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Fleece   Listen
verb
Fleece  v. t.  (past & past part. fleeced; pres. part. fleecing)  
1.
To deprive of a fleece, or natural covering of wool.
2.
To strip of money or other property unjustly, especially by trickery or fraud; to bring to straits by oppressions and exactions. "Whilst pope and prince shared the wool betwixt them, the people were finely fleeced."
3.
To spread over as with wool. (R.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fleece" Quotes from Famous Books



... ability and exquisite taste. She wove her own robe and that of Hera, which last she is said to have embroidered very richly; she also gave Jason a cloak wrought by herself, when he set forth in quest of the Golden Fleece. Being on one occasion challenged to a contest in this accomplishment by a mortal maiden named Arachne, whom she had instructed in the art of weaving, she accepted the challenge and was completely vanquished by her pupil. Angry at her defeat, she struck the unfortunate maiden on ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... his throat was to be seen. His lungs and his lights stood out so that they fluttered in his mouth and his gullet. He struck a mad lion's blow with the upper jaw [3]on its fellow[3] so that as large as a wether's fleece of a three year old was each [4]red,[4] fiery flake [5]which his teeth forced[5] into his mouth from his gullet. There was heard the loud clap of his heart against his breast like the yelp of a howling bloodhound or like a lion going ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown

... of the expedition of the Argonauts. Phrixus and his sister Helle, children of a Boeotian king, suffered many things from their step-mother. The gods sent them a ram with a golden fleece, which flew away with them. When they came to the straits between Europe and Asia, Helle was drowned. Hence the strait is called the Hellespont. Phrixus came to the King of Colchis, on the east shore of the Black Sea. He sacrificed the ram to the gods, and gave its fleece to King AEetes. The ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner

... small fractions of the coveted treasure, choosing, through a diffidence which he mistook for a sort of virtue, the time of day when he would not see Dr. Sevier; and at the third visitation took the entire golden fleece away with him rather than encounter again the always more or less successful courtship of ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... air of the Yankee coast! And our viny locks! were they also to be shorn? Was a grand sheep-shearing, such as they annually have at Nantucket, to take place; and our ignoble barbers to carry off the fleece? ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... sheep's clothing," after an extraordinary career in endeavoring to "fleece" others, finally lost every dollar of his property, fled from the town with his family, and I have never been able to hear from him since. I wish for the sake of faith in human nature that this had been the only case of "fall from grace," but ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... in two hours, and I went ashore to get some things together I'd need. When I came aboard I showed the general with pride the outfit. 'Twas a fine Chinchilla overcoat, Arctic overshoes, fur cap and earmuffs, with elegant fleece-lined ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... Frederick can never succumb. His sun is clouded for a moment, but it will burst forth again brilliant and triumphant, and blind all his enemies. The Prussians celebrate this feast to defy the Teresiani. They have their club at the hotel of the 'Golden Fleece,' and held a grand ball there yesterday in honor of their victory at Mayen. 'Tis true the king has lost two battles, the battles of Kunersdorf and Mayen, but the Prussians do not despair; for if the king has ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... front of the eye distinct, of moderate size and depth, and the hair round them generally somewhat darker brown than the rest of sides of the head. The nose is slightly arched and the muzzle sloping. The hair is strong, wiry, and very thickly set, and at the base intermixed with scanty, very fine fleece; the average length of the hairs on the back is 2 to 2-1/2 inches. The iris is brown. The horns are subtriangular, touching each other at the base, curving gradually with a long sweep backwards and outwards; and, after completing a full circle, the compressed points again curve backwards and ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... deprived his half-brother AE'son of the kingdom of Iol'cus in Thessaly. When Jason, son of AEson, had attained to manhood, he appeared before his uncle and demanded the throne. Pelias consented only on condition that Jason should first capture and bring to him the golden fleece of the ram which had carried Phrix'us and Hel'le when they fled from their stepmother I'no. Helle dropped into the sea between Sigae'um and the Cher'sonese, which was named from her Hellespon'tus; but Phrixus succeeded in reaching Col'chis, a country at the eastern ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... Cotton soul and soil. Scorning the slow reward of patient grain, He sowed his heart with hopes of swifter gain, Then sat him down and waited for the rain. He sailed in borrowed ships of usury — A foolish Jason on a treacherous sea, Seeking the Fleece and finding misery. Lulled by smooth-rippling loans, in idle trance He lay, content that unthrift Circumstance Should plough for him the stony field of Chance. Yea, gathering crops whose worth no man might tell, He staked his life on games of Buy-and-Sell, And turned each field into a gambler's ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... with a mission is not without his interests in life. Hadleigh was Mr. Drummond's sheep-walk, where he shepherded his lambs, and looked after his black sheep and tried to wash them white, or, in default of that, at least to make out that their fleece was not so sable after all: so he now considered it his duty to leave off turning over the pages of a seductive-looking novel, and to ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... five or ten minutes the air was kept alive by shouting and laughter of the men, and the protestations of the dog. When the shearer touched skin, he yelled "Tar!" and when he finished he shouted "Wool away!" at the top of his voice, and his mates echoed him with a will. A picker-up gathered the fleece with a great show of labour and care, and tabled it, to the well-ventilated disgust of old Scotty, the wool-roller. When they let the dog go he struck for home—a clean-shaven poodle, except for a ferocious moustache and a tuft at the ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... had a drink, and the old squatter said, "Now, I'll show you the difference between a champion ram and a second-rater." So he caught a ram and pointed out his defects. "See here—not half the serrations that other sheep had. No density of fleece to speak of. Bare-bellied as a pig, compared with Sir Oliver. Not that this isn't a fair sheep, but he'd be dear at one-tenth Sir Oliver's price. By the way, Johnson" (to his ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... way I soundly berated myself for my folly in venturing so recklessly and without authority to interfere in behalf of a sheep, when besieged by wolves, and in danger of losing no more than his fleece. ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... The sea is now alight from the increase of sunset hues. In the shadow the lines of the sea are a sequence of wavings like the smoke of the snow blown over the steppes. In the hurrying clouds a great space clears, and along the south-west runs a great rosy fleece of sunset. It is rapidly darkening. The sea in the western corner is crimson, but all the vast south is silver and sombre. The horizon is like that seen from a balloon—pushed out to its furthermost, and there, where clouds ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... too happy to consider any topic with gravity. "We will take her a swanboat, or one of the Hesperidian apples, or the Golden Fleece." ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up! For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod's slaughter of the innocents ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... symphony Hath need of pause and interval of peace. Some subtle signal bids all sweet sounds cease, Save hum of insects' aimless industry. Pathetic summer seeks by blazonry Of color to conceal her swift decrease. Weak subterfuge! Each mocking day doth fleece A blossom, and lay bare her poverty. Poor middle-agd summer! Vain this show! Whole fields of golden-rod cannot offset One meadow with a single violet; And well the singing thrush and lily know, Spite of all artifice which her regret Can ...
— A Calendar of Sonnets • Helen Hunt Jackson

