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noun
Nettle  n.  (Bot.) A plant of the genus Urtica, covered with minute sharp hairs containing a poison that produces a stinging sensation. Urtica gracilis is common in the Northern, and Urtica chamaedryoides in the Southern, United States. The common European species, Urtica urens and Urtica dioica, are also found in the Eastern united States. Urtica pilulifera is the Roman nettle of England. Note: The term nettle has been given to many plants related to, or to some way resembling, the true nettle; as: Australian nettle, a stinging tree or shrub of the genus Laportea (as Laportea gigas and Laportea moroides); also called nettle tree. Bee nettle, Hemp nettle, a species of Galeopsis. See under Hemp. Blind nettle, Dead nettle, a harmless species of Lamium. False nettle (Baehmeria cylindrica), a plant common in the United States, and related to the true nettles. Hedge nettle, a species of Stachys. See under Hedge. Horse nettle (Solanum Carolinense). See under Horse. nettle tree.
(a)
Same as Hackberry.
(b)
See Australian nettle (above). Spurge nettle, a stinging American herb of the Spurge family (Jatropha urens). Wood nettle, a plant (Laportea Canadensis) which stings severely, and is related to the true nettles.
Nettle cloth, a kind of thick cotton stuff, japanned, and used as a substitute for leather for various purposes.
Nettle rash (Med.), an eruptive disease resembling the effects of whipping with nettles.
Sea nettle (Zool.), a medusa.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Nettle" Quotes from Famous Books



... bit o' luck in getting that up! Never had less trouble! Shows we can do better without those Foundry chaps than with 'em! James, ye can have a quart brought in, if ye'n a mind, but I won't have them apprentices drinking! No, I won't! Mrs Nixon'll give 'em some nettle-beer if ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... acquitted him, as they were morally certain to do, what Court of Appeal could reverse the decision of men who claimed to 'judge angels'? A riot arose in Edinburgh, the King seized his opportunity, he grasped his nettle, the municipal authorities backed him, and, in effect, the claims of true ministers thenceforth gave little trouble till the folly of Charles I. led to the rise of the Covenant. The Sovereign had overshot his limits of power as wildly as ever ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... its way through the forests with a strong and steady flight. Many a time have I taken a second look at one, as it has threaded the treetops over my head, thinking to see a bird. Besides the Turnus, I noted here the nettle tortoise-shell butterfly (Vanessa Milberti—a showy insect, and the more attractive to me as being comparatively a stranger); the common cabbage butterfly; the yellow Philodice; the copper; and, much more abundant than any ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... obtained. Ignorant and stupid people have to writhe in agony as well as wise and clever ones, and until grief is the portion only of the cultivated classes, its healing must come from something more universal than philosophy; or else the nettle would be more plentiful than the dock; and many a poor heart would be stung to death. Blessed be God! the Christian view of sorrow, while it leaves much unexplained, focuses a steady light on these two points; ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... blockade of le petit Leyth, although he had nothing better to place on it than the quarter of a carrion-horse now and then, and the grass and weeds that grew on the ramparts. "Despardieux c'dtoit un homme superbe! With one tistle-head, and a nettle or two, he could make a soupe for twenty guests—an haunch of a little puppy-dog made a roti des plus excellens; but his coupe de maitre was when the rendition— what you call the surrender, took place and appened; and then, dieu me damme, he made out of the hind quarter of one salted horse, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... and as picturesque ground implies the existence of hill and valley, wood and rock, the naturalist will find himself at home here. The flora is rich, though without any very marked features; the Nettle-leaved Bell-flower (Campanula Trachelium) being the most characteristic species. Regarding the fauna much has still to be learned. In Tipperary, Queen's County, and King's County we are in typical central plain country—great tracts of slightly ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... Meredith's utterances into possible human speech, then we can enjoy him," says the Pall Mall Gazette. We take our pleasures differently; mine are spontaneous, and I know nothing about translating the rank smell of a nettle into the fragrance of a ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... is an eruption on the skin, often coming suddenly and going off again, but sometimes of long standing. It resembles in appearance the sting of a nettle—hence the name. It is accompanied by an intolerable itching, and is a very sore trouble where it continues, or frequently recurs. Its cause is usually defective digestion. We should not depend on drugs ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... animals found out their mistake, a regular stampede used to ensue; and it was not supposed to be good for the health of the old or young sheep to hurry up the hill-sides in such wild fashion as that in which they rushed away from Rose's attempts to intrude on their society. Nettle may come, for he is but a tiny terrier, and so fond of his mistress that he never strays a yard away from her horse's heels. Brisk, my beautiful, stupid water-spaniel, is also allowed an outing. He is perfect to look at, but not having had any educational ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... Westminster Abbey!"[20] cried Nelson in his bright, boyish, heroic manner. These are great incentives; not for any of these, but for the plain satisfaction of living, of being about their business in some sort or other, do the brave, serviceable men of every nation tread down the nettle danger,[21] and pass flyingly over all the stumbling-blocks of prudence. Think of the heroism of Johnson, think of that superb indifference to mortal limitation that set him upon his dictionary, and carried him through triumphantly until the end! Who, if he were wisely considerate ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... strawberry grows underneath the nettle, And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best Neighboured by fruits of baser quality, And so the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various

... in a great powdery plain without roads, without grass, without a thistle, without a nettle, I met several men who were walking with heads ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... at him with eyes in which contentment struggled with some obscure reluctant protest, and at last turned them slowly to the black nettle pagodas against ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... amid dispiritment, stupidity, and contradiction proclaims to us, Euge! Nothing ever was more ungenial than the soil this poor Teufelsdrockhish seed-corn has been thrown on here; none cries, Good speed to it; the sorriest nettle or hemlock seed, one would think, had been more welcome. For indeed our British periodical critics, and especially the public of Fraser's Magazine (which I believe I have now done with), exceed all speech; require not even ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... dust of the sunshine. Pink and white, black and yellow spores from the mushrooms over the fence in the pasture; pollen pushed from the glumes of the red top grasses and the lilac spires of the hedge nettle and germander by the roadside; shoals of spores from the mosses and ferns by the trees and in the swamp; all these life particles rose and floated in the haze, giving it tints and meanings strangely sweet. When ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... he would gain favour by delivering the letters: on the other side, if Basterga retained power to harm, it was not he who had taken the letters, nor he who would be exposed to the first blast of vengeance—but the girl. The blame for her, the credit for him! From the nettle danger his wits had plucked the flower safety. But for his fears he could have chuckled; and then he heard her leave the room, and relock the door. With a gasp of relief, he retired a pace or two, and waited, ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... may be mistaken for nasal catarrh, nasal gleet, ulcerated teeth, nettle rash, lymphangitis, distemper, etc. Fortunately, this dreaded disease is not very prevalent in this country, as every precaution has been taken to ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek

... accomplishment of their own ends. France can never overestimate the great evil these two men did to the national cause. Napoleon's power and penetrating vision kept them in check only when he could grasp the nettle. Even when absent on his campaigns, they knew he was kept in close touch with what was going on. It was not until treason became entangled within treason that their evil designs had fuller scope and more disastrous results. Bourrienne, another rascal already referred to in this ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... stop on at twice and a half the circumference of the rope from the end, which will leave about the length for pointing, unlay the rope to the stop and then unlay the strands. Split a number of the outside yarns and make a nettle out of each yarn. (A nettle is made by laying up the yarns with the finger and thumb left-handed.) When the nettles are made stop them back on the standing part of the rope; then form the point with the rest of the yarns by scraping them down to a ...
— Knots, Bends, Splices - With tables of strengths of ropes, etc. and wire rigging • J. Netherclift Jutsum

... hand, welcomed me back to Falmouth with a carelessness which disappointed if it did not nettle me. He fetched out the tea and guava-jelly, to be sure, but appeared to take no interest in my doings during the holidays, and was uncommunicative on his own. This seemed the stranger because he had important news to tell me. During my absence he and Mr. Goodfellow between them had finished ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... very much resembling the air-bladder of fishes, from the bottom of which descended a number of strings of a bright blue and red, some of them three or four feet in length, which upon being touched sting like a nettle, but with much more force. On the top of the bladder is a membrane which is used as a sail, and turned so as to receive the wind which way soever it blows: This membrane is marked in fine pink-coloured veins, and the animal is in every respect ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr

... not been idle while his mistress was away, and he showed her the hospital garden he had made close by, in which were cabbage, nettle, and mignonette plants for the butterflies, flowering herbs for the bees, chick-weed and hemp for the birds, catnip for the pussies, and plenty of room left for whatever other patients might need. In the afternoon, while Nelly ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... concerned himself with looking at the facts, but contents himself with taking them also at second-hand. A most amusing example of this fashion of dealing with scientific statements is furnished by Dr. Stirling's remarks upon my account of the protoplasm of the nettle hair. That account was drawn up from careful and often- repeated observation of the facts. Dr. Stirling thinks he is offering a valid criticism, when he says that my valued friend Professor Stricker gives a somewhat different statement about protoplasm. ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... and poorest of twiners: it may often be seen growing as an upright bush, and when growing in the midst of a thicket merely scrambles up between the branches without twining; but when, according to Dutrochet (tom. xix. p. 299), it grows near a thin and flexible support, such as the stem of a nettle, it twines round it. I placed sticks round several plants, and vertically stretched strings close to others, and the strings alone were ascended by twining. The stem twines indifferently to the right or left. Some others species of ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin

... Colombo is strewn with the thin transparent globes of the "Portuguese Man of War," Physalus urticulus, which are piled upon the lines left by the waves, like globules of glass delicately tinted with purple and blue. They sting, as their trivial name indicates, like a nettle when incautiously touched. ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... the rest, for her dad used to read books and tell her about 'em. One time he took her to Richmond for the better part of a winter, where she larned dancing and music. The neighbours allowed that turned her head. Ye couldn't please her with clothes, for she wouldn't look at the sun-bonnets and nettle-linen that other gals wore. She must have a neat little bonnet and send to town for pretty dresses.... The women couldn't abide her, for she had a high way of looking at 'em and talking at 'em as if they was jest black trash. But the men 'ud walk miles ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan

... need not be at all troubled about; but it will be interesting to him to know what effect nettles have on hay, and what taste they will give to porridge; and it will give him nearly a new life if he can be got but once, in a spring time, to look well at the beautiful circlet of white nettle blossom, and work out with his schoolmaster the curves of its petals, and the way it is set on its central mast. So, the principle of chemical equivalents, beautiful as it is, matters far less to a peasant boy, and even to most sons of gentlemen, ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin

... my sweet Jessie," replied Walter, laughing. "I don't want to touch your sting-nettle of a cousin. I'd about as lief grapple a hedgehog. Let him and his selfish sister have their slides all to themselves. You come with me. I know where there is far better sliding than this, and I came on purpose to tell you so. Come, let us go, ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester

... help it. Oh, listen, Phoebe!' cried Bertha, with her wicked look of triumph. 'I brought home such a lovely sting-nettle for Miss Fennimore's peacock caterpillar; and when I heard how kind dear Juliana was to you about your visit to London, I thought she really must have it for a reward; so I ran away, and slily tucked it into her bouquet; and I did so hope she would take it up to fiddle ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my lord fool, 'out of this nettle danger, we pluck this flower ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... live to be avenged of their deaths, and my brother's death; and their destroyer shall not dandle a bairn upon his knee, or kiss its cheek, while mine are all, all dead, and in a strange grave, and even wi' no one near to pull up the noxious nettle that may be waving ower their once bonny ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... shall walk with him in white, and sit down at the marriage -supper of the Lamb; but if not, then they will be rejected. The great principle is neither more nor less than this—namely, that men shall reap as they sowed. The principle is just. If men sow nettle -seed or the seed of briers and thorns, is it not fair that they should reap the fruit? The great principle, then, of the Bible is this: "If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace

... bloom shows a heart-shaped flower, so inviting in appearance that unwary people are seized with an irresistible desire to pluck it. Instead of the anticipated pleasure, however, they receive a sharp, stinging sensation, not unlike that of a nettle. As with the Nettle, too, if the flower be firmly grasped and crushed in the hand, the sting will be deadened. This plant should be avoided by inexperienced gardeners. It is believed by some that the sting caused by the Flirtatia Mittifolia may be cured by ...
— Cupid's Almanac and Guide to Hearticulture for This Year and Next • John Cecil Clay

