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Horny   Listen
adjective
Horny  adj.  (compar. hornier; superl. horniest)  
1.
Having horns or hornlike projections.
2.
Composed or made of horn, or of a substance resembling horn; of the nature of horn. "The horny... coat of the eye."
3.
Hard; callous. "His horny fist."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Horny" Quotes from Famous Books



... provisions or weapons the wilderness of that unknown land was only less dreadful than death. Trees and vines barren of fruit, streams where a huge horny lizard ate all the fish—El Lagarto he was called by the discoverers,—no grain or cattle which might be taken by stealth—this was the realm into which they had been exiled. When they ventured out of the forest, driven by famine, they ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... sliver from a horny finger and recalled the fact that Tarzan had once said that the trees talked to one another, and Gozan recounted having seen the ape-man dancing alone in the moonlight with Sheeta, the panther. They did not know that Tarzan had roped ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... she said, taking the glass. "You see theer's a gert ship passin' down Channel, an'—an' my Joe's aboard 'er, an' they'm bound for furrin' paarts, an' I promised as I'd come to this here horny-winky [Footnote: Horny-winky—Lonely. Fit place for horny-winks.] plaace to get a last sight o' the vessel if I could." He made no answer, and, after a pause, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... Spot he saved the farmer's life, The farmer's money, the farmer's wife, And now a hero grand and gay, A silver collar he wears today; Among his friends, among his foes— And everywhere his master goes— He follows on his horny toes, ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... the poor bird had suffered! First plastered up and left to starve or suffocate in its hollow tree; then captured and passed round from rough, horny hand to hand, while the villagers were discussing it in their slow, ponderous fashion—how wildly its little wild heart must have palpitated!—and, finally, after being released, to go back at once to its ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... skin rubbed off with a linen cloth. Having thus prepared a sufficient number of roots, the operator should spread them on a tin plate in a hot oven for eight or ten minutes, until they get to look horny, but without shrinking in size: and being then withdrawn, they may be dried with more gentle heat, or by exposure to the air. Their concocted juice can be employed with the same intentions and in the same complaints as gum arabic,—about ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... the watch-dog, for Caesar kens weel When the wild gipsy laddies are tryin' to steal; But he lies like a lamb, and licks wi' good will The hard, horny hand that brings grist to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... he cared about the week's growth of beard that sat on his gaunt face, or for the sweat that ran over his forehead and splashed to his great, bared chest. Pride did not chide him for hands that were horny and begrimed, nor for arms that were red and scarred from the bite of ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... more insidious salesmen doing a brisk trade in what they falsely pretended to be 'Tennyson's last poem.' Next day we read in our newspapers affecting accounts of the emotion displayed by the vast crowd outside the Abbey—horny hands dashing away the tear, seamstresses holding 'the little green volumes' to their faces to hide their agitation. Happy for those who could see these with their fairy telescopes out of the garrets of Fleet Street. I, alas!—though I sought assiduously—could ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of the cabin, advancing hesitatingly. To Helen they all looked alike, tall, awkward, with brown faces and big hands. When Colonel Zane cheerily cried out to them, they stumbled forward with evident embarrassment, each literally crushing Helen's hand in his horny palm. Afterward they leaned on the rail ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey

... Osmiae whom I have been able to observe are divided into two classes: one building compartments with mud, the other with a green-tinted vegetable putty. The first section includes the Horned Osmia and the Three-horned Osmia, both so remarkable for the horny tubercles on ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... actions of the Gods, yet they cannot entertain a thought of a Deity doing nothing. The Egyptians (so much ridiculed) held no beasts to be sacred, except on account of some advantage which they had received from them. The ibis, a very large bird, with strong legs and a horny long beak, destroys a great number of serpents. These birds keep Egypt from pestilential diseases by killing and devouring the flying serpents brought from the deserts of Lybia by the south-west wind, which prevents the mischief that may attend their biting while alive, or ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... wallop the boys somethin' awful," added Uncle Jason, rubbing his horny palm on his trouser leg and then looking at it as though the sting of Miss Blodgett's ruler had not even at this late day ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long

