Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Eel   Listen
noun
Eel  n.  (Zoöl.) An elongated fish of many genera and species. The common eels of Europe and America belong to the genus Anguilla. The electrical eel is a species of Gymnotus. The so called vinegar eel is a minute nematode worm. See Conger eel, Electric eel, and Gymnotus.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Eel" Quotes from Famous Books



... where she sat, jutted out the "brace" well lined with bacon; to the right hung a well-scoured salt-box, and to the left was the jamb, with its little paneless window to admit the light. Within it hung several ash rungs, seasoning for flail-sooples, or boulteens, a dozen of eel-skins, and several stripes of horse-skin, as hangings for them. The dresser was a "parfit white," and well furnished with the usual appurtenances. Over the door and on the "threshel" were nailed, "for luck," two horse-shoes, that had been found by accident. In ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... same. Similarly in the list of sept-names of the tribes given by Sir H. Risley [492] several coincide. Among the 15 names of main septs of the Santals, Besra, a hawk, Murmu nilgai, or stag, and Aind, eel, are also the names of Munda septs. The Santal sept Hansda, a wild goose, is nearly identical with the Munda sept Hansa, a swan; the Santal septs Kisku and Tudu are sept-names of the Hos, a branch of the Mundas; and in one or two other names there is a great resemblance. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... morn when first it thunders in March, The eel in the pond gives a leap, they say. As I leaned and looked over the aloed arch Of the villa-gate this warm March day, No flash snapped, no dumb thunder rolled In the valley beneath where, white and wide And washed by the morning water-gold, Florence ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... changed into frivolous members of Parliament?" Like some persons who, although case-hardened at home, overflow with sympathy towards distant objects, he cared less for the feelings of his neighbor close at hand than for the eel out of water or the ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... clothing. Even in winter he went about without garments. He sat on a tortoise three feet long. Once he was asked: "About how old might this tortoise be?" He answered: "When Fu Hi first invented fish-nets and eel-pots he caught this tortoise and gave it to me. And since then I have worn its shield quite flat sitting on it. The creature dreads the radiance of the sun and moon, so it only sticks its head out of its shell once in two thousand years. ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various

... little vessel goeth from its place, backward, backward, so he thence withdrew; and when he felt himself quite at play, he turned his tail to where his breast had been, and moved it, stretched out like an eel, and with his paws gathered the air to himself. Greater fear I do not think there was when Phaethon abandoned the reins, whereby heaven, as is still apparent, was scorched; nor when the wretched Icarus felt his flanks unfeathering through the melting of the wax, his father shouting ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... days the children were always abroad in the forest or by the lake-side watching Flossy catching fish. She dived and swam far more quickly than an eel. ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables

... he had been seen leaving the town by the lieutenant, who summoned his men and went after him—cautiously, however, in order to take him by surprise, for Ruby, besides being strong and active as a lion, was slippery as an eel. ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... him—watching him with no agreeable or timid expression in its angry eyes. He was just expecting Victor Hugo's devil fish to complete his horror when a sudden, sharp, bone-breaking shock struck him from an electrical eel or marine torpedo. This was a real and sensible danger, and as he struggled to ascend the hulk to the rotten half-deck, the spongy substance gave way, the treacherous quicksand, with its smooth, tenacious throat-clutch, slid down and caught him. The danger was real and imminent, when his companions ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... an eel stood up on end, and wriggled and squirmed lithely in every direction, and declared that, for his part, he went in for rainbows and hot water—how could I help seeing that he was still black and loved a ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... and Kutchin phratries call for special notice. The kins of the former are arranged in three groups: wolf, turtle, and turkey; and the first phratry includes quadrupeds, the second turtles of various kinds and the yellow eel, and the third birds. We find a parallel to these phratries in the groups of the Kutchin, but in the latter case our lack of knowledge of the tribe precludes us from saying whether totem kins exist among them, and, if so, how far the grouping is systematic; the Kutchin groups, ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas

... reader, a glorious Latitudinarian, that can, as to religion, turn and twist like an eel on the hook; or rather like the weathercock that stands ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... was of a deep green. In proof of these trees being derived from the head of Tuna, we are told that we have only to break the nut in order to see in the sprouting germ the two eyes and the mouth of Tuna, the great eel, the lover of Ina. For a full understanding of this very complicated myth more information has been supplied by Mr. Gill. Ina means moon; Ina-mae- aitu, the heroine of our story, means Ina-who-had-a-divine ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... fuzz of baby trees sprang up, growing to a rank prosperity and dying suddenly beneath the sun. Along the river's edge little shreds of watercress took root and threw out sprouts and blossoms; the clean water brought forth snaky eel-grass and scum which fed a multitude of fishes; in the shadows of deep rocks the great bony-tails and Colorado River salmon lay in contented shoals, like hogs in wallows, but all the time the water grew less and less. At every shower the Indian wheat sprang up on the mesas, the myriad grass-seeds ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... several Saxon kings were crowned, and the coronation-stone, marked with their names, it is said, still remains in the market-place. Teddington Lock is the last upon the Thames, and a mile below is Eel-Pie Island, lying off Twickenham, renowned for the romance that surrounds its ancient ferry. Near here lived the eccentric Horace Walpole, at Strawberry Hill, while in Twickenham Church is the monument to the poet Pope, which states ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... attention too much, for it is another motion that we have now to seek. Here and there you observe a greater disturbance than ordinary among the globules; keep your eye upon the place of tumult, and you will probably see emerging from it a long eel-like organism, tossing the globules aside and wriggling more or less rapidly across the field of the microscope. Familiar with one sample of this organism, which from its motions receives the name of ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... to his oars till the water foamed under the bow of his boat. Now he has landed; now he drags the boat up as if she were an eel-pot. Now he strides ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... hereabouts and thereabouts, and needs stirring, as your Tom knows well; so I chucked the gallipots fur from me, right and left, into the shallows, and thereby druv the pike upon my hooks. A good night's work I made of it too, say nothing of the Savings-bank; forty pound o' pike and twelve of eel ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... the bottom, but like an eel he squirmed to the top before the other had time to get set. The champion's patrician head was thumped down into the mud and a knobby little fist played a painful tattoo on ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... are not so well supplied with fish as those of many other countries. The largest, except an eel, is one called the black-fish, which, in some of the rivers which discharge themselves into the sea on the north coast, attains a weight of six to eight pounds. This fish, it is said, does not exist in the river Derwent, or in any of its numerous tributaries. The mullet ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... well known that the gymnotus is a kind of eel, with a blackish, slimy skin, furnished along the back and tail with an apparatus composed of plates joined by vertical lamellae, and acted on by nerves of considerable power. This apparatus is endowed with singular electrical properties, and is apt to produce very ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... of fine silver[181-] eels: the best are those that are rather more than a half-crown piece in circumference, quite fresh, full of life, and "as brisk as an eel:" such as have been kept out of water till they can scarce stir, are good for nothing: gut them, rub them with salt till the slime is cleaned from them, wash them in several different waters, and divide them into ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner

... she was particularly amiable. She called the inspector to her to show him a huge eel which had been the wonder of the market when exhibited at the auction. She opened the grating, which she had previously closed over the basin in whose depths the eel seemed to ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... Mr. Paredes, and there is a lot about this case that looks like ghosts, but leave us a few flesh-and-blood clues. This woman in black is one of them, although she's been slippery as an eel. It looks to me as if you went to the grave to meet her alone exactly as you went to the deserted house to talk quietly with her night before last. Maybe she mistook you for one of us snooping in the dark, and let ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp

... sucked its blood, and ate it, leaving the bare skeleton only. In about thirty minutes he rejected the hairs in the manner of birds of prey and carnivorous animals. He also ate dogs in the same manner. On one occasion it was said that he swallowed a living eel without chewing it; but he had first bitten off its head. He ate almost instantly a dinner that had been prepared for 15 vigorous workmen and drank the accompanying water and took their aggregate allowance of salt at the same time. After this ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... to be in heaven, their roots and water kept them for a century from their wishes. I have lived all my life like an anchoret in London, and within ten miles, shed my skin after the gout, and am as lively as an eel in a week after. Mr. Chute, who has drunk no more wine than a fish, grows better every year. He has escaped this winter with only a little pain in one hand. Consider that the physicians recommended wine, and then can you doubt of its being poison? Medicines may cure a few ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... substantiate. Presently there was a large dish of stewed eels put on. "What's that?" asked Jorrocks of the man.—"Poisson," was the reply. "Poison! why, you infidel, have you no conscience?" "Fishe," said the Countess. "Oh, ay, I smell—eels—just like what we have at the Eel-pie-house at Twickenham—your ladyship, I am thirsty—'ge soif,' in fact." "Ah, bon!" said the Countess, laughing, and giving him a tumbler of claret. "I've travelled three hundred thousand miles," said the fat man, "and never saw claret drunk in ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... variety of eel that lurks in holes; it is wont to keep its head lifted. The o-i' (same verse) is an eel that snakes about in the shallow water or on the sand at the edge ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... the course of my travels I often have seen Th' effects of the dreadful electric machine; Of the gymnotus eel, with one stroke of his tail He would make the stout African elephant quail, Or the heart of the horny rhinoceros quake, Oh! may he ne'er visit this land or this lake. The small swimming spider, with silky lined cell, I ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.

... Street, has a beautiful shop full of wonderful things. Felicite bought a pound of galantine de volaille truffee, for which she paid two-and-six, and for which in Piccadilly she would have paid five shillings; she bought half a pound of jellied eel; she bought Pont l'Eveque cheese; flat little Parisian sausages; she bought a glass jar of preserved pears, ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... on the coasts between Caen and Havre, of the fish called lancon at Granville and St. Malo, a kind of malacopterygious fish living on sandy shores and hiding in the sand at low tide.— Littre. A species of sand eel. This stream is now known as the Annapolis River. Lescarbot calls it ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... distinguished theological writer, to whom was largely due the foundation of the British and Foreign Bible Society. Bala Lake, the largest in Wales (4 m. long by some 3/4 m. wide), is subject to sudden and dangerous floods, deep and clear, and full of pike, perch, trout, eel and gwyniad. The gwyniad (Caregonus) is peculiar to certain waters, as those of Bala Lake, and is fully described by Thomas Pennant in his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... of kings," the old man chuckled; "an it's a long eel that won't turn when trodden upon. If you're not going to fish, John, do sit down! You're throwing a shadow over the water and that scares the finny monsters. A fish diet is great for the brain, John! ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh

... was delivered just as we reached Thirty-second Street. Like an eel I slipped from his grasp, and whirling about, I said as rapidly as I could speak, "I'm almost home now. I can see the light from here, and I can't take you any farther out of your way," and I darted down the ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... the revealer was present to his mind, may be gathered from an incident related by Trelawny. They were bathing in the Arno, when Shelley, who could not swim, plunged into deep water, and "lay stretched out at the bottom like a conger eel, not making the least effort or struggle to save himself." Trelawny fished him out, and when he had taken breath he said: "I always find the bottom of the well, and they say Truth lies there. In another minute I should have found it, and you would have found an empty shell. Death is ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... good, for earlier in life she was the wife of the skipper of a bolter that made regular voyages to Hole Haven at the mouth of the Thames, where a large eel trade was in the hands ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... sir—her knee—this, sir"—slapping of knee with horny hand of toil—"The ship's knees, miss," addressing Damaris, whose straight brows had almost met in puzzlement, "is a chock on the forepart of the lowermast on which the 'eel—heel, miss, of the topmast rests. Yuss, sir. Her knee may 'ave water in it; but no one couldn't say the same of ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... sprang aboard and looked over into the water, we could see him going down out of reach of a harpoon; and his body seemed to be silver-plated, flashing and glittering like a burnished eel, so completely did the skin of air envelope him, held there by ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... he writes in 821 to his sister, "that anyone who was not cock-ide drunk would have known better than to of tried to walk bear-foot through that eel-grass from the beech up to the bath-house without sneekers on, which is what that ninn Aethelbald tryed to do this AM. Well say laffter is no name for what you would of done if you had seen him. He looked like he was trying to walk a tide-rope. Hey I yelled at him all ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... equal aversion to solitary feeding, had established a breakfast-club, in which, thanks to Drysdale's genius, real scientific gastronomy was cultivated. Every morning the boy from the Weirs arrived with freshly caught gudgeon, and now and then an eel or trout, which the scouts on the staircase had learnt to fry delicately in oil. Fresh watercresses came in the same basket, and the college kitchen furnished a spitchedcocked chicken, or grilled turkey's leg. In the season there were plover's eggs; or, at the worst, there was a ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... a as in hat. e as in there. e as in bet. e as in French meme. i as in eel. i as in bit. o as in hole. o as in not. u as in cool. u as in cut. ai as in eye. ei not represented ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... time, did you?" said Sam, with a satisfied chuckle. "You generally play the wriggling eel, but I was too quick for ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn

... the advantage of the first kick at the ball while the mercury tube inside was still quiet. Once the mercury was agitated, the ball would be as easy to kick as a well-greased eel. ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... held an eel. She slipped from my hands, and ran back to her lodge. "So!" she cried, as she lifted the mat before her door. "So it is not the dog alone that smells at its food before it will eat. Why stay here? I have given you what you ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... manifest any signs of vitality so long as we remained beside it; whereas the lower half, as if the whole life of the animal had retired into it, continued dancing upon the moss for a full minute after, like a young eel scooped out of some stream, and thrown upon the bank; and then lay wriggling and palpitating for about half a minute more. There are few things more inexplicable in the province of the naturalist than the phenomenon of what ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... fact could be more striking than this sea of grass, from which whirls of dust rise up continually, although not a breath of wind is felt at Calabozo, in the centre of this vast plain. Humboldt first tested the power of the gymnotus, or electric eel, large numbers of which are met with in all the tributaries of the Orinoco. The Indians, who were afraid of exposing themselves to the electric discharge of these singular creatures, proposed sending some horses into the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... men, can be so barbarous as to invent such grotesque names as these is surprizing, or why Apicius should be remembered for having been the first to teach mankind how to suffocate fish in Carthaginian pickle; or Quin, for having discovered a sauce for John Dories; or Mrs. Glasse, for an eel pie; or M. Soyer, celebrated for depriving barbel of their sight, in order to make them grow fatter, and be more acceptable to the epicure. Into this wilderness of discoveries, I have no intention of introducing ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... stayed where they were, frozen by the calm threat of the old man's voice. "Been eel fishing," he said. "Saw that young reporter skate around the corner with two men after him. Then I noticed Scotty and Rick looking out, and I thought I better take a hand. Didn't know just what to do until I spotted this BB gun ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... finality in Jim's tones that closed the subject for good. Half the traps had now been hauled and there were about seventy-five pounds of lobsters in the tub. Spiny, egg-like sea-urchins, green wrinkles, and an occasional flounder or lamper-eel gave variety to the catch. There was always the hope that the next trap might yield five ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman

... on this famous lake," said James Starr. "It has been compared to an eel on account of its length and windings: and justly so. They say that it never freezes. I know nothing about that, but what we want to think of is, that here are the scenes of the adventures in the Lady of the Lake. I believe, if friend Jack looked about him carefully, ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne

... caught a monstrous eel in the duck pond on Monday," Mr. Crow said. Being a newspaper, he thought he ought to say nothing except what ...
— The Tale of Brownie Beaver • Arthur Scott Bailey

... nothin' but a fresh water eel,' sais I; 'I have seen thousands of 'em there; for the crevices of them rocks are chock full of 'em. How can you come for to go, for to talk arter that fashion; you are a disgrace to our great nation, you great lummokin coward, you. An American citizen is afeerd of nothin', but a bad spekilation, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... honest forester," said Gefroi, and groaned again. "The favour of a lord is a slippery thing—much like an eel—quick to wriggle away. An hour agone my lord Duke held me in much esteem, while now? And he struck me! On the face, here!" Slowly Gefroi got him upon his feet, and having donned cap and pourpoint, shook his head and sighed; ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... alone out into the storm. He fought with the monsters of the deep, as well as with men. He captured the great shark that abounds in the bay, and he would clutch in the fearful grip of his hands the deadly eel or snake of these seas, the terror of fishes ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various