... the marsh-lotus which he himself has plucked and watered with salt tears—the marsh-lotus from the fresh waters. And here is a nettle: what does its leaf say? What did he think on plucking it—on preserving it? Here are lilies of the valley from the woodland solitudes; here are honeysuckle leaves from the village ale-house flower-pot; and here the ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... value of $21,000,000 in garden vegetables chiefly of European or Asiatic origin, 3,000,000 gallons of wine, and many minor agricultural products. [Footnote: Raenie, Bochmeria tenacissima, a species of Chinese nettle producing a fibre which may be spun and woven, and which unites many of the properties of silk and of linen, has been completely naturalized in the United States, and results important to the industry of the country are expected ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... Dave—the cat went over the partition. That door opened, only a little way this time, paused, and shut suddenly. Dave got out, grabbed a stick, skipped to the door, and clutched at the knob as if it were a nettle, and the door wouldn't come!—it was fast and locked! Then Dave's face began to look as frightened as his hair. He lit his candle at the fire, and asked me to come with him; he unlocked the door and we went into the other room, Dave shading his candle very carefully ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... all they know about it. I've told them till I'm tired that it's nettle-rash. I've had it before. I always do get the wretched thing when I eat sausages. They sort of poison me. It'll go away all right if they only let me alone. What did Miss Todd want bringing that black doctor up to see me? I had nearly ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... took place more than once. It gave me indescribable pleasure to narrate an absurd adventure, believe it myself in the telling of it, and think others believed me. Aunt Millie's scorn stung me like a nettle, and I hated her. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... also seen in cultivation, and mango-trees, and the great broad-leaved pawpaw, and black-pepper vines, with beautiful green leaves, trained against the stems of the palms. Jack-trees with their gigantic fruit, and figs, and nettle-trees, and the singular screw-pines, and euphorbias, and various species of the orange, were ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... just here lay a great way out from the shore. The lagoon was so shallow that at low tide one could have waded almost right across it, were it not for pot-holes here and there—ten-feet traps—and great beds of rotten coral, into which one would sink as into brushwood, to say nothing of the nettle coral that stings like a bed of nettles. There were also other dangers. Tropical shallows are full of wild surprises in the way ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... and with but rude provision. I may instance the case of my father, who was storm-bound three days upon an islet, sleeping in the uncemented and unchimneyed houses of the islanders, and subsisting on a diet of nettle-soup and lobsters. ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... amulets and charms have been enabled to silence people who have had the hardihood to throw odium on their superstitions. Believers in amulets and charms remind us that it is a well-ascertained fact in nature, that for every bane there is an antidote. Wherever the stinging nettle grows, the slimy stem of the dock is near; whenever the wasp stings, honey gathered by the industrious bee may be had, without going far, to put on the injured part; when the cold is most intense ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... when at last the window faded from his sight, and he became insensible to what was going on around him, he was still conscious of that peculiar irritation, that prickled and itched and stung and burned, till he dreamed that he was travelling through a stinging-nettle wood that led up to a square window, through which a fierce-looking Turk armed with pistols and dagger crept to come ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... and do not expect to leave for two or three days. The weather is unsettled, and the sun increasing in power daily. The new Soobahs left to-day for their appointments, with the exception of the Dewangur one. Pigs are here fed on boiled nettle leaves: old ladies may be seen occasionally busily employed in picking the leaves for this purpose, and which they do by means of bamboo pincers or tweezers. A few plantains may be met with here, but in a wretched state. Rice may be seen 500 feet above this, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... that exceedingly, and when he rhymed it at last, Mother Flower or one of the little girls had always to take the spider beside her, when she sat down, which was of course quite troublesome. The kettle he rhymed first with nettle, and hung a bunch of nettle over it, till all the children got dreadfully stung. Then he tried settle, and hung the kettle over the settle. But that was no place for it; they had to go without their tea, and everybody who sat on the settle bumped his head against ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... husbanded the supply of cotton most carefully, so that, after an unexpectedly long war, a little was still left over. The mills which were running, displayed great assiduity in procuring and utilizing substitutes for cotton. Paper, wood, cellulose, reed and nettle fibres, and other materials were tried, some were manufactured quite extensively. During the war they did good service, but in normal times, they cannot usurp the place of cotton. After surmounting many difficulties, the German cotton industry is once more in full swing, and with it, Bremen ...
— Bremen Cotton Exchange - 1872/1922 • Andreas Wilhelm Cramer

... so rare in cases of typhus, that as a rule its appearance is taken to indicate that the disease is not a case of abdominal typhus. Frequently, however, urticaria, (nettle-rash) perspiration and other pustules are to ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... that led to the building, was overgrown with grass and the flowers which St. Aubert had scattered carelessly along the border were almost choked with weeds—the tall thistle—the fox-glove, and the nettle. She often paused to look on the desolate spot, now so silent and forsaken, and when, with a trembling hand, she opened the door of the fishing-house, 'Ah!' said she, 'every thing—every thing remains as when I left it last—left it with those who never must return!' She went to a window, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... country gentleman and a justice of the peace, the spectacle was scandalously disreputable. It was moss-grown; it was worm-eaten; it was broken right in the middle; through its four socketless eyes, neighboured by the nettle, peered the thistle,—the thistle! a forest of thistles!—and, to complete the degradation of the whole, those thistles had attracted the donkey of an itinerant tinker; and the irreverent animal was in the very act of taking his luncheon out of the eyes ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a thorn; but no hail of shot revenges his tortures. The grass stiffens at nightfall (in autumn), and he must creep where he may, if possibly he may escape the frost. No one cares for the humble-bee. But down to the flowering nettle in the mossy-sided ditch, up into the tall elm, winding in and out and round the branched buttercups, along the banks of the brook, far inside the deepest wood, away he wanders and despises nothing. His nest is under the rough grasses and the mosses of the mound; a mere tunnel ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... of the nettle stung her, And the thistle's rude embrace Burned her sensitive nature, And scarred ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris

... stung by a Nettle. He ran home and told his mother, saying: "Although it pains me so much, I did but touch it ever so gently." "That was just it," said his mother, "which caused it to sting you. The next time you touch a Nettle, grasp it boldly, ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop

... the Promised Land That flows with Freedom's honey and milk; But 't was they won it, sword in hand, Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk.[7] 235 We welcome back our bravest and our best;— Ah me! not all! some come not with the rest, Who went forth brave and bright as any here! I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, But the sad strings complain, 240 And ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... life he led Upon his brazen chair Made his hindquarters very red, While pricks, as from a nettle-bed, He felt both here and there: A burning sun, too, chanced to shine, And boiled down all ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... kin' o' taste My live-oak leg, an' so, ye see, ther' warn't no gret o' waste; Fer they found out in quicker time than ef they'd ben to college 'Twarn't heartier food than though 'twuz made out o' the tree o' knowledge. But I tell you my other leg hed larned wut pizon-nettle meant, An' var'ous other usefle things, afore I reached a settlement, 50 An' all o' me thet wuzn't sore an' sendin' prickles thru me Wuz jest the leg I parted with in lickin' Montezumy: A useful limb it's ben to me, an' more of a support ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... undertake is dangerous." "Why that is certain: it is dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my Lord fool, out of this nettle danger, we pluck ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... work is his specialty. He has been employed by some company that intended to put in a power plant of some kind on Nettle River, and either the company broke up, or they found the plan was not feasible, or something, and they abandoned it. So Mr. Wentworth isn't doing anything, at present. But he is a fine fellow—so jolly, and so good ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx

... against a will of iron padded round with gentleness. She tried to fill the little man's soul with jealousy and alarms, but it was stockaded with insolent confidence. He left Dinah, when he went to Paris, with all the conviction of Medor in Angelique's fidelity. When she affected cold disdain, to nettle this changeling by the scorn a courtesan sometimes shows to her "protector," and which acts on him with the certainty of the screw of a winepress, Monsieur de la Baudraye gazed at his wife with fixed ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... and conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plants, or the stamens of the barberry, but to much more widely spread, and at the same time, more subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable contractility. You are doubtless aware that the common nettle owes its stinging property to the innumerable stiff and needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover its surface. Each stinging-needle tapers from a broad base to a slender summit, which, though rounded at the end, is of such ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... country-houses of England, has an indeterminate bit of ground beyond the garden, called, according to choice of costume, "the rock-garden," "the home-farm," "the grouse moor," or "no rubbish may be shot here." James calls his own particular nettle-bed (or slag ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various

