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Eider   Listen
noun
Eider  n.  (Zoöl.) Any species of sea duck of the genus Somateria, esp. Somateria mollissima, which breeds in the northern parts of Europe and America, and lines its nest with fine down (taken from its own body) which is an article of commerce; called also eider duck. The American eider (S. Dresseri), the king eider (S. spectabilis), and the spectacled eider (Arctonetta Fischeri) are related species.
Eider down. Down of the eider duck, much sought after as an article of luxury.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Eider" Quotes from Famous Books



... still living in a sand-bagged shell-hole eight feet beneath the level of the ground. I have a sleeping bag with an eider-down inside it, for my bed; it is laid on a stretcher, which is placed in a roofed-in trench. For meals, when there isn't a block on the roads, we do very well; we subscribe pretty heavily to the mess, and have an ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson

... geese, eider-ducks, gulls, and little song-birds began to arrive, the latter perching on the rigging of the Vega, but May and June found her still icebound in ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... movement of the vessel, colors more beautiful than those of a rainbow played entrancingly. Rare pictures in frames of delicate gold were interspersed among the clusters of prisms, and the floor was covered with carpets that felt as soft beneath the foot as pillows of eider-down. ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... to the most vulgar faces. Half-past seven in the morning had just struck. The prior had profited by the rule which gave to him an hour's more sleep than to the other monks, and now, although he had risen, he was quietly continuing his sleep in a large armchair as soft as eider down. The furniture of the room was more mundane than religious; a carved table, covered with a rich cloth, books of religious gallantry—that singular mixture of love and devotion, which we only meet with at that epoch ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas

... on their faces which they had worn when they were awake; and then he slipped into the room—yes, a key hole was large enough for him to creep through if he chose! and breathed upon them so, that they shivered in their beds, in spite of the warm eider down they had tucked around them. "The window was open on a crack," they would say on the following day; but it needed not a crack for Captain Jack to enter if ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... sweet haze, which like the eider down of charity smooths all roughness, rounds all angles, the world of shore and lake presented a magical panorama of towns and villages, herds of cattle, flocks of sheep, spires of churches, masts of vessels,—all flashing past the open window of the car, where Beryl sat, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... Manchester, on this very subject, (Contemporary Review, Feb. 1880); and some of Mr. Hartwig's half-sandy, half-soppy, political opinions, are offered to the consideration of the British workman in the last extant number of 'Fors.' Touching eider ducks, I find in his fifth chapter—on Iceland—he quotes the following account, by Mr. Shepherd, of the shore of the island of 'Isafjardarjup'—a word which seems to contain in itself an introduction to ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin

... very earnestly in Essper's face; "I should have thought that thou wert one more anxious after dish and flagon than curtain and eider-down!" ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... amount of luxury, and, as there was not enough to go round, Mrs. Lorton got it all. So, though Nell's little bed was devoid of curtains, her furniture of the "six-guinea suite" type and her carpet a square of Kidderminster, her stepmother's bed was amply draped, possessed its silk eider-down and lace-edged pillows; there was an Axminster on the floor, an elaborate dressing table furnished with a toilet set, and—the fashionable lady's ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... was a broad expanse of blue; at dusk it had a soft murky hue and a melancholy attraction. In the heart of the woods, now that winter was over, the first deed of the beasts was being accomplished—birth. Eider-ducks, swans, and geese were crying ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... would come singing a solemn Sunday tune. They'd beckon to me gravely, They'd tell me I could stay, They'd show me all the jewels That pave the milky way. They'd promise me a golden crown And silver robes like eider-down, They'd give me harps with shiny strings And wonderfully fluffy wings; BUT—I would tell them plainly I didn't want to die— Till all the angel cooks had learned How Sally ...
— Songs for Parents • John Farrar

... fellow, kicking him till he'll never sit down again except on eider-down cushions three deep," remarked Mr. Temple Barholm, with fire in his eyes also. "That's where your place is. It's where mine would be if I was in the same house with him and caught him making a goat of himself. I bet nine Englishmen out of ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the burden of a thought bowed me; and an unanswered question, like the slow turning of a mechanism, revolved in my gloomy spirit: for everywhere around me lay bears, walruses, foxes, thousands upon thousands of little awks, kittiwakes, snow-owls, eider-ducks, gulls-dead, dead. Almost the only living things which I saw were some walruses on the drift-floes: but very few compared with the number which I expected. It was clear to me that some inconceivable catastrophe ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... he came quickly home to find his friend in a terrible state of mind at his lengthened absence. In the evening we had some music—for both bachelors are musical—the older having a baritone voice, and the younger playing the piano. How cold that night was! and how welcome was the great eider-down pillow, which is generally such a nuisance in ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various