... to their camp about three miles further. They had caught a considerable quantity of fish, but most of them were small. I noticed three different kinds; a small one that they call Cupi, from five to six inches long, and not broader than an eel; the common one, with large coarse scales, termed Peru; and a delicious fish, some of which run from a pound to two pounds weight; the natives call them Cawilchi. On our arrival at the camp they led us to a spot to camp on, and soon afterwards brought a lot of fish, and a kind of ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... communication of the 8th instant from the Secretary of the Interior, submitting, with accompanying papers, an estimate of appropriation in the sum of $22,000, prepared in the Office of Indian Affairs, to provide for the payment to the Eel River band of Miami Indians of a principal sum in lieu of all annuities now received by them under ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... the child slipped away like an eel, and disappeared behind a muck-heap which was piled at the top of a mound between the path and the house; for, like many Breton farmers who have a system of agriculture that is all their own, Galope-Chopine ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... the control cabin and threw him to the floor. But Rapaju was like an eel. He wriggled from under him and snatched from the heap of clothing the ray-pistol of the disintegrated guard. With a yelp of triumph he rose to his knees and leveled ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... renegade. As the two went down Joe caught the villain's wrist with a grip that literally cracked the bones. The knife fell and rolled away from the struggling men. For an instant they tumbled about on the floor, clasped in a crushing embrace. The renegade was strong, supple, slippery as an eel. Twice he wriggled from his foe. Gnashing his teeth, he fought like a hyena. He was fighting for life—life, which is never so dear as to a coward and a murderer. Doom glared from Joe's big eyes, and scream after scream issued from the ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... of wind, and Dan shook loose the linen, and a straight shining streak with specks of foam shot after us. The mast bent like eel-grass, and our keel was half out of the water. Faith belied her name, and clung to the sides with her ten finger-nails; but as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... hilly and picturesque miles north of Fort Bragg, we turned again into the interior of Mendocino, crossing the ranges and coming out in Humboldt County on the south fork of Eel River at Garberville. Throughout the trip, from Marin County north, we had been warned of "bad roads ahead." Yet we never found those bad roads. We seemed always to be just ahead of them or behind them. The farther ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London

... die, I can't tell where: Voices I call 'em: 't was a kind o' sough Like pine-trees thet the wind is geth'rin' through; An', fact, I thought it was the wind a spell,— Then some misdoubted,—couldn't fairly tell,— Fust sure, then not, jest as you hold an eel,— I knowed, an' didn't,—fin'lly seemed to feel 'T was Concord Bridge a-talkin' off to kill With the Stone Spike thet's druv thru Bunker Hill: Whether't was so, or ef I only dreamed, I couldn't say; I tell it ez ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various

... Occasionally a small catch—a mere "bait "—was handed round for inspection; and once a cunning fisherman, acquainted with all the secrets of his craft, succeeded in drawing forth three perch, perhaps a quarter of a pound each, and one slender eel. These made quite a show, and were greatly admired; but I never saw the same man ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... was overpassed. Swaying tufts of vegetation marked the rapid passage of eel-like bodies. The Indians had decided on an advance, being encouraged probably by the latter inaccuracy of the plainsmen's fire. Besides, the day was waning. It was no cat-and-mouse game now; but a rush, like the other except that all but the last twenty ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... buttons, as they described their everlasting circles; at long intervals there was a faint ripple just perceptible round the floats, when a fish was 'playing' with the worm. Very few fish were taken; during a whole hour we drew up only two loaches and an eel. I could not say why the brigadier aroused my curiosity; his rank could not have any influence on me; ruined noblemen were not even at that time looked upon as a rarity, and his appearance presented nothing ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... thought that I had seized possession of a fact, but it slipped through my fingers like the tail of an eel." ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... is observed, that the old or very great Pikes have in them more of state than goodness; the smaller or middle-sized Pikes being, by the most and choicest palates, observed to be the best meat: and, contrary, the Eel is observed to be the better ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... lizards and crawling forms, with centipedes and fierce formicidae. Death and terror stalk hand in hand. But life trails them. Where one falls, countless others spring up to fill the gap. The rivers and pantanos yield their quota of variegated forms. The flat perania, the dreaded electric eel, infests the warm streams, and inflicts its torture without discrimination upon all who dare invade its domain. Snakes lurk in the fetid swamps and lagoons, the brilliant coral and the deadly mapina. Beneath the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... I Was a Bachelor" Unknown "Johnny Shall Have a New Bonnet" Unknown The City Mouse and the Garden Mouse Christina Rossetti Robin Redbreast Unknown Solomon Grundy Unknown "Merry Are the Bells" Unknown "When Good King Arthur Ruled This Land" Unknown The Bells of London Unknown "The Owl and the Eel and the Warming Pan" Laura E. Richards The Cow Ann Taylor The Lamb William Blake Little Raindrops Unknown "Moon, So Round and Yellow" Matthias Barr The House That Jack Built Unknown Old Mother Hubbard Unknown The Death and Burial of Cock Robin Unknown Baby-Land ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... and then twisted like an eel, and tried to dive under the spy's arm. He had smiled and spoken, hoping to throw the man off his guard, but this man was not easily deceived, and ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore

... emperor's table. He was especially fond of fish and all the progeny of the water,—eels, frogs, oysters, and the like. The trout of the neighborhood were too small for his liking, so he had larger ones sent from a distance. Potted fish—anchovies in particular—were favorite viands. Eel pasty appealed strongly to his taste. Soles, lampreys, flounders reached his kitchen from Seville and Portugal. The country around supplied pork, mutton, and game. Sausages were sent him from a distance; olives were brought from afar, as those near at hand were not to his liking. ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... gilded; the fifth, of ducks, small birds, and fish, all gilded; the sixth, of beef, capons with garlic-sauce, and sturgeon; the seventh, of veal and capons with lemon-sauce; the eighth, of beef-pies, with cheese and sugar, and eel-pies with sugar and spices; the ninth, of meats, fowl and fish in jelly (potted, we presume); the tenth, of gilded meats and lamprey; the eleventh, of roast kid, birds, and fish; the twelfth, of hares and venison, and fish ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various

... named Mestigoit; the other was the most noted "medicine-man," or, as the Jesuits called him, sorcerer, in the tribe of the Montagnais. Like the rest of their people, they were accustomed to set out for their winter hunt in the autumn, after the close of their eel-fishery. Le Jeune, despite the experience of De Nou, had long had a mind to accompany one of these roving bands, partly in the hope, that, in some hour of distress, he might touch their hearts, or, by a ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... heartily when to-morrow is past; till then I dare not: my prize is not certain. This is you, who have been as slippery as an eel this last month, and as thorny as a briar-rose? I could not lay a finger anywhere but I was pricked; and now I seem to have gathered up a stray lamb in my arms. You wandered out of the fold to seek your ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... Confound that fellow, Ripley. And he's as slick and slippery as an eel. I don't suppose there is any way that we can ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... "Zephir" had reached the open sea, La Queue cast his nets. After that he went to visit his "jambins." The jambins are a kind of elongated eel-pot in which they catch more, especially lobsters and red garnet. But in spite of the calm sea, he did well to visit his jambins one by one. All were empty; at the bottom of the last one, as if in mockery, he found a little mackerel, which he threw back angrily into the sea. It was fate; ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola

... brother—in his absence. It had been shown that Wood was met, at one o'clock of the night in question, crossing the fields toward his home, from the direction of the bank, with a large wicker basket slung over his shoulders, returning, as he had said, from eel-spearing in Harlow's Creek; and there was ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various

... speaker do? He tried another plan. "Ceres," he began, "made a voyage one day with an eel and a swallow. After a time the three travellers were stopped by a river. This the eel got over by swimming ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine

... and are distinctively clannish. They retain their old clan-dress—blue cloaks and red petticoats—which distinguishes them from the rest of the county of Galway, and it may be conjectured that the present-day custom of naming from the names of fish—thus, Jack the hake, Bill the cod, Joe the eel, Pat the trout, Mat the turbot, etc.[399]—may be a remnant of the mental attitude of the folk towards that belief in kinship between men and animals which is at the basis of totemism. But, returning to the fox, we have in the belief that ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... off his spectacles, polished them, and replaced them on his nose. As he did so, the thin gruffle of the tarantula sounded once more. Without changing his expression, Clarence cautiously uttered the deep snarl of a sand-eel ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... make herself a scarf, or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother's gift for devising drapery and costume. As the last touch to her mermaid's garb, Pearl took some eel-grass, and imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom, the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother's. A letter,—the letter A,—but freshly green, instead of scarlet! The child bent her ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... black-fish militated against his chances for, while it took him more than his own length to turn in the water, the thresher darted, here, there and everywhere, like an eel—just getting out of his reach when the other thought he had got him and had opened his ponderous jaws to crush him. It was at this moment that his agile tormentor, seizing his opportunity, would leap out of the water and give the whale a "whack" ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... wanted her like that—handles rough water better. But just take a peep at that bow of hers! Sharp enough to cut paper with! Black along the scuppers, but with a shine like the patent leather shoe of a Grandee of Spain; and the body of her, white, but smooth as an eel, and just as fast, by God, in the water!" The rigging, the fishing gear and other trappings, were not yet aboard. But the best tackle makers along shore were at work on them, and by the fifteenth, the whole trousseau would be ready, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... by this, I stepped down to another branch directly over the bear, and tried again to rope him. It was of no use. He slipped out of the noose with the sinuous movements of an eel. Once it caught over his ears and in his open jaws. He gave a jerk that nearly pulled me from my perch. I could tell he was growing angrier every instant, and also braver. Suddenly the noose, quite by accident, caught his nose. He wagged his head and ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... Battle I saw less. He shipped with the fishing boats in the summer and cruised with any vagrant craft for the winter. When he came ashore he was as small and eel-like and shy and awkward as ever, with the same dumb fidelity ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... came; the little Touranian, exalted with pride caparisoned with desire, and spurred by his "alacks" and "alases" which nearly choked him, glided like an eel into the domicile of the veritable Queen of the Council—for before her bowed humbly all the authority, science, and wisdom of Christianity. The major domo did not know him, and was going to bundle him out again, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... "the old Duke [Wellington] will at last give salt eel to that cowardly, bawling vagabond O'Connell." Borrow detested O'Connell as a "Dublin bully . . . a humbug, without courage or one particle of manly feeling." Again (17th June) he had written: "Horrible ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... homeward for the night; the cattle and poultry had been housed, and the herdsmen, standing at the gates of the village cattle-pens, amid the trailing dust lately raised by their charges, were awaiting the milk-pails and a summons to partake of the eel-broth. Through the dusk came the hum of humankind, and the barking of dogs in other and more distant villages; while, over all, the moon was rising, and the darkened countryside was beginning to glimmer to light again under her beams. What a glorious picture! ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... positions of the stars and the entrails of dead animals before going to war, talked of the horrible fetiches of the Africans, the tricks and speculations of the priests of Greek and Roman temples, finally telling me the story of the ambitious eel-seller who anchored the dead horse in the stream in order to have plenty of eels every morning for market. I revolted. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... overhear them, they would make up fairy tales of wonderful adventures they had gone through, and fierce monsters they had destroyed. One would say 'I wish I were large enough to drag home the enormous giant eel I killed today. He was sixteen feet long, and weighed five hundred pounds.' Another would say, 'Pooh, that is nothing! Why, you ought to see an Indian who tried to catch me in a net! Why, I not only pulled him in the water and dragged him all over the bottom, ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle

... and opened its mouth with a penknife, to show a gentleman how different it was from that of the adder, which I had dead by me: its teeth being no more formidable or terrific than the teeth of a trout or eel; while the mouth of the adder had two fangs, like the claws of a cat, attached to the roof of the mouth, no way connected with its jaw-teeth. While examining the snake in this manner, it began to smell most horridly, and filled the room with an abominable odour; I also felt, or thought I felt, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various

