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Nettles   Listen
noun
Nettles  n. pl.  (Naut.)
(a)
The halves of yarns in the unlaid end of a rope twisted for pointing or grafting.
(b)
Small lines used to sling hammocks under the deck beams.
(c)
Reef points.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nettles" Quotes from Famous Books



... coral groves, making love to the mermaids. Or, racing round, make a mad merry night of it with the sea-urchins:—plucking the reverend mullets by the beard; serenading the turtles in their cells; worrying the sea-nettles; or tormenting with their antics the touchy torpedos. Sometimes they went prying about with the starfish, that have an eye at the end of each ray; and often with coral files in their hands stole upon slumbering swordfish, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... while they ate it looked on and muttered her talk and twirled her distaff, day after day, year after year, the same. Life is homely and frugal here, and has few graces. The ways of life in these grand old places are like nettles and thistles set in an old majolica vase that has had knights and angels painted on it. You know what I mean, you who know Italy. Do you remember those pictures of Vittorio Carpaccio and of Gentileo? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... have known people after talking to whom for a while you felt disgusted with everything, and above all, with those people themselves. Talking to them, you felt your moral nature being rubbed against the grain, being stung all over with nettles. You showed your new house and furniture to such a man, and with eagle eye he traced out and pointed out every scratch on your fine fresh paint, and every flaw in your oak and walnut; he showed you that there were corners of your big mirrors that distorted your face,—that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it.... They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing. And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls. The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow: the screech owl also shall rest there, and find ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... old road, accepting the fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the cross of making his own, and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially to educated society. For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... for in most cases they are the publishers of the sunbursts of infantile imbecility which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals. I may seem to speak with some heat, not to say a suspicion of personal spite; and I do admit that it nettles me to hear about so many gifted infants in these days, and remember that I seldom said anything smart when I was a child. I tried it once or twice, but it was not popular. The family were not expecting brilliant remarks from me, and so they ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... aslant. Coming down Galley Hill, near Hastings, one day, a party was almost stopped by finding they could only walk on thousands of caterpillars, dark with bright yellow bands, which had sprung out of the grass. The great nettles—now, nothing is so common as a nettle—are sometimes festooned with a dark caterpillar, hundreds upon each plant, hanging like bunches of currants. Could you find a spot the size of your watch-seal without an insect or the germ ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... gardens, and behold, these were full of weeds and nettles, the fountains dry, no tree to be seen—a desert. And Shahpesh cried, 'This is indeed of admirable design, O Khipil! Feelest thou not the coolness of the fountains?—their refreshingness? Truly I am grateful to thee! And these flowers, pluck me now a handful, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... nettles after Dixon went away, and it is a question whether he would have felt much easier in his mind if he had known why it was that his cousin was so anxious to find Bud Goble. Rodney did not want to put any more mischief into the man's head; he wanted to take out some he had put there two days ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon

... vivid impression of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon, one Christmas Eve. Ours was the marsh country, down the river, within twenty miles of the sea; and I had wandered into a bleak place overgrown with nettles called a churchyard. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... broke away and ran. She was swift and hard as a greyhound. For a moment the other stood, leaning over a bed of nettles, snorting and sniffing as the blood dripped from his nose. Then he pursued. She heard him thundering behind her. It was like the pursuit of a fawn by a grizzly. She had only a hundred yards to go to the open; and as she fled with her head ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant

... at dawn, they repaired to the cemetery. Bouvard felt with his walking-stick at the spot indicated. They heard the sound of a hard substance. They pulled up some nettles, and discovered a stone basin, a baptismal font, out of which plants were sprouting. It is not usual, however, to ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... passage (I vse no hole in the Hiue, but a piece of wood hoal'd to saue the hiue & keep out Mice) shake in your Bees, or the most of them (for all commonly you cannot get) the remainder will follow. Many vse smoke, Nettles, &c. which I vtterly dislike: for Bees loue not to be molested. Ringing in the time of casting is a meere fancie, violent handling of them is simply euill, because Bees of all other creatures, loue cleanlinesse and peace. Therefore ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson

... some portion of Jonson's own genius, who had the art of making even Decker popular; while he discovered that his own laurel-wreath had been dexterously changed by the "Satiromastix" into a garland of "stinging nettles." ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... Desroches, "you have made an utter fool of him, and he is furious. The scamp will stop at nothing to get his revenge upon you—for he'll lose everything if he forces you to fling your barrister's gown, as they say, to the nettles and ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... two gardens, divided by an iron railing. The Millars' garden was very untidy and forlorn, and filled with nettles, and thistles, and groundsel, and all kinds of weeds, for Mr. Millar did not care for gardening, and Mrs. Millar had six little children, and had no time ...
— Saved at Sea - A Lighthouse Story • Mrs. O.F. Walton

