose husbands, uncommonly drunken, Are commonly found in dives,— With this I baptize and appoint thee (to St. John.) To marshal the vinophobe ranks. In the name of Dambosh I anoint thee (pours ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... screamed as it burned its way out of his garments. The Mohawk flung the man fiercely clear, to crash horribly on the far-distant floor, and then kicked the incendiary off. It fell after the man and hit and burst, and it was thermite which surrounded itself with a column of acrid ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... board, then he flung it down at the bottom of the boat, with a loud cry, exclaiming, "The horrid beast has stung me, as if it were a great nettle!" So it was, for it had thrown round his fingers its long tentaculae, discharging, at the same time, an acrid fluid from them, which caused the pain he felt. We all laughed at him at first very much; but he suffered so considerably during the day from the effects of the sting, that the more humane really pitied him, in spite of the ridiculous ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... silence of the avenue, the Russian evoked the ruddy figures of the implacable gods, that were going to awake that night upon hearing the hum of arms and smelling the acrid odor of blood. Thor, the brutal god with the little head, was stretching his biceps and clutching the hammer that crushed cities. Wotan was sharpening his lance which had the lightning for its handle, the thunder ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the sunlight? "It is the work of an insect. It is the shelter in which the Cicadellina deposits her eggs. What a miraculous chemist! Her stiletto excels the finest craft of the botanical anatomist" by its sovereign art of separating the acrid poison which flows with the sap in the veins of the most venomous plants, and extracting therefrom only an ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... those proud, turbulent Nobles, proud enough whatever else they were; and could maintain to the end a kind of virtual Presidency and Sovereignty in that wild realm, he who was only "a subject born within the same": this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean, acrid man; but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pulling down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious, rioting demagogue: precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... against the sinfulness of drinking healths, and quite fraternising with them in all their animosity against Popery and Prelacy. What does he mean? Is it a case of conversion? Is it an outpouring merely, by a strange vent, of certain acrid humours? Is he honest, and in earnest? or is he making sport of those hapless Englishmen whom he pronounces "in human stupidity ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... is a substance which is composed of a metal, or positive radical, and OH. It generally turns red litmus blue, and often has an acrid taste. ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... lost battle, from a silent and great defeat. She was afraid of it, for it was black and profound beyond all plumbing. Often in her ten years of retirement she had felt melancholy. But this was a new sort of sadness. There was an acrid edge to it. It had the peculiar and subtle terror of a grief that was not caused only by events, but also, and ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... confab at the village lawyer's, he could not help believing that, by a brisk course of purgatives and an antiphlogistic treatment—and without resorting to a strait-waistcoat, which many who knew Jack's pranks at once recommended him to adopt—he might be cured of those acrid and intoxicating vapours, which, ascending into the brain, led him into such extravagant vagaries. "I'faith," said the Squire, "since the poor man has taken this mad fancy into his head as to the terms of his bargain, the best way to restore him to his senses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... was anticipated as a certainty. In the Senate the consulship of Catiline was regarded as no less than an impending national calamity. Marcus Cato, great-grandson of the censor, then growing into fame by his acrid tongue and narrow republican fanaticism, who had sneered at Pompey's victories as triumphs over women, and had not spared even Cicero himself, threatened Catiline in the Curia. Catiline answered, in a fully attended house, that if any agitation was kindled ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... the vile, including the acrid variety that cuts the nostrils like a razor, Constantinople stands forever and alone on a plinth of infamy, and no language that can be dragged into the arena of expression can be utilized to describe them. They paralyze the intellect ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... who from Bokhara come And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares.[177-9] Next, the more temperate Toorkmuns of the south, The Tukas, and the lances of Salore, And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands; Light men and on light steeds, who only drink The acrid milk of camels, and their wells. And then a swarm of wandering horse, who came From far, and a more doubtful service own'd; The Tartars of Ferghana, from the banks Of the Jaxartes, men with scanty beards And close-set skullcaps; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... room, where Marian was sitting on a sofa, trying to subdue the hysteria which had been gaining on her since her escape from the balcony; whilst Elinor, seated on the corner of a drawer which projected from the dressing-table, talked incessantly in her most acrid tones. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... forge, Or troll-like in the mine; nor cares to walk With Wealth and Fashion in the parks and squares; But follow! Come thou down, and let the cold Cramp-headed cynics yelp alone, and leave The mugwump scoffers there to shape and sleek Their thousand paragraphs of acrid joke That like a squirting fountain waste in air: So waste thou not; but come; for hunger pale Awaits thee; haggard pillars of the hearth Appeal to thee; slum children call, and now The Crowd's astir, with every man a Vote To give him voice, and in that voice you'll ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... are unable to get work done by other women with any of the good will which men display in the same occupations. If this is true, the reason should not be looked for in any intersexual complications, such as fear or an acrid rivalry, but only in the perpetually recurring physical disturbances to which, as a sex, they are subjected; and as the ability and willingness of a man to use his fists in response to an affront has imposed sobriety and good humor towards each other in almost ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... mind the slings and arrows of outrageous partisanship, so long as he shares them with Bright and Gladstone. Just lately, his pronouncement that we ought to love the Germans, as our fellow-citizens in the Kingdom of God on earth, has provoked very acrid criticism from some who generally share his political beliefs; and in a Tory paper I noticed the singularly inept gibe that this doctrine was "medieval." For my own part I should scarcely have thought that an undue tendency ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... must be as unfit as irreligion and sparkling shallowness can make him. But he told stories admirably, and was allowed sometimes to interrupt Carlyle a little, of which one was glad, for that night he was in his more acrid mood, and though much more brilliant than on the former evening, grew wearisome to me, who disclaimed and ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... unsteady hand on the clear blue of the hot sky. In the space sheltered by the high palisades there lingered the smell of decaying blossoms from the surrounding forest, a taint of drying fish; with now and then a whiff of acrid smoke from the cooking fires when it eddied down from under the leafy boughs and clung lazily about ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... lumber-jack communities, and the last refinements of sybaritic summer homes in the Adirondacks. All these are camps. And when you talk of making camp you must know whether that process is to mean only a search for rattlesnakes and enough acrid-smoked fuel to boil tea, or a winter's consultation with an expert architect; whether your camp is to be made on the principle of Omar's one-night Sultan, or whether it is intended to accommodate the full ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... found that wood and other combustibles were, under the action of heat, capable of disengaging a gas fit for lighting and heating. He had seen that the gas which is disengaged from wood is accompanied with blackish vapors of an acrid and empyreumatic odor. In order that it might serve for the production of light, it was necessary to free it from these ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... dry brush was rolled into a sort of a bundle, care being taken so that there was enough dry wood and twigs to catch fire properly. When these had caught fire, the wet brush would burn less easily, and cause a thick acrid smoke to ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... track of tipsy duckboards we go for a mile, until acrid fumes tell that the German barrage line is being passed. This is a moment to press on! To get the Company safely across this hundred yards ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... he peered down the hatchway, but started back as a gust of acrid smoke struck him from below. He called to the Gujarati. There was no response. For an instant he stood in hesitation; had the man been overcome by the suffocating fumes filling the hold? But just as, with the instinct ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... outside world was like the hard-driven, acrid spray of the ocean in a wintry storm, it stung yet calmed with its grateful, stern menace. A thin drizzle of rain was beginning to fall, and the avenues were filled with the furious clamor of belated traffic. The clangor of the ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... duckweeds (Pistiaceae) should also be noted with the bullrushes (Typheae), and the arums (Aroideae). This last-mentioned order, familiar to us by the kind known as "Lords and Ladies," presents some climbing forms in tropical countries. Generally acrid, some species, when in flower, even produce headache and vomiting; at least an explorer was attacked with these symptoms after gathering forty specimens of Arum dracunculus. The order is also interesting from experiments as to ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... young, have a warm, pungent taste; and are eaten as a salad, either separately, or mixed with lettuce or other salad plants. The leaves should be cut or plucked before the plant has run to flower, as they then become acrid and unpalatable. The curled varieties are also used ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... saying that the innocent rejoinder opened the way to an acrid discussion of John Tullis. If that gentleman's ears burned in response to the sarcastic comments of the Duke of Perse and Baron Pultz, they probably tingled pleasantly as the result of the stout defence put up by ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... did perhaps fifty times in the course of the two or three hours daily, or approximately daily, which he spent there. He did so now. He did so because it put off for a few minutes longer the fierce, exasperating, acrid pleasure of doing worse. To do worse had been his avowed object in coming to the office that morning, and not the answering of letters or the raking in ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... he could, begging all the while for more soldiers, and carrying on at the same time a correspondence with his rival, Dongan. At first, it was courteous on both sides; but it soon grew pungent, and at last acrid. Denonville wrote to announce his arrival, and Dongan replied in French: "Sir, I have had the honor of receiving your letter, and greatly rejoice at having so good a neighbor, whose reputation is so widely spread that it has anticipated your arrival. I have a very ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... a company from Kenosha consented to transport its entire industry thither if it could receive a building rent free. It was proffered, and it accepted, the cutlery works. For a season the neighboring streets were acrid with the aroma of the passionate pickles that were bottled there. And then its briny deeps ceased to swim with knobby condiments. A tin-foil company abode awhile, and yet again a tamale-canning corporation, which in its turn sailed ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... mysticism, and in science. The spiritual discipline of the school came to mean for the Jew what military discipline is for other nations. His remarkable longevity is due, I am tempted to say, to the acrid spiritual brine in which he was cured. In its second half, the originality of Jewish history consists indeed, in the circumstance that it is the only history stripped of every active political element. There are no diplomatic artifices, no wars, no campaigns, no unwarranted encroachments ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... of the sensation," continued Mr. Blunt, with a faint grimace, as though the words had an acrid taste in his mouth. "And the consternation," he added venomously. "Many of those men on that great morning had some one of their womankind with them. But their hats had to go off all the same, especially the hats of the fellows who were under ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... of his desire to learn other than ordinary school work. As a young man he had suffered the insolence of these wretched people about him; their cackling laughter at his poverty jarred and grated in his ears; he saw the acrid grin of some miserable idiot woman, some creature beneath the swine in intelligence and manners, merciless, as he went by with his eyes on the dust, in his ragged clothes. He and his father seemed to pass down an avenue ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... shoulders and hairy breasts, agile youths, old men shaking the multitudinous wrinkles of their rosy, and white-haired skins, or dragging their legs thinner and drier than the juniper staff that served them as a third leg, hurried on, panting and emitting an acrid odour and hoarse gasps. Yet she went on peacefully and seemed to ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... with acrid, often poisonous, usually milky juice, and dotless, alternate, usually pinnately compound leaves. Flowers greenish-white or yellowish, in large terminal panicles. Fruit small (1/8 in.), indehiscent, dry drupes in large clusters, generally ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... streaming hair, she thrice moved round the altars, dipped flaming twigs in the blood, and laid them thereon to burn. Meanwhile the caldron with its contents was got ready. In it she put magic herbs, with seeds and flowers of acrid juice, stones from the distant east, and sand from the shore of all-surrounding ocean; hoar frost, gathered by moonlight, a screech owl's head and wings, and the entrails of a wolf. She added fragments of the shells of tortoises, and the ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... have moved into another world, so different was everything,—as different, say, as was the acrid countenance of Mrs. MacGregor from the fresh-skinned, clear-eyed, clever, handsome face of Marcia Vandervelde. Everything interested Nancy. Her senses were acutely alert. Just to watch Mrs. Vandervelde, so calm, so poised and efficient, ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... the front, I got my first smell of the dead. It is something you never get away from in the trenches. So many dead have been buried so hastily and so lightly that they are constantly being uncovered by shell bursts. The acrid stench pervades everything, and is so thick you can fairly taste it. It makes nearly everybody deathly sick at first, but one becomes used to ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... a beautiful, tragic figure, in her flaming cloak, stood looking down at the dead man. Safiyeh was peeping round from behind the screen, her face a brown mask of terror. Hassan, holding his drum, appeared behind her, staring stupidly. To the smell of cigar smoke and perfume a new and acrid odour was added. ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... are markedly irritant to the mucous membranes. They have an acrid taste and provoke a flow of saliva, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. If injected directly into the circulation they produce hemolysis, diuresis and direct actions on the central nervous system which may be rapidly fatal. Absorption after oral administration is so poor that saponins ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... when he passed the first lamps he vacantly noticed the ugliness of the place. The small, grimy houses were packed as close as they could be got, the pavement was covered with black mud, and the air filled with acrid smoke. Presently, however, he came to a pretentious hotel, built of glaring red brick and ornamented with sooty paint. He wondered what accounted for its being planted there; but it offered shelter for the night ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... the most keen external impressions. As she awoke and looked up on Christmas morning early, and saw the frosted panes and the snow lying