... men. The Manbos of the Kasilaan River are said to have dug trenches and to have made valiant resistance, but were finally obliged to flee to the Pacific coast.[7] It is said that when encamped near the present site of San Luis these tailed folks slept on a kind of nettle[8] and being severely stung, took it for a bad omen ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... neither Russia nor Turkey could mistake, or else have carried out his twice-repeated purpose of resignation. Everyone admits that from the outset his position was one of great difficulty, but he increased it greatly by his practical refusal to grasp the nettle. He was not ambitious of power, but, on the contrary, longed for his quiet retreat at Haddo. He was on the verge of seventy and was essentially a man of few, but scholarly tastes. There can be no doubt that ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... he added, cheerfully. "Then I was to stop at some cottage and ask—what was it? There was NETTLE-RASH mixed up in it, I'm sure. But never mind, I've forgotten, and it doesn't matter. Look here, we're three desperate young fellows who stick at nothing. Suppose we go ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... streets, all the shops he passed were closed, except the beer-shops and the chemists'. "The nettle and ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald

... berries from a hedge when his hand was stung by a Nettle. Smarting with the pain, he ran to tell his mother, and said to her between his sobs, "I only touched it ever so lightly, mother." "That's just why you got stung, my son," she said; "if you had grasped it firmly, it wouldn't have hurt you in ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... him to her arm. The bite showed no more than the sting of a nettle, but around it was the deep impress of his teeth. Certainly he had done his ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... a scornful squaw worth the hazard of death and the shame that attends defeat? Seek thy lodge and blow away these thoughts as the wind disperses the winged seeds of the stinging nettle." It was evident Manabozho had never been in love, for then he would not have thrown away his advice. He stayed not for a reply, but with a gesture of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... wait upon the firm fair sand, When all is calm at sea, all still at land; And there the ocean's produce to explore, As floating by, or rolling on the shore: Those living jellies which the flesh inflame, Fierce as a nettle, and from that its name; Some in huge masses, some that you may bring In the small compass of a lady's ring; Figured by hand divine—there's not a gem Wrought by man's art to be compared to them; Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave they glow, And make the moonbeam ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe

... he gave it. I think I went to his lodgings—and he sketched out what he was going to say. The question was whether, in view of the Tyndall row, it was wise in him to take the line he had marked out. In the end I remember his saying,] 'Grasp your nettle, that is what I have got to do.'" [But apart from the subject, the manner of the address struck the audience as a wonderful tour de force. The man who at first disliked public speaking, and always expected ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... the tale of my escape from Pretoria have I taken up my pen with such feelings of satisfaction and contentment as I do to-night. The period of doubt and hesitation is over. We have grasped the nettle firmly, and as shrewdly as firmly, and have taken no hurt. It remains only to pluck it. For heaven's sake no over-confidence or premature elation; but there is really good hope that Sir Redvers Buller has solved the Riddle of the Tugela—at last. At last! I expect ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill

... in the other party. Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than that my friend should overstep, by a word or look, his real sympathy. I am equally baulked by antagonism and by compliance. Let him not cease an instant to be himself.... Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... getting his fingers among Occasion's hair, and secure Aurora for his share, while Dr. Tom was apportioned with the slenderer charmer. But the behavior of all was civilized and urbane, and if a thorn pricked or nettle burned, the sufferer concealed his pain and spoiled ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... Knightly Tale of Galogras, The Temple of Glas, Lodge's Nettle for Nice Noses, or the Book of Fayts of Armes, by Christene of Pisa, or Caxton's Pylgremage of the Sowle, or his Myrrour of the Worlde, will be long inquired after before they come to the market, thoroughly contradicting that fundamental principle of political economy, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... terrible to insects, I am able to handle without any fear. My skin does not suit them. If I persuaded them to bite me, what would happen to me? Hardly anything. We have more cause to dread the sting of a nettle than the dagger which is fatal to Dragon-flies. The same virus acts differently upon this organism and that, is formidable here and quite mild there. What kills the insect may easily be harmless to us. Let us not, however, generalize too ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... always nettle her into saying exactly the wrong thing, so as to alarm and distress the old lady? That want of comprehension of playfulness was a strangely hard trial. She turned to Mrs. Meadows and tried to reassure her by saying, 'You know I ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the account had not been carelessly overdrawn— Suppose— He never for one instant suspected the girl. As soon suspect a rosebud of foregoing its own sweet personality, and of being in reality something else, say a stinging nettle. The girl carried her patent royal of youth and innocence on her face. He made up his mind to say nothing about the check, to lose the ten dollars, and, since dollars were so far from plenty with him, to sacrifice some luxury for the luxury of the loss. He made up his mind that he ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... extremities are treated with splints and bandages, as in Europe. Venereal ulcers are sprinkled with alkaline wood ashes, the astringent liquid of the nettle bark, or a macerated preparation from a particular kind of broad-leaved grass. Superficial wounds are left to themselves, and usually heal without much trouble. Malformations of the body are attributed to the influence of the stars, caused by the mother eating forbidden food during pregnancy, ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... many plays and reading too many exciting books, Mr. Beale," she said, "I confess I have never regarded Doctor van Heerden as a possible suitor, and if I thought he was I should be immensely flattered. But may I suggest to you that there are other ways of winning a girl than by giving her nettle-rash!" ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... are two moderately nutritious plants—nettle and fern—that are found wild in very many countries: and, therefore, the following extract from Messrs. Hue and Gabet's 'Travels in Thibet' may be of service:—"When the young stems of ferns are gathered, quite tender, before they are covered with ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton

... of nine-formed faculties, Of the Fruit of fruits, Of the fruit of primordial God; Of primroses and mountain flowers, Of the blooms of trees and shrubs, Of Earth, of an earthly course, When I became,— Of the blooms of the nettle, Of the foam of the Ninth Wave. I was enchanted by Math Before I became immortal. I was enchanted by Gwydion, The purifier of Brython, Of Eurwys, of Euron, Of Euron, of Modron,— Of Five Battalions of Initiates, High ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... the dowry of every man's birth, A nettle adversity flings us; It yields to the grip of the masterful hand, When we ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... said this OEnothea brought) out a leathern dildo which, when she had smeared it with oil, ground pepper, and pounded nettle seed, she commenced to force, little by little, up my anus. The merciless old virago then anointed the insides of my thighs with the same decoction; finally mixing nasturtium juice with elixir of southern wood, she gave my genitals a bath ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... a nettle myself," said the cook, "but there's no accounting for taste! You take my word for it, if she goes on stroking much longer, she'll get a sting as she ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... newfangled iron eyes, and, when it is through, I knot it any way. The "jam" knot is a name to me, and no more. That, perhaps, is why the hooks crack off so merrily. Then, if I do spot a rising trout, and if he does not spot me as I crawl like the serpent towards him, my fly always fixes in a nettle, a haycock, a rose-bush, or whatnot, behind me. I undo it, or break it, and put up another, make a cast, and, "plop," all the line falls in with a splash that would frighten a crocodile. The fish's big black fin goes ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang

... took turns at that labour except Mr. Bensington, who was manifestly unfit. He took post in the Skinners' bedroom with a rifle, to watch the carcase of the dead rat, and of the others, they took turns to rest from sack-carrying and to keep watch two at a time upon the rat-holes behind the nettle grove. The pollen sacs of the nettles were ripe, and every now and then the vigil would be enlivened by the dehiscence of these, the bursting of the sacs sounding exactly like the crack of a pistol, and the pollen grains as big as ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... I have said, a day and a night in the camp between Aora river and the deep wood of Tarradubh. The plain hummed with our little army, where now are but the nettle and the ivied tower, and the yellow bee booming through the solitude; morning and night the shrill of the piob-mhor rang cheerily to the ear of Dun-chuach; the sharp call of the chieftains and sergeants, the tramp ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... season suit them; or rather, I suppose that an outburst of a particular flower in a particular year shows that the previous year was a good seeding-time. This year has been remarkable for two plants so far, a sort of varnished green ground-weed, with a small white flower, and a dull crimson dead-nettle; both of them have covered the ground in places in huge patches. This is both ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heart strings thrill like an AEolian harp, and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among other love-inspiring qualities, she sang sweetly, and it was her favourite reel to which I attempted to give an embodied vehicle in rhyme; thus with me began love and verse." ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... fifty. ira f. anger, ire. iracundo, -a wrathful. irona f. irony. irnico, -a ironical. irreligioso, -a irreligious. irreverencia f. irreverence, disrespect. irritar anger, excite, arouse, provoke, nettle, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... of them, and it is likely that he practised on a nettle at taking the head off Goll, and that he hunted a sheep from cover in the implacable manner he intended later on ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... was signalized by a storm of extreme violence, and the thunder burst several times over the island. Large trees were struck by the electric fluid and shattered, and among others one of those gigantic nettle-trees which had shaded the poultry-yard at the southern extremity of the lake. Had this meteor any relation to the phenomena going on in the bowels of the earth? Was there any connection between the commotion of the atmosphere and that of ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... not choose to attend to this question; exclaiming, as she reviewed each of the books on the table in their turns, in the summary language of presumptuous ignorance, "Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments—milk and water! Moore's Travels—hasty pudding! La Bruyere—nettle porridge! This is what you were at when I came in, was it not?" said she, taking up a book[8] in which she saw Belinda's mark: "Against Inconsistency in our Expectations. Poor thing! who bored you with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... child; he remained there open-mouthed. He only dropped his head a moment when a nettle, which felt like an insect, stung his leg; then he looked up again—he looked above him at the face which looked down on him. It appeared to regard him the more steadfastly because it had no eyes. It was a comprehensive glance, having ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... Pennyroyal, rue, calamint, bay leaves, and berries, scordium, bethany, lavender, camomile, centaury, wormwood, cumin, broom, orange pills. Spices, Saffron, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, pepper, musk, zedoary with wine, &c. Seeds, Aniseed, fennel-seed, ammi, cary, cumin, nettle, bays, parsley, grana paradisi. or Compounds, as Dianisum, diagalanga, diaciminum, diacalaminthes, electuarium de baccis lauri, benedicta laxativa, &c. pulvia carminativus, and pulvis descrip. Antidotario Florentine, aromaticum, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... occidentalis) (Sugar Berry, Nettle Tree). The wood is handsome, heavy, hard, strong, quite tough, of moderately fine texture, and greenish or yellowish color, shrinks moderately, works well and stands well, and takes a good polish. Used to some extent in cooperage, and in the manufacture of cheap furniture. ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner

... as little let As fennel, wall-wort-stem, or dill uptore; And ilex, knotted oak, and fir upset, And beech and mountain ash, and elm-tree hoar. He did what fowler, ere he spreads his net, Does, to prepare the champaign for his lore, By stubble, rush, and nettle stalk; and broke, Like these, old sturdy trees ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... Fig. 14. The edges are like the teeth of a saw. This is called the serrate leaf. The rose and the common nettle have such leaves. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay

... upon the shop, and find the weights false and the scales unequal; and the whole thing is broken up for old iron. Capital fables, also, in the same ironical spirit, are "Prometheus Unbound," the tale of the vainglorying of a champagne-cork, and "Teleology," where a nettle justifies the ways of God to nettles while all goes well with it, and, upon a change of luck, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... heraldic insignia of Sauve should be a trident, those of Quissac should be surmounted by an old shoe! In the former place the forked branches of the Celtis australis or nettle tree, Ulmaceae, afford a most profitable occupation. From its tripartite boughs are made yearly thousands upon thousands of the three-pronged forks used in agriculture. The wood, whilst very durable, is yielding, and lends itself ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... season, nettle leaves and seed; beat them into powder, and make it into paste with flour, adding a little sweet olive-oil. Make this up into small crams: coop the birds up and feed them with it, giving them water in which ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury

... his worst intoxicant lhiamba (Cannabis sativa), a plant which grows wild on the South-West Coast and on the West for all I know, as well as the African or bowstring hemp (Sanseviera guiniensis). The plant that produces the lhiamba is a nettle-like plant growing six to ten feet high, and the natives collect the tops of the stems, with the seed on, in little bundles and dry them. It is evidently the seeds which are regarded by them as being the important part, although ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... touching my face with one of the branches, pain was instantaneously caused; it increased as usual after a few seconds, and remaining sharp for some minutes, was perceptible for half an hour afterwards. The sensation was as bad as that from a nettle, but more like that caused by the Physalia or Portuguese man-of-war. Little red spots were produced on the tender skin of the arm, which appeared as if they would have formed watery pustules, but did not. M. Quoy mentions this case ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... if wine be recommended for this, there is a deeply rooted prejudice in favour of red wine because the blood is red, and upon no better principle than that which prescribes the yellow bark of the barberry for the yellow state of jaundice; the nettle, for the nettle-rash; and the navel-wort (Cotyledon umbilicus), for weakness about the umbilical region. The truth is, that rustic practice is much influenced by the doctrine of similitudes, the principle of "similia similibus curantur" having been more ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various

