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Spatter   Listen
verb
Spatter  v. t.  (past & past part. spattered; pres. part. spattering)  
1.
To sprinkle with a liquid or with any wet substance, as water, mud, or the like; to make wet of foul spots upon by sprinkling; as, to spatter a coat; to spatter the floor; to spatter boots with mud. "Upon any occasion he is to be spattered over with the blood of his people."
2.
To distribute by sprinkling; to sprinkle around; as, to spatter blood.
3.
Fig.: To injure by aspersion; to defame; to soil; also, to throw out in a defamatory manner.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spatter" Quotes from Famous Books



... together, their khaki kilts swaying in rhythm, their long bayonets a-twinkle, while down the wind came the regular tramp of their feet and the wild, frenzied wailing of their pipes. Soon we were up with them, bronzed, stalwart figures, grim fighters from muddy spatter-dashes to steel helmets, beneath which eyes turned to stare at us—eyes blue and merry, eyes dark and sombre—as they swung along to the lilting ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol

... sideways into a convenient cleft, and to draw feet up as close to chin as possible, when that hollow which had seemed my path, and high up the ravine on either side, was filled with tumbling, hissing snow, while the rocks on either side echoed with the musketry spatter of stones ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... a pump-handle and a spatter of water upon the red-tiled courtyard showed that somebody else was astir, and a few steps farther he beheld a brawny, sandy-haired man gasping wildly under severe self-infliction ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs

... man. Haw! haw! he! he! ho! ho!" roared half a dozen fat men at my faceshusness, and they laffed and shook their sides, ontil I thought they'd colaps a floo and spatter me. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various

... still continued. Later on there was rifle fire in the street, and, acting upon the Padre's suggestion, uncle and niece took refuge in their cellar, for the bullets were beginning to spatter on ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce

... the tap). Time will show, madam. At prisent they seem to be in no hurry to spatter us with their word-jelly. Does some spark of pity linger in their marble bos'ms? or do they prefer inaud'ble chit-chat ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... Transparencies on Glass, Leaf work, Autumn Leaves, Wax Work, Painting, Leather Work, Fret Work, Picture Frames, Brackets, Wall Pockets, Work Boxes and Baskets, Straw Work, Skeleton Leaves, Hair Work, Shell Work, Mosaic, Crosses, Cardboard Work, Worsted Work, Spatter Work, Mosses, Cone Work, etc. Hundreds of exquisite Illustrations decorate the pages, which are full to overflowing with devices to ornament a home cheaply, tastefully, and ...
— The Nursery, No. 109, January, 1876, Vol. XIX. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Unknown

... woman's wail of fife, The Dead March played for Dearborn's men just marching out of life; The swooping of the savage cloud that burst upon the rank And struck it with its thunderbolt in forehead and in flank, The spatter of the musket-shot, the rifles' whistling rain,— The sandhills drift round hope ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish

... raised his rifle, and a vivid spatter of fire followed. As the report died out, one of the great forms sank to the ground with a scream that sounded almost human. The others glided off in the same direction as they had the night before, and vanished ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... a little easier then, and went to work again: The sky was getting cloudier, 'twas coming on to rain. Before I knew, the clock struck six, and John had not come back; The rain began to spatter down, and all the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... mud was rotted. He poked the muzzle of the rifle through the crevice, took careful aim, and had the satisfaction of hearing a savage curse in the instant following the flash. He threw himself flat immediately, listening to the spatter and whine of the bullets of the volley that greeted his shot. They kept it up long—but when there was a momentary cessation he crept back to the entrance of the adobe house, entered, followed another passage ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... toddling infant in the neighbourhood whose downfall they could encompass, the two became inseparable. It was pleasanter, they found, to play together, and go neck and neck round the eighteen holes, than to take on some lissome youngster who could spatter them all over the course with one old ball and a cut-down cleek stolen from his father; or some spavined elder who not only rubbed it into them, but was apt, between strokes, to bore them with personal reminiscences of the Crimean ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... now and then barely enough to reveal the greater mountain, but never yet had quite cleared the summit. The mist had slimed the whole world with a coating of wet, and when the wind chanced to set the bare limbs of the trees to swaying, the drops would spatter on the ground and scarcely be absorbed, ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... far more marked in the young generation, probably because foolish parents seem to think it rather an amusing trait in their offspring. Now, the boy at Chittenden's who allowed his mind to wander, and did not concentrate, promptly made the acquaintance of the "spatter," a broad leathern strap; and the spatter hurt exceedingly, as I can testify from many personal experiences of it. On the whole, then, even the most careless boy found it to his advantage to concentrate. This clever teacher knew how quickly young brains ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... passive brain Of love that bleeding lies, Of hoping ever and hoping in vain, Of a sorrow that never dies— When a sudden spatter of angry rain Smote against every window-pane, And ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... more terrible now that he was with his friends than when he was outside and alone. He kept on saying to himself that there were plenty more who would be spending the night out of doors. He strove to distract his mind by talking, but in the middle of his words a spatter of rain against the window would ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... a spatter of hoofs coming up the drive sent Mrs. Dunlop to the sitting-room window. She tried to see out through streaming ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote

... shall I tarnish the mirror of life, A spatter of rust on its polished steel! The seasons reel Like a goaded wheel. Half-numb, half-maddened, my ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... meet the morn, Were all his efforts at the plough; Then, the mill-brook with hay or corn, Good creature! how he'd spatter through! ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield

... whooping-cough and measles, pay for clothing and doctors' bills, and, while it complained about business losses and safe-guarded trees and harvests and buildings, destroyed the most valuable product of all with a spatter of bullets ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... starlings, with their red and yellow epaulets, rising and fluttering and sinking again among the lilies and mallows, and the white crane, paler than a ghost, wading in the grassy shallows. She saw the ravening garfish leap from the bayou, and the mullet in shining hundreds spatter away to left and right; and the fisherman and the shrimp-catcher in their canoes come gliding up the glassy stream, riding down the water-lilies, that rose again behind and shook the drops from their crowns, like water-sprites. Here and there, farther out, she saw the little cat-boats of ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... mold, molder; go bad &c adj.. render unclean &c adj.; dirt, dirty; daub, blot, blur, smudge, smutch^, soil, smoke, tarnish, slaver, spot, smear; smirch; begrease^; dabble, drabble^, draggle, daggle^; spatter, slubber; besmear &c, bemire, beslime^, begrime, befoul; splash, stain, distain^, maculate, sully, pollute, defile, debase, contaminate, taint, leaven; corrupt &c (injure) 659; cover with dust &c n.; drabble in the mud^; roil. wallow in the mire; slobber, slabber^. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the Manhattoes were alarmed, one sultry afternoon, just about the time of the summer solstice, by a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning. The rain descended in such torrents, as absolutely to spatter up and smoke along the ground. It seemed as if the thunder rattled and rolled over the very roofs of the houses; the lightning was seen to play about the church of St. Nicholas, and to strive three times, in ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... the others and appeared at the head of the straightaway. The muffled thud of hoofs became audible, rising in swift crescendo as the shadow resolved itself into a gaunt bay horse with a tiny negro boy crouched motionless in the saddle. A rush, a flurry, a spatter of clods, a low-flying drift of yellow dust and the vision passed, but the Bald-faced Kid had seen enough to compensate him for the early hours and the lack of breakfast. He glanced at ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan

... and the spatter of red dust from a bullet near his feet, told him he was recognized. He stirred not; but another shout, and a cry, "There they are—BOTH of 'em!" ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Angeline has seen 'em as thick as spatter! They come when you're asleep, and there don't anybody know it. I shouldn't dare open my eyes in the night. They're wrapped in a sheet, all white, and their eyes snap like fire. ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May

... strokes ceased and the rattle of rifle fire died out in a desultory spatter as stray bullets impinged against the ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant

... suck. Soupe, sup, liquid. Souple, supple. Souter, cobbler. Sowens, porridge of oat flour. Sowps, sups. Sowth, to hum or whistle in a low tune. Sowther, to solder. Spae, to foretell. Spails, chips. Spairge, to splash; to spatter. Spak, spoke. Spates, floods. Spavie, the spavin. Spavit, spavined. Spean, to wean. Speat, a flood. Speel, to climb. Speer, spier, to ask. Speet, to spit. Spence, the parlor. Spier. v. speer. Spleuchan, pouch. Splore, a frolic; ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... sharply, "you may set the muffins down and go at once to Miss Pollyanna's room and shut the windows. Shut the doors, also. Later, when your morning work is done, go through every room with the spatter. See that ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter

... flatt'ry deal; Your scorn, your hate, with that conceal. Seem only to regard your friends, But use them for your private ends. Stint not to truth the flow of wit; Be prompt to lie whene'er 'tis fit. Bend all your force to spatter merit; Scandal is conversation's spirit. Boldly to everything pretend, And men your talents shall commend. I know the Great. Observe me right, So shall you grow like man polite." He spoke and bowed. With mutt'ring jaws The wond'ring circle grinned applause. Now, warmed with malice, envy, spite, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various

... old age pensions, because they never reach old age. They find themselves ground up by all kinds of machinery, ground to death under car wheels, sawed to pieces in factories and mills, falling from ten and twelve story buildings, picked up on the ground just one big spatter of blood and bones. They know these conditions are wrong and they can't change them, and the people who have control of it are squeezing them tighter and tighter all the time and they don't know which way to turn. And which way ...
— Industrial Conspiracies • Clarence S. Darrow

... building double walls of boards and pouring in the concrete. When this has hardened, the boards are removed, and whatever sort of finish the owner prefers is given to the walls. They can be treated by spatter-work, pebble dash, or in other ways before the cement is fully set, or by bush hammering and tool work after the cement has hardened. Coloring matter can be mixed with the cement in the first place; and if the owner decides to change the ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan

... turning swiftly and trudging down the road. He would have liked to howl himself. Montoya's kindliness at parting—and his gift—had touched Pete deeply, but he had fought his emotion then, too proud to show it. Now he felt a hot something spatter on his hand. His mouth quivered. "Doggone the dog!" he exclaimed. "Doggone the whole doggone outfit!" And to cheat his emotion he began to sing, in a ludicrous, choked way, that sprightly and inimitable ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... considerable advantages in the way of being generally invited to write about what interests me, instead of indulging in a kind of spray or spatter work of beneficial publicity—instead of getting off ideas at a nation with a nice elegant literary atomizer, I insist on making ideas do things and I plan on having my ideas done up solidly in ten solid men who will make the ideas ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee

... briletajxo. Spanish-fly kantarido. Spare (extra) ekstra. Spare indulgi. Sparing, to be sxpari. Sparing (saving) sxparema. Spark fajrero. Sparkle brili. Sparrow pasero. Sparrow-hawk akcipitro. Sparse maldensa. Spasm spasmo. Spatter sxprucigi (sur). Spawn fisxsemo. Speak paroli. Speak through the nose nazparoli. Speaker parolanto. Spear lanco. Special speciala. Specialise specialigi. Specialist specialisto. Speciality ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... Ashcroft (which was the beginning of the long trail) at sunrise. The town lay low on the sand, a spatter of little frame buildings, mainly saloons and lodging houses, and resembled an ordinary cow-town ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... thoughtlessly provided and a couple of big mirrors that looked as if you could throw a catsup bottle clear through them, only you couldn't, because it would stop there after merely breaking the glass, and spatter in a ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... there in their ranks, however, moves a forlorn one who is blind—blind in the sense of the dulled window-pane on which the pelting raindrops have mingled and run down, obscuring sunshine and the circling birds, happy fields, and storied garden; blind with the spatter of a misery uncomprehended, unanalysed, only felt as something corporeal in its ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame

... enamel dressing table with toilet water and ring my piano top with wet glasses and spatter grease on the kitchenette wall. But I'll be earning a million," Harrietta announced, recklessly, "or thereabouts. Why ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... the three sisters protested that she had better not; she was not properly equipped, and would ink herself all over. If she would pin down a leaf upon the scrap she held up, Grace should spatter it for her, and they would make it ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... a volley and another volley which answered came from his right, and then there was a spatter of musketry, stray shots following each other and quickly dying away. Talbot saw the flash of the guns, and the smell of burnt gunpowder came to his nostrils. He made a movement of impatience, for the powder poisoned the pure air. He heard the shouts of men, but they ceased ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... scrupulously white. Although he seemed, judging from the mud he had picked up on the way, to have come from London, his horse was as smooth and cool as his own iron-grey periwig and pigtail. Neither man nor beast had turned a single hair; and saving for his soiled skirts and spatter-dashes, this gentleman, with his blooming face, white teeth, exactly-ordered dress, and perfect calmness, might have come from making an elaborate and leisurely toilet, to sit for an equestrian portrait at old ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... aspect of the rudest. A feeble yellow flame from a gas-light is all that illuminates it. All round us are troughs and bottles and water-pipes, and ill-conditioned utensils of various kinds. Everything is blackened with nitrate of silver; every form of spot, of streak, of splash, of spatter, of stain, is to be seen upon the floor, the walls, the shelves, the vessels. Leave all linen behind you, ye who enter here, or at least protect it at every exposed point. Cover your hands in gauntlets of India-rubber, if you would not utter Lady Macbeth's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... threateningly, at least he did not speak angrily. But the four Boyle children gave him one affrighted glance and started on a run for the corral, looking back over their shoulders now and then as if they expected a spatter ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower

... us, partly because he is full of it himself, and partly because he is green, and don't know any better." Tucket muttered and spat, then broke forth again, "I be darned ef that pesky football didn't take me right in the face, and spatter my ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... sharp. He did not spill over on every occasion. He had no little spurts of wit like a spatter of water on a hot stove, but when he let out his joke it went off like a percussion cap. The attention of the company being secured, he alluded to his present position as a change, he believed, for the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... amazement. It was a little sanctum which she and Quenrede had shared in the old days as a kind of studio. Here they had been allowed to try experiments in poker work, painting, fret-carving, spatter-work, or any other operations which were considered too messy to be performed in the school-room downstairs. They had loved their "den," as they called it, and had taken a particular pleasure in covering its walls with pictures, cut, most of them, from magazines, and stuck on with glue or paste. ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... a crab full of yellow meat, which she was in the act of cleaning. As soon therefore as she heard this taunt, she came, crab in hand, to spatter Hu Po's face, as she laughingly reviled her. "I'll take you minx with that cajoling tongue of ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... a scream from Alice, a big whoosh of wind, a flash way ahead (where I'd aimed), a spatter of hot metal inside the cabin, a blinding spot in the middle of the World Screen, a searing beam inches from my neck, an electric shock that lifted me from my seat and ripped ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... it is!" said Jennie. "I think I could manage with plants, if it were not for this eternal showering and washing they seem to require to keep them fresh. They are always tempting one to spatter the carpet and surrounding furniture, which are not equally benefited ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... side of a fish glittered just beneath the surface. With a skillful dip, a splash, and a spatter the trout lay quivering ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... like a white-hot ball in the brazen sky and the men held to the rails, mouths open, and stared ahead into the safe open water, expecting every moment for the Vulcan to spatter skyward in a volcano of ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling

... clumsy in handling the dishes and plates. Wherefore'—she looked funnily over her shoulder—'you are to think of Gloriana in a green and gold-laced habit, dreadfully expecting that the jostling youths behind her would, of pure jealousy or devotion, spatter it with sauces and wines. The gown was Philip's gift, too! At this happy juncture a Queen's messenger, mounted and mired, spurs up the Rye road and delivers her a letter'—she giggled—'a letter from a good, simple, frantic Spanish gentleman ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... in an instant, Mr. Smithers is off and away in pursuit. His heavy rubber-boots spatter over the bricks with an echo that startles the sober residents from their slumbers. Strong of limb, and not wholly unaccustomed to such exercise, he rapidly gains upon the fugitive, who, finding himself so hotly followed, utters a faint cry, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... study, I give, for use of making toddy, A bottle full of white-face STINGO, Another, handy, called a mingo. My wit, as I've enough to spare, And many much in want there are, I ne'er intend to keep at home, But give to those that handiest come, Having due caution, where and when, Never to spatter gentlemen. The world's loud call I can't refuse, The fine productions of my muse; If impudence to fame shall waft her, I'll give the public all, hereafter. My love-songs, sorrowful, complaining, (The recollection puts ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... a grand sight, as it rolled toward us, over the timber. And soon it was raining below us, down at the beaver pond—and then, with a drizzle and a spatter, the rain ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... himself with the window, examining with an air of irascibility a stain of blood which his cut finger had left on the white paint near the lock. His eyes travelled from it to the muddy footprints of the two who had come in from the garden and to the spatter of earth-daubed leaves on the polished floor, and his mouth drew down at the corners in a grimace of passion that made Ellen long to run to him and kiss him and bid him not give way to the madness of order so prevalent in this house. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... of a place?" He was on his knees digging a little trench with his knife, piling up the moist earth in miniature embankments, so that the dripping from the roof would not spatter this Princess of his whom he had saved from ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... there came a yell, a chatter of barbaric voices, a scuffle and a scream; a gray-black figure mounted the rail, and poised there a moment, an offence to the sunlight, and then, falling convulsively downwards, hit the yellow water with a smack and a spatter of spray, ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... was too late. Relying upon the manacles, the quartermaster had taken his hands for a moment off Craddock's arm. In that instant he had flung off the carpenter, and, amid a spatter of pistol bullets, had sprung the bulwarks and was swimming for his life. He had been hit and hit again, but it takes many pistols to kill a resolute and powerful man who has his mind set upon doing something ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... attention of a near-by nozzleman. "Walk up to it. It won't bite you." But the valiant fire-fighter held stubbornly to his post, while the stream he directed continued to describe a graceful curve and spatter upon the sidewalk in front of the burning building. "You're spoiling that old woman's bed," Anthony warned him, at which a policeman with drawn club forced him back as if resentful of criticism. Other peace officers compelled the crowd ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... less, women. They are not in the army, it may be said but then they are the army. They are very formidable. In France one must count with the women. The drive back from Langeais to Tours was long, slow, cold; we had an occasional spatter of rain. But the road passes most of the way close to the Loire, and there was something in our jog-trot through the darkening land, beside the flowing river, which it ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... warning historians against following truth too close upon the heels, the caution is a good one for poets as respects truth to Nature. But it is a mischievous fallacy in historian or critic to treat as a blemish of the man what is but the common tincture of his age. It is to confound a spatter of mud with ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... sun drawing closer down upon the long steel saw that the peaks to our westward made. The site of my shock lay behind me—I knew now well enough that it had been a shock, and that for a long while to come I should be able to feel the earth spatter from Mr. Adams's bullet against my ear and sleeve whenever I might choose to conjure that moment up again—and the present comfort in feeling my distance from that stone in the road increase continually put me in more cheerful spirits. With the quick rolling of the wheels ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... brought him into the Temple, and the agents of the priests came on the fifth day to drag me out and kill me in some convenient byway, the sacristans closing the doors of the Temple behind me. We will make an end of this mischief, the hirelings said, and began to look around for stones wherewith to spatter out my brains; they cast off their garments and threw dust into the air, and I should have met my death if the noise had been any less, but it was even greater than the day Stephen died, and the Roman ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... sailors, British and American, toiled until they dropped in their tracks, pulling at the kedge anchors and hawsers or bending to the sweeps of the cutters which towed at intervals and were exposed to the spatter of shot. It seemed impossible that the Constitution could slip clear of this pack of able frigates which trailed her like hounds. Toward midnight the fickle breeze awoke and wafted the ships along under studding sails and all the light ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... her! shatter her! Throw and scatter her!" Shouts each stony-hearted chatterer! "Dash at the heavy Dover! Spill her! kill her! tear and tatter her! Smash her! crash her!" (the stones didn't flatter her!) "Kick her brains out! let her blood spatter her! Roll on ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... stop playing, then." And in spite of a mild spatter of applause from the first-cabin deck and one or two requests for more of his delightful music, he rose and went within. It was clear that his soft courtesies, free performances, were for the poor folk in the steerage, not for the rich upon ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... eagerly, having in a moment changed in his mind the destination of the flowers; "I've found a place where the checker-berries are thick as spatter." And Phil put the flowers and the berries in his cousin's hand. Alice looked very much pleased with this simple tribute, but, as she admired it, unfortunately asked—women always ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... seen Horned Owls so plentiful. I did not know that there were so many Bear and Beaver left; I never was so much impressed by the inspiring raucous clamour of the Cranes, the continual spatter of Ducks, the cries of Gulls and Yellowlegs. Hour after hour we paddled down that stately river adding our 3 1/2 miles to its 1 mile speed; each turn brought to view some new and lovelier aspect of bird and forest life. I never ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... stood there, a carriage rolled by. Some one looked out. "O, mamma," said a young voice in English, "look at that pretty little peasant," and a kid-gloved hand was stretched through the open window to spatter a shower of base coin toward her. It was terrible! The children sprang for it, and, fighting and laughing, ran homewards with the dreadful Talila. The parti-colored picturesque dress had been a joy to Mae. Now she longed ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason

... "Good morrow, Gossip Joan." "Polly. Why, how now, Madam Flirt? If you thus must chatter, And are for flinging dirt, Let's try who best can spatter, Madam Flirt! "Lucy. Why, how now, saucy jade? Sure the wench is tipsy! How can you see me made The scoff of such a gipsy? [To him.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... we had some nuts," panted perspiring Inez, stirring the bubbling mess in the kettle so vigorously that a great spatter flew up and ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown

... a serious tone, "I'd rather fall into the hands of the Germans, and have some chance for my life, than spatter myself all over ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll

... papers continued, but Bayley, shifting slightly, revealed to me the three- day old wound on his left side that had soaked the ground about him. I saw Pigeon fling up a helpless arm as to guard himself against a spatter of shrapnel, and Luttrell with a foolish tight-lipped smile lurched over all in one jointless piece. Only old Vee's honest face held steady for awhile against the darkness that had swallowed up the battalion ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... physical conditions influencing explosions—especially as to barometric influence. There was a good deal of disjointed information on lavas, ropy or rapid flowing and viscous—also on spatter cones ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... point, Mr. Goodchild continued at intervals to breathe a vein of classic fancy and eloquence exceedingly irksome to Mr. Idle, until it appeared that the honest English pronunciation of that Cumberland country shortened Aspatria into 'Spatter.' After this supplementary discovery, Mr. Goodchild ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens

... on to rain," supplied Pendrilla piteously, and a gusty spatter on the small-paned window confirmed her words, as the three girls went back into the room where the candle stood in the middle of the floor with the three portions of bread and ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... him out," retorted Gabriel, with pure irrelevancy; "I'd scotch his sheets; I'd pour water in his boots; I'd sift sand in his hair-brush; I'd spatter vitriol on his shirts. A man who marries a woman deserves ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... estimate of the situation. This time the slug slapped rock close enough to spatter sandstone chips in ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... up on thoroughbred hacks, spatter-dashed to the knee, and entered the house to pay their respects to the ladies, or, more modest and sportsmanlike, divested themselves of their mud-boots, exchanged their hacks for their hunters, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... were hurrying to the well, which was soon completely surrounded by a thirsty mob, yelling and pushing and pulling to get to the bucket as the windlass brought it again and again to the surface. But their impatience and haste would soon overturn the windlass, and spatter the water all around the well till the whole crowd were wading in mud, the rope would break, and the bucket fall to the bottom. But there was a substitute for rope and bucket. The men would hasten away and get long, slim poles, ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy

... and flushed through with darkness.... Lidless windows Glazed with a flashy luster From some little pert cafe chirping up like a sparrow. And down among iron guts Piled silver Throwing gray spatter of light... pale without heat... Like the ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... care now, and don't spatter me all over the slide," said the cheerful stout girl, whose doll-like face was almost always ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson

... articles can be prettily decorated by spatter-work. Ferns are the favorite shapes to use. You first pin them on whatever it is that is to be ornamented in this way, arranging them as prettily as possible. Then rub some Indian ink in water on a saucer until it is quite thick. ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... start this morning we had seen mists in various quarters, betokening that there was rain in those spots, and now it began to spatter in our own faces, although within the wide extent of our prospect we could see the sunshine falling on portions of the valley. A rainbow, too, shone out, and remained so long visible that it appeared to have made a permanent stain ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... rest of our company on the day we ran out o' Budmouth because it was thoughted that Boney had landed round the point. There was I, straight as a young poplar, wi' my firelock, and my bag-net, and my spatter-dashes, and my stock sawing my jaws off, and my accoutrements sheening like the seven stars! Yes, neighbours, I was a pretty sight in my soldiering days. You ought to ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... the vessel over until the water hissed beneath her lee bulwarks. Broad and ungainly, she floundered from wave to wave, dipping her round bows deeply into the blue rollers, and sending the white flakes of foam in a spatter over her decks. On her larboard quarter lay the two dark galleys, which had already hoisted sail, and were shooting out from Freshwater Bay in swift pursuit, their double line of oars giving them a vantage which could ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... he assured himself. "A gust of wind; a spatter of rain; perhaps a dash of hail; then, of a sudden, a sky so calm and peaceful one would wonder how it ever could have been disturbed." Even as he spoke the house shivered in every timber as the gale struck ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead

... as always. Yellow landscape, spatter cones, glittering streaks that might be metal in the volcanic ground—created by dusting ground mica on wet glue to catch the reflection of the sun. ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins

... down? No, not yet. He had seized Burr, and hoisting him in his two arms was coming at a plunging run through the spatter of bullets ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... "that's a bully waterfall!" and he thrust his whip into the stream to see it spatter, hopping ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... I can do. You have come at just the right time. We are driven with business. By the way, you needn't wait for Mr. Whippleton. I'll set you at work. I've just sold a bill, and want it entered. Take your pen, old boy, and show us whether you can spatter the ink or not. By the way, are you a hard brick ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic

... saying over and over until it would say itself. But somehow when I got up before that "last day of school" audience and opened my mouth, it was a great opening, but nothing came out. It came out of my eyes. Tears rolled down my cheeks until I could hear them spatter ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... producing one, 'this is the infallible and invaluable composition for removing all sorts of stain, rust, dirt, mildew, spick, speck, spot, or spatter, from silk, satin, linen, cambric, cloth, crape, stuff, carpet, merino, muslin, bombazeen, or woollen stuff. Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains, pitch-stains, any stains, all come ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... A sudden spatter of rain against the window-pane made them both look up in surprise; and in a lighter ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... was starting off. A slight whistle brought him to a standstill, and I drew a bead behind his shoulder, and low down, resting the rifle across the crooked branch of a dwarf spruce. At the crack he ran off at speed, making no sound, but the thick spatter of blood splashes, showing clear on the white snow, betrayed the mortal nature of the wound. For some minutes I followed the trail; and then, topping a ridge, I saw the dark bulk lying motionless in a snow drift at the foot of a low rock-wall, from ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt

... more reckless. They stood in their trenches. We fired. We got them by the ones and twos. They ducked, then—swoop—again the major was over them, and again they forgot. Up went their rifles, and spatter, spatter, the bullets went ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat

... in the icy water, and moving out into the shadow with no more noise than a chub's swirl or a minnow's spatter-leap when a great chain-pike ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... we heard of a huge black bear that had been molesting some new ranches. "No take now," said the Indian. "Him fur no good now." Though we might camp on bare rocks and the fire lay dead ash, it was the extra Indian paddler who invariably went back to spatter it out. You know the white's innate love for a roaring log fire in front of the camp at night? ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut

... was a moving picture, too, and it went away past the word-spurs, because you painted the balance of it yourselves like a flash. You saw the glass fall and smash on the floor, and you saw the water spatter the man's feet and trousers—then some of you saw him jump back and look up quick and kind of mad like at the person passing, ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith

... face, leaving her head covered only by a close-fitting motoring bonnet of dark green, from within which her face, vivid with the colouring born of many days driving with and without veils, met without flinching the spatter of rain the fitful April wind sent drifting in under the edge of the top. Her black eyelashes caught the ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... hour at night. Here is a group of extremely diminutive ones, dancing an elf-like measure to the music of an itinerant organist. Darting about, here, there, and everywhere, are packs of ragged little urchins. They paddle along in the dirty gutter, the black ooze from which they spatter over the passers on the sidewalk, and run with confiding recklessness against the legs of hurrying pedestrians. Ragged and poor as they certainly are, they do not often ask for alms, but continually give themselves up, with wild abandon, to chasing each other in and out between ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... angrily that if it were Collins's blood he had not missed it particularly, for he had moved away without leaving a sign of a trail. Where to I had no means of knowing, till five minutes later I found another spatter of blood on my corduroy road,—and as I looked at it my own blood boiled. There was not only no one but that young devil Collins who could have lain in wait for me; but he had had the nerve to walk away on my own road! Where to, beat me; but considering what I knew of ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... the night, Gypsy was awakened by a great noise. The wind was blowing a miniature hurricane through the trees, and the rain was falling in torrents. She could hear it spatter on the canvas roof, and drop from the poles, and gurgle in a stream through the ditch. She could hear, too, the loud, angry murmur of the trout brook and the splashing of hundreds of rivulets that dashed down the slope and over the ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... the door; but it's the old story over again—rain, rain, rain; spatter, spatter, spatter,—'I can't stop here with these true Brittons,' sais I, 'guess I'll go and see the old Squire: he ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... came hurrying in with the news that the mutineers were coming. And not long after, this was confirmed by a spatter of bullets ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes

... hung with spatter-work that the biggest brother had done, and with photographs and magazine pictures in splint frames. Over the front door was tacked the first yarn motto that the little girl had ever worked. It was faded, but her mother, though her eyes were dimming, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates

... flicker of sunlight on the steel as it whirled, saw the arm of Poleon Doret fling itself across the bar with the speed of a striking serpent, heard a smash of breaking glass, felt the shock of a concussion, and the spatter of some liquid in his face. Then he saw the man's revolver on the floor half-way across the room, saw fragments of glass with it, and saw the fellow step backward, snatching at the fingers of his right hand. A smell of powder-smoke and rank ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... drizzling rain, which resolved itself into a steady downpour as the afternoon wore on. It was so heavy that Mr Sharnall could hear the indistinct murmur of millions of raindrops on the long lead roofs, and their more noisy splash and spatter as they struck the windows in the lantern and north transept. He was in a bad humour as he came down from the loft. The boys had sung sleepily and flat; Jaques had murdered the tenor solo with his strained and raucous voice; and old Janaway remembered afterwards ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... as they passed in the lamp's rays, officers smooth-shaven and powdered, wearing blue and yellow, and their long boots; soldiers with black queues in eelskin, tiny mustaches turned up at the waxed ends, and long black, buttoned spatter-dashes ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... big men stepped outside. In the night there was a sudden clatter of hoofs as the Texans mounted and rode. From across the river came a brief spatter of musket fire, then silence. In the dark, there had been no difficulty in breaking through ...
— Remember the Alamo • R. R. Fehrenbach

... figure it up, just for the joy of envyin' him, I reckon. An average twenty-wagon outfit, first and last, would bring him in somewheres about fifty dollars—and besides he had forty-rod at four bits a glass. And outfits at that time were thicker'n spatter. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... their burdens. My sympathies constantly went out to this man. There was no room for him inside, and certainly no wish for his company, and so he must, perforce, balance himself under his umbrella, first on one leg and then on the other, in his effort to escape the spatter which now reached his knees, quite as would a wet chicken ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith

... was all over with MacKenzie. The big guns of the Toronto troops shelled the woods, killing one patriot rebel and wounding eleven, four fatally. In answer, only a clattering spatter of shots came from the rebel side. The patriots were in headlong flight with the mounted men of Toronto ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... men lay down on the asphalt; and when their friend next poked his head and shoulders around the corner, they fired. They saw the adobe plaster spatter from a corner of the building just under the man's chin; but that wasn't getting him. They jacked their sights up 50 yards, making it 800 yards; and when next the native showed around the corner they both got him—one plumb ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly



Words linked to "Spatter" :   spot, dot, disperse, blob, swash, slosh, rain down, patter, spit, bespatter, blot, slush around, painting, splosh, spattering, slush, rain, sputtering, noise, sputter, splash, sprinkle, slosh around



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