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Crowing   /krˈoʊɪŋ/   Listen
Crowing

adjective
1.
Exhibiting self-importance.  Synonyms: big, boastful, braggart, bragging, braggy, cock-a-hoop, self-aggrandising, self-aggrandizing.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Crowing" Quotes from Famous Books



... his hands, crowing at the vociferations of disgust of those negrophiles and sweaters of Christians, whose isolated clamour amid the popular uproar sounded ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... leaned on my gate. Crowning the post at his side was his travelling bandanna, into which he had securely clasped by one great knot all his portable possessions. It was very early in the morning, in that half-dark and half-dawn time, when the muffled crowing begins to sound from the village barns and the dogs crawl forth from their barrels and survey the deserted street and yawn. Tip was not usually abroad so early, but in his travelling bandanna and solemn face, as he leaned on his elbows and ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd

... road; as many times it was moved by the united efforts of five or six teams and the combined blasphemy of a dozen drivers. Through all of this, David slept as if drugged. Daybreak came; the ghostly wagon train slipped from darkness into the misty light of a new "day." Cocks were crowing afar and near, and birds were chirping in the bushes at the roadside. Out of the sombre, crinkling night rolled the red, and white, and golden juggernauts, gradually taking shape in the gray dawn, crawling with sardonic indifference past toll-gate and farmhouse, ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... to be no crowing. If we had beaten them, I should not have permitted a word to be spoken that would create a hard feeling in the minds of any of them," replied Frank. "And I know that Tony is ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic

... here's something that will raise you quicker than yeast," he said, beating a hasty retreat, while the indignant young lady verified his words by leaping half-way across the floor, her angry tones mingling with Willie's crowing laugh, as the child took the whole for fun, meant expressly for ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... you know how these Northmen are crowing, They would trample the rights of the South in the dust; The boys are all fire; and they wish I were going—" He stopped, but his eyes said, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... this, showing accord with the deity, was a good omen, and unwillingness was a bad omen.[1614] Among the later Romans the entrance of a strange black dog into a house, the falling of a snake through the opening in the roof, the crowing of a hen were unfavorable signs which prevented the immediate undertaking of any new affair;[1615] these were all unusual and therefore uncanny occurrences. Some of the animals that furnish omens are totems, and in such cases the totemic significance coalesces with ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... are possible in the country. Outside the garden, with the meadows beyond the village road, lay in that sweet September hush of sunlight and mellow color that seemed to embalm the house in peace. From the farm beyond the stable-yard came the crowing of a cock, followed by the liquid chuckle of a pigeon perched somewhere overhead among the twisted chimneys. And within this room all was equally at peace. The sunshine lay on table and polished floor, barred by the mullions ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson

... and a local surgeon had already arrived. We exchanged bows and salutes gloomily and the seconds gathered together, and began to talk in hoarse whispers. It was still very dark. The moon hung empty and pallid above the cold outline of the hills, and although the roosters were crowing cheerfully, the sun had not yet risen. In the hollows the mists lay like lakes, and every stone and rock was wet and shining as though it had been washed in readiness for the coming day. The gravestones shone upon us like freshly scrubbed doorsteps. It was a most dismal ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis

... been reckoned a bird possessed of magic power. At its crowing, we are told, all unquiet spirits who roam the earth depart to their dismal abodes, and the orgies of the Witches' Sabbath terminate. A cock is the favourite sacrifice offered to evil spirits in Ceylon and elsewhere. Alectromancy(2) was an ancient and ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove

... face went red; he gurgled and gasped for breath; he was sinking to his knees when the yelling and crowing of the students on the platform straightened him up. He walked about a few minutes, then ordered ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... the oaths and the obscenity which made up the greater part of his own conversation, he looked upon them with suspicion. In the evening the two men played piquet. He played badly but vaingloriously, crowing over his opponent when he won and losing his temper when he lost. On rare occasions a couple of planters or traders would drive over to play bridge, and then Walker showed himself in what Mackintosh considered a characteristic ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... grew and swiftly overspread all things. The leaden silence began to be pierced here and there by the barking of a dog, the crowing of a cock, the scolding of a parrot. Somewhere, either in the compound or close to it, some one began to whistle—a soft, tentative whistle, like a ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell

... side of some great hill. But if the world was masked it was alive with sounds. Up through that vapour floor came the deep roar of trains, the whistles of horns of motor-cars, a sound of rifle fire away to the south, and as he drew near his destination the crowing of cocks.... ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... Cock is crowing, The stream is flowing, The small birds twitter, The lake doth glitter, The green field sleeps in the sun; The oldest and youngest Are at work with the strongest; The cattle are grazing. Their heads never raising; There are ...
— Verse and Prose for Beginners in Reading - Selected from English and American Literature • Horace Elisha Scudder, editor