like wool on the cross-bars, and heard the Christmas bells peal out in the listening air; as she came downstairs and the old pleasant acrid smell of the evergreens met her, and she saw the red berries over each picture, and the red heart of the wood-fire; nay, as she knelt at the chancel rails, and tried in her heart to adore the rosy Child in the manger, and received the sacred ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... clearly distinguish the rabbit-hutches, the fowls' roosting-places, or the ducks' house. The place was all one big mass heaped up in stench, still exhaling in its sleep a pestiferous odour. From under the stable-door came the acrid smell of the nanny-goat; while the little pig, stretched upon his back, snorted near an empty porringer. And suddenly with his brazen throat Alexander, the big yellow cock, raised a crow, which awoke in the distance impassioned calls from all the ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... in a deep breath—and gasped, for the pungent fumes, acrid and penetrating, of sulphuric and nitric acids, stabbed her lungs. It was like the breath of hell, to fit the simile, and aptly Professor Burr seemed the devil himself, manipulating the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... opened his mouth to call—and went rigid, as a translucent shape of mud shot from the door, rose up to tower before him. Brett stood, mouth half open, eyes staring, leaning forward with hands outflung. The Gel loomed, its surface flickering—waiting. Brett caught an acrid odor of geraniums. ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... towards the cottage. It seemed to be innocent of bars and bolts. The ford, known to so few, and the evil name of the Wolf, served instead. The door opened at a push, and Marcos went in. A wood-fire smouldered on an open hearth, while the acrid smoke half-filled the room, blackened by the fumes of ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... other fault than their being friends of his enemy Nash. It is sufficient to say that Harvey had all the worst traits of "donnishness," without having apparently any notion of that dignity which sometimes half excuses the don. He was emphatically of Mr. Carlyle's "acrid-quack" genus. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... everywhere; but it will not be difficult; no one will have the hardihood to present him to my daughter. The quarrel between us—" Mr. Carewe broke off for a moment, his hands clinching the arms of his chair, while he swallowed with difficulty, as though he choked upon some acrid bolus, and he was so strongly agitated by his own mention of his enemy that he controlled himself by a painful effort of his will. "The quarrel between us is political—and ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... not in the sense of the beautiful, or even of the profound. But certainly I never beheld eyes that looked so inspired or supernatural. They were like fires half burning, half smouldering, with a sort of acrid fixture of regard, and seated at the further end of two caverns. One might imagine Ezekiel or Isaiah ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... an indelible impression of principles upon the mind. In the first period of life, character is a blossom that should be carefully touched; in the second the petals fall, and the fruit sets; it is hard and acrid then until the third period, when, if things go well, it will ripen on the bough, and be sweet and wholesome—if ill, it will drop off immediately, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... because she could peel it. I told her that the most deadly mushroom can be peeled just as readily. Nor is there anything more valuable in the silver spoon test in which Mr. Gibson's old lady put so much confidence. Some say, do not eat any that have an acrid taste; many are edible whose taste is quite acrid. Others say, do not eat any whose juice or milk is white, but this would discard a number of Lactarii that are quite good. There is nothing in the white gills and hollow stem theory. It is true that the Amanita ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... meat, for excess of whatsoever you may offer him; he is on the highroad of recklessness, and had it been the bottle instead of Caroline's coffee-cup, Patrick would soon have received a priming for a delivery of views upon the sex, and upon love, and the fools known as lovers, acrid enough to win the applause ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the dead. The chamber was a small, square, walled-up affair, and at one side stood the three sarcophagi. The other halls had been in total darkness, but the blackness of this place appeared something palpable and weighty. And the air had the dry, acrid tang of dust which has lain ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Ginger (Amomum zinziber) is planted in small quantities. Of this also there are two kinds, alia jai (Zinziber majus) and alia padas (Zinziber minus), familiarly called se-pade or se-pudde, from a word signifying that pungent acrid taste in spices which we express by the vague term hot. The tummu (Costus arabicus) and lampuyang (Amomum zerumbet) are found both in the wild and cultivated state, being used medicinally; as is also the galangale (Kaempferia galanga). The coriander, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... of the stable, of milk, of the dunghill, of hay, and of perspiration—that acrid, disgusting odor of man and beast peculiar to ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... reverie throughout the uptown journey. And he strengthened himself with it, deriving a sort of acrid comfort from the knowledge that henceforth none should know the burden of his misfortunes save himself. There was no deprecation of Kellogg's goodness in his mood, simply determination no longer to be a charge upon it. To contemplate the sum total of the benefits he had received ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... train, but for a long time he goes on muttering, sighing and clearing his throat.... The cold air in the railway van grows thicker and more stifling The pungent odor of fresh dung and smoldering candle makes it so repulsive and acrid that it irritates Yasha's throat and chest as he falls asleep. He coughs and sneezes, while the old man, being accustomed to it, breathes with his whole chest as though nothing were amiss, and ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... June. London, swart and grim, semi-shrouded in a warm close mist of mingled human breath and acrid vapour steaming up from the clammy crowded streets,—London, with a million twinkling lights gleaming sharp upon its native blackness, and looking, to a dreamer's eye, like some gigantic Fortress, built line upon line and tower upon tower,—with ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... There came an acrid rush of smoke, which swallowed up the moving train with its cargo of khaki-clad boys. Above the cheering the hunchback, still dodging under the elbows of the crowd, was ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... of Southern France, have a poetry of their own that to me is ever enticing. I love the stony wastes and their dazzling sun-glitter. There I find something that approaches companionship in the prickly juniper, the narcotic hellebore, and the acrid spurge. And these plants likewise love the places where the world has remained unchanged by man. The heat, however, was too great for me to linger upon this shadeless hill, where every stone was warm, and the reflected ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... on from the great grain-fields beyond, and hung around the house charged with a dry, dusty closeness that seemed to be quite independent of the sun's rays, and more like a heated exhalation or emanation of the soil itself. In its acrid irritation Rose thought she could detect the breath of the wheat as on the day she had plunged into its pale, green shadows. By the afternoon this mist had disappeared, apparently in the same mysterious manner, but not scattered by the usual trade-wind, which—another unusual circumstance—that ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... figs. The arborescent tabayba (Euphorbia canariensis), locally called 'cardon,' is compared by some with the 'chandelier' of the Cape, bristling with wax tapers: the Guanches used it extensively for narcotising fish. This 'milk plant,' with its acrid, viscid, and virulent juice, and a small remedial shrub growing by its side, probably gave rise to the island fable of the twin fountains; one killed the traveller by a kind of risus Sardonicus, unless he used the other by way ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... garden, followed by the servant with the candle. The monstrous leaping shadow of himself was cast before him on the lawn; lost and wandering odours of rose and lily and damp earth were thick about him, but more pungent was some sharp and acrid smell that suddenly reminded him of a certain chalet in which he had once taken refuge in the Alps. In the blackness of the hazy light from the sky, and the vague tossing of the candle behind him, he saw that the hammock ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... you often get poor cooking. It passes quite unnoticed too. No one seems to mind thick soups that are too thick and gravies that are tasteless, and melted butter like Stickphast paste, and savouries quite acrid with over much vinegar and anchovy. I once saw a whole company of English people contentedly eat a dish of hot scones that had gone wrong. They tasted of strong yellow soap. But I once saw a company of Germans eat bad fish and apparently like it. They were sea soles handed round in a Swiss ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... Diplodactylus lepidopygus, Tsch., and the Discodactylus phacophorus, Tsch. They are nearly related to each other, being only distinguished by one species having an orifice in the thighs, serving as a passage for an issue from a gland which secretes a very acrid fluid. This little animal never bites; but it is possible that the fluid by touching a fresh wound, or scratch, may cause very ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the West Indies and other tropical countries. The stem furnishes a milky juice, which becomes hard and black when dry, and is used as a varnish. It also secretes a gum, like gum arabic. The nut or fruit contains a black, acrid, caustic oil, injurious to the lips and tongue of those who attempt to crack the nut with their teeth; it becomes innocuous and wholesome when roasted, but this process must be carefully conducted, the acridity of the fumes producing severe inflammation ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... had nothing that could be called bad blood. Horace perhaps had a little, but it was sweet and childlike compared to the "acrid-quack" fluid of Edmond de Goncourt's veins and heart. Probably several people have seen in M. de Goncourt the suggestion of an ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... later the water of the cave was entirely covered with petrol. The air was acrid with the smell of it. The Queen held her ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... ran through him, acrid and fiery. It was not like the vapour of distaste and dislike, of which he had been conscious on the day of the election. That had been cold and clinging; this was a burning and a poisoned arrow. It killed the softening, the consciousness of charm, the spell of Cary's ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... romance, had given her an absolute loathing for it. To her, in that condition, any expression of friendship that was warm and soft, and in the least sentimental, would have been almost unendurable to her. Miss Gibbons, in that acrid antiseptic way of hers, simply