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noun
Sharper  n.  A person who bargains closely, especially, one who cheats in bargains; a swinder; also, a cheating gamester. "Sharpers, as pikes, prey upon their own kind."
Synonyms: Swindler; cheat; deceiver; trickster; rogue. See Swindler.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sharper" Quotes from Famous Books



... of learning to misquote; A mind well skilled to find or forge a fault; A turn for punning—call it Attic salt; To Jeffrey go, be silent and discreet,— His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet; Fear not to lie, 'twill seem a sharper hit; Shrink not from blasphemy, 'twill pass for wit; Care not for feeling—pass your proper jest,— And stand a critic, hated ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... feeble current the temperature of the wire was gradually augmented; but long before it reached the heat of ignition, a flat stream of air rose from it, which when looked at edgeways appeared darker and sharper than one of the blackest lines of Fraunhofer in the purified spectrum. Right and left of this dark vertical band the floating matter rose upwards, bounding definitely the non-luminous stream of air. What is the explanation? Simply this: The hot wire rarefied the air in contact ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... of indighting, is in a subtile, pressed, and fyled oracion, meete for causes that be a lytel sharper then are in the comon vse of speakynge. For it is a kynde of oracion that is lette downe euen to the mooste vsed custume of pure and clere speakyng. It hathe fyne sentences, subtile, sharpe, teachyng all thynges, and makynge them more playne, not more ample. And in the ...
— A Treatise of Schemes and Tropes • Richard Sherry

... they were struggling with currents of the Bocas, piloted by a Mandingo Negro, Alfred Sharper, who died in 1836, 105 years of age. The line-of-battle ships anchored in the magnificent land- locked harbour of Chaguaramas, just inside the Boca de Monos. The frigates and transports went up within five miles of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... one as ignorant as I was of mercantile movement, the story of Colbert's methods, owing to their pure autocracy, was a kind of introductory primer to this element of sea power. Thus received, the impression was both sharper and deeper. New light was shed upon, and new emphasis given to, the commonplace assertion of the relations between commerce and a navy; civil and military sea power. While I have no claim to mastery of the arguments ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... than half the volume, disarmed for a moment the resentment of outraged Rome. The Pope, on a report from Theiner, spoke of the book as one that might do good. Others said that it was pointless, that its point was not where the author meant it to be, that the handle was sharper than the blade. It was made much more clear that the Pope had governed badly than that Russia or Great Britain would gain by his supremacy. The cold analysis, the diagnosis by the bedside of the sufferer, was not the work ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... during his somewhat lengthy journey, for, in spite of his other most admirable qualities, the Pilot-Fish was very greedy. Few indeed were the morsels that fell to poor Sammy's share when his guide had finished his meals, and the young salmon had occasion more than once to wish that he had driven a sharper bargain. But, although he was growing thin, he comforted himself with the reflection that they were quickly nearing the promised land, where the Pilot assured him delicious food of ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater

... regarded her in speechless dignity. Vouchsafing no reply, he attempted to pass her and enter the house. But Britta settled her arms more defiantly than ever, and her voice had a sharper ring as ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... not enjoy riches, but is tormented by anxiety or sickness. Others are worn out by the jealousy or envy which consume them. Others, again, wrapped in their pride, are being continually galled by the supposed indignities offered to them, and there is no sharper crown of thorns than that worn by the proud man. There is one sin which seems to be rampant in our day, and that is scepticism, or doubting God and revelation; and this also brings its own punishment in the present. On the other hand, to those who are tempted, suffering, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... any great sorrow, and which was, as it were, crowned and sealed by that son's first utterance—no miserable and ordinary infant's wail, but the stentorian barytone "A boire!" which rings through the book till it passes in the sharper, but not less delectable treble of "Trinq!" And then comes a brief piece, not narrative, but as characteristic perhaps of what we may call the ironical moral of the narrative as any—a grave remonstrance with those who will not believe ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... the miser. He was thrown down and flung over icy banks, but he clung to his precious burden. Utter night was around him, and in every crash and thunder of the gale was a growing undertone which he well knew to be the voice of Tamanous. Floating upon this undertone were sharper tamanous voices, shouting and screaming, always sneeringly, 'Ha, ha, hiaqua!—ha, ha, ha!' Whenever the miser attempted to continue his descent the whirlwind caught him and tossed him hither and thither, flinging him into a pinching crevice, burying him to the eyes ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax

... again; my skull is a Grub Street attic to let—not so much as a joint stool left in it; my hand writes, not I, from habit, as chickens run about a little, when their heads are off. O for a vigorous fit of gout, colic, toothache,—an earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs; pain is life—the sharper, the more evidence of life; but this apathy, this death! Did you ever have an obstinate cold,—a six or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, fear, conscience, and every thing? Yet do I try ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... Have not I more skill Than thou to draw the horoscope of Thebes? Are not my teachers surer guides than thine— Great Phoebus and the sire of Phoebus, Zeus? Thou art a messenger suborned, thy tongue Is sharper than a sword's edge, yet thy speech Will bring thee more defeats than victories. Howbeit, I know I waste my words—begone, And leave me here; whate'er may be my lot, He lives not ill who ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... rage against it, in conjunction with these declarations, which they saw and acknowledged were evidently conformed to, and founded upon it. After the publication of this testimony, the sufferings of that poor people that owned it were sadder and sharper than ever before, by hunting, pursuing, apprehending, imprisonment, banishment, death, and torture; this increasing rage, oppression, cruelty, and bloodshed, being no more than what they might look for, agreeable to the spirit and principles of that popish incendiary, to ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... payne / the more my loue encreaseth The more my Ieopardy / the truer is my harte The more I suffre / the lesse the fyre releasheth The more I complayne the more is my smarte The more I se her / the sharper is the darte The more I wryte / the more my teeres dystyll The more I loue / the hotter is ...
— The coforte of louers - The Comfort of Lovers • Stephen Hawes

... over the white forehead. That sweet calm which will sometimes descend on the face of the dead, even when their end has been violent—the sad Alpen-gluth that comes only when the sun has set—was there in all its beauty. Save that the features were somewhat sharper than in life, there was nothing to mar their pure classical outline. It was well, indeed, that Guy held her back two hours ago. If Isabel had looked on them then, I believe she would have gone mad with terror, if not with sorrow. It matters ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... moment, and particularly in the rural districts, faces exactly resembling those at home. Had I met the same persons in Denmark or Norway, it would never have entered my mind that they were foreigners. Now and then I also met with some whose taller growth and sharper features reminded me of the inhabitants of South Jutland, or Sleswick, and particularly of Angeln; districts of Denmark which first sent colonists to England. It is not easy to describe peculiarities which can be appreciated in all their details only by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... said: "It is sharper to bear than the bitter sword in the breast, O woe, to think of it now in the days ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... the Exit Dome. Sarka raced to give the "Enter" Signal—and Dalis, he of the hawk-eyes, the sharp nose and sharper tongue, entered the presence of the man who, in a twinkling, had made himself master ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... on all the girl's rose-colored appreciations with a scorn hardly disguised. All the "locals," according to her, were stupid or snobbish—bores, in fact, of the first water. And to Diana's discomfort and amazement, Oliver Marsham joined in. He showed himself possessed of a sharper and more caustic tongue than Diana had yet suspected. His sister's sallies only amused him, and sometimes he improved on them, with epithets or comments, shrewder than hers ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Those uprisings of vagrant desire still struggled, combating the dominion of the fixed idea. But the struggle grew faint and fainter. And then, for a measurable time, Richard fell silent again while she waited. Verily there is no sharper discipline for a woman's proud spirit, than that administered, often quite unconsciously, by the man ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... the money, his face drawing into closer and sharper lines as the amount grew, under his fingers, to the ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... answered Bazarov, in a lazy but manly voice; and turning back the collar of his rough coat, he showed Nikolai Petrovitch his whole face. It was long and lean, with a broad forehead, a nose flat at the base and sharper at the end, large greenish eyes, and drooping whiskers of a sandy colour; it was lighted up by a tranquil smile, and showed self-confidence ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... the case that even parents in old age have had occasion to say with the forsaken King Lear, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!" It is right training in early life alone that ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... if we wish really to understand the manner in which the Queen's Government over the British Empire is carried on, we must now prepare to examine into some sharper contrasts than any which our path has yet brought into view. The power of the American Executive resides in the person of the actual President, and passes from him to his successor. His Ministers, grouped around him, are the servants, ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... will become of me?" thought Betty, as she heard the grindstone go round and round as the knife got sharper and sharper. "I look so like a pig they will kill me too, and make me into sausages if I don't run away. I'm tired of playing piggy, and I'd rather be washed a hundred times a day than be ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott

... an all-sufficient evidence to her and to such as her, that there was a limit where the flaunting of their foul acts and opinions before the world must stop; certain of them, with a higher art, and to her a finer cruelty, a sharper torture, uttered no abuse, but always spoke of her in terms of mocking eulogy and ironical admiration. Everybody talked about the new wonder, canvassed the theme of her proposed discourse, and marveled how she ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... sacrificed for the qualities of strength and cunning and speed, as these alone have survival value. Man wants specific results at once. Nature works slowly to general results. Her army is drilled only in battle. Her tools grow sharper in the using. The strength of her species is the strength of ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... friends, at the close of the year 1790, Schiller took a cold which brought on an attack of pneumonia. An Erfurt doctor treated the case lightly and unskillfully and sent him back half cured to Jena, where he resumed his lectures. Now came a second and sharper attack, with hemorrhage and other alarming symptoms. The doctors operated upon him as best they knew, with leeches and phlebotomy and purgatives and vomitives, and came very near killing him. For days he lay at the point of death, a few faithful students sharing the young wife's anxious ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... enunciation its one, invariable solution, scarce veiled by the indiscreet signs that contain or cover it. It is there, under the numbers that have no other object than to give it life, coming, stirring and ceaselessly proclaiming itself a necessity. It is not surprising therefore that eyes sharper than ours and ears open to other vibrations should see and hear it without knowing what it represents, what it implies or from what prodigious mass of figures and operations it merges. The problem itself speaks; and the horse but repeats the sign which he hears whispered in the mysterious life ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... rare; it is called aguara, its nearest ally being the aguara-guazu, the Canis jubatus or maned wolf of naturalists, found north of the pampean district. The aguara is smaller and has no mane; it is like the dingo in size, but slimmer and with a sharper nose, and lias a much brighter red colour. At night when camping out I have heard its dismal screams, but the screamer was sought in vain; while from the gauchos of the frontier I could only learn ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... when such scenes delighted Lily, when they gratified her sense of beauty and her craving for the external finish of life; there were others when they gave a sharper edge to the meagreness of her own opportunities. This was one of the moments when the sense of contrast was uppermost, and she turned away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset, glittering in serpentine ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... a sharper angle until it bent in upon itself, threatening to snap, and flung one gray-spatted ankle across ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... certainly, if wickedness and sin Had only foolish toys and trifles been, And if God had not greatly hated it, Yea, could he any ways thereof admit, And let it pass, he would not thus have done. He doth not use to punish any one With any place or punishment that is Above or sharper than the sin of his Hath merited, and justice seeth due; Read sin, then, by the death that doth ensue. Most men do judge of sin, not by the fruits It bears and bringeth forth, but as it suits Their carnal and deluded hearts, that be With sensual pleasures ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... from Bordin asking me to go to his office and get my receipt. I went. 'I tried to get fifty of your louis for you,' he said, 'but the birds had flown. Say good-by to your yellow boys; those pretty canaries are off to other climes. You have had to do with a sharper; that's what he is. He declared to me that his wife and father-in-law had gone to the United States with sixty of your louis to buy land; that he intended to follow, for the purpose, he said, of making a fortune ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac

... this suppression of the freedom of speech and press, and the right of petition, the people of the free States of this Union are responsible, and the people of Pennsylvania most of all. Of this responsibility, I say it with a pang, sharper than language can express, the city of Philadelphia must take herself ...
— A Visit To The United States In 1841 • Joseph Sturge