... giving me a fine imitation of a man who is surprised," stated his grandfather. "Maybe you are! I hope so. But she's here. She's with a bunch of girls from some school or other, paraded around by a hatchet-faced woman—another crowing hen that's trying to teach parliamentary law, I suppose. Harlan, I hope you've been square with me about that girl! Now, if you're honest, and don't know she's here, keep out of sight. I've given you the tip. She'll be speaking to you—and it will ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... is not a square yard of ground hereabouts that ever has been plowed, spaded or hoed: yet the place is crammed with all sorts of farm produce. Manifestly it was all brought here, where there are no pigeons to reveal the place by their flight above it, nor any cock to call attention to it by his crowing. This is not a farm, it is a treasure-house, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... bound to be the long-needed lesson, by means of which careless Bob would cut loose from his pernicious habit of taking everything free—and—easy. Good might spring from evil, and what now seemed to be a crowing disaster, the boy was likely in later days to look upon as a blessing ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... all sizes, and in the quiet air we could hear their various sounds that seemed to tell in each of a self-contained world, where every item of life was summarized on board. Men chatting, women laughing, dogs barking, cocks crowing, and pigs squealing, a floating farmyard, such is life on the sea. For the Rob Roy I had tried to get a monkey as a funny friend, if not as a tractable midshipman, but an end was put to the idea by the solemn warning of an experienced comrade, who stated, that ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... wood and were out in the open country again. As they galloped on, only the distant barking of a watch-dog guarding some lonely farm-house, or the premature crowing of a barn fowl, deceived by the brilliancy of the moonlight into thinking that day had come, broke the absolute silence. They might have been the one woman and the one man in a new world, so profound ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden

... Come all to church to-morrow, and I'll let you hear how I'll gull the saints of Auchtermuchty. In the meantime, there is a feast on the Sidlaw hills tonight, below the hill of Macbeth—Mount, Diabolus, and fly." Then, with loud croaking and crowing, the bridal of corbies again scaled the dusky air, and left Robin Ruthven in the middle of ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... Amphibalus, St. WuIstan, St. Ebba, St. Neot, St. Ninian, and Cunibert the Hermit. Their austerities, their virginity, and their miraculous powers were described in detail. The public learned with astonishment that St Ninian had turned a staff into a tree; that St. German had stopped a cock from crowing, and that a child had been raised from the dead to convert St. Helier. The series has subsequently been continued by a more modern writer whose relation of the history of the blessed St. Mael contains, perhaps, even more matter ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... carried them away. He took the dish in his hand, the cat on his arm, and the golden cock on his shoulder, and disappeared with them under the rock. Not only food and drink, but everything else required for the household, and even clothes, came out of the rock upon the crowing of the cock. Although but little conversation was carried on at table, and even that in a foreign language, the lady and the governess talked and sang a great deal in the house and garden. In time Elsie also learned ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... ringing Bell, Think it is your latest knell: When I cry, Maide in your Smocke, Doe not take it for a mocke: Well I meane, if well 'tis taken, I would have you still awaken: Foure a Clocke, the Cock is crowing I must to my home be going: When all other men doe rise, Then must I ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton

... on his bed that night, And never asleep went he For the crowing of his little red cock, ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson

... largely composed of infantry, burst upon them like a thunder-clap, and continued to pour in like a torrent. There were men shouting, women chattering, tired children whining, and excited children laughing; babies yelling or crowing miscellaneously; parrots screaming; people running up and down stairs in search of dormitories; plates and cups clattering at the bar, as the overwhelmed barmaids did their best to appease the impatient ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... unfailing curiosity which would have been highly flattering to the possessors if it had not been neutralized by a strain of comment which was much less satisfactory. When Mr. May went in, he found him in the dining-room, with Sir Robert and his daughters standing by, clapping his wings and crowing loudly over a picture which the Dorsets prized much. It represented a bit of vague Italian scenery, mellow and tranquil, and was a true "Wilson," bought by an uncle of Sir Robert's, who had been a connoisseur, from the Master himself, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... paused. There was complete silence save for a clock striking two and the distant crowing of a cock. The pause belonged ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... took little Dickie out on to the lawn to sit under the big wide trees that threw so grateful a shade across the green. Big Dick joined them there with his pipe and he sat beside them in silence. It was very pleasant in the garden with the bluest of blue skies overhead and the baby chuckling and crowing in the very first rapture of life on the grass at their feet. Presently, however, a stern nurse descended on the scene and laughter was changed to tears for one short minute before the young gentleman, protesting but half-heartedly, was removed. ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson

... the vast vault of the sky passing, even as he looked, from a cold colourless luminosity to a tender tint of yellow, as far away beyond Thabor and Moab the dawn began to deepen. From the village half-a-mile away arose the crowing of a cock, thin and brazen as a trumpet; a dog barked once and was silent again; and then, on a sudden, a single stroke upon a bell hung in the roof recalled him in an instant, and told him that ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... beloved by the hair just before cock-crow, and hold her fast, whatever transformation she might undergo. He did so; the nymph became in turn a dog, a snake, a camel, and fire. In spite of all, he retained his hold; and at the next crowing of the cock she regained her beauty, and accompanied him home. After a year, in which she spoke no word, she bore a son. The peasant again applied to the old woman for a cure, and was advised to tell his wife that if she would not speak, he would throw ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick

... one of the children with croup—I am sure it sounded like what I have heard croup described, or like that dreadful illness they call the crowing cough," she said to Mr. Caryll, as she rushed out of the room ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... new pine log, and a black urchin gathering chips into a big split basket. At a little distance the Hopeville stage was drawn out under the trees, the empty shafts lying upon the ground, and on the box a red and black rooster stood crowing. Overhead there was a dull gray sky, and the scene, in all its ugliness, showed stripped of the redeeming grace of lights ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... as the child uplifts his cherub face, Opens his soft small arms to stroke thy cheek, Crowing with glee, while the slant sunbeams light A halo of gold fire about thy hair, I see again a canvas that is hung Over the altar in our church at home. "Mater amabilis," yet here be traits, Colors and tones the artist never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... —to be judged by their peers." He was speaking one day of some rulers who had tried to check the rising tide of some reform by persecuting its leaders. "Fools!" said the Doctor. "They thought if they could but wring the neck of the crowing cock it would ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... Not even demons could do them harm. Once a new-born babe, running to fetch a light whereby his mother might cut the navel string, met the chief of the demons, and a combat ensued between the two. Suddenly the crowing of a cock was heard, and the demon made off, crying out to the child, "Go and report unto thy mother, if it had not been for the crowing of the cock, I had killed thee!" Whereupon the child retorted, "Go and report unto thy mother, if ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... with the baby! (He adores her more than I); How she choruses his crowing, How she hushes every cry! How she loves to pit his dimples With her light forefinger deep; How she boasts, as one in triumph, When she gets him off ...
— Neighbor Nelly Socks - Being the Sixth and Last Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... third story was not like other doors; it was of plain oak, thick, without mouldings, and fastened with iron bars. It would have looked like a prison door had not its sombreness been lightened by a heavily colored engraving of a cock crowing, with the legend "Always Vigilant." Had the detective put his coat of arms up there? Was it not more likely that one of his men had done it? After examining the door more than a minute, and hesitating like a youth before his beloved's gate, he rang the bell. A ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... beautifully enough, what we had been doing clumsily. It was living, intent on its own conscious life, the sap hurrying, the scent flowing, the bud waxing. The yellow-hammer poising and darting along the hedge, the sparrow twittering round the rick, the cock picking and crowing, were all intent on life, proclaiming that they were alive and busy. Something vivid, alert, impassioned was going forward everywhere, something being effected, something uttered—and yet the cause how utterly hidden from me ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson

... and window-frames, the cupboards and the shelves for the crockery, were all of dark oak, fashioned into leaves and ferns, with birds on their nests, and timid rabbits, and still more timid wood-mice peeping out of their coverts, cocks crowing with uplifted crest, and chickens nestling under the hen-mother's wings, sheaves of corn, and tall, club-headed bulrushes—all the objects familiar to a country life. The dancing light played upon ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... said that the Red Cock was crowing over his enemies' home, he meant that he had set it on fire after the people who lived ...
— The Gold Of Fairnilee • Andrew Lang

... watched playing at the water's edge, crowing and chuckling in the universal language of their kind, staggering groggily along the shelving beach with outspread arms balancing their uncertain steps. On such nights when M'sa beckons the dead world to the source of all rivers, ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... nooses [53] is a series of rattan nooses placed around a decoy cock. This bird, by his lusty crowing, challenges his wild fellows to fight. When the fight begins the champion of the woods soon finds his feet enmeshed in the nooses, and within a short time his whole body safely lodged ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... they did catch one more glimpse of the fleeting sprite between the shrubs. "He was mighty jolly," said the Brown Teddy-Bear enviously, in his deep, mournful voice; and "Let's go catch him!" cried the Baby, where it sat flat on the bricks, crowing and clapping its hands. ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker

... the cock is crowing aloof! And work—work—work, Till the stars shine through the roof! It's Oh! to be a slave Along with the barbarous Turk, Where woman has never a soul to save, If this ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... the spectacle of a British "rag." He paid the dubious tribute of a weak giggle to the bombardment of Dr. Bird. He was convulsed at the first performance of Prosper Panne. In his final collapse he was rocking to and fro and crowing ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... indicating finger helped him, "and gray hairs all round here, and thick eyebrows, and—" he dropped the hand and his smile softened to reminiscence, "It was only yesterday you were a baby, a little, fat, crowing thing all creases and dimples. Your mother and I used to think everything about you so wonderful that we each secretly believed—and we'd tell each other so when nobody was round—that there had been other babies in the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... a high crowing laugh, "it is not the head upon my shoulders that I think of. Cospetto! no. It is the head under my arm which ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... convoying whole fleets of ducks. 11. Regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard. 12. Guinea fowls fretted about, like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. 13. Before the barn-door strutted the gallant cock, clapping his burnished wings, and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart—sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then generously calling his ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy the rich ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... of hearing a cock crowing in the morning, is significant of good. If you be single, it denotes an early marriage and a ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... he, "you are and will always be an incorrigible fool; you are crowing as loud as a Gallic cock, who is declaring war against my people. I have made peace with the Gauls, mark that, and do not dare again to crow so loud. What do you want? Do your creditors wish to cast you in prison, or ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... Supposing he were to peep out into the yard... would there still be a terrible black cloud? Why not try? He put his head out of the back door and saw the blue sky flecked with little white clouds hurrying eastwards. The cock was flapping his wings and crowing, heavy drops were sparkling on the bushes, golden streaks of sunlight penetrated into the passage, and bright reflections from the surface of the waters beckoned ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... the time is. For the Son of man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch. Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you ...
— Jesus of Nazareth - A Biography • John Mark

... of their dream came the disturbing patter of small feet and the joyous, innocent laughter of infantile glee. Two tiny mud-stained figures rushed at the doorway and fell sprawling into the hut. They were on their feet again in a moment, laughing and crowing out their delight. Then, as the man and woman sprang apart, they stood round-eyed, ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... the haunts of men, and even without a friend with thee, thou wouldst not find it solitary. The crowing of the hannaquoi will sound in thine ears like the daybreak town-clock; and the wren and the thrush will join with thee in thy matin hymn to thy Creator, to thank Him ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... calendar; in the middle was an astrolabe, and in the superior division were seen the three wise men and the Virgin Mary carved in wood; the wise men bent every hour before the Virgin, by means of a peculiar mechanism, which at the same time put in motion a chime of harmonious sounds and a cock crowing and flapping his wings. ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous

... John Marsh spends a deal of time in vilifying the English as a mean-minded people, but my God, he has only got to look round the corner in Dublin, to see mean-minded men by the hundred. He wrote to me the other day, crowing because his Volunteers had prevented the application of conscription to Ireland, and that's a frame of mind I don't understand. He's an idealist, but all his ideals are being employed to enable mean-minded and greedy men like ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... looking him over derisively, as he passed into the house. "You're crowing loud for your size. And don't you bet heavy on that ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... that lassitude which, in my first recovery, showed the continuance of the malaria in the system. I found that my men, without prompting, had established a brisk trade in fire-wood. They sallied forth at cock-crowing in the mornings, and by daylight reached the uncultivated parts of the adjacent country, collected a bundle of fire-wood, and returned to the city. It was then divided into smaller fagots, and sold to the inhabitants; and as they ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... pulled up his shirt-collar, twined his side-hair, stuck an arm akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by, wriggling his elbows and body, and drawling to his attendants, "Don't know yah, don't know yah, 'pon my soul don't know yah!" The disgrace attendant on his immediately afterwards taking to crowing and pursuing me across the bridge with crows, as from an exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I was a blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which I left the town, and was, so to speak, ejected by it into the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... particular interest; they might have been going to or coming from church. A warm, basking, Sunday feel was in the sunshine. There was not the faintest breeze. Distant sounds carried clearly, as the barking of a dog— it might have been Gringo shut up at home—or the crowing of a distant cock. From the square below arose the murmur of a multitude talking. The groups of people increased in frequency, in numbers. Black forms began to appear on roof tops all about; white ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... with the cold air from the open window blowing on my face, I heard in turn the crowing of the cocks in the village, the irregular breathing of Philippe, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion not far from me, and the blows and the death-rattle of the man who took so long to die. He became silent, however, in the morning, when the wind began to drop, and the first detonation of the ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... and began to build an elaborate fortress on the nursery floor. The baby lay on his back on a rug by the fire and contemplated his woollen shoe which he slowly dragged off and disdainfully flung away. Then, crowing to himself, he watched his father ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... game indeed.' And so he did, for he set the edge of the said knife against his neck, and off came his head; but there came no blood, nor did he tumble down, but took up his head and stuck it on again, and then he stood crowing like our big red cock. Then he said: 'Poultry, cockerel, now I will do the like by thee.' And he came to me with the knife; but I was afraid, and gat hold of his hand and had the knife from him; and then I wrestled with him and gave ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... we hear, is crowing over a wonderful new play which she thinks she has invented, and with which she expects to get even for what happened last year. We have not seen the new marvel, of course, but we understand that it is called a "close formation." It is safe to ...
— Behind the Line • Ralph Henry Barbour