... Parliament, and recorded in its name decisions and orders never really made." In the course of his long and checkered career he had been a member of so many Ministries and changed sides so often that it was not to be expected that he should escape charges of inconsistency. "Some do compare him to an eel," said Lockhart of Carnwath, "and certainly the character suited him exactly ... He had sworn all the most contradictory oaths, and complied with all the opposite Governments since the year 1648, and was humble servant to them all till he got what he aimed at, though often he did ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... indigestion can temporarily metamorphose the character. The eel stews of Mohammed II. kept the whole empire in a state of nervous excitement, and one of the meat-pies which King Philip failed to digest caused the revolt ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... whose name is on the title; so that a correcting republisher makes use of his author's name to teach his own variation. The tortuous logic of "the trade," which is content when "the world" is satisfied, is not easily answered, any more than an eel is easily caught; but the Religious Tract Society may be convinced [in the old sense] in a sentence. On which course would they feel most safe in giving their account to the God of truth? ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... hands and Burr departed, after promising to renew the conversation next day. Slowly he walked along the river bank, saying to himself, "If I could only rely on him. He is slippery as an eel, but a net of golden promise will hold him if anything will. I fancy I have caught James Wilkinson, and if so, half ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... weather; but he was a brave lad; and sorry were the folks for him, when he fell off in taking over sharp a turn, by which old Pullen, the bell-ringer, who was holding the post, was made to coup the creels, and got a bloody nose.—And but the last was a wearyful one! He was all life, and as gleg as an eel. Up and down he went; and up and down philandered the beast on its hind-legs and its fore- legs, funking like mad; yet though he was not above thirteen, or fourteen at most, he did not cry out for help more than five or six times, but grippit at the mane with one hand, and at the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... the higher animals live parasitic lives. The nearest approach to a true parasite among the vertebrates is the lamprey-eel (Fig. 1) which attaches itself to the body of a fish and sucks the blood or eats the flesh. Among the Crustaceans, the group that includes the lobsters and crabs, we find many examples of parasites, the most ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... jump Anders got out of his chair. He darted like an arrow through all the halls, down all the stairs, and across the yard. He twisted himself like an eel between the outstretched arms of the courtiers, and over the soldiers' muskets he jumped like a little rabbit. He ran so fast that the Princess's necklace fell off his neck, and all the cakes jumped out of his pockets. But he had his ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... resembled the arrow-headed pronged fork, used by the fishermen of the Mediterranean Sea in the eel-fishery. ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... and rise only at the end of the village, yield nothing but the bull's head or miller's thumb (gobius fluviatilis capitatus), the trout (trutta fluviatilis), the eel (anguilla), the lampern (lampoetra parva et fluviatilis), and the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... of us were actively engaged, under Arthur's direction, in accumulating a stock of these materials, Max devoted all his energies to the task of capturing an enormous eel which frequented the upper end of the lake. But he exhausted all his ingenuity in this endeavour without success. The monster had a secure retreat among the submerged roots of an old buttress tree, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... sinister—haunter of those muddied depths of pollution, who took a more than passing interest in the smell of blood, and must, to judge by the swirl, have been too big to be safe. And that was probably a giant female eel, as dangerous a foe as any swimmer of his size—though he ate eels—might care to face. Then there was the marsh-harrier—and the same might have been a kind of owl if it wasn't a sort of hawk—who flapped up like some gigantic moth, and dogged his steps, only waiting—he felt sure of it—for ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... arose then in the constricted passageway that seemed to Ken to raise College Hall from its foundation. It terrified him. Like an eel he slipped through reaching arms and darted forward. Ken was heavy and fast on his feet, and with fear lending him wings he made a run through College Hall that would have been a delight to the football coach. For Ken was not dodging any sophomores now. He had ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... like an eel through the willow thicket until she was completely hidden from view, and Botts followed as well as he was able, with one hand fending off the supple young shoots from whipping back upon ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant

... proposes to wait upon us after breakfast. A trouble occurs about my taking an oath before a master-extraordinary in Chancery; but such cannot easily be found, as they reside in chambers in town, and rusticate after business, so they are difficult to catch as an eel. At ten my children set off to the dockyard, which is a most prodigious effort of machinery, and they are promised the sight of an anchor in the act of being forged, a most cyclopean sight. Walter ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject him to the test of oaths? The oaths keep him out of Parliament; why, then, he respects them. Turn which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you are; but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson does when he is compelled by the gripe of reason to admit anything in favour ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... of the Springfield (Mass.) "Republican," said that Lincoln "handled Douglas as he would an eel—by main strength. Sometimes, perhaps, he handled him so strongly that he slipped ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne



Words linked to "Eel" :   electric eel, sand eel, conger, common eel, elver, wheat eel, Anguilla sucklandii, Anguilliformes, cusk-eel, lamper eel, lamprey eel, smoked eel, moray eel, tuna, blind eel, vinegar eel



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org