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verb
Batten  v. i.  To grow fat; to grow fat in ease and luxury; to glut one's self. "The pampered monarch lay battening in ease." "Skeptics, with a taste for carrion, who batten on the hideous facts in history, persecutions, inquisitions."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Batten" Quotes from Famous Books



... beef being apt to batten or fatten those that eat it. The cove has hushed the battner; i.e. has ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... done you good to have been kept waiting ten years or more. You're spoilt; that's what's the matter with you. You got your heart's desire too easily. You think this world is your own damn playground. And it isn't. Understand? You're put here to work, not play; to develop yourself, not batten on other people. You won her like a man in the face of desperate odds. You paid a heavy price for her. But even so, you don't deserve to keep her if you forget that she has paid too. By Heaven, Piers, she must have loved you a mighty lot ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell

... politics and rhetorics, will I display no more mercy than sundry commentators of maltreated Aristotle. I will exhibit them in their state chaotic,—I will addle the eggs, and the chicken shall not chirp,—I will reveal, and secrets shall not waste me; I will write, and thoughts shall not batten on me." ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... methods of those who batten on others' goods, the plunderers who know no rest till they have wrought the destruction of the worker, it would be difficult to find a better instance than the tribulations suffered by the Chalicodoma of the Walls. The Mason who builds on the pebbles may fairly boast ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... gaining rapidly on the schooner; I could see the brass glisten on the tiller as it banged about, and still no soul appeared upon her decks. I could not choose but suppose she was deserted. If not, the men were lying drunk below, where I might batten them down, perhaps, and do what I ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... careless as I could. It seemed a rash thing to go down to the afterhold, where any one might batten me down. But, there being no help for it, I took the bucket and went. I filled it well up to the brim from the second cask, returned to deck, and handed it to the man who stood behind Martin. They took it, pretty respectfully, and went below, Martin ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... these interstices pass the warp threads. Just beyond this comb and farther away from the weaver is a hardwood rood[sic], as wide as the weft, around which are single loops of abak or other fiber. Through these loops pass alternately the warp threads in such a way that when the batten is inserted the upper and lower alternate warp threads are reversed, thereby holding the weft threads in the position to which they have ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... spoke no Spanish, and he was surrounded by greedy Flemish courtiers dressed in outlandish garb, speaking in a strange tongue, and looking upon the realm of their prince as a fat pasture upon which, locust like, they might batten with impunity. The Spaniards had frowned to see the great Cardinal Jimenez curtly dismissed by the boy sovereign whose crown he had saved; they clamoured indignantly when the Flemings cast themselves upon the resources of Castile and claimed the best offices civil and ecclesiastical; they ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... remote; hast bid the bread-fruit shade Th' Hesperian regions, and has softened much With bland amelioration, and with charms Of social sweetness, the hard lot of man. 260 But weighed in truth's firm balance, ask, if all Be even. Do not crimes of ranker growth Batten amid thy cities, whose loud din, From flashing and contending cars, ascends, Till morn! Enchanting, as if aught so sweet Ne'er faded, do thy daughters wear the weeds Of calm domestic peace and wedded love; Or turn, with beautiful disdain, to dash Gay pleasure's poisoned chalice ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... fiddler fiddle? I have. I heard a fiddler fiddle, and the hey-dey-diddle of his frolicking fiddle called back the happy days of my boyhood. The old field schoolhouse with its batten doors creaking on wooden hinges, its windows innocent of glass, and its great, yawning fireplace, cracking and roaring and flaming like the infernal regions, rose from the dust of memory and stood once more among the trees. The limpid ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... lives with Whigs and Tories, vibrates between coffee-house and tea-table. He annoys his daughter by sometimes calling her 'Belinda,' and astonishes his wife with his mock-heroic apostrophes to her hood and patches. He reads his Spectator at breakfast while other people batten upon newspapers only three hours old. He smiles over the love-letters of Richard Steele, and reverences the name and the writings of Joseph Addison. Indeed, his devotion to Addison is so radical that he has actually been guilty of reading ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... deck before they batten down the hatches," said Jose, putting on his boots again. "I've no mind to stay in this hole. If the ship sinks, we shall be drowned like rats in ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... world. Ring upon awful ring uprose That obscure heritage of foes, The exceeding bitter heritage Which still a jealous God bestows From inappellable age to age, The ghostly worms that softly move Through every grey old corse of love And creep across the coffined years To batten on our blood and tears; And there were hooded shapes of death Gaunt and grey, cruel and blind, Stealing softly as a breath Through the woods that loured behind The City; hooded shapes of fear Slowly, slowly stealing near; While ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... grand staple of Bermuda, but there was a fearful dearth of both at the time I speak of; a knot of young West India merchants, who, with heavy purses and large credits on England, had at this time domiciled themselves in St George's, to batten on the spoils of poor Jonathan, having monopolized all the good things of the place. I happened to be acquainted with one of them, and thereby had less reason to complain, but many a poor fellow, sent ashore on duty, had to put up with but Lenten ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... make our port before it breaks out. I want you to keep cool and steady, and remember there's no danger, for we can make land any time in the boats if worse comes to worse. Mr. Gibbs, have the men get their dunnage up out of the forecastle, and then close the hatch and batten it." ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... the fancy shops of Paree printed "Pare'" with accent on "e" tool-house, piggery, poultry-house, corn-crib text reads "con-crib" about the size of a common window button text unchanged: error for "batten"? to support the comb as it is built text reads "as t is" with blank space and why not hen's? apostrophe in original what she lays in winter must be subtracted text reads "substracted" should then be placed one inch below text reads ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... To give the world assurance of a man; This was your husband.—Look you now, what follows: Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear, Blasting his wholesome brother.[124] Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor?[125] Ha! have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for, at your age The hey-day in the blood[126] is tame, it's humble, And waits upon the judgment: And what judgment Would step from this to this? O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... inches across; several windows without sashes, but with sturdy iron gratings and solid iron shutters. On the fourth floor the doorway communicating with the main house is entirely closed twice over, by two pairs of full length batten shutters held in on the side of the main house by iron hooks eighteen inches long, two to each shutter. And yet it was through this doorway that the ghosts—figuratively speaking, of course, for we are dealing with plain fact and history—got ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable

... was looking up in awe at Sir Edward Codrington's fleet just home from the battle of Navarino. Even then, as a mere boy, I was struck by the grand symmetry of that ample basin: the break water—then unfinished—lying across the centre; the heights of Bovisand and Cawsand, and those again of Mount Batten and Mount Edgecumbe, left and right; the citadel and the Hoe across the bottom of the Sound, the southern sun full on their walls, with the twin harbours and their forests of masts, winding away into dim distance on each side; and behind all and above all, the ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... never drove a-field and had no flocks to batten; and though it be allowed that the representation may be allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote that it is never sought, because it cannot be known when it ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... Darnley and the Russian Prince and the Sneyds were there? and Davy saying that this Cornish friend was a very clever man, and that he was anxious to do him honour, and be kind? This Cornish friend was Mr., now Dr. Batten, at the head of Hertford College. He had with him a rosy-cheeked, happy-looking, open-faced son, of nine years old, whom we liked much, and whose countenance and manner gave the best evidence possible in favour of ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... one's place on a board a dozen inches wide. My petticoats have to be firmly wrapped around me, and care taken that no fold projects beyond the sledge, or I should be soon dragged out of my frail seat. I fix my feet firmly against the batten, and F—— cries, "Are you ready?" "Oh, not yet!" I gasp, clinging to Mr. U——'s hand as if I never meant to let it go. "Hold tight!" he shouts. Now what a mockery this injunction was. I had nothing to hold on to except my own knees, and I clasped them convulsively. Mr. U—— ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... sea a skipper will order his men to trim, batten down the hatches, and clear the deck of all litter. The barometer says nothing, neither the sky nor the water; the skipper has the "feel" that out yonder there's a big blow moving. Now the doctor had the "feel" that ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... Neddo. We had blown out ever clip, 'N' 'blooed the hammunition for the little box of tricks. Each took a batten in his fist. Sez Billy "Let 'er rip!" But Son he claws his stubble. Sez—he: "Hold a brace of ticks." Then "Yow!" he pipes 'n' "Strewth!" he sez, "it's ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson

... was the fork of a tree, alias a wheel-less water-trolly. The horse was hitched to the butt end, and a batten nailed across the prongs kept the cask from slipping off going uphill. Sandy led the way and carried the bucket; Dad went ahead to clear the track of stones; and Joe straddled the ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... Master Commanding, John A. J. Brooks; Acting Ensign and Executive Officer, Milton Webster; Acting Master's Mates, Charles F. O'Neill and John Maddock; Acting Assistant Paymaster, J. Woodville Sands; Acting Assistant Surgeon, John M. Batten; Engineers—Second Assistant in charge, James M. Battin; Acting Third Assistant, John Minton; Acting Master and Pilot, ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten

... Joe Batten was the youngest member of the Athletic team and at that time quite a promising young player. He did not last long with the Athletics, however, and after playing on one or two other league teams he dropped out sight. He was a bricklayer by trade, and the last time I heard of him he was in ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... was of your country or mine I know not, but I fervently hope he belonged to neither. Oh, I have never slept sound since. The screams of the birds terrify me, and yet what do they do but follow the instincts of their nature? They batten on the dead, and if they do feed on the living, God has given them animated beings for their sustenance, as, he has the fowls of the air, the fishes of the sea, and the beasts of the field to us, but they feed not on each other. Man, man ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... sawmills far away. But this was long before you took your malaria of mosquitoes, and we minded them no more than little children mind them to-day. Indeed, I can keep peacefully still even now to watch a mosquito batten and fatten upon my hand, to see his ravenous, pale abdomen swell to a vast smug redness—that physiological, or psychological, moment for which you wait ere you ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... little of her except that she had been great and that she had been unhappy; and the descendants of the men who had thronged the theatre to see the Oedipus of Sophokles, sickening with that strange disease which makes the soul crave to batten on the fruits that are its poison, found a rare feast furnished forth in the imaginary history of the one great woman of ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... by them in swarms; they scorned to use their wings, they preferred walking to flying; one might kill them in millions, yet other, and hungrier millions would still come on, rejoicing in the death of their predecessors, as they now had not only men's eyes and wounds to eat, but could batten upon the bodies of their slaughtered friends also. Strange to say, we were not troubled here with ants; had we been, we should only have required a few spears stuck into us to complete our happiness. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... hast passed A long black time within, thou shalt come out To front the sun; and Zeus's winged hound, The strong, carnivorous eagle, shall wheel down To meet thee—self-called to a daily feast— And set his fierce beak in thee, and tear off The long rags of thy flesh, and batten ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... murdered her womanhood, that the red cross of Cain blazes upon her brow. Realizing that she is a social outcast, a moral pariah, she becomes reckless, defiant, and finally glories in betraying the fool who trusts her. No matter how fair the mountain upon which she has leave to feed, she will batten on the moor. Love was her excuse when first she went astray, and she hugs the delusion to her heart that Cupid can sanctify a crime; but where honor spreads not its wings of snow love perishes in the fierce simoon of lust. The ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... to batten down the curtains on the weather side. But the boat rose gracefully on the billows, and did not scoop up any water in doing so. Boxes, barrels, and other movable articles were secured, and the captain was delighted with the working ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... when we met three nights since, you would have crushed the victim of your own perfidy. You shall tread the path of your ambition childless and objectless and hopeless. Disease shall set her stamp upon your frame. The worm shall batten upon your heart. You shall have honours and enjoy them not; you shall gain your ambition, and despair; you shall pine for your son, and find him not; or, if you find him, you shall curse the hour in which he was born. Mark me, man,—I am dying while I speak,—I know ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... heightened by the conduct of, shall we say, the prussianized officials,[123] who are reported to have disposed of waggons for large sums to greedy merchants, who used to raise the prices of the merchandise and batten on the misery ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... shalt not be left for the carrion crow, Or the wolf to batten o'er thee: Or the coward insult the gallant dead, Who in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various