... year presents the appearance of a vast bee-hive or ant-hill. San Agustin! At the name how many hearts throb with emotion! How many hands are mechanically thrust into empty pockets! How many visions of long-vanished golden ounces flit before aching eyes! What faint crowing of wounded cocks! What tinkling of guitars and blowing of horns come upon the ear! Some, indeed, there be, who can look round upon their well-stored hacienda and easy-rolling carriages, and remember the day, when with threadbare ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... so loud, that a fox in a hole near by was up in an instant thinking: "What a funny thing for a cock to be crowing in the forest! I expect he's lost his way and ...
— More Russian Picture Tales • Valery Carrick

... care she now bestowed upon the ducks. When the young cocks began to try their voices, their foster-mother was as much annoyed as she now was by the swimming of the duckings—and never failed to repress their attempts at crowing. ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown

... more to seek? This is but a formal way of worshipping; as if we had wiped off a writing which was against us, and there was an end of the matter. But blessed are those servants who are ever expecting Him, who is ever coming to them; whether He come "at even, or at midnight, or at cock-crowing, or in the morning;" whereas those who first come to Him for the gift of grace, and then neglect to wait for its progressive accomplishment in their hearts, how profanely they act! it is as if to receive the blessing in mockery, and ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... fowls had to wait till evening before they heard Mark, the watchman, crowing from ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... happened in one of their walks, that as they talked of their love, and it was after midnight, they passed under the place where the tops of the glass hills used to open and let the underground people in and out. As they went along they heard of a sudden the crowing of several cocks above. At this sound, which she had not heard for twelve years, little Elizabeth felt her heart so affected that she could contain herself no longer, but throwing her arms about John's neck, she bathed his cheeks with her tears. At ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... the door, then she turned with a resolute air. "As for going downstairs and owning up I'm scared and having that Lippincott girl crowing over me, I won't for any red roses instead of peacocks. I guess they can't hurt me, and as long as we've both of us seen 'em I guess we can't both be ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... be particularly amiable when first presented to his new friends. Of course he had not at that time reached the crowing or smiling age. His goodness as yet was negative. He did not squall; he did not screw up his face into inconceivable formations; he did not grow alarmingly red in the face; he did not insist on having milk, ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... foot, as he stood with a perfectly unmoved and vacant countenance beside the Dame, which made some delay; and as Mrs. Datchett bent lower on the right side of her chair, William began upon the left a "hum," which, with a close imitation of the crowing of a cock, the grunting of a pig, and the braying of a donkey, formed his chief stock ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... old abbey struck the hour of twelve, he saw the earth open below, and about twenty little black devils came out and started to pull down the wall. Sir Francis began to move his arms about and flap them as if they were wings, and then crowed like a cock. The devils, when they heard the white bird crowing, looked up, and, thinking the morning must be close at hand, immediately disappeared to the regions below. We could not learn if or how often these performances were repeated, but it seemed a very unlikely ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... wandering; under a canopy of blue or gold, where the eye could fall on nothing that was not beautiful, enough to be at one with Nature in dreamy rest. From stubble fields sounded the long caw of rooks; a sleepy crowing ever and anon told of the neighbour farm; my doves cooed above their cot. Was it for five minutes, or was it for an hour, that I watched the yellow butterfly wafted as by an insensible tremor of the air amid the garden glintings? In every autumn there comes ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... surrounded by a high white picket-fence: stately, widespreading live-oaks shaded it, and the spacious courtyard had a neat and carefully-kept aspect. Crowing cocks, and hens each with her brood, were scratching and picking about, the geese cackled, and several well-trained dogs gave us a noisy welcome. Upon our asking for the doctor, a friendly German matron directed us to the orchard, whither we immediately turned our steps. A really magnificent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... spent: no threats or prayers move thee; O harder than the doors thou guard'st I prove thee, No pretty wench's keeper may'st thou be, The careful prison is more meet for thee. Now frosty night her flight begins to take, And crowing cocks poor souls to work awake. But thou, my crown, from sad hairs ta'en away, On this hard threshold till the morning lay. That when my mistress there beholds thee cast, She may perceive how we the time did waste. 70 Whate'er thou art, farewell, be like me pained! ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... uneasily. He kept a bold front, accepted every challenge, and even went out of his way to pick a quarrel; yet he quaked at heart continually. He feared and hated the noises of the yard, particularly the crowing of our big buff cochin rooster and the screaming of the guineas. This was one of the swamp-fears that he had brought with him and could not outlive. It haunted him. If he had a conscience, its only warnings were of coming noises great ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... vanished Abbey. There the monks had stored the meal which the people dwelling on their lands brought to them instead of rent. Lovel found it a rambling, hither-and-thither old house, with tall hedges of yew all about it. These last were cut into arm-chairs, crowing cocks, and St. Georges in the act of slaying many dragons, all green and terrible. But one great yew had been left untouched by the shears, and under it Lovel found his late fellow-traveller sitting, spectacles on nose, reading the ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... other days was the fond proud father of the precious crowing bundle now pulling at his beard. What cared he for Hastings' Hall? It was a fine old place enough, and he had enjoyed coming there every day of his life; but his own bright home was just around the corner, ...
— Three People • Pansy