... Sally cleaned the glass with her apron, and gave it back to me. As she did so, she half stretched out her hand to Mary's face, but drew it in again suddenly, as if she was afraid of soiling Mary's delicate skin with her hard, horny fingers. Going out, she stopped at the foot of the bed, and scraped away a little patch of mud that was on ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... still held by that convulsive grip, he turned and kicked at Mansoor with the vicious impatience with which one drives off a pestering cur. The dragoman's high red tarboosh flew up into the air, and he lay groaning upon his face where the stunning blow of the Arab's horny foot ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... garter of leather, curiously wrought, with the stained quills of the porcupine, encircled each leg, immediately under the knee, where it was tied in a bow, and then suffered to hang pendant half way down the limb; to the fringes of the leggings, moreover, were attached numerous dark-coloured horny substances, emitting, as they rattled against each other, at the slightest movement of the wearer, a tinkling sound, resembling that produced by a number of small thin delicate brass bells; these were ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... snarl, and, clenching his huge, horny fist, let drive full in the other's face and knocked him ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... is obedience that was not in the least degree depressed by the recognition of past failure. All night long they had been dropping the net overboard, and drawing it in, and with horny, wet hands seeking in its meshes, and finding nothing. Then overboard with it again, and more pulling at the heavy sweeps, till the dawn began to show, and all in vain. Now the weary task must be done all over again, though in all the past hours though ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... him from the top of a house which was building. He did not notice it, and only when he ran against a watchman, who, having planted his halberd beside him, was shaking some snuff from his box into his horny hand, did he recover himself a little, and that because the watchman said, "Why are you poking yourself into a man's very face? Haven't you the pavement?" This caused him to look about him, ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various

... did; handy and clever, and swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her; he seldom slept; and often I saw his small, shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her. As ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Hogg, I found them to be first a hard transparent horny substance, without the least appearance of pores or holes in it; and this I try'd with the greatest care I was able, cutting many of them with a very sharp Razor, so that they appear'd, even in the Glass, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... drive me frantic with your meek and mild ways," cried the other passionately. "My own feet are strong enough for me to stand on and my hand, though it is horny, can carry out what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... and, the mate making a sign, two of the harpooners tilted the hatch, from which the remains slid off into the unknown depths with a dull splash. Several of the dead man's compatriots covered their faces, and murmured prayers for the repose of his soul, while the tears trickled through their horny fingers. But matters soon resumed their normal course; the tension over, back came the strings of life into position again, to play the same old tunes ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... Tail, intent upon his toilet and oblivious of his danger, would undoubtedly have furnished a meal for the panther had not old Ahmeek appeared, swimming upward from the lodge. Immediately his keen eyes discovered the crouching animal and, with a sound like the crack of a rifle, his flat, horny tail descended upon ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... treatise that knowledge opens to us other excitements than those of the senses, and another life than that of the moment. The difference between us is this, that you forget that the same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains—the horny hand of the peasant feels not the nettles which sting the fine skin of the scholar. You forget also, that whatever widens the sphere of the desires, opens to them also new temptations. Vanity, the desire of applause, pride, the sense of superiority—gnawing discontent where that superiority ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... date in my information; there is a marked revulsion of feeling upon the town versus country question; the tide of the rural exodus has really turned, as I might have discerned without going far afield. At many a Long Island home I might see on Sundays, weather permitting, the horny-handed son of week-day toil in Wall Street, rustically attired, inspecting his Jersey cows and aristocratic fowls. These supply a select circle in New York with butter and eggs, at a price which leaves nothing to be ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett

... obeyed. He was a man of about fifty, indefinite in colouring, for his eyes were very light-blue or grey and his hair was sandy, tough-looking and strongly made, with big hands that showed signs of work, for the palms were horny and the nails worn down. He was clad in a suit of shiny black, such as folk of the labouring class wear at a funeral. I made up my mind at once that he ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... seasons—spring, summer, autumn and winter. Spring is the most joyful season of the year. It is then that the green grass and the lavender pants come forth. The little robbins twitter in the branches, and the horny-handed farmer goes joyously afield to till the soil ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... of Cuthbert's traditional reverence; but he had all an Englishman's love of fair play, and hated the cruelty and cowardice of an angry mob as he hated anything mean and vile, and he doubled back his wrist bands and clinched his horny ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... to consult my doctor, the White Owl, about the terrible indigestion I have. He's very difficult to catch awake; for he's out all night and sleepy all day. He says cockchafers have caused it. The horny wing-cases and legs are most indigestible, he assures me. I didn't fancy them much when I ate them last night, so I took his advice and coughed them up, and I'm no longer feeling depressed. Take my advice, and don't ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... specimens of which grow to the weight of a ton and measure fifteen feet from wing tip to wing tip, are armed with a long tail, terminating in a tough, horny substance, like many of the ray family members. This horn-tipped tail, lashing about in the water, becomes a terrible weapon of defense. Possibly it is used for offense, as the devil fish feeds on small sea animals, sweeping them into its mouth by movements of the horns ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... small, battered, pointed hats; rough, muddy hose that should have once been white; shoes that loaded their steps like lead; and they moved slowly, with bent heads, rough, long-unshaven faces, eyes too hollow, horny hands too lean—wild, half-fed creatures, worse off than the flocks they drove, by all the degrees of the inverse ratio between man, who needs man's help, and beast, that needs ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford

... are totally ruined by bad applications. We have been told that drying oil mixed with mastic varnish has been, though not very recently, used in our National Gallery. We hope it is a mistake, and that there has been no such practice. The effect must be to make them dull and horny, and to destroy all brilliancy in time. We say no more upon that subject, believing that our National Gallery is intrusted to good hands, and that whatever is done, will be done with judgment, and not without much reflection. A ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... miserable in their tawdriness, their painted cheeks peeling in the hot sun, which they cannot shut out if they would. Throughout the long day the wearied minstrels pant over their greasy tubes of brass, or scrape their grimy instruments with horny fingers, praying for the deep night; and there, through the long day, does the echoing floor rebound with the beating of vigorous feet; for salt-water Jack is there, and fresh-river Jack is there, and while there is a copper pfennig in their pockets, ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... American citizen, and while he wore a slight cauliflower in one ear, his broad, kindly humorous face and alert, bustling manner was assurance that he would be an easy man to get along with. When the Old Man introduced him to Matt, he extended a horny right hand that closed on Matt's like the jaws of a dredger, the while he ran an equally horny left hand up and down ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... it was a common thing to see them playing together, the old sailor on his knees, one eye shut, and a marble against the nail of his horny thumb taking aim; Dick and Emmeline on the watch to make sure he was playing fair, their shrill voices echoing amidst the cocoa-nut trees with cries of "Knuckle down, Paddy, knuckle down!" He entered into all their amusements just ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... was not man enough, had not sense enough, to give her this poor chance of matrimonial escape from labor that seemed to her like a giant taskmaster, waiting with grimy, horny hand to claim her as another of his innumerable slaves. Though a life of lonely, ill- paid toil would have been better for Edith than marriage to Gus, he was missing the one golden opportunity of his life, when he thought of Edith Allen ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... Indian tends the grave with fidelity and the dawdling minuteness of inherited sloth. He chops down the weeds and ever-springing grass with his machete, he plucks ants and scorpions and beetles from it with his horny fingers, and sprinkles its turf with water from the plaza fountain. There is no grave anywhere ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... I must not forget my horned toad, Diego, that I got in California. I keep him in the green-house, and he is very happy catching flies and holding his horny head to be scratched whenever any one ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... a socialist and a revolutionist. I joined the groups of working-class and intellectual revolutionists, and for the first time came into intellectual living. Here I found keen-flashing intellects and brilliant wits; for here I met strong and alert-brained, withal horny-handed, members of the working-class; unfrocked preachers too wide in their Christianity for any congregation of Mammon-worshippers; professors broken on the wheel of university subservience to the ruling class and flung out because they were quick with knowledge ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... arid wilderness, and to remember, as Umbopa had said, that if we did not find water this day we must perish miserably. No human creature could live long without water in that heat. I sat up and rubbed my grimy face with my dry and horny hands, as my lips and eyelids were stuck together, and it was only after some friction and with an effort that I was able to open them. It was not far from dawn, but there was none of the bright feel of dawn in the air, which was thick with ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... Balance, and all who think that it is their business to straighten things out. Poisoners and assassins are born under the Scorpion. Cross-eyed people who look at the vegetables and sneak away with the bacon, are born under the Archer. Horny-handed sons of toil are born under Capricorn. Bartenders and pumpkin-heads are born under the Water-Carrier. Caterers and rhetoricians are born under the Fishes: and so the world turns round, just like a mill, and something bad always comes to the top, and men are either being born or else they're ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... Such reproaches have the poor Nonjurants to endure, and worse; spoken in on them by frantic Patriots, who mount even on the carriage-steps; the very Guards hardly refraining. Pull up your carriage-blinds!—No! answers Patriotism, clapping its horny paw on the carriage blind, and crushing it down again. Patience in oppression has limits: we are close on the Abbaye, it has lasted long: a poor Nonjurant, of quicker temper, smites the horny paw with his cane; nay, finding solacement in it, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... exchanged a tall, lank, grim mountaineer slouched forward and laid a horny hand upon Steve's shoulder. The startled boy looked up to see his ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins

... of the Shark,—the Skate and the Dog-fish,—are more careful of their eggs. Have you ever found their empty eggs on the sea shore? Children call them "mermaids' purses." But they are more like little horny pillow-cases than purses. ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith

... as I could judge he was about fourteen feet long, but evidently of great age, from his bulk, his horny hide banded and barred and corrugated, while the strength of such a beast ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... a hidden passage leading from the archway; he peeps out through a crack, having rolled back so far the stone that seals it." He held his horny fingers about an inch apart to ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... eels from his basket, and grasping Flora's hand in his hard horny palm, said, "May the Lord grant you prosperity! an' bless you an' your husband an' the little 'un, an' bring you safe to the far land to which you are journeying! May it prove to you a haven of rest! God ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... her floury and horny hand into mine; another and heartier smile illumined her rough face, and from that moment ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... to 6 cm. in diameter (doubtless becoming larger): tubercles 8 to 10 mm. long, woolly in the upper axils: radial spines 4 to 6, rigid, 4 to 6 mm. long, the upper one stouter than the rest and sometimes shorter, reddish-brown and horny, straight or slightly curved, the remainder straight and white with dusky tips; central spine stout and horny, reddish-brown, 7 to 10 mm. long: flowers greenish-white or tinged with ...
— The North American Species of Cactus, Anhalonium, and Lophophora • John M. Coulter

