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Dyke   /daɪk/   Listen
Dyke

noun
1.
(slang) offensive term for a lesbian who is noticeably masculine.  Synonyms: butch, dike.
2.
A barrier constructed to contain the flow of water or to keep out the sea.  Synonyms: dam, dike.






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"Dyke" Quotes from Famous Books



... gash an' faithfu' tyke As ever lap a sheugh or dyke. His honest, sonsie, bawsn't[51] face, Aye gat him friends in ilka place. His breast was white, his touzie back Weel clad wi' coat of glossy black; His gaucie tail, wi' upward curl, Hung owre ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... displaying the ruddy light and acrid fumes of glowing lava. He is not master of his ideas, but his ideas master him; he is under submission to them; he has not that firm foundation of common practical sense which controls their impetuosity and ravages, that inner dyke of social caution which, with Montesquieu and Voltaire, bars the way to outbursts. Everything with him rushes out of the surcharged crater, never picking its way, through the first fissure or crevice it finds, according to his haphazard reading, a letter, a conversation, an improvisation, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... river—a river-bed!" was his horrified thought. Down went the nose of the car before him, the steering-wheel hitting him in the chest. Down came Fanny and all her black thoughts against the glass at his back. The car had not fallen very far; it had slid forward into a snow-lined dyke, and remained, resting on its radiator, its front wheels thrust into the steep walls of the bank, its back wheels in the air. Alfred climbed down from a seat which had lost its seating power; Fanny opened the door and stepped ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... full force of this remarkable adjuration burst upon Mr. Stenner all at once it might have carried him away, which would not have been so bad a thing for San Francisco; but as the meaning had to percolate slowly through a dense dyke of ignorance, it produced no other immediate effect than the exclamation, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... Sobieski, anxious for the fate of the day, mounted the dyke, and looked eagerly around for the arrival of some messenger from the little army. As the wind blew strongly from the south, a cloud of dust precluded his view; but from the approach of firing and the clash of arms, he was led to fear that his friends ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... to be brought from a distance. Belknap thus describes it: "It was environed, two miles and a half in circumference, with a rampart of stone from thirty to thirty-six feet high, and a ditch eighty feet wide, with the exception of a space of two hundred yards near the sea, which was inclosed by a dyke and a line of pickets. The water in this place was shallow, and numerous reefs rendered it inaccessible to shipping, while it received an additional protection from the side-fire of the bastions. ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... half fantastic, half faithful portrait of Shelley, who was Peacock's intimate friend), or of Dr. Folliott (a genial parson) in Crotchet Castle—as the brilliant picture of the breaking of the dyke in Elphin, or the comic one of the rotten-borough election in Melincourt—are among the triumphs of the English novel. And they are present by dozens and scores: while (though it is a little out of our way) there is no doubt that the attraction of the books is greatly enhanced by the abundance ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... millrace which Desmond traced to its junction with one of the broad dykes intersecting Morstead Fen. The only inhabited house to the south of the Bellward villa appeared to be a lonely public house situated on the far edge of the fen, a couple of hundred yards away from the road. It was called "The Dyke Inn." ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... of the sedge-beds of Wicken Mere, almost the only untouched tract of fenland; slow herds of cattle grazed, more and more minute, in the unhedged pasture-land, and the solitary figure of a labourer moving homeward on the top of the green dyke, seemed in the long afternoon to draw no nearer. Here and there were the floodgates of a lode, with the clear water slowly spilling itself over the rim of the sluice, full of floating weed. There was something infinitely ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the earth, England was an undiscovered country. It was some time before he learned its name; and for all I know he might have expected to find wild beasts or wild men here, when, crawling in the dark over the sea-wall, he rolled down the other side into a dyke, where it was another miracle he didn't get drowned. But he struggled instinctively like an animal under a net, and this blind struggle threw him out into a field. He must have been, indeed, of a tougher fibre than he looked to withstand without expiring such buffetings, the violence of his exertions, ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... likely to punish me," said Rodney; "but you know I am used to it; and, though decidedly unpleasant, it does not grate on my nerves as it did a year or two ago. Van Dyke, my teacher, says I am hardened. But I would rather have a stroll here, and a flogging after it, than be shut up in school and church all day to escape it. I wish, Will, that mother was like your grandfather, and would let me do as I ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown

... of November, 1519. Across the southern end of the great Lake Texcoco stretched a singular dyke or causeway, several miles in length and a few yards in width—a road or pathway built up of stone and mortar above the surrounding water, connecting the shores of that inland sea with an island and three other similar causeways. Upon this ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... were scanning the faces of the sailors. "I'll no be the last to join ye," he said. "But all must agree. One man out would make a hole i' the dyke." ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... assurance that Hartmann always found almost as irritating as the man's gracefully exaggerated manner and speech. His blonde hair was brushed back from a high, narrow forehead. A turned-up moustache and a close-trimmed and pointed Van Dyke beard added ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco

... last the brute Hun hordes Had broken that wall of steel; And that soon, through this breach in the freeman's dyke, ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke

... of Ostende—after the great hotels—is its Digue, or Dyke, a great longdrawn-out breakwater against whose cemented walls pound the furies of the North Sea with such a virulence and force as to make one seasick even on land. "See our Digue and die," say the fisherfolk of Ostende,—those that have not been crowded out by the palace hotels,—"See ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... direction. At the head of Loch Fyne, near Dunderar, the grim tower of the Macnaughtons—which, from some decorations on it, looks hugely like as if it had been built in the seventeenth century with the stones of an old church—we find a tuft of trees with a dyke round it, called Kilmorich. It is a graveyard evidently, though it may not have been recently opened; the surface is uneven, and several rough stones, which may have been placed there at any time, stick through the earth. These, after a deliberate ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... navy-yard; then he went down to the bottom of the basin hewn out of the rock, which was to contain the ships-of-the-line, and to be covered by the water to a depth of fifty-five feet. "During our stay," says M. de Bausset, "the Emperor wanted to breakfast on the dyke, or jetty, which had been begun in the unhappy reign of the most virtuous of kings. I got there before Their Majesties, on a most lovely day, and had everything arranged. The table was set in view of the sea; the English ships ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... who seemed anxious to fulfil his promise of enabling them to see the city in a brief period of time, trotted them along the quays at a rapid rate, pointing out to them the great dyke which prevents the Zuyder Zee from washing into the town; then he conducted them up one street and down another, over bridges and along banks of canals innumerable, till they had not the slightest idea of where they were going or what ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston

... of Mr. Jordan's winning Essays which have called forth the hearty praise of Henry van Dyke who said: "They are suggestive and stimulating. His philosophy has three big little ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... emphatically laid down that the minister should not have been satisfied, and had in fact made a most unfortunate choice. He was thus answered by another parish oracle—perhaps the schoolmaster, perhaps a weaver:—"Fat better culd the man dee nir he's dune?—he bud tae big's dyke wi' the feal at fit o't." He meant there was no choice of material—he could only ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... every brimming dyke and trough Is laughing wide with ripples now, And oh, 'tis easy to forget That wintry winds can sigh and sough, When thrushes chant on every ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn

... is partly composed of rounded stones about 2 feet in diameter. These generally belong to the hard gritstone of the moors through which Newton Dale has been carved. Dr. Comber also mentioned the discovery of a whinstone from the great Cleveland Dyke, composed of basaltic rock, that traverses the hills near Egton and Sleights Moor, two miles above the intake of Newton Dale ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... pictorial spot. Under the black tree on the island she said good-bye to a lover whom she made not in the least like Richard, because she thought it probable later in the story he would meet a violent death. A man fled over the marsh before an avenger who, when the quarry tripped on the dyke's edge, buried a knife between his shoulders; and, as he struck, a woman lit the lamp in the window of the island farm, to tell the murdered man that it was safe to come. Indeed, that farm was a red rag to ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... waste; Langworth, probably a corruption of lang-wath, the long ford; Troy Wood, may be British, corresponding to the Welsh caertroi, a labyrinth or fort of mounds. The hamlets are Dogdyke, a corruption of Dock-dyke (the sea having once extended to these parts); Hawthorn Hill, Scrub Hill. There is an enclosure award in the possession of the clerk of ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter

... OFFA'S DYKE, an entrenchment and rampart between England and Wales, 100 m. long, extending from Flintshire as far as the mouth of the Wye; said to have been thrown up by Offa, king of Mercia, about the year 780, to confine the marauding Welsh within ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the good of his soul he made over to him all his lands, and on this estate David founded a sanctuary for men of all tribes and nationalities, and, to mark the privileged ground, he caused a deep trench to be dug, and traces of this trench you may find to-day known as "The Monk's Dyke." ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various

... Squalidness, and Hunger, and Disease are insufficient guardians of his home—and that the puff of the landlord's or the agent's breath may blow him off the land where he has lived, and send him and his to a dyke, or to prolong wretchedness in some desperate kennel in the next town, till the strong wings of Death—unopposed lord ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... land which, with my aid, France is to conquer, I am to receive as a reward the little Isle of Tobago in the West Indies! Have you finished, dyke, or have you ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... much about him. He is a fly in amber, nobody cares about the fly; the only question is, How the devil did it get there? Nor do I attack him for the love of glory, but from the love of utility, as a burgomaster hunts a rat in a Dutch dyke for fear ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... play with Marshall or Chilvers a thousand times and not know or care if the links were garbed in green or yellow, or if the clouds were pink or Van Dyke brown, but as I said before, the only sentiment aroused by association with these vindictive golf fiends is a wild and unreasoning desire to beat the life out of them at their own game. I dislike to ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... vast and silent, piercing the foliage with its first stars. Now and again a warm breath passed over us, blown from the woods; I tasted its strangely sweet perfume; I saw in glimpses the flying vision of a huge dark tulip, striped with gold, unfolding its petals on the moist bank of a dyke, and I asked myself whether a mysterious flower had really opened in the night, or whether it was but a new feeling, slowly budding, unfolding, blossoming ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... near, dives instant down, while he Enrag'd and spent retires. That mockery In Calcabrina fury stirr'd, who flew After him, with desire of strife inflam'd; And, for the barterer had 'scap'd, so turn'd His talons on his comrade. O'er the dyke In grapple close they join'd; but the' other prov'd A goshawk able to rend ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... respect the most; you are one of those from whom a gentleman can take a favour and no more words about it. I am an old soldier," he went on, looking rather disgusted-like around my chamber, "and you need not fear I shall prove burthensome. I have ate too often at a dyke-side, drank of the ditch, and had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and he said he would go and get the ball. So he went to the park-gate, but 't was shut; so he climbed the hedge, and when he got to the top of the hedge, an old woman rose up out of the dyke before him, and said, if he wanted to get the ball, he must sleep three nights in the ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various

... unfortunately for him, he was not destined to accomplish his mission, for as he was crossing the ditch his pole snapped asunder, and he suddenly found himself located in the very centre of the rank mud dyke. There he was, and all his efforts to free himself caused him only to ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... the town are very pleasant Downs for the company to ride on, the air of which is accounted extremely wholesome, and about eight miles from Brighthelmstone on the Downs is one of the finest prospects in the world called Devil's Dyke." ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes

... very sad. The shikari said nothing, but counted it out at seventy yards. Looking over the top of the dyke I'd thought it a hundred and probably took too full a foresight; anyway it was an abominably easy shot to miss. I wished very much I'd taken a few practice shots with the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... in stopping a hole in a Dutch dyke is doubtless better invested than if it were to be retained until a vast breach had laid half a kingdom under water. Surely your Hollander would agree to be mulcted in one-third of his fortune ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... fiercer blasts, we swung along the reedy shores of the narrowing lake, the broken sides of the Rigi standing finely up on our right hand. Winston was satirical about the poor Rigi and its railway, calling it the Primrose Hill and the Devil's Dyke of Switzerland, the paradise of trippers, a mountain whose sides are hidden under cataracts of beer-bottles; but from our point of view, the vulgarities of the maligned mountain were mellowed by distance, and I neither could nor would ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... Londonderry was certainly "Mr." Lea in 1873, his baronetcy dating from 1892, being one of the recognitions made by Lord Salisbury of the services of the Dissentient Liberal allies. The reference to Sir William Dyke as Liberal Whip was, as the context shows, an obvious slip of the pen, Sir William having been for many years prominent in the Conservative ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... was plain Hart Dyke in '73; then, as now, one of the members for Kent, and not yet whip of the Liberal Party, much less Minister of Education. Mr. G. H. Finch also then, as now, was member for Rutland, running Mr. Beach close for ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... yon auld fail dyke, I wot there lies a new-slain Knight; And naebody kens that he lies there, But his hawk, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... gentleman, medium sized, and wore a Van Dyke beard. He never whipped his slaves, and he didn't have a one dat ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various