... Regime, tells that in the year 1704, when a ship was lost that was to bring cloth and wool to Quebec, a Madame de Repentigny, one of the aristocrats of the French-Canadian colony, spun and wove coarse blankets of nettle and linden bark. Similar experiments were made by the English colonists. Coarse thread was spun out of nettle-fibre by pioneers in western New York. Levi Beardsley, in his Reminiscences, tells of his mother at the close of the last century, in her frontier home at Richfield Springs, weaving ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... such as the flower-cobbler has made it, here is one of the kind that people praise, out of the greenhouse,—and yet a figwort we must have, too; which I see on referring to Loudon, may be balm-leaved, hemp-leaved, tansy-leaved, nettle-leaved, wing-leaved, heart-leaved, ear-leaved, spear-leaved, or lyre-leaved. I think I can find a balm-leaved one, though I don't know what to make of it when I've got it, but it's called a 'Scorodonia' in Sowerby, ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... forgive either his own alarm, or the 'not exactly'; and the terms of confidence so evident between him and Felix seemed to place them in the same hateful category. Worse than all, Lance had laughed at him, and Bernard was far too proud and self-important not to feel every joke like so many nettle-stings. He had expected an easy careless helper; he had found what he could not comprehend, whether boy or man, but at any rate a thing with that intolerable possession, a conscience, and a strong purpose of keeping him ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... translated into English. For women they were such as Spray of the Coral Reef, Queen of Parrot's Land, Queen of Strangers, Smooth Water, Wife of the Morning Star, Mother of Her Grandchildren, Ten Whale's Teeth, Mother of Cockroaches, Lady Nettle, Drinker of Blood, Waited For, Rose of Rewa, Lady Thakombau, Lady Flag, etc. The men's names were such as The Stone (eternal) God, Great Shark, Bad Earth, Bad Stranger, New Child, More Dead Man's Flesh, Abode of Treachery, Not Quite Cooked, Die Out of Doors, Empty Fire, Fire ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... plucked a flower That clung with pain and stung with power, Yea, nettled me, body and mind.' ''Twas the nettle of sin, 'twas medicine; No need nor seed of it here Above; In dreams of hate true ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... ye be for lang kail, Cowe the nettle, stoo the nettle: Gin ye be for lang kail, Cowe ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... ends; But I guess "Abolition" 'll work a spell yit, When the war's done, an' so will "Forgive-an'-forgit." Times mus' be pooty thoroughly out o' all jint, Ef we can't make a good constitootional pint; An' the good time 'll come to be grindin' our exes, When the war goes to seed in the nettle o' texes: Ef Jon'than don't squirm, with sech helps to assist him, I give up my faith in the free-suffrage system; Democ'cy wun't be nut a mite interestin', Nor p'litikle capital much wuth investin'; An' my notion is, to keep dark an' lay low Till we see the right ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... plenty; but the choicest aroma comes from that "wine of memories"—the fragrant reminiscences—which the poet affected to despise. The epilogue ends, incorrigibly, with a promise to "posset and cosset" the cavilling reader henceforward with "nettle-broth," good for the sluggish blood and the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... which grew in great abundance on the ranges. We passed a fine large but dry Casuarina creek, coming from the westward, with a broad sandy bed. A large tree, with dark green broad lanceolate stinging leaves, grew on its banks; it resembled the nettle tree, but belonged to neither of the two species growing in the bushes of ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... quarters, and the Government seemed for the first time fairly to comprehend that it had twenty millions of freemen at its back, and that forts might be taken and held by honest men as well as by knaves and traitors. The nettle had been stroked long enough; it was time to try a firm grip. Still the Administration seemed inclined to temporize, so thoroughly was it possessed by the notion of conciliating the Border States. In point of fact, the side ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various

... ground, that bears the weedes wick' *that same Bears eke the wholesome herbes, and full oft Next to the foule nettle, rough and thick, The lily waxeth,* white, and smooth, and soft; *grows And next the valley is the hill aloft, And next the darke night is the glad morrow, And also joy is next the fine* ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... is a thorn, they show no wit Who foolishly hug and foster it. If love is a weed, how simple they Who gather and gather it, day by day! If love is a nettle that makes you smart, Why do you wear it next your heart? And if it be neither of these, say I, Why do you ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert

... carefully labelled with the name in Latin. There were cases filled with crimson tiger moths all aflame with color; cases devoted to the common yellow butterflies; symphonies in orange and pale yellow; cases of soft gray and dun-colored sphinx moths; and cases of grayish nettle-bed butterflies of the numerous family ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... better for you, boy—don't be a fool, I say, but have sense—I tell you what, Phil," continued his father, and his face assumed a ghastly, deadly look, at once dark and pallid, "listen to me;—I'll forgive him, Phil, until the nettle, the chick-weed, the burdock, the fulsome preshagh, the black fungus, the slimiest weed that grows—aye, till the green mould of ruin itself, grows upon the spot that is now his hearth—till the winter rain beats into, and the whiter wind ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... the north wind loves to hold His dreary revels, loud and cold, The nettle's bloom's his daily fare, The TOAD the guest ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... sands, which rest on the chalk. Again and again we stop, and turn to admire the winding valley of the Medway. As we get more into the country and leave the town behind, we find the roadsides still decked with summer flowers, notably the fine dark blue Canterbury bell—the nettle-leaved Campanula (Campanula Trachelium)—and the exquisite light-blue chicory (Cichorium Intybus); but the flowers of the latter are so evanescent that, when gathered, they fade in an hour or two. This beautiful starlike-blossomed plant is abundant in many parts of Kent. ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... farther on at Pont y Meibion; she said, however, that the ground had belonged to him, and that they had some of his blood in their veins. I shook her by the hand, and gave the chubby bare-armed damsel a shilling, pointing to the marks of the nettle stings on her fat bacon-like arms. She laughed, made me a curtsey, and said: "Llawer iawn ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... a nettle, And it stings you for your pains; Grasp it like a man of mettle, And it ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... into months, and still Princess Sudolisu's kingdom looked like one large bedchamber. The people snored in the streets, the brave army lying in the fields slept soundly, hidden in the long grass under the shadow of nettle, wormwood, and thistle, rust and dust marring the brightness of their armour. Inside the palace everything was the same. The twelve maids of honour lay motionless. The princess alone kept watch, silent amid this reign of sleep. She walked ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko

... re-echoed by her sisters, all of whom bent their eyes towards a corner of the ample porch, where, busied with a rude loom, fashioned perhaps by the axe and knife of the militia colonel himself, on which she was weaving a coarse cloth from the fibres of the flax-nettle, sat a female somewhat younger than the eldest of the sisters, and doubtless of a more humble degree, as was shown by the labour in which she was engaged, while the others seemed to enjoy a holiday, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... middle bending of the garland, and vnder the proiecture of the lyppe of the vessell, there was fixed and placed the head of an olde man, with his beard and haire of his head transformed into nettle leaues, and out of whose mouth gushed out the water of the fountayne by art continually into the hollownes of the ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna

... completely woven with the most beautiful feathers of the wild turkey, arranged in regular stripes and compartments, encircled it. The cloth on which these feathers were woven, was a kind of linen of neat texture, of the same kind with that which is now woven from the fibres of the nettle. The body was evidently that of a female of middle age, and I should suppose that her majesty weighed, when I saw ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall

... constantly had to snap off twigs that had sprouted from the old wood. Next you passed on through groves of strawberry trees with verdure like that of giant box-plants, and with scarlet berries which suggested maize plants decked out with crimson ribbon. Then there came a jungle of nettle-trees, medlars and jujube trees, which pomegranates skirted with never-fading verdure. The fruit of the latter, big as a child's fist, was scarcely set as yet; and the purple blossoms, fluttering at the ends of the branches, looked like ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola

... would ever mistrust, to see it, that it would prove to be connected in any way with the flaunting willow-herb, or fire-weed? But such incongruities are not confined to the "vegetable kingdom." The wood-nettle was growing everywhere; a juicy-looking but coarse weed, resembling our common roadside nettles only in its blossoms. The cattle had found out what I never should have surmised,—having had a taste of its sting,—that it is good for food; there were great patches of it, as likewise of ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... and 'Nettle,' till spying a cat in the distance, the whole pack with a whimper of excitement dash off at a mad scramble, the hound straining meanwhile at the slip, till he almost pulls the mehter off his legs. Off goes the cat, round ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... men, such as Mr. Roosevelt and our own Prime Minister, might be cited in the same sense; but Professor Murray's has been chosen because he has had the courage to grasp the nettle. In his words the true position is quite clearly set forth. If Inter-State Law is to become a reality we must "be sure to go far enough." There is no half-way house between Law and no Law, between Government and no Government, between Responsibility and no Responsibility. If the new Concert is ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,

... here met any of the European sort; Tobacco of many sorts, Dill, Carawa, Cummin, Anise, Coriander, all sorts of Plantain of England, and two sorts spontaneous, good Vulneraries; Elecampane, Comfrey, Nettle, the Seed from England, none Native; Monks Rhubarb, Burdock, Asarum wild in the Woods, reckon'd one of the Snake-Roots; Poppies in the Garden, none wild yet discover'd; Wormseed, Feverfew, Rue, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... Autumn falls in June— And fir cones standing stiff up in the heat. The mill-foot water tumbled white and lit With tossing crystals, happier than any crowd Of children pouring out of school aloud. And in the little thickets where a sleeper For ever might lie lost, the nettle-creeper And garden warbler sang unceasingly; While over them shrill shrieked in his fierce glee The swift with wings and tail as sharp and narrow As if the bow had flown off with the arrow. Only the scent of woodbine and hay new-mown Travelled the ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas

... to Mr. Mount's chamber at the Cockpit, where he did lie of old, and there we drank, and from thence to W. Symons where we found him abroad, but she, like a good lady, within, and there we did eat some nettle porrige, which was made on purpose to-day for some of their coming, and was very good. With her we sat a good while, merry in discourse, and so away, Luellin and I to my Lord's, and there dined. He told me one of the prettiest stories, how Mr. Blurton, his friend that was ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... black beetle, commonly known to negroes as the black Betsy Bug; the rattle and button of a rattlesnake; the fang-tooth of a cotton-mouth moccasin, the left hind foot of a frog, seeds of the stinging nettle, and pods of peculiar plants, all incased in a little sack made of a mole's hide. These were all given sufficient charm by a small round cotton yarn, in the center of which was a drop of human blood. They were placed on the ground around him, but he ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... be apologetic and merciful toward those who, while they have great faults, have also great virtues. Some people are barren of virtues. No weeds verily, but no flowers. I must not be too much enraged at a nettle along the fence if it be in a field containing forty acres of ripe Michigan wheat. At the present time, naturalists tell us, there is on the sun a spot twenty thousand miles long, but from the brightness and warmth I conclude it is a good deal ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... English Chatterton. But, then, no one of these can be called "a dominant historical personage," and the known facts permit themselves to be, and are, "romanticised" effectively enough. So the flower is in each case plucked from the nettle. And there is another flower of more positive and less compensatory kind which blooms here, which is particularly welcome to some readers, and which, from Cinq-Mars alone, they could hardly have expected to find in any garden of Alfred de Vigny's. For this springs from ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... and asthmatics are also subject to attacks of urticaria or "hives" (nettle-rash), from these and other special articles ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... from hemp and the common sting nettle, the latter being preferred. The nettle-stalks are soaked in water and then dried and pounded till the fibres separate. Ropes and cords are equal to those of civilized manufacture, though sometimes not quite as smooth. Thread for sewing and embroidery comes from ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... me some lessons in the art of living, for it is an art and must be learned. These rules would have helped, could I have known them. I am glad to know that my pupils have faith in me. When I pointed out a nettle to them one day, they avoided it; when I showed them a mushroom that is edible, they accepted the statement without question. So I'll see what I can do for them to-morrow with these four rules. Then, if we have time, we shall learn the lines ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... which can not pierce two thicknesses of leather; and as their heads are also covered with a sort of helmet, the neck is almost the only part in which they can be wounded. They have another kind of corslet, made like the corsets of our ladies, of splinters of hard wood interlaced with nettle twine. The warrior who wears this cuirass does not use the tunic of elk-skin; he is consequently less protected, but a great deal more free; the said tunic being very ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... nettle and parsley, white In its own green light, Or milkwort and sorrel, thyme, harebell and meadow-sweet Lifting at your feet, And ivy-blossom beloved of soft bees; I will take The loveliest— The seeding grasses that bend with the winds, and shake Though the winds ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... blossom from a nettle ta'en, Is in thy beauteous bosom bound, Born amid stings, it gives no pain, 'Tis sweetness among ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... they cam to yon nettle bush, The nettles they war spread: 'O an my mither war but here,' she says, 'These nettles ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick

... what manner of folk worshipped there, nor of those who destroyed it. The roofless haunt of bats and owls, preserved from complete collapse by the ancient ivy that covered its walls, the mortar between its stones the prey of briers, its floor a nettle bed, the chapel remained a mystery. Yet over the arch of the west door the two Maries gazed heavenward as they had gazed for six hundred years. The curiosity of the few antiquarians who visited the ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... a sweet garden rose, Let it bloom and wither if no man knows: But if one knows when the sweet thing blows, Knows, and lets it open and drop, If but a nettle his garden grows He hath earned ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... ground that grew gradually higher, were scattered several clumps of trees, made up of oaks and beeches, sycamores and nettle-trees, but trees of great stature as they were, they seemed but simple underwood by the side of the "mammoths," whose huge shadows the sun was throwing even into the sea. Across the prairie lay minor lines of bushes, and vegetable clumps and verdant thickets, which Godfrey resolved to investigate ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne

... was forwarded by Aberdeen to Lord John Russell. Lord John had the peculiar temperament that is hard to agitate, but easy to nettle. So polemical a reading of former whig pranks nettled him considerably. Why, he asked, should he not say just as reasonably that Mr. Gladstone held up the whigs to odium in 1841 for stripping the farmer of adequate protection; ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... nettle ta'en. Is in thy beauteous bosom bound, Born amid stings, it gives no pain, 'Tis sweetness among ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... Dunciad. Collected by the same Mr Curll. 12mo, price 6d. With the Metamorphosis of P. into a Stinging Nettle. By Mr ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... Trelyon that she did not notice how far away they were getting from Eglosilyan; but Mabyn and her companion knew. They were now on the high uplands by the coast, driving between the beautiful banks, which were starred with primroses and stitchwort and red dead-nettle and a dozen other bright and tender-hued firstlings of the year. The sun was warm on the hedges and the fields, but a cool breeze blew about these lofty heights, and stirred Mabyn's splendid masses of hair as they drove rapidly along. Far over on their right, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... said that our people are becoming hysterical, and that Britain is losing her old deep-seated sagacity for judging men and events. That is not my view. I have been taught that the dock always grows near the nettle. I am inclined to think that in a free community every evil carries with it its own corrective, and so I believe that sensationalism of all kinds is playing itself out, and, overdoing, is itself undone. And the more our scaremongers cry havoc, and ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... Beyond the ditch there was an undergrowth, a dense thicket of trees, stunted and old, crooked and withered by the winds into awkward and ugly forms; beech and oak and hazel and ash and yew twisted and so shortened and deformed that each seemed, like the nettle, of no common kind. He began to fight his way through the ugly growth, stumbling and getting hard knocks from the rebound of twisted boughs. His foot struck once or twice against something harder than wood, and looking down he saw stones white with the ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... back. With the gentle tact peculiar to kindly people, he avoided looking at his disarmed antagonist. But something in the older man's attitude seemed to further nettle the over-stimulated sensibility of the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... resembling the pupil. The blood-stone, the Heliotropium of the ancients, from the occasional small specks or points of a blood-red color exhibited on its green surface, is even at this very day employed in many parts of England and Scotland to stop a bleeding from the nose; and nettle tea continues a popular remedy for the cure of Urticaria. It is also asserted that some substances bear the signatures of the humors, as the petals of the red rose that of the blood, and the roots of rhubarb and the flowers of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... And Charlemagne, albeit he created the Paladins, wist not how to make them in such numbers as to form an army of them alone. It must needs be that in the multitude of things there be found diversities of quality. No field was ever so well tilled but that here and there nettle, or thistle, or brier would be found in it amid the goodlier growths. Whereto I may add that, having to address me to young and unlearned ladies, as you for the most part are, I should have done foolishly, had I gone about searching and swinking to find matters very exquisite, and been sedulous ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... was not one of those collected at O Tahaiti; there were three new Distichoporae, Seriatipora, six kinds of Madrepora, two Porites, four Astrea, Pocillopora caerulea, and another kind, forming broad, yellow, leafy masses, the slime of which stings like a nettle; Cariophyllaea glabrescens Cham., and ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... blossoming spray of black byrony—here it is, with its graceful climbing stem, its glossy, heart-shaped leaves and its pretty greenish lily flowers—I have stung myself rather badly against the nettles that grow rank and tall from the rich mud in the ditch below. Nothing soothes a nettle sting like philosophy and dock-leaf; so I shall rub a little of the leaf on my hand and then sit awhile on the Hole Farm gate here to philosophize about nettles and things generally, as is my humble wont. There is a great deal more in nettles, I believe, than most people are apt ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... "The Popiad" and "The Curliad" were rapidly huddled together and placed upon the market. Close upon the heels of these publications came "The Female Dunciad," containing beside the "Metamorphosis of P. into a Stinging Nettle" by Mr. Foxton, a novel called "Irish Artifice; or, the History of Clarina" by Mrs. Eliza Haywood. In a short introduction to the piece, Curll explained how it happened to fall into ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... the fireside; Teach one year, in words of kindness, Teach with eyes of love a second, In the third year teach with firmness. If she should not heed thy teaching, Should not hear thy kindly counsel After three long years of effort, Cut a reed upon the lowlands, Cut a nettle from the border, Teach thy wife with harder measures. In the fourth year, if she heed not, Threaten her with sterner treatment, With the stalks of rougher edges, Use not yet the thongs of leather, Do not touch her with the birch-whip. If she does not heed this warning, Should she pay ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... the entire confraternity of his hearers sometimes. He said one Sunday "None of you are ower much to be trusted—none of us are ower good, are we? A, bless ya, I sometimes think if I were to lay my head on a deacon's breast—one of our own lot—may be there would be a nettle in't or summut at sooart." He is partial to long "Oh's," and "Ah's" and solemn breathings; and sometimes tells you more by a look or a subdued, calmly-moulded groan than by dozens of sentences. He spices his ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... shaped, whitish, pinkish or reddish elevations, of an evanescent character; as, for example, the lesions of urticaria, the lesions produced by the bite of a mosquito or by the sting of a nettle. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... Mr. PUNCH! who is that tall, fair-haired, somewhat parrot-faced gentleman, smiling like a schoolboy over a mess of treacle, and now kissing the tips of his five fingers as gingerly as if he were doomed to kiss a nettle? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... near the coast. His enterprise is full of hazard, but a hazard wisely incurred as it seems to me. I ardently hope that 'out of the nettle, danger, he ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... time, as one who examining a fair shrub abruptly discovers that it is a stinging-nettle, Elizabeth realized the truth. This was no innocent young man who stood before her, but the blackest criminal known to criminologists—a stealer of other people's cats. Her manner shot down ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... second sitting she prescribed for herself nettle-broth; at the third, catnip. The crises became mitigated, then disappeared. It was truly a miracle. The nasal addigitation did not succeed with the others, and, in order to bring on somnambulism, they projected the construction of a mesmeric tub. Pecuchet already ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert



Words linked to "Nettle" :   white horse nettle, chevy, beset, devil, irritate, get to, burn, peeve, chivy, hedge nettle, horse nettle, Pilea microphylla, ball nettle, Urtica dioica, white dead nettle, clearweed, nettle-leaved bellflower, chivvy, rag, dead nettle, panamica, bull nettle, hemp nettle, plague, wood nettle, rankle, bother, Australian nettle, Pilea involucrata, fret, provoke, flame nettle, artillery plant, hassle, painted nettle, devil nettle, chafe, get at, spurge nettle, get under one's skin, eat into, friendship plant, grate, Roman nettle, weed, antagonise, nettle-leaved goosefoot, chevvy, ruffle, stinging nettle, nettle rash, false nettle, Australian nettle tree, rile, antagonize



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