... would soon sally forth to learn what that news might be. In this conjecture Ormond was not mistaken. He soon heard her voice "Mon-Dieu!-ing" at the top of the bank: he ducked—he dived—he darted through nettles and brambles, and escaped. Seen or unseen he escaped, nor stopped his flight even when out of reach of the danger. As to trusting himself to meet Dora's eyes, "'twas what he ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... this exordium as if he sat on nettles, but wisely held his tongue, while the brazen-faced proprietor leaned carelessly over, and whispered to his counsel. Phipps, on his distant seat, grew white around the lips, and felt that he was on the verge of the most serious danger of ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... supernatural intimation that Benedict was hungry in a pit, and he therefore took his dinner to him and they ate it together. A blackbird once assailing Benedict's face was repelled by the sign of the cross. Being tempted by a woman, Benedict crawled about among briars and nettles to maintain his Spartan spirit. He now became the abbot of a monastery, but the monks were so worldly that he had to correct them. In retaliation they poisoned his wine, but the saint making the sign of the cross over it, the glass broke ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... marjoram, with roses, with gourd-leaves, with beets, with colewort, with leaves of the vine-tree, with mallows, wool-blade, which is a tail-scarlet, with lettuce, and with spinach leaves. All this did very great good to my leg. Then with mercury, with parsley, with nettles, with comfrey, but that gave me the bloody flux of Lombardy, which I healed by wiping me with my braguette. Then I wiped my tail in the sheets, in the coverlet, in the curtains, with a cushion, with arras hangings, with a green carpet, with a table-cloth, with a napkin, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... one—be forced? No, apparently not: and yet, as he gave a final irritated kick at the gate, something gave way, and the lock fell at his feet. He pushed the gate open inconveniencing a number of nettles as he did so, and ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James

... it, old fellow," said Harry, really wishing to console him. "When you get home mother will, I dare say, apply some remedy. We were fortunately warned about catching hold of nettles before we had your experience; but ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston

... has been adduced by the advocates of the change which has ruined Sutherland, as a proof of the extreme hardship of the Highlander's condition, that at such times he could have eaten as food a broth made of nettles, mixed up with a little oatmeal, or have had recourse to the expedient of bleeding his cattle, and making the blood into a sort of pudding. And it is quite true that the Sutherlandshire Highlander was in the habit, at such times, of having recourse to such food. It is not ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... a little olive offshoot grows Beneath its orchard elders' shady rows, No budding leaf as yet, no branching limb, Only a rod uprising, virgin-slim— Then if the busy gardener, weeding out Sharp thorns and nettles, cuts the little sprout, It fades and, losing all its living hue, Drops by the mother from whose roots it grew: So was it with my Ursula, my dear; A little space she grew beside us here, Then Death came, breathing pestilence, and she ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski

... cover a stone with dust and get a boy, not in the secret, to kick the pile over with his bare foot. It was perfectly good form, also, to get a boy, if you could, to shut his eyes, and then lead him into a mud-puddle or a thicket of briers or nettles, or to fool him in any heartless way, such as promising to pump easy when he put his mouth to the pump-spout, and then coming down on the pump-handle with a rush that flooded him with water and sent him off blowing the tide from ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... told me—a thin fellow with a shrivelled mouth, and a back bent two-double. And I heard it on the very hearthstone of the Mayor's cottage, one afternoon, as we sat and smoked in the shadow of the crumbling mud wall, with a square of blue sky for roof, and for carpet a tangle of brambles, nettles, and rank grass. ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... was changed, for the cottages were gone, and the farmsteads stood no longer in the clearings. I know not what tales of terror I might have heard concerning the burnings of these homes. Where the thralls' huts had been were but patches of nettles and docks hiding heaps of ashes, and the farmhouses were charred ruins. And we saw now and then a man, skin clad and wretched, seeking shelter in the woods in all haste as we sighted him. But I had no need to ask aught—I knew only too well ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler

... before him like a great white road. It began in a dark grove where there were laughing waters, and ended at a quiet grave overgrown with brambles, nettles, ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes

... of many other materials, such as hay, straw, nettles, flax, grasses, parsnips, turnips, colewort leaves, wood-shavings, indeed of anything fibrous; but as the invention of printing is not concerned in them, I see no occasion to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... Glanvil did the tale inscribe That thou wert wander'd from the studious walls To learn strange arts, and join a gipsy-tribe; And thou from earth art gone Long since, and in some quiet churchyard laid— Some country-nook, where o'er thy unknown grave Tall grasses and white flowering nettles wave, Under a dark, red-fruited ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... chair as she spoke, "what does it matter; for what does it compensate? Oh, I would give it all gladly, gladly, to be that little black-haired girl again, back in Squire Dearborn's water lot; with my hands stained with the whortle-berries and the nettles in my fingers—and my little lover, who called me his beau-heart and bought me a blue hair ribbon, and kissed me behind ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... request. Her directions were to repair to the back door, which looked out upon some fields, and give three taps. I arrived, and as soon as I raised my hand to give the signal, was seized by four men in masks, who gagged and bound me. They then stripped off my friar's dress, and scourged me with nettles, until I was almost frantic with the pain. When their vengeance was satisfied, they cast me loose, removed the gag, and ran away. As I then suspected, and afterwards discovered to be true, I was indebted to the young officer for this treatment, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... now got him in their clutches. In vain Bailly and Lafayette, during a long agony at the Hotel de Ville, attempted to save him; the mob would not be denied. Finally Foulon was seized; he was strung up to a street lantern, and later his {75} head, the mouth stuffed full of hay and nettles, was paraded in triumph ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... "I don't hate you, and I don't want to revenge myself on you; but you and I can't get on together, and I think I am of more importance in this world than you. If nettles and thistles grow in my cabbage garden, I don't try to persuade them to grow into cabbages. I just dig ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... pitiable, as two unfortunate, half-drowned young monkeys could look. The butterflies flitted before them and danced up and down in the sunny air, displaying their gorgeous wings; the yellowhammer flew out from amongst the nettles, and betrayed the place where his sober-hued little mate was sitting upon her grassy nest; a stoat ran across the road with a bird in his mouth, and disappeared in the bank unchased; the corncrake sang ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... were plenty of nettles to be found in a neglected corner of the garden, and I quickly applied the remedy, which worked, as the saying is, 'like magic,' for the Grand Panjandrum's Chief Cook's face resumed its normal size at once, and ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow

... in our autumn do! And as your leaves lie quiet on the ground, The loss alone by those that lov'd them found; So in the grave shall we as quiet lie, Miss'd by some few that lov'd our company; But some so like to thorns and nettles live, That none for them ...
— Language of Flowers • Kate Greenaway

... swimming around them, floated in state on the wonderful brook, along the bank of which the procession marched. Now let the Reader picture to himself this interminable multitude advancing in the beautiful green woods, all amidst lilies-of-the-valley, violets and buttercups, lettuce-leaves, nettles, and ferns, marching over hill and dale, in a sparkling sunshine, and with a blue sky overhead,—and withal the toil and efforts of the little wights, the creaking of wheels, the cracking of whips, the word of ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick

... custom obtained of decking the neighbours' doors with May if they were popular, and with nettles if they ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... east, and so decided that she must have gone in that direction. We now pulled merrily along, sure of soon falling in with her. Billy Wise was the only unhappy one of the party. He could not tell what was going to happen to him, till the men told him he must have fallen into a hedge of sea-nettles, and that he would soon get well again. This comforted him considerably, and so he consented to put on his ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... but it was equally clear that the convulsion had caused a general leveling of the sea-bottom, and that the soil, degenerated, as it has been said, into a metallic dust of unrecognized composition, bore no trace of the sponges, sea-anemones, star-fish, sea-nettles, hydrophytes, and shells with which the submarine rocks of the Mediterranean had hitherto ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... only alders, elders, and weeds. Everywhere docks thrust up heads through cracks in the fences to catch at the legs or the skirts of passers-by, while masses of nettles squeeze their way under fences to sting little children. Apropos, the latter are all thin and hungry, in the highest degree quarrelsome, and addicted to prolonged lamentation. Also, each spring sees a certain proportion of their number carried off by diphtheria, ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... it seemed as if it must be always summer and generally afternoon, a land where bees hummed among the wild thyme and in the flower beds of cottage gardens, where the harvest-mice rustled amid the corn and nettles, and the mill-race flowed cool and silent through water-weeds and dark tunnelled sluices, and made soft droning music with the wooden mill-wheel. And the music carried with it the wording of old undying rhymes, and sang of the jolly, uncaring, uncared-for miller, ...
— When William Came • Saki