... seem that the body of man was not given an apt disposition. For since man is the noblest of animals, his body ought to be the best disposed in what is proper to an animal, that is, in sense and movement. But some animals have sharper senses and quicker movement than man; thus dogs have a keener smell, and birds a swifter flight. Therefore man's body was not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... was intelligent London that in going to hear Arthur Meadows on the most admired—or the most detested—personalities of the day, they at least ran no risk of wishy-washy panegyric, or a dull caution. Meadows had proved himself daring both in compliment and attack; nothing could be sharper than his thrusts, or more Olympian than his homage. There were those indeed who talked of "airs" and "mannerisms," but their faint voices were ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward

... contest of the rival forces will undoubtedly for a little while be sharper than ever, just because it will be plain that an end must be made of the existing situation, and that very promptly; and with the increased activity of the contending factions will come, it is to be feared, increased danger to the non-combatants ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... suggested Mr. Churchouse, but Estelle, sharper-eyed, saw Abel disappear. She also noted that her bouquet of flowers had gone from ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... language. Glad to hear the mother-tongue once more, the emigrant readily enters into conversation with the fellow, and reveals to him his destination, his plans, and the amount of money he has with him. The sharper, after some pleasantries meant to lull the suspicions of his victim, offers to show him where he can purchase his railroad tickets at a lower rate than at the office in the Landing Depot, and, if the emigrant is willing, conducts him to a ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... or the delicate trunks dim as ghosts in shadow, bright as organ-pipes where sun touched them. Out from the depths came sweet, mysterious breaths, and whispers like prophecies of peace. But to this region of romance there were sharp contrasts. Not even dreams have sharper ones! German trenches, chopped into blackened wastes that once were farmlands, and barbed wire wriggling like snake-skeletons across ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... see what we can do, except keep a sharper lookout in future. There is not enough evidence to go and boldly accuse him of having walked off with two buckets of lard for which he had not paid. There may be a hundred buckets like that in the district, every one of which has contained grease of ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... is justified of her children. There are many, I think, who eat dry crusts and drink water, with a joy infinitely sharper than anything within the experience of ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... tile laid on this farm, and not a dozen rods of covered stone drain. But the major has a home-made, or, at least, home-devised, 'bull plow,' consisting of a sharp-pointed iron wedge, or roller, surmounted by a broad, sharp shank nearly four feet high, with a still sharper cutter in front, and with a beam and handles above all. With five yoke of oxen attached, this plow is put down through the soil and subsoil to an average depth of three feet—in the course which the superfluous water is expected and desired to take—and the field ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French

... They were coming up more solidly, and the advantage of the surprise was now gone. He waited, however, until they were almost as near as they had been before, and then gave the order to charge, in the same words as before, but in a much sharper and louder tone, which rang out like a sudden blast from ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... had grown bitter and hard. The knives of the trappers were sharp, and not one whit sharper than their tempers. Some one said that the friendly Pawnees were conspiring with the Sioux, who were always treacherous, to sack the settlement. The trappers doubted this. They and the Pawnees had been friends many years, and they had together killed the Sioux ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie

... enveloped her in a tight hug that relieved her from the sharper pangs; and so held her, the tears bursting through his shut eyelids, till at the first hotel they reached he managed to get food for her. She gave a little gasping cry when he put bread through the window of the cab. Bit by bit he handed her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the game of make-believe actuality. Now, according to the accustomed order of development, The Night Watch should have followed The Syndics. But it preceded it by two decades, and the later work contains far better painting and a sharper presentment of the real. The Night Watch is Rembrandt's Ninth symphony; but composed before his Fifth, The Syndics. One figure in this latter picture has always fascinated us. It is of the man, Volkert Janz, according to ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... and he could see the group of "home-folks" at the door. But he gave only one glance at the little log cabin, and then turned his head away. It was a poor home, but if it had been a palace, the pang he felt as he was torn from it could not have been sharper. ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... first by Mrs. Burrage's note; and then, as we know, she had vaguely entertained the conception, asking Verena whether she would make the visit if it were again to be pressed upon them. It had been pressed, certainly, and the terms of the problem were now so much sharper that they seemed cruel. What had been in her own mind was that if Verena should appear to lend herself to the Burrages Basil Ransom might be discouraged—might think that, shabby and poor, there was no chance for him as against people ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... And ever, through the clamour of the strife, I heard the ceaseless wailing of a child, And the sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, endless Sobbing of a reft and broken woman. "Shall it be Peace or War?" A two-edged sword Could cut no sharper than the gentle voice Of Him who bowed with sorrow at the sight Of man destroying man for sake of gain. I waited, breathless, for the warrior's word. But no word came. His heart was with his men. "Shall it be Peace or War? Look yet again!" And at their feet, like mighty map unrolled, ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham

... seem to start the sap in the trees and the blood in the veins, when the first bluebird is heard, and we get one swift, delicious glimpse of the good time coming. But this year the cold only takes a sharper clutch. At its average, our northern winter has a fierce and almost merciless persistence. Those first days of spring are hardly more than the taste of freedom with which the cat tantalizes the mouse. It is this lingering close of winter that ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... and 'Grecian Urn,' one were doomed to perish, and fate allowed us to choose which one should be abandoned. Sorrowful as the choice must be, I believe that lovers of poetry would find themselves least loth to part with 'Autumn'; that the loss of either of the others would be foreseen as a sharper wrench. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... I know, his greatest excellency is in his diction. In all other parts of poetry he is faultless, but in this he placed his chief perfection. And give me leave, my lord, since I have here an apt occasion, to say that Virgil could have written sharper satires than either Horace or Juvenal if he would have employed his talent that way. I will produce a verse and half of his, in one of his Eclogues, to justify my opinion, and with commas after every word, to show that he has given almost ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... width of the ship became marked and popular. Hollow water-lines fore and aft were introduced; the forefoot of the hull ceased to be cut away so much, and the swell of the sides became less marked; the bows became somewhat sharper and were often made flaring above the water, and the square sprit-sail below the bowsprit was given up. American ship-builders had not yet learned to give their vessels much sheer, however, and in a majority of them the sheer line was almost straight from stem to ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... Bob, and so much the greater need that you should look out the sharper. Give the ship plenty of room, and I'll let her run down for the passage, square for ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... face, in order that he might recover strength to go on a few yards. But he would persevere. If God would but leave to him mind enough for his work, he would go on. No personal suffering should deter him. He told himself that there had been men in the world whose sufferings were sharper even than his own. Of what sort had been the life of the man who had stood for years at the top of a pillar? But then the man on the pillar had been honoured by all around him. And thus, though he had thought of the man on the pillar to encourage himself by remembering ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... honour, wherein its noblest and at the same time its most terrible elements unite to a second religion. Extremes of selfish desire and of sacrifice both seek to be satisfied. The nature of the "world" could not possibly find sharper, more dazzling, more dominating, and at the same time more destructive, more terrible expression. The poet in his most vigorous presentations has taken for his subject the conflict of this honour with the deep human feeling of sympathy (Mitgefuehl). ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... blew up colder and sharper. They were glad to get home. There was a slight fall of snow and everything was frozen up hard enough to last ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... in a half interested manner when they laughed aloud over the harrowing supposition. They noticed that his eyes were blue and bloodshot, wan and fatigued. He gave Grace a second glance, sharper than the first, and politely resumed his manufacture of circles in the brown gravy and brown study. ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... long,—but had not abandoned the haunts of his exile. They still for many a year saw the wilderness beneath their daily flight giving place to arable fields, and learned to exchange their wary guard against the Indian's arrow for a sharper watch of the Anglo-Saxon rifle. Up to the last of their appearance the country-people spoke of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... the effect of this terrible speech, or perhaps he wished to judge of the effect of it, like those who, suffering from a chronic pain, and seeking to break the monotony of that suffering, touch their wound to procure a sharper pang. Anne of Austria was near fainting; her eyes, open but meaningless, ceased to see for several seconds; she stretched out her arms toward her other son, who supported and embraced her without fear of irritating ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... and in so exhausted a condition, Bennington de Laney could not sleep. He had taken a slight fever, and the wound in his shoulder was stiff and painful. For hours on end he lay flat on his back, staring at the dim illuminations of the windows and listening to the faint out-of-door noises or the sharper borings of insects in the logs of the structure. His mind was not active. He lay in a semi-torpor, whose most vivid consciousness was that of mental discomfort ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... had gradually got possession of her, and she became as courageous as a youth. She would willingly have seized a weapon and followed the insurgents. As the muskets and scythes filed past, her white teeth glistened longer and sharper between her red lips, like the fangs of a young wolf eager to bite and tear. And as she listened to Silvere enumerating the contingents from the country-side with ever-increasing haste, the pace of the column seemed to her to accelerate still more. She soon fancied it all ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... unshadowed, where Polaris makes a somewhat sharper angle with the horizon, there is law, also, but much of it is unwritten. And one of the unwritten statutes is that which maintains the inherent right of a man to avenge his own quarrel with his ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... conscience the young doctor rode fast. He was not the man to let duty wait even on love, without trying to make amends. But a sharper pang stung him when he reached the desolate cabin in which the Cold Plague ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... dreaded question of my going into his business. And this I was firmly resolved not to do. For my dislike of all his work, his deepening worries, his dogged absorption in his tiresome hobby of ships, was even sharper ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... you was gone, of course in the crowd the real pickpocket got off scot-free. It turned out that the farmer and him that told me had been "done" by some sharper, and that they was just ready to pass off on this foreigner a lot ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... be the cure, not sympathy. Labour is the only radical cure for rooted sorrow. The society of a calm, serenely cheerful companion—such as Ellen—soothes pain like a soft opiate, but I find it does not probe or heal the wound; sharper, more severe means, are necessary to make a remedy. Total change might do much; where that cannot be obtained, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... liable to grain, which can be seen by an expert and avoided. Before putting on the boil see that there is sufficient fuel on the furnace to carry through the operation. To make up a fire during the process spoils the color and quality. The sharper the sugar is boiled the better the ...
— The Candy Maker's Guide - A Collection of Choice Recipes for Sugar Boiling • Fletcher Manufacturing Company