... 1870 he wrote between thirty and forty tales in verse, containing not less than seventy or eighty thousand lines in all. The longest of these tales, "The Life and Death of Jason," appeared in 1867. It is the old Greek story of the ship Argo and the voyage in quest of the Golden Fleece. Twenty-five other tales are included in "The Earthly Paradise," published in three ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris

... Creative Principle Unlikely to benefit its beneficiaries Wanted things so inexorably until she got them Waves of sweetness and regret flooded his soul Weighing you to the ground with care and love Went out as if afraid of being answered What do you mean by God? When you fleece you're sorry When you're fleeced you're sick Where Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight Whole world was in conspiracy to limit freedom With the wisdom of a long life old Jolyon did not speak Witticism of which he was not the author ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of John Galsworthy • John Galsworthy

... with the starched band, old Schwalbach, the famous dealer in pictures, displayed his prophet's beard, yellow in spots like a dirty fleece, his three mouldy-looking waistcoats and all the slovenly, careless attire which people forgave him in the name of art, and because he had the good taste to have in his employ, at a time when the mania for galleries kept millions of money ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... catch strains of long remembered melodies ("those songs without words") which only the finest souls may know. Yet here were three men who, in their modern Ago, were returning from their search of the golden fleece. Jason, Hercules and Theseus could have experienced no greater joy in object won, than these three "heroes" of the lake returning in the resin-scented twilight with their long-sought prize of bass! A nickel up on each black bass ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... at Alec's head, and I shall have the hinter dynamited. No, no, my Joan, we may yield to higher powers; but we do not abandon our pilgrimage because it is shared by an old scamp of a father whose sole anxiety is to fleece his son. Come, now, finish your dinner in peace, and let me explain to you why it is that Alexis III. and not Michael V. reigns in Delgratz. You don't glean many facts about monarchs from newspapers. If I brought you to a certain wineshop ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... some good in them. I've always thought that there ought to be something between sheep and goats—not quite so good and not quite so bad as either; or they might have points, such as length of horn, or silkiness of coat and thickness of fleece, and so on." ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... ordinary wild goat of Persia and Mesopotamia (Capra cegagrus), he is at any rate closely allied to it; and it is possible that all his peculiar characteristics may be the effect of climate. He has a soft, white, silky fleece, very long, divided down the back by a strong line of separation, and falling on either side in beautiful spiral ringlets; his fleece weighs from two to four pounds. It is of nearly uniform, length, and averages from five to ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... in the cottage, than we have been in the Castle; we shall have fewer cares, and shall have a pleasure in putting our small means to the best. Do not the scatterings of the flock, aunt Margaret, make us as warm hose as the prime of the fleece?" ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]

... such a distance from home, if we except the legends of Herakles and Dionysus, and the vague accounts which we have received by tradition of the travels and exploits of Perseus in Ethiopia, Media, and Armenia, and of the expedition of Jason to recover the Golden Fleece. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... escape-valve, so that we could control it from the car, a puff of wind came and overturned the balloon completely. In a moment the aspect of the monster was transformed into a crude resemblance to the badge of the Golden Fleece—the car with Kenneth and me in it at one end, and Phillip Rutley hanging from the other, the huge gas-bag like the body of the sheep of Colchis in ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... little lamb, Its fleece a dirty black, The only place its wool was white Was high up ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens

... that ravening terror; heard we its din in our ears; Called on the Gods of our fathers, juggled forlorn with our fears; Sank to our waists in its fury, tossed to the sky like a fleece; Then, when our dread was the greatest, ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... spreads by dust and sweat. Safe stand thy walls and thee, and so both will, Since neither's height was rais'd by th' ill Of others; since no stud, no stone, no piece Was rear'd up by the poor man's fleece; No widow's tenement was rack'd to gild Or fret thy ceiling or to build A sweating-closet to anoint the silk- soft skin, or bathe in asses' milk; No orphan's pittance left him serv'd to set The pillars up of lasting jet, For which their cries might beat against thine ears, Or in the damp jet ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... Huntly Lodge, a bullfinch, an immense Talbot mastiff named Sall, and others. He adds—"To a stranger, the most remarkable of the duke's old favourites was Kaiser, an Hungarian wolf-dog, with a snow-white fleece, and most sheep-like aspect in the distance, but at whose appearance out of doors, man, woman, and child fled as from a wolf. The duchess called him 'The wolf in sheep's clothing.' Her husband's tastes having brought her much into contact with all sorts ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... Arke, Wherein iust Noah did all the world imbarque, With that which after Troyes so famous wracke, From ten yeares trauell brought Vlisses backe, 80 That Argo which to Colchos went from Greece, And in her botome brought the goulden fleece Vnder braue Iason; or that same of Drake, Wherein he did his famous voyage make About the world; or Candishes that went As far as his, about the Continent. And yee milde winds that now I doe implore, Not once to raise the least sand on the shore, Nor once on forfait of your selues respire: ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... Creator, God, thy watchfulness O'er me, oh may it never cease! Keep thou the opening of my lips! the fleece Of purest snow be my soul's daily dress. Guard thou my hands! O Samas, Lord of Light! And ever keep my life and ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... but carefully preserved in their respective shrines. All the holy vessels and priests' dresses and jewels were taken out for our inspection. The sacramental custoda cost thirty-two thousand dollars, and the richest of the dresses eight thousand. There is a lamb made of one pearl, the fleece and head of silver; the pearl of ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... Leather bending over a sheep, whose fleece he was relieving of a strange growth of burrs and prickly, brambly strands with ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn

... well as a stockade against pilfering ants; by humps on the petals that hide the nectar from winged trespassers on the bees' and butterflies' preserves, the hound's tongue goes into the battle of life further armed with barbed seeds that sheep must carry in their fleece, and other animals, including most unwilling humans, transport to fresh colonizing ground. For a plant to shower its seeds beside itself is almost fatal; so many offspring impoverish the soil and soon choke each other to death, if, indeed, ants and ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... and stuck their noses into the fragrant hay. And when he came home from the long trip to the market town after having wrangled with some of the rascals there, he marvelled at how snow-white they were in the fleece. They were like a special kind of people and yet better than people in general. And yonder were his cows being led off the place like large and foolish women, who are nevertheless kindness itself, and you are fond of them because you have ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... with his ground; And half the year he care of that does take That half the year grateful returns does make Each fertile month does some new gifts present, And with new work his industry content: This the young lamb, that the soft fleece doth yield, This loads with hay, and that with corn the field: All sorts of fruit crown the rich autumn's pride: And on a swelling hill's warm stony side, The powerful princely purple of the vine, Twice dyed with the redoubled sun, does shine. In th' evening to a fair ensuing ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... them. Fifty of these heroes, for instance, went on board of a small vessel called the "Argo," sailed across the well-known waters, and ventured boldly into unknown seas. They were in search of a Golden Fleece, which they were told they would find in Col'chis, where it was said to be guarded by ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... Kind," a comedy playlet produced by Roland West, two crooks fleece a "sucker" and agree to leave the money in a middle room while they sleep in opposite rooms. They say they trust each other implicitly, but each finds a pretext to sit up and watch that money himself. The comedy rises from their movements around the room as ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... my boys," she answered, her eyes twinkling at the thought of being able to fleece us, as she led us into a small room at the back ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston

... gentle harlot* and a kind; *a low fellow A better fellow should a man not find. He woulde suffer, for a quart of wine, A good fellow to have his concubine A twelvemonth, and excuse him at the full. Full privily a *finch eke could he pull*. *"fleece" a man* And if he found owhere* a good fellaw, *anywhere He woulde teache him to have none awe In such a case of the archdeacon's curse; *But if* a manne's soul were in his purse; *unless* For in his purse he should y-punished be. "Purse is the archedeacon's ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... very cheap, wears for ever, and strongly resembles the torchon lace, now so fashionable in Paris and London for trimming petticoats and children's frocks. The women also spin, dye, and weave the wool from the fleece of their own sheep into the bright-coloured ponchos universally worn, winter and summer, by the men in this country. These ponchos are not made of nearly such good material as those used in the Argentine Republic, but they are considerably gayer and ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... readily be imagined that anything like civilization, as at present understood, must have been next to impossible under such circumstances. "Miserable indeed," says Carlyle, "was the condition of the aboriginal savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung round them like a matted cloak; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, living on wild fruits; or, as the ancient Caledonians, squatted himself in ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... L10 to L15, and a better saddle or gig horse, from L20 to L30, than could be obtained in this country for double the money. Very good milch-cows may be bought from L5 to L10; working oxen for about the same price; and fine young breeding ewes from L1 to L3, according to the quality of their fleece. Low as these prices may appear they are in a great measure fictitious; since there is confessedly more stock of all sorts in the colony, than is necessary for its population. It accordingly frequently happens, particularly at sales by public auction, that stock are to ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... above all; for there he had the full play which he required as a humorist, and as a self-formed man with a peculiar style and experience. "Punch" was the "Argo" which conveyed him to the Golden Fleece. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... Hindostan, had now acquired principalities and kingdoms, and had even made themselves masters of the vast inheritance of Aurungzebe. Fortunate as the Argonauts, they found and possessed themselves of the "golden fleece," which had been the object of their search. Enormous fortunes were made with a rapidity hitherto unknown, and they were gathered into the laps of even the most obscure adventurers. The fables of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... of every rank or origin, young Chateaubriand, minister of France to the republic of Valais, felt himself constrained to give in his resignation. Louis XVIII. sent back the collar of the Golden Fleece to the King of Spain, who remained the ally of Napoleon. The courts of Russia and Sweden put on mourning for the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt

... down under the blow. But his soft fleece had saved the boy from serious injury, if ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin

... the steaming rain-washed slopes, Now satisfied with sunshine, and behold Those lustrous clouds, as glorious as our hopes, Softened with feathery fleece of downy gold, In all fantastic, huddled shapes uprolled, Floating like dreams, and melting silently, In the blue upper regions ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... agricultural operations. Sheep-raising is the most profitable of their pursuits. The climate appears to be more congenial to the growth of wool than of cereal productions. The Faroese sheep are noted for the fineness and luxuriance of their fleece, and it always commands a high price in market. A considerable portion of it is manufactured by the inhabitants, who are quite skillful in weaving and knitting. They make a kind of thick woolen shirt, something ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... manifesto he sharply rebukes those princes and nobles, bishops and priests, who cease not to rage against the gospel, and in their temporal government 'tax and fleece their subjects, for the advancement of their own pomp and pride, until the common people can endure it no longer.' If God for their punishment allowed the devil to stir up tumult against them, He and his gospel were not to blame; but he counselled them ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... a hard struggle for Pen to adjust her new self that she had found up in the high altitudes where all the tepid, petty things of life had dropped from her—where she had found the famous fleece, the truth. In the vastness of that uncharted land, like a flash in the dark something had leaped at her. Her dream of a dream had come true. She had learned the great human miracle, the meaning of a love that had ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... the world, feeble, incapable of flying like the bird, running like the stag, or creeping like the serpent; without means of defense, in the midst of terrible enemies armed with claws and stings; without means to brave the inclemency of the seasons, in the midst of animals protected by fleece, by scales, by furs; without shelter, when all others have their den, their hole, their shell; without arms, when all about him are armed against him. And yet he has demanded of the lion his cave for a lodging and the lion ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... take his ease beside his tiller hung up in his dwelling,(5) and Orestes(6) to weave a tunic, so that the rigorous cold may not drive him any more to strip other folk. When the kite reappears, he tells of the return of spring and of the period when the fleece of the sheep must be clipped. Is the swallow in sight? All hasten to sell their warm tunic and to buy some light clothing. We are your Ammon, Delphi, Dodona, your Phoebus Apollo.(7) Before undertaking anything, whether a business transaction, a marriage, ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes

... is not a road To bring you near the skies Where you can sit and gather clouds That flit before your eyes, Or jump upon a golden fleece And sail to paradise— But it is a super-mountain road Where you can feast your eyes Upon the beauties of the world The Lord God gave to man For his enjoyment and his use; Improve it if you can. The builders of this Skyline Drive ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... times make greater moan. His dangling tresses, that were never shorn, Had they been cut, and unto Colchos borne, Would have allured the vent'rous youth of Greece To hazard more than for the golden fleece. Fair Cynthia wished his arms might be her sphere; Grief makes her pale, because she moves not there. His body was as straight as Circe's wand; Jove might have sipped out nectar from his hand. Even as delicious ...
— Hero and Leander • Christopher Marlowe

... gods in beauty; take thy bow And dreadful arrows, and about her sow The seeds of folly, and with such an one I pray thee cause her mingle, fair my son, That not the poorest peasant girl in Greece Would look on for the gift of Jason's fleece. Do this, and see thy mother glad again, And free from insult, in her temples reign Over the hearts of lovers ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris

... much it signifies whether he's mad or otherwise," responded a neighbor. "I know him well; his name's Fardorougha Donovan, the miser of Lisnamona, the biggest shkew that ever skinned a flint. If P——did nothin' worse than fleece him, it would never stand between him an' ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... dispossess, ease one of, snatch from one's grasp; tear from, tear away from, wrench from, wrest from, wring from; extort; deprive of, bereave; disinherit, cut off with a shilling. oust &c. (eject) 297; divest; levy, distrain, confiscate; sequester, sequestrate; accroach[obs3]; usurp; despoil, strip, fleece, shear, displume[obs3], impoverish, eat out of house and home; drain, drain to the dregs; gut, dry, exhaust, swallow up; absorb &c. (suck in) 296; draw off; suck the blood of, suck like a leech. retake, resume; recover ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... I got back, I had had enough of a northern voyage, so for the first time went on shore at Hull. Sailors' lodging-houses are generally dirty, foul traps, kept by wretches whose great aim is to fleece the guests of everything they may possess at least cost to themselves. I got into one of this class, for, of course, I did not know where to go. A shipmate had invited me to accompany him, saying he had been very well-treated—though I found afterwards ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... gillifloure, with very many branches, bearing on euery branch a fruit or rather a cod, growing in round forme, containing in it the cotton: and when this bud or cod commeth to the bignes of a walnut, it openeth and sheweth foorth the cotton, which groweth still in bignes vntill it be like a fleece of wooll as big as a mans fist, and beginneth, to be loose, and then they gather it as it were the ripe fruite. The seeds of these trees are as big as peason, and are blacke, and somewhat flat, and not round; they sowe them in plowed ground, where they grow in the fields in great ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt

... "Sire," said the fox, "you are too good a king To die for any trivial thing; Your simples are too nice. Eat sheep, and why not? Is it a sin? is it a vice? No, sire, you did them honor; And as for shepherds, I desire, That over us their false empire Should cease, and we have all we want Of sheep and fleece." So said the fox, flatterers applaud, The tiger, bear, and other powers they laud, Even for their most violent offence. All quarrelsome people, Down to the mastiffs, Were little saints. But when the donkey's turn ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park

