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Scrub   /skrəb/   Listen
Scrub

noun
1.
Dense vegetation consisting of stunted trees or bushes.  Synonyms: bush, chaparral.
2.
The act of cleaning a surface by rubbing it with a brush and soap and water.  Synonyms: scouring, scrubbing.



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"Scrub" Quotes from Famous Books



... how the case was, and saved almost all the water in our bottles for the child. To look back on it is like a nightmare. I can scarcely bear to dwell on it. Day after day, by turns carrying the child through the heavy sand; night after night lying down in the scrub, chewing the leaves, and licking such dew as there was from the scanty grass! Not a spring, not a pool, not a head of game! It was the third night; we were nearly mad with thirst. Tota was in a comatose condition. Indaba-zimbi still had a little water in his bottle—perhaps ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard

... and for the whole of that distance there is very little improvement towards picturesque beauty. Now and then, to be sure, they came to woods of birch or fir, but the trees were small and widely scattered; still the chief feature was a dead flat covered with scrub. ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... and his goodness, and his fine manners, and his extraordinary learning. And I agreed with her, though I no longer liked the doctor. She wanted to work, to be independent, and to live by herself, and she said she would become a school-teacher or a nurse as soon as her health allowed, and she would scrub the floors and do her own washing. She loved her unborn baby passionately, and she knew already the colour of his eyes and the shape of his hands and how he laughed. She liked to talk of his upbringing, and since the best man on earth was Vladimir, all her ideas were reduced to making ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... old hall, where a certain bad lord, baronet, knight, or gentleman, shot himself, has certain planks in the floor from which the blood WILL NOT be taken out. You may scrape and scrape, as the present owner has done, or plane and plane, as his father did, or scrub and scrub, as his grandfather did, or burn and burn with strong acids, as his great- grandfather did, but, there the blood will still be—no redder and no paler—no more and no less—always just the same. Thus, in such another house there is a haunted door, ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens

... the manikin, "I'll bake your bread, I'll wash your dishes, I'll scour your pans, I'll scrub your floors, I'll brew your beer, I'll roast your meat, I'll boil your water, I'll stuff your sausages, I'll skim your milk, I'll make your butter, I'll press your cheese, I'll pluck your geese, I'll ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle

... the schools of the city. That something was Sahwah. Thanks to her playing, Washington High had not lost a single game so far. Her being put on the team was purely due to chance. Sahwah was a Junior and the Varsity team were all Seniors. She was a member of the "scrub" or practice team and an ardent devotee of the sport. During one of the early games of the season Sahwah was sitting on the side lines attentively watching ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey

... leaving the railroad they had spent four days upon the trail, which sometimes ran plain before them, marked by dints of wheels among the wiry grass, and sometimes died away, leaving them at a loss in a wilderness of sand and short poplar scrub. ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... Gros Isle, And are obliged to anchor for a while. For "Quarantine inspection" they prepare; The berths are cleansed, and decks are scrubbed with care. And human beings who had lost all traces Of cleanliness, were made to scrub their faces! This done; they muster in clean garments dressed, To meet the Doctor, at the Mate's behest. No serious sickness to his eye appeared; Yet some for want of decency are jeered. Permission to proceed they then obtain; The He-ho-heave!'s sung out in jovial ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... day of a journey that led him up the winding watered valleys of the lower ranges, Bob surmounted a ridge higher than the rest and rode down a long, wide slope. Here the character of the country changed completely. Scrub oaks, young pines and chaparral covered the ground. Among this growth Bob made out the ancient stumps of great trees. The ranch houses were built of sawn lumber, and possessed brick chimneys. In appearance they seemed midway between the farm houses of the older ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... his face in the passageway, his right hand still dutifully wielding the scrub-brush, but his spirit ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... her way through the brush and scrub cottonwood-trees that lined the opposite bank, she found herself upon the border of a field where the white, bursting cotton, with the dew upon it, gleamed for acres and acres like frosted silver in the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... smell. It was human, and Gray Wolf slunk behind Kazan and whined. For several minutes they stood without moving or making a sound, and then Kazan led the way on. Less than three hundred yards away they came to a thick clump of scrub spruce, and almost ran into a snow-smothered tepee. It was abandoned. Life and fire had not been there for a long time. But from the tepee had come the man-smell. With legs rigid and his spine quivering Kazan approached ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... and not gasoline, as gasoline will injure the rubber. Lay out on a flat surface and scrub lightly with soap and water; then rinse with clear water. Do not wring. Put on a coat-hanger and hang out ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler

... was over, Charles rushed off to Cannes, to get away from the impertinent stare of London. Amelia and Isabel and I went with him. We were driving one afternoon on the hills beyond the town, among the myrtle and lentisk scrub, when we noticed in front of us a nice victoria, containing two ladies in very deep mourning. We followed it, unintentionally, as far as Le Grand Pin—that big pine tree that looks across the bay ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... to scrub the stable," said Vrouw Vedder. "It is getting too cold for the cows to stay all night in the pastures. Father means to bring Mevrouw Holstein in to-night, and I want her stable to be nice and ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... we connot find a safety valve we shall brust. Nah, a woman drives up to th' elbows i'th' weshin' tub, or rives all th' carpets up, or pools all th' pots aght o'th' cubboard an' puts 'em back agean. Shoo lets her tongue have full liberty, an' what wi' talkin', an' sweatin', an' scrub bin', an' brushin', shoo finds hersen reight daan tired, an' after a bit ov a wesh an' snoddenin' her toppin', shoo sits daan to her knittin' or sewin', as cooil as a cucumber, an' as ful o' gooid natur as an egg's ful o' mait, an' her een sparkle wi' pleasure, like dewdrops sparkle on a ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... sitting down on a projecting root of a scrub oak, produced from the depths of his capacious pocket a bit of tin, which he carefully selected from among a miscellaneous hoard of treasures. "Here," said he, holding it up to the view as he spoke,—"here is the slide of an old powder-flask, ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... I am nearly eight, So I can fill the kettle, And sweep the room and clean the grate, And even scrub a little; Oh! I'm so very glad to be A little useful girl, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole

... higher they went, and, when day broke, they were once more in the scrub pines and cedars, with a cold wind blowing and nipping at their ears and noses. But Boyd, who went far back on the trail, could discover no sign of Felton's band, and they concluded ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... either side, were farms; but this was a wild piece of scrub at the foot of the dam. One could jump a rabbit in it, or get up a flock of quail at almost any time ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson

... sense of minding their own business. His blue eyes had a determined look, as he came on the campus the first morning of the new term, that made his old persecutors think it best to withhold such choice epithets as "Biddy," "Kitchen Girl," and "Scrub Maid," which they had laid up for him. For they knew that it was Mike who now did housework at General Brady's. They had never seen Mike fight. He had always stood back and let Pat lead. But there was something in his erect and independent bearing on this autumn morning that made ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger

... Farquhar's Beaux-Stratagem, Scrub thus describes his duties: —'Of a Monday I drive the coach, of a Tuesday I drive the plough, on Wednesday I follow the hounds, a Thursday I dun the tenants, on Friday I go to market, on Saturday I draw warrants, and a Sunday I draw beer.' Act ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... Those who idly drew around could not hear his words, but the "captain's" answers were intentionally audible. He shook his head in rejection of a proposal. "No, nobody but the prisoner himself should scrub out the cell. No, the Italian should not do it for him. The prisoner's refusal and resistance had settled that question. No, the knocking down had not balanced accounts at all. There was more scrubbing to be done. It was scrubbing day. Others might scrub the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... not hungry that day when the dinner call came, and flung himself down under a scrub oak outside the barracks while the others rushed in with their mess kits ready for beans or whatever was provided for them. He was glad that they were gone, glad that he might have the luxury of being miserable all alone for a few minutes. He felt strangely as if he were going to cry, ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... position not being within reach of the field batteries, is contradicted; while Buller complained that Long had taken up a position within 1,200 yards of a fortified hill and less than a quarter of a mile from cover occupied by the enemy. There is, indeed, a small area of low trees and scrub near the right bank of the Tugela a few hundred yards on the right front of the line of guns, but there is no evidence that the Boers had ever crossed the river ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... Samson, at Dol, is, says an unusually expressive Frenchman, "a grand, noble, and severe church, now widowed of its bishops. Its aspect is desolate and abandoned, as if it were but a ruin en face sur la grande place, of itself, but a mere desert of scrub." This is certainly a vivid and forceful description of even a wholly unprepossessing shrine. This St. Samson is not, and due allowance should be made for verbal modelling which, in many cases, is but the mere expression of a mood pro tempo. There is, however, ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... hills, from the summit of which more hills stretched to a horizon entirely of mountains. They did not form ridges but, like men in a crowd, shouldered into one another. They were of a soft rock and covered with snow, above which to the height of your waist rose scrub pine-trees and bushes of holly. The rain and snow that ran down their slopes had turned the land into a sea of mud, and had swamped the stone roads. In walking, for each step you took forward you skidded and slid several ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis

... Piang struggled upward. Everything was strange to him; the growths and trees were different from those of the lowlands. Scrub palms, covered with small buds, on which the dread packda feeds, began to appear, and Piang anxiously scanned the trees. There is no creature in the jungle that has the strength of the packda. Only the crocodile and the python are foolish enough to attack it, but the crocodile's ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart

... of youth, she used to plunge her painted face into soapsuds and scrub vigorously till her own complexion appeared, a good deal overheated and temporarily shiny; but before long she had yielded to Alphonsine's entreaties and representations and had adopted the butter ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... Dugald's trails well, and when we mentioned the small distant laguna, he set out at once in the direction of the glen. He made so many windings, however, and took so many different turns through bush and grass and scrub, that we began to wonder however Dugald could have found ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... number of stocks of red birch, white birch and scrub oak grafted with European hazels and chinkapins, but the grafts all died. The grafting was done as an experiment in the hope that we might possibly utilize our waste lands which are covered with birch and scrub oak by grafting these trees ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... like a potter's vessel, though a single hour's rain rendered them so slippery as to be very dangerous to travellers." The roads in fact were and are, little more than lanes between the isolated woods across the low scrub of the old Weald. ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... I don't, nor can't, nor won't call them that pay their debts honestly. Scrubs, I don't, nor won't, nor can't, call them that behave as handsome as young Mr. Talbot did here to me this morning about the hunter. A scrub he is not, wife. Fancy-dress or no fancy-dress, Mr. Finsbury, this young gentleman ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... we were invited by two officers to join their dinner at a Cairo eating- house. We plowed our way gallantly through the mud to a little shanty, at the door of which we were peremptorily commanded by the landlord to scrub ourselves, before we entered, with the stump of an old broom. This we did, producing on our nether persons the appearance of bread which has been carefully spread with treacle by an economic housekeeper. And the proprietor was right, for had ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... its banks; and birds of so many kinds came to it to drink and bathe that the pool became a favourite spot with me. One evening, just before sunset, as I lingered near it, a pied wagtail darted out of some low scrub at my feet and fluttered, as if wounded, over the turf for a space of ten or twelve yards before flying away. Not many minutes after seeing the wagtail, a reed-bunting—a bird which I had not previously observed on the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... large potatoes and scrub them with a little brush, till they are a nice clean light brown, and bake them for half an hour in a hot oven; or, if they are quite large, bake them till they are soft and puffy. Cut off one end from each and take out ...
— A Little Cook Book for a Little Girl • Caroline French Benton

... fine a mangy sheep could scrub, Or nobly fling the gospel club, And New-Light herds could nicely drub Or pay their skin; Could shake them o'er the burning ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... she should make me presents only of innumerable stitches: which she had done. Polly, whom it is both impossible and irrelevant to describe, took the opportunity to scrub the house from top to bottom. Her own wedding-present to me, homely though it was, I wrapped in silver paper, and showed it to her lying in state on the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... of women, and born of a well-shorn family, was unhappy from the middle to the end of the week that she could not scrub her husband's beard off. The lady's sense of human crime, and of everything hateful in creation, expressed itself mainly in the word "dirt." Her rancor against that nobly tranquil and most natural of elements inured itself into a downright passion. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... done, done late, when the poor flock have found their doctoring and shepherding at other hands: their 'bulb-food and fiddle,' that she petitioned for, to keep them from a complete shaving off their patch of bog and scrub soil, without any perception of the tremulous transatlantic magnification of the fiddle, and the splitting discord of its latest ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... allegro must be forte, Go wash my neck and sleeves, because this shirt is dirty Mon charmant, prenez guarda, Mind what your signior begs, Ven you wash, don't scrub so harda, You may rub my shirt to rags. Vile you make the water hotter— Uno solo I compose. Put in the pot the nice sheep's trotter, And de little petty toes; De petty toes are little feet, De little feet not big, Great feet belong to de grunting ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... Kennedy's ill-fated expedition, which the "Rattlesnake" landed in Rockingham Bay, and trusted to meet again at Cape York. Happy it was for Huxley that his duties forbade him to accept Kennedy's proposal to join the expedition. After months of weary struggles in the dense scrub, Kennedy himself, who had pushed on for help with his faithful black man Jacky, was speared by the natives when almost in sight of Cape York; Jack barely managed to make his way there through his enemies, and guided a party to the rescue of the two starved and ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... TABLES.—Scrub hard the way of the grain. Hot water makes boards and tables yellow. Rinse in ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low

... the dark rock, snow-sprinkled, rising out of the dense growth of pine and cedar. We drove at first through open pine forests, through park-like intervals, over the foot-hills of the mountain, through growths of scrub cedar, and out into the ever-varying rolling country to widely-extended prospects. Two considerable hills on our right attracted us by their unique beauty. Upon the summit and side of each was a red glow exactly like the tint of sunset. We thought ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner

... and soon, after a bite to eat, they rolled themselves in their blankets, having tied the ponies to scrub bushes, and went to sleep. The riding of the boys, coupled with the pure air they had breathed, brought them slumber almost at once, and even Buck Tooth, alert as he usually was, neither saw nor heard anything of the sinister visitor who came softly ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... are all the other handsome chambers on this story. The men were obliging and tried to find scrub-women, but the poor things are afraid ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... hard, clean work, like haying or harvest, but the slavery of being nurse to calves and scrub-boy to horses cankered my spirits more and more, and the thought of living in town filled me with an incredulous anticipatory delight. A life of leisure, of intellectual activity seemed about to open up to me, ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... his nephew. "Ah, Bog," said he, shaking his head at him, "what changes Time does make! It seems only a few days ago that you was a little scrub of a chap, runnin' 'round town and pickin' up your livin'. And a very good and honest livin' you picked up, too. Now, here you are, a nicely dressed, tall, handsome young man, with a snug little ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... twig came as a startling report compared with the almost noiseless tread of the hunter. A little cloud of powdery snow rose above the dragging heels of his snowshoes, and, whirling about, covered the back of his leggings with a coating of white. Onward he strode, twisting through the tangled scrub, stooping under a fallen tree, stepping over a snow-capped log, or ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... necessary. He marched in person by land with the remainder, advancing chiefly over wooded country to escape notice. Part of this path, which was once closed up with thick woods, is now land ready for the plough, and fringed with a scanty scrub. And, in order that when they got out into the plain they might not lack the shelter of trees, he told them to cut and carry branches. Also, that nothing might burden their rapid march, he bade them cast away some of their clothes, as well as ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... men. The savages now began to jabber to each other in a jargon which I could not comprehend, and presently two of them laid hold of me, one by each arm, and in spite of my protests and such resistance as I made, forced me through the scrub inland. Some of the tribe followed, others went on ahead, flitting like shadows among the trees, the journey being performed at a rate which made it hard for me to ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... a mite of use puttin' that little washtub in my room no more, bekase you ain't a-goin' to toll me into it. I takes my bath when I gits home to Sally. She kinder expects it of me. Hit's a wife's privilege to cut her man's hair and pare his nails and scrub his ears an' all them little things, 'specially ef she ain't got no chillun to do hit fur, an' I'd feel mighty mean ef I disapp'inted her. I don't do much fer Sally, noways. No, darter, oncet or twicet a year's often enough fer a human critter to git wet all over, 'cep'n in a nateral ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... half-buried in dense undergrowth affording us a perfectly ideal ambush; and we had scarcely settled ourselves comfortably therein when a violent swaying of the underbrush warned us that our quarry was approaching. The next instant the scrub parted right and left, the points of two enormous tusks protruded from the swaying tangle of leaves and creepers, and in the drawing of a breath the head and fore quarters of the biggest bull elephant I had ever seen came into view. For a moment the huge beast stood looking ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... "the tired burglar seeks his bed." I had thought of dozing in a hotel chair until breakfast, but presently a flood appeared in the persons of three scrub women. The fountains of the great deep were opened and the ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... modern dulcinea, incensed at the opprobrious term; "such a b— as your mother, you dog! D— you, I've a good mind to box your jaws instead of your comepiss. I'll let you know, as how I am meat for your master, you saucy blackguard. You are worse than a dog, you old flinty-faced, flea-bitten scrub. A dog wears his own coat, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... volunteers. To organize anything like a regular attack on such ground is almost impossible, as the officers cannot see their men, who, the moment they move forward in open order, are lost among the thick scrub. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... industriously that he never once lifted his head from the ground, while the tiger crawled towards him in a manner that was exquisite to see. Belly to the ground, its movements resembled rather those of a snake than an animal as it wound its way through the scrub, gliding through the ferns, and taking advantage of all the bushes. Occasionally it sat up to peer cautiously at the bull, and then sinking down it again glided on. Except now and then, when the bushes were low, I doubt if it could see the ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... inevitably one of two results must follow. You degenerate into a bitter, waspish, and fault-finding shrew; or you develop into a patient, tolerant, and infinitely understanding woman. Martha Foote dealt daily with Polack scrub girls, and Irish porters, and Swedish chambermaids, and Swiss waiters, and Halsted Street bell-boys. Italian tenors fried onions in her Louis-Quinze suite. College boys burned cigarette holes in her best linen sheets. Yet ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... no difficulty in writing. The sun is warm, and the air keen and delicious. But the scenery would depress the most buoyant spirits. We climbed up the mountains during the night, and with the daylight the train was in the middle of the Great Karroo. Wherefore was this miserable land of stone and scrub created? Huge mounds of crumbling rock, fashioned by the rains into the most curious and unexpected shapes, rise from the gloomy desert of the plain. Yet, though the Karroo looks a hopeless wilderness, flocks of ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... indicate the condition of woodland and waste which formerly prevailed. Immediately south of the church and its surroundings we find the “Ings,” or meadows, the Saxon term which we have noticed in several other parishes. Further off, we have “Oaklands” farm, and “Scrub-hill,” “scrub” being an old Lincolnshire word for a small wood; as we have, in the neighbourhood, ‘Edlington Scrubs’ and ‘Roughton Scrubs.’ “Reedham,” another name, indicates a waste of morass. “Toot-hill” might ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... tons of water up several flights of stairs, a hundred pounds at a time, in prodigious metal pitchers. She does not have to work more than eighteen or twenty hours a day, and she can always get down on her knees and scrub the floors of halls and closets when she is tired and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... twenty miles straight down the river, when Ferguson, concealed behind a ridge, saw them suddenly disappear into a little basin. Then he rode around the ridge, circled the rim of hills that surrounded the basin, and dismounting from his pony, crept through a scrub oak thicket to a point where he could look directly ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer

... of hypochondria gained ground—here I merely note coincidence, not historical cause and effect—the disease became increasingly fashionable in England, particularly among the polite, the aristocratic, and the refined. Students of the drama will recall Scrub's denial in The Beaux' Stratagem (1707) of the possibility that Archer has the spleen and Mrs. Sullen's interjection, "I thought that distemper had been only proper to ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill

... of wild pigs, we met with no animal life. Quail used to be abundant, but the run fires were fast destroying them. We had before us the nearing view of the Malvern Hills, the sloping pine forests and scrub, with the long, undulating spurs running back to the foot of great ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... whom shall they be? For they must be white male residents of the parish, and they must not be insane, deaf, dumb, blind, nor disqualified by crime. I will tell you: let them be Jean d'Eau—at the French market. He will still be there; it is his turn to scrub the market to-day. Get him, get Richard Reau, and old man Ecswyzee. And on no account must the doctor be allowed to come. Do that, Madame Brouillard, as quickly as you can. ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... to the front window, which was open toward the peaceful little lawn. On the railroad track behind the copse of scrub oak an unskilful train crew was making up a long train of freight cars. Their shouts, punctuated by the rumbling reverberations from the long train as it alternately buckled up and stretched out, was the one discord in the soft night. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... Portage Lake, which with its recently cut ship-canals bisects Keweenaw Point, making of its upper end an island, and was speeding northward over a rough upland. Its way led through a naked country of rocks and low-growing scrub, for the primitive growth of timber had been stripped for use in the mines. Every now and then it passed tall shaft-houses and chimneys, belching forth thick volumes of smoke, which, with their clustering villages, marked ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe

... had been put in better trim, for, after his master had refreshed himself with a warm bath, he gave his dog a good scrub while Mrs. Moss set a stitch here and there in the new old clothes; and Sancho reappeared, looking more like the china poodle than ever, being as white as snow, his curls well brushed up, and his tasselly tail waving proudly over ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... director of that survey, Mr. James P. Howley, F.R.G.S., has replied in part to Major-general Dashwood's remarks in a letter written a fortnight ago, from which I extract a few passages. The Major-general said at the Royal Geographical Society that the timber of Newfoundland is all scrub, and fit only for firing. Mr. Howley writes: "Our lumbering industry is in a most flourishing condition. Ten large saw-mills are in full swing, besides several smaller ones, around our northern and western bays. Large shipments of lumber were made last summer to the English markets. Messrs. ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell

... As we fell back in the afternoon, I found a haversack containing some hard-tack. This our mess divided. We did not fail to commiserate the unlucky chap whose loss was our gain. This was a very unsatisfactory fight. It always seemed to me like a scrub race. The rebels plunged in as if they thought it was a 2.20 affair, at the least. The march continued all night. About two in the morning I concluded that the thing had gone on about long enough, and, without any ceremony, made my bed beside a stump in a little ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... and scrub and cook, and pretend they don't,—that is the difference," put in Miss Sarah, crossing her knees and bending forward with the air of one who had found a congenial theme. "I am a paper-hanger, a painter, and a maid-of-all-work; and this is what it usually means to be a lady when ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard

... lads come to us and say, "Let me do that. I can't write the languages, or do many things you or Mr. Pritt or Mr. Palmer do, so let me scrub your floor, or brush your shoes, or fetch some water." And of course we let them do so, for the doing it is accompanied by no feeling of degradation in their minds; they have seen us always doing these things, and not requiring them to do them as if it were the natural work ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... I could have been, if he had been in circumstances to marry. But, you see, I am one of those to whom the luxuries are essential. I never could rub and scrub and work; in fact, I had rather not live at all than live poor; and Harry is poor, and he always will be poor. It's a pity, too, poor fellow, for he's nice. Well, he is off in India! I know he will be tragical and gloomy, and all that," she said; ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... "I shall be all right now," as he took his dripping head out of the bowl of cold water, and felt refreshed by the scrub he gave himself; but somehow he did not feel right. His head burned, and he was glad to get out in the open air, in the hope that a little exercise would clear his brain and drive away the cobweb-like fancies which seemed ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... want to trouble her last days, my kind, good grandmamma, with the knowledge of my troubles; she might die of it. Ah! if she knew they made her grandchild scrub the pots and pans,—she who used to say to me, when I wanted to help her after her troubles, "Don't touch that, my darling; leave it—leave it—you will spoil your pretty fingers." Ah! my hands are never clean now. Sometimes ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... difficulty in getting into the wood as the undergrowth of young oak scrub made it almost impenetrable; it stood up straight, and the great, swaying, huge, spreading boughs of the old oaks above came down and rested on and amongst the young oaks, like a roof upon pillars, and the leaves of both intermingled ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... Herit, the Lady of the Red Mountain. Then I allowed my feet to take the road downstream, and I travelled on to Anebuheq, the fortress that had been built to drive back the Satiu (nomad marauders), and to hold in check the tribes that roamed the desert. I crouched down in the scrub during the day to avoid being seen by the watchmen on the top of the fortress. I set out again on the march, when the night fell, and when daylight fell on the earth I arrived at Peten, and I rested myself by the Lake of Kamur. Then thirst came upon me and overwhelmed me. I suffered torture. ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... moving away himself, when his eyes lit upon a strange sight, and one which sent a tingling through his skin. Out of the tangled scrub on the old overgrown barrow two human faces were looking out at him; the sinking sun glimmered full upon them, showing up every line and feature. The one was an oldish man with a thin beard, a crooked nose, and a broad red smudge from a birth-mark over his temple; the other was a negro, ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... thing, then," declared Paul. "This note came from some one not belonging to our camp. He must have crawled into the tent from the rear, taking advantage of our being busy. Yes, there's a bunch of scrub close enough to give him more or less shelter, if he crawled on all fours. Let's see if one or two of the tent pins ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... some of the streets, forms innumerable pictures when reflecting the quaint houses and gardens whose walls are generally grown over with creepers. Near the ascent to the castle is one of the washing places where the women let their soap suds float away on the translucent water as they scrub vigorously. They kneel upon a long wooden platform sheltered by a charming old roof supported upon a heavy timber framework that is a picture ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home