... this fact, all incriminating evidence was carefully concealed by the old man and his sons, and it would have taken a sharper man than Bonar—intelligent as he was—to discover any traces of illicit distilling in the neighborhood of their house. There was one suspicious feature only; a large eighteen-gallon barrel, full of something—whatever the liquid might be—was barely ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... begin a suit at law here, the precedents of others warn me, a stranger,[88] how easy and profitable a task it would be for me. At the same time, I suppose that by this she has got some friend and protector; for she was pretty nearly a grown-up girl when she left there. They would cry out that I am a sharper; that, a pauper, I'm hunting after an inheritance; besides, I shouldn't like to ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... an increase of rancour in the Opposition. "We shall," adds Rose, "drag on a wretched existence and expire not creditably. What next will happen God only knows."[702] Canning was equally annoyed at the new Coalition.[703] His sharp tongue and still sharper pen had deeply annoyed Addington. Who, indeed, would not have resented this reference in the "Apothecary's Hall ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... English to the horn[1], To England thus spake England over sea, "In peace be friend, in war my enemy"; Then countering pride with pride, and lies with scorn, Broke with the man[2] whose ancestor had borne A sharper pain for no more injury. How otherwise should free men deal and be, With patience frayed and loyalty outworn? No act of England's shone more generous gules Than that which sever'd once for all the strands Which bound you English. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... remedies cannot be applied unto thee; wherefore, for a while, we will use the more easy, that thy affections, which are, as it were, hardened and swollen with perturbations, may by gentle handling be mollified and disposed to receive the force of sharper medicines. ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... we could distinguish a low moaning sound, like the hum of a wild bee; it seemed to come out of the earth. After a little it grew louder and sharper; then it ended in a yelp and ceased altogether. After a short interval it began afresh, this time still clearer; then came the yelp, loud, sharp, and vengeful. There was no mistaking that sound. It was the bark ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... in a hospital? Did your people know? Were you properly cared for?" Each question that she asked came with a little sharper note of irritation. ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty

... answer I will sink you,' whereupon the skipper of the lugger shouted out, 'the Jennie of Portsmouth.' 'Lend a hand, lads, with the sails,' he whispered to us; 'slip the cable, Tom.' We ran up the sails in a jiffy, you may be sure, and all the sharper that, as they were half-way up, four guns flashed out. One hulled the lugger, the others flew overhead. Close as they were they could not have seen us, for we could scarce see them and we were under the shadow of the cliffs, but I suppose they fired at ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... another maxime deepely imprinted in his minde, which was, carefully to obey, and religiously to submit himselfe to the lawes, under which he was borne. There was never a better citizen, nor more affected to the welfare and quietnesse of his countrie, nor a sharper enemie of the changes, innovations, newfangles, and hurly- burlies of his time: He would more willingly have imployed the utmost of his endevours to extinguish and suppresse, than to favour or further them: His minde ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... said Mr Meldrum, "and keep a sharper look-out than ever. If the vessel runs against the ice ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... yours," retorted Giovanni, regretting that he could not instantly find a sharper answer, for he was not ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford

... zest and joyousness of her life came back to her. Soundlier than ever slept she, and sweetlier dreamed, under the fine silk canopy, till the birds called her to her work. Greater than ever was her love of the fine furbelows that were hers to flaunt in, and sharper her appetite for the fine hot dishes, and more tempestuous her scolding of Betty, poor maid. She was more than ever now the cynosure, the adored, of the fine young gentlemen. And as for her husband, she looked up to him as the wisest, kindest ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... to know," he said. "I was for three years in a gambling house in Paris, where every other man was a sharper. I have been in places of the same sort in Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Italy. At first I was only a boy waiter, and as until evening there was nothing doing at these places, men would sometimes amuse themselves ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... only feel that his patent curse hasn't done any damage, but has even helped to chain up a lot of rival plagues. These men of science are like benevolent Jupiters: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday colloguing with Vulcan to forge heavier and sharper thunderbolts; Thursday, Friday and Saturday conferring anxiously with all Olympus as to how they shall be blunted and lightened, lest they hurt poor mortal ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... immediate banks, and the familiar scent of autumn was in the air. In a word, the change so familiar in Manitoba in August had taken place here, to be followed by a balmy September and the fine fall weather of the North, said to surpass that of the East in mildness by day, though perhaps sharper by night. We were now but a few miles from the last obstruction, the Pelican Rapids, and pushed on in the morning along banks of a coal-like blackness, loose and friable, with thin cracks and fissures running in all directions, the forest behind being the usual mixture of spruce and poplar. By ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair

... French departments are as nicely defined as their political demarcations. Nothing can afford a sharper contrast than the Aveyron, with its ruddy soil and red rocks, and the green, pastoral Cantal, land of smiling valleys, unbroken pastures, and hills that wear a look of perpetual spring. These differences cannot fail to strike ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... and a few years ago a party of the Qurneh dealers, armed with a bogus Museum permit, dug there for several weeks. The tombs they had rifled could be distinguished from tombs that were intact or had been plundered in early times by the sharper edges of the depressions left. Time has rounded over the traces of the earlier robberies, so that anciently robbed tombs look much like those which are intact, but in which the roof has fallen in causing ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell

... animosity by absenting themselves from parliament; and finding that this expedient had not been successful, they began to think of employing sharper and more effectual remedies. Though there had scarcely been any national ground of complaint, except some dissipation of the public treasure: though all the acts of mal-administration objected to the king and his favorite, seemed of a nature more proper to excite heart-burnings in a ball ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... Pirate. (Luxuriantly tropical. Monthly. Salter than the Sea. Sharper than Coral. Unmitigatedly ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... and we were wondering what next. I was hoping it would be a dolphin or a waahoo. It happened, however, to be a beautiful cero mackerel, one of the shapeliest and most attractive fish in these waters. He is built something like the brook-trout, except for a much sharper head and wider fins and tail. But he is speckled very much after the manner of the trout. We trolled on, and all of a sudden raised a school of sailfish. They came up with a splashing rush very thrilling to see. One hit R. C.'s bait hard, and then another, by way of contrast, began to ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... upon the lips, and a pringling in the eyes. Suddenly as he gazed, however, something black was tilted up upon the sharp summit of one of the seas, and swooped out of view again upon the further side. It was so far from him that he could make nothing of it, but sharper eyes than his had caught a glance of it. Amos Green had seen the girl point and observed what it was which had attracted ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... man, who was, to begin with, in that state which so often follows on the long confinement of illness, when the light seems brighter and scents keener and experience sharper than at other times, he was inwardly confessing that Mrs. Thornburgh had not been romancing. The vivid creature at his elbow, with her still unsoftened angles and movements, was in the first dawn of an exceptional beauty; ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... atmosphere all sun and flowers, and pleasant with generous service and thankful joy. Be careful what Scheherezade you invite to your couch. By an awful rule of this world's life, in all its phases, the sharper the zest of enjoyment, the keener the possible disgusts may be. I recommend Dumas's books at this crisis, but they should be read with acceptance; as stories, their value lying largely in this, that ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... dear," said the playful old gentleman, patting Oliver on the head approvingly. "I never saw a sharper lad. Here's a shilling for you. If you go on in this way, you'll be the greatest man of the time. And now come here, and I'll show you how to take the marks out of ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... have no knowledge. We have come to see how great is the unexplored, and many lifetimes will not bring us to the end of our quest. [-But we wish no end to our quest.-] We wish nothing, save to be alone and to learn, and to feel as if with each day our sight were growing sharper than the hawk's and ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand

... skunk alive," said Jack. He added fervently, "Acton, have no dealings with that fellow. He is an abominable sharper." ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... Uncle Peter, the first to censure and the last to praise. Now, as I've been his especial tidbit and awful example for years, I had to school myself to the thought of snatching the daily morsel of gossip from his mouth. The murder out, Uncle Peter's grief is pitiful. How much sharper than a serpent's tooth is a prophecy of evil unfulfilled! It's not that he considers I've gone to work, incorrigible vagabond that I am; it's the fact that my intolerable idling has produced money which sets his teeth on edge—money, ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... disarm him; but at the first encounter he felt that the colonel's wrist was iron, with the flexibility of a steel string. Maxence was then forced, unfortunate fellow, to think of another move, while Philippe, whose eyes were darting gleams that were sharper than the flash of their blades, parried every attack with the coolness of a fencing-master wearing ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... the picture. It was a representation of one of the newest and largest of the British tanks. In appearance these are not unlike great tanks, though they are neither round nor square, being shaped, in fact, like two wedges with the broad ends put together, and the sharper ends sticking out, though there is no sharpness to a tank, ...
— Tom Swift and his War Tank - or, Doing his Bit for Uncle Sam • Victor Appleton

... so as to have the benefit of the little daylight there was. My host went first; I followed. After descending four or five steps, we came to a doorway which was covered with a woollen curtain. We pushed this aside. The sound that had first reached me as a low rumbling now became sharper, and I could plainly hear that it was caused by sawing. We went in. The room we entered was long and narrow, cut out of the Barrier. On a solid shelf of snow there lay barrel after barrel arranged in exemplary ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... her maath, but it coom aght agean sharper nor it went in; aw thowt her heart ud come up. "A'a dear! a'a dear!" shoo says, "it's Harryget watter! it's Harryget watter! aw've made a t'mistak!' aw've made a mistak! but it's ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... of mighty strength, whereof the Syrians were authors; and perchance King Uzziah first made it, for we find him very dexterous and happy in devising such things. And although these bear-whelps were but rude and unshaped at the first, yet art did lick them afterward, and they got more teeth and sharper nails by degrees; so that every age set them forth in a new edition, corrected and amended. But these and many more voluminous engines are now virtually epitomized in the cannon. And though some ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell

... into the water and swimming with swift strokes to the waiting boat; but Rex refusing absolutely to be pulled aboard. He only splashed and shook himself, scattering a very geyser of salt water on the tugging boys, and barked louder and sharper still as if he were doing ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman



Words linked to "Sharper" :   gouger, card shark, grifter, chiseler, card sharper, card sharp, cardsharp, scammer, sharpie, defrauder, swindler, sharpy, chiseller, cardsharper



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