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Mousing   Listen
noun
Mousing  n.  
1.
The act of hunting mice.
2.
(Naut.) A turn or lashing of spun yarn or small stuff, or a metallic clasp or fastening, uniting the point and shank of a hook to prevent its unhooking or straighening out.
3.
A ratchet movement in a loom.
Mousing hook, a hook with an attachment which prevents its unhooking.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Mousing" Quotes from Famous Books



... thy glory towers When the rich blood of kings is set on fire! O, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel; The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs; And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men, In undetermin'd differences of kings.— Why stand these royal fronts amazed thus? Cry, havoc, kings! back to the stained field, You equal potents, fiery-kindled spirits! Then let confusion of one ...
— King John • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... be a work of niceness and despatch, but it is ill training for working on the spars of a rolling ship. John Cutler was mousing clew-blocks on the main-yardarm, the ship lurched heavily, the foot-ropes were wet and slippery, and John, ill-balanced and unready, was cast into the sea. Instant, there was the cry "Man overboard"; the Old Man ordered the helm down, and, springing to the rack, threw a lifebuoy from the starboard ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... Orleans he met George W. Cable and Joel Chandler Harris, and they had a fraternizing good time together, mousing about the old French Quarter or mingling with the social life of the modern city. He made a trip with Bixby in a tug to the Warmouth plantation, and they reviewed old days together, as friends parted for twenty-one years will. Altogether the New Orleans sojourn was a pleasant ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... mousing priesthood ply Their garbled text and gloss of sin, And make the lettered scroll deny Its living soul within: Still let the place-fed, titled knave Plead robbery's right with purchased lips, And tell us that our fathers gave For Freedom's ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... a ruling principle with Mrs. Gouverneur that whatever Philip wanted he was to have, if it were procurable, and as the husband of such a woman as Phillida he ought to be a great deal happier than in mousing among old books and moping over questions that nobody could solve. Besides, Phillida possessed one qualification second to no other in Mrs. Gouverneur's opinion—there could be no question that her family was a first-rate one, at least upon the mother's side. The intrusion of a third ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... homeward walk S. must have been mistaken in his eloquent reference to the crake of the landrail, though he might have been correct as to the weak, piping cry of the circling bats, and the ghostly passage of flitting owl mousing low over the meadow. These alone, he said, broke the silence; in this M. took him to task, having himself heard the tinkling of sheep bells and the barking of ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior

... Maiesty: how high thy glory towres, When the rich blood of kings is set on fire: Oh now doth death line his dead chaps with steele, The swords of souldiers are his teeth, his phangs, And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men In vndetermin'd differences of kings. Why stand these royall fronts amazed thus: Cry hauocke kings, backe to the stained field You equall Potents, fierie kindled spirits, Then let confusion of one ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... resurrection and the life. Once you are dead you are dead. That last day idea. Knocking them all up out of their graves. Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job. Get up! Last day! Then every fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights and the rest of his traps. Find damn all of himself that morning. Pennyweight of powder in a skull. Twelve grammes one ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... had always been one of your snapping, sparkling, busy sort of girls, began at once to develop her womanhood, and show her principles, and was as different from her former self as your careworn, mousing old cat is from your rollicking, frisky kitten. Not but that Sophie was a good girl. She had a capital heart, a good, true womanly one, and was loving and obliging; but still she was one of the desperately painstaking, conscientious sort of women whose very blood, as they grow older, is devoured ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... good one; and the third so great, that the world, when it speaks their common name, means only him. The father and grandfather were born at Augsburg, in Bavaria, and of late years it has been asserted by mousing antiquaries that the grandson was born there too; but this, perhaps, is not quite certain; and it is much pleasanter to adhere to the ancient faith, and believe that he was born at that strange old Bale, in sight of that great Dance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... active puss, and often went bird-catching, or mousing during the night; but generally, when Minnie opened the door of her chamber in the morning, there was Fidelle ...
— Minnie's Pet Cat • Madeline Leslie

