Free translatorFree translator
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Leech   Listen
noun
Leech  n.  
1.
A physician or surgeon; a professor of the art of healing. (Written also leach) (Archaic) "Leech, heal thyself."
2.
(Zool.) Any one of numerous genera and species of annulose worms, belonging to the order Hirudinea, or Bdelloidea, esp. those species used in medicine, as Hirudo medicinalis of Europe, and allied species. Note: In the mouth of bloodsucking leeches are three convergent, serrated jaws, moved by strong muscles. By the motion of these jaws a stellate incision is made in the skin, through which the leech sucks blood till it is gorged, and then drops off. The stomach has large pouches on each side to hold the blood. The common large bloodsucking leech of America (Macrobdella decora) is dark olive above, and red below, with black spots. Many kinds of leeches are parasitic on fishes; others feed upon worms and mollusks, and have no jaws for drawing blood. See Bdelloidea. Hirudinea, and Clepsine.
3.
(Surg.) A glass tube of peculiar construction, adapted for drawing blood from a scarified part by means of a vacuum.
Horse leech, a less powerful European leech (Haemopis vorax), commonly attacking the membrane that lines the inside of the mouth and nostrils of animals that drink at pools where it lives.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Leech" Quotes from Famous Books



... has broken out," he feebly laughed, pretending to misunderstand. Then, "Oh, you mean the sword cut. 'Twould never open after it has been dressed by so fair a leech." ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... maid with a cheek like a peach, like a peach, That is waiting for you in the church;— But he clings to your side like a leech, like a leech, And you leave your lost ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... So cup-and-leech-Mother Taraldsen went on, saying that the girls stood poking their heads out of every single gate the whole way up the street; she saw it so well when she came home from ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... brings, in Clouds involv'd; and brews Th' extracted Liquor with Ambrosian Dews, And od'rous Panacee: Unseen she stands, Temp'ring the Mixture with her heav'nly Hands: And pours it in a Bowl, already crown'd With Juice of medc'nal Herbs, prepared to bathe the Wound. The Leech, unknowing of superior Art, Which aids the Cure, with this foments the Part; And in a Moment ceas'd the raging Smart. Stanched is the Blood, and in the bottom stands: The Steel, but scarcely touched with tender Hands, Moves up, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... like a leech, old man! The day one raiding lashkar gets command of the Khyber's throat, the others'll all believe they've won the game. Nothing'll stop 'em then! Look out for traps. Smash 'em on sight. But don't follow up ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... ask the high-priest to send the best leech for outward wounds immediately to the child. But where is the house of the paraschites Pinem? I ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... heeled over. The decks were aslant. A tin pannikin rolled down the inclined plane, rattling and banging. From above came the slapping of canvas and the quivering rat-tat-tat of the after leech of the loosely stretched foresail. Then the mate's voice sang down the hatch, "All hands on deck ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London

... were suffering from wounds more or less severe. The following morning their bonds were unloosed, and their wounds carefully attended to by a leech. Then water and food were offered to them, and of these, following Beric's example, they partook heartily. An hour later they were placed in the centre of a strong guard, and then fell in with the troops who were formed up to escort Suetonius ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... had been immense. Prolonged marches, great anxiety, sleeping on wet ground, being frequently soaked to the skin by heavy rains, all these things had told upon him, and now that the necessity for exertion was over, a sort of low fever seized him, and he was forced to take to his bed. The leech whom Harry called in told him that Jacob needed rest and care more than medicine. He gave him, however, cooling drinks, and said that when the fever passed he would need strengthening ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... from various disturbances, the principal of which occur in the neighbourhood of Coleford, extending in a line from Worcester Lodge to Berry Hill, and is marked on the surface by a succession of pools, named Howler's Well, Leech Pool, Crabtree Pool, Hooper's Pool, and Hall's Pool. Mr. Buddle describes the width as varying from 170 to 340 yards in the most defined part, called by the colliers the "Horse," and the dislocations adjoining, the "Lows." "It is not," he remarks, "what geologists term ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... le Colonel had not been fasting, the shock must have killed him," pronounced the leech. "He was over-tired, and that saved him," and with a few directions as to the patient's treatment, he went to prepare a composing draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the next morning, but the doctor had insisted on sitting ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... wrecked. The government should suppress these eminently respectable gambling games. They have caused more sorrow, destitution and crime than all the cards and dice this side of the dark dominion of the devil. The horse-leech's daughters should be pulled off the body politic. Not only should the government suppress these shameless skin games which collect gold and distribute copper, but it should supply life insurance to heads of families at cost and make it compulsory. It should be an offense ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... lapis had appeared, Blest leech! to Phoebus'-self endeared Beyond all men below; On whom the fond, indulgent God His augury had fain bestowed, His lyre-his sounding bow! But he, the further to prolong A fellow creature's span, The humbler art of Medicine chose, The knowledge of each ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... the retirement of Assistant-Surgeon Haggarty from the 120th, where he was replaced by Assistant-Surgeon Angus Rothsay Leech, a Scotchman, probably; with whom I have not the least acquaintance, and who has nothing whatever to do with this ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Pasi or Bahelia caste of hunters and fowlers. Mr. Crooke [32] writes of them: "All their traditions connect them with the Pasis and Parasurama, the sixth Avatara of Vishnu. One story runs that Parasurama was bathing in the sea, when a leech bit his foot and caused it to bleed. He divided the blood into two parts; out of one part he made the first Pasi and out of the second the first Arakh. Another story is that the Pasis were made out of the sweat (pasina) ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... up," said Ellis, "for I shall be a precious long time at those curls of Corwen's and those expressive brown eyes. Shoni, I know, will stick to me like a leech, but you and Valmai, I expect, will ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine

... that long ago I had studied for a time with a leech, and that I was somewhat used to care of the sick. "Then you are my man!" quoth the master, and forthwith took me to the Admiral. I became ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... information: there are five portages above Aitkin, as follows: first, into the western gulf of Lake Cass, saving six miles; second, Little Winnipeg Lake into a stream leading to the Ball Club Lake (missing the great tributary Leech Lake River); third, at White Oak Point, below the Eagle's Nest Savannah; fourth, Pokegama Falls, a carry of two hundred yards on the left bank (a necessity); and fifth, a cut-off above Swan River, saving six miles. This last was the only portage (except the falls) made by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... expressions of regret, that Damian gave himself too little rest, considering his early youth, slept too little, and indulged in too restless a disposition—that his health was suffering—and that a learned Jewish leech, whose opinion had been taken, had given his advice that the warmth of a more genial climate was necessary to restore his constitution to ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... motioned him to a seat between us, and then uncovering my limb, desired him to examine it. The leech gazed intently from me to Toby, and then proceeded to business. After diligently observing the ailing member, he commenced manipulating it; and on the supposition probably that the complaint had deprived the leg of all sensation, began to ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... hath willed: Else had he spared the leech Asclepius, skilled To bring man from the dead: the hand divine Did smite himself with death—a warning ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... back from the pursuit of the strange boat by the creaking of the davits, and arrived at the Lancashire Queen just as the Italians were lowering their skiff. Another night, fully half a dozen skiffs rowed around us in the darkness, but we held on like a leech to the side of the ship and frustrated their plan till they grew angry and showered us with abuse. Charley laughed to himself in ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London