... crow to pluck with you, anyhow, and I'm going to pluck it now." He grasped the Greek by his collar and jerked him backward until the man lay flat on his back across the baggage-truck; then, with his horny left hand, Donald slapped the sullen face vigorously, jerked the fellow to his feet, faced him in the direction of Darrow, and, with a vigorous kick, started him on his way. "That's for throwing beer-bottles!" he called after ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... reduced, and in the lowest form of all, Ascomyces, it is entirely absent. In the Phacidiacei, the structure is very similar to that of the Elvellacei, whilst the Hysteriacei, with greater affinities with the latter, still tend towards the Pyrenomycetes by the more horny nature of the receptacle, and the greater tendency of the hymenium to remain closed, at least when dry. In some species of Hysterium, the sporidia are remarkably fine. M. Duby[AA] has subjected this group to examination, and M. ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... singular organic peculiarity and of its transmission to descendants, is furnished in the case of the English family of "Porcupine men," so called from having all the body except the head and face, and the soles and palms, covered with hard dark-colored excrescences of a horny nature. The first of these was Edward Lambert, born in Suffolk in 1718, and exhibited before the Royal Society when fourteen years of age. The other children of his parents were naturally formed; and Edward, ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale

... down the groping hands of the woman and sprang to the rail, bracing his feet on the smooth iron deck-plate as the Chinese leaped. A knife glinted. Peter seized a horny wrist with both hands, bent, and wrenched it. The knife struck the water with a sibilant splash. The fokie lost his balance. His ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... the hoarse stag, l. 321. A great want of one part of the animal world has consisted in the desire of the exclusive possession of the females; and these have acquired weapons to combat each other for this purpose, as the very thick shield-like horny skin on the shoulder of the boar is a defence only against animals of his own species, who strike obliquely upwards, nor are his tushes for other purposes, except to defend himself, as he is not naturally a carnivorous animal. So the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... is not the actual horny reptile known to naturalists and to common experience, but a spirit, an animated creature that ages ago rose up out of the Yellow River, having on its carapace the mystic writing out of which the legendary founder of Chinese civilization ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... frivolity. The dear little soul! who would have suspected that she had such a worthy motive for her ball? But, do you know, sometimes in fashionable life we catch a glimpse of the simple-minded, homely kindliness which we are taught to believe exists only among horny-handed farmers, rough miners, ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell

... 2l.—I spent the afternoon doctoring the poultry. To my surprise every hen and chicken I caught had "pip," a horny substance under the tongue and rather hard to get off. I operated on nearly thirty. The fowls are rather a trouble, from their habit of getting into all sorts of impossible places. The other day I found a hen on the pillow and her chickens ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow

... after a gale of wind, and pick up a few delicate little sea-ferns. You have two in your hand, which probably look to you, even under a good pocket magnifier, identical or nearly so. (1) But you are told to your surprise, that however like the dead horny polypidoms which you hold may be, the two species of animal which have formed them are at least as far apart in the scale of creation as a quadruped is from a fish. You see in some Musselburgh dredger's boat the phosphorescent sea-pen (unknown in England), a living feather, of the look and consistency ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... below, now—the scuffing of horny-soled feet on the dirt road, the clink and rattle of slung weapons, the clicking and ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr

... of his voice, decided at last to come out of her shell. First she showed the point of her little horny nose, then her black eyes, her flat-pointed tail, and finally her strong little claw-tipped feet. Seeing the melon, she made a gesture of assent, ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne

... what has since happened, that my refusal was judgematical. Moreover, the very next day I heard of a more congenial matter in the hammer-and-tongs department of my august profession. A village blacksmith, a horny-handed son of toil, generously offered to feed and lodge me for as long as I liked to stop, in return for my services in his forge. The offer was the more magnanimous in that he was not in any particular need of assistance, but was willing to ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn

... minute and evanescent 6. L. humicola Thallus well developed and persistent. Thallus of raised granules 7. L. uliginosa Thallus of flat granules 8. L. sylvicola Exciple persistent 9. L. flexuosa Exciple horny, dark colored. Disk usually convex, commonly on wood 10. L. enteroleuca Disk flat or less commonly convex, on rocks. Disk usually white- to rusty-green-pruinose 11. L. albocaerulescens Disk black, scarcely ...
— Ohio Biological Survey, Bull. 10, Vol. 11, No. 6 - The Ascomycetes of Ohio IV and V • Bruce Fink and Leafy J. Corrington