... led his little convict-laden fleet to Botany Bay—a bay as unknown almost as any bay in Laputa—that voyage which resulted in the founding of a cluster of great nations any one of whose mammoth millionaires could now buy up Ilium and the Golden Fleece combined if offered in the auction mart? The Spirit of Antiquity knows not that captain. In a thousand years' time, no doubt, these things may be as ripe for poetic treatment as the voyage of the Argonauts; ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... living, then universal in the Highlands, put in his power. In this person, an old man about seventy, Edward admired a relic of primitive simplicity. He wore no dress but what his estate afforded. The cloth was the fleece of his own sheep, woven by his own servants, and stained into tartan by the dyes produced from the herbs and lichens of the hills around him. His linen was spun by his daughters and maid-servants, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... account with a mission, which he terminated so entirely to my satisfaction, that had I been king, I should have instantly created him knight of all my orders, even had I been able to offer him the Golden Fleece and ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... from thy justice thou could'st not refrain. So that Romish Pharaoh, a tyrant most cruel, Hath brought us again into captivity, And instead of the pure flood of thy gospel, Hath poisoned our souls with devilish Hypocrisy, Unable to maintain it, but by murthering Tyranny; Seeking rather the fleece than the health of the sheep, Which are appointed ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... no faggot for burning, Allen-a-Dale has no furrow for turning, Allen-a-Dale has no fleece for the spinning, Yet Allen-a-Dale has red gold for the winning; Come, read me my riddle! come, hearken my tale! And tell me the craft ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... veiled, was the wonder of all who were permitted to view its interior. Here he had brought his magnificent Arras tapestries and among them the set of the History of Gideon, which he had had made in honour of the order of the Golden Fleece founded by him at Bruges, in 1429, for, he said, the tale of Gideon was more appropriate to the Fleece than the tale of Jason, who had not kept his trust—a bit of unconventionalism appreciable even at this distance ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... quote Scripture, eh? I thought you did not believe in that. Hear t'other side. Abraham and Lot couldn't live in the same place, because they both kept sheep, and we can't, because we fleece 'em. So Abraham gave Lot warning as I give it you. And as for dying on my premises, if you like to hang yourself before next Lady-day, I give you leave, but after Lady-day no more Jewish dogs shall die in my house nor be buried for manure in ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... trespasses, and a remedy for some abuses in the execution of common law, were the chief conditions insisted on; and the king, in return for his concessions on these heads, obtained from the barons and knights an unusual grant for two years, of the ninth sheaf, lamb, and fleece on their estates, and from the burgesses a ninth of their movables at their true value. The whole parliament also granted a duty of forty shillings on each sack of wool exported, on each three hundred ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... tower that "sprang sublime," whence the king and his minions and his dames used to watch the "burning ring" of the chariot-races. . . . This is twilight: the "quiet-coloured eve" smiles as it leaves the "many-tinkling fleece"; all is tranquillity, the slopes and rills melt into one grey . ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... Oft would the nymphs In admiration quit Pactolus' waves. Nor pleasure only gave the finish'd robe, When view'd; but while she work'd she gave delight; Such comely grace in every turn appear'd. Whether she rounded into balls the wool; Or with her fingers mollify'd the fleece; And comb'd it floating light in cloudy waves; Or her smooth spindle twirl'd with agile thumb; Or with her needle painted: plain was seen Her skill from Pallas learnt. This to concede Unwilling, she ev'n such a tutor scorn'd Exclaiming:—"come let her ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... May 5.—A fleece of letters, which must be answered, I suppose—all from persons, my zealous admirers, of course, and expecting a degree of generosity, which will put to rights all their maladies, physical and mental; and expecting that I can put to rights whatever losses have been their lot, raise them to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... following list of his titles may give some idea of the grandeur to which these ancient nobles were born. Louis de Valois, De Chartres, De Nemours, and De Montpensier, First Prince of the blood, First Peer of France, Knight of the Golden Fleece, Colonel-general of the French and Foreign Infantry, Governor of Dauphiny, and Grand Master of the Orders of Notre Dame, of Mount Carmel, and of ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... in forc'd curls Bind up their locks, look big and high, And shine in robes of scarlet dye. But in my thoughts more glorious far Those native stars and speckles are Which birds wear, or the spots which we In leopards dispersed see. The harmless sheep with her warm fleece Clothes man, but who his dark heart sees Shall find a wolf or fox within, That kills the castor for his skin. Virtue alone, and nought else can A diff'rence make 'twixt beasts and man; And on her wings above the spheres To the true ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... the golden fleece, bearing Jason, Hercules, Theseus and the other Greek heroes, carried no higher hopes and no greater joy in the dangers and mysteries of the sea than does many a keen-bowed sloop or broad-beamed cat ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard

... back seeds, which have been planted in the Jardin des Plantes with success. A peculiar breed of sheep M. Rochet d'Hericourt thought worthy of being transferred to France, but of the pair he sent the female died on the route. This sheep has a very long and silky fleece. On the shores of Lake Frana he also found a very large sort of spiders, whose cocoons, he said, were converted into excellent silk. He thinks these spiders might be brought to Europe, and employed in producing silk, but in this ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... about them and pulled their caps low over their ears. Winter had come in earnest, winter with a blizzard raging through the town on the breast of a fifty-mile gale. Out into it the two men went, to fight their way though the swirling, frigid fleece to Kentucky Gulch and upward. At last they passed the guard, huddled just within the tunnel, and clambered down the ladder which had been put in place by the sight-seers on the day of the ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... and thus strive to commercialize the things of the mind and of the spirit. We have laid waste our forests, impoverished our fields, and defiled our landscapes to stimulate increased activity in our clearing-houses. Like Jason of old, we have wandered far in quest of the golden fleece. We welcome the rainbow, not for its beauty but for the bag of gold at its end. We seek to scale the heights of Olympus by stairways of gold, fondly nursing the conceit that, once we have scaled these heights, we shall be equal ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... fortune," he muttered, "comin' over t' help fleece the boarders! By gum! I wonder, knowin' what Billy knows, an' havin' the handlin' of a craft like Janet, he didn't hold the sheet rope pretty snug as he headed her ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock

... regular places of business in some of the neighboring streets, and are as fair and upright in their dealings as any member of either of the boards; but the great majority are simply sharpers, men who will not meet their losses, and who will fleece any one, who falls into their hands, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... other testimony; and after an earnest admonition from the justice, on the turpitude of crime and its dreadful miseries, Jared Sculpin was sentenced to give Simon Bogle one good day's work, and one good fleece of wool for his time lost in hunting the chain, and in bringing the offender to justice; to carry the chain on his back through the main travelled road, in open daylight, and humbly ask Simon ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee

... is one of the most useful animals, its fleece or wool being used as a covering to man, and its flesh for food. It was only yesterday I read the well-established fact that, from one pound of sheep's wool a thread was spun so fine that it reached to the almost incredible distance of ninety-five miles, while one of ordinary fineness ...
— Minnie's Pet Lamb • Madeline Leslie