... (Figure 2.362). Other vessels grow into the body-wall and ramify in order to convey blood to it. In addition to the two large vessels of the middle plane there are often two lateral vessels, one to the right and one to the left; as, for instance, in the leech. There are four of these parallel longitudinal vessels in the Enteropneusts (Balanoglossus, Figure 2.245). In these important Vermalia the foremost section of the gut has already been converted into a gill-crate, and the vascular arches ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel

... him, and these fears were realized when upon the morrow Gregory awoke on fire with the fever. They summoned a leech from Sheringham, and this cunning knave, with a view to adding importance to the cure he was come to effect, and which in reality presented no alarming difficulty, shook his head with ominous gravity, and whilst promising to do "all that his skill permitted," ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... contempt and wonder for those who counsel you to resist the word of Rome, whilst yet one Roman draws his breath. You have acted lightly, and by reason of vanity have wrought mischief to us who are the front and avengers of the world. You resemble a blind man, whose eyes the leech prepares to open. You know not yet, but very soon you will have learned, the presumption of him who teaches law to the justice of Rome. It is not enough to say that you have acted after your kind, ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... (branch-) runes thou must know, if thou a leech wouldst be, and wounds know how to heal. On the bark they must be graven, and on the leaves of trees, of ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson

... not I concerning thee—in proof whereof do I now lead thee to the best leech I know—one who brought me back from death's door, when through thee, if not by thy hand, I was sore wounded. With her, as my prisoner, I shall leave thee. Seek not to make thy escape, lest, being a witch, as they saw of her, she chain thee up in alabaster. When thou ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... confessions five other women—"the old beldam" Anne West, who had "been suspected as a witch many yeers since, and suffered imprisonment for the same,"[12] her daughter Rebecca,[13] Anne Leech, her daughter Helen Clarke, and Elizabeth Gooding—were arrested. As in the case of the first, there was soon abundance of evidence offered about them. One Richard Edwards bethought himself and remembered that while crossing a bridge ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... ear to the nearest church and marry him," Lucille would reply; or—"Stick to him like a leech for evermore, Auntie"; or—"Marry him when he isn't looking, or while he's asleep, if he's ill—or by the scruff of his ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... healed. It is bad policy to remove leeches forcibly in spite of the temptation to do so. The application of salt or tobacco juice makes them drop off, and the wounds are less severe, but few persons have the patience to wait after discovering a leech. The animal is not easily killed. The Dayaks always remove it with the sword edge and immediately ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... the king's own leech prescribes for him, and the chief priests repair daily to his palace to pray for his safe deliverance, and sprinkle him with consecrated waters and anoint him with consecrated oils. Should he die, all Siam is ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... some explanation, she could not understand how it was she did not pull away the hand to which Ilyin was clinging like a leech, and why, like Ilyin, she hastily glanced to right and to left to see whether any one was looking. The clouds and the pines stood motionless, looking at them severely, like old ushers seeing mischief, but bribed not to tell the school authorities. The sentry stood like a post ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Borneo, where for four Spanish dollars I became the proud possessor of a three-year old male. No sooner was the struggling animal deposited in the bottom of my own boat than it savagely seized the calf of my devoted leg and endeavored to bite therefrom a generous cross section. My leggings and my leech stockings saved my life. That implacable little beast never gave up; and two days later it ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... right to your own opinion, my lad," said Shaddy quietly, "but I suppose you believe that if you dabbled your legs in the water a leech might fix on you and suck ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... had been confined in this country to the richer class of smokers, but when he wrote it was "in universal use." The wonder is that with so many men smoking cigars the old domestic and club restrictions, as pilloried in Thackeray's pages, were maintained so long. In 1853 Leech had an admirably drawn sketch in Punch of paterfamilias, in the absence of his wife, giving a little dinner. Beside him sits his small son, and on either side of the table sit two of his cronies. One has a cigar in his hand and is blowing a cloud of smoke, while the other is selecting a "weed." ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... streams, in the same country even, you will find the trout to be quite different to each other and easily recognisable by those who fish in the particular streams. There is the same differences in leeches; leech collectors can easily point out to you the differences and the peculiarities which you yourself would probably pass by; so with fresh-water mussels; so, in fact, with every animal ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... external parasites which attach themselves to the skin of the legs and adjacent parts of the horse, and the Haemopis Sanguisuga, and others of this class, which, not being able to penetrate the skin, endeavor to enter the mouth or nostrils of the horse when he is drinking or grazing in wet and leech-infected pastures. They sometimes cling to the mucous membrane of the eyes. The horse leech, which lives in the water, usually gains access to the mouth and nostrils of the animal, when young and not more than ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... passenger in the Emanuel, otherwise called the Busse of Bridgewater, wherein Iames Leech was Master, one of the ships in the last Voyage of Master Martin Frobisher 1578. concerning the discouerie of a great Island in their way homeward the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... passions Can divert him, by her charms Curing him of all his sadness, Shall become his wife, how humble Her estate, her wealth how scanty. And if this be not sufficient, I will give a golden talent Yearly to the leech who cures him By some happy stroke ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... after the doctor asked for his fee of the husband, who answered that truly he was deaf, and so was not able to understand what the tenour of his demand might be. Whereupon the leech bedusted him with a little, I know not what, sort of powder, which rendered him a fool immediately, so great was the stultificating virtue of that strange kind of pulverized dose. Then did this fool of a husband and his mad wife join together, and, falling on the doctor and the surgeon, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... again. I see I don't even know the A B C of this business. In the old days the leech was a physician. You don't mean I'm to ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... too all Statesmen of dulness, ma tear, Tho' the case vas as desperate as poor Mister VAN'S. Dere is noting at all vat dis Pill vill not reach— Give the Sinecure Ghentleman van little grain, Pless ma heart, it vill act, like de salt on de leech, And he'll throw de pounds, shillings, and pence, up again! Vill nobodies try ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... Wordsworth’s poem, “The Daffodils”—“dancing daffodils, ten thousand, as he says, in high dance in the breeze beside the river, whose waves dance with them, and the poet’s heart, we are told, danced too.” She deemed this unnatural writing, and mentions some of his verses she liked, notably the “Leech-Gatherer.” If he had written nothing else, that composition might stamp him, she thought, a poet of no common powers. Lovers of poetry generally, however, think “The Daffodils” one of the ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin

... cold complains. "'Tis very good," the doctor said; "He has but to remain in bed, And take the med'cines I shall send, The thing will soon be at an end." When next the question was repeated, The man complain'd he much was heated; "This," cried the leech, "is better still!" And thus to each increasing ill, "That it was going well," he cried, Till the poor martyr ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park

... said either as to their crime or their condition. He belonged to a peculiar class,—one that grows larger and larger each year in New York and which has imitators in every large city in this country. It is a set which lives, like the leech, upon the blood of others,—that draws its life from the veins of foolish men and immoral women, that prides itself upon its well-dressed idleness and has no shame in its voluntary pauperism. Each member of the class knows every other, his methods and his limitations, and their ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... publishers,—Bradbury and Evans,—who nursed and resuscitated it at the critical moment. Well-known contributors to the letter-press have been Jerrold, Albert Smith, a Beckett, Hood, and Thackeray; whilst Henning, Leech, Meadows, Browne, Forrester, Gilbert, and Doyle have acted as designers. Of these men of letters and art, Lemon and Leech, it is said, alone remain; some of the others broke off their connection with the work at different periods, and some have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... herself in her mother's arms, and answered with a voice half suffocated with her sobs: "Do not ask me to tell you what the priest has said—it is so shameful that I can not repeat it—His words have stuck to my heart as the leech put upon the arm of my little ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy

... an attendant elicited that Philippe had just dropped asleep under the influence of a potion from his leech. ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that rang to heaven: it might have entered into the music of Jubal's lyre, or have glorified the timbrel of Miriam. All the rest, tried by the deep standard of my own feeling, that clamors for the impassioned in music, even as the daughter of the horse-leech says, 'Give, give,' is as much without meaning as most of the Hebrew chanting that I heard at the Liverpool synagogue. I advise Mr. Murray, in the event of his ever reviving the 'Antigone,' to make the chorus sing the Hundredth Psalm, rather than Mendelssohn's ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... the grub that makes its own way into the storeroom, that same grub which we have seen draining the Chalicodoma with its leech-like kisses? Let us call the creature to mind: a little oily sausage, which stretches and curls up just where it lies, without being able to shift its position. Its body is a smooth cylinder; its mouth simply a circular lip. Not one ambulatory organ does it possess; not even hairs, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... manufacture out of very trite materials a sort of snap-dragon wit, which flares up in an instant, is as soon out, and generally burns somebody's fingers. It may be urged on the contrary that many celebrated wits as Mathews, Leech, and others, have been melancholy men. But despondency is often found in an excitable temperament which is not unfavourable to humour, for the man who is unduly depressed at one moment is likely to be immoderately elated at another. Old Hobbes ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... the sad enclosure of the vindictive thunder: it is evident that he is mad, and like a bear that has burst through the gates closing his den, this unmerciful rehearser chases the learned and unlearned. And whomsoever he seizes, he fastens on and assassinates with recitation: a leech that will not quit the skin, till satiated ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace

... of this cunning maneuver may be foreseen. The old gentleman paid a large sum of money to the "injured" husband on the condition that he would withdraw the legal proceedings against his wife. When the money had been spent, the leech again renewed his black-mailing effort, and with success, although the respectable gentleman had been guilty of no further crime than the indiscretion of accepting the woman's invitation to step inside for a minute or two. With the second payment, however, he obtained a promise from ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... the right position to lay up in the vacant space left in the cringle; when done, the one end will hang down inside the right hand eyelet hole and the other end outside the left hand one; the ends are then hitched by being rove through their respective eyelet holes and passed over the leech rope and under their own part, one hitch being towards you and the other from you; then take the ends down under one strand on the right and two on the left of cringle nearest to it; then tuck the ends under the first two strands nearest the hitch, heaving them well in place; the cringle is ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum

... ran towards him, and tried to pull him away from the leech-like suckers. She snapped two of these tentacles, and their sap ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... unto Sir Tristram and said: Fair nephew, I am sorry of your hurts. Gramercy my lord, said Sir Tristram. Then King Mark made Sir Tristram to be put in an horse bier in great sign of love, and said: Fair cousin, I shall be your leech myself. And so he rode forth with Sir Tristram, and brought him to a castle by daylight. And then King Mark made Sir Tristram to eat. And then after he gave him a drink, the which as soon as he had drunk he fell asleep. And when it was night he made him to be carried to another ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... will neither be your crimped pinners, Mrs. Lilias, (speaking of them with due respect,) nor my silver hair, or golden chain, that will fill up the void which Roland Graeme must needs leave in our Lady's leisure. There will be a learned young divine with some new doctrine—a learned leech with some new drug—a bold cavalier, who will not be refused the favour of wearing her colours at a running at the ring—a cunning harper that could harp the heart out of woman's breast, as they say Signer David Rizzio did to our ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... away was the Rosan, and to the southward of her the Herring Bone with mean old Jed Martin aboard. Bijonah Tanner had tried his best to shake Martin, but the hard-fisted old skipper, knowing and recognizing Tanner's "nose" for fish, had clung like a leech and profited by ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... honey from plants.[253] He should act like the keeper of a cow who draws milk from her without boring her udders and without starving the calf. The king should (in the matter of taxes) act like the leech drawing blood mildly. He should conduct himself towards his subjects like a tigress in the matter of carrying her cubs, touching them with her teeth but never piercing them therewith. He should behave like a mouse which ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... the art of healing (as Paracelsus declares) was chiefly in the hands of witches and public executioners. Torturers, chiefly clergymen such as Grillandus, were in great honour, while the healing leech was disreputable. It was not, as people say, "the age" which caused all this—it was the result of religion based on crucifixion and martyrdoms and pain—in fact, on that element of torture which we are elsewhere taught, most inconsistently, is the special province of the devil in hell. ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... countenance and protection?—He daily bestows his greatest kindness on the undeserving and the worthless—assure him, that I bring ample documents of meritorious demerits! Pledge yourself for me, that, for the glorious cause of Lucre, I will do anything, be anything—but the horse-leech of private oppression, or the vulture ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... could be, lots and lots of them. And—Merton doesn't half do Saladin. He keeps getting mad when I run him through the body, and I can't make him understand that I don't mean those nasty, fat, black things in ponds, when I call him 'learned leech,' and you know he has to be the leech, it says so in the 'Talisman.' And so perhaps you would be Saladin, and he can be Sir Kenneth, though he's too sneaky for him, too. Or else you could be the hermit, Cousin ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards

... "the cocks are crowing a merry midnight," as in the ballad, the sleepless patient wishes he could make off as quietly and quickly as the ghostly sons of the "Wife of Usher's Well." Dogs delight to bark in the country more than in town. Leech's picture of the unfortunate victim who left London to avoid noise, and found that the country was haunted by Cochin-China cocks, illustrates the still repose of the rural life. Nervous people, on the whole, are in a minute minority. ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... laughed. 'That comes of looking at one of Mahbub's horses. He's a regular old leech, Padre. Wait, then, if thou hast so much time to spare, Mahbub. Now I'm at your service, Padre. Where is the boy? Oh, he's gone off to collogue with Mahbub. Queer sort of boy. Might I ask you to send ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... to be set so as to take every advantage of the wind, in addition to our steam-power, the old barquey prancing away full speed ahead, with her topsails and fore canvas bellied out to their utmost extent, their leech lifting occasionally with a flicker as she outran the breeze and the clew-gallant blocks rattling as the sheets slackened and grew taut again, while the wind hummed through the canvas aloft like a thousand bees buzzing ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... ago, I went with John Leech to admire Robson in The Porter's Knot, and when that pathetic little drama was over, and the actor had stirred our souls with pity, an undergraduate in the stalls before us turned to his companion, as the curtain fell, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... Meanwhile the leech had visited good Marcus Bork, who was much easier after his wounds were dressed, and promised to do well, to the great joy of their Graces; and Dinnies Kleist went to the stable to see after his horse, there being ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... Not him who stanched my husband, but another We have no time: send for a leech, I say: There is an antidote against each poison, And he will sell it if we give him money. Tell him that I will give him Padua, For one short hour of life: I will not die. Oh, I am sick to death; no, do not touch me, This poison gnaws my heart: I did not know ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde

... bridge wreck. He was paddling himself along with arms and legs hung over the sides of the plank. We all gave him a cheer, and then started out to have some fun with him. We tried to pull him off his raft, but he stuck on like a leech. It was only when we made his craft turn turtle that Dutchy got his head under water. But it wasn't a moment before he scrambled back on top again, gasping and sputtering to get the water out of his nose ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond

... thrust in, and the Queen would have it so. We will walk here in the court till we hear what he saith of her. How befell it, dost thou ask? Truly I can hardly tell, but I believe one of the Frenchmen's horses got restless either with a fly or with standing so long to hear yonder leech's discourse. He must needs cut the beast with his rod, and so managed to hit White Posy, who starts aside, and Cis, sitting unheedfully on that new-fangled French saddle, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... strict character, and in part of their manners, deficient as above noticed) were nearly always readable—and sometimes very amusing—even to those who are not exactly Nimrods: and they were greatly commended to others still by the admirable illustrations of Leech. There is not a little sound sport in Kingsley and afterwards in Anthony Trollope: while the novels of Frank Smedley, Frank Fairlegh (1850), Lewis Arundel (1852), and Harry Coverdale's Courtship (1855), mix a good deal more of it with ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... Lobourne was the medical attendant, who, with head-shaking, and gathering of lips, and reminiscences of ancient arguments, guaranteed to do all that leech could do in the matter. The old doctor did admit that Richard's constitution was admirable, and answered to his prescriptions like a piano to the musician. "But," he said at a family consultation, for Sir Austin had told him how it stood ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Shelley. In her last phase, she reminds us rather of the authors of Far from the Madding Crowd and The Mill on the Floss, and of Wordsworth, once, too, a torch of revolution, turning to his Michaels and his leech-gatherers and his Peter Bells. Her exquisite pictures of pastoral life are idealizations of it; her representations of the peasant are not corroborated by Zola's; to the last she approaches the shield of human nature ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... resources. To-morrow he would not especially need that dime. He had a job. He would begin to draw pay. In his own phrasing he would "buy him a square meal and rent him a room somewhere." Upon these two prospects his brain fastened with a leech-like persistency. And yet above anything he had faced in his life he dreaded the job and the room. The inspiration of his flight, the impulse that had sped him out of Millings like a fire-tipped arrow, that determination to find Sheila, to rehabilitate himself ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... glare and stare, with life increasing, And leech-like eyebrows, arching in; Be, if ye must, my fate unceasing, But never hope a fear ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... at the time; nor, indeed, to any one else. But later he took it to a very private market of his own, the breakfast-room of a sunny and secluded house far uptown, where lived, in an aroma of the domestic virtues, a benevolent-looking old gentleman who combined the attributes of the ferret, the leech, and the vulture in his capacity as editor of that famous weekly publication, The Searchlight. Ives did not sell in that mart; he traded for other information. This time he wanted something about Judge Willis Enderby, for he was far enough on the inside politically to see in him a looming ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... crackers and {warez d00dz}, one who consumes knowledge without generating new software, cracks, or techniques. BBS culture specifically defines a leech as someone who downloads files with few or no uploads in return, and who does not contribute to the message section. Cracker culture extends this definition to someone (a {lamer}, usually) who constantly presses informed sources ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... it were a holy man—the heathen devil! He went to the burgh-gate, where the king lay in chamber, and greeted the door-keeper with God's greeting; and bade him in haste go into the king, and say to him in sooth, that Uther his brother had sent him thither a good leech; the best leech that dwelt in any land, that ever any sick man out of sickness can bring. Thus he lied, the odious man, to the monarch, for Uther was gone forth with his army, nor ever him saw Uther, nor thither him ...
— Brut • Layamon