... but did not the fire flash into his honest eyes, and leap into his swarthy cheek, and nerve his brawny arm, and clinch his horny fist, as he marched straightway up to the doomed offender, fiercely denounced his dishonesty, and violently demanded redress? Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, and eagerness and delight on every countenance, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... a mighty spiritual fellowship. On the night of our visit the immense temple was crowded from floor to ceiling. The congregation had obviously been drawn from all ranks and conditions of society. Professional men sat side by side with horny-handed sons of toil, fine ladies with servant girls, the old with the young. What new device of sensationalism had brought them together? What startling announcement had been flung out over the city to attract this mighty concourse? Absolutely none! The sermon was a closely reasoned doctrinal ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... of young women in the village?' answered the cornet's wife slyly as she carefully replaced the lid of the matchbox with her horny hands. ...
— The Cossacks • Leo Tolstoy

... on a farmer who was working his plow. Nothing was found on him. Next day the same thing happened and again the watch was set. This time our efforts were rewarded; the scout saw the farmer shoot and throw the rifle down. He reported to the officer and we went over. The horny-handed son of toil was very busy at the plow as he saw us coming. He couldn't speak English. The officer sent to the nearest French battery and presently a French soldier came who interpreted the officer's questions and the man's replies. ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... many of our Modern Philosophers suppose to be the Seat of the Soul, smelt very strong of Essence and Orange-flower Water, and was encompassed with a kind of Horny Substance, cut into a thousand little Faces or Mirrours, which were imperceptible to the naked Eye, insomuch that the Soul, if there had been any here, must have been always taken up in contemplating her ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... want of one part of the animal world has consisted in the desire of the exclusive possession of the females; and these have acquired weapons to combat each other for this purpose, as the very thick, shield-like, horny skin on the shoulder of the boar is a defence only against animals of his own species, who strike obliquely upwards, nor are his tushes for other purposes, except to defend himself, as he is not naturally a carnivorous animal. So the horns of the stag are sharp to ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... Gringoire, fondling his misshapen chin with his horny hand; "I don't see why you should not be hung. It is true that it appears to be repugnant to you; and it is very natural, for you bourgeois are not accustomed to it. You form for yourselves a great idea of the thing. After all, we don't ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... former reacts, and is therefore termed erythrocellulose. The former is easily separated from its opalescent solution. It has the empirical composition of cellulose. In the soluble form it resembles glycogen. The achroocellulose is isolated in the form of horny or agglomerated masses. It appears to be resolved by ultimate hydrolysis into dextrose ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross

... such plight lacking special organs it would be at cruel advantage in the struggle for existence. The posterior segment of the body is therefore developed into an operculum-like organ, smooth and of horny texture, which closes the narrow end of the tube. The other extremity is more elaborately guarded, the anterior segment being fringed with a frontal membrane, while the second segment forms a disc, the minute mouth orifice with the true tentacles and gills being ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... it dead. We soon recognised, by the shape of the point, the fearful rattlesnake;—fearful it would be from its venomous bite, had not the rattle been fixed to it to give notice of its approach. We threw sticks at it, but still it did not seem inclined to move. Again it lifted up its horny tail, and shook its rattle. "Take care," cried John; "keep away." The serpent had begun to glide over the ground, now looking at one of us, now at the other, as if undecided at which it should dart. I took John's advice, and quickly retreated. He fired, and shattered the reptile's head. ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... than five hundred inhabitants,[3359] in many other villages of greater population, but scattered[3360] and purely agricultural, especially in those in which patois is spoken, there is a scarcity of suitable subjects for a revolutionary committee. People make use of their hands too much; horny hands do not write every day; nobody desires to take up a pen, especially to keep a register that may be preserved and some day or other prove compromising. It is already a difficult matter to recruit a municipal ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... recess, then, which afforded no shelter, while Pegtop stumped by with his lantern in his hand. I fancy he had some idea of listening to his master unperceived, for he stopped close to my hiding-place, blew out the candle, and pinched the long snuff with his horny finger and thumb. ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... misunderstood. DrG. could suggest nothing for almond, but on looking at the drawing of the male Whelk (Buccinum undatum) creeping, in the Penny Cyclopdia, v.9, p.454, col.2 (art. Entomostomata), it is quite clear that the almond must mean the animal's horny, oval operculum on its hinder part. 'Most spiral shells have an operculum, or lid, with which to close the aperture when they withdraw for shelter. It is developed on a particular lobe at the posterior part of the foot, and consists of horny layers sometimes hardened with shelly matter.' ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various

... more times as long as wide, widest near the center; fruit a round, prickly bur with 1-3 horny-coated nuts 89. Castanea. ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar

... yielding to pressure. It crackles when touched, and the surface, when the feathers are removed, presents a swollen bubbly appearance; for under the skin there is a layer of air-bubbles extending over the whole body and even down the legs under the horny tesselated skin to the toes, the legs thus having ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... looking turtle," Rose said. "See how high up it is." None of them had ever seen a wood tortoise before, and the box-like, horny shell was not like that of the little mud-turtles in Rainbow River or the snapping turtle Laddie had found at ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope

... son, I would behold this priest That is not fat, and loves not wine, and fasts, And stills the folk with waving of his hand, And threats the knights and thunders at the Pope. Make way for Gris, ye who are whole of limb! Set me on yonder ledge, that I may see." Forthwith a dozen horny hands reached out And lifted Gris Grillon upon the ledge, Whereon he lay and overlooked the crowd, And from the gray-grown hedges of his brows Shot forth a glance against the friar's eye That struck ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... The water fell two feet at this place during the night. Our nets produced a great variety of fish, namely a salmon trout, some round-fish, tittameg, bleak, star-fish, several herrings and a flat fish resembling plaice, but covered on the back with horny excrescences. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... boiled, it is perfectly innocuous; and this vegetable, so rough in its exterior, becomes a very delicate dish. We were able to enjoy this delightful variety of esculents for more than a month. Then the little tubercles of the fern became hollow and horny, and the stems themselves grew as hard as wood while the nettle, armed with a long white beard, p 203 presented only a menacing and awful aspect." The roots of many kinds of ferns, perhaps of all of them, are edible. Our poor in England will eat ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... right in his path. Upon this, the hideous monster instantly charged me in the most resolute manner, blowing loudly through his nostrils; and, although I quickly wheeled about to my left, he followed me at such a furious pace for several hundred yards, with his horrid horny snout within a few yards of my horse's tail, that my little Bushman, who was looking on in great alarm, thought his master's destruction inevitable. It was certainly a very near thing; my horse was extremely afraid, and exerted his utmost ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... forenoon, when Tessibel returned home from an errand to Kennedys', she found Daddy Skinner on the bench at the side of the shanty, one horny hand clutching the bowl of a pipe in which the ashes were dead. It took but one sharp glance from the red-brown eyes for Tess to note that his face was white, almost grey; she saw, too, with a quiver of loving sympathy, that his lower lip hung ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... strong hands he made a fine white stream of milk shoot into the pail, squirt, squirt, squirt. Eben had often tried, but pull as he would, he could only get out a few drops. And even as Andrew Brewster had milked his cows morning and evening until his hands were horny, so had his father done before him. Yes, and his father's father, too. For three generations of Brewsters had hardened their hands milking cows on Green Mountain Farm. Then there came this exciting day, and a new way of milking began at ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... young scoundrel!" Conway yelled, and forthwith he beat Farrel between the shoulder-blades with a horny old ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... fill up all the little room. She could not lift up her head, but her face was turned toward us, and she held out her small, wasted hand to him, smiling faintly. He fell on his knees before he took it into his great, horny palm, and looked down upon it as he held it very carefully with, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton

... in the woods, he saw a boa-constrictor [Tag. sawang bitin]. He knew that this reptile carried the centre of its strength in the horny appendage at the end of its tail. Lucas wished very much to become strong, because the men of strength in his barrio were the most influential. So he decided to rob the boa of its charm. He approached the snake like a cat, and then with his sharp teeth bit off the end of its tail, ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... no word of welcome for a chum after a month's absence?" said Slugs, holding out his horny hand to the Black Swan, who gravely ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne

... evening customers attends. Anon, With squeaking bucket on his arm, emerges The errand-boy, slow marching to the tune Of "Uncle Ned" or "Norma," whistled shrill. Hark! heard you not against the window-pane The dash of horny skull in mad career, And a loud buzz of terror? He'll be in, This horrid beetle; yes,—and in my hair! Close all the blinds; 't is dismal, but 't is safe. Listen! Methought I heard delicious music, Faint and afar. Pray, is the Boat-Club ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... snow; while in the weedy fields, many a fairy trail shows where bob-white has passed, and often he will announce his own name from the top of a rail fence. The grouse at this season have a curious outgrowth of horny scales along each side of the toes, which, acting as a tiny snowshoe, enables them to walk on soft snow with little danger ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... your friend is a squid or pen-and-ink fish, Loligo among the learned. Probably Loligo media which I have taken in that region. They have ten tentacles with suckers round their heads, two much longer than the others. They are close to cuttlefish, but have a thin horny shell inside them instead of the "cuttle-bone." If you can get one by itself in a tub of water, it is pretty to see how they blush all over and go pale again, owing to little colour-bags in the skin, which expand and contract. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... rotting on a beach; long scissor lips-nippers to any wretched rose of a kiss! a pugilist's nose to the nostrils of a phoca; and eyes!—don't you see them?—luminaries of pestilence; blotted yellow, like a tallow candle shining through a horny lantern." ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... perfectly controlled. For fear of the swallows, the summer beetles fly by choice at twilight; even then they must needs fly low, for the noctule never misses, and the crunch of his teeth in a beetle's horny back is all he knows ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... having occurred at Madampi, on the west coast of Ceylon, about seven years ago, the day before I passed through the village. A number of women were employed in cutting rushes for mat-making, and were about mid-deep in the water. The horny tail of a large crocodile was suddenly seen above the water among the group of women, and in another instant one of them was seized by the thigh and dragged towards the deeper part of the stream. In vain the terrified ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... the day when he ceased to be the horny-handed toiler and became the aristocrat was in the evening after dinner, when, egged on by Lady Caroline, who gave him no rest in the matter—he would retire to his private study and work on his History of the Family, assisted ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... "Damnation!" Under the horny grip, Mr. Barradine emitted a squeal of pain. "Confound it—my good fellow—why the deuce can't you be careful what ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... immensely powerful, and his black skin showed with a grayish shine upon it through the rents in his rags. His gray-black, horny toes protruded through what once had been shoes, and a shapeless, colorless felt hat covered his bullet head. His corded black arms emerged from the torn sleeves of his checked shirt, and his hairy chest was naked. There came from him an ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... exposures. When a freshet coursed down the coulee, and the low spots on the prairie filled until they were broad ponds, around which the migrating wild-fowl alighted with joyous cries. Now eaves dripped musically; slushy wagon ruts ran like miniature Missouris, and were travelled by horny frogs; prairie-cocks made each dawning weirdly noisy, and far and near, where showed the welcome green, blue-eyed anemones sprang bravely and tossed their fuzzy heads in ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... confined. It is about as large as the Unicorns, and has, like them, four limbs; but otherwise it more resembles a bird. It has a bird's long slight neck, but a very small and not very bird-like head, with a long horny snout, furnished with teeth, something between a beak and a mouth. Its hind limbs are those of a bird, except that they have more flesh upon the lowest joints and are covered with this soft down. Its front limbs, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... however, it has been superseded by coal-oil, gas, and electricity. It is still in demand as a lubricant, but the whale-oil of commerce is quite as apt to come from the blubber of the porpoise or the sea-cow as from the right whale. Whalebone is a horny substance taken from the animal's jaw, and is worth from three dollars to eight dollars per pound. It is used chiefly in the manufacture of whips. For other purposes, steel, hard rubber, and celluloid ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... Psmith, as one mourning over the frailty of human nature. "About how many horny-handed assistants should you say that he would be likely to bring? Will you, for ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... said Flett, blowing a hot potato that he held in his horny hand, "what brings ye all the way to Kirkwall on a cold day like this? Ye didna tell ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... uprooting all things within their power, and the structure of the simple coralium would fail to withstand their violence. Here, then, under such circumstances, in the case of the Gorgonia, nature has provided a horny and flexible skeleton, which, spreading majestically in the sea, shall be capable of bending beneath the weight of the superincumbent waves, and so yielding to the storms. Nature has thus adapted herself to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... the companionway, found the colored steward, chinked five dollars into his horny palm, and said, "My good fellow, you must look out for me; I shall want a good deal ...
— Overland • John William De Forest

... matter of character within, Roger is quite another man. If his rank in this world is the lowest, many potentates may envy him his state elsewhere. His heart is as soft, as his hand is horny; with the wandering gipsy or the tramping beggar, thrust aside, perhaps deservedly, as impudent impostors from the rich man's gate, has he often-times shared his noon-day morsel: upright and sincere himself, he thinks as well of others: he scarcely ever heard ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... high on the sides; skin smooth, not porous; limbs rather short; toes 4.5, tapering to a point, nearly free, the palms with roundish tubercles beneath; the fourth hind toe elongate, the rest rather short; the ankle with an oblong, compressed, horny, sharp-edged tubercle on the inner side at the base of the inner toe; the male with an internal vocal ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... felt nervous he did not show it, but slid gently down, his hands being too horny from constant handling of ropes to be injured by the friction; neither did the task on hand seem difficult, as he went down and down, swaying more and more as the length of rope between him and the iron bar increased, and gradually beginning ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... "circumspect animals;" but this male glowworm has a contrivance, by which any upward or side vision is prevented. Viewed when at rest, no portion of his eyes is visible, but the head is margined with a horny band, or plate, being a character of one of the genera of the order coleoptera, under which the eyes are situate. This prevents all upward vision; and blinds, or winkers, are so fixed at the sides of his eyes, as greatly to impede the view of all lateral ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various

... sure to paint over it, and possibly convert it into another subject. We do not doubt, however, that Sir Joshua deserved the reputation he obtained as a colourist in his day. We attribute the brown, the horny asphaltum look they have, to change. It is unquestionably exceedingly mortifying to see, while the specimens of the Venetian and Flemish colourists are at this day so pure and fresh, though painted centuries before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... princess, to be sure, A sweet and gracious Clotilde, And a knight who does her homage, But the rest of us Are fishy, scaly, Horny and altogether horrid, And of very low degree Who scarce know why we are upon the boards, Except for your ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney

... (from Nibelungen, the name of an ancient powerful Burgundian race, and Lied, a lay or song) occupies an important place in German literature, and in grandeur of design and beauty of execution it far surpasses any other poetical production of this period. The "Horny Siegfried," one of the poems of the Heldenbuch, serves as a sort of prelude to the Nibelungen. In that, Siegfried appears as the personification of manly beauty, virtue, and prowess; invulnerable, from having bathed in the blood of some dragons which ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... Chapter VI. The Ta-sha-ke—literally, "Deer-hoofs"—is a rattle made by hanging the hard segments of deer-hoofs to a wooden rod a foot long—about an inch in diameter at the handle end, and tapering to a point at the other. The clashing of these horny bits makes a sharp, shrill sound something like distant sleigh-bells. In their incantations over the sick they sometimes use ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... he threaded the wood hither and thither, his toes ploughing layer after layer of the little horny scrolls that had once been leaves, he could not find him. He stood still listening and looking round. The breeze was oozing through the network of boughs as through a strainer; the trunks and larger branches stood against the light of the sky in the forms of ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... every one of them came to a miserable end. Roquefort and Farges were attacked by strange and hitherto unknown diseases, recalling the plagues sent by God on the peoples whom He desired to punish in bygone ages. In the case of Farges, his skin dried up and became horny, causing him such intense irritation, that as the only means of allaying it he had to be kept buried up to the neck while still alive. The disease under which Roquefort suffered seemed to have its seat in the marrow, for his bones by degrees lost all solidity and power of resistance, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... of the procession. As it passed him, he joined the chief mourner, who went plodding on with his arms hanging by his sides. Creeping close up to him, he slid his little soft hand into the great horny hand of the peasant. Instinctively the big hand closed upon the small one, and the weather-beaten face of a man of fifty looked down on the boy. Not a word was said between them. They walked on, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... we understand properly a certain class of vertebrate or backboned animals, which, on the whole, may be described as possessing scales or horny shields since most of them may be distinguished by this outer covering, as the mammals by their hair and the birds by their feathers. Such animals as thousand-legs, scorpions, tarantulas, etc., though often erroneously ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... of venter coarsely areolate; skin of flanks, throat, chest, undersurfaces of arms, tibia, tarsi, dorsal surfaces of thighs, tarsi, hands, and feet smooth; skin of dorsal surfaces of tibia, forearm, back, and top and sides of head having large horny pustules (sharply spinous ...
— Systematic Status of a South American Frog, Allophryne ruthveni Gaige • John D. Lynch

... honey. A small tree, with stiff alternate leaves scarcely an inch long, was covered with red fruit of the form of an acorn, and about half an inch long, having a sweet pericarp with two compressed grain-like seeds, which had the horny albumen of the coffee, and were exceedingly bitter. The pigeons, crows, and cockatoos, fed upon them, we also ate a great number of them; but the edible portion of each seed was very small. It is a remarkable ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... hunger that nothing can fill which belongs to earth. Do you remember the bitter experience of the poor prodigal, 'he would fain have filled his belly with the husks'? He tried his best to live upon the horny, innutritious pods, but he could not; and after them he still was 'perishing with hunger.' So it is with us all when we try to fill the soul and satisfy the spirit with earth or aught that holds of it. It is as impossible to still the hunger of the heart with that, as to stay the hunger ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... was a sort of bower, made of bright-colored pieces of stuff the child had begged from the neighbors, and called by her the "Witch's Cave;" here little Mercedes loved to sit and tell the fortunes of her friends. These were mostly Jamie's horny-handed friends; the women neighbors took no part in all these doings, and gave it out loudly that the child was being spoiled. She went, with other boys and girls, to a small dame-school on the other side ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... rowed, looking out sharply right and left for an alligator basking on the mud among the mangrove roots. But none appeared, though more than one, probably, was watching us, with nothing of him above water but his horny eyes. The heron flapped on ahead, and settled once more, as if leading us on up the ugly creek, which grew narrower and fouler, till the oars touched the bank on each side, and drove out of the water shoals of four-eyed fish, ridiculous little things about as long as ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... surface of the body of a Trilobite was defended by a strong shell or "crust," partly horny and partly calcareous in its composition. This shell (fig. 31) generally exhibits a very distinct "trilobation" or division into three longitudinal lobes, one central and two lateral. It also exhibits a more important ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... lying in a dark old wood in Kentucky and watching a pileated woodpecker at work on a dead tulip-bough that seemed to afford a great number of dainty morsels of food. There were streaks of hard wood through the rotten, and whenever his great horny beak struck one of these it would sound as loud and clear as the blow of a carpenter's hammer. This fine bird is almost extinct now, having totally disappeared from nine-tenths of the area of its former habitat. I never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various



Words linked to "Horny" :   sexy, horny structure, horned, steamy, ruttish, horny frog, horny layer



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