washed her soul in cold water and clothed it again ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... plant interested me more from this point of view, than the well-known Indian turnip (Arisoema triphyllum). As a boy I was well acquainted with the signally acrid quality of this plant; I was well aware of its effect when chewed, yet I was irresistibly drawn to taste it again and again. It was ever a painful experience, and I suffered the full penalty of my rashness. As an awn ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... a sage, to move men to action. Europe followed Luther and embarked on a century and a half of war and bloody persecution. It's a melancholy story." Mr. Scogan lighted a match. In the intense light the flame was all but invisible. The smell of burning tobacco began to mingle with the sweetly acrid smell of ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... petticoat could be detected on this length of Brussels carpet, the acrid vulgarity of eau de Cologne hung like a curtain before an open door, a vision of white silk gleamed for a moment as it fled from room to room: men in a strange garb—black velvet and steel buttons—hurried away, tripping ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... full of an acrid debate which turned entirely upon his interview with Ashe of the day before. No doubt, as an old friend, aware of Lady Kitty's excitable character, he might have felt it his duty to go straight ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the effect of this genial open-handedness might have been, had it lasted, on the genius of the poet. But fortune had harsher views of what befitted the training of so acrid a nature. When Ibsen was eight years of age, his father's business was found to be in such disorder that everything had to be sold to meet his creditors. The only piece of property left when this process had been gone through was a little broken-down farmhouse called Venstoeb, ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... him openly forth in a tempest of insulting speech. There was a mordant there, like the menace of misfortune to come, in which the injured goddess also was invited to concur. What words! what terrible words! following, clinging to him, like acrid fire upon his bare flesh, as he hasted from Phaedra's house, thrust out at last, his vesture remaining in her hands. The husband returning suddenly, she tells him a false story of violence to her bed, and ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... cocoa-nut she endures,—two,—but three? no, she must rebel, and cry out,—"No mi gusta!" Then she must try a bitter orange, then a sour bitter one, then a sweet lemon, then a huge fruit of triple verjuice flavor. "What is it good for?" she asks, after a shuddering plunge into its acrid depths. "Oh," says the Don, "they eat it in the castors instead of vinegar." Then come sapotas, mamey, Otaheite gooseberries. "Does she like bananas?" he cuts a tree down with his own hand, and sends the bunch of fruit to her volante;—"Sugar-cane?" he bestows ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... winter-food of the reindeer, its gelatinous or starchy matter giving the nutritive property to the odd-looking stuff. Reindeer-moss has saved the life of many an Indian lost in these woods. We try it, and find the taste slightly pungent and acrid; but when boiled it forms a jelly said ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... of fire lanced the darkness, directed at the Thing in the window. While the air of the hut reeked with the acrid smoke, the echo of the volley sounded through the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... talking after that. By five o'clock he was down in the cellar. She heard him making a great sound of rattling and bumping and shaking and pounding and shoveling. She smelled the acrid odour of ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... flatter than a turbot, and absurdly resigned. It was the nick of time. The earth was trembling under the mechanical horror; it passed me, with a roar and rush of wind, by I know not how many inches; there were flashes of light, a screeching of machinery, an acrid smell of mineral oils and heated metal. Then all was over again, save for a choking-fit produced by a deluge ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... therefore, after the inauguration of the new household, there was trouble in the camp. Sour bread had appeared on the table,—bitter, acrid coffee had shocked and astonished the palate,—lint had been observed on tumblers, and the spoons had sometimes dingy streaks on the brightness of their first bridal polish,—beds were detected made shockingly awry,—and Marianne came burning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... green in the level evening light, to the darkening woods beyond, gilt-tipped in the setting sun. There were fields of ripening yellow grain, of lusty young corn that grew almost as we watched it: the warm winds of evening were heavy with the acrid odours of fecundity. Fecundity! In that lay the elusive yet insistent charm of that country; and Nancy's, of course, was the transforming touch that made it paradise. It was thus, in the country, I suggested that we should ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... response, and more flame and light and less smoke was the result, while more light came in from the windows above, for as the hot acrid smoke poured out the leafage writhed and crinkled up, taking up half the space it ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... noted that it belongs to the family of Asclepiadaceae, which have all something more or less 'fleshy' looking about some parts of them, which, like the Apocyneae, were in the old world credited with medicinal properties, and which are generally acrid, stimulating, and astringent. There are many poisonous members of the family, such as the dog's-bane and wolf's-bane