... Take good care of that fleece-coat thine! Sewed to one and another, Warm it shall keep ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... cotton-plant and the manufacture of its product was known to both the Old and New World. Herodotus describes it (450 B.C.) as the tree of India that bears a fleece more beautiful than that of the sheep. Columbus found the natives of the West Indies using cotton cloth. It was also found in Mexico and Peru. It is a significant fact that the cotton-plant has been found growing ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... Juana were driven on English shores. Henry VII. treated them with all possible courtesy, and made Philip a Knight of the Garter, while Philip repaid the compliment by investing Prince Henry with the Order of the Golden Fleece.[61] But advantage was taken of Philip's plight to extort from him the surrender of the Earl of Suffolk, styled the White Rose, and a commercial treaty with the Netherlands, which the Flemings named the Malus Intercursus. Three months after his arrival in Castile, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... of the journey and were well up into the canyon. But the storm was worse than they had thought. Already occasional snowflakes were drifting down, and the chill was beginning to bite even through the warm fleece that lined mademoiselle's coat. The men decided to ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... the houses fall asleep Under the fleece of shadow, as in between Tall and dark the church moves, anxious to keep Their ...
— Bay - A Book of Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... the nuggets had to be pursued to pay-dirt beneath gravel and clay. This meant shafts, tunnels, hydraulic machinery, stamp-mills. Later, when the pay-dirt showed signs of merging into quartz, there passed away for ever the day of the penniless prospector seeking the golden fleece of the hills as his predecessor, the trapper, had sought the pelt of ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut

... sheared off my fleece, three bags of it. I didn't mind them taking the first bag full, for I had plenty and it was so warm I thought Spring was coming. And it doesn't hurt to cut off my fleecy wool, any more than it hurts to cut a boy's hair. And after they took the ...
— Uncle Wiggily and Old Mother Hubbard - Adventures of the Rabbit Gentleman with the Mother Goose Characters • Howard R. Garis

... members of the Exchange buy and sell here, either in person or through their representatives, and many good men who are unable to enter the Exchange conduct their business here. Others again prefer the freedom and the wider field of the Long Room. Still, there are many sharpers here, who would fleece a victim ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... thick white fleece advanced with a continuous undulating motion, a compact and unbroken surface, like a muddy wave pouring over the pavement. A sharp quavering bleat would mingle with the tinkling bells to be answered by other voices, fainter and more timid; from time to time, the mounted shepherds, riding at ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... little either to the one side or the other, and your ship must meet with certain destruction. No vessel ever yet tried that pass without being lost but the Argo, which owed her safety to the sacred freight she bore, the fleece of the golden-backed ram, which could not perish. The biggest of these rocks which you shall come to, Scylla hath in charge. There in a deep whirlpool at the foot of the rock the abhorred monster shrouds her face; who if she were to show her full form, no eye of man or god could endure ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... days, gray overhead, when moisture breaks upward through the ground, instead of descending. Many light clouds flitted under the grayness. The grass showed with a kind of green blush through its old brown fleece. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... the weapons by the high-seat) There are not enough moments to get under That heavy fleece: an iron ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... flower, but the folds of her mottled purple skirt were as vaguely dark as the foliage on the lilac-bush beside her. All at once the flowering branches on a wide-spreading apple-tree cut the gloom like great silvery wings of a brooding bird. The grass in the yard was like a shaggy silver fleece. Charlotte paid no more attention to it all than to her own breath, or a clock tick which she would have to withdraw from ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... separate bathing-places should not be constructed for the two sexes, if they wish to enjoy its bounty[271]. Moreover, those secret caves, the bowels of the mountains from whence it springs, have power even to judge contentious business. For if any sheep-stealer presumes to bring to it the fleece of his prey, however often he may dip it in the seething wave, he will have to boil it before he ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... road-stragglers—the eternal wars kept the country full of them. He came in, all over snow, and stamped his feet, and shook, and brushed himself, and shut the door, and took off his limp ruin of a hat, and slapped it once or twice against his leg to knock off its fleece of snow, and then glanced around on the company with a pleased look upon his thin face, and a most yearning and famished one in his eye when it fell upon the victuals, and then he gave us a humble and conciliatory salutation, and said it was a blessed thing to have a fire like ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... it was probably meant to consist of twelve, and to end with the return of the Argonauts to Greece. In all respects, except the choice of subject, Valerius Flaccus is far inferior to Statius. He cannot indeed wholly destroy the perennial charm of the story of the Golden Fleece, but he comes as near doing so as is reasonably possible. His versification is correct, but without freedom or variety; and incidents and persons are alike presented through a cloud of monotonous ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... knew Paul. When Paul first came to Jerusalem after his conversion and assayed to join himself to the Christians there, they were all afraid of him, suspecting the teeth and claws of the wolf beneath the fleece of the sheep. But Barnabas rose superior to these fears and suspicions and, having taken the new convert and heard his story, believed in him and persuaded the rest to receive him. The intercourse thus begun ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker

... he said presently; "why shouldn't we get hold of Farmer Larkin's boat, and go right away up the river in a real Argo, and look for Medea, and the Golden Fleece, and everything? And I'll tell you what, I don't mind your being Jason, as you thought ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame

... pose her eyes wandered from him and his canvas to the evening tinted clouds already edged with deeper gold. Through the sheet of glass above she saw a shred of white fleece in mid-heaven turn ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... heaved a sigh, and dropped a silent tear— And said, "You mustn't judge yourself too heavily, my dear— It's wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece; But sins like these one ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... Every small town and village of the United States has its quota of Argonauts, and they are pouring west to take ship for the Klondike. In Greek mythology there is a story about a man named Jason, who set out to find the Golden Fleece. The ship he sailed in was named the Argo. In 1849, when the people of the United States had the gold fever so badly, and the rush to California was very much like that to the Klondike to-day, the men who started from the East ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 11, March 17, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... out of the same nest, would at first take them for strangers to each other. The female is of a splendid velvety black, with dark-violet wings. In the male, the black velvet is replaced by a rather bright brick-red fleece. The second species, which is much smaller, does not show this contrast of colour: the two sexes wear the same costume, a general mixture of brown, red and grey, while the tips of the wings, washed with violet on a bronzed ground, recall, but only faintly, the rich purple of the ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... and the inseparable dignity which attaches itself to the privileged orders. The only instances in which he condescended to persons in inferior rank, were when he was engaged at the race-course at Newmarket, or when he found that condescension might enable him to fleece some play-loving plebeian, or when affairs of gallantry were concerned. In these matters no one could be more condescending than Lord Spoonbill. We should leave but an imperfect impression on the minds of our readers if we should ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Volume 12, No. 329, Saturday, August 30, 1828 • Various