... phases and periods are enshrined in the aspect of her buildings, the constant rasure of these buildings is a disservice to the historian not less than to the mere sentimentalist, and that it will moreover (this is a more telling argument) filch from Englishmen the pleasant power of crowing over Americans, and from Americans the unpleasant necessity of balancing their pity for our present with envy of our past. After all, our past is our point d'appui. Our present is merely a bad imitation of what the Americans ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... much to Jimmy's disgust. There is no need to go into details of the show, all of which are more or less alike, with dogs of all sizes and breeds, barking in different keys, pigs grunting and squeaking, horses neighing, cows mooing, cocks crowing, ducks quacking; boys yelling out the price of catalogues, men requesting people to 'walk up,' and inspect their wares, which are all warranted to be the very best of their kind; and besides all this two brass bands which play two ...
— Lippa • Beatrice Egerton

... on my way to meet Bindo, who was to be the guest of a Russian countess in Ostrog. Whenever I mentioned my destination, the post-house keepers held up their hands. The Red Rooster was crowing in ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux

... burst of talk had ceased, and all rode silently along. The air was chill, and Nick was grateful for the cloak that Carew threw around him. There was no sound but the beat of many hoofs in the dust-padded road, and now and then the crowing of a cock somewhere within the cloaking fog. The stars were gone, and the sky was lighting up; and all at once, as they rode, the clouds ahead, low down and to the right, broke raggedly away and ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... and, with their aid, the colored man succeeded in catching the rooster, which, crowing a loud protest, was shut up in a wooden cage and taken to the shop, ready to be placed in ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood

... startled her," said Jonathan, peering up and down the deserted street. Two roosters were crowing antiphonally in near-by yards, and a dog ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge

... Harry had arrived at the conclusion that it was time to stop eating, we left the shadow and went out into the sun, carrying Connie and laying her down in the midst of "the ribbed sea-sand," which was very ribby to-day. On a shawl a little way off from her lay her baby, crowing and kicking with the same jollity that had possessed the boys ever since the morning. I wandered about with Wynnie on the sands, picking up amongst other things strange creatures in thin shells ending in ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... was a small, brown woman, holding in her arms a crowing youngster, who was making a great ado and reaching out his hands toward his father. She raised the window just a little, ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... imitations of the bellowing of the "heavy beasts," and such like. It is probably indefensible on purely artistic grounds. But Handel did it in "Israel in Egypt" and elsewhere. And is there not a crowing cock in Bach's "St Matthew Passion"? Haydn only followed ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... had always received attention; she expected and probably deserved admiration; but so did Carlyle, who expected also to be made the center of all solicitude when he called heaven and earth to witness against democracy, crowing roosters, weak tea and other grievous afflictions. After her death (in London, 1866) he was plunged into deepest grief. In his Reminiscences and Letters he fairly deifies his wife, calling her his queen, his star, his light and joy of life, and portrays a companionship ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... everything that passes in France, to their eager desire of a close communication with the mother faction there. At this moment, when the question is upon the opening of that communication, not a word of our English Jacobins. That faction is put out of sight and out of thought. "It vanished at the crowing of the cock." Scarcely had the Gallic harbinger of peace and light begun to utter his lively notes, than all the cackling of us poor Tory geese to alarm the garrison of the Capitol was forgot.[11] There was enough ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Chanticleer as he stood talking loudly to a large circle of friends and neighbours,—old Mr. Drake, young Mr. Gosling, Mr. Peacock, Mr. Pidgeon, Mr. Swann, and several others,—and forthwith arrested him. Poor Mr. Chanticleer! how crest-fallen he looked! All his crowing was stopped in a moment. He walked by the policeman's side in silence, and looked as much like a culprit as any thief that was ever found with the stolen ...
— Comical People • Unknown