... the Tree, rejoicingly, and spread its branches far out; but, alas! they were all withered and yellow; and it lay in the corner among nettles and weeds. The tinsel star was still upon it, and ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... she's in the right; she has given the public what they desire, given them what they like. Of course it made one cry horribly; but then of course one cries when one hears of people reduced by sheer craving to eat nettles and cabbage-stalks. Destitution, absolute hunger, cold and nakedness, are no more subjects for artistic representation than sickness, disease, and the real details of idiotcy, madness, and death. All art should be an idealized; elevated representation (not imitation) ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... reached the Avduhin pond, but it was not a bright morning. Thick clouds of the colour of milk covered the whole sky, and were driven flying before the whistling, shrieking wind. Rudin began to walk up and down along the bank, which was covered with clinging burdocks and blackened nettles. He was not easy in his mind. These interviews, these new emotions had a charm for him, but they also troubled him, especially after the note of the night before. He felt that the end was drawing near, and was in secret perplexity of spirit, though ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... of malice, Mr. Fox sought to give general annoyance, by a polite insolence toward the others, which they with difficulty ignored, and a lover-like gallantry toward Edith, which was like nettles to Gus, and nauseating to her; but she did not dare resent it. He could at least torment ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... body was quite burnt. At other times, in the depth of winter, I have sometimes passed part of the night entirely naked in the snow, or in tubs of icy water. I have besides often gone among thorns so that I have been torn by them; at other times I have rolled in nettles, and I have passed whole nights defying my enemies to attack me, and assuring them that I was resolved to defend myself with the grace of God." With her confessor's permission, she also had an iron girdle made, with spikes, and wore this day and night for nearly six months ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... journal for July 8th says: "The Land is so good that I cannot give it its due Praise. The undergrowth is Clover, Pea-vine, Cane & Nettles; intermingled with Rich Weed. It's timber is Honey Locust, Black Walnut, Sugar Tree, Hickory, Iron-Wood, Hoop Wood, Mulberry, Ash and Elm and some Oak." And later it dwells on the high limestone cliffs facing the river ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... time for bandying words. From behind us came a shout, "Pass on, pass on; room for the Queen!" And at the word we charged forward, shoulder to shoulder, and brushed those unmannerly mercers and barber-surgeons aside as a torrent the nettles that grow on its bank. Let them follow as they list. The Queen went hunting to-day, and was not to be kept standing for a score of London Bridges, if we ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... whitish-green cabbages; the hop twined its tendrils round high poles; there were thick ranks of brown twigs tangled over with dried peas; large flat pumpkins seemed rolling on the ground; cucumbers showed yellow under their dusty angular leaves; tall nettles were waving along the hedge; in two or three places grew clumps of tartar honeysuckle, elder, and wild rose—the remnants of former flower-beds. Near a small fish-pond, full of reddish and slimy ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw and considered it well; I looked upon it ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... his bundle and switch, and retraced his steps towards Overcombe Mill, knocking down the brambles and nettles as he went with gloomy and indifferent blows. When he got within sight of the house he ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... it all grows up to nettles!" said Elizabeth. "Will you take the money of me and let me take the land ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... others at Edinburgh Dec. 7, 1666, and was one of the test circuits 1683. This and other pieces of the like employment made James Nicol a martyr say, That the world would see that house a desolation, and nettles growing in its closs:—which came to pass soon after the Revolution, when he became insolvent, his estate sequestrated, and orders obtained to apprehend him: which at last was effected although he defended himself some time with stones ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... yet on the dry part of the reef. Let us make for it, taking care meanwhile that we do not get our feet cut by the coral, or stung as by nettles by the coral insects. We shall see that the dry land is made up entirely of coral, ground and broken by the waves, and hurled inland by the storm, sometimes in huge boulders, mostly as fine mud; and that, under the influence of the sun and ...
— Town Geology • Charles Kingsley