... Leo joined the family, and Lucille taking his arm, the two walked the deck, and later they found quiet seats in the moonlight. The moon's welcome rays revealed fleece-like clouds overhead and changed the waters astern into acres of diamonds. Gentle breezes fanned the cheeks of two troubled lovers who thus far had kept well their heart secrets. Lucille's warm and sensitive nature yearned for some confidant in whom she could find consolation. Mrs. Harris ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... awake roused those who slept. Everywhere a delicious tremor was felt, a sense of mighty wonder. A poor, strange woman and a naked child! What was the use of singing? Swaddling clothes and wraps and milk were what was needed. One brought the fleece of a slaughtered sheep. Another brought dried figs and grapes and a skin of red wine. Other shepherds brought milk and bread and a fat kid; every one brought something, just as they took tithes to the officer. An old ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... his head over schemes to fleece the strangers, in blissful ignorance of the fact that one of his neighbors was planning to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne

... about the neck like a fruit near to ripen, and the large arms, curving deeply, fall from the shoulder in superb indolences of movement, and the hair, varying from burnt-up black to blue, curls like a fleece adown the shoulders. She is large and strong, a fitting mother of man, supple in the joints as the young panther that has just bounded into the thickets; and her rich almond eyes, dark, and moon-like in their depth of mystery, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... exploit other workmen even more mercilessly than the capitalist employers, and in struggles between Labour and Capital their sympathies have nearly always been on the side of the capitalists."[862] Another says: "The Rochdale Pioneers hire and fleece labourers in the usual manner. Experience teaches, indeed, that such associations are the hardest taskmasters. Their interest becomes identified with Capital; and if ever circumstances should make it easier for the smarter labourers to start companies of the kind successfully, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... so many opulent cities and fruitful provinces, he felt himself equal to the kings of Europe. Upon his marriage with Isabella of Portugal, he founded, at Bruges, the celebrated order of the Golden Fleece. What could be more practical or more devout than the conception? Did not the Lamb of God, suspended at each knightly breast, symbolize at once the woollen fabrics to which so much of Flemish wealth and Burgundian power was owing, and the gentle humility of Christ, which was ever to characterize ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... champaign with its endless fleece Of feathery grasses everywhere! Silence and passion, joy and peace, An everlasting wash ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... years more of these animals perished than in four hundred, in the times of the Incas. *5 The flocks, once so numerous over the broad table-lands, were now thinned to a scanty number, that sought shelter in the fastnesses of the Andes. The poor Indian, without food, without the warm fleece which furnished him a defence against the cold, now wandered half-starved and naked over the plateau. Even those who had aided the Spaniards in the conquest fared no better; and many an Inca noble roamed a mendicant over the lands where he once ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... Celtic romance. Then it was discovered that Jason and Medea were no more, and no less, than the adventurer and the wizard's daughter, who might play their parts in a story of Wales or Brittany. The quest of the Golden Fleece and the labours of Jason are all reduced from the rhetoric of Ovid, from their classical dignity, to something like what their original shape may have been when the story that now is told in Argyll and Connaught of the King's Son of Ireland was told ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... stony bottom; it is fed by many large flocks, turned on it by the occupiers of the adjacent farms, who alone have the right, and pay very great rents on that account. It is the only considerable common in the kingdom. The sheep yield very little wool, not more than 3lb. per fleece, but of a very ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young

... strayed away from his master; and he told Jonas to go out after supper and drive him away. Josey begged his uncle to keep him, but his aunt said she would not have a dog about the house. She said it would cost as much to keep him as to keep a sheep, and that, instead of bringing them a good fleece, a dog was good for nothing, but to track your floors in wet weather, and keep you awake all ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott

... thus the quiet-coloured eve Smiles to leave To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey Melt away— That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... frieze of children, who are hurrying about in very beautiful attitudes and unloading a barque full of merchandise. He also painted a large scene of Jason asking leave from his uncle to go in search of the Golden Fleece. But the Prince, seeing the difference that there was between the work of Perino and that of Pordenone, dismissed the latter, and summoned in his place Domenico Beccafumi of Siena, an excellent painter and a rarer master than Pordenone. And he, glad to serve so great a Prince, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... recently certain valuable documents in the meanest of contemporary swindles, which reveal the connection of the National City Bank, certain of its officers and other important financial interests, with a plot to fleece the fag ends of the public. The details of the Munroe & Munroe-Montreal & Boston conspiracy have been widely published, and the world is well acquainted now with the two Munroes, graduates of a "gents' furnishing-goods" shop in Montreal, introduced ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... similar even at the present day; the pestilential atmosphere exists, but the peasant avoids its injurious effects by caution in reference to clothing, food, and the choice of his hours of labour. In fact, nothing is so certain a protection against the "aria cattiva" as wearing the fleece of animals and keeping a blazing fire; which explains why the Roman countryman went constantly clothed in heavy woollen stuffs, and never allowed the fire on his hearth to be extinguished. In other respects the district must have appeared attractive to an immigrant agricultural ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... came a sudden loud shout from the edge of the grove. The cattle broke and fell back quite spontaneously, went running up the hill, their fleece waving like fire to their motion. Gudrun stood suspended out on the grass, Ursula rose to ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... dropping beside the motionless body; "it's nob'but a sheep." As he spoke his hands wandered deftly over the carcase. "But what's this?" he called. "Stout* she was as me. Look at her fleece—crisp, close, strong; feel the flesh—firm as a rock. And ne'er a bone broke, ne're a scrat on her body a pin could mak'. As healthy as a mon—and yet ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... make some petition that the door might be opened for her. She had come all the way from Nuremberg to this spot, thinking it possible that in this spot alone she might receive succour; and now she stood there, fearing to raise the knocker on the door. She was a lamb indeed, whose fleece had been shorn very close; and the shearing had been done all in the sacred name of religion! It had been thought necessary that the vile desires of her human heart should be crushed within her bosom, and the crushing ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope

... American, "'Jason': that had hold of me as soon as I saw it. He was the chap who went after the golden fleece, wasn't he?" ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... should have deemed quite indispensable, So greatly did their excellence excel All evanescent beauty in man's eyes, The loveliest primrose in the greenest dell, The lithest form man e'er did idolize: Fairer than fleece-like cloudlets of the ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott

... was nae get o' moorland tups, [issue] Wi' tawted ket, an' hairy hips; [matted fleece] For her forbears were brought in ships Frae 'yont the Tweed; A bonnier fleesh ne'er cross'd the clips [fleece, shears] Than ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... reaching one or other of the Guacharo caves. Keeping along under the lee of the island, we crossed the 'Umbrella Mouth,' between it and Huevos, or Egg Island. On our right were the islands; on our left the shoreless gulf; and ahead, the great mountain of the mainland, with a wreath of white fleece near its summit, and the shadows of clouds moving in dark patches up its sides. As we crossed, the tumbling swell which came in from the outer sea, and the columns of white spray which rose right and left against the two door-posts of that mighty gateway, augured ill for our chances of entering a ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... extended, and lashed to the rock; but their whiteness partook of a livid hue, and her fingers were like those of a corpse. Thus lay she, expecting death, but arrayed like a bride, in a long white robe, which seemed not as if woven from the fleece of the sheep, but from the web of the spider, or of those winged insects, the long threads spun by which are gathered by the Indian women from the trees of their own country. The monster was just rising ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... stall. coverlet, counterpane, sheet, quilt, tarpaulin, blanket, rug, drugget[obs3]; housing; antimacassar, eiderdown, numdah[obs3], pillowcase, pillowslip[obs3]; linoleum; saddle cloth, blanket cloth; tidy; tilpah [obs3][U.S.], apishamore [obs3][U.S.]. integument, tegument; skin, pellicle, fleece, fell, fur, leather, shagreen[obs3], hide; pelt, peltry[obs3]; cordwain[obs3]; derm[obs3]; robe, buffalo robe [U.S.]; cuticle, scarfskin, epidermis. clothing &c. 225; mask &c. (concealment) 530. peel, crust, bark, rind, cortex, husk, shell, coat; eggshell, glume[obs3]. capsule; sheath, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... the cow-lot peach trees were all in blossom and humming with bees, their rich, amethystine rose flung up against the gay April sky in a challenge of beauty and joy. The air was full of the promises of spring, keen, bracing, yet with an undercurrent of languorous warmth. There was a ragged fleece of bloom, sweet and alive with droning insects, over a plum thicket near the woods,—half-wild, brambly things, cousin on the one hand to the cultivated farm, and on the other to the free forest,—while beyond, through the openings of the timber, ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... ticklin' the grupers, and while they are smirking and smiling, devour their food, and prosecute the fallen angels for violating the Maine law and disturbing the peace. The devil's hole, like Westminster Hall, is a dangerous place for a fellow of substance to get into, I can tell you; the way they fleece him is ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... the Spanish Hapsburgs?" asks she. "And the Austrian Hapsburgs being out, do not the Spanish Hapsburgs come in? He, I say, this BOURBON-Hapsburg, he is the real Hapsburg, now that the Austrian Branch is gone; President he of the Golden Fleece [which a certain "Archduchess," Maria Theresa, had been meddling with]; Proprietor, he, of Austrian Italy, and of all or most things Austrian!"—and produces Documentary Covenants of Philip II. with his Austrian Cousins; "to which Philip," said the Termagant, "we Bourbons surely, if you consider ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... right there was visible on tufted cushions of white satin a large, firm, and ruddy face, a brow freshly powdered a l'oiseau royal, a proud, hard, crafty eye, the smile of an educated man, two great epaulets with bullion fringe floating over a bourgeois coat, the Golden Fleece, the cross of Saint Louis, the cross of the Legion of Honor, the silver plaque of the Saint-Esprit, a huge belly, and a wide blue ribbon: it was the king. Outside of Paris, he held his hat decked with white ostrich plumes on ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... her side, the ewe pastured confidently, secure in the proved prowess of her protector. As the sun dropped below the far-off western rim of the forest, it seemed as if one wide wave of lucent rose-violet on a sudden flooded the world. Everything on Ringwaak—the ram's white fleece, the gray, bleached stumps, the brown hillocks, the green hollows and juniper clumps and poplar saplings—took on a palpitating aerial stain. Here and there in the distance the coils of the river gleamed clear gold; and overhead, in the hollow amber-and-lilac arch ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... the undergraduate mind of that day the Bird-in-Hand tavern was what the golden fleece used to be to the Greeks,—a sort of shining, remote, miraculous thing, difficult though not impossible to find, for which expeditions were fitted out. It was reported to be somewhere in the direction of Quincy, and in one respect it resembled a ghost: you never ...
— Philosophy 4 - A Story of Harvard University • Owen Wister

... Dryden's letter, soliciting his interest in very affecting terms, and from the subsequent dedication of "Cleomenes," where he acknowledges his lordship's goodness during the reign of two masters; and that, even from a bare treasury, his success was contrary to that of Mr Cowley; Gideon's fleece having been moistened, when all the ground was dry around it. The Earl of Rochester was the more proper patron for the "Duke of Guise," as he was a violent opponent of the bill of exclusion. He was Lord High Treasurer in the reign of James II., and ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden



Words linked to "Fleece" :   cloth, wool, rob, leather, China fleece vine, material, charge, trim, coat, hook, fabric, shave, extort, sheepskin, cheat, surcharge, pluck, rack



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