... business there. The morning we were to go proved cloudy, and we waited till afternoon, when Charles, declaring that it would not rain, ordered Aspen to be harnessed. I went into Alice's room tying my bonnet; he was there, leaning over the baby's crib, who lay in it crowing and laughing at the snapping of his fingers. ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... then he paused and listened. He could hear the distant lowing of the wild bulls, and the crowing of the cocks at the hacienda, mingled with the lugubrious notes of the great wood owl, perched near him upon a branch. He could hear the distant sound of water—the cataract of the Salto de Agua—and, in the same direction, the ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid

... buildings, the day was still gray and misty. Only an occasional noise broke the silence of the early morning: a cough from one of the rooms; the rattle of a pot or a pan, stirred by some sleepy scullion; the clapping of a door or a shutter, and now and then the crowing of a cock back of the long row of stables—all sounding loud and startling in the fresh ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... it four times before the baby smiled at her. At first he only looked serious and astonished. The fifth time his smile broadened and he gurgled. But the sixth, as she came to "The Great Ormondon," he burst into a crowing laugh. Never before had a laugh been heard in earth or Heaven. It was so surprising that the angels ceased from cowering and the Man uncovered his ...
— Christmas Outside of Eden • Coningsby Dawson

... fat little hands, and with a smile on her toothless mouth, began, like a fish with a float, bobbing her fingers up and down the starched folds of her embroidered skirt, making them rustle. It was impossible not to smile, not to kiss the baby, impossible not to hold out a finger for her to clutch, crowing and prancing all over; impossible not to offer her a lip which she sucked into her little mouth by way of a kiss. And all this Anna did, and took her in her arms and made her dance, and kissed her ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... I am not a superstitious person. I smile at those whimsical fancies which figure so conspicuously in many people's lives, such as the howling of dogs, the flickering of a candle, the arrangement of the grounds in a cup, the cracking of a mirror, the sudden stopping of the clock, the crowing of hens, the chirping of crickets, the hooting of an owl, the fall of a family portrait, the spilling of salt, a dream of the toothache, etc., etc., etc. If this particular cat had been black instead of tabby I should have regarded ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... more, but the siksiklat encircled and carried her up. When they reached the sky (literally "the up"), the siksiklat placed her below the alosip [85] tree. She sat for a long time. Soon she heard the crowing of the rooster. She stood up and went to see the rooster which crowed. She saw a spring. She saw it was pretty because its sands were oday [86] and its gravel pagapat [87] and the top of the betel-nut tree was gold, and the place where the ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole

... her high in the air, catching her deftly on her descent, while Patty held her breath in apprehension. She knew perfectly well Bill wouldn't let the child fall,—and yet, accidents had occurred,—and the crowing baby might squirm out of the ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells

... world was fallen into an easier way: This age knew better than to fast and pray. Good sense in sacred worship would appear, So to begin as they might end the year. Such feats in former times had wrought the falls Of crowing chanticleers in cloister'd walls. Expell'd for this, and for their lands they fled; And sister Partlet with her hooded head Was hooted hence, because she ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... crowing rooster would be a good performer to have in a barnyard scene on a stage," agreed Mr. Treadwell. "But the only thing about it is that we couldn't be sure that he would crow at the right time. He might crow when Lucile was singing, or when Bunny Brown was doing some of his tricks, ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope

... perch, and crowing like a rooster, is the bart. You need not look for flies on Barraclough, doctor. He's his own chauffeur this trip. I don't fancy the joy myself, but the bart. is rorty, and what would you say to ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... to rear a few pheasants annually. There is no bird which gives more delight, even if fairly tame; their beautiful colouring and cheerful crowing are always pleasant in the garden and woods around your house. If you feed them every day, they will come regularly up to the very door; and with them come the swans, waddling up from the water, looking very much out of their element. Sometimes, ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... the surface and into contact with the inspired air, this substance grows thick and tough, or leathery, as we find it. It is the obstruction in the respiratory canal which this foreign matter causes that gives rise to the labored breathing, and the ringing, brassy cough, together with the crowing or whistling inspiration characteristic of croup. Before recovery can take place this membrane must be detached and expelled. The cough is nature's effort to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... north-east of Rocford Church, Essex, is held what is called the Lawless Court, a whimsical custom, the origin of which is not known. On the Wednesday morning next after Michaelmas day, the tenants are bound to attend upon the first cock-crowing, and to kneel and do their homage, without any kind of light, but such as heaven will afford. The steward of the court calls all such as are bound to appear, with as low a voice as possible, giving no notice when he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various