of our own country, favourite plants with the enchanters, while the cowplant of Ceylon is of ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... not a poetic word—mere mention of it would distress Mr. Yeats; but it is potent as "Sesame" to unlock the treasures of memory. And before the laggard Spring comes round again many of us will sigh for a whiff of yellow, acrid smoke, curling from a smoldering fire in the heart ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... was! And what an atmosphere inside the highest shelter, where sleepers had been packed like sardines and the newly kindled fire filled the fetid air with acrid smoke! What there was to be seen we saw—the crater, neither wide nor deep; the Shinto temple, where a priest was intoning prayers; and the Post Office, where an enterprising Government sells picture-postcards for ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... profuse, thin, acrid, and offensive, and consists of pus, broken-down blood-clot, and sloughs. The edges are inflamed, irregular, and ragged, showing no sign of growing epithelium—on the contrary, the sore may be actually ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... were, according to her ideas, slow, respectable, and dull. But they had not found much open fault with her, and she was aware that it was for her interest to remain on good terms with them. Her letter, therefore, to Mrs. Eustace was somewhat less acrid than that written to her ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... politicians. And if a real revolutionist like Hugo did not do justice to the revolutionary element in Caesarism, it need hardly be said that a rather Primrose League Tory like Tennyson did not. Kinglake's curiously acrid insistence upon the Coup d'etat is, I fear, only an indulgence in one of the least pleasing pleasures of our national pen and press, and one which afterwards altogether ran away with us over the Dreyfus case. It is an ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... standing in the doorway looking at us with an acrid, scornful smile that went to my heart like ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... formation, and that is to be found, not in the bowels, but only at the inlets and outlets of the digestive canal. The actual deposit at the outlet of the bowel is indeed exceptional, though the edges are often red and sore from the irritation produced by the acrid motions, and this irritation sometimes extends to the skin over the lower part of the baby's person, which becomes rough, and covered with a blush ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... face in his hands. For in his mind he was seeing a rigid, searing body, and in his nostrils, acrid, distinct, was the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... used his Englishman's right of grumbling to a large extent; with a sort of bitter and acrid humility, he would accuse himself of having missed his vocation and his rightful heritage, of being neither "fish, flesh, nor good red herring;" nevertheless his post for the last two years had pleased him well: he was connected with a certain large literary society which gave ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... are many, and some of them wild in the Eastern States, are counted inferior seedlings of the species avium, and are tall, large trees, the fruit being small and rather acrid and colors various. The Mahaleb is a European type with a smaller tree, fruit inferior to the Mazzards, and used as a root under soil and climatic conditions under which the Mazzard is not hardy ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... of distress afterward. Other fruits were less satisfactory. Of the samples which the skin-test said were non-poisonous, one was acrid and astringent, and two others had no taste except that of greenness—practically the taste of ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Sicilian honey was famous for its flavour because of the bee pasture of thyme which there abounded, especially at Hybla. Theophrastus (H.P. III, 15, 5) explains that the honey of Corsica had an acrid taste, because the bees pastured there largely on ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... began, stooping over the book close to his daughter and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat, so that she felt herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of old age and tobacco, which she had known so long. "Now, madam, these triangles are equal; please note that the ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... courage,—an uncontrollable will,—a sturdy pride, which might be disciplined into self-respect,—and a bitter scorn of many things, which, when examined, might be found to have the taint of falsehood in them. She possessed affections, too, though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as are the richest flavors of unripe fruit. With all these sterling attributes, thought Hester, the evil which she inherited from her mother must be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Fred, but the effort hurt him. There was a suggestion of unpleasant mockery in Helen's tone. She seemed to be hiding her contempt behind a thin veil of acrid humor. And somehow this revelation in the presence of ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... fairly good September and October pear, rather large, a good bearer, "flesh white, but somewhat acrid and gritty" (Barron). ...
— The Book of Pears and Plums • Edward Bartrum
... and abrupt, her prayer-book in her hand, freeing her skirt as it caught on the railings, and brushing past the withered wreaths which left the heads of immortelles adhering to her gown. Finally, the first to reach the graveside smelt the acrid odour of the freshly turned soil, and from the heights of the neighbouring flagstones saw the grave into which the coffin ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France |