... that they seemed to merge the dark waters of the flood into the gloom of the night. When the horse was quiet, peering ahead, with its sharp little ears pointed forward, there was no sound save the vague sighing of the wind through the tops of the scrub pines and the ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... that even the best name you could pick wouldn't turn out to be a misfit? About the only Percy I ever knew in real life was a great two-fisted husk who was foreman of a stereotypin' room; and here in the Corrugated Buildin', if you'll come in some night after five, I can show you a wide built scrub lady, with hair redder'n mine and a voice like a huckster—her front name is Violet. Yet I expect, when them two was babies, both those names sounded kind of cute. I could see where it would be easy enough for me to make a mistake ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... me, mother," she demanded, turning around. "Do you think all this is meant to scrub and sew and cook for the foreman in locomotive works? Because ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... I'm not mistaken," Peters said. "It'll be as well to push on beyond the scrub, or up to ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... possible a more highly organized community life, and any complex organization is the more easily deranged; a complex machine or a high-bred animal is more susceptible to injury than a simple tool or scrub. Many ministers have railed against the automobile, while others have used it to fill their pews. We cannot get away from that oldest of paradoxes, first learned by Father Adam, that every new good has possibilities of evil. A certain type of mind has always enjoyed ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... swerved into the low scrub; the well-trained horse leapt at him like a cat; and Raphael, who dare not trust his skill in archery, struck with his whip at the long neck as it struggled past him, and felled the noble quarry to the ground. He was in the act of springing down to secure his ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... there. They'll pot you from the top of the bluff, first off. Besides, you got a canteen, I see. You back up to that mountain mahogany bush, slip under it, and worm down through the rocks till you come to a little scrub-oak tree and a big granite bowlder. They'll give you shelter to cross the ridge into a deep ravine that leads here where I am. You'll be out of sight all the way up once you hit the ravine. I'd—I'd worm along pretty spry if I ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... him. Such a heaven was his. Now, honest Teddy, think of such a wretch, And learn to shun his vices, one and all. Though richer than a Jew, he was more poor Than is the meanest beggar. At the cost Of other men a glutton. At his own, A starveling. A mere scrub. And such a coward, A cozener and liar—but a coward, And would have been a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... "Scrub" cattle are not profitable. They mature slowly and consequently consume much food before they are able to give any return for it. Even when fattened, the fat and lean portions are not evenly distributed, and "choice cuts" are few ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... morning of July 20. Fog drifts rode the bay like huge white swans, shrouding the Island of Alcatraz with a rise and fall of impalpable wings and casting many a whilom plume over the tents and adobe houses nestling between sandhills and scrub-oaks in the ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... of her concoctions. She has a running bill here. Her father settles once a month. She gives nine-tenths of it away. Hardly ever touches it herself, but when she does she makes me mix it. She's just old persimmons. Even the scrub-boy of this establishment would fight for her. It lasts the year round, for in winter it's some poor, frozen cuss that she's warming up on hot ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... spread a linen sheet in the tub, and turned on the water. I waited for the tub to fill and Marie to depart. Marie seemed in no hurry. I pondered over the possibilities involved in a German "Warm-bad." Perhaps Marie will attempt to scrub me! Never! At last she goes. I remove my collar. Suddenly Marie returns: it is to bring another towel. There is no lock on the door—nothing with which to defend one's self. I bathe in peace, however. On emerging I examine the pile of linen Marie ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... country, bordered on one side by the swollen river, here flowing again through steeper banks which were overgrown with alders and pollard willows. Along the left of the Spanish army, as they moved in the direction of Herenthals, was a continuous fringe of scrub-oaks, intermixed with tall beeches, skirting the heath, and forming a leafless but almost impervious screen for the movements of small detachments of troops. Quite at the termination of the open apace, these thickets becoming closely crowded, overhung ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... on the carpet at each side of his chair, but they'd all be back on their shelves, as neat as a new pin, when I went to tidy up the room after him. I never allow no butter-fingered girls in this room, except to sweep or scrub, under my own eye. There's not many ornaments, but what there is is precious, and the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... of the prostrate forest, like the conqueror of some city who, having first prevailed over his adversary, applies the torch as the finishing blow to his conquest. For a long time Billy Kirby would then be seen sauntering around the taverns, the rider of scrub races, the bully of cock-fights, and not infrequently the hero of such sports as the one ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... go on living with them unless I promise to marry Monsieur Charretier," I explained. "I'd rather scrub floors ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... for little shells is to cover small boxes with them. The shells are arranged in a simple pattern and fastened on with glue. If the shells are not empty and clean, boil them, and scrub them with an ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... struggled somehow through five years of life, and was put into smallclothes. Two weeks after this promotion his mother started off to scrub out a big house in the fashionable quarter, and took him with her: for the house possessed a wide garden, laid with turf and lined with espaliers, sunflowers, and hollyhocks, and as the month was August, and the family away in Scotland, there seemed ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... knew the distressing family affairs of the maids; how many were the ignoble progeny of the elevator-man, and what his plebeian wife did for their croup; how much rent the hall-boy's low-born father paid for his mean two-story dwelling in Jersey City; and how many hours a day or night the debased scrub-women devoted to their ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... little—in public— She'd chances enough and to spare, Ah, then if you'd only turned jealous— But you didn't notice nor care. Then her sickness came—even we fellows All thought you behaved like a scrub, Leaving her for the nurse to take care of, While you spent your time at the club. She never forgave you. How could she? If I'd been in her place myself, By Jove, I'd have left you. She didn't, But told all ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.