... when all at once the mast swung through a huge arc; the canvas came with tremendous force against the cross trees, and Desmond, flung violently outwards, found himself swinging in midair, clinging desperately to the leech of the sail. With a convulsive movement he grasped at a loose gasket above him, and catching a grip, wound it twice or thrice round his arm. The strain was intense; the gasket was thin and cut deeply into the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... Barbara. "Except Ruth's music, there isn't a specialty among us; we haven't any views; we're on the mean-spirited side of the Woman Question; 'all woman, and no question,' as mother says; we shall never preach, nor speech, nor leech; we can't be magnificent, and we won't be common! I don't see what is to become of us, unless—and I wonder if maybe that isn't it?—we just do two or three rather right things in a no-particular sort of ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... drove his sheep to the banks of the river Amphrysus, and there he sat to watch them browse. The country folk that passed drew near to wonder at him, without daring to ask questions. He seemed to have a knowledge of leech-craft, and knew how to cure the ills of any wayfarer with any weed that grew near by; and he would pipe for hours in the sun. A simple-spoken man he was, yet he seemed to know much more than he would say, and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... hammock and saw it much stained with blood. "There," said he, thrusting his foot out of the hammock, "see how these infernal imps have been drawing my life's blood." On examining his foot I found the vampire had tapped his great toe: there was a wound somewhat less than that made by a leech; the blood was still oozing from it; I conjectured he might have lost from ten to twelve ounces of blood. Whilst examining it, I think I put him into a worse humour by remarking that a European surgeon would not have been so generous as ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... rehearsal next week, and I must live near the theatre. And then, too—well, you know, since I've made up my mind, it's best to clean the slate even in respect of one's dwelling-place. Memories stick, stick like a leech; and they raise emotions of a slightly disturbing character sometimes. I am sure of myself; and yet I know it's safest to make a clean sweep of whatever reminds me of all the forbidden dear damned lot. I regret nothing—don't imagine that. I'm keen on my work. The artist, after all, is the strongest ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... He made thereat the sun, this isle, Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing. Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech; Yon auk, one fire-eye, in a ball of foam, That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm, And says a plain ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... and the whole of her canvas was clewed up and hauled down together, man-o'-war fashion. And thus, with her jibs and stay-sails hauled down, and her square canvas gathered close up to her yards by the buntlines and leech-lines, she swerved slightly from her previous course and headed straight for us, still sliding fast through the water with the "way" or momentum remaining to her, and just sufficient to ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... spite of the leech's prescription Ephraim continued restless. Sometimes Kasana's image rose before his eyes, increasing the fever of his over-heated blood, sometimes he recalled the counsel to become a warrior like his uncle. The advice seemed wise—at least he tried to persuade himself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the tiny foam-beads rise, His back gleams bright above the brine, And the wake-line foam behind him lies. But the water-sprites are gathering near To check his course along the tide; Their warriors come in swift career And hem him round on every side: On his thigh the leech has fixed his hold, The quad's long arms are round him rolled, The prickly prong has pierced his skin, And the squab has thrown his javelin, The gritty star has rubbed him raw, And the crab has struck with his giant claw. He howls ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... here; as I was turning over this bit of flat tile I saw in the water I found a creature something like a leech, and on raising it up I saw what looks like a quantity of the animal's eggs, and she seems to be sitting upon them as a hen upon her eggs." All right, Jack; let me look, I dare say it is one of the snail-leeches. Yes, to be sure it is, and here ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton

... Fort Deer Creek Fond du Lac Grand Portage Leech Lake Mdewakanton Mille Lac Red Lake Vermillion Lake White Earth White ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman

... Dr. Brunton as a leech or mosquito fastens on fresh blood: this was an entirely new listener, and he felt free to tell his very oldest stories without a lurking suspicion that he had told them before. And Dr. Brunton enjoyed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... utterly impossible to get near enough to throw a harpoon. When we had approached somewhat closely, we discovered that it had been attacked by a killer fish, which was fully twenty feet long, and stuck to it like a leech. The monster's struggles were made in trying to shake itself free of this tremendous enemy, but it could not accomplish this. The killer held him by the under jaw, and hung on there, while the whale threw himself ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne

... see. It's a tricky place. I shall never forget the look of relief on that old fellow's face at sight of me. I believe he thinks to this day that I saved his life. He stuck to me like a leech all the way through the further caves and till we ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... implicitly believed; Love, when he comes wandering like a lost angel to our door, is at once admitted, welcomed, embraced. His quiver is not seen; if his arrows penetrate, their wound is like a thrill of new life. There are no fears of poison, none of the barb which no leech's hand can extract. That perilous passion—an agony ever in some of its phases; with many, an agony throughout—is believed to be an unqualified good. In short, at eighteen the school of experience is to be entered, and her humbling, crushing, grinding, but yet purifying ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... feel, and I do not wonder; but for your own sake, in order to keep your mind clear and strong for your vindication, you certainly ought to take care of your health. Starvation is the surest leech for depleting soul and body. Do you want to die here in prison, leaving your name tarnished, and smirched with suspicion of crime, when you can live to proclaim your innocence to the world? Remember that even if you care nothing for your life, you ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... was borne to the royal pavilion, and placed upon the imperial couch. The most skilful leech was summoned; he examined the wound, but shook his head. The dying warrior was himself sensible of his desperate condition. His agony could only be alleviated by withdrawing the javelin, which would occasion his immediate decease. He desired to be ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... in bonds under Philistian yoke." Alas, alas, it is very hard to break asunder the bonds of the latter-day Philistines. When a Samson does now and then pull a temple down about their ears, is he not sure to be engulfed in the ruin with them? There is no horse-leech that sticks so ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... son of Iasus, was there, The best-beloved of Phoebus. Long ago Apollo, fired to see a youth so fair, His arts and gifts had offered to bestow, His augury, his lyre, his sounding bow. But he, in hope a bed-rid parent's days To lengthen, sought the leech's craft to know, The power of simples, and the silent praise Of healing arts, and scorned the great ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... canker bumps. And poisonous froth he blew on the sprouting rose leaves, so they blackened and withered away. The jewel weed, friend of the humming birds, he trampled down, but it rose so many times and so bravely, that he left the yellow dodder like an herb-worm, or a root-born leech to suck its blood all summer long, and break it down. Then to trail over the trunks of trees and suck their life, he left the demon vine, the Poison Ivy with its touch of burning fire. He put the Snapping Turtle in the beautiful ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... "Complain aloud," said the leech to the lady; "cry! scream! Jarnidieu! that man has a necklace that won't fit you any better than me. ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac

... The two signs by which the "learned physicion" recognized diabolic intervention were: first, the preternatural appearance of the disease from which the patient was suffering; and, secondly, the inefficacy of the remedies applied. In other words, if the leech encountered any disease the symptoms of which were unknown to him, or if, through some unforeseen circumstances, the drug he prescribed failed to operate in its accustomed manner, a case of demoniacal possession was considered to be conclusively proved, and the medical man ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... feeling into what they wrote. Perhaps best reflected, as indeed it proved most potent in molding public opinion, this thought entered into the novels of Charles Dickens. These, in the development of child life as a social force, not only recorded history; they made history, and the virile pencils of Leech and Phiz and Cruikshank ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... stupefied.... I could see nothing but the terrible white tusks just before my nose, the red tongue all covered with white foam. But at the same instant, another dark body was whisking before me like a ball—it was my darling Tresor defending me; and he hung like a leech on the brute's throat! The creature wheezed, grated its teeth and staggered back. I instantly flung open the door and got into the hall.... I stood hardly knowing what I was doing with my whole weight on the door, and heard a desperate ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... us return to M. Fouquet. What did he repeat to us all the day? Was it not this? 'What a cuistre is that Mazarin! what an ass! what a leech! We must, however, submit to the fellow.' Now, Conrart, did he say so, or ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... Dona Jocasta and forcing brandy between the white lips, while Elena bustled around the padre whose head she had been bathing. A basin of water, ruby red, was evidence of the fact that Padre Andreas was not in immediate need of the services of a leech. He sat with his bandaged head held in his hands, and shrank perceptibly when the ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... larboard beam, and some six miles distant, thrashing along in a style that did one's heart good to see, and plunging into the heavy head-sea, against which she was beating until her foresail was dark with wet half-way up the weather-leech, and the spray was flying clean over her, and drifting away like smoke to leeward. Then he turned and looked at the brig on ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... they arched overhead, to alight with a drum-boom and burst with a cymbal crash; the whole orchestra of battle was playing—it seemed that everyone must recognise the air—"The Ride of the Valkyrie;" and now the driving rain and the salt spindrift, the flapping of the leech of our brown sail, every note of accompaniment is being given to that great air that runs through Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata, which the wind is singing louder and louder. Tim sits up well to windward, the tiller quivering in his hand, the rain beating on one side of his face, his beard ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... came in the morning, according to his promise; but there was nothing to be done, so he looked wise, wagged his head very solemnly, and said, "I will come again after two days more, when the fever must be near to its height, and bring a famous leech out ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... sing our better suns or air, Whose vital draughts prevent the leech's care, While through fresh fields the enlivening odours breathe, Or spread with vernal blooms ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al

... himself is with him a secondary process only-the response, in almost every instance, to impressions from without. This poet can nobly brace the human heart to fortitude; but he must first have seen the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor. The "presence and the spirit interfused" throughout creation is revealed to us in moving and majestic words; yet the poet requires to have felt it "in the light of setting suns and the round ocean and the living air" before he ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... leech. It refused to come off, and so she carried both frog and leech back to the camp. Aggie said on no account to pull a leech off, it left its teeth in and the teeth went on burrowing, or laid eggs or something. One must leave it on until ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... flung across the front pages in glaring type—even the most stately journals, for the nonce aroused out of their dignified calm, indulging in "display" headlines that, quite apart from the mere text, could not but have startled their equally stately and dignified readers. The Gray Seal, the leech that fed upon society, the murderer, the thief, the menace to the lives and property of law-abiding citizens, the scourge that for years New York had combated in the no more effective fashion than that of gnashing its teeth in impotent fury, had suddenly reappeared with a fresh murder ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... Bad habits and bad associates always involve the spending of money freely. This consequence naturally occurred in the case of Sanford. To supply his wants his salary proved insufficient. These wants were like the horse-leech, and cried continually—"give, give." They could not be put off. The first recourse was that of borrowing, in anticipation of his quarterly receipt of salary, after his last payment was exhausted. It was not long before, under this system, his ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... raise! Pray don't be so fastidious! She But as a leech, her hocus-pocus plays, That well with you her potion may agree. (He compels FAUST ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... haemorrhage. Bleeding with a quick, strong, and full pulse. The haemorrhages from the lungs, and from the nose, are the most frequent of these; but it sometimes happens, that a small artery but half divided, or the puncture of a leech, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... these mighty men of Momus, these acknowledged sages of laughter, (pardon me for omitting some fifty more,) so familiar to the tickled ear, as Boz, and Sam Slick, Ingoldsby, and Peter Plymley, Titmarsh, Hood, Hook; not to mention—(but that artists are authors)—laughter-loving Leech, Pickwickian Phiz, and inimitable Cruikshank? Nevertheless, let a tender conscience penitently ask, is it quite an innocent matter to lend a hand in rendering the age more careless than perchance, but for such ministrations, it would ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... mother, "don't allow that thought to gain upon you. We'll get a fairy-man or a fairy-woman, because they know the best remedies against everything of that kind, when a common leech or chirurgeon ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... Open it now and you will find that under it my possessions pass to you and your heirs absolutely as my executors, for such especial trusts and purposes as are set out therein. Elsa has been ailing, and it is known that the leech has ordered her a change. Therefore her journey to Leyden will excite no wonder, neither, or so I hope, will even Ramiro guess that I should enclose a letter such as this in so frail a casket. Still, there is danger, for spies are many, but having ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... had so embarrassed myself, that my whole attention was engaged in contriving excuses, and raising small sums to quiet such as words would no longer mollify. It cost me eighty pounds in presents to Mr. Leech the attorney, for his forbearance of one hundred, which he solicited me to take when I had no need. I was perpetually harassed with importunate demands, and insulted by wretches, who a few months before ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... was de terriblest folks dat ever crossed my path. Who dey was I ain't never know'd, but dey took Alex Leech to Black's Ford on Bullet Creek and killed him for being a radical. It was three weeks befo' his folks ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration

... these things my mind was now so turned, that it lay like an horse-leech at the vein, still crying out, Give, Give, Prov. xxx. 15; yea, it was so fixed on eternity, and on the things about the kingdom of heaven (that is, so far as I knew, though as yet, God knows, I knew but little), that neither pleasures, nor profits, ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan

... given to a condition in which, as Gilbert says, "A superfluous humor is abundant in the superficies of the lung, which compresses that organ and renders it unable to dilate in inspiration. Hence it labors in inspiration like a leech, from which the dyspnea ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson

... (so God him speed) They said had wrought this blessed deed, This leech Arbuthnot was yclept, Who many a night not once had slept; But watch'd our gracious Sov'reign still: For who could rest when she was ill? O may'st thou henceforth sweetly sleep! Shear, swains, oh shear your softest sheep To swell his couch; for well I ween, ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... I am decidedly taken again; for my old nightmares have returned. Last night I felt somebody leaning on me who was sucking my life from between my lips with his mouth. Yes, he was sucking it out of my neck, like a leech would have done. Then he got up, satiated, and I woke up, so beaten, crushed and annihilated that I could not move. If this continues for a few days, I shall certainly ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... bazaar. His Excellency the lord lieutenant. Sixteenth. Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer's hospital. The Messiah was first given for that. Yes. Handel. What about going out there: Ballsbridge. Drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a leech. Wear out my welcome. Sure to know someone ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... and chill; The mellow blackbird's voice is still. The glow-worms, numerous and bright, Illum'd the dewy dell last night. At dusk the squalid toad was seen, Hopping, and crawling o'er the green. The frog has lost his yellow vest, And in a dingy suit is dressed. The leech, disturb'd, is newly risen, Quite to the summit of his prison. The whirling winds the dust obeys, And in the rapid eddy plays; My dog, so alter'd in his taste, Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast; And see yon rooks, how odd their flight! They imitate the gliding kite, Or seem ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous

... Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in this country by making use of a carefully selected series of animals. His 'types' were the Rat, the Common Pigeon, the Frog, the Perch, the Crayfish, Blackbeetle, Anodon, Snail, Earthworm, Leech, Tapeworm. He had a series of dissections of these mounted, also loose dissections and elaborate manuscript descriptions. The student went through this series, dissecting fresh specimens for himself. After some ten years' experience Rolleston printed his manuscript directions and notes ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... I knowed it took holt like a leech in half a dozen places. I jumped; but I didn't jump far. There was two o' the things had me, and that left leg o' mine was fast as a ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... profitable to him. Parrawhite had discovered this, and was in a position to blackmail Pratt. Therefore Parrawhite would not wish to leave Pratt's neighbourhood—so long as there was money to be got out of Pratt, Parrawhite would stick to him like a leech. But if Parrawhite was to abide peaceably in Barford, he must pay Pickard that little matter of between fifty and sixty pounds. Accordingly, in Byner's opinion, Parrawhite had every honest intention of returning ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher

... however, being a man of determination, stuck to his text like a horse-leech; so, after a great to-do, and considerable argle-bargling, he got me, by dint of powerful persuasion, to give him my hand on the subject. Accordingly, at the hour appointed, I popped up the back-loan with my stick in my hand—Peter having agreed ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... to think that I myself believe, that all women make heroes of their husbands. Women are logical in nothing. They naturally hate mathematics. So, they would have their husbands be heroes only to the rest of the world. There is a charming picture by John Leech, the English satirist, which depicts Jones, who never looked askance at a woman in his life, sitting demurely at table, stuck with his nose on his plate, and Mrs. Jones opposite, redundant to a degree, observing with gratified severity, "Now, Mr. Jones, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... would preach, Be sure a text to take, And stick unto it like a leech Until your point ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... chemist. Hotel des Invalides; sanatorium, spa, pump room, well; hospice; Red Cross. doctor, physician, surgeon; medical practitioner, general practitioner, specialist; medical attendant, apothecary, druggist; leech; osteopath, osteopathist^; optometrist, ophthalmologist; internist, oncologist, gastroenterologist; epidemiologist [Med.], public health specialist; dermatologist; podiatrist; witch doctor, shaman, faith healer, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... Nick. "I'm here. I shall stick like a leech for the future. You will never be out of my sight again in your ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... interrupted the Caliph, "we know what thou wouldst say before it is spoken. We require not a vizier to talk, but to act as a leech, and draw blood where it is too rich or corrupt. How thinkest thou? If I were to impale one of these lazy dancers, would terror ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... marked the hissing, hungry sea. But, with the sail surging before us in its gear like a mad balloon, who noted aught but the sail? I leant out upon my taut bulge of living canvas, beat it with the flat of my hand, and being the youngest waited for the word to "leech" it or "skin" it up. Being tall I was not at the extremity of the yard arm; my fellow fore-topman and a little squat man from the lower Thames stood outside me. My mate and the man inside were my world. The others I saw and heard not. The word ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... truly!' cried Yspaddaden; 'the iron pains me like the bite of a horse-leech. Cursed be the hearth whereon it was heated, and the smith who ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang

... the night?—Very composedly I trow, for this is a most quiet and sequestered apartment: but, our Lady defend us! how pale you look;—surely, you are not ill?—La virgen nos valga.[32] Samuel Mendez shall be commanded here forthwith; for this same Samuel, you must know, is a very sapient leech, and well versed in occult medical science, though a very dog of a cursed unbelieving Jew;[33] he shall be sent for anon; there is no cause to fear him, for the infidel dare not use any of his poisonous drugs to such ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... means well pleased at being thus held responsible for all the stranger's moral and social vagaries. "It's the merest chance acquaintance. I know nothing of his antecedents. I—er—I lent him a bag, and he's fastened himself upon me ever since like a leech, and come constantly to my sister's. But I haven't the remotest idea who he is or where he hails from. He keeps his business wrapped up from all of us in ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... a hundred thousand dollars for a judgeship and for a blanket mortgage on your party. And if you should win, you'd find you could do little showy things that were of no value, but nothing that would seriously disturb a single leech sucking the blood of ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... the street wore a cheerful look. He went onward with a feeling that his mind was lifted above the things of everyday; the grimy old woman who lived as a parasite on the poverty of the "Ark" and who had a wonderful daughter who was absorbing riches like a leech. And on top of it all the little Pelle with the "lucky curl," like the curly-haired apprentice in the story! Here at last was the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... things' my mind was now so turned, that it lay like a horse leech at the vein, still crying out, Give, give (Prov 30:15); yea, it was so fixed on eternity, and on the things about the kingdom of heaven, that is, so far as I knew, though as yet, God knows, I knew but little; that neither pleasures, nor profits, nor persuasions, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... whilst still in the larval stage. Neorhynchus clavaeceps in Cyprinus carpio has its larval form in the larva of Sialis lularia and in the leech Nephelis octcculii: tact K. agilis is found in Mugil ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Illustrated Edition, in 2 vols., with all the Illustrations by Cruikshank and Leech, 15s., or in one vol., with ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins

... foul imputation back into thy teeth base knave. Thou thyself art a very daughter of a horse-leech ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... it go, left it hanging, and sat down on a great stone, with her black cat, who had followed her all round the cave, by her side. Then she began to knit, and mutter awful words. The snake hung like a huge leech, sucking at the stone; the cat stood with his back arched, and his tail like a piece of cable, looking up at the snake; and the old woman sat and knitted and muttered. Seven days and seven nights they sat thus; when suddenly the serpent dropped from the roof, as if exhausted, ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... resemble small leeches; some, bearing a series of points ranged on a common base, like masts on the hull of a vessel, the tallest in the centre, belong to the genus Hybodus. There is a palpable approximation in the teeth of the leech-like form to the teeth with the numerous points. Some of the specimens show the same plicated structure common to both; and on some of the leech backs, if I may so speak, there are protuberant knobs, that indicate the places of the spiky ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... Lombard couthe[3] make, Nor be so lusty for to take, Nor so far forth restoratif, (I say as for mine owne life,) As be the wordes of her mouth For as the windes of the south Be most of alle debonaire;[4] So, when her list to speake fair, The virtue of her goodly speech Is verily mine hearte's leech. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... experiment. Naude, indeed, has utterly ridiculed the occult virtues of talismans, in his defence of Virgil, accused of being a magician: the poet, it seems, cast into a well a talisman of a horse-leech, graven on a plate of gold, to drive away the great number of horse-leeches which infested Naples. Naude positively denies that talismans ever possessed any such occult virtues: Gaffarel regrets that so judicious a man as Naude should have gone this length, giving ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... here and there into the collection-boxes for the wounded, which were placed on chairs in the middle of the pathway. Then she stopped before some caricatures representing Louis Philippe as a pastry-cook, as a mountebank, as a dog, or as a leech. But she was a little frightened at the sight of Caussidiere's men with their sabres and scarfs. At other times it was a tree of Liberty that was being planted. The clergy vied with each other in blessing the Republic, escorted by servants in gold lace; and the ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert

... king and he departed, and went till they came to a hermit, that was a good man and a great leech. So the hermit searched all his wounds, and applied good salves; and the king was there three days, and then were his wounds well amended, that he might ride and go. So they departed, and as they rode Arthur said, "I have no sword." ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... and put two and two together. I shipped him off to Australia when I came into the title. He has come back. Lately, I can tell you, he has pretty well drained me dry. He has become a regular parasite a cold-blooded leech. He doesn't get drunk now. He looks after his health. I believe he even saves his, money. There's scarcely a week I don't hear from him. He keeps me a pauper. He has brought me at last to that state when I feel that there ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... first, the brotherhood of man, has often been used as the watchword of a false independence. It is only possible on the condition of reverence and obedience for that which is higher than oneself, either in the past or the present. "Suspicion of 'Servility,' of reverence for Superiors, the very dog-leech is anxious to disavow. Fools! Were your Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for them were even your only possible freedom." These three, then, are the social realities, and all other social distinctions ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... London, who were the original publishers of Pickwick. One of the best of the many editions of Dickens is the Macmillan Pocket edition with reproductions of the original covers of the monthly parts of the novels as they appeared, the original illustrations by Cruikshank, Leech, "Phiz" (Hablot Browne) and others, and valuable and interesting introductions by Charles Dickens the younger. Another good edition is in the World's Classics, with brilliant introductions by G.K. Chesterton. In buying an edition of Dickens it is well ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch

... continue the exclusive privilege of caste to the free population, and you sow the seeds of a servile rebellion. Open your hands to give concessions and privileges to the emancipists, and you scatter good seed upon the stony rock, you vainly endeavour to satisfy the daughters of the horse-leech. But infuse a christian feeling into all classes, get them to meet in the same church, to kneel at the same table, to partake in the same spiritual blessings, and then you may hope that all, whether free or emancipists, will feel themselves to be members of one another, portions of the ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... a tedious old Mumpsiman that kept himself and her in little ease by plying the trade of a horse-leech, which trade, for the girl's felicity, held him much abroad, and gave her occasion, seldom by her neglected, to prove to her intimate of the hour that there can be fire without smoke. Now I, being somewhat top-heavy ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... of the paynims' cannonballs has carried off both my legs below the knee. The leech has been searing the wounds with a hot iron, and says that he thinks I shall get over it; but if so I fear that my fighting days are past, unless, indeed, I fight seated on a chair. However, I ought not to grumble. I have lost many ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... than of yore, The ancient "Black mouth's" knelt before. And Robert Sheriff, stately man, Who the Crown Timber Office "ran"— To use a well worn Yankee phrase Unknown in Bytown's early days. And A.J. Christie, what shall I Say of this old celebrity? An M.D. of exceeding skill Who dealt in lancet, leech and pill, Cantharides and laudanum, too, When milder measures would not do; A polished scholar and a sage, A thinker far before his age, A writer of sarcastic vein And philosophic depth, who's train Of thought was comprehensive, deep, Peace to his ashes! let him sleep! In ancient times ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett

... Stick to him like a leech," and the detective indicated a chair to his visitor. Jack Young was one of the ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele

... meanwhile, that prostrate individual. Having examined the wounds in his side, legs, head, and throat, the old hermit (a skilful leech) knelt down by the side of the vanquished one and said, "Sir Knight, it is my painful duty to state to you that you are in an exceedingly dangerous condition, and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... slipped the great key from his belt, and bade him good-night, to which he muttered something. At the great gate stood a young sentry, who, seeing me to be a warder, asked me where I went at that hour. I told him a state prisoner was very sick and I was bidden by the leech go to the druggist for a plaster. 'A pretty errand to send an honest fellow,' said I, 'who has work enough of his own without being waiting gentleman to every knave in the place who has a fit of the colic.' The soldier laughed and said, 'twas a pity they did not ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... The Chamberlain must prepare for his lord a clean shirt, under and upper coat and doublet, breeches, socks, and slippers as brown as a water-leech.] ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... is chiefly to the student of the occult. It is impossible, however, to classify under one heading all those early works which treat of the beginnings of scientific knowledge. The star-gazer, the herbalist, the necromancer, and the leech, must be content to share among themselves a class of books which deals generally with the ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... And I must hang to it like a leech," admitted the other, trying to smile, but making a sorry mess ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach

... but for the honor of the ship. They soon discovered that a new order of proceeding had been introduced. The masters and midshipmen perched themselves in the rigging, where they could see the movements of every seaman. The adult forward officers—Peaks, the boatswain, Bitts, the carpenter, and Leech, the sailmaker—also went aloft, and stationed themselves on the topmast-stays, so that, besides the lieutenants on deck, the commodore, and the past officers, there were three pairs of sharp eyes aloft to inspect the ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... and heard of the habits and disposition of this family. He says, "They are a destructive race of little savages; and one has been known, before now, to attack a child in his cradle, and inflict a deep wound upon his neck, where it clung, and sucked like a leech. They are very fond of blood, and to obtain this, they will sometimes destroy the occupants of a whole hen-roost, not caring to feed upon the bodies of the poultry which they have killed. They will climb trees, attack the old bird on its nest, suck the eggs, or carry off the young; ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... Sathanas." said he, "which can convert Scripture into blasphemy, mingling poison with our necessary food!—Is there no leech here who can tell us the ingredients ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... head of the table; and his example being followed first by the bold, then by the doubtful, and lastly by the timid, the clatter soon made the circuit of the tables. Some were shocked, however, as the Colonel had feared they would be, at the want of the customary invocation. Widow Leech, a kind of relation, who had to be invited, and who came with her old, back-country-looking string of gold beads round her neck, seemed to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... through leaden-grey seas under hurrying, leaden-grey skies and bitter snow squalls, with a foul wind persistently pounding at her day after day, he had thought, as some more than ordinarily angry puff whitened the water to windward and broke him off his course, with the weather leech of his close-reefed topsail shivering, how pleasant it must be to be a landsman, to go where he pleased in spite of wind or weather. Ah! they were the happy ones, those lucky landsmen, who could always do as they chose, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang



Words linked to "Leech" :   annelid worm, phlebotomize, leech onto, care for, Hirudinea, sponge, class Hirudinea, phlebotomise, practice of medicine, medicinal leech, segmented worm, hirudinean, treat



Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org