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Alligator   Listen
noun
Alligator  n.  
1.
(Zool.) A large carnivorous reptile of the Crocodile family, peculiar to America. It has a shorter and broader snout than the crocodile, and the large teeth of the lower jaw shut into pits in the upper jaw, which has no marginal notches. Besides the common species of the southern United States, there are allied species in South America.
2.
(Mech.) Any machine with strong jaws, one of which opens like the movable jaw of an alligator; as,
(a)
(Metal Working) A form of squeezer for the puddle ball;
(b)
(Mining) A rock breaker;
(c)
(Printing) A kind of job press, called also alligator press.
Alligator apple (Bot.), the fruit of the Anona palustris, a West Indian tree. It is said to be narcotic in its properties.
Alligator fish (Zool.), a marine fish of northwestern America (Podothecus acipenserinus).
Alligator gar (Zool.), one of the gar pikes (Lepidosteus spatula) found in the southern rivers of the United States. The name is also applied to other species of gar pikes.
Alligator pear (Bot.), a corruption of Avocado pear. See Avocado.
Alligator snapper, Alligator tortoise, Alligator turtle (Zool.), a very large and voracious turtle (Macrochelys lacertina) inhabiting the rivers of the southern United States. It sometimes reaches the weight of two hundred pounds. Unlike the common snapping turtle, to which the name is sometimes erroneously applied, it has a scaly head and many small scales beneath the tail. This name is sometimes given to other turtles, as to species of Trionyx.
Alligator wood, the timber of a tree of the West Indies (Guarea Swartzii).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Alligator" Quotes from Famous Books



... all about it. Secret no longer. Dr. MORTIMER GRANVILLE has told the Times how it's done. Consider it great shame. Takes the bread, so t' speak, out of one's mouth." Here the Sage gave a lurch and seated himself accidentally on a stuffed alligator. Seeing that his host was about to indulge in an untimely nap, PETER thought the moment had arrived to urge him to reveal his wonderful secret. "I implore you to tell me how you have managed to live for so many years when all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various

... a gesture, the porters advanced in line, like the Three Graces; and counting rapidly, I made out that their load consisted of one good-sized "Innovation" cabin box, two enormous alligator-skin dressing bags, one small bag, and two capacious hold-alls, umbrellas, parasols, and ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... is a dangerous substance to go into any stomach, unless it be that of a buzzard. Heredity and environment have made this bird a carrion-eater, hence, like the jackal, the hyena, and the alligator, companion scavengers, it can eat putrid flesh with impunity. Other flesh-eating animals avoid carrion when they can, for long years of experience have taught them that decaying meat contains certain ptomaines which render it very poisonous; hence, they let dead, or ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir

... as a hole in the ground, And weasels are wavy and sleek; And no alligator could ever be straighter Than lizards that live in a creek, But a Camel's all lumpy And bumpy and humpy— Any ...
— The Best Nonsense Verses • Various

... a deer, or a sign of one, to be seen, and nothing living within a mile. But no! There is something moving! It is—yes, it is a big Alligator, lying down there on the rocks! After looking for a few minutes with disgust at the ugly creature, the Jaguar said to himself, "He must have come on shore while I was asleep. But what matters it! An Alligator! Very different indeed from five fat ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... gum; 'monkey-plums' or 'apples' and 'governor's plums.' The common guavas are rank and harsh, but the 'strawberry guava,' as it is locally called, has a delicate, subacid flavour not easily equalled. The aguacate, or alligator-pear (Persea gratissima), which was not 'introduced by the Basel missionaries from the West Indies,' is inferior to the Mexican. Connoisseurs compare its nutty flavour with that of the filbert, and eat it with pepper, salt, and the sauce ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... found in great abundance in the woods about the mouth of the river, and, for aught I know, in every part of the country. You perceive that I am constantly discovering new luxuries for my table. Not having been able to kill a crocodile (alligator), I have offered a reward for one, which I mean to eat, dressed in soup, fricassees, and steaks. Oh! how you long ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... end of the month of May that Kennedy landed at Rockingham Bay with his party of twelve men. He had started from Sydney in the barque Tam o' Shanter, which was convoyed by Captain Owen Stanley in the Alligator. This was in 1848, the same fateful year that witnessed Leichhardt's disappearance. A schooner was to meet the party on the north, at Port Albany, where it was proposed to form a settlement should the features of the peninsula warrant such an enterprise. In actual point of distance the ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... Paris of the art lover, nor the Paris of the lover of history, nor yet again the Paris of the worth-while Parisians —but the Paris which the casual male visitor samples, is the most overrated thing on earth, I reckon—except alligator-pear salad —and the most costly. Its system of conduct is predicated, based, organized and manipulated on the principle that a foreigner with plenty of money and no soul will be along pretty soon. Hence by day and by night the deadfall is rigged and the trap is set and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... chattering of the paroquets began to be heard from the wood. The ill-omened gallinaso was sailing and circling round the hut, and the tall flamingo was stalking on the shallows of the lagoon, the haunt of the disgusting alligator, that lay beneath, divided from the sea by a narrow mud bank, where a group of pelicans, perched on the wreck of one of our boats, were pluming themselves before taking wing. In the east, the deep blue of the firmament, from which the lesser stars were fast fading, all ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 472 - Vol. XVII. No. 472., Saturday, January 22, 1831 • Various