... sarcasm, resuming his seat on the bench; "he was SUPPOSED to do consider'ble many things. Stand watch and watch with me, and scrub brass and clean up around, and sweep and wash dishes and—and—well, make himself gen'rally useful. Them was the duties he was supposed to have. What he done ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... hesitated and sought for words not too direct, her mother had recourse to Shakespeare, and turned page after page, set upon finding some quotation which said all this about love far, far better than she could. Accordingly, Katharine did nothing but scrub one of her circles an intense black with her pencil, in the midst of which process the telephone-bell rang, and she left the room to ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... forest passed we entered a vast level land covered with scrub, which Omar informed me was the border of the Debendu territory. Proceeding down a wide valley we came at length to the first inhabited region. Every three or four miles we passed through a native village—usually ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... the world that brings out unselfishness as does this great gridiron game of ours. Every fall, second and scrub teams throughout the country sacrifice themselves only to let others enter the promised land of victory. It is a strange thing but one almost never hears any real football player criticise another's making the team, either his own or an All America. Although the player in this ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... abandoned position and again fortify the hill. In some respects this hill, which was about one hundred and fifty feet in height, made a strong and easily defended position; but, unfortunately, it was covered nearly to the summit with a dense growth of bushes and scrub, and was commanded by a range of higher hills a little farther to the eastward. The enemy, therefore, could not only creep close up to the camp under cover of the dense chaparral, but could fire down upon it from the higher slopes of the ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... and General Manager of the Gold Divide Mining, Milling, and Tunnel Company of Colorado and directs 300 workmen. These are a few examples out of some thousands of what woman is doing.[427] And yet there are men who do not believe she should do anything but wash dishes and scrub. ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... the trouble of answering, for Bessie seemed in too great a hurry to listen to explanations; she hauled me to the washstand, inflicted a merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face and hands with soap, water, and a coarse towel; disciplined my head with a bristly brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying me to the top of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted in ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... expectant force. Glimpses of horses and men could just be caught over the crests of the low trees or between the interlacing boughs. Both men and horses were motionless, and the eye that strove to see more was baffled by the scrub which concealed more than it revealed, and by the absence of the standards of war which might have afforded some estimate of the nature and size of the force and had for this reason been carefully ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... rough and, though by good fortune they met no one, since the few who dwelt in these wild parts had gone up to Bonsa Town to be present at the great feast, the sun was sinking before ever they reached the place. Moreover, this promontory proved to be covered with dense thorn scrub, through which they must force a way in the gathering darkness, not without hurt and difficulty. Still they accomplished it and at length, quite exhausted, crept to the very point, where they hid themselves between some stones at ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... counted out the money required to purchase this astonishing outlay the bulky proprietor tasked pleasantly: "Uncle Noah, do you happen to know where I can get a good woman to scrub up my ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple

... like that when you know Docia has heart disease and can't scrub the clothes clean," she responded. "If she'd drop down dead I'd like to know what ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... said Marcella, mournfully, as she inspected them; "well, we'll get Mrs. Levi to come in and scrub—as soon as your mother ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... of about five miles to the beach along a straight road bordered with palm trees. At some distance from the highway the country was thick with scrub, from which the sickly smell of the mangroves rose in the still slanting rays of ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman

... of Dutch cleanliness and neatness, but what is all I have said compared with Brock? Even the people have their jokes upon its superiority in this particular, and assert that the inhabitants actually wash and scrub their wood before they put it on the fire. Lady Penrhyn's cottages must yield the palm, they are only internally washed and painted, but in Brock, Tops and bottoms, Outside and in, bricks and all, are constantly under the ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley

... "just as you like. If you feel yourself going, stoop down and pretend to fasten your shoe, and give a scrub to your cheeks before passing Miss Bruce. She'll spot you in a moment if you go in ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... of the road, passing the base of a huge hill of granite all overgrown with ivy and scrub oak, the deacon's house comes full in sight. It is a quaint old edifice of wood, whose architecture proclaims it as belonging to the ante-revolutionary period. Innocent of paint, its dingy shingles and moss-grown roof assimilated with ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

... during the transit over the water in the darkness or nearing the land when the bullets took their toll. But, as the keel of the boats touched bottom, each boat-load dashed into the water and then into the enemy's fire. At first it seemed that nothing could stop them, but by degrees wire, scrub and cliffs; thirst, sheer exhaustion broke the back of their impetus. Then the enemy's howitzers and field guns had it all their own way, forcing attack to yield a lot of ground. Things looked anxious for a bit, but by this morning's dawn all are ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... men of the Cristobal Colon, and these were the best looking of all the captives. From their pretty fair average the others varied to worse and worse, till a very scrub lot, said to be ex- convicts, brought up the rear. They were nearly all little fellows, and very dark, though here and there a six-footer towered up, or a blond showed among them. They were joking and laughing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... she gave him her hand to hold, and there was very little to say and no need of saying it until they came to the hill overlooking the pasture, yellowing toward the end of summer, full of late bloom and misty colour passing insensibly into light. Threads of gossamer caught on the ends of the scrub or floated free, glinting as they turned and bellied in the windless air, to trick the imagination with the hint of robed, ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin



Words linked to "Scrub" :   cleansing, holystone, cleanup, vegetation, schedule, cleaning, swabbing, scrub plane, flora, botany, rub, unimproved, lave, mopping, wash, scrub-bird



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