... one man in England like Old Man Rubens, or Van Dyke, or those other fellows, I forget their names, who are head and shoulders above everybody else? Sort of Jay Gould in art, ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... (English Men of Letters Series), by Horton; Alfred Lord Tennyson, a Memoir by his Son. Napier, Homes and Haunts of Tennyson; Andrew Lang, Alfred Tennyson; Dixon, A Tennyson Primer; Sneath, The Mind of Tennyson; Van Dyke, The Poetry of Tennyson. Essays by Harrison, in Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill and Other Literary Estimates; by Stedman, in Victorian Poets; by Hutton, in Literary Essays; by Dowden, in Studies in Literature; by Forster, in Great Teachers; by ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... gypsy who is visited treats you as a guest, thus much Oriental politeness being deeply set in him—had been in America from boyhood, but he seemed to be perfectly acquainted with all whom I had known over the sea. Only one thing he had not heard, the death of old Gentilla Cooper, of the Devil's Dyke, near Brighton, for I had just received a letter from England announcing ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... abandoned. The next advance followed more than fifty years later. About A.D. 140 the district up to the Firth of Forth was definitely annexed, and a rampart with forts along it, the Wall of Antoninus Pius, was drawn from sea to sea (see BRITAIN: Roman; and GRAHAM'S DYKE). At the same time the Roman forts at Ardoch, north of Dunblane, Carpow near Abernethy, and perhaps one or two more, were occupied. But the conquest was stubbornly disputed, and after several risings, the land north of Cheviot seems to have ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... his coat-tails were waving victoriously as he leaped a dyke on his way to tell our Drumtochty Maecenas that ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... the Black Killer devilishly human, and yet they are dogs; not fabulous dogs, invented by clever writers. A great book! It is too thrilling; it reminds of "Wuthering Heights"; I shall, therefore, read this evening some of Henry Van Dyke's Canadian stories, and end the day with ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... that what happens to the one will not be long ere it reach the other. If a fog lodges on the one, it is sure to rain on the other; the mutual sympathies of the two countries were hence deduced in a copious dissertation, by Oswald Dyke, on what was called "The Union-proverb," which local proverbs of our country Fuller has interspersed in his "Worthies," and Ray and Grose ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... pleasantly the journey through the hills and open land of Brabant, the repeated crossing of arms of the Rhine, and the change from the undulating scenery of Belgium to the flat, rich meadows, the sunlit dyke roads, and the countless windmills of the Dutch levels. In those days there was unbroken land from Alkmaar and Leiden to the Dollart. Three great provinces, South Holland, North Holland, and Zuiderzeeland, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... picturesque enough to be preserved in English. "Sadd," I have said, is a wall or dyke, the term applied to the great dam of water- plants which obstructs the navigation of the Upper Nile, the lilies and other growths floating with the current from the (Victoria) Nyanza Lake. I may note that we need no longer derive from India the lotus-llily so extensively ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... "Environs of Southampton," was typical of the work he was to do. A long waste of land near the sea, the middle distance in deepest shadow, and richly colored storm-clouds racing overhead; the foreground in sunlight, enhanced by the artificial contrast of the rest of the picture; a wooden dyke on which, together with two white horses near by, the gleam of sunlight falls almost with a sound, so intensified is all the effect, make