... where primitive weaving is practised,—in southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Here the loom work is at a more advanced stage of development than that of the northern area, the weavers making use of a loom frame, sheds, healds, batten and an improvised shuttle. The Navajo Indians are the most skilled weavers north of Mexico and a description of their weaving is fairly typical of this area. As the warps are of soft pliable threads they must of necessity be stretched between two beams. These are suspended vertically ...
— Aboriginal American Weaving • Mary Lois Kissell

... abruptly. The stranger was drawing the batten blinds together. Her ivory-white arms gleamed in the sun. For a moment they could see her face shining like a star against the dusky glooms within; then the bolt was shot ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... melted that a-way, he pours it into these yere auger holes an' lets it cool. It gets good an' hard, this arsenic-tallow does, an' then Coyote drags the timber thus reg'lated out onto the plains to what he regyards as a elegible local'ty an' leaves it for the wolves to come an' batten on. Old Coyote will have as many as a dozen of these sticks of timber, all bored an' framed up with arsenic-tallow, scattered about. Each mornin' while he's wolfin', Coyote makes a round-up an' skins an' counts ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... curious selection which will be welcomed by readers of all ages.... The illustrations by Mr. Batten are often clever and irresistibly humorous. A delight alike to the ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... The batten door behind the bar now began to open slowly and noiselessly. Lefever peered through it. "Come in, Pedro," he cried reassuringly, "come in, man. This is no officer, no revenue agent looking for your license. Meet a friend, Pedro," he continued encouragingly, as the swarthy publican, low-browed ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water. It had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the bow, and this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to cross the Stroem, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for this circumstance we should have foundered at once—for we lay entirely buried for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... I have it, leave me; y'are infectious, the plague and leprosie of your baseness spreading on all that do come near you; such as you render the Throne of Majesty, the Court, suspected and contemptible; you are Scarabee's that batten in her dung, and have no palats to taste her curious Viands; and like Owles, can only see her night deformities, but with the glorious splendor of her beauties, you are struck blind as Moles, that undermine the sumptuous Building that allow'd you shelter: you stick ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... men!" shouted Dan as they struggled out of the hold. "You've done all I can ask. Hurry! Get out!" and they got out and then turned to batten the hatch cover down. But the rush of fire was too swift to be denied. A thick-bodied pillar choked through the opening and spouted to the top of the funnel—great gouts of the devouring element pulsed softly, but with lightning swiftness, down the deck, and shrivelled a life raft. Long tongues ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... danger to Monny; but you see, as I've told you, the convent isn't far from Monaco. I got off the Laconia there, to visit Esme, and when I came on board again, Monny and Mrs. East and Rachel came with me. They'd been in Italy and France, and had picked up Miss Guest, who was only too enchanted to batten on Monny's kindness and dollars. It was I who had engaged their staterooms, on a cable from Monny, long before. And if there were a spy anywhere, he might have the idea that I wanted to smuggle Esme out of her ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... of opulence, through the unlatched wicket in some porte-cochere—red-painted brick pavement, foliage of dark palm or pale banana, marble or granite masonry and blooming parterres; or through a chink between some pair of heavy batten window-shutters, opened with an almost reptile wariness, your eye gets a glimpse of lace and brocade upholstery, silver and bronze, and ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable

... come, Dogs shall devour it in the fleet of Greece. So they with prayers importuned, and with tears Their son, but him sway'd not; unmoved he stood, Expecting vast Achilles now at hand. 105 As some fell serpent in his cave expects The traveller's approach, batten'd with herbs Of baneful juice to fury,[3] forth he looks Hideous, and lies coil'd all around his den, So Hector, fill'd with confidence untamed, 110 Fled not, but placing his bright shield against A buttress, with his noble heart conferr'd. [4]Alas for me! should I repass the gate, Polydamas ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... he said, "high water soon, and den ship go in smooth—batten down hatches though, ...
— The African Trader - The Adventures of Harry Bayford • W. H. G. Kingston

... that in "that woman," as he called Caesar, his clearer vision discerned beneath the plumage of the peacock, the beak and talons of the bird of prey. For they were there, and needed only a vote of the senate to batten on nations of which the senate had never heard. Loan him an army, and "that woman" was to give geography such a twist that today whoso says Caesar ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus

... he thought; 'I can do nothing. I don't even know that there's anything in it.' The instinct of self-preservation warned him to batten down his hatches, to smother the fire with want of air. Unless one believed there was something in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... simply crashes through the bone, disintegrating it at the point of entrance, and cracking or splintering it for a variable, but limited, distance beyond. On the other hand, when the head is struck by a "blunt" object—for example, a batten falling from a height—the force is applied over a wider area and the elastic skull bends before it. If the limits of its elasticity are not exceeded, the bone recoils into its normal position when the force ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... greets me now. Probably the Free Libraries have supplanted the flickering shop lights; and every lad and lass can enter and call for Miss Braddon and batten thereon "in luxury's sofa-lap of leather''; and of course this boon is appreciated and profited by, and we shall see the divine results in a year or two. And yet sometimes, like the dear old Baron in the "Red ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame

... presents these famous Oriental stories most acceptably, and Mr. Batten's remarkable illustrations are all that can be desired. His genii are genii indeed, and his fairy princesses ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... unfrocked priest of Rouen; one was a hedge-robber from the western marches who had followed Alan of Brittany; a third had the olive cheeks and the long nose of the south; and the fourth was a heavy German from beyond the Rhine. They were the kites that batten on the offal of war, and the great battle on the seashore having been won by better men, were creeping into the conquered land for the firstfruits ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... to learn that the covering of the asparagus-berry, which becomes an opal globe when the grub has emptied it, has failed to save the recluse. The Tachina-midge drains her victim by herself; this other, tinier creature feasts in company. Twenty or more of them batten on the grub together. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... meanwhile, the bo'sun had started to cut through the topmast, about fifteen feet beyond the first cut, for that was the length of the batten he required; yet so wearisome was the work, that we had not gotten more than half through with it before the man whom the bo'sun had sent, returned to say that the dinner was ready. When this was dispatched, and we had rested a little over our ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson

... maids Fell to dancing, the first time that ever I did in my life Have been so long absent that I am ashamed to go I took occasion to be angry with him Justice of God in punishing men for the sins of their ancestors Lady Batten to give me a spoonful of honey for my cold My great expense at the Coronacion She hath got her teeth new done by La Roche That I might not seem to be afeared The monkey loose, which did anger me, and so I ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Diary of Samuel Pepys • David Widger

... row of biscuit tins that held the groceries. I thought that his wife, or housekeeper, or whatever she was, was a clean and tidy woman about a house. I saw no woman; but on the sofa—a light, wooden, batten one, with runged arms at the ends—lay a woman's dress on a lot of sheets of old stained and faded newspapers. He looked at it in a puzzled way, knitting his forehead, then took it up absently and folded it. I saw then that it was a riding skirt and jacket. He bundled ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson

... inquisitive mob. Why! they will rouse us at midnight next, and throw stones at our rotten old shutters. The effects of my last greeting lasted you for three weeks—to-day's I hope may act a little longer. You, gentlemen there, listen to me. Just as the raven follows an army to batten on the dead, so that fellow there stalks on in front of strangers in order to empty their pockets—and you, who call yourself an interpreter, and in learning Greek have forgotten the little Egyptian you ever knew, mark this: When you have to guide strangers ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... from maid and nurse, A Governess help'd to make still worse, Giving an appetite so perverse Fresh diet whereon to batten— Beginning with A B C to hold Like a royal playbill printed in gold On a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... calculating liberality of the gaming-house keepers, and to loiter round the brunnens of more or less nauseous flavour, the pretext of resort to this rendezvous of idlers and gamblers. The waiters had disappeared to batten on the broken meats from the public table, and to doze away the time till the approach of supper renewed their activity. My interlocutor, with whom I was alone in the deserted apartment, was a man of about thirty years of age, whose dark hair and mustaches, marked features, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... butt, the "Strangers' Friend Society" appealed for funds on the ground that the urgency of their charitable needs would "dissolve even the hardest, the most magnetic astringent Jewish mind," Punch vigorously protested against the quaintness of that virtue and charity which would batten upon the faithful by tickling their pet prejudice against the Jews, and declared that "the Society's healing goodness would be none the worse for not spurting its gall at any portion of the family of men." And in more recent times Punch has carried his sympathy to its furthermost point by ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... poor; we only rob the rich—those arrogant, purse-proud rogues who batten and fatten on what they wring from the poor," answered, in quick, scornful accents, the man who appeared to be the leader of this little band. "On them we have scant pity. They have but stolen, in cunning though lawful fashion, what we wrest from them, lawlessly ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... yea, delightfully un-American; the outside of his house may be as rough as the outside of a bird's nest; it is the inside that is for the birds; and the front room of this house, when the daughter presently threw open the batten shutters of its single street door, looked as bright and happy, with its candelabra glittering on the mantel, and its curtains of snowy lace, as its ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... to be a demagogue of a new sort: an honest one, if possible, who will tell the people they are blind and foolish, and neither flatter them nor batten on them. I have my heritage—an order I belong to. I have the blood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I want to stand up for the lot of the handicraftsmen as a good lot, in which a man may be better trained to all the best functions of his nature, than if he belonged to the grimacing ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... all the owners of slum property, all the grasping shipowners, all those who batten and fatten on other people's welfare in a most favourable light. We have been thinking them almost criminals when they were in reality public benefactors. They lead to many improvements, and even though the improvements come too late to ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... badinage. "I love the plot-interest of the game," he said, "and so does dear Jessie here. We both of us adore it. As long as I find such good pickings upon you, I certainly am not going to turn away from so valuable a carcass, in order to batten myself, at considerable trouble, upon minor capitalists, out of whom it is difficult to extract a few hundreds. It may have puzzled you to guess why I fix upon you so persistently. Now you know, and understand. When a fluke ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... found and read it when I was a small girl. It was very long, and perhaps I should find it a little dull now though I hope not, for I loved it then, reading in delicious secrecy and stealth, because the Sisterhood doesn't allow youthful pupils to batten on love stories, no matter how old-fashioned. I hadn't thought of the book for years; but evidently its story had been lying all this time carefully put away in a parcel, gathering dust on some forgotten shelf in my brain, for down it tumbled at the mention of the name. ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... praise—is no less provocative of the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criticalness of the censorious palate. The strong man may batten on him, and the weakling refuseth ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... this picture would be incomplete. He tells us he arose early on this day; and the vain fellow says he made himself as fine as could be, putting on his velvet coat for the first time, though he had it made half a year before. "And being ready," he continues, "Sir W. Batten, my lady, and his two daughters, and his son and wife, and Sir W. Pen and his son and I, went to Mr. Young's, the flag-maker, in Corne-hill; and there we had a good room to ourselves, with wine and good cake, and saw the show ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... had arrived by this time. Immediate help was dispatched, but it was no easy task to find the men. Four of the party were alive, one had died. The sick man had been dragged on the sledge thirty-nine days, and they had buried him after all in a solitary spot in the far north—"a paddle and a batten" made a rude cross, and the sketch shows it most effectively in Doctor Moss's book. Five only of the seventeen of the party came back in working condition, and they were ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith

... from his course for them! Spiders o' hell! I'll strike my topmast to Death himself first—so the devil go with them! The blind gods may crush—they shall not conquer! They may kill—but I snap my fingers in their faces to the death! A pretty pickle, indeed! Batten down the hatches, Ramsay. Lend Jean a hand to get the guns under ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... this? It is most unreasonable to flee the knowledge of good like the infection of a horrible disease, and batten and grow fat in the real atmosphere of a lazar-house. This was my first thought; but my second was not like unto it, and I saw that our satirist was wise, wise in his generation, like the unjust steward. He does not want light, because ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to a shrivelled rhizome—"was not identified. It may be a Palaeonophis—or it may not. It may be a new species, or even a new genus. And it was the last that poor Batten ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... only glazedly Reflected. Upwards, upwards through the shadows, Through the lush sponginess of deep-sea meadows Where hare-lipped monsters batten, let me ply ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley

... fast after the boards had been steamed. The boards were steamed by wrapping them in burlap for a distance of 2 feet from the forward end, and pouring boiling water over them, as was done with the snow shoes (page 39). Before bending the boards we had fixed screw eyes in the ends of each batten, except the forward one; a rope had been strung through these screw eyes and the ends were now tied to the head piece and drawn tight so as to bend the boards into a graceful curve. In this way the ropes were of service not only for curving the front end ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond

... may have justification. The Army Commander's opinion was shown not alone by his congratulatory message, but by the immediate honours awarded. To the Leicestershires fell one Military Cross[4] and four Military Medals, one of the latter going to Sergeant Batten, Marner's platoon-sergeant. The water-tank leans against the station no longer, and they have repaired the crumbled walls. But the cracks and fissures in the great fort lift eloquent witness to the ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson

... I've tried other things, but my thoughts always come back to the Hands. I'm proud of your success you know. I want to—to batten on it. And I want to carry it on. I have ideas ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... job-shop in the Vineyard; they might have taken it into their lonely old heads to run off with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps. Let me see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay over the same with pitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the snap-spring over the ship's stern. Were ever such things done before with a coffin? Some superstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied up in the rigging, ere they ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... given to Colonel Baum, who, with about a thousand Germans, Indians, Canadians, and refugee loyalists, started out from camp on his maraud, on the eleventh, halted at Batten-Kill on the twelfth, and reached Cambridge on the thirteenth. He was furnished with Tory guides, who knew the country well, and with instructions looking to a long absence ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake

... are further controlled by a reed board which acts both as warp spacer and beater-in. All being ready for the weaving, the shed is opened by raising one of the heddle sticks, and a heavy knife-shaped batten of wood is slipped into the opening. This is turned sideways to enlarge the shed, and a shuttle bearing the weft thread is shot through. By raising and lowering the heddle rods the position of the warp is changed as desired, while from time to time the weft threads are forced up against the ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole

... could give an offence to any, and with the great honour he thought it would be to him. Being overtook by the brigantine, my Lord and we went out of our barge into it, and so went on board with Sir W. Batten, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... said Lord Menteith; "I think this fellow Dalgetty is one of those horse-leeches, whose appetite for blood being only sharpened by what he has sucked in foreign countries, he is now returned to batten upon that of his own. Shame on the pack of these mercenary swordmen! they have made the name of Scot through all Europe equivalent to that of a pitiful mercenary, who knows neither honour nor principle but his month's pay, who transfers his allegiance from ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... times in beating the bookmakers; we have then an outer circle, composed partly of stainless gentlemen who do not bet and who want no man's money, partly of perfectly honest fellows who have no judgment, no real knowledge, and no self-restraint, and who serve as prey on which the bookmakers batten. ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... excuse till hair had clothed his cheek, * And gloom o'ercrept that side-face (sight to stagger!) A fawn, when eyes would batten on his charms, * Each glance deals thrust ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... subject. Unfortunately no such records as to height, etc., are kept about officers, and my search proved fruitless, more especially as the records at Woolwich for the period required were destroyed by fire some years ago. The best evidence I have obtained is that of General Gordon's tailors, Messrs Batten & Sons, of Southampton, who write: "We consider, by measurements in our books, that General Gordon was 5 ft. 9 in." As he had contracted a slight stoop, or, more correctly speaking, carried his head thrown forward, he looked in later life much less than his real ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... loss, there was discredit, in having recourse to such characters, when honest wants could be fairly supplied by upright men, and on liberal terms. Such reptiles have been confined in Scotland to batten upon their proper prey of folly, and feast, like worms, on the corruption in which they ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... "Batten me into the pantry!" said Napoleon. "I'll bet old Algy'd board the outlaw himself, fer ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... rest of the King's following was billetted on farm-houses in the parishes nearest to the town. Yet, as a warning that all was not their own, four frigates and two line-of-battle ships, with a commission from the rebel government of London, and flying the broad pennant of Admiral Batten, cruised between Jersey and Guernsey, never far from sight, although giving for the most part a wide berth to both the island castles, whose gunners ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... possible threatening of evil in all the world. He hastened to stiffen his resolve. He had need of it. Tyler Sudley had said that he did not know how the law stood, and for himself, he was not willing to risk his liberty on it. He gazed apprehensively upon the little batten shutter of the window of the room where Nehe-miah Yerby slept, expecting to see it slowly swing open and disclose him there. It did not stir, and gathering resolution from the terrors that had beset him when he fancied his opportunity threatened, he ran like a frightened deer ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... the blood and marrow and life of the struggling people, you heartless extortioner! Begone, sirra; a foot of land upon the property for which I am agent you shall never occupy. You and your tribe, whether you batten upon the distress of struggling industry in the deceitful Maelstrooms of the metropolis, or in the dirty, dingy shops of a private country village, are each a scorpion curse to the people. Your very existence is a libel upon the ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... slum counterpart of self-esteem, and Riis calls the gang a club run wild. They have their own ideality and a gaudy pinchbeck honor. A young tough, when arrested, wrenched away the policeman's club, dashed into the street, rescued a baby from a runaway, and came back and gave himself up. They batten on the yellowest literature. Those of foreign descent, who come to speak our language better than their parents, early learn to despise them. Gangs emulate each other in hardihood, and this is one cause of epidemics in crime. They passionately love boundless ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... champion, thanks' the Maniac cried, And pressed her to Fitz-James's side. 'See the gray pennons I prepare, To seek my true love through the air! I will not lend that savage groom, To break his fall, one downy plume! No!—deep amid disjointed stones, The wolves shall batten on his bones, And then shall his detested plaid, By bush and brier in mid-air stayed, Wave forth a banner fail and free, Meet signal for ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... Do you know who is my favourite author just now? How are the mighty fallen! Anthony Trollope. I batten on him; he is so nearly wearying you, and yet he never does; or rather, he never does, until he gets near the end, when he begins to wean you from him, so that you're as pleased to be done with him as you thought you would be ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... guidance, the young man had become one of the devouring offsprings of conquest, eager to despoil that Italy, that Rome, which his father seemed to have desired solely in order that he might pillage them and batten on them. Orlando had vainly opposed Luigi's departure from the ministry, his participation in the frantic speculations on land and house property to which the mad building of the new districts had given rise. But at the same time he loved ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... into the sea, living or dead," said Mr. Thompson, with an ominous lift of his eye, "you go with her, Mr. Batten. Remember who brought her ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... Laud; but they soon became tired of being Lauds, for Laud's Church, gewgawish and idolatrous as it was, was not sufficiently tinselly and idolatrous for them, so they must be Popes, but in a sneaking way, still calling themselves Church of England men, in order to batten on the bounty of the Church which they were betraying, and likewise have opportunities of corrupting such lads as might still resort to Oxford with principles uncontaminated. So the respectable people, whose opinions are still sound, are, to a certain extent, right when they say that the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... drawn. This is one of the pseudo-Radical calumniators of Lavengro and its author; and this is one of the genus who, after having railed against jobbery for perhaps a quarter of a century, at present batten on large official salaries which they do not earn. England is a great country, and her interests require that she should have many a well-paid official both at home and abroad; but will England long continue a great country if the care of her interests, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... say? No, Moonlight, my respected friend, I scorn the title. Doctors are a brood that batten on the ills of others. First day: 'A pain internally, madam? Very serious. I will send you some medicine. Two guineas. Yes, the sum of two guineas.' Next day: 'Ah, the pain is no better, madam? Go on taking the medicine. Fee? Two guineas, if you please.' And so on till the pain cures ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... that lamp. [The lamp goes out] Put a little amber in your back batten. Mark that! Now pass ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... never drove afield, and that they had no flocks to batten; and, though it be allowed that the representation may be allegorical, the true meaning is so uncertain and remote, that it is never sought, because it cannot be ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... say, must make our escape—that same night, although the hatches were off, and all the boats were ashore. Of course the fact that the hatches were off was the merest trifle, for Gurney and I could soon clap them on and batten them down; but I did not at all like the idea of going to sea without even so much as a single boat on board; while, of all the boats belonging to the ship, I should most have preferred the longboat, because she was a fine, ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood

... weeks of camp life proved to be monotonously dreary. Ivan was not of the type of man to press his popularity and batten upon it. Rather, flattery, and the inevitable toadyism of weaker natures, revolted him; and he began once more to retire into himself, and to live again with dreams, which now formed themselves round any one of three topics: first and highest, his music, at which he had begun again to work; ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... lead strips (known as "cames"). The window frames used in a few of the Jamestown houses were handwrought iron casements. Most of the humbler dwellings had no glass panes in the windows. The window openings were closed by batten shutters, operated by hinges of wood and fitted ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter

... garotter, or, indeed, a common thief Is very glad to batten on potatoes and on beef, Or anything, in short, that prison kitchens can afford, - A cut above the diet in a ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert

... 4, 1666, Pepys recorded the burying of his pet Parmesan, "as well as my wine and some other things," in a pit in Sir W. Batten's garden. And on the selfsame fourth of September, more than a century later, in 1784, Woodforde in his Diary of a Country ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... Batten is responsible for the illustration of so many important collections of fairy tales that it is vexing not to be able to reproduce a selection of his drawings, to show the fertility of his invention and his consistent improvement ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White

... Then perhaps a school or pack or flock of Octopus gigas would be found busy picking the sailors off a stranded ship, and then in the course of a few score years it might begin to stroll up the beaches and batten on excursionists. Soon it would be a common feature of the watering-places—possibly at last commoner than excursionists. Suppose such a creature were to appear—and it is, we repeat, a possibility, if perhaps a remote one—how could ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... the city hall, on his way to the office, he had seen the steps of that noble building disfigured by a fringe of job-hunting negroes, for all the world—to use a local simile—like a string of buzzards sitting on a rail, awaiting their opportunity to batten upon the helpless corpse ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... other people make fortunes out of it, that is really responsible for their doing so, by reason of its own greed and stupidity. Because it will not take the trouble to find out how to spend or invest its money, it asks those who are clever enough to batten on its foibles, to sell it bad stuff and bad securities, and then feels hurt because it has a pain in its inside, or a worthless bond at its banker's, while the producers thereof are founding county families. If the public would learn the A B C of ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... snap; fall to; despatch, dispatch; discuss; take down, get down, gulp down; lay in, tuck in*; lick, pick, peck; gormandize &c. 957; bite, champ, munch, cranch[obs3], craunch[obs3], crunch, chew, masticate, nibble, gnaw, mumble. live on; feed upon, batten upon, fatten upon, feast upon; browse, graze, crop, regale; carouse &c. (make merry) 840; eat heartily, do justice to, play a good knife and fork, banquet. break bread, break one's fast; breakfast ,lunch, dine, take tea, sup. drink ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... dawning, Let her have a weaver's shuttle, 60 And a batten that shall suit it, And a loom of best construction, And a treadle of the finest. Make the weaver's chair all ready, For the damsel fix the treadle, Lay her hand upon the batten. Soon the shuttle shall be singing, And the treadle shall be thumping, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

... deep there. Who, indeed, would care for her, guard her against the world with its beasts of prey that batten their lusts upon beauty and innocence? And who would help her against herself? The desire to hold her for himself and for her sprang up fierce within him. Could he desert her, leave her to fight her fights, to find her way through the world's treacherous paths ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... of bounds. A woe-begone trolley creaks through the narrow streets and heart-broken cabmen mourning over the mistakes of misspent lives, larrup disconsolate horses over stony streets as they creak and jog and wheeze ahead of the invisible crows that seem always to be hovering above ready to batten upon their rightful provender. For an hour in the morning before our train left for Paris we chartered one of the ramshackle cabs of the town and took in Bordeaux. It was vastly unlike either Emporia or Wichita, or anything in ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White

... writers and critics of America is by no means inconsistent with the existence of an enormous class of half-educated readers, who devour the kind of "literature" provided for them, and batten in their various degrees on the productions of Mr. E.P. Roe, Miss Laura Jean Libbey, or the Sunday War-Whoop. The evolution of democracy in the literary sphere is exactly analogous to its course in the political sphere. In both there is the same tendency to go too far, to overturn the good and ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... that close relation of the ideal to the present sufferings of men, which has enabled powerful political movements to grow out of the hopes of solitary thinkers. It is this that makes Socialism and Anarchism important, and it is this that makes them dangerous to those who batten, consciously or unconsciously upon the evils of ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell

... Penzance John Batten, jun. of ditto, Merchant Joseph Batten, of ditto John Blewett, Esq. of Marazion 4 George Borlase, Attorney at Law, of Penzance William Bastard, of Exon Joseph Batten John Beard, jun. of Penzance, Merchant Capt. Barkley, of the Wolf Sloop ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew

... the potatoes. Another layer of sea-weed, then the roasting-ears. After that come the fish, wrapped in paper. Then the mussels, clams or anything else you want. When you get them all in, cover the whole thing with a lot of heavy kelp and batten it down with a big piece of canvas. The whole trick is knowing just when to open the oven. Nothing can burn so it's better to leave it too long than to try to ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... breezes and Clear weather. At 1/2 past 8 p.m. Anchored in the Entrance of Plymouth Sound in 9 fathoms water. At 4 a.m. weighed and worked into proper Anchoring ground, and Anchored in 6 fathoms, the Mewstone South-East, Mount Batten North-North-East 1/2 East, and Drake's Island North by West. Dispatched an Express to London for Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander to join the Ship, their Servants and Baggage being ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... one end of the fife to his mouth, blew out all the flour, and in this humble imitation of the smoke of a gun, poor puss was run up to the batten, where she hung till she was dead. I am ashamed to say I did not attempt to save the kitten's life, although I caused her foul murder to be revenged by ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... lie to. Ask old D. what that means, if you can't understand my description of it. The principle of it is to set two small sails, one fore and one aft, lash the rudder (wheel) amidships, make all snug, put on hatches, batten everything down, and trust to ride out the storm. As the vessel falls away from the wind by the action of one sail, it is brought up to it again by the other-sail. Thus her head is always kept to the wind, and she meets the seas, which if they caught her on ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... ill of her business. But she will be able to console herself for those and similar bitternesses by the knowledge that on the whole the world honours those who battle against ill-fortune without complaint far above the needy crowd of spongers who strive to batten without effort on the crumbs that fall from ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various

... the finest little craft that ever floated; and I shall love her as long as I live. In that great gale a week ago, she was under water half the time, I believe. We had to batten down everything, and lash ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... February the queen, who had been absent on the Continent selling her jewels and endeavoring to raise a force, landed at Burlington, with four ships, having succeeded in evading the ships of war which the Commons had dispatched to cut her off, under the command of Admiral Batten. That night, however, the Parliament fleet arrived off the place, and opened fire upon the ships and village. The queen was in a house near the shore, and the balls struck in all directions round. She was forced to get up, throw on a few clothes, and retire on foot to some distance ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... about here. A few boats and canoes are drawn up upon the beach. The atmosphere is heavy with the odor of ancient fish. The water-line is strewn with cast-off salmon heads and entrails. Indian dogs and big, fat flies batten there prodigiously. Acres of salmon bellies are rosy in the sun. The blood-red interiors of drying fish—rackfuls of them turned wrong side out—are the only bit of color in all Alaska. Everybody and everything is ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... his cult, if Waitz-Gerland (vi. 811) are right in saying that the Australians have no ancestor-worship. The Kurnai ghosts 'were believed to live upon plants,'[13] which are not offered to them. Chill ghosts, unfed by men, would come to waning camp-fires and batten on the broken meats. The Ngarego and Wolgal held, more handsomely, that Tharamulun (Darumulun) met the just departed spirit 'and conducted it to its future home beyond the sky.'[14] Ghosts might also accompany relics of the body, such as the dead hand, carried about by the family, who would ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... turning to Barnabas. "You hear that, sir, my unnatural father and uncle batten upon rounds of beef, and smoked tongues, while I sit here, my legs at a most uncomfortable angle, and my inner man as empty as a drum; oh, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... a forme indeed, Where euery God did seeme to set his Seale, To giue the world assurance of a man. This was your Husband. Looke you now what followes. Heere is your Husband, like a Mildew'd eare Blasting his wholsom breath. Haue you eyes? Could you on this faire Mountaine leaue to feed, And batten on this Moore? Ha? Haue you eyes? You cannot call it Loue: For at your age, The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waites vpon the Iudgement: and what Iudgement Would step from this, to this? What diuell was't, That thus hath cousend you at hoodman-blinde? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes ... ... ... ... What devil was't That thus cozen'd you at hoodman-blind? Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, Or but a sickly part of one true sense Could ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... shall have none of them. They and their like are the curse of Kosnovia. Who will pay taxes to keep me in the state that becomes a King? Not they. Who will benefit by good government and honest administration of the laws? Assuredly not they, for they batten on corruption; they are the maggots not the bees of industry. Over whom, then, shall ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... been placed over the hatchway. Perhaps the crew were about to batten down the hatches. In vain I tried, while this was going forward, to strike the cask. I had not sufficient strength to do it. A fearful faintness was coming over me. Perhaps the movement of the ship contributed to this. I think I must have fainted, for I cannot recollect ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston

... pea, or bean, or wort, or beet, Whatever comes, content makes sweet. Here we rejoice, because no rent We pay for our poor tenement, Wherein we rest, and never fear The landlord or the usurer. The quarter-day does ne'er affright Our peaceful slumbers in the night. We eat our own and batten more, Because we feed on no man's score; But pity those whose flanks grow great, Swell'd with the lard of others' meat. We bless our fortunes when we see Our own beloved privacy; And like our living, where we're known To very few, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... water flopping around her deck—that was no harm. "Tarpaulin her hatches, clamp 'em down, and let her roll!"—that had been Captain Norman's word coming out of Hampton Roads. And "Batten her down and let her plug into it!" had come roaring across to us at almost the same moment from the deck of the Orion. And no more than into the open Atlantic than we were plugging into it. The sea came mounting up over our low ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... method to adopt is seen at Fig. 6. Here we have supported the joint by rearing up against the wall a couple of pieces of batten, one at each end of the board, thus supporting it throughout its entire width until the glue is thoroughly set. The two or more pieces of timber in a butt joint adhere by crystallisation of the glue and atmospheric pressure. ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham

... weepe to thyncke, What foemen[19] riseth to ifrete[20] the londe. Theie batten[21] onne her fleshe, her hartes bloude dryncke, And all ys graunted from ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton



Words linked to "Batten" :   batting, strip, stuffing, fortify, secure, batten down, beef up



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