... to China and North America the alligator of the Yangtsze-kiang is generically identical with its Mississippi relative. The spoon-beaked sturgeon of the Yangtsze and Hwang-ho is, however, now separated, as Psephurus, from the closely allied ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... burrowed in the ground, and sometimes seized and devoured men. This animal, of the existence of which we have the additional evidence of an exactly similar description given by one of the chiefs to Nicholas, is probably an alligator. The natives, as we learn from Cruise, have the greatest horror of a lizard, in the shape of which animal they believe it is that the atua (or demon) is wont to take possession of the dying, and to devour their entrails—a ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... the gentleman," she said, "who was in the Fruit Store the day I bought the Alligator pears and dropped my pocket-book down ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... I had a good hook an' line I'd sneak a pick'rel out o' that pond. Say, remember that time I shot that alligator-" ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... history, and alligators. Alligators are confined to the Western Hemisphere; crocodiles were supposed to be peculiar to the East, but lately a true crocodile (Crocodilus Americanus) has been identified in Florida. The alligator covers its eggs with a heap of rubbish for warmth and so leaves them; the African crocodile, on the contrary, buries them in the sand and then sits over them. The cardinal bird and the ocellated ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson

... of giddiness, and between whiles he speculated hazily as to the size of the blister the sun was raising on his back. For amusement he tried by looking ahead to decide whether the muddy object he saw lying on the water's edge was a log of wood or an alligator. Only very soon he had to give that up. No fun in it. Always alligator. One of them flopped into the river and all but capsized the canoe. But this excitement was over directly. Then in a long empty reach ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... were grouped about four lunch baskets. One of the children, a little boy, held a black greyhound by a rope around its neck. Trina wore a blue cloth skirt, a striped shirt waist, and a white sailor; about her round waist was a belt of imitation alligator skin. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... up his pieces of paper; here he offers up his prayers; here he receives his religious consolations, and here is his road to the celestial land." That "Joss is located in a long, narrow room, in a building in a back alley, upon a kind of altar;" that "he is a wooden image, looking as much like an alligator as like a human being;" that the Chinese "think there is such a place as heaven;" that "all classes of Chinamen worship idols;" that "the temple is open every day at all hours;" that "the Chinese have no Sunday;" ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... reach; with its flat-top, square-sided, boxlike buildings, with here and there a structure taller than the others; the flash of light from Trinity's spire, its cross aflame; the awkward, crab-like movements of innumerable ferry-boats, their gaping alligator mouths filled with human flies; the impudent, nervous little tugs, spitting steam in every passing face; the long strings of sausage-linked canalers kept together by grunting, slow-moving tows; the great floating track-yards bearing ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... mean you needn't let yourself feel them. There's something in the idea: be callous as an alligator and nothing can ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... farther on he met another man who had been at Cibola, and who also told him of a great river in which there were crocodiles. This was the Mississippi, of course, and the crocodiles were alligators. As Alarcon had never seen an alligator he took the description to mean crocodile. A little farther and he heard of the negro Estevan again and the reason why the Cibolans had killed him, which was to prevent the Spaniards, whom he described, from finding their way into ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... and Lander, set out in the Quorra and Alburkah. Attack of the natives. Leave Eboe. Mortality on board the vessels. Capture of an alligator. Aspect of the Niger near the Kong Mountains. The Quorra aground. Fundah. Mr. Laird returns to the coast. Richard Lander wounded. His death. Return ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... dozen times, and once or twice nibble at a precious pellet of nitro. At night I am wakened as of yore, but the agonizing, crushing pains do not come every night. ... I eat prunes and bran biscuit and coffee for breakfast; a bit of cooked fruit (and that in this land of oranges and alligator pears and ripe raspberries!), chicken and green peas, and bran biscuit and tea for lunch; a couple of green vegetables and bran biscuit and a small black, for dinner. And all this I write with a supreme sense of ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... a snaky, dusky fellow, with huge rings of gold in his ears and a smile that showed altogether too many teeth to be pleasant—a regular alligator smile. As far as I could see, I would just as lief have Pedro's ill feeling as his friendship. Yet Tugg trusted him implicitly. But I—I locked my stateroom door whenever I lay down to sleep; and I kept the Winchester and the Colts ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster

... Turtles, Lizards and Snakes. It is commonly said that reptiles are cold-blooded. This means that the temperature of their blood varies and is the same as the surrounding medium. The temperature of an Alligator that has been floating with its nose out of the water is the same as the surrounding water. The temperature of a turtle in the winter time is the same as the mud in which it is buried, while in the summer time it is much higher. What is ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... agin, as hard as he could lay on. I believe in my soul he would have nearly killed me, if it hadn't a been for a great big nigger wench he had, called Rose. My! what a slashin' large woman, that was; half horse, half alligator, with a cross of the mammoth in her. She wore a man's hat and jacket, and her petticoat had stuff enough in it to make the mainsail of a boat. Her foot was as long and as flat as a snow shoe, and her hands looked as shapeless and as hard ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... would have to be a cold kind of pet," he replied. "And I don't like seals and walruses. The very animal that I want I can't have: the alligator has always been ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner

... craft are brought to the mole of the Malecon, besides articles for exportation, a boundless variety of fruits—pine-apples (whose quality has made Guayaquil famous), oranges, lemons, limes, plantains, bananas, cocoa-nuts, alligator pears, papayas, mangos, guavas, melons, etc.; many an undescribed species of fish known only to the epicure, and barrels or jars of water from a distant point up the river, out of the reach of the tide ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... the goat, and the dog, with many more, such as the beaver, the otter, the mink, and the musk-rat, which lay with their tails in the pond and their heads in the pen; and others, such as the tortoise and the alligator, whose snouts preferred water, while their tails stuck to the land. In the coop were a vast many birds and fowls, some of beautiful and varied plumage, while others were robed in dirty and dingy feathers; some were very tender, and good ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... Western Australia, the Swan, the Irwin, the Greenough, the Murchison, and the Gascoyne, the Ashburton, the Fortescue, the De Grey, and another Fitzroy. On the north coast, we meet with the Victoria, the Daly, the Adelaide, the Alligator, the Liverpool, the Roper, the Limmen Bight, the Macarthur, the Robinson and the Calvert, the Albert—which is the outlet for the Nicholson and the Gregory—the Leichhardt and the Flinders, the Norman, the Gilbert, the Einesleigh, the Mitchell, the Archer, the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... my rifle by my side, ready for service. We rowed on, now and then knocking a young alligator on the nose as he popped his ugly head out of the water to have a look ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston

... in the adventurous and energetic spirit of their leader, remonstrated with him and proposed to return to their companions; but, disregarding them, he pressed on in his new enterprise. In wading a small stream, one of the men was carried off by an alligator, and a day or so after, another was bitten and killed by a rattle-snake. Terror seized upon his men, and all their persuasions proving fruitless, they determined to assassinate him and return. They did so, only to find the colony dispersed and nowhere to be found. After many hazardous ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... an apothecary,— And hereabouts he dwells,—which late I noted In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, Culling of simples; meagre were his looks, Sharp misery had worn him to the bones; And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, An alligator stuff'd, and other skins Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves A beggarly account of empty boxes, Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses, Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show. ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... too late," declared Mr. Alcando. "The alligator will have him before you reach him. Oh, that I was a good swimmer, or ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton

... journey that he saw the most magnificent residence that he had ever beheld, the home of an old friend of his, an alligator, who possessed a number of such palatial mansions and could change his residence at any time by the simple process of swimming from ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... it! Fritz's barbed wire and dugouts and machine gun emplacements can't stand for a minute against these tanks! Why, Tom, they can crawl on their back as well as any other way, and they don't mind a shower of shrapnel or a burst of machine gun lead, any more than an alligator minds a swarm of gnats. The only thing that makes 'em hesitate a bit is a Jack Johnson or a Bertha shell, and it's got to be a pretty big one, and in the right place, to do much damage. These tanks are great, ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton

... study for the common schools. Among animals are the beaver, otter, squirrel, coon, bear, fox, wildcat, deer, buffalo, domestic animals, wild turkeys, ducks, pigeons, eagle, hawk, wild bees, cat-fish, sword-fish, turtle, alligator, and many more. Among native products and fruits are mentioned corn, pumpkins, beans, huckleberries, grapes, strawberries, cranberries, tobacco, pawpaw, mulberry, haw, plum, apple, and persimmon. Of ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... Jim Travers had told the wondering people that he saw Tom capture Sipo Tahib, as he called him, by jumping on his back and bending his forepaws over his neck. (Peter Parley's History, which Jim read at school, contained a picture of the naturalist Chatterton thus navigating an alligator, and Jim couldn't see why a tiger should not be handled the same way. He preferred, however, that some other boy should be the one to make ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis

... water-snakes (Heliops), and anacondas. But alligators bear the palm for ugliness, size, and strength. In summer the main river swarms with them; in the wet season they retreat to the interior lakes and flooded forests. It was for this reason that we did not see an alligator on the Napo. At low water they are found above the entrance of the Curaray. About Obidos, where many of the pools dry up in the fine months, the alligator buries itself in the mud, and sleeps till the rainy season returns. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... his bedroom, Northwood examined the wallet. It was made of alligator skin, clasped with a gold signet that bore the initial M. The first pocket was empty; the second yielded an object that sent a warm flush ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various

... a skillful man with horses, and had never liked an automobile half as much. He loved all animals and they seemed to love him too. At the present time his pets consisted of a small woolly dog, an angora cat, a parrot, and an alligator. The last named pet he kept in an old wash tub, half full of water, and called him Percy. He used to talk to all his pets as if they were human beings, Percy included, and many people had ventured the opinion that his brain was not quite as good ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene

... "stewed tripe Spanish." Someone must or they wouldn't advertise it on the outside of he restaurant. Well, it takes all sorts of people to make a world. Probably the man who would order "stewed tripe Spanish" wouldn't touch an alligator pear salad. To him alligator pears taste exactly like lard. To the person who wouldn't eat "stewed tripe ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... size as compared with the one that towers above it, and in this structure there is a reclining statue of Buddha seventy feet long. Buddha must have been a giant, for his footprints are four feet long, and his tooth is as large as the tooth of an alligator, and ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... "Seven-fifteen! Aren't you ever going to get up for breakfast?" and he was not a hero-scientist but a rather irritable and commonplace man who needed a shave. They had coffee, griddle-cakes, and sausages, and talked about Mrs. McGanum's atrocious alligator-hide belt. Night witchery and morning disillusion were alike forgotten in the ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... tongue not to be easily translated; in fact, perfectly proof against all prying outsiders. The one way to hoodwink old Fraser is to humbug him about the great work on Thibet. That is the one soft spot in the hide of this old alligator. We have gone carefully over the reports of your secret agent at St. Heliers. Make us square with him, Captain, let him have your orders to aid us, and he can get us first hooked on to this Yankee Professor Alaric Hobbs! We will jolly him a bit, and so, get ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... preacher wuz in de river fixin' ter baptize a man. Eve'ybody wuz singin' ole time 'ligion. A 'oman sung, "I don' lak dat thing 'hind you." Bout dat time de pahson en de udder man se'd an alligator. De parson sezs, "No-By-God I Don't Either." He turned de man loose ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Tennessee Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... and others, the trustiest of his followers. On the twenty-fifth, they set sail; the "Joly" and the little frigate "Belle" following. They coasted the shore of Cuba, and landed at the Isle of Pines, where La Salle shot an alligator, which the soldiers ate; and the hunters brought in a wild pig, half of which he sent to Beaujeu. Then they advanced to Cape St. Antoine, where bad weather and contrary winds long detained them. A load of ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... night; she liked a comfortable quantity, and that of many varieties, and these of the best. Under the ministrations of Matilda she pleasurably disposed of clear soup, whitebait, a pair of squabs on toast with asparagus tips, and an alligator pear salad. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott

... the cage where serpents of every kind were twisting and squirming about, among them the terrible boa-constrictor, and the python; but Mrs. Steiner could not look at them, and asked the boys to stay but a little while, but they could halt at the tanks of the South American alligator, the rhinoceros, the great turtle, and the hippopotamus; all animals which the boys had never seen except in pictures and were ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang

... supply of fish, some of which were cooked on the spot, brother Ed., in wandering about, captured a young alligator, and led it along to where sister Lu was seated, saying: "I've brought you a new pet, Lu." She adopted the little monster at once, and it was carried home, and turned loose in the creek ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various

... a sea-captain who had sent him "stuffed" natural-history curios from all parts of the world, and Mr. Parrott had arranged a rather picturesque interior. Miss Philamese Nile, president of the W.T.W.'s, stood beneath a dusty alligator that swung from the ceiling, and Cap'n Sproul, glancing from one to the other, confessed to himself that he didn't know which face looked the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... happens that aggressively disposed animals, like cowardly men, are apt to try battle with the unlikeliest adversaries. A missionary from India tells the story of an alligator who was enjoying a noonday sleep on the bank of a river, when an immense tiger emerged from the jungle, made straight for the sleeping saurian until within leaping distance, when he sprang on the ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... for, Advertised goods, Nationally, After-dinner coffee, Afternoon tea, teas, Age on children's diet, Effect of, on diet, Effect of, Alcoholic beverages, beverages, Harmful effects of, beverages, Kinds of, Alligator pear, or avocado, Apple butter, sauce, Apples, apricots, and peaches, Dried, Composition and food value of, Drying of, Maple, Porcupine, Steamed, Stewed quinces and, Apportionment of income, Apricot souffle, Apricots, Drying of, Food value and composition of, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5 • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... at Perihelion, he had a Complexion suggesting an Alligator Pear, and his Eye-Balls should have ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... furniture, for these are few, but things appertaining to the craft in which Shebotha is supposed to have skill—demonology. There are the bones and skins of monkeys, with those of snakes, lizards, and other reptiles; teeth of the alligator and jaguar; the proboscis-like snouts of the tapir and tamanoir, or great ant-bear, with a variety of other like oddities, furnished by the indigenous creatures of the Chaco in every department of the zoological world—birds, quadrupeds, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... 9th, at 6 o'clock a.m., we got under weigh, and steamed up to the mouth of the Alligator river, where we arrived at 9 o'clock a.m. The Shamrock was lying close by. The weather was cold. At 1:30 o'clock p.m., the Valley City proceeded up the Alligator river. At 7 p.m. we anchored off Newport News. ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten

... the news was not all bad. There were always the comic strips. Pogo was busily staving off an approaching wedding between Albert Alligator and a new character named Tranquil Portly, who appeared to be a brown bear. He was running into some resistance, though, from a wolflike character who planned to abscond with Albert's cigars while Albert was honeymooning. This character, Don Coyote ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett

... Boulder in the drawing-room end of a Pullman car, that was all littered up with double-barrelled express rifles and leather game bags and lynx catchers and wolf traps and Heaven knows what. And the Duke had on his very roughest sporting-suit, made, apparently, of alligator hide; and as he sat there with a rifle across his knees, while the train swept onwards through open fields and broken woods, the real country at last, towards the Wisconsin forest, there was such a light of genial happiness in his face that had not been seen there ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... tiger, the largest and most formidable of the terrestrial mammals of the Old World, are not here to be found; but their places are well supplied by the swamp-loving tapir, the voracious alligator, the stealthy puma, and the blood-thirsty jaguar, all well worthy of the sportsman's rifle, or of the snake-visioned native warrior's weapons—for the power of destruction in these animals during life is great, while after ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... The nearest alligator made a snap at the seed as it sank in the river, but he missed it, and the next minute he found himself no bigger than a lizard, sitting at the bottom of a stream not half a yard across. At the other side ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... tight hold of his line, and as Barry watched, he gathered up the slack and with a whoop jumped nimbly over the back of the nearest alligator, charging now with open jaws. As he landed on his feet, he dodged behind a root, and his clear cry ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... had begun. I went to the window, the moon was at the full. She was standing by the gate, her head inside the garden; I took it her anxiety was lest we might miss any of it. Her neck was stretched out straight, her eyes towards the sky; which gave to her the appearance of a long-eared alligator. I have never had much to do with cows. I don't know how you talk to them. I told her to "be quiet," and to "lie down"; and made pretence to throw a boot at her. It seemed to cheer her, having an audience; she added half a dozen extra notes. I never knew before a cow had so much in her. There is ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... spring when the first midges dance and warm days lure the last-year's butterfly, the scarlet of the cardinals begins to flicker through the ivory smoke of the mosses. Then the alligator leaves his winter ooze, and the widening "O" of the ripple which his gar-like nose makes, travels slowly across the sullen ponds, where the pendant gonfalons of the mosses kiss their imaginary duplicates, hanging head downward in ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen

... LAY-deeze," shouted Penrod, "I will first call your at-tain-shon to our genuine South American dog, part alligator!" He pointed to the dachshund, and added, in his ordinary tone, "That's him." Straightway reassuming the character of showman, he bellowed: "NEXT, you see Duke, the genuine, full-blooded Indian dog from the ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... saw a large alligator, about twenty feet long, rising to the surface of the water, close to our camp. He appeared to be attentively watching our sheep, which were feeding by the side of the river, on the Dolichos and Ipomoeas which were growing on the ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray

... hundred cubits long, beside being elaborately carved, and inlaid with bits of crystal, porcelain, mother-of-pearl, and jade, is richly enamelled and gilt. The stem, which rises ten or eleven feet from the bows, represents the nagha mustakha sapta, the seven-headed serpent or alligator. A phrasat, or elevated throne (also termed p'hra-the-nang), occupies the centre, supported by four pillars. The extraordinary beauty of the inlaying of shells, mother-of-pearl, crystal, and precious stones of every color, the splendor of the gilding, and the elegance of the costly ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... you about a young alligator and a water turtle papa had. He kept the turtle in the cellar, and the alligator in an earthen tank; but when it came winter he put that in the cellar too, in a tight box with air-holes. Some time afterward he went to look at the turtle and the alligator, and they had both disappeared. ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... announced Mephisto to the woman who met them. She was small and wizened and old, with yellow, flabby jaws, a neck like the throat of an alligator, and straight, white hair that stood from ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... by smoking, is any thing but kindness or the kindly expression of it, when it creates an atmosphere, which, whether it comes directly from the pipe, the cigar, or deeply imbued clothing, or worse than alligator breath, is absolutely insupportable to many, who do not use it, causing depression of strength, dizziness, headache, sickness at the stomach, and sometimes vomiting. By what rule of politeness, nay, on what ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey

... run too many shows at once. He's tryin' to keep the Gospel trade hummin' an' have his eye on all the fun that's goin' at the same time. I ain't up in the religion business myself; there ain't likely to be any wings sproutin' 'round where I'm at, but I can tell a minister from an alligator seven days in the week, an' without specs, too, an' the first time I laid eyes on that chap you've got now, I knew he wasn't the sort that made folks hop along to Heaven any faster than they wanted ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith

... out on the jam and was clawing out the butt of a log with a rude sort of boat-hook. It slid forward slowly as an alligator moves, three or four others followed it, and the green water spouted through the gaps they had made. Then the villagers howled and shouted and scrambled across the logs, pulling and pushing the obstinate timber, and the red head of Namgay Doola was chief among them ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... side again, and at the bottom held the flask up to the light. Through the side slits in the alligator-skin covering, she saw the deep color of the contents; and, as she lifted the nozzle, she sniffed contemptuously. Then, she took a sample draught herself—to make certain that ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... laughing of the operators and onlookers she heard piercing screams, as strong arms plied the alligator hide, and one by one the girls came running into her, bleeding and quivering in the agony of pain. By and by the opiate did its work and ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... may have been an alligator, fellows. Some of the natives told me there are a few in this old ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... yourself, Ursa, but quite vice versa, You know how impressive caste's quiet is! But, JAMRACH! O JAMRACH! Woe's stretched on no sham rack Of metre that mourns you sincerely; E'en that hard nut o' natur, the great Alligator, Has eyes that look red, and blink queerly. Mere "crocodile's tears," some may snigger; but jeers Must disgust at a moment so doleful. For JAMRACH the brave, who has gone to his grave, All our sorrow's sincere as ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand

... wade waist or knee deep in a Sunderbunds creek, and clear a boat with a yo-heave-ho, for fear of some festive mugger, which means alligator, lurking in the mud. ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... not be touched. Varnished pine-cones, flint arrow-heads, statuettes set on worsted mats, tiny strange boxes rarely ornamented—you mustn't even shake them to see if they contained anything—a small stuffed alligator in the act of climbing a pole; a frail cup and saucer; a watch-chain fashioned from Grammer's hair probably long before she fell into evil habits; a pink china dog that simpered; a dusty black cigar with a gay red-and-gold belt that had once upon a time been ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... large, white-eyed holy terrors gazed at him in a kind of dumb, inquiring tone of voice, but he didn't say much. He seemed considerably reserved as to the plan of the campaign. The new teacher then unlocked his alligator-skin grip, and took out a Bible and a new self-cocking weepon that had an automatic dingus for throwing out the empty shells. It was one of the bull-dog variety, and had the laugh ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... man chiefly responsible for the slaughter of the birds at Alligator Bay. He laughed at the idea of getting plumes without killing the birds! I well know the man who shot the birds up Rogers River, and even saw some of the empty shells left on the ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... harbors: Alligator Pond, Discovery Bay, Kingston, Montego Bay, Ocho Rios, Port Antonio, Rocky ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... just before sundown. As they were about to return they espied the largest and strangest lizard they ever saw. It was nearly two feet long, with a perfectly round body, a broad, flat head, short legs and a short, blunt tail. It was a chunky little animal, all covered with a rough skin like an alligator and dotted with square warts. It seemed very tame and followed Mary into the tent where she made a warm nest for it in the corner near her bunk. It was very fond of being petted and would lie and rub its head against Mary's hand. When Father returned at night he was ...
— Little Tales of The Desert • Ethel Twycross Foster

... consciousness of this, she addressed herself to him with a pretty exclusion; and, pausing to explain her indifference to food, she left the selection of everything but the salad to Lee; she had, she admitted, a preference for alligator pears cut into small cubes with a French dressing. That disposed ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... head mistress of the Diocesan School at Amherst near Rangoon, and her pupils were bathing in the sea when one of them was bitten in the leg by a shark or alligator. Alarmed by this terrible shock she lost her balance and was being carried away by the tide when her sister and the head mistress both went to the rescue. Miss Grace Darling had succeeded in getting hold of her when ...
— Beneath the Banner • F. J. Cross

... could realise what it was, there was another movement just beyond, and this time he made out plainly enough the gaping mouth, prominent eyes, and rugged back of a great alligator, followed by its waving tail, as it dived down from a cluster of tree-roots out ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn

... never seen a Scotsman before. And he looked me all over, his good, honest, brawny countenance shining with interest, as a boy might look upon a lion or an alligator. From him I learned with disgust that I could not be received at Our Lady of the Snows; I might get a meal, perhaps, but that was all. And then, as our talk ran on, and it turned out that I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Nature—it is the decoration of another and a strange element: the roots are in the air; the boughs which should be full of birds, are in the flood, covered by its alien products, swimming side by side with the alligator. So has this priestcraft swept its victims from their natural place and independent growth, to clothe them in their helplessness with a false spiritual adornment, neither scriptural nor human, but ecclesiastical—the native ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... the census frequently involves hardship and peril, requiring arduous journeys by dog-team in the frozen north and by launch in the snake-haunted and alligator-filled Everglades of Florida, while the enumerator whose work lies among the dangerous criminal classes of the greater cities must take his life in ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... indeed might the shade of Apicius[A] lament that America and turtle were not discovered in his days. There were the guanas, too, in abundance, with their mouths sewed up to prevent their biting; these are excellent food, although bearing so near a resemblance to the alligator, and its diminutive European representative, the harmless lizard. Muscovy ducks, parrots, monkeys, pigeons, and fish. Pine apples abounded, oranges, pomegranates, limes, Bavarias, plantains, love apples, Abbogada ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the affair for our paper, giving the small list of guests and the long line of refreshments—which included alligator-pear salad, right out of the Smart Set Cook Book. Moreover, when Jefferson appeared in Topeka that fall, Priscilla Winthrop, who had met him through some of her Duxbury friends in Boston, invited him to run down for a luncheon with her and the members of the royal family who surrounded her. ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... signs." This slave, a girl of the Chitimacha tribe, remained with Le Page for years, and one draws the inference that she was possessed of a vigorous personality, and was not devoid of charm or bravery. Le Page writes that when frightened by an alligator approaching his camp fire, he ran to the lodge for his gun. However, the Indian girl calmly picked up a stick and hammered the 'gator so lustily on its nose that it retreated. As Le Page arrived with his ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... a look of surprise was painted on his face. In silence he looked toward the neighboring mountain and continued moving the handle of the net from one side to the other. Finally, without taking the net out of the water, he murmured in a low voice: "An alligator." ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal

... He's a back number. There's nothing he's done that isn't on the tumble since last night. The financial gang that he downed are out already against him. They'll have his economic blood. He made a splash while he was at it, but the alligator's got ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... small plot of ground, the cultivation of which was the delight of papa Christinat. It soon became a miniature zoological garden, where all sorts of experiments in breeding and observations on the habits of animals, were carried on. A tank for turtles and a small alligator in one corner, a large hutch for rabbits in another, a cage for eagles against the wall, a tame bear and a family of opossums, made up the menagerie, varied from time to time by ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... identified Wewillemuck as the snail. Some of the Indians say that it is a large lizard like an alligator. The bark picture of this creature, made by Noel Josephs, is that of a nondescript difficult ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes

... lizard was on the outside of a pane of glass, with a candle on the inside. There is, I believe, no class of living creatures in which the gradations can be traced with such minuteness and regularity as in this; where, from the small animal just described, to the huge alligator or crocodile, a chain may be traced containing almost innumerable links, of which the remotest have a striking resemblance to each other, and seem, at first view, to ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... seemed crammed to the hinges with it, making an alluring bait. The long, black revolver of Shanklin's other days and nights lay there beside the bag asserting its large-caliber office of protection with a drowsy alligator look ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... Ulysses, M. Salverte, a recent compiler on the marvellous, is tempted to regard as an overgrown polypus magnified by the optical power of poetry, though we are disposed to give the credit to an alligator, or its mate, a crocodile; and this occurrence is not so fictitiously represented, as it ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... of Colonel Taylor in Florida was his victory of OKEE-CHOBEE, which was gained on the 25th of December, 1837. The action was very severe, and continued nearly four hours. The Indians, under the command of Alligator and Sam Jones, numbered about 700 warriors, and were posted in a dense hammock, with their front covered by a small stream, almost impassable on account of quicksands, and with their flanks secured by swamps that prevented ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... boy was not particularly pleased at the summary manner in which the young Alligators were disposed of; but he was very much amused at the somewhat novel method employed by the Bear to deceive the old Alligator. The negroes, however, enjoyed Daddy Jack's story immensely, and even 'Tildy condescended to give it her approval; but she qualified this by saying, as soon as ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... There seemed nothing in this person's appearance to call forth such a welcome. He was dressed in a half-Indian, half-hunter's garb, a long-barrelled rifle was slanted over his shoulder, and he seemed a favorable specimen of the "half-horse, half-alligator" type of the early West. But there was a shrewd look on his weather-beaten face and a humorous twinkle in his eyes that betokened a man above the ordinary frontier level, while it was very evident that the guests present looked upon ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... age; they are now restricted to two species, A. mississippiensis or lucius in the southern states of North America up to 12 ft. in length, and the small A. sinensis in the Yang-tse-kiang. In Central and South America alligators are represented by five species of the genus Caiman, which differs from Alligator by the absence of a bony septum between the nostrils, and the ventral armour is composed of overlapping bony scutes, each of which is formed of two parts united by a suture. C. sclerops, the spectacled alligator, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Having obtained a supply of water, I despatched Mr. Baines, with Phibbs, Shewell, and Dawson, in the gig to bring up the sheep, the long-boat also going down the river with a crew from the vessel to bring up the kedge anchor and warp from Alligator Island, and also to assist in bringing up the sheep. In the evening there was a fine breeze from the east, and the thermometer fell to 65 degrees during the night. A few days before our arrival one of the kangaroo dogs had been seized by an ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... goods. A short time before we reached the point, above thirteen miles in a straight line from the mouth of the river where we anchored for the night, we saw about six blacks, who were very friendly and followed us for some time. We found that the water was fresh when we reached Alligator Point, about twenty miles in a straight line from the mouth of the river; above this point the fringes of mangrove are scarce on the edges of the river, and back from the river there is rising ground, consisting of fine, well-grassed, and slightly timbered downs. On passing up ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough

... The unconscious, expressive gesture, scornful and abrupt, with which she neglected them might have been terribly wounding to a young man more sensitive than Dayson. But Dayson, in his self-sufficient, good-natured mediocrity, had the hide of an alligator. He even judged her movement quite natural, for he was a flunkey born. Hilda gazed at her master with anxiety as he deposited his black walking-stick in the corner behind the door and loosed his white ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... knew about Dunsany and georgette and alligator pears; and Hosea Brewster was in the habit of dropping around to the Elks' Club, up above Schirmer's furniture store on Elm Street, at about five in the afternoon on his way home from the cold-storage ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... he was drawing the long-bow, as the Yankees call it, at a prodigious rate. He was telling how, once upon a time, he had caught a young alligator; how he had tamed it and fed it till it grew a monster twenty feet long; how he used to saddle it and bridle it, and ride through the streets of Tulcora on its back—men, women, and children screaming and flying in all directions; how, armed only with his good sabre, he ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables

... "the principal chief or king of this part of the Timmannee country, is about ninety years of age, with a mottled, shrivelled-up skin, resembling in colour that of an alligator more than that of a human being, with dim, greenish eyes, far sunk in his head, and a bleached, twisted beard, hanging down about two feet from his chin; like the king of the opposite district he wore a necklace of coral and leopard's teeth, but his mantle was brown and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... Indian, without communicating his thoughts to his companion, silently divested himself of the little remnant of clothing that remained to him, and glided off among the bushes—like a jaguar advancing through the underwood to surprise the gaunt alligator on the bank ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... out what it was. They were in the open country at the time, though not far from the edge of the bush. The something that the dogs had disturbed came directly towards the party, and Ned happened to be nearer to it than anybody else. The creature looked like a small alligator, and that's what Ned and Harry thought it was. Ned had dismounted from his horse and was standing by the animal's head, waiting for the decision about their movements. The animal came directly up to Ned and climbed up his side. It was about five feet long, and a very formidable-looking ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... friends, M. Larsoneur, advocate, member of the bar at Lisieux, and archaeologist, would probably supply them with information about it. He had written a history of Port-en-Bessin, in which the discovery of an alligator was noticed. ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... been my hard fortune to run upon it, when a softer bed would have given a more quiet nap. This is just the present difficulty with me, for I am now tacking about among these Frenchmen in order to get afloat again, like an alligator floundering in the mud. I lost my schooner on the northeast coast of Russia—somewhere hereabouts," pointing to the precise spot on the apple; "we were up there trading in skins-and finding no means of reaching home by ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... inflicted little more than flesh wounds, which under the circumstances were trifling, yet others did effective work. This was especially the case with those that found a lodgment in his head, which, big and tough as it was, lacked the power of turning aside a rifle-ball, as the indurated back of an alligator often does. ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... back streets of the town. These things came about through a fatal resemblance of the river Cooloosa to the Hudson, as set forth and expounded by a Northern tourist. Okochee felt that New York should not be allowed to consider itself the only alligator in the swamp, so to speak. And then that harmless, but persistent, individual so numerous in the South—the man who is always clamoring for more cotton mills, and is ready to take a dollar's worth of stock, provided he can borrow the dollar—that man added his deadly ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry



Words linked to "Alligator" :   leather, alligator lizard, American alligator, Alligator mississipiensis, alligator grass, genus Alligator, alligator weed, alligator wrench, crocodilian reptile, Chinese alligator, alligator clip, gator, alligator snapping turtle, crocodilian



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