... prudent man, and had done his work as well as he doubtless wishes now that he had done it. Neal is only half himself away from his beautiful home. There, he is in place—an eagle in a nest lined with down, soft as eider. There his fine taste is manifest in every thing. If we judge of his taste by his rapidly-written works, we are sure to do him injustice. We find in him a union of the most opposite qualities. We can not say a harmonious union. An inflexible ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... good for the gout—or perhaps, by the bye, what I heard was that it wasn't good. I know old port and gout seem to run together in my head somehow. But if there's anything in the house your papa would like, Diana—wine, or gunpowder tea, or the eider-down coverlet off the spare bed, or the parlour croquet, to amuse him of an evening, or a new novel—surely one couldn't forfeit one's subscription by lending a ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... dat letter I know'd afore, and dar's odder points as 'pear new to me; but whether de old or de new, 'twon't do for us folk declar a single word o' what de young lady hab wrote in dat ere 'pistle. No, Phoebe, neery word must 'scape de lips ob eider o' us. We muss hide de letter, an' nebba let nob'dy know dar's sich a dockyment in our posseshun. And dar must be nuffin' know'd 'bout dis nigga findin' it. Ef dat sakumstance war to leak out, I needn't warn you ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... a dream. She felt as if warm, delightful bedclothes were heaped upon her. She could actually FEEL blankets, and when she put out her hand it touched something exactly like a satin-covered eider-down quilt. She must not awaken from this delight—she must be quite still ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... say so, for fear careless people should think it was setting in the east. In point of fact, it was not exactly in the west either—but that's near enough.) The sun, I repeat, was sinking slowly in the west, and the children slept warmly and happily on—for wings are cosier than eider-down quilts to sleep under. The shadow of the church-tower fell across the churchyard, and across the Vicarage, and across the field beyond; and presently there were no more shadows, and the sun had set, and the wings were gone. And still the children slept. But not ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... the storm, anon interrupted by drift-ice, and obliged to carry his canoe for miles and miles on his shoulders, while the faithful Aneetka trudged by his side, happy as the day was long; for, although her load was necessarily a heavy one, her love for Maximus made it rest lighter than the eider-down that floated from her fingers when she plucked the wild birds for their evening meal. Moggy, too, waddled along after her own fashion, with a resolution and energy that said much for her strength and constitution. She only carried the light paddles and a few trifling articles ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... intruding on the premises which she overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later,—oftener soon than late,—is apt to fling off her nestlings, with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... need feather-beds and eider-down quilts," he said; "and as for the sumptuous viands we have served at mealtime, they are utterly inappropriate. I'd rather have a plate of Boston baked beans or steaming buckwheat cakes to put my mind into that state which should characterize the thinking apparatus ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... reclining on one of Down and Eider's voluptuous ottomans, the only couch on which Belgravian beauty now reposes, when Lord Bathershins entered, stepping noiselessly over one of Tomkins's elastic Axminster carpets. "Good heavens, my lord!" she said—and the lovely creature fainted. The Earl rushed ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... "Animal homes" which appeal especially to the child's mind are the hen and chickens, the downy eider ducks, the family of red foxes, and the home of the muskrat. "Color in nature" is effectively illustrated by grouping together certain tropical fishes, minerals, shells, insects, and birds in such a manner as to bring out vivid red, yellow, blue, and green colors. Here and elsewhere in the museum ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... couch, and dropped upon it, with his head resting on an eider-down pillow. Like a tired infant, his eyes closed, and ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... of his early life, for he sprang from the same obscure origin with Francisco, and seems to have been as little indebted as his eider brother to the fostering care of his parents. He entered early on the career of a soldier; a career to which every man in that iron age, whether cavalier or vagabond, seems, if left to himself, to have most readily inclined. Here he soon distinguished himself by his skill in martial exercises, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... brings from the southern reaches of the Mississippi and its tributaries to these sub-Arctic wildernesses, where they find an abundance of food, and at the same time build their nests and rear their young in safety. The snow-geese are the first to arrive; next come the common and eider-duck; after them the great northern black-and-red-throated divers; and last of all the pin-tail and the long-tail ducks. Some of these go no further than just beyond the outskirts of the forest region; others, flying further northward, lay their eggs in the open ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... you out'n yo' hide an' taller, an' lettin' a black man beat you up tull you has to 'kick him in the spivit. Ef a aidjucation does you any good a-tall, you'd be boun' to beat de white man at one en' uv de line, or de black man at de udder. Ef Peter ain't to be foun' at eider en', ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... youse are her kin, an' so youse stay here w'ere yeh can help her after I git her out—I don't want nothing to do wid her anyhow. She gives me a swift pain, and," he added as though it were an after-thought, "I ain't got no use fer dat ransom eider—youse can have ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... against the Monarchy in Copenhagen. Moreover, a vigorous democratic party had arisen in Denmark; their object was to incorporate the whole of Schleswig in the Danish Monarchy; they did not care what happened to Holstein. This party were called the Eider Danes, for they wished Denmark to be extended to the Eider. Against this proposed separation of the two Duchies violent protests were raised, and in 1848 a rebellion broke out. This was the rebellion which had been supported in that year by Prussia, and it had the universal ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... Dukedoms into Denmark. Then the people stood up and expressed the desire to remain with the German Federation, to which it had always belonged, and there it is now, of its own free will. The natural dividing line between Denmark and Germany, however, is the River Eider. There are about 30,000 Danes south of the Eider, who have been absorbed against their will, a thing that can never be avoided, and that has sometimes given Prussia a ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... were two pictures, representing Vesuvius by day, and Vesuvius by night; then came a drawing of a coasting vessel called The Three Sisters of Farsund; then Frederick VII. with his red uniform and hook nose; and over the bed, which was heaped up with eider-downs as high as one's head, hung a huge horn of plenty, made of white cardboard, and on which was the motto, in gilt paper letters, "Be fruitful and multiply," which had been given them as a wedding-present. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland

... she heard a queer, soft voice say, "I don't believe he did it. I wouldn't kill a goose." Patsy opened her eyes and found herself in a room full of dogs. The voice came from a wee doggie wrapped in an eider down quilt. ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various

... remarkable differences, and with a third scale of intensity, pointing out substances of a close, firm texture, such as stones, metals, etc., as unfavorable, but those of a loose one, as cloth, velvet, wool, eider-down, cotton, etc., as eminently favorable to the contraction of dew." The Method of Concomitant Variations is here, for the third time, had recourse to; and, as before, from necessity, since the texture of no substance is absolutely firm or absolutely loose. Looseness of texture, therefore, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... that!' thought the old Queen. But she said nothing, and went into the sleeping-room, took off all the bed-clothes, and laid a pea on the bottom of the bed. Then she put twenty mattresses on top of the pea, and twenty eider-down quilts on the top of the mattresses. And this was the bed in which the Princess was ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various

... are lots of eider ducklets Up in Heaven, above the blue, And they're dropping off their feathers,— And such downy ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller

... day's travelling to rest at a post station, to enter the "stuga," the every-day room, where the family lives, and see the blazing open fireplace. How nice it was to jump into a feather bed, and sink deep and be lost in it, and to cover myself with a quilt filled with feathers or eider down! ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... or Greenland eider (Somateria mollissima borealis) might also be induced to concentrate there. There seems to be no reason why an eider-down industry should not be built up by the end of the five years. The eider ought to ...
— Draft of a Plan for Beginning Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood

... fast asleep, half sitting, half lying, with her head on the cushions, and the tears wet on her cheeks. He hesitated between a wish to see her in a more comfortable position, and an unwillingness to disturb her. Finally, he took an eider-down quilt from the bed, and wrapped it round her; then slipped noiselessly ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... their skins, a few articles of manufacture, and where travelling Russian merchants came with the productions of other climates, and found eager customers in the inhabitants who thronged to this fair to make their purchases. Here, in exchange for the salt-fish, feathers, and eider-down which had been prepared by the industry of his family, Erlingsen obtained flax and wool wherewith to make clothing for the household, and those luxuries which no Norwegian thinks of going without,—corn-brandy, coffee, tobacco, sugar, and spices. Large mould ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau

... two generations of mothers in our village, was engaged at that time, and I was compelled to take an exotic. I had often watched "Mother Monroe" with admiration, as she turned and twisted my sister's baby. It lay as peacefully in her hands as if they were lined with eider down. She bathed and dressed it by easy stages, turning the child over and over like a pancake. But she was so full of the magnetism of human love, giving the child, all the time, the most consoling assurance that the operation ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... up two flights of stairs to a room which seemed close and stuffy to her, although in English eyes it might be deemed comfortable and even luxurious. But padded arm-chairs and couch, eider-down silken-covered quilts, cushions, curtains, and carpets, were things of which she had as yet no great appreciation. The room seemed to her altogether too full of furniture, and she longed to run to the window for a breath of ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... though not without considerable difficulty; the wind, which was now freshening from the southward, blowing in such violent and irregular gusts off the high land that the ship was scarcely manageable. Walruses, dovekies, and eider-ducks were very numerous here, especially the former; and four reindeer came down upon the ice near ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... DUVET. The Bordered Quilt is in the usual form of Bed Quilts, and is a most elegant and luxurious article. The Plain Quilt is smaller, and is useful as an extra covering on the bed, or as a wrapper in the carriage, or on the couch. The Duvet is a loose case filled with Eider Down as in general use on the Continent. Lists of Prices and Sizes sent free by Post, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various

... Down of the eider duck, used to stuff quilts and pillows. Quilt stuffed with the down of ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... the deep feather bed is still regarded as the piece de {131} resistance of the careful householder's equipment. There was a time when the domestic poultry of New England did not furnish as great a supply of feathers as was desired. Furthermore, "Eider down" was recognized as the most desirable of all ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... the room were shaded by soft curtains of pale blue. A cheerful fire burned in the grate, and a child lay, half-sitting up, in a bed covered by a silken eider-down. ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade

... returned to the brig towards evening, bringing back the visitors to the shore; Strong had bought several dozen eider-duck's eggs, which were twice as large as hen's eggs, and of a greenish color. It was not much, but it was very refreshing for a crew accustomed to little ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne



Words linked to "Eider" :   sea duck, eider duck, eiderdown, genus Somateria, Somateria



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