... Garden, and he was left desolate and alone. He cared for nothing and for a time even forgot the flower that she had left. Weeds grew among the flowers, nettles and thistles took possession of the walks, and strange vines choked with their tendrils everything ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... late hour, according to our provincial notions. They passed through the "back-way," which led between the back gardens of the houses, with hurdles on either side. This way leads out on to the bridge over the long, stinking pool which we were accustomed to call a river. Among the nettles and burdocks under the hurdle our revelers saw Lizaveta asleep. They stopped to look at her, laughing, and began jesting with unbridled licentiousness. It occurred to one young gentleman to make the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... his fortune and his birth, Yet was not Cotta void of wit or worth: What though (the use of barbarous spits forgot) His kitchen vied in coolness with his grot? 180 His court with nettles, moats with cresses stored, With soups unbought and salads bless'd his board? If Cotta lived on pulse, it was no more Than Brahmins, saints, and sages did before; To cram the rich was prodigal expense, And who would take the poor from Providence? Like ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... mountains—should have found out a shrub whose bark would kill the fever poison and make a man himself again. They say—put the cup away, Poole—that wherever a poisonous thing grows there's another plant grows close at hand which will cure the ill it does, bane and antidote, my lad, stinging-nettles and dock at home, you know. I don't know that it holds quite true, but I do know that there are fevers out here, and quinine acts as a cure. But there's one thing I want to know, and it's this, how in the name of all that's wonderful these South American people first ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... of liberty. In the first, men lived in fear; in the second, they rest in faith; in the third, they shall burn with love. The first saw the shining of the stars; the second sees the whitening of the dawn; the third will behold the glory of the day. The first produced nettles, the second gives roses, the third will be the age ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... cases for others he thought was to cause them to lose the power of deciding for themselves. When asked what a just man should do when he was dealing with one absolutely unjust, he said, "He who wrongs himself sows in his own heart nettles." ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... spectacles, who wear shoes and can walk for ever, collect every weed they drop upon, to which they assign a most extraordinary name, and display it at their lodgings upon cartridge paper, with penny pieces to keep the leaves in their places as they dry. Others limit their collections to stinging-nettles, which they slyly insert into their companions' pockets, or long bulrushes, which they tuck under the collars of their coats; and the remainder turn into the first house of public entertainment they arrive at on emerging ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various

... and nettles, and darnels rank, And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, 55 Stretched out its long and hollow shank, And stifled the air till the dead ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... nettles left behind Which I so fondly handled in my play; I deemed the friend who warned me true and kind, And in great haste I threw the weeds away, But soon the burning flesh reminded me 'Twere safer far from all such ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant

... fancied wrong, or their minds have lost their even poise by dwelling on insane reforms or visionary projects. All this may have its use, but the subscriber has preferred to look at things in a more cheerful way, to pluck roses rather than nettles, and neither to throw filth nor to ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... in place of the superb building she saw only an appalling ruin—in place of the magnificent trees and rare flowers which surrounded it, only briers and thorns, nettles and thistles, could be seen. Terrified and most desolate, she tried to force her way in the midst of the ruins, to seek some knowledge of her kind friends. A large Toad issued from a pile of stones, advanced before her, ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur

... descriptions of seasons, of recipes, flowers and vegetables, of the gardener's pleasure in digging his fields in spring, clearing them of nettles, and levelling the ground thrown up by the moles, in protecting his seedlings from rain and sun, and, later on, in his ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... building at the church and castle took place in the period described, and it is quite possible that some of the oldest cottages with fork framework date from Plantagenet times, and that the fallen beams we see lying among the nettles of the ruined cottages were taken from the forest ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... rotting roots in the fields under a blaze of yellow flower. The young spring meadow-grass could scarcely push its way up through the long dead grass and bennets of the year previous, but docks and thistles, sorrel, wild carrots, and nettles, ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... that never overcrowds the canvas. I can see on that side of the building, which looks upon a much wilder garden, where peach and plum trees stride over grassy ground adjoining the filbert-grove that dwindles away into the wooded warren, a broad line of tall nettles in the shade against the wall. Hard by, on the line—so it was said—of the filled-up moat, is a row of ancient quinces, with long crooked arms, green, gray, or black with moss and lichen, stretching ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... burdock gets a late start, it makes great haste to develop its seed; it foregoes its tall stalk and wide flaunting growth, and turns all its energies into keeping up the succession of the species. Certain fields under the plow are always infested with "blind nettles," others with wild buckwheat, black bindweed, or cockle. The seed lies dormant under the sward, the warmth and the moisture affect it not until ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... detect in the performance. However kindly he may do this, and however gentle the tones of his voice, still the work is criticism and fault-finding from beginning to end. The boy sits on thorns and nettles while submitting to the operation, and when he takes his marked and corrected manuscript to his seat, he feels mortified and ashamed, and is ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... and stinging nettles, of each three handfuls, bruise them well and pour on them six ounces of plantain water, afterwards make a strong expression and drink ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... Nessus, and will produce intolerable irritation; and even climbing the tree to obtain its flowers is said to have produced severe effects on the climber. In proximity to the last-mentioned plant comes appropriately (as also in its proper botanical order) the group of stinging-nettles (Urticaceae). The curious Australian plants which delighted the eyes of Captain Cook's botanical companions belong to the order Proteaceae. Besides these may be mentioned the dead-nettle order ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... high, with candles, which they lighted and danced around till burnt out. They then lighted a huge bonfire, threw the bush on it, and continued their dance around that. In other parts of Ireland, the boys had a mischievous habit of running through the streets with bundles of nettles, with which they struck the face and hands of every one they met. The sting of nettle, perhaps you know, is a very uncomfortable pain. The same people are very superstitious, and they believed that the power of the Evil Eye was greater ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... go. I subsided first on the hedge, and then very gently on a bower of nettles. As I scrambled to my feet a hand took me by the arm, and a sympathetic and badly scared voice asked me if ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan

... snuff-box to invoke its former possessor's gentle, patient spirit, and to keep his own composed in the midst of life's conflicts. The good Monk had died: Yorick sat by his grave, took out the little snuff-box, plucked a few nettles from the head of the grave, and wept. We looked at one another in silence: each rejoiced to find tears in the others' eyes; we honored the death of the venerable old man Lorenzo and the good-hearted Englishman. In our opinion, too, the Franciscan deserved more to be canonized ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... despotisms, which had so much to do with weakening them by their very conquests. The land had lain desolate and uncultivated for many years, savage beasts had increased in the untilled solitudes, even as weeds and nettles grew in the gardens and vineyards of Samaria. At last the king of Assyria resolved to people the country; and for this purpose he sent a mixed multitude from the different nationalities of his empire to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... what may they light (lamps) on the Sabbath?" "And with what may they not light?" "They may not light with cedar moss, nor with unhackled flax, nor with floss silk, nor with a wick of willow, nor with a wick of nettles, nor with weeds from the surface of water, nor with pitch, nor with wax, nor with castor oil, nor with the defiled oil of heave-offering, nor with the tail, nor with the fat." Nahum the Median said, "they may light with cooked ...
— Hebrew Literature

... sluggard. He said Solomon's description of the slothful should be written in letters of gold on the walls of the understanding. He explained it to them as a metaphor, and made them to understand that the field of the sluggard, overgrown with thorns and nettles, was only an image of the neglected and uncultivated mind. He gave them Doctor Watts' versification of it to commit to memory, and repeated it with them in concert. It is not strange that Mittie, who never came to him with a neglected or imperfect lesson, should ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz

... return, your sister must allow me to feel no more than I profess. I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles; I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles or thistles or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower, and a troop of tidy happy villagers please me better than the finest banditti ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... lookin' like grim death, if I ever see it. My heart plum stopped. Says I, 'she's a failure! She's a bustin' the boy's heart! I'll go straight over and tell her so.' I didn't dare bespeak him, but I was on nettles all night. I jest laid a-studyin' and a-studyin', and I says, 'Come mornin' I'll go straight and give her a curry-combin' that'll do her good.' And I started a-feelin' pretty grim, and here you came to meet me, and wiped it all out of my ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... Invertebrate and rattling ache.... Then suddenly Eternity Drowns all the houses like a sea And down the street the Trump of Doom Blares madly—shakes the drawing-room Where raw-edged shadows sting forlorn As dank dark nettles. Down the horn Of her ear-trumpet I convey The news that "It is Judgment Day!" "Speak louder: I don't catch, my dear." I roared: "It is the Trump we hear!" "The What?" "THE TRUMP!" "I shall complain! .... the boy-scouts ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... longer.—Now, gentlewoman, you are confessing your enormities; I know it, by that hypocritical downcast look:—enjoin her to sit bare upon a bed of nettles, father; you can do no ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... took them to Vlammertinghe, led through level fields, lying waste and desolate with rank, overgrowing weeds. As they approached that historic village, they saw on every hand the cruel marks of war. On either side of the road were roofless and shattered cottages, grown around with nettles and briars. Among these ruins, as they found on a later day, were the old garden flowers, pansies and daisies, bravely trying to hold their own. Among the rank weeds was to be seen the half-hidden debris of broken farm gear. Here and there stood the ruins of what had ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor

... Richard was on nettles to get at Dorothy's note. Anxiety sharpened his faculties, and he took from his pocket a clipping, being indeed a Daily Tory editorial wherein was set forth what should be a proper tariff policy, and gravely besought Senator Hanway for his views thereon. While that ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... length and breadth of the land. And the young men left shop and trade and counting-house. And young parsons fretted, and some obtained the Bishop's permission to become Army chaplains, and others, snapping their fingers (figuratively) under the Bishop's nose, threw their cassocks to the nettles and put on the full (though in modern times not very splendiferous) panoply of war. And in course of time the brigade of artillery rolled away and new troops took their place; and Marmaduke Trevor, Esquire, of Denby ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... I pray your seed fares not as mine That sowed there stars along with good white grain, But reaped thereof—be better fortune thine— Nettles and bitter herbs, for all ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... had only one door, and James mistook it, running his head, for lack of knowledge, into the open closet, just as the minister lifted the outer-door sneck. We were all now sitting on nettles, for we were frighted that James would be seized with a cough, for he was a wee asthmatic; or that some, knowing there was a thief in the pantry, might hurt good manners by breaking out into a giggle. However, all ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... set out flying through the air lightly till they came to Sidhe Fionnachaidh; and it is how they found the place, empty before them, and nothing in it but green hillocks and thickets of nettles, without a house, without a fire, without a hearthstone. And the four pressed close to one another then, and they gave out three sorrowful cries, and Fionnuala made ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... lofts, wherein they lay vp that which the Indians doe giue them for tribute, which is Maiz, Deeres skins, and mantles of the Countrie, which are like blankets: they make them of the inner rinde of the barke of trees, and some of a kind of grasse like vnto nettles, which being beaten, is like vnto flaxe. The women couer themselues with these mantles; they put one about them from the wast downeward; and another ouer their shoulder, with their right arme out, like vnto the Egyptians. The men weare but one mantle vpon their shoulders after the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... serve you to fill space but only my own corpse? To go set my coffin making and to put nettles growing on my hearth! Wouldn't it be enough to rob my house or to make an attack upon my means? Wouldn't that ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory

... of these pieces was slow and painful; it was like walking or slipping about among broken ruins overgrown with nettles. But then Uncle Fountain was so anxious to hook on to the Flunkeys—oh, Ciel! what am I saying?—the Funteyns, and his direct genealogical evidence had so completely broken down. She said to herself, "Oh dear! if I could find something among these old writings, and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... cage before her house, and stood up, like a slender grey ghost, paws high up in the bars, and whimpered softly to her lord. He quieted her, and went to the door in the yard that opened on to the field-path to East Maskells, unbarred it and stepped through. There was a dry ditch on his left, where nettles quivered in the stirring air; and a heavy clump of bushes rose beyond, dark and impenetrable. Mr. Buxton stared straight at these a moment or two, and then out towards East Maskells. There lay his own meadows, and the cattle and horses secure and sleeping. Then he stepped back again; ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... itself trapped in a way from which there is no escape. Then there was the cactus with spikes three inches in length, and the "Come and I'll kiss you," a bush armed with almost equally formidable thorns, and huge nettles, and numerous other vegetable productions, offering impracticable impediments to the progress, not only of human beings, but of every species of animal, with the exception of elephants and rhinoceroses, which might attempt to ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston

... of lilac bushes, behind which no one ran, but Katiousha, turning toward Nekhludoff, motioned him with her head to join her there. He understood her, and ran behind the bushes. But here was a ditch overgrown with nettles, whose presence was unknown to Nekhludoff. He stumbled and fell, stinging and wetting his hands in the evening dew that was now falling, but, laughing, he straightened himself and ran into ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... mounts to the top again. The pretty moist, green herbage, the graceful grasses, quickly wither away; dust and straws and rubbish from the road lie in the dry channel, and by and by it is filled with a summer growth of dock and loveless nettles which no child may touch ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... rushing out at its mouth, find their way back again in an ever-constant circle to its sources among the far-off lakes of North America. The Gulf Stream fertilises the earth for the benefit of man, and it likewise carries food to regions frequented by the mighty whales. Frequently large shoals of sea-nettles, on which the black whale feeds, have been met with, borne onward towards its haunts in the north. The whale itself, it is believed, could not exist in the warm waters of the stream. Fish, also, are not generally ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... so confused that at first she did not notice another little door in the orange tree, but presently it opened and she found herself in a field of thistles and nettles. It was encircled by a muddy ditch, and a little further on was a tiny thatched cottage, out of which came the Yellow Dwarf with a very jaunty air. He wore wooden shoes and a little yellow coat, and as he ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... Or with the first, or second bread. Who keep'st no proud mouth for delicious cates; Hunger makes coarse meats, delicates. Canst, and unurged, forsake that larded fare, Which art, not nature, makes so rare; To taste boil'd nettles, coleworts, beets, and eat These, and sour herbs, as dainty meat:— While soft opinion makes thy Genius say, 'Content makes all ambrosia;' Nor is it that thou keep'st this stricter size So much for want, as exercise; To numb the sense of dearth, which, should sin haste it, Thou might'st ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick

... creatures—some microscopic, some of large dimensions—which deck it with the gayest colours by day, and at night light up its dreary waste with 'mimic fires,' and make it glow and sparkle as if, like the heavens, it had its galaxies and constellations. These are the jelly-fishes, or sea-nettles (Acalephae), as they are often called, from the stinging properties with which some of them are endowed. The commoner forms are well known, for the beach is often strewn with the carcasses of the larger species. On fine days in summer and autumn, whole ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... grey form moving among the tombstones? Was it the village witch gathering the nettles that grew on the suicide's grave, in order to work her mystic spells and secret charms? Was that sound I heard her dark laughter, as she plucked the mugwort of ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking

... climbing plants, which once hung their leaves about each doorway; dry fragments of the old stem still adhered to the stucco. What had been the narrow strip of fore-garden, railed from the pavement, was now a little wilderness of coarse grass, docks, nettles, and degenerate shrubs. The paint on the doors had lost all colour, and much of it was blistered off; the three knockers had disappeared, leaving indications of rough removal, as if—which was probably the case—they had fallen a prey to marauders. Standing full in the ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... by the beach of the sea, towards where the salt-pans were smoking, in by the Esk mouth. No doubt there was a by-ordinary bonny blink of morning sun on Arthur's Seat and the green Pentlands; and the pleasantness of the day appeared to set Alan among nettles. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... years ago, in the state of Tennessee, "Two human bodies were found in a copperas cave in a surprising state of preservation. They were first wrapped up in a kind of blanket, supposed to have been manufactured of the lint of nettles, afterwards with dressed skins, and then a mat of nearly 60 yards ...
— Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States • William Henry Holmes

... a backward glance, and here indeed she came. With her bright hair flying in the breeze, her riding hat rakishly askew, one glove invisible, and the other tucked for safe keeping under the saddle, her riding-habit gray with dust, and fantastically trimmed with thorns and nettles, her blue eyes at their bluest, her pink cheeks at their rosiest, she produced a very powerful effect upon the minds of her spectators. Perhaps it would not be too much to say that she produced three distinct effects upon ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam

... Dr Watson—eagerly to admit that the nettle was a weed, he would at once put the definition to the test. "The story goes," he would say, quoting Mrs. Clark Nuttall's admirable work, Wild Flowers as They Grow, "that the Roman soldiers brought the most venomous of the stinging nettles to England to flagellate themselves with when they were benumbed with the cold of this—to them—terribly inclement isle. It is certain," he would add from the same source, "that physicians at one time employed nettles to sting paralysed limbs into vigour again, also ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd

... the egg shells, for he could talk, talk, and ask questions enough to drive you wild. So they took him out under the privet hedge, Madge and her gossip Deborah Clint, and had got his clothes off to flog him with nettles till they changed him, when the ill-favoured elf began to squall and shriek like a whole litter of pigs, and as ill luck would have it, the master was within hearing, though they had watched him safe off to one of his own 'venticles, but it seems there had been warning that the justices ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in the garden at home. Would God they were shattered quickly, the cattle would tread them out in the loam. I wish the elder trees in flower could suddenly heave, and burst The walls of the house, and nettles puff out from the hearth at which ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... with his own fair hands—he produced a screen cunningly woven with grasses and weeds which he swore would defy the most lynx-eyed pilot. He even went so far as to place in the centre of it a large bunch of nettles, which he contended gave it an air of insouciance and lightheartedness that ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... by bushes, from under which the torrent glances, tumbling into the white basin below, where the clear water contrasted beautifully with the muddy stream of the river. Its outlet was covered with a rank growth of canes, and a variety of unusual plants, and nettles, (urtica canabina,) which, before they were noticed, had set our hands and arms on fire. The temperature of the spring was 58 deg., while that of the river was 51 deg.. The perpendicular height of the place at which this stream issues is 45 feet above the river, ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... Charles's last walk from St. James's to Whitehall, and of the fatal window of the Banqueting-hall which had been pointed out to her, and then her thoughts flew back again to that vault in the castle yard, and she saw only too vividly in memory that open vault, veiled partly by nettles and mulleins, which was the unblest, unknown grave of the old playfellow who had so loved her mother and herself. Perhaps she had hitherto more dwelt on and pitied the living than the dead, as one whom fears and prayers still ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is just the word for her. She is like a bunch of nettles, stinging you if you but touch her. She has contrived to give me an unpleasant memory of her every time I have been here. And so it is to her I owe this break in our business intercourse;" and with flushed face and flashing eyes he left the room, and before night ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... this campaign, observes, "that no spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of towns, and especially in wasted countries, than to see multitudes of these poor people dead, with their mouths all coloured green, by eating nettles, docks, and all things they ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee



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