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Snare   Listen
noun
Snare  n.  
1.
A contrivance, often consisting of a noose of cord, or the like, by which a bird or other animal may be entangled and caught; a trap; a gin.
2.
Hence, anything by which one is entangled and brought into trouble. "If thou retire, the Dauphin, well appointed, Stands with the snares of war to tangle thee."
3.
The gut or string stretched across the lower head of a drum.
4.
(Med.) An instrument, consisting usually of a wireloop or noose, for removing tumors, etc., by avulsion.
Snare drum, the smaller common military drum, as distinguished from the bass drum; so called because (in order to render it more resonant) it has stretched across its lower head a catgut string or strings.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Snare" Quotes from Famous Books



... silver hammers falling On silver anvils, and the splash and stir Of fountains spouted up and showering down In meshes of the jasmine and the rose: And all about us pealed the nightingale, Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare. ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... to contractors there is many a snare and pitfall for the unwary feet of the beginner. In superintending the construction of work the engineer may err on the side of unreasonable strictness or on that of improper leniency. If so disposed, he can involve any contractor in loss and do him ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various

... the orchard pass; Bow low, as in lords' halls; and springtime grass Tangles a snare to catch ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray

... answered, speaking swiftly: "Nay, have thy sons with thee; Gather an host together and a mighty company, And meet the guile and the death-snare with battle ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... was based upon luck and guesses, but those were all Shann had. And as he worked at the stretching of his snare, the Terran's heart pounded, and he tensed at every sound out of the night. Having tested all the anchoring of his net, he tugged at a last knot, and then crouched to listen not only with his ears, but with all his strength ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton

... remedy, is one applicable to a common-law wrong. I do not say that the reasoning is just; I do not say that it is juridical; but I say, in our experience, we should be willingly blind if we take that for a security which will only be a snare. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... said Derville, smiling. "You are caught, madame, in the first snare laid for you by an attorney, and you fancy ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac

... of the small traps torn to pieces, probably by a bear, for he saw its tracks in the snow. He rebuilt the snare and baited it with parts of a rabbit he had shot. In one trap he discovered a skunk and in another a timber wolf. When he came in sight of the rendezvous, he ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... a sheet-iron contraption in the shape of a pocket inkstand, and it stood on a perch in the corner, like a Russian icon, with a small blue flame flickering beneath it. It looked as though its sire might have been a snare-drum and its dam a dark lantern, and that it got its looks from its father and its heating powers from the mother's side of the family. And the plumbing fixtures were of the type that passed out of general use on the American side ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... secretly as possible, to avoid alarming the public, but scurrying for cover nevertheless. And Dave had acquiesced in that policy. He had little stomach for it, but no other course seemed possible. Conward, he knew, had no scruples. Bert Morrison had been caught in his snare, and now this other and dearer friend had proved a ready victim. As Conward was wont to say, business is business. And he had acquiesced. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... asked me to write a poetic epistle to a young lady, his Dulcinea. I had seen her, but was scarcely acquainted with her, and wrote as follows." Chalmers was a writer in Ayr. I have not heard that the lady was influenced by this volunteer effusion: ladies are seldom rhymed into the matrimonial snare.] ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... supporters. Many profess to think that Northern fanaticism, as they call it, acted like a mordant in fixing the black dye of slavery in regions which would but for that have washed themselves free of its stain in tears of penitence. It is a delusion and a snare to trust in any such false and flimsy reasons where there is enough and more than enough in the institution itself to account for its growth. Slavery gratifies at once the love of power, the love of money, and the love of ease; it finds a victim for ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... moves and has its being outside of Mintonville had several centuries back diplomatically dropped the devil question, undertook to inform his flock that he, too had arrived at the conclusion that his Satanic Majesty was a myth, a delusion and a snare, a howling farce. The reverend gentleman's intentions were good, but he had reckoned without his congregation. They had always had a devil who was responsible for their pecadilloes; he was a convenient little institution to have around when the pecadilloes were a little more ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... men who are in imminent peril, who are in truth almost infallibly sure, of being eternally damned the next instant, what have they to do with science, literature, art, social ambition, or commerce? Away with them all! Lures of the devil to snare souls are they! The world reflecting from every corner the lurid glare of hell, who can do any thing else but shudder and pray? "Who could spare any attention for the vicissitudes of cotton and the price of shares, for the merits of the last opera and the bets upon the next ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... water up the creek," he said, "and we can snare all the quail we want; and then there's the fish and abalone. Even if the stores were gone we could ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... particular plan of action; and, finding that the man of the baleful trade was no longer in their company, they seemed quite unable to form any such plan now. They descended in all directions down the hill, and straightway several of the party fell into the snare set by Nature for all misguided midnight ramblers over this part of the cretaceous formation. The "lanchets," or flint slopes, which belted the escarpment at intervals of a dozen yards, took the less cautious ones unawares, and losing their footing on the rubbly steep they slid sharply downward, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... told her she must die, for the mother would have them tell her. Once, for a few moments, there rested on her face a fearfully frightened look, such as a harmless bird might wear when suddenly caught in a snare. But that soon passed away as from beneath the closed eyelids the great tears came gushing, and the stained lips whispered faintly: "God knows best what's right. Poor ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... nests and shying at red squirrels on the way, and who knows but he might "see" a sucker in the meadow brook, and perhaps get a "jab" at him with a sharp stick. He knows a hole where there is a whopper; and one of his plans in life is to go some day and snare him, and bring him home in triumph. It is therefore strongly impressed upon his mind that the cattle want salting. But his father, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... among melancholy contemporaries, his education will have exerted upon him a corresponding influence. The prevailing religious doctrine, accommodated to the state of affairs, will tell him that the earth is a place of exile, life an evil, gayety a snare, and his most profitable occupation will be to get ready to die. Philosophy, constructing its system of morals in conformity to the existing phenomena of decadence, will tell him that he had better never have been born. Daily conversation will inform him of ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... lodge returning Kindly greeting found the hunter, Fire to warm and food to nourish, Golden trout from Gitchee Gumee, Caught by Kak-kah-ge—the Raven. With a snare he caught the rabbit— Caught Wabose, the furry footed, [7] Caught Penay, the forest drummer; [7] Sometimes with his bow and arrows, Shot the red deer in the forest. Shot the squirrel in the pine top, Shot Ne-ka, the wild goose, flying. Proud ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... language which might irritate Steventon into answering her plainly. He was a young man—he fell into the snare that she ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins

... had been in New York, as was proven by Bob Reynolds, but where was she now, and who were those people with her? Had they entrapped her into some snare, and possibly murdered her? It might be. Such things were not of rare occurrence, and Wilford actually grew poor with the uncertainty which hung over the fate of one whom in his present state of mind he would have warmly welcomed to his fireside, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... the locks wherewith the wind did play, Finer than silk, waved softly like the sea After a three days' calm, and to her knee Wellnigh they reached; fair were the white hands laid Upon the door posts where the dragons played; Her brow was smooth now, and a smile began To cross her delicate mouth, the snare ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the house? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not: it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves, how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... between 1588 and 1640. The diction of the History establishes Ralegh's title to the praise. It is clear, flowing, elastic, and racy, and laudably free, as Hallam has testified, from the affectation and passion for conceits, the snare of contemporary historians, preachers, and essayists. If Pope, as Spence represents, rejected Ralegh's works as 'too affected' for one of the foundations of an English dictionary, he must have been talking at random. At all ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds. It was impossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyes open; if ever a girl was a free agent she had been. A girl in love was doubtless not a free agent; but the sole source of her mistake had been within herself. There had been no plot, no snare; she had looked and considered and chosen. When a woman had made such a mistake, there was only one way to repair it—just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to accept it. One folly was enough, especially ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... numerous, and compact burgess communities to be discovered? Lastly, the declaration of Drusus that he would have nothing to do with the execution of his law was so dreadfully prudent as to border on sheer folly. But the clumsy snare was quite suited to the stupid game which they wished to catch. There was the additional and perhaps decisive consideration that Gracchus, on whose personal influence everything depended, was just then establishing the Carthaginian colony ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... forehead over the neck of his mule; even like this monk, humanity had passed, a careful pilgrim, intent on the terrors of sin, death, and judgment, along the highways of the world, and had scarcely known that they were sightworthy, or that life is a blessing. Beauty is a snare, pleasure a sin, the world a fleeting show, man fallen and lost, death the only certainty, judgment inevitable, hell everlasting, heaven hard to win; ignorance is acceptable to God as a proof of faith and submission; abstinence and mortification are the only safe rules ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... order, have been reaching conclusions and teaching doctrines at which Carlyle would have stood aghast. These are but random examples, but they are one in this, that each has protested against that one-sidedness for which Carlyle stood. Yet each is a one-sided protest, and falls again into the snare of setting the affections upon things which are not eternal, and so wedding man ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... Fraegmoy, o'er Finnass, O'er Moydeo, o'er Monaken, On to Shan-iber, o'er Shan-glen, Till the clear stream of Flesk we win, And reach the pillar of Crofinn; O'er Sru-Muny, o'er Moneket, And where the fisher spreads his net To snare the salmon of Lemain, And thence to where our coursers' feet Wake the glad echoes of Loch Leane; And thus fled he, Nor slow were we; Through rough and smooth ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... to appear in all the light of thy countenance. Oh! let them never be seen sinking with shame before thee. Father, if thou hast made thy children to love one another for their good, let not love be a grief and a snare to such as these. Thou canst turn the hearts even of the wicked: turn the hearts of these thy dutiful children to love, where love may be all honour and no shame, so that they may have no more mysteries from each other, ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... the shining light the butterfly, Winging his way knows not the burning flame, And if the thirsty stag, unmindful of the dart, Runs fainting to the brook, Or unicorn, unto the chaste breast running, Ignores the snare that is for him prepared, I, in the light, the fount, the bosom of my love Behold the flames, the arrows, and the chains. If it be sweet in plaintiveness to droop, Why does that lofty splendour dazzle me? Wherefore ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno

... love shall come like visitant of air, Safe in secret power from lurking human snare; What loves me, no word of mine shall e'er betray, Though for faith unstained ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

... the depressing influences of delay, urged an immediate attack, which was accordingly made. The Turks adopted the stratagem of apparently neglecting to defend the city; and the Christians, falling into the snare, scattered their forces. The licentiousness of some of their number, moreover, proved fatal to their vigilance, and a sudden sortie of the garrison inflicted deadly havoc. The siege was then commenced in earnest; but the city was so strongly guarded, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... "this day at the village—my son's authority is, as yet, unable to prevent these continued workings of the ancient leaven of folly which the Romish priests have kneaded into the very souls of the Scottish peasantry. I do not command thee to abstain from them—that would be only to lay a snare for thy folly, or to teach thee falsehood; but enjoy these vanities with moderation, and mark them as something thou must soon learn to renounce and contemn. Our chamberlain at Kinross, Luke Lundin,—Doctor, as he foolishly ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... painting is only first-rate when it handles landscapes and animals, and seems likely so to remain; but, meanwhile, nobody cares. Some of the deepest and most earnest minds vote the question, in general, a 'sham and a snare,' and whisper to each other confidentially, that Gothic art is beginning to be a 'bore,' and that Sir Christopher Wren was a very good fellow after all; while the middle classes look on the Art movement half amused, as with a pretty toy, half sulkily suspicious of Popery ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... I don't know of any," answered the curate. "There is no true bird in the grounds that won't manage somehow to escape the snare of the fowler." ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... the love that she had thus far found in this earthly paradise had proved a delusion, a mockery and a snare. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance

... prove the excess and sincerity of her passion, she fell into the snare; she agreed to go off with him, and live some time in a retirement where she was to see only himself, after which he ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... wait for his fellow-townsmen, but Christian told him that, having entered the mine, they would never come out; and, besides, that treasure is a snare to them that seek it, for it hindereth their pilgrimage. And he spoke truly; for I saw in my dream that some were killed by falling into the mine as they gazed from the brink, and the rest who went down to dig were poisoned by the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... gradations of an appreciated sorrow that makes all souls akin and that even lifts the beast to the plane of brotherhood, the bond of emotional woe. He had often with no other or better reason liberated the trophy of his snare, calling after the amazed and franticly fleeing creature, "Bye-bye, Buddy!" with peals of ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... me that before, dear? It alters everything. You did not go of your own choice at first, then. He had you in a snare.' ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... Republic before us, with its truncated cone encircled by a low rampart of rock half hidden by wild vine, ivy, eglantine, honeysuckle and all the creeping plants whose tough trailing stems enabled the besieged gladiators to effect their escape from the snare into which they had unwittingly fallen. We can understand from this event how utterly remote was the idea of any upheaval of nature to the dwellers on these shores, whose ancestors remembered the crest of the mountain as the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... May 12th. There arrived here yesterday a second proposition of Fox for peace with this Republic. It will be presented tomorrow to the States-General; a new snare, which is happily foreseen and escaped. I shall speak ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife.... And this I speak for your own profit, not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... who play tricks beware, Lest they may get you in a snare. You cannot trust them, so watch out ...
— Bowser The Hound • Thornton W. Burgess

... speaking when the two sportsmen heard a cry as if some bird had been taken in a snare. They listened. There was a sound like the murmur of rippling water, as something forced its way through the bushes; but diligently as they lent their ears, there was no footfall on the path, the earth kept the secret ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... averted. He was so handsome, so soft, so eager to make everybody happy, that although he did not deceive even my infant mind for a minute, I felt obliged by sheer force of sympathy to step into the amiable snare ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... with right good-will, 40 And so [8] have gained the top of the hill; He was patient, they were strong, And now they smoothly glide along, Recovering [9] breath, and pleased to win The praises of mild Benjamin. 45 Heaven shield him from mishap and snare! But why so early with this prayer? Is it for threatenings in the sky? Or for some other danger nigh? No; none is near him yet, though he 50 Be one of much infirmity; [10] For at the bottom of the brow, Where once ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... ever met hex in real life? As for me, I doubt that such a monster has ever actually existed. There are, of course, women who spend a great deal of time denouncing and reviling men, but these are certainly not genuine man-haters; they are simply women who have done their utmost to snare men, and failed. Of such sort are the majority of inflammatory suffragettes of the sex-hygiene and birth-control species. The rigid limitation of offspring, in fact, is chiefly advocated by women who run no more risk of having unwilling motherhood forced upon ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... every nerve in his body quivering with wrath, the proud, unhappy boy strode through the gay streets. They had betrayed him then, these accursed Beauforts! they circled his steps with schemes to drive him like a deer into the snare of their loathsome charity! The roof was to be taken from his head—the bread from his lips—so that he might fawn at their knees for bounty. "But they shall not break my spirit, nor steal away my curse. No, my ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... in a minor key, indefinite and melancholy symbols of fancy, is a snare than which none more dangerous can be placed in the path of a feeble foot. But Poe was not feeble, and he was protected, and permanent value was secured for his poetry, by the possession of one or two ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... himself a solution of problems, the same thing always happened. As long as he followed the fixed definition of obscure words such as spirit, will, freedom, essence, purposely letting himself go into the snare of words the philosophers set for him, he seemed to comprehend something. But he had only to forget the artificial train of reasoning, and to turn from life itself to what had satisfied him while thinking in accordance with the fixed definitions, and all this artificial edifice fell to ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... lot first of all to fall into pretty good company in London, which does not always happen to such loose and unguided young fellows as I then was; the devil generally not omitting to lay some snare for them very early: but it was not so with me. I first fell acquainted with the master of a ship who had been on the coast of Guinea; and who, having had very good success there, was resolved to go again; and who taking a fancy to my conversation, which ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe

... said that the Puritan did not condemn bear-baiting because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectator. The Puritan regarded beauty as a pitfall and a snare: that which gave pleasure was a sin; he found his gratification in doing without things. Puritanism was a violent oscillation of the pendulum of life to the other side. From the vanity, pretense, affectation and sensualism of a Church ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... Between them and the river was hilly ground—probably a spur from the range. On this hilly ground the king posted Bomilcar, with the infantry and elephants. He himself, with the best of the foot and the cavalry, waited nearer the mountains. Metellus saw the snare, but was obliged to get water, and in making for the river was surrounded. But the new discipline told. Though isolated, each Roman division fought bravely. Metellus and Marius carried the hills. Rufus dispersed the picked infantry, and killed ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... him not! the tempter hath A snare for all; And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, Befit ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... this genus would be a rarity indeed. I had nothing with me of value to attract a thief. The usual limited masculine jewelry—a watch, a pair of cuff-links, a modest pin—surely were not sufficiently tempting to snare so dainty a bird of prey as one wearing such plumage as I held. I have not a small fist, yet that braid was a generous handful. How did it come to trail across my bed, in any case? And why was its owner locked in silence and immobility? Surely startled innocence would have cried out, questioned ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... enough to have effected great things. The Ghilzai chief of Tezeen possessed a strong fort full of supplies, which Dennie was about to attack, when the wily Afghan sent to Major Macgregor, the political officer accompanying Sale, a tender of submission. Macgregor fell into the snare, desired Sale to countermand the attack, and entered into negotiations. In doing so he committed a fatal error, and he exceeded his instructions in the concessions which he made. Macnaghten, it was true, had left matters greatly ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... the translation "were made to be an abomination," which might imply causality.]; for God did not make the creatures that they might be an evil to man; this was the result of man's folly, wherefore the text goes on to say, "and a snare to the feet of the unwise," who, to wit, in their folly, use creatures for a purpose other than that ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... dream of fancied happiness! And has my fatal fondness then destroy'd thee? Oh, have I lured thee to the deadly snare Thy cruel foes have laid? I dreaded Cecil's malice, and my heart, Longing to see thee, with impatience listen'd To its own alarms; and prudence sunk beneath The ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones

... womanly cloak, And painted his cheeks of a maidenly red. "One kiss, my dear lord, and begone!—and beware! Walk softly—I follow!" Oh guide them, and save, From the open assault, from the intricate snare, Thou, Providence, friend of the good and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... days which elapsed since the interview with the stranger had been passed by Dumiger in great misery. He blamed himself deeply for having been so easily entrapped into what he feared would prove a snare, and very foolishly, as we have seen, he wrote to Marguerite that she had everything to hope, as he still retained the desire of being honored by his fellow-townsmen, although they were not to enjoy ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... the Marquis of Montcalm upon terms of less disadvantage than attacking his entrenchments, and, if possible, to draw him from his present position." Would the French chief, whose great military genius was known in Europe, fall into such a snare? No wonder there were pale looks in the City at the news, and doubt and gloom wheresoever ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... ruin on the unsuspecting and simple-minded Dutch settlers. The wheel of fortune was turned now. He had himself been ruined, betrayed, and disgraced by the very men he had put confidence in and made partners of his guilt. He also had set a snare and invented a plot by which he expected to strip honest old Hanz Toodleburg of his property, and now he had ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams

... more ingenious. It was on the plan of the twitch-up snare, common in New England. A young tree, very strong and flexible, is bent down till the upper end touches the ground. To this extremity is attached a stout cord, and fastened to a stake in the ground. A slip-noose is so arranged that the tiger thrusts his head through ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... tone. It revels in military music, which is proper, for it is an own cousin to the ear-piercing fife, which annually makes up for its long silence in the noisy days before political elections. When you hear a composition in march time, with bass and snare drum, cymbals and triangle, such as the Germans call "Turkish" or "Janizary" music, you may be sure to hear also the piccolo flute. The flute is doubtless one of the oldest instruments in the world. The primitive cave-dwellers made flutes of the leg-bones ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... was thicker and heavier and huger than any web on Earth—and rather fearfully looked for the monster that could string thirty-foot cables as thick as fishing-twine. Then he found that it was not a snare at all. It was a construction at whose center something undiscoverable had made a nest, with eggs in it. Some creature had made an unapproachable home for itself where its young would ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... charge of the door were intent upon hearing Mr. Brook's address. Without a word of thanks, the instant the hands restraining her were loosed she dived into the crowd and escaped like a bird from a snare. Satisfied that justice had been done, Jack now said a few words of thanks to his employer and the subscribers to his present, and the meeting then broke up, Jack returning with Bill Haden and his mother, both ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... us that the drum—exception is made in the case of the snare and the kettle drum—is an instrument in which the pitch is a matter of comparative indifference, its function being to mark the time and emphasize the rhythm. [Page 143] There are other elements, it would seem, that must be taken into the account in estimating the value of the drum. Attention ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... snares that Steve had set. At length they came out upon the trail leading from Mrs. Bean's to the falls, travelled chiefly by Jimmy. Lois was standing on the path with Dora by her side waiting until Steve had set one more snare in a good place he had spied. She presented a picture of perfect health and beauty as she stood there, with the rich blood mantling her face. Jasper was sure that he had never seen any one so lovely as he appeared suddenly in sight around a bend in the trail. He was ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody

... open the kitchen door, and enable that gong to slam us across the house, sometimes breaking a window with one or the other of us. At the end of a week we recognized that this switch business was a delusion and a snare. We also discovered that a band of burglars had been lodging in the house the whole time—not exactly to steal, for there wasn't much left now, but to hide from the police, for they were hot pressed, and they shrewdly judged that the detectives would never think ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... snare. I could hear Steel, who was near me, groan, as we watched him lift the bat which had till now remained so well under control, and stepping forward prepare for a terrific "slog." Alas! the deceitful ball never rose at all, but pitching quietly a foot before the ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... Skag was waiting near Poona, for Carlin's eldest brother Roderick Deal, that he became toiled in the snare of his own interest in jungle laughter. It is a strange tale; lying over against the mud wall of the English caste system in India. It is to be understood that a civil officer of high rank in that country is a man whose word is law. His least suggestion is imperative. The usages of ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... Intrigue, and that without either Thought or Design; but I understood afterwards that a Breach of Idleness being espy'd in my Conduct, the Roving Deity seiz'd the Advantage and enter'd Sword in Hand. The Gentlewoman who drew me into this Snare, was no otherwise my Acquaintance than by an accidental Visit; but I was so much a Philosopher, as to know that where there is a Sympathy of Humours, all other Considerations are neglected, and a Turk with those Advantages, is as capable to make a Conquest as a Christian. ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe

... honour, and he asked that he might have the ear-rings of the Midianites who had fallen. Therewith he made an image, a thing forbidden. It stood in his house, a record of what the Lord had done for him; and yet this very record became a snare, and Israel fell to worshipping it, and Jehovah was displaced by the testimony of His own love ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... filled udder of its dam. With plenteous logs the hearth is bright. The household Gods glow in the light, And baby slaves are sprawling round. No town-bred idlers here are found: No cellarer grows pale with sloth, No trainer wastes his oil, but both Go forth afield and subtly plan To snare the greedy ortolan. Meanwhile the garden rings with mirth, While townfolk dig the yielding earth: No need for the page-master's voice; The saucy long-haired boys rejoice To do the manager's commands. At morn 'tis not with empty hands The country ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker

... plumage, set off by the snow, and their cheerful cry, are especially welcome. They would have furnished Aesop with a fable, for the feathered crest in which they seem to take so much satisfaction is often their fatal snare. Country boys make a hole with their finger in the snow-crust just large enough to admit the jay's head, and, hollowing it out somewhat beneath, bait it with a few kernels of corn. The crest slips easily into the trap, but refuses to be pulled out again, and he who came ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell

... tree—a tree pleasant to look upon, and good for food—so was the obedience of the Nazarite tested. He was not forbidden to eat poison berries, nor was he merely required to abstain from the wine and strong drink which might easily become a snare; fresh grapes and dried raisins were equally prohibited. It was not that the thing was harmful in itself, but that the doing the will of GOD, in a matter of seeming indifference, ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor

... greatest snare," was his answer, much amazing her, for she had her mind full of the two direct personal blunders she had ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a quick glance at the picture of her sister. "Was that it? Margaret was a strange woman, Master. I suppose she thought her own beauty had been a snare to her. She WAS bonny. That picture doesn't do her justice. I never liked it. It was taken before she was—before she met Ronald Fraser. We none of us thought it very like her at the time. But, Master, three ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... babe has grown to be the fairest of the land, And rides the forest green, a hawk upon her hand, An ambling palfrey white, a golden robe and crown; I've seen her in my dreams riding up and down: And heard the ogre laugh, as she fell into his snare, At the tender little creature, who ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... Boucheseiche, immediately falling into the snare; "let no one touch him, gentlemen—I will ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet

... he wonders, that, after all, Viennese gaiety is an illusion, a base fabrication? Is the Wiener blut, like Iowan blood, calm and sluggish? Is Vienna's reputation bogus, a snare for tourists, a delusion for the unsophisticated? Where is that far-renowned gemuethlichkeit? Has an American press agent had his foul hand in the advertising of Austria's capital? Perhaps—perhaps!... But what ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... art, skill, cleverness, cunning: device, trick, snare, ambuscade, plot, treachery, , AO, CP: work of art, cunning device, engine ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall

... us arm ourselves against all such violent incursions, which may invade our minds. A little experience and practice will inure us to it; vetula vulpes, as the proverb saith, laqueo haud capitur, an old fox is not so easily taken in a snare; an old soldier in the world methinks should not be disquieted, but ready to receive all fortunes, encounters, and with that resolute captain, come what may ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... communication with King Sweyn and promised to lure Olaf away from his main force and lead him into the snare they were laying for him. Chief among the enemies of the Norse king was Earl Erik, the son of Earl Haakon, whom he was eager to avenge, and King Olaf the Swede, who was ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... lakes, neighbour, it is but fair that they should sometimes be caught in nets. Fishes have no reason to guide them from danger; they are easily caught in nets. I must not, then, take example from them, else I shall, too, some day, perhaps, be caught. Jacques lays many a snare or nets for the birds of the mountains,' she added, as if to turn the conversation; 'and once Margot found a young one caught, but she cried so bitterly about it that we took it home and nursed it till it got well. Did you ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... feared to be compromised through the violent hatred of the Prussians; the Count d'Artois, with impatient levity, always ready to promise and agree, and already entangled through his most active confidant, M. de Vitrolles, in the snare which Fouche had spread for the Royalists ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Never anywhere was snare more plainly set in the sight of any bird. There is little in the way of amusement that you do not get for nothing here, a beautiful pleasure-ground, reading-rooms as luxurious and well-supplied as those of a West End club, one of the best orchestras in Europe, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... him in this Sloka,—O fowler, it appears very strange and wonderful to me that thou, that art a treader of the earth, pursuest yet a couple of creatures that are tenants of the air. The fowler said, "These two, united together, are taking away my snare. There, however, where they will quarrel they ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... ailed the door? he wondered. Why was it open? How came it to shut so easily and so effectually after him? There was something obscure and underhand about all this, that was little to the young man's fancy. It looked like a snare, and yet who could suppose a snare in such a quiet by-street and in a house of so prosperous and even noble an exterior? And yet—snare or no snare, intentionally or unintentionally—here he was, prettily trapped; and for the life of him he could see no ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson

... parts of his body. He can be taught to treat them scrupulously and hardily. He can be given positive ideas which will save him, though I also believe that he ought to be told with definiteness to avoid this particular snare. I know of no other case in which a little wise love and timely vigilance may have such tremendous results in saving a child from future suffering and mistake. Does anything more need to be said to mothers who really love ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray

... assurance that she who gave him life now sends him as a mother's last blessing the First Kiss of Love, she bends over him and places her lips upon his in a prolonged Wagnerian kiss. The sorcery-motif is heard weaving its unholy snare. Of a sudden, with an abruptness as unexpected as it is disconcerting, Parsifal tears himself from her embrace, leaps to his feet, and pressing his hands to his heart, as if there were the seat of an ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... Hence, man lives in an immensely contracted, but a very real and tangible world and within the small experimental circumference of it, he holds a far larger place (from one viewpoint, a far smaller one from another) than that of a finite creature caught in the snare of this world and yet a child of the Eternal, having infinite destinies. The humanist sees man as freed from the tyranny of this supernatural revelation and laws. He rejoices over man ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... mournfully three men-at-arms, clad and weaponed like the warriors of his folk, with the image of the Raven on their helms and shields. So Hallblithe refrained him, for besides that this seemed like to be a fair battle of three against three, he doubted some snare, and he determined to look ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris

... sick-bed; from which, considering the nature of his disease—decline—and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will ever rise. He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you from the snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason to lose no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage. He referred him to me for assistance, I used all dispatch, and am thankful I was not too late: as ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... come at my call: The princess is young and fair; Mix me a charm that shall bring her to woe Spin me your vilest snare." ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May

... in paradise, "My silver planet, both of eve and morn! Why will you plead yourself so sad forlorn, While I am striving how to fill my heart 50 With deeper crimson, and a double smart? How to entangle, trammel up and snare Your soul in mine, and labyrinth you there Like the hid scent in an unbudded rose? Ay, a sweet kiss—you see your mighty woes. My thoughts! shall I unveil them? Listen then! What mortal hath a prize, that other men May be confounded ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... grove, a valley made a channel for sound that brought to our ears the thunder of guns, with firing so rapid that it was like the roll of some cyclopean snare-drum beaten with sticks the size of ship-masts. From the crest of the next hill we had a glimpse of an open sweep of park-like country toward wooded hills. As far as we could see against the background of the foliage which threw it into relief was a continuous cloud of smoke from ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... did you enter my wound from another wound brushing mine in a crowd... or did I snare you on my sharper edges as a bird flying through cobwebbed trees at sun-up carries off spiders on ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... made a snare to take themselves withal: and let the things that should have been for their wealth be unto them an ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... to "snare" some other boy, and make him submit as the other had been obliged to submit when younger. As a rule, the prushun is freed when he is able to protect himself. If he can defend his "honor" from all who come, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... "The snare, Sir," said he, "was not of our laying; it is not we that invited you. We came to avenge, and not to compass, the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... the man is backed against the intelligence of the fish or animal, and the poacher tries to get himself into the ways of the creature he means to snare. That is what really takes place as seen by us as lookers-on; to the poacher himself, in nine out of ten cases, it is merely an acquired knack learned from watching others, and improved by practice. But to us, as lookers-on, this is what occurs: the man fits himself to the ways of ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... has nearly as much to commend it to the self-respecting sportsman as the practice of imitating the cry of the female moose to lure the bull to mad recklessness and his undoing, a challenge hard for a courageous animal to resist, a treacherous snare set before his feet. It would seem as if a right-minded man would hesitate to take so base an advantage as by either of these two ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... much pride, noting the respect with which the officers heard it. She accounted for the incongruities of his presence here as the result of a trip from England to the province, where, as she said, "he was detained by the snare of matrimony." It was his own phrase, for as a snare he regarded the holy estate; but the younger of the officers were pleased to find it funny, and ventured to laugh; whereat she grew red and silent, and they perforce became grave again ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... of Gischala, and Simon, fight to the last. They are as wild beasts, inclosed in the snare of the hunter; and they merit a thousand deaths, for it is they who have brought Jerusalem to this pass, they who have robbed and murdered the population, they who have destroyed the granaries which would have enabled the city to exist for years, they who refused the terms by which the Temple ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty

... worked or managed the boat. I consider that painter—like halter and tether, derived from Gothic words signifying to hold and to tie—is a corruption of bynder, from the Saxon bynd, to bind. If the Anglo-Norman word panter, a snare for catching and holding birds, be a corruption of bynder, we are brought to the word at once. Or, indeed, we may go no farther back ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various

... me, if I judge too harshly of their views!—But if I do not, it follows, that they laid a wicked snare for me; and that I have been caught in it.—And now they triumph, if they can triumph, in the ruin of a sister, who never wished ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... penalty, in case of our breach of those laws: for otherwise the multitude of penal laws in a state would not only be looked upon as an impolitic, but would also be a very wicked thing; if every such law were a snare for the conscience of the subject. But in these cases the alternative is offered to every man; "either abstain from this, or submit to such a penalty;" and his conscience will be clear, whichever side of the alternative he thinks proper to embrace. Thus, by ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone



Words linked to "Snare" :   lure, catch, trap, capture, membranophone, ensnare, speed trap, side drum, design, plan, hook, entrap, entice, snarer, hunting, accost, hunt, trammel, tempt, tympan, drum



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