... "thy chamber smacks of treason: it must be purged from this suspicion. This mousing owl will search the crannies even of a woman's wits ere he sate his appetite for discovery. Hast aught plotting in the hem of thy purfle, or in thy holiday ruff and fardingale? Come with us, wench;—the gallant Earl of Tyrone would sport himself bravely ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... an opportunity again. It was the occasion of the last of my many battles for the mastery; but, more than that, it illustrates very well that which I have been trying to describe as a reporter's public function. We had been for months in dread of a cholera scourge that summer, when, mousing about the Health Department one day, I picked up the weekly analysis of the Croton water and noticed that there had been for two weeks past "a trace of nitrites" in the water. I asked the department chemist what it was. He gave an evasive answer, and my curiosity ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... bodie turn'd to ashes colde. I saw the foule that doth the light dispise Out of her dust like to a worme arise. [* Haughtie, lofty.] [** Raught, reached.] [VII. 1-14.— "A falcon, tow'ring in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... a cuff and angry word, Chased roughly from the tempting board. But yet, for that thou hast, I ween, So oft our favored playmate been, Soft be the change which thou shalt prove! When time hath spoiled thee of our love, Still be thou deemed by housewife fat A comely, careful, mousing cat, Whose dish is, for the public good, Replenished oft with savory food, Nor, when thy span of life is past, Be thou to pond or dung-hill cast, But, gently borne on goodman's spade, Beneath the decent sod be laid; And children show with glistening eyes The place where ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... in iron speculation" [here Hawkins got up and began to pace the floor with excited eyes and with gesturing hands]—"something enormous going on in iron, without the shadow of a doubt, and here I sit mousing in the dark and never knowing anything about it; great heaven, what an escape I've made! this underhanded mercenary creature might have taken me up—and ruined me! but I have escaped, and I warrant me I'll not put my ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... that the old gentleman had been lingering in the neighborhood. The corn wasn't quite ripe enough to suit him. So he had decided to go a-mousing that morning. ...
— The Tale of Master Meadow Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey

... birds and the like, very well. Teleology tells us that they do so because they were expressly constructed for so doing—that they are perfect mousing apparatuses, so perfect and so delicately adjusted that no one of their organs could be altered, without the change involving the alteration of all the rest. Darwinism affirms on the contrary, that there was no express construction concerned in the matter; but that among the multitudinous ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... shall be done in case the bill now before Parliament becomes a law, as I have no doubt it will. I shall be pleased to have you go with me. Of course our meetings are somewhat secret. We do not care to have any mousing Tory know just what we intend to do. You will have a hearty welcome from the boys. It is only a few steps from here, ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... the result. Another of the three corners was caught and held by the clip-hooks on the end of the halliard. Priscilla moused these carefully, explaining why she did so, and then found that she had to cut the mousing and catch the remaining corner of the sail with the hooks. When at last she triumphantly hoisted it the thing went up in a kind of bundle. Its own sheet was wrapped round it twice, and a jib sheet which had somehow wandered away from its proper place got twined round and round the boom which remained ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... times interlarded with the slang terms appropriated to the science, to which he was so devoted. In other points he was a brave and trust-worthy officer, although he valued the practical above the theoretical branches of his profession, and was better pleased when superintending the mousing of a stay or the strapping of a block, than when "flooring" the sun, as he termed it, to ascertain the latitude, or "breaking his noddle against the old woman's," in taking a lunar observation. Newton had been strongly recommended ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... brings you in sight of a fox, as his ears are much sharper than yours, and his tread much lighter. But if the fox is mousing in the fields, and you discover him before he does you, you may, the wind favoring, call him within a few paces of you. Secrete yourself behind the fence, or some other object, and squeak as nearly like a mouse as possible. Reynard will hear the sound ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... carried about by bawds, and sold at doors, like stale flesh in baskets. Then, for your honesty, or justness, as you call it, to your keepers, your kept-mistress is originally a punk; and let the cat be changed into a lady never so formally, she still retains her natural property of mousing. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden



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