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Lair   /lɛr/   Listen
Lair

noun
1.
The habitation of wild animals.  Synonym: den.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Lair" Quotes from Famous Books



... for example, one week-end that was much cheered by a visit from our architect friend, who rode down from Santa Barbara in his motor, and made himself very popular with every member of the household. He brought home the laundry, bearded the ice man in his lair, making ice-cream possible for Sunday dinner, mended the garden lattice, and drew entrancing pictures of galleons sailing in from fairy shores with all their canvas spread, for the boys. As we waved our handkerchiefs to him from the Good-by Gate on ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... and their inmates climbed stairs cheerfully; at most, they had only to mount to a second storey. Each block owned a uniformed porter, who, on a night like this, even in May, needed rousing from his lair by a bell if ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy

... attacks game so large as the wapiti; but the latter had, no doubt, chanced upon the lair of his fierce enemy, who could not resist such a tempting opportunity of getting a meal. The wolves had seen the wolverene as they approached the thicket, and that accounted for their strange behaviour in the pursuit. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... appreciable time been coursing across the heavens. It was, then, the hour of mystery; the hour when wicked folk stalk abroad; the hour in which the poet dreams of immortality, rhyming hijos with prolijos and amor with dolor; the hour in which the night-walker slinks forth from her lair and the gambler enters his; the hour of adventures that are sought and never found; the hour, finally, of the chaste virgin's dreams and of the venerable old man's rheumatism. And as this romantic hour glided on, the shouts and songs and quarrels of the street subsided; the lights in the ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... could not join the group that congregated to listen to Beekstein—Secretary of Education—straighten out the involved syntax or track an elusive x to its secret lair. In the afternoon he could not practice on the diamond with them, learning the trick of holding elusive flies or teaching himself to face thunderous outshoots ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... from the first to end with a paunch. But now wealth was inalienably his and Beauty could beckon him on no strange pilgrimages, his soul retraced its steps and contemplated this bright thing as an earth creature might creep to the mouth of its lair and blink at the sun. And there was more than that to it. He loved her. He had never had enough to do with pitiful things (his wife Elizabeth had been a banker's daughter), and this, child had come to him, that day in June, so white, so weak, so chilled to the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... be, was the object of extreme dread; it devoured sheep and cattle, when they came down to the water, and even young shepherd boys were missing. And the pilgrimage to the Chapel of St. Stephen, on the hill above its lair, was especially a service of danger, for pilgrims were believed to be snapped up by the dragon before they ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... flame of vengeance hurl them upward in the fog. Shattered glass and toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides, Egan of Paris, unsought by any save by me. Making his day's stations, the dingy printingcase, his three taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in, rue de la Goutte-d'Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the gone. Loveless, landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy without her outcast man, madame in rue Git-le-Coeur, canary and two buck ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... points of which other corridors diverged. The whole cliff must be honeycombed with apartments and passages of which this community occupied but a comparatively small part, so that the possibility of the more remote passages being the lair of savage beasts that have other means of ingress and egress than that used by the Band-lu filled me ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... had she taken up her abode there while the rains were falling. And now, springing nimbly from one prostrate tree-trunk to another, threading her way through verdure-covered tunnels, and pushing aside the sprouts that impeded her progress she made her way to the old lair—a great cavity in the ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... off his clothes and flinging himself on the shake-down Mrs. Kelly had provided for him, was soon wrapt in the profoundest slumber, from which he never awoke until the morning uproar of the inn aroused him. He jumped from his lair and rushed to the scene of action, to soar in the storm of his own raising; and to make it more apparent that he had been as great a sufferer as the rest, he only threw a quilt over his shoulders and did not draw on his stockings. In this plight he scaled the stairs and ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... later before he came back, with his head held high, and a tale of a lion which he had tracked to its lair and killed, at the risk of his own life. A little while earlier and his people would have welcomed his story, and believed it all, but now it ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various

... led the way down the long hall with his noiseless, gliding steps. Laurie, following close behind him, reflected that the place was exactly the sort the ophidian Shaw would choose for a lair, a long black ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan

... thrown themselves down upon the kitchen floor, and now lay in every sort of awkward attitude, stretched out or doubled up in heavy sleep. The old beldame had disappeared—doubtless she had long since sought her night lair. ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... which the Romans worshipped; hither I followed their victorious steps, and in these green hollows have I remained. Sometimes in the still noon, when the leaves of spring bud upon the whispering woods, I peer forth from my rocky lair, and startle the peasant with my strange voice and stranger shape. Then goes he home, and puzzles his thick brain with mopes and fancies, till at length he imagines me, the creature of the South! one of his northern demons, and his poets adapt the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... knock, knock! He began to have the feeling that if this frightful knocking continued it would beat its way out. Something would give way. Amidst the purposeful reverberations, his mind, like one squeezed back in the dark corner of a lair of beasts, crouched shaking and appalled. He was the father of Effie's child; he was the murderer of Effie and of her child! He was neither; but the crimes were fastened upon him as ineradicable pigment ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... strong like a young oak, a figure in harmony with the wilderness and its lonely grandeur. He seemed to fit into the scene, to share its colors, and to become its own. The look of content in his eyes, like that of a forest creature that has found a lair to suit him, made him part of it. His dress, too, matched the flush of color around him. The fur cap upon his head had been dyed the green of the grass. The darker green of the oak leaves was the tint of his hunting ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... of the paper on which my hand rests. I know I am a self, because I can pass, so to speak, between the foreground and the background of my consciousness. It is the feeling of transition that gives me the negative and positive of my circuit; and this feeling of transition, hunted to its lair, reveals itself as nothing more nor less than a motor sensation felt in the sense organs which adapt themselves to the new conditions. I look on that picture and on this, and know that they are two, because the change in the adaptation of my sense ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... man labors in his lair, and trains his telescope across a million leagues of air, among the stars to grope. He would increase the little store of knowledge we possess, and so he toils forever more, and often in distress. His whiskers and his hair are long, and in the ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... to be actively engaged during the few days he expected to pass in Sweden, accepted the proposition with eagerness. The two huntsmen, having been sent for, said that they knew the lair of an old bear they had hunted during the last winter. It was arranged, that on the next morning, they should ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... deer, wolf or bear, Pursued by hardy Indian braves, Lay low, in cunning grove or lair, And listen'd to ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young

... middle of the forest there was a dense thicket of lower growths on a piece of dry land lifted above the waters of a swamp. The place was the lair of such small wild things as still survived in the wilderness once the haunt of the wolf and the wild cat, and the resort of the bear allured by the profusion of the huckleberries which grew there. But, except in the early fall when the annual squirrel-hunt swept over the ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... themselves to be, "providential men." Whether reading the Bible by the light of the great pine fires, or burning the cabins of the Cherokees, or driving the marauding Chickamaugas into their lair at "Nick-a-Jack" cave, or beating the British at King's Mountain, these men felt themselves called of God to maintain for the ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 10. October 1888 • Various

... not into the serpent's lair, neither does the son of the Queen enter the country ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... They rose up, thick and dark, right in front of us. Our guide stopped and told us to look down. Among the gnarled gorse-stems there seemed to be a passage or "run" made by some beast, fox or badger, going to and from his lair. ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield

... Conventicles would rejoice together. MacKay would be sitting in his quarters at Elgin that night making his plans also, but not for flight, and hardly for fighting. When officers arrest an outlaw, it is not called a battle any more than when hounds run a fox to his lair. MacKay would be arranging how to trap him, anticipating his ways of escape, and stopping all the earths, so that say, to-morrow, he might be quietly taken. It would not be a surrender; it would be a capture, and he would be sent to Edinburgh ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren

... fare so well. Indeed, he had a rough time. He wandered aimlessly about over the frozen ground and could not find the slightest scrap of food. After three days, weary, paw-sore and dispirited, he came to a wolf's lair and begged for shelter. The wolf took pity on him, gave him some scraps of food, and permitted him to sleep in the lair. Doggie was most thankful, and sleeping with his ears on the alert, he heard stealthy footsteps in the night. He ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... and carnage the subsistence which Nature evidently has not intended that they should realize in communion with man. The peculiar odor of the fox is his, though in a mitigated degree. He loves to make a lair under the bushes by tearing up the turf with his teeth and paws, and to lie in it. He is of a shy and reserved disposition, and usually more lively at night than by day. These are attributes of beasts of prey. Unlike all other members of the terrier ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... "You're a lair!" declared Bostil, with a tremendous stride forward. Slone saw then how dangerous the man really was. "It was no race. Your wild hoss knocked the King off ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... honest man? Which of them will dare to meet his gaze? But what do I say? They all know the truth. They carry it in their guilty breasts; it stings their hearts like a serpent. They tremble in their lair, where doubtless they are devouring their victim; they tremble because they have heard the cries of three deluded women. What was I about to do? I was about to speak in behalf of Urbain Grandier! But what eloquence could equal that of those unfortunates? What words could better have shown you ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... in his own "den," one of the smallest rooms in the house, meant for a dressing-room, and opening off his bedroom. He had fitted it up as a nondescript lair, and indulged in ribald mirth if Ena tried to dignify it with the name of "study." All the pictures of the big animals he hadn't killed were there—beautiful wild things he felt he had the right to know socially, as he had never harmed them or their most ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... it is a splendid sight to see (For one who hath no friend, no brother there) Their rival scarfs of mixed embroidery, Their various arms that glitter in the air! What gallant war-hounds rouse them from their lair, And gnash their fangs, loud yelling for the prey! All join the chase, but few the triumph share: The Grave shall bear the chiefest prize away, And Havoc scarce for joy can ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... to the hotel sitting-room has revealed him, lying miserably on the sofa, shrouded in a filthy duvet, having been flung there at some two in the morning on his arrival, wet through, from heaven knows what tremendous walk. Subsequently we hear him being haled from his lair by the chambermaid, who treats him as the dirt under her feet (or, indeed, if we may judge by our bedroom carpet, ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... Weptst not when they brought thy slain father before thee, Trembledst not when the leaguer that lay round thy city Made a light for these windows, a noise for thy pillow? Is it lies what men told us of thy singing and laughter As thou layst in thy lair fled away from lost battle? Is it lies how ye met in the depths of the mountains, And a handful rushed down and made nought of an army? Those tales of your luck, like the tide at its turning, Trusty ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair; Forest on forest hung about his head Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. A stream went ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron

... askit the questioun at him, Quhairfoir he com to hir mair [than] ane vthir bodye? Ansuerit, Remembring hir, quhen sche was lyand in child-bed-lair, with ane of her laiddis, that ane stout woman com in to hir, and sat doun on the forme besyde hir, and askit ane drink at her, and sche gaif hir; quha alsua tauld hir, that that barne wald de, and that hir husband suld mend of his seiknes. The said Bessie ansuerit, that ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... Night as far as he prowled abroad. And at one time Slid, with the Pleiades in his hand, came nigh to the golden ball, and at another Yoharneth-Lahai, holding Orion for a torch, but lastly Limpang Tung, bearing the morning star, found the golden ball far away under the world near to the lair of Night. ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... were putting your dreams into yours, and I was not your dream hero. Then we would read to each, other what we had written. Do you remember how guardedly we read and how stealthy we were so as not to arouse suspicion or attract attention to our lair? I shall never forget those happy hours. Every line I wrote and read to you, Alix dear, was of you and FOR you. You were my heroine. My hero, feeble creature, told you how much I loved you, and ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... more plain along the broad-armed Susquehanna and her tributaries. They came, painted and plumed for the fray, with their scalp-locks waving in the air; and the frightful war-whoop echoed through the valley and died away upon the mountain top, frightening the wild beasts to their lair, as they marched towards the nearest settlements, to kindle the terror-awakening fire, and massacre and plunder the inhabitants. The war-whoop awoke the child from the cradle—the infant was torn from its mother's arms, the aged fell by ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes

... into his lair, was unhappily conscious that the girl was on the verge of tears. He puzzled over the situation for some time. His immediate instinct was to help any troubled creature, and it had dawned on him that this composed young lady who manicured her nails out of a pasteboard ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... never occurred to either of the twins that the Clouston Sacks would not meet them. They had taken it for granted from the beginning that some form of Sack, either male or female, or at least their plenipotentiary, would be on the wharf to take them away to the Sack lair, as Anna-Felicitas alluded to the family mansion. It was, they knew, in Boston, but Boston conveyed nothing to them. Only Mr. Twist knew how far away it was. He had always supposed the Sacks would meet their young charges, ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim

... rough sea-song And the throat of a salty tar, This devil-may-care, till he makes his lair By the light of ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey

... determined to try another plan—he would electrically charge the water of the lake. He hoped that this would reach the monster in his watery lair and kill him instantly. So he constructed two giant magnets and placed one on each end of the lake. Then harnessing all the electrical energy at his command he sent a tremendous current through the water with high potential, alternating it ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow

... distance, just to keep him amused. Dashing young cock-sparrows would show off before their particular hen-sparrows, and earn a cheap reputation for dare-devilry by going within so many years of Edwin's lair, and then darting away. Bob was in his favourite place on the gravel. I took him with me down to the Cob ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse

... glory;" in confusion of them that so savour [take delight in] earthly things. He that is usant [accustomed, addicted] to this sin of gluttony, he may no sin withstand, he must be in servage [bondage] of all vices, for it is the devil's hoard, [lair, lurking-place] where he hideth him in and resteth. This sin hath many species. The first is drunkenness, that is the horrible sepulture of man's reason: and therefore when a man is drunken, he hath lost his reason; and this is deadly sin. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... a chilly sense of having been forgotten and neglected by her old companion. And then, in the gloaming, just when she had lost all hope of seeing him, he had come leaping in out of the wet night, like a lion from his lair, and had taken her in his arms and kissed her before she knew ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... ancient custom, feasted publicly on a stag, which was therefore always at hand in the ditch for such a festival, in case princes or knights interfered with the city's right of chase outside, or the walls were encompassed or besieged by an enemy. This pleased us much, and we wished that such a lair for tame animals could have been ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... have been easy enough, but his imagination presently compassed the task. And when he found his way to the Deil's Den, a low stone tower on a hill some six miles from Ardrochan, his favourite occupation was that of robber baron. It would have been more proper to put the tower to its old use of a lair of a Highland cateran; but, to his shame, Tinker funked the dialect with which such a person ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson

... one place as in another. Here was an immense building, containing literally hundreds of apartments; it was like being in a rabbit-warren, a labyrinth of passages and rooms that it would take a regiment to explore. He had only to observe reasonable prudence in entering and leaving his lair to be assured against the ordinary risks of discovery, and he depended, too, upon the obvious negligence of the sentinels. It was a simple application of the principle that what is nearest to ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... who seek, with plows and hoes, to get a living out of the ground. Under this arrangement we have the spectacle of a Christian people arrayed in open hostility to those who plant Christian churches, schools and libraries on the lair of the wolf; and in alliance with the savage who coolly unjoints the feet and hands of little children, puts them in his hunting pouch as evidence of his valor, and leaves the victim to die at leisure; ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... were three of us in close proximity, and the stairway was lined with officers and attendants; but such was the death-like stillness that I could distinctly hear my own foot-fall. If it had been a wild beast slumbering in his lair that we were about to visit, there could not have been a ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... manhood-destroying character of many of the tenements in which the poor herd in our large cities. But there is a depth below that of the dweller in the slums. It is that of the dweller in the street, who has not even a lair in the slums which he can call his own. The houseless Out-of-Work is in one respect at least like Him of whom it was said, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... He will enter my palace and remove the furniture, taking my mother's legacies to his own lair—where I shall recover them all within three weeks—and his own beside! I will be maharanee ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... wishing to catch a fox, laid a bag with its mouth open, but well secured, at the entrance to a fox's den in Coed Cochion, Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd parish, and hid himself to await the result. He had seen the fox enter its lair, and he calculated that it would ere long emerge therefrom. By and by, he observed that something had entered the bag, and going up to it, he immediately secured its mouth, and, throwing the bag over his shoulder, proceeded homewards, but he had not gone far on ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... much of the game from the cabin windows, but toward the end the animals learned to fear the strange lair from whence issued the terrifying thunder ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... rise in the man's throat, and his shoulders shook. He turned slowly and looked at her for a moment over his shoulder. Then he went swiftly away across the snow (for the bobcat had disappeared into her lair) and Nan stumbled back up the trail toward the camp, the tears blinding ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... were, the kernes, to kill that fawn, And all the priests stood silent; but the Saint Put forth his hand, and o'er her signed the Cross, And, stooping, on his shoulder placed her firm, And bade the brethren mark with stones her lair Dewless and dusk: then, singing as he went "Like as the hart desires the water brooks," He walked, that hill descending. Light from God O'ershone his face. Meantime the awakened fawn Now rolled her dark eye on the silver head Close by, now turning licked the wrinkled hand, Unfearing. ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere

... across our trail just then," Frank continued; "and we made up our minds to track the beast to her lair. Where do you suppose we found it, dad, but in the big bunch of rocks that lies about ten ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson

... rather hungry, he trotted out of his lair to take a look round. The neighbouring farmers guarded their hen-roosts so carefully from his depredations that a nice fat hen was out of the question, and the weather was too cold to tempt the rabbits out of their snug warren. Therefore Mr Fox set his wits to work and kept ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... is't a fact (As wondrous facts there are) That History's scenes thou wouldst enact Beside the banks of Cher? Wilt thou for pomps like these desert Thy calm and cloistered lair, Not quite so young as once thou wert, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... changed; the face of the moon had cleared, but tatters and scuds of smoke-colored cloud fled northward, as if scourged by a stormy current too high to stir the sultry stagnation of the lower atmospheric stratum. From its vaporous lair somewhere in the cypress and palm jungles of the Mexican Gulf borders, the tempest had risen, and before its breath the shreds of cloud flew like avant couriers of disaster. Already the lurid glare of incessant sheet ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... could only know the actual that reached him over the trails of his physical senses. Sights, scents and sounds were facts to him. Those senses combined to show him that the unnatural visits were real,—that Shady actually entered the lair of a man and came back smelling strong of him. Yet when she was with him Breed felt a sense of unreality in his memories of those visits, partaking of the same vague qualities that dreams ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts

... trouble. His disaffected speech at a meeting of Atua chiefs was betrayed by the girls that made the kava, and the man of the future was called to Apia on safe-conduct, but, after an interview, suffered to return to his lair. The peculiarly tender treatment of Mataafa must be explained by his relationship to Tamasese. Laupepa was of Malietoa blood. The hereditary retainers of the Tupua would see him exiled even with some complacency. But Mataafa was Tupua himself; and Tupua men would probably have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... likit hay better," he said, pointing to this lair rather than couch, "but it's some ill to get, an' the spales they 're at han', an' they smell ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... Merrimac; the Brooklyn, the Oregon, the Texas, the Indiana, the Iowa and the Massachusetts all watching that orifice. Then black smoke rolled from the tunnels of the enemy's ships, indicating that the tiger had roused him from his lair and was making a rush for the open sea. Up went the signal on the flagstaff of the Brooklyn, "Forward—the enemy is approaching." Then engines moved; then guns thundered their volleys; then sky and sea became ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... breathing sawed the air within the walls, and a fine starlight showed through the open door, for we had no window. Outside the oak trees were pattering their leaves like rain, reminding me of our cool spring in the woods. My bandaged head was very hot, in that dark lair of animals where the log bunks stretched ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... stuck fast enough, and the helpless dam could only bellow her distress. The boys, in spite of some fear of the cow, would have gone down to extricate the calf, but at this instant Solomon roused in his lair, and took a hand ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... hearts sink to see On the earth the bloody corpses, In the path the dauntless Three: And, from the ghastly entrance Where those bold Romans stood, All shrank, like boys who unaware, Ranging the woods to start a hare, Come to the mouth of the dark lair Where, growling low, a fierce old bear ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... character and habits of the Buzzer, we will next proceed to visit the creature in his lair. This is an easy feat. We have only to walk up the communication-trench which leads from the reserve line to the firing-line. Upon either side of the trench, neatly tacked to the muddy wall by a device of the hairpin variety, run countless insulated wires, clad in coats of ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... startled the ladies of the family from their beds; but every fisherman rushed from his hut upon the shore. Christophe and Placide were galloping to Pongaudin almost before they had drawn a breath. Every beast stirred in its lair; and every bird rustled in its roost. Rapid, however, as was the spread of sound, it was too ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... what the old man bade her and drew forth from this peculiar repository—which served as a sort of lair for snuff-boxes, pill-boxes and odd bits of pastry—a large bundle of manuscripts which she recognized at the first glance. The apprehended papers, which during her illness had prevented her from ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... them in their peace, returned to the brow of the hill, and then walked slowly down the other side. He heard a woof, a sound of scrambling, and a black bear, big in frame, but yet lean from the winter, ran from its lair in the bushes, stopped a moment at fifty or sixty yards to look hard at him, and then, wheeling again in frightened flight disappeared among the trees. Henry once more laughed silently. He would not have harmed ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... knowledge of his movements, and those of two brothers named Sheares. On his warning the Castle that they were about to arouse Dublin to revolt, Camden resolved to anticipate the blow. Two police officers, Swan and Ryan, tracked Fitzgerald to his lair on the 19th of May. They found him in bed. At once the fierce spirit of his race surged up. He sprang at them with the small dagger ready by his side and struck at Swan. The blow went home, while the pistols aimed by the officers missed fire. Turning on Ryan, he dealt thrust upon thrust. The two ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... kick when he was not quick enough; nevertheless, Jurgis did not even lift his eyes—he had lived two years and a half in Packingtown, and he knew what the police were. It was as much as a man's very life was worth to anger them, here in their inmost lair; like as not a dozen would pile on to him at once, and pound his face into a pulp. It would be nothing unusual if he got his skull cracked in the melee—in which case they would report that he had been drunk and had fallen down, and there would be no one to ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... nothing. Then, little by little, it seemed as though different objects crept forward, one by one, like wild animals from their lair. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... to the lair of the mountain lion it rises; where the mighty crags, throne-like, o'ershadow the lesser woods; where the royal beast, lording it over an inferior world, stealthily prowls and lashes its angry tail at the impudence of such a disturbance in its vast domain. Its basilisk ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... here for?" he asked, his eyes looking out as tigers waiting in their lair. "All unarmed, and trusting, as I am, it is only reasonable to suppose that I come to fulfill my promise to Sir John here. He knows what that was, and he's done enough to have ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson

... to Haim some portion of the truth. For an instant he remained silent, then, burning with the most violent rage, he grasped the hand of his wife, and rushed back to their desolate home in a state akin to that of the wounded prey of the hunter, seeking its forest lair. "You," exclaimed he, frantically, "you only are the cause of this misfortune! my daughter Sol, the daughter whose sight lightened my cares, and gave joy to my existence, God knows if ever again she will return to my arms; this Moor, this Tahra ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... about one in the morning, the whiskey had overpowered my boat's crew, and the whisking myself. They made up a lair for me with abundant greatcoats in the corner of the room, and my eyes gradually closed in sleep, catching, till they were finally sealed up, every now and then, twinklings of bare legs and well-turned ankles, mingled with the clatter of heavy brogues, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... as I may term it, to smoothe down his intention of deserting me and my dear child, leaving us to be subjected to the biting scorn of the uncharitable world, and without even the nominal existence of a home that we could call our own. Again, the evil spirit of his soul has been aroused from its lair; and without a reasonable cause he pierces the very nerves of my affections with the stings of a jealous heart. A soul so sensitive as mine feels deeply the wounds he has afflicted. Oh! unfortunate ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon

... Moloch of the air! The eagle swooping from his lair On bird-world's lesser creatures, Is spoiler less intent to slay Than this unsparing Bird of Prey, With Woman's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various

... at the top of the hill, for the trade which he follows admits of no rest. Have I not said truly that he is hunted like a fox, driven from covert to covert with his poor empty craving belly? prowling about through the wet night, he returns with his prey, and finds that he is shut out from his lair; his bloodshot eye is ever over his shoulder, and his advanced foot is ever ready for a start; he stinks in the nostrils of the hounds of the law, and is held by all ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope

... forest is full of blood; well may our hands be bloody. I see flowers all the way to Vienna: but there is blood below: 0, what a depth! what a depth!—O! heart, heart!—See how he starts up from his lair!—O! your highness has deceived me! There are a ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... hands—about half an hour's work. Orion charged $50 for it—Bliss paid him $15. Thus four or five years of slaving has brought him $26, but this will doubtless be increased when he gets done lecturing and buys that "law library." Meantime his office rent has been $60 a year, and he has stuck to that lair day by day as patiently as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Room leaped to his feet, removing as he did so his hat—with the exception of les deux americains, who kept theirs on, and The Zulu, who couldn't find his hat and had been trying for some time to stalk it to its lair. La commission reacted interestingly to the Enormous Room: the captain of gendarmes looked soggily around and saw nothing with a good deal of contempt; the scented soap squinted up his face and said, "Faugh!" ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings

... tracking the dragon to his lair? Is this the aboriginal beast? Not at all, I should say. On the contrary, this is a mere side-issue, to follow which would lead us astray. The reptile-dragon was invented when men had begun to forget what the arch-dragon was; it is the product of a later stage—the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... free of fear, Creep drowsy toward his feet; His heart were heard to beat, Were any there to hear; Ah, not for ends malign, Like wild thing crouched in lair, Or watcher of a snare, But with a friend's design He ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... douanier lounged out of his little whitewashed lair, and asked for that which Terry had just said he ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... I snapped. "Let him return with what he pleases. To-day I enrol more forces from the countryside, take up the bridge and mount our cannon. This is my lair and fortress, and I'll defend it and myself as becomes my name and blood. For I am the lord and master here, and the Lord of Mondolfo is not to be dragged away thus at the heels of a Captain of Justice. You have my orders, obey ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... thanes gathered nightly to feast and to listen to the songs of his gleemen. One night, as they were all sleeping, a frightful monster, Grendel, broke into the hall, killed thirty of the sleeping warriors, and carried off their bodies to devour them in his lair under the sea. The appalling visit was speedily repeated, and fear and death reigned in the great hall. The warriors fought at first; but fled when they discovered that no weapon could harm the monster. Heorot was left deserted and silent. For twelve ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... thrice crying aloud, "To whom do these belong?" and not finding an owner, he put on his neck the rope for lifting the pot, and grasping the spits and lizard with his teeth, he laid them in his own lair, thinking, "In due season I will devour them," and then he lay down, thinking ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... holde more of the ayre and of the water (whiche ben two quelles soient, tiennent plus de lair et de leau (qui ...
— An Introductorie for to Lerne to Read, To Pronounce, and to Speke French Trewly • Anonymous

