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Foul   Listen
verb
Foul  v. t.  (past & past part. fouled; pres. part. fouling)  
1.
To make filthy; to defile; to daub; to dirty; to soil; as, to foul the face or hands with mire.
2.
(Mil.) To incrust (the bore of a gun) with burnt powder in the process of firing.
3.
To cover (a ship's bottom) with anything that impered its sailing; as, a bottom fouled with barnacles.
4.
To entangle, so as to impede motion; as, to foul a rope or cable in paying it out; to come into collision with; as, one boat fouled the other in a race.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Foul" Quotes from Famous Books



... fool, abused my poor father for having taught me Latin, which, she said, had made me a downright coxcomb, and made me prefer myself to those who were a hundred times my superiors in knowledge. She then fell foul on the learned languages, declared they were totally useless, and concluded that she had read all that was worth reading, though, she thanked heaven, she understood no ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... slept deeply and soundly. He had not stirred. His breathing was unnaturally heavy, Jen thought, but, no suspicion of foul play came to her mind yet. Why should it? She gave herself up to a sweet and simple sense of pride in the deed she had done for him, disturbed but slightly by the chances of discovery, and the remembrance of the match that showed her face at Archangel's Rise. Her hands ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... light and lightning. "As lightning is to light, so is a Cromwell to a Shakspere. The light is beautifuller. Ah, yes; but, until by lightning and other fierce labour your foul chaos has become a world, you cannot have any light, or the smallest chance for any!... The melodious speaker is great, but the melodious worker is greater than he. Our Time cannot speak at all, but only cant and sneer, and argumentatively jargon and recite the multiplication-table: neither, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... suspicious that she had been murdered by the orders of the Bishop. Never did I obtain any light on her mysterious disappearance. I am confident, however, that if the Bishop wished to get rid of her privately and by foul means, he had ample opportunities and power at his command. Jane Ray, as usual, could not allow such an occurrence to pass by without intimating her own suspicions more plainly than any other of the nuns would have dared to do. She spoke out one ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk

... Paddington just in time for the Cornish express. This was surely a call. The words rang in his ears louder and clearer than ever, "Go, Michael, of celestial armies prince!" He would go and obey them. He would trample under foot this foul fiend that masqueraded in human shape as his dear boy's murderer. He would wield once more that huge two-handed sword, brandished aloft, wide-wasting, in unearthly warfare. He would come out in his true shape before heaven and earth as ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen

... given. The defendant claimed that it should be given by word of mouth, being anxious to know who had earned their money. Staienus and Bulbus were the first to vote. To the surprise of all, they voted "Guilty." Rumors too of foul play had spread about. The two circumstances caused some of the more respectable jurors to hesitate. In the end five voted for acquittal, ten said "Not Proven," and seventeen "Guilty." Oppianicus suffered nothing worse than banishment, a banishment which did not prevent him from ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church

... room were a number of men, and two or three women in all the shameless dishabille of their profession. As Shock opened the door a young girl, with much of her youthful freshness and beauty still about her, greeted him with a foul salutation. ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... something else out of the way. The large sails cannot be shifted round to go on the other tack without first hauling down the jibs, and the booms of the fore and aft sails have to be lowered and completely detached to perform the same operation. Then there are always a lot of ropes foul of each other, and all the sails can never be set (though they are so few) without a good part of their surface having the wind kept out of them by others. Yet praus are much liked even by those who have had European vessels, because of their cheapness both in first cost and in keeping up; ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... the keynote of his career. He met everything in life with a challenge. If it was righteous, he fought for it; if it was evil, he hurled the full weight of his finality against it. He never capitulated, never sidestepped, never fought foul. He carried the fight ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... scales, leeks, &c. &c.—and as a French chambermaid usually prefers the direct road to circumambulation, the refuse of the kitchen is then washed away by plentiful inundations from the dressing-room—the passages are blockaded by foul plates, fragments, and bones; to which if you add the smell exhaling from hoarded apples and gruyere cheese, you may form some notion of the sufferings of those whose olfactory nerves are not robust. Yet this is not all—nearly every female in the house, except myself, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... and the boathook between the banks of mire. Sometimes she touched and stuck until the rising water floated her off, and sometimes she scraped along the bottom, but still made progress. They were breathless and soaked with perspiration, while the foul scum that ran off the oar stained their damp clothes. Then Jake's boathook sank a foot or two deeper and finding the depth as good after a few vigorous pushes, they started ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... lights glowed behind wired enclosures. Well aft were the motors and oil engines, around them switchboards and other electrical apparatus—-a maze of intricate machinery that filled all the stern space. The air was hazy and smelled strong of oils and gases. Huge electric fans swept the foul air along the passageway and up through the hatchways, while other fans placed near the ventilators distributed the fresh air as it poured into the vessel, ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll

... to oblige you," ses Bob Pretty, "but the pond is so full o' them cold, slimy efts; I don't fancy them crawling up agin me, and, besides that, there's such a lot o' deep holes in it. And wotever you do don't put your 'ead under; you know 'ow foul that water is." ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... stirring and calling; a rush of men to the work of unlading; a heaving of ropes, winding of cables, shouts, curses, the rattling of carts on the piers, the tinkle of bells on the cars, the roar of escaping steam, the scream of whistles, and the foul smells of garbage and bilge-water. He watched the men at their work, he saw the passengers come out, with sleepy eyes and sodden faces, and take their departure. He too must go—but where? He wandered off the pier in a maze. Where should he go? what should he do in all this crowd ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... could, but that was more than any one else could even affect to do. His blows were not undecided and ineffectual—lumbering like Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry, nor wavering like Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short of the mark like Mr. Brougham's speeches, nor wide of it like Mr. Canning's wit, nor foul like the Quarterly, nor let balls like the Edinburgh Review. Cobbett and Junius together would have made a Cavanagh. He was the best up-hill player in the world; even when his adversary was fourteen, he would play on the same or better, and as he never flung away the game through carelessness ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... of the world! Thou rose of all the roses! [Muttering. I am not worthy of her—this beast-body That God has plunged my soul in—I, that taking The Fiend's advantage of a throne, so long Have wander'd among women,—a foul stream Thro' fever-breeding levels,—at her side, Among these happy dales, run clearer, drop The mud I carried, like yon brook, and glass The faithful face of heaven— [Looking at her, and unconsciously ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders; such as rais'd To highth of noblest temper heroes old Arming to battle, and instead of rage Deliberate valour breath'd, firm and unmov'd With dread of death to flight or foul retreat.'] ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... sent in answer, and that Sylvia being to write with her own hand begot a new doubt, insomuch as the whole business was at a stand: for when it came to that point that she herself was to consent, she found the project look with a face so foul, that she a hundred times resolved and unresolved. But Philander filled her soul, revenge was in her view, and that one thought put her on new resolves to pursue the design, let it be never so base and dishonourable: 'Yes,' cried she at last, 'I can commit no action that ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... race alone, and these builders of the new commonwealth never thought of the black man, save as a servant in the house. For more than two centuries, therefore, the wheat and the tares grew together in the soil. When the tares began to choke out the wheat, the uprooting of the foul growth became inevitable. Perhaps the Civil War was a necessity,—for this reason, the disease of slavery had struck in upon the vitals of the nation and the only cure was the surgeon's knife. Therefore God raised up soldiers, and anointed them as surgeons, with "the ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... causative of, their choice of means, there is always a tendency in etchers to fasten on unlovely objects; and the whole scheme of modern rapid work of this kind is connected with a peculiar gloom which results from the confinement of men, partially informed, and wholly untrained, in the midst of foul and vicious cities. A sensitive and imaginative youth, early driven to get his living by his art, has to lodge, we will say, somewhere in the by-streets of Paris, and is left there, tutorless, to his own devices. Suppose him also ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... account of the massacre of Cawnpore, which was now for the first time authentically told; for hitherto only native reports had come down from the city. Great was the indignation and fury with which the tale of black treachery and foul murder was heard; and when the story was told it had to be repeated to the officers of the ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... knowledge of the country; they have little affection for it, and few ties or interests therein. It is always their intention to return to the mother-country, and to procure their own enrichment—whether it be by fair means or foul, or even by destroying and consuming, in their eagerness to attain that end—not troubling themselves whether the country be ruled rightly or wrongly, whether it be ruined or improved. The second evil is that, to the Spaniards, the commonalty of the Indians is something ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair

... something to do. My conscience cried aloud to me, and, thank God, was clamorous till I grew human and obedient. I entered the house. A child was sitting at the foot of the stairs, her face and arms begrimed—her black hair hanging to her back foul with disease and dirt. She was about nine years old; but evil knowledge, cunning duplicity, and the rest, were glaring in her precocious face. She clasped her knees with her extended hands, and swinging backwards and forwards, sang, in a loud and impudent voice, the burden of an obscene ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... lowest form of honesty which bids you keep your hands clean of another's goods or money; I do not mean that you shall not be a "grafter," to use the foul and sinister word which certain base practices have recently compelled us to coin. Of course you will be honest ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... were failing, where The throngful street grew foul with death, O high-souled martyr! thou wast there, Inhaling, from the loathsome air, Poison with every breath. Yet shrinking not from offices of dread For the wrung dying, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... tabernacle drownd, Either by chance, against the course of kind, Or through unaptness of the substance found, Which it assumed of some stubborn ground That will not yield unto her form's direction, But is preformed with some foul imperfection. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... air. Modifying circumstances. Dangers of polluted air. Effect of changes in air. Composition of air. Organic matter in air. Fresh-air inlet. Position of inlet. Foul-air outlet. Size of openings. Ventilation of stables. Cost of ventilation. Relation ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... sigh of discontent,—"yours was the very worst case I ever was concerned in! I had no idea of what had resulted till you told me. Scamp that I was to foul that innocent life! The whole blame was mine—the whole unconventional business of our time at Trantridge. You, too, the real blood of which I am but the base imitation, what a blind young thing you were as to possibilities! I say in all earnestness ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... Again, Dr. George Brown tells us that in New Britain "a ruling chief was always supposed to exercise priestly functions, that is, he professed to be in constant communication with the tebarans (spirits), and through their influence he was enabled to bring rain or sunshine, fair winds or foul ones, sickness or health, success or disaster in war, and generally to procure any blessing or curse for which the applicant was willing to pay ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... his own clear breast May sit i' th' center and enjoy bright day; But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... wariest of himself, and sleeps on a strongly made lock-bed." Thorgils' followers bade him follow his own foresight. Thorgils now changed his clothes, and took off his blue cloak, and slipped on a grey foul-weather overall. He went home to the house. When he was come near to the home-field fence he saw a man coming to meet him, and when they met Thorgils said, "You will think my questions strange, comrade, but whose am I come to in this countryside, and what is the name of ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... surprising number above the average in sense, knowledge, and manners. The trouble (for Samoa) is that they are all here after a livelihood. Some are sharp practitioners, some are famous (justly or not) for foul play in business. Tales fly. One merchant warns you against his neighbour; the neighbour on the first occasion is found to return the compliment: each with a good circumstantial story to the proof. There is so much copra in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... fire inside. For a moment, he envied her coziness. Then, he crawled stealthily forward, until within ten feet of the big hollow pine. The air-holes, he noticed now, were not made on the north and west sides of the tree. Evidently, she counted on the suction of the wind to draw out the smoke and foul air. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams

... o'ercast, And every beauty withers at the blast: Where e'er they fly their lover's ghosts pursue, Inflicting all those ills which once they knew; Vexation, Fury, Jealousy, Despair, Vex ev'ry eye, and every bosom tear; Their foul deformities by all descry'd, No maid to flatter, and no paint to hide. Then melt, ye fair, while crouds around you sigh, Nor let disdain sit lowring in your eye; With pity soften every awful grace, And beauty smile auspicious in each ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... law, the positive evils of corrupt government are bound to fall heaviest upon the poorest and least capable. When the water of Chicago is foul, the prosperous buy water bottled at distant springs; the poor have no alternative but the typhoid fever which comes from using the city's supply. When the garbage contracts are not enforced, the well-to-do pay for private service; ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... through your work, and serves to confute the calumny that none but infidels are interested in the cause of abolition—a calumny which cuts at Christianity with a yet sharper edge than at abolition, but which you have proved to be a foul and malignant falsehood. We congratulate you not only on the richness of the laurels which you have won, but on the dignity, the meekness, and the magnanimity with which these laurels have been worn. We hail in you our most gifted sister in the great cause of liberty—we bid you warmly ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... need further confirmation. The ruthless manner in which the Kaiser's forces prosecuted the war, abandoning all pretense of civilization and relapsing into the most utter barbarism, is enough to convince anyone of her definite and well prepared program, which she was determined to execute by every foul ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... which would have made the bushranger Kelly reject him from his historic gang. Finally, they brought him back to England a ruined desperado, intent on getting at his relative's wealth by fair means or foul. The robbery of her jewels was only part of his scheme. By killing her he obtained the whole of her wealth at once. Then a victim became necessary—a stalking-horse to mislead the minions of justice, and whose punishment would ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward

... throughout the conversation. Undoubtedly she was a busy woman. "Up at half-past five," "to bed the last thing at night," "workin' fit ter drop," thirteen years of it, and for reward, grey hairs, frowzy clothes, stooped shoulders, slatternly figure, unending toil in a foul and noisome coffee-house that faced on an alley ten feet between the walls, and a waterside environment that was ugly and ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... He'd smelled the foul odor at least fifteen minutes before, and had dragged Jill back, and there had been no other sign of monsters or not-monsters upon the earth. Now he crouched down and crawled among the bushes. He came to the ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... caze I larned him to box. Maybe my fightin's been my punishment, Jimmy, but I never struck a man a foul blow." ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... clatter of voices, that fragments only of what was passing around reached me, giving to the conversation of the party a character occasionally somewhat incongruous. Thus such sentences as the following ran foul of each other ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... must consider and analyze a case from every standpoint, you know, Miss Lawton," he answered. "It did occur to me that perhaps your father met with foul play, but I put the theory from me ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... stretching out of the hand, and no man that ever, with love and longing, lifted an empty hand to God, dropped it still empty. And no man who, with penitence for his own act, and trust in the divine act, lifted blood-stained and foul hands to God, ever held them up there without the gory patches melting away, and becoming white as snow. Not 'all the perfumes of Araby' can sweeten those bloody hands. Lift them up to God, and they become pure. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... infernal and avenging clan — Appeared the monstrous Harpies' craving brood; Which, armed with beak and talons, overran Vessel and board, and preyed upon the food; And what their wombs suffice not to receive Foul and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... troubled at remembrance of the last words spoken by his daughter Elizabeth, who had threatened judgments upon him because of his refusal to save the King; whilst his body was grievously racked with a tertian fever, and a foul humour which, beginning in his foot, worked its way steadily to his heart. Moreover, some insight regarding his future seemed given to him in his last days, for he appeared, as Ludlow, his contemporary, states, "above all concerned ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... by as my second, but don't make any too stiff claims of foul. This will have to be ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock

... present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power, to maintain the universe in its course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view; comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets, and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... was a Prussian swine?" cried Bettermann. "Isn't that reason enough? But, if you will know, he'd seen me speak to a lady in the street. Afterwards me standing to attention, of course! he made a foul comment on her, and asked me ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... storm of missiles rained down upon them from the thronging hosts of their enemies on the banks above, while some, in the midst of their draught, were pierced by the spears of the Peloponnesians, who followed them into the river, and slew them at close quarters. The water grew red with blood, and foul from the trampling of so many feet, but the thirsty multitude still came crowding in, and drank with avidity of the ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... only he could be won over. Against this, however, there was one great impediment: the recollection of the judicial murder of his two grandsons, Benjamin and William Hewling, by Jeffreys at the Bloody Assizes. Fondly imagining that the memory of that foul act could be blotted out and the stricken heart salved by an increase of wealth or elevation in rank, James sent for him to court, and after some preliminary remarks touching the royal favour that was being shown ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... and if a vessel of about our size was made out a mile off, it was all hands on deck, and cast the lashings off the guns, and stand by till she was out of sight again. Now one jogs along, and all that you have got to look out for, is to see that you don't run foul of another craft, or let one run foul of you. Yes, we had a rough time of it in those days, and I ain't sorry ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... 20: "If beauty were the only province of art, neither painters nor etchers would find anything to occupy them in the foul stream that washes the London wharfs"—P. G. HAMERTON, Etching ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... evidence at the inquest; it read like honest evidence. Or—the question would never be silenced, though he scorned it—had she lain expecting the footstep in the room and the whisper that should tell her it was done? Among the foul possibilities of human nature, was it possible that black ruthlessness and black deceit as well were hidden behind that good and ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... send for me or ask anything, after the foul injustice with which you have treated me as ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon

... messenger to the Tenawa town. He returns to tell me there's no Horned Lizard in existence, and only a remnant of his tribe. Himself, with the best of his braves, has gone to the happy hunting grounds; not voluntarily, but sent thither by a party of Tejanos who fell foul of them ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... religion to the gratification of revenge. But the authority and eloquence of the wiser few obtained a salutary pause: the victory of the Phasis restored the terror of the Roman arms, and the emperor was solicitous to absolve his own name from the imputation of so foul a murder. A judge of senatorial rank was commissioned to inquire into the conduct and death of the king of the Lazi. He ascended a stately tribunal, encompassed by the ministers of justice and punishment: in the presence of both nations, this extraordinary cause was pleaded, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... are you mad, sir? you have certainly been bit by some mad whig or other: but now, sir, after aw this foul-mouthed frenzy, and patriotic vulgar intemperance, suppose we were to ask you a plain question or twa: Pray, what single instance can you, or any man, give of the political vice or corruption of these days, that has nai been practised in the greatest ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin

... seyne, the cytee of the sonne. In that cytee there is a temple made round, aftre the schappe of the temple of Jerusalem. The prestes of that temple han alle here wrytinges, undre the date of the foul that is clept Fenix: and there is non but on in alle the world. And he comethe to brenne him self upon the awtere of the temple, at the ende of 5 hundred zeer: for so longe he lyvethe. And at the 500 zeers ende, the prestes arrayen here awtere honestly, and putten there upon spices ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt

... sinking exhausted beside her cotton row. We hear the prayer for mercy answered with sneers and curses. We look on the instruments of torture, and the corpses of murdered men. We see the dogs, reeking hot from the chase, with their jaws foul with human blood. We see the meek and aged Christian scarred with the lash, and bowed down with toil, offering the supplication of a broken heart to his Father in Heaven, for the forgiveness of his brutal enemy. We hear, and from our inmost hearts repeat the affecting interrogatory of the aged ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... building. The children being obliged to work themselves up by pressing with their feet and knees on one side, and their back on the other, often force out the bricks which divide the chimnies, and thereby encrease the danger, in case a foul chimney should take fire, as the flames frequently communicate by those apertures to other apartments, which were not suspected to be in any danger. To avoid these consequences, a rope twice the length of ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton

... and everywhere, with the ghosts of the past days haunting me, and other darker spirits of sorrow and remorse and wonder. Black spirits among the gray, all like a mist between me and the green woods. And I feel like a caterpillar,—stung just enough. Foul weather and mist enough, of quite a real kind besides. An hour's sunshine to-day, broken up speedily, and now ...
— Hortus Inclusus - Messages from the Wood to the Garden, Sent in Happy Days - to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite, Coniston • John Ruskin

... they thought had any property ... and put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with unutterable torture; for never were martyrs so tortured as they were. They hanged them up by the feet and smoked them with foul smoke; they hanged them by the thumbs or by the head and hung armour on their feet; they put knotted strings about their heads and writhed them so that they went into the brain. They put them in dungeons in which were adders, and snakes, and toads, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams

... blissful occupation was to talk politics in pot houses and groggeries; men of desperate fortunes who sought to mend them, not by honest labor, but by opportunities for official pickings and stealings; bands of miscreants resembling foul and unclean birds which clamor and fight for the chance of settling down upon and devouring the body to which their keen scent hag directed them; all were astir and with but little effort obtained all that they desired. ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb

... encroached upon their territory, seeing before them the fate that had befallen all the other tribes among whom white settlements had been opened up, these Indians feared that this man, whose hair had whitened among them, would take part with his own people against them, and made a foul conspiracy against his life, treacherously stilling the heart that had beat with kindness and affection for them, are grievous facts in the history of his beloved Montana, on which I need ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... I said quickly, "I meant to offer you no offence, mademoiselle. You naturally are in distress regarding the unaccountable disappearance of your father, and when one mentions jewels thoughts of foul play always arise in one's mind. The avariciousness of man, and his unscrupulousness where either money or jewels are concerned, are well known even to you, at your age. I thought, however, you were confiding in me, and I wondered how you, in active search of your father as you are, could ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux

... accustomed; showing silver, mainly Mexican, the only credentials the players required. At sunset he quit, easy winner, and went without taking so much as a "snifter." Once having found the way, and the means, the dago came again and yet again, neither giving nor having trouble until he ran foul of Munoz, the Mexican, whom he seemed to hate at sight. Whatever his lingo, or that employed by the polyglot Mexican, they understood each other, and the misunderstanding ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... get up," Douglas remarked, as he stood viewing his prostrate victim. "How dare you insult the King, and lay your foul hands upon this woman? Get up, I tell you, and clear out of ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... some great lord,—I forget his name, but no matter,—that had made a most tremendous sum of money, either by foul or fair means, among the blacks in the East Indies, had returned, before he died, to lay his bones at home, as yellow as a Limerick glove, and as rich as Dives in the New Testament. He kept flunkies with plush small-clothes and sky- ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... left the house. He walked half a mile with his eyes turned to the ground, then noticed a hansom which was passing empty, and had himself driven to Hoxton. He alighted near the Britannia Theatre, and thence made his way by foul streets to a public-house called the 'Warwick Castle.' Only two customers occupied the bar; the landlord stood in his shirt-sleeves, with arms crossed, musing. At the sight of Mutimer he brightened up, ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... sinful man was held at arm's length, so to speak, in the grasp of the Infinite and Most Holy; and the result was a total collapse of the human spirit. Isaiah's eye turned away from the sight of God's glory back upon himself, and back on his past life; and, in this light, all appeared foul and hideous. There was sin everywhere—sin in himself and sin in his environment. He was utterly confounded and swallowed up of shame and terror. "Woe is me," he groaned, "for I am undone; because ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker

... from the North-West with a high sea, and as there was only one cast of the lead taken, in the confusion of wearing, it is possible they might have been deceived. The kelp might have been adrift, and the sea, in that neighbourhood, often breaks irregularly as if on foul ground. The position of this supposed shoal, by the run from Banks Strait would be, latitude 39 degrees 51 minutes South, longitude 149 degrees 40 minutes East; but as this gives a difference of twenty miles in the latitude by observation, and as the Beagle has ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes

... must be no discourtesy to the authorities, Mr. Hovstad. It is no use falling foul of those upon whom our welfare so closely depends. I have done that in my time, and no good ever comes of it. But no one can take exception to a reasonable and frank expression of a ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen

... of the wisest and best of human beings. Rome also is a great city of art; and yet there, the VIRTUS or valour of the ancient Romans has characteristically degenerated into VERTU, or a taste for knicknacks; whilst, according to recent accounts, the city itself is inexpressibly foul. [1818] ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... bills," says Squar' Alexanders, an' he p'ints to where one is hangin' on the barroom wall. It gives a picture of the foul fiend, with pitchfork, spear-head tail an' all. "Whatever do ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... him come ben whare my minny sae thrang Was birlin' her wheel eidentlie, An', foul fa' the carle, he was na' that lang, Ere he tauld ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... a flurry within hail of their own fireside. No man ventures abroad without meat and a bottle of wine, which he replenishes at every wine-shop; and even thus equipped he takes the road with terror. All day the family sits about the fire in a foul and airless hovel, and equally without work or diversion. The father may carve a rude piece of furniture, but that is all that will be done until the spring sets in again, and along with it the labours of the field. It is not for nothing that you ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a cry as though for protection from the touch of something unspeakably foul, she threw both arms across her face and turned, shuddering, ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... with arms in his hand, they seize and fasten in their enormous coils; and now twice clasping his waist, twice encircling his neck with their scaly bodies, they tower head and neck above him. He at once strains his hands to tear their knots apart, his fillets spattered with foul black venom; at once raises to heaven awful cries; as when, bellowing, a bull shakes the wavering axe from his neck and runs wounded from the altar. But the two snakes glide away to the high sanctuary and seek the fierce Tritonian's citadel, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... helpless and oppressed people. The sentiments too, which he delivered on this occasion, ought not to be forgotten. "This trade," said he, "is contrary to the principles of the British constitution. It is, besides, a cruel and criminal traffic in the blood of my fellow-creatures. It is a foul stain on the national character. It is an offence to the Almighty. On every ground therefore on which a decision can be made; on the ground of policy, of liberty, of humanity, of justice, but, above all, on the ground of religion, I shall ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson

... shoemaker, "a very foul-mouthed woman," in the language of Madame Nourrisson; mother of seven children. After having dunned a countess, to no avail, for a hundred francs that was due her, she conceived the idea of carrying off the silverware, ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... of the tall trees, and the blades of the shaking-grass, and all manner of hues, of variable, pleasant light out of the sky; nay, the ugly gutter, that stagnates over the drain bars, in the heart of the foul city, is not altogether base; down in that, if you will look deep enough, you may see the dark, serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing of pure clouds. It is at your own will that you see in that despised stream, either the refuse of the street, or the image of the sky—so it is with almost ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... make you go after it," began Frank, when Gill, making a sudden jump, landed up against him, and dealt him a quick, foul ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster

... any real damage, son. And here's another angle: these judges won't give a nigger any the best of it on a claim of foul agin a white boy. My Mose is the only darky rider here, and the other boys want to drive him out. Between Engle and his gang after me, and the jockeys after Mose, we ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... two spirits do suggest me still: The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. To win me soon to hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, Wooing his purity with her foul pride. And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend Suspect I may, yet not directly tell: But being both from me, both to each friend, I guess one angel in another's hell: Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt, Till my bad angel ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... became inexpressibly soft and tender, "on Tuesday next I had hoped to become one bone and one flesh with a fair girl whom I have loved for months;—fair indeed to the outer eye, as flesh and form can make her; but ah! how hideously foul within. And I had hoped on this day se'nnight to have received the congratulations of this chamber. I need not say that it would have been the proudest moment of my life. But, my Grand, that has all passed away. ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... retention of fragments of food between and around them. The warmth and moisture of the mouth make these matters decompose quickly. The acid thus generated attacks the enamel of the teeth, causing decay of the dentine. Decayed teeth are often the cause of an offensive breath and a foul stomach. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell

... affairs. The object of his diplomacy was at this time simply to get money. The finances of his government were in an embarrassed state, and this embarrassment he was determined to relieve by some means, fair or foul. The principle which directed all his dealings with his neighbours is fully expressed by the old motto of one of the great predatory families of Teviotdale, "Thou shalt want ere I want." He seems to have laid it down, as a fundamental ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... shore-boat. Now, look here—this infernal lazy scoundrel of a caretaker has gone to sleep again—curse him. The light is out, and I nearly ran foul of the end of this damned jetty. This is the third time he plays me this trick. Now, I ask you, can anybody stand this kind of thing? It's enough to drive a man out of his mind. I'll report him.... I'll get the Assistant Resident to give him the sack, by... See—there's no light. ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad

... frameless windows with boards and the gaping doorways with rags, and occupying now an entire princely flat and now a few small rooms, according to its taste. Horrid-looking linen hung drying from the carved balconies, foul stains already degraded the white walls, and from the magnificent porches, intended for sumptuous equipages, there poured a stream of filth which rotted in stagnant pools in the roads, where there was ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... lord! Jist think o' the preevilege—I never saw nor thoucht o' 't afore—o' haein' 't i' yer pooer, ony nicht 'at ye're no efter the fish, to stap oot at yer ain door, an' be in the mids o' the temple! Be 't licht or dark, be 't foul or fair, the sea sleepin' or ragin', ye ha'e aye room, an' naething atween ye an' the throne o' the Almichty, to the whilk yer prayers ken the gait, as weel 's the herrin' to the shores o' Scotlan': ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... his own And yet—my Rabbi tells me—he has left The care of that to which a million worlds. Filled with unconscious life were less than naught, Has left that mighty universe, the Soul, To the weak guidance of our baby hands, Turned us adrift with our immortal charge, Let the foul fiends have access at their will, Taking the shape of angels, to our hearts, Our hearts already poisoned through and through With the fierce virus of ancestral sin. If what my Rabbi tells me is the truth, Why did the choir of angels ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... crossed athwart thy frank Stout Scottish legs, men watched thee snarl and scowl, And boys responsive with reverberate howl Shrilled, hearing how to thee the springtime stank And as thine own soul all the world smelt rank And as thine own thoughts Liberty seemed foul. Now, for all ill thoughts nursed and ill words given Not all condemned, not utterly forgiven, Son of the storm and darkness, pass in peace. Peace upon earth thou knewest not: now, being dead, Rest, with nor ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... a span of grass rope, had been thrown overboard from the pursued vessel, in the hope that the submarine would foul her propellers in the tangle of line. Once a blade picked up that trailing rope, the latter would coil round the boss as tightly as ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... met with such foul weather, out at sea, as don't blow once in twenty year, my darling. There was hurricanes ashore as tore up forests and blowed down towns, and there was gales at sea, even in them latitudes, as not the stoutest wessel ever launched could ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... no doubt that this is of importance," Charlie said, when he had read the letter through. "It is only by getting hold of this villain that there is any chance of our obtaining proof of the foul treachery of which you were the victim. Hitherto, we have had no clue whatever as to where he was to be looked for. Now, there can be little doubt that he has returned to his haunts in London. I understand now, father, why you wanted me to get leave. You mean ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty

... that the Blacks repaid kindness with ingratitude—treachery—foul murder—' He pulled himself up as though afraid of losing command of himself if he pursued the subject: his voice thrilled with some deep-seated feeling. Mrs Gildea, who understood the personal application, broke in across the table with an apposite remark ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... draughts of milk between, leaving not a morsel, not even the very bones. But the others, when they saw the dreadful deed, could only weep and pray to Zeus for help. And when the giant had ended his foul meal, he lay down among his sheep ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... daughter's legacy, and L5 more for a Quarter's annuity, in the manner expressed in each acquittance, to which I must be referred on any future occasion, and to the bond and affidavit. Thence to the office and there sat till noon, and then home to dinner, and after dinner (it being a foul house to-day among my maids, making up their clothes) abroad with my Will with me by coach to Dr, Williams, and with him to the Six Clerks's office, and there, by advice of his acquaintance, I find that my case, through my neglect and the neglect of my lawyers, is come ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... First, there was his love of sweet things; then his long-accustomed habit of never denying himself anything he wanted, if he could get it by fair means or foul. And his lessons in honour had been learnt such a little time that the disgrace and wrong of stealing scarcely troubled him. Finally, he would be doing his enemy an injury, and the thought of revenge ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... th—" The throttled note expired in a very dreadful squawk of agony. It was as if foul murder had been done, and done swiftly. The maddened woman faced me with the potentially evil disk clutched in her hands. In a voice that is a notable loss to our revivals of Greek ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... obtaining a husband when I wanted one, and thus obliging me to purloin the thing I might have honorably come by." "Hell, and double Hell to the lustful wretch of a gentleman, who first began tempting me," would the third say; "if he had not, betwixt fair and foul, broken the hedge, I had not become a cell open to every body, nor had I come to this cell of devils!" And then they fell to ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... when he was seized with a severe attack of small-pox. It was a time of anxiety, not only on account of the possible fatal termination of the disease, but in an age of plots, of the advantage that might be taken to bring about his end by means of poison or other foul play. ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard



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