... passed out of their beauty sleep—i.e., the slumber before midnight—when, as the clocks were striking twelve, and an early chanticleer was crowing for the morn, Edie was awakened by some mysterious sounds—sounds as of something bumping against the ...
— The Island House - A Tale for the Young Folks • F. M. Holmes

... sin, and Peter's repentance. The cock's crowing shows also that day is coming on; let then the crowing of the cock put thee in mind of that last and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... of Autumn, with all the country veiled in softest haze. It was very early morning, and few people were upon the road, although since the first light of dawn men had been working in field and forest. From a farmhouse off the road came the crowing of a cock and the creak of a cumbrous handmill hidden in a thick copse near by. Nicanor, sitting by the roadside where he had slept, ate the food remaining overnight in his wallet, and rolled his sheepskin cloak into a bundle for his shoulders. Behind him, from the road, came a ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... over demons of Discord, Idleness, Injustice, Unreason, and Chaos come again. None of the old Epics is longer possible. The Epic of French and Phrygians was comparatively a small Epic: but that of Flirts and Fribbles, what is that? A thing that vanishes at cock-crowing,—that already begins to scent the morning air! Game-preserving Aristocracies, let them 'bush' never so effectually, cannot escape the Subtle Fowler. Game seasons will be excellent, and again will be indifferent, and by and by they will not be at ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... Mexicans. There was a possibility that Deweese might still be in camp at the new reservoir, and I was hopeful that my employer might not yet be returned from the hunt on the Frio. After a number of hours' riding, the horse under saddle nickered. Halting him, I listened and heard the roosters crowing in a chorus at the ranch. Clouds had obscured the moon, and so by making a detour around the home buildings I was able to reach the Mexican quarters unobserved. I rode up to the house of Enrique, and quietly aroused him; told him my misfortune and asked him to hide me until ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... with gold the summits of the trees, the wild-cock was crowing in the woods, the thousand choristers of the forest were pealing in rich harmony, when the Osage warriors awoke. They smiled grimly on one another, and then started, each man mechanically placing his hand upon the back and crown of ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... that a fine knave? Have any mo masters such a man as I have? So idle, so loit'ring, so trifling, so toying? So prattling, so trattling, so chiding, so boying? So jesting, so wresting, so mocking, so mowing? So nipping, so tripping, so cocking, so crowing? So knappish, so snappish, so elvish, so froward? So crabbed, so wrabbed, so stiff, so untoward? In play or in pastime so jocund, so merry? In work or in labour so dead or so weary? O, that I had his ear between my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley

... even Farquhar's sluggish blood. "Let them go, Ranald!" he cried. "Let them go, man! Never you fear for the horses, if you take down the spunk o' yon crowing cock." ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... crowned its brow, where lay the Monastery of St. Michaelsburg—"The White Cross on the Hill." There within the white walls, where the warm yellow sunlight slept, all was peaceful quietness, broken only now and then by the crowing of the cock or the clamorous cackle of a hen, the lowing of kine or the bleating of goats, a solitary voice in prayer, the faint accord of distant singing, or the resonant toll of the monastery bell from the high-peaked belfry that overlooked the hill and valley and the ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle

... I stand once more before the home of the long-suffering, much-laboring, loud-complaining Heraclitus of his time, whose very smile had a grimness in it more ominous than his scowl. Poor man! Dyspeptic on a diet of oatmeal porridge; kept wide awake by crowing cocks; drummed out of his wits by long-continued piano-pounding; sharp of speech, I fear, to his high-strung wife, who gave him back as good as she got! I hope I am mistaken about their everyday relations, but again I say, poor man!—for all his complaining must have meant real discomfort, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... perfectly certain that his hair was standing bolt upright on the top of his head, thrusting at right angles to the sides. He forced his alarmed face to smile: "A cock crowing in the yard, I ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... Crowing is a masculine foible, and this sort of brag is the natural recreation of a young man in the presence ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... it and more in pronouncing its name. Some of us called it Off, some Owf! I knew I had heard the name somewhere, and I was racking my brains to think as Johnson set up our wee piano and I began to sing. Just as I finished my first song a rooster set up a violent crowing, in competition ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... and may be seen there to this very day. Before they had left the castle, however, they had set what was left of the elixir of life out in the courtyard. Hens and hounds picked and licked it up, and all flew up into the skies. In Huai Nan to this very day the crowing of cocks and the barking of hounds may be heard up in the skies, and it is said that these are the creatures who followed the ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various



Words linked to "Crowing" :   boasting, self-aggrandizing, self-praise, proud, boast, jactitation



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