... shares at any time within four months. Although this settlement left Vanderbilt out of pocket to the extent of almost two million dollars, he consented to abandon his suits. The three now left their lair in Jersey City and transferred the Erie offices to the Grand Opera House, at Eighth avenue and Twenty-third street, New York City. In this collision with Vanderbilt, Gould learned a sharp lesson he thereafter never ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... the thunder's peal, Then soft and low through the May night doth steal; Sometimes, on joyous wing, to Heaven it soars, Sometimes, like Philomel, its woes deplores. For, oh! this a song that ne'er can die, It seeks the heart of all humanity. In the deep cavern and the darksome lair, The sea of ether o'er the realm of air, In every nook my song shall still be heard, And all creation, with sad yearning stirred, United in a full, exultant choir, Pray thee to grant the singer's fond desire. E'en when the ivy o'er my grave hath grown, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of the heart-broken thrall, Ye blood-hounds, go back to your lair; May a free northern soil soon give freedom to all, Who shall breathe in its pure mountain air. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Harp • Various

... eclipsed, but are extinguished not: Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... this warm secure turning of the human animal to the lair which it has made for itself, even into the heart of the tempestuous ocean. He can give us that curious half-psychic and half-physical thrill of being in mellow harmony with our material surroundings, even in the little cabin of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... Political Pull made fast to the Ox's head and nature took her course. The Ox was drawn, first, from the mire, and, next, from his skin. Then the Political Pull looked back upon the good fat carcase of beef that he was dragging to his lair and said, with ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... episodes of the war was the search for the Koenigsberg, lost after she had destroyed the Pegasus and done much damage in the Indian Ocean. She was discovered in a most secluded branch of the Rufiji River, and ultimately destroyed by seaplanes and monitors in her impenetrable lair. Yet, though destroyed, she made her voice heard over all that vast country, for her ten big naval guns, each pulled by teams of four hundred stalwart natives, accompanied the enemy armies in all directions, and, with other naval guns and howitzers smuggled ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... Goim[17] fell with Lul-lu-bu,[18] Thus Khar-sak-kal-a-ma[19] all Eridu[20] O'erran with Larsa's allies; Subartu With Duran[21] thus was conquered by these sons Of mighty Shem and strewn was Accad's bones Throughout her plains, and mountains, valleys fair, Unburied lay in many a wolf's lair. Oh, where is Accad's chieftain Izdubar, Her ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... January. The Russian commander, outnumbered by the French, retired to his fortified camp at Heilsberg. After sustaining a bloody repulse in an attack upon this position, Napoleon drew Bennigsen from his lair by marching straight upon Koenigsberg. Bennigsen supposed himself to be in time to deal with an isolated corps; he found himself face to face with the whole forces of the enemy at Friedland, accepted battle, and was unable to save his army from a severe and decisive defeat (June ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... to just what the telephone would not do. Terry was gone, was already at the fork of the roads, turning northward, hasting alone on a forty-mile drive over lonely roads and into the very lair of the old mountain-lion ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... and the den affair, And other stories rich and rare, Were writ to make old doctrine wear Something of a romantic air: That the Nain widow's only heir, And Lazarus with cadaverous glare (As done in oils by Piombo's care) Did not return from Sheol's lair: That Jael set a fiendish snare, That Pontius Pilate acted square, That never a sword cut Malchus' ear And (but for shame I must forbear) That — — did not reappear! . . . - Since thus they hint, nor turn a hair, All churchgoing will I forswear, ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy

... have dreamed it—there's nothing out there. I killed them all before daybreak—I hoked them out of their lair; I cut off a hundred heads with a single stroke of my sword, And then I danced on their graves and carried ...
— The Green Helmet and Other Poems • William Butler Yeats

... displayed Stands scoffing through the never-opened gate, Which nothing through its bars admits, save day, And tasteless food, which I have eat alone Till its unsocial bitterness is gone; And I can banquet like a beast of prey, Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave Which is my lair, and—it may be—my grave. All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear, But must be borne. I stoop not to despair; 20 For I have battled with mine agony, And made me wings wherewith to overfly The narrow circus of my dungeon wall, And freed the Holy Sepulchre from ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... were lying on the crests of Erymanthus when Hercules came upon the tracks of the wild creature, and following patiently finally reached his lair. There the boar stood, his tusks pointed outward ready for attack, his eyes snapping vindictively. He was indeed ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... No shed, no tree; He totters to his lair— A den that sick hands dug in earth Ere ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... laid along the waters of the Cumberland, the lair of moonshiner and feudsman. The knight is a moonshiner's son, and the heroine a beautiful girl perversely christened "The Blight." Two impetuous young Southerners fall under the spell of "The Blight's" charms and she learns what a large part jealousy and pistols have in the ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... excavation, pit, perforation, rent, fissure, opening, aperture, delve, cache, concavity, mortise, puncture, orifice, eyelet, crevice, loophole, interstice, gap, spiracle, vent, bung, pothole, manhole, scuttle, scupper, muset, muse; cave, holt, den, lair, retreat, cover, hovel, burrow. Antonyms: imperforation, closure. Associated words: auger, drill, gimlet, bodkin, bore, bit, puncture, perforate, pink, awl, stylet, imperforable, imperforate, punch, wimble, pierce, eyeleteer, dibble, plug, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... and led off to the lair of that hardened cynic, the Medical Officer. Here he is put through some simple visual tests. He soon finds himself out of his depth. It is extremely difficult to feign either myopia, hypermetria, or astigmatism if you are not acquainted with the necessary symptoms, ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... tremendous. Especially the bosom gives me a feeling of faintness and aversion I cannot express. The female breast looks made for the temple of sweet and chaste thoughts, while this is so formed as to remind you of the lioness in her lair, and suggest a word which I will ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... scurried across the plain, with the wind in my face, not unpleasantly, I had some dim consciousness of somebody unknown flying after me headlong. My first idea was that Harold Tillington had hunted me down and tracked me to my lair; but gazing back, I saw my pursuer was a tall and ungainly man, with a straw-coloured moustache, apparently American, and that he was following me on his machine, closely watching my action. He had such a cunning expression on his face, and seemed ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... in office beware The swift retribution that waits upon crime, When the lion, RESISTANCE, shall leap from his lair, With a fury that ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... lakes that lay beyond and of the great forest, stretching, for all they knew, thousands of miles to the great ocean. The bushes and their blankets protected them from the cold winds, and it was so dark that no enemy could trail them to their lair. Moreover the five were there, intact, and they had the company of one ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... mid-afternoon siesta in his office when Captain Matt Peasley appeared at the counter of the general office and, without awaiting an invitation to enter, swung through the office gate and made straight for Cappy's office. En route he had to pass through Mr. Skinner's lair, and the general manager looked up ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... in some darksome lair In iron chains is bound, While puddin'-snatchers on him fare, And eat him ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay

... crystal Air, Daughter of sweet Mystery! Here is one has need of thee; Lead him to thy secret lair, Myrtle brings he for thy hair— Hear ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... royal measure; With our spears so burning and sharp, we cut off the necks of your Arabs, O, Shepherd of Obaid, you fled deserting your pastures, Biting your finger in pain and regret for your sad disasters— Savage hyena, come forth, from your lair in the land of Jedaileh, Howl to your fellow-beasts, in the distant land of Butina; Come and eat your fill of the dead in the Plain of Fada, O, fair and beautiful plain, you belong to the tribe of the victor; But ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup

... not yet fired against the enemy. For many months the gunners had drilled in England, and they had tried their "eight-inch hows" out on the target range and brought them across the Channel and nursed them along French roads, and finally set them up in their hidden lair. Now they waited for observers to assist ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... were accompanied by the dogs. A dead silence continued for upwards of half-an-hour; everyone listening for the slightest noise, but nothing was heard. The buffalo continues a long time frequently without betraying his lair; but at the end of the half-hour we heard the repeated barking of the dogs, and the shouts of the hunters: the animal was aroused from his cover. He defended himself for some time against the dogs, till at length, becoming furious, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere



Words linked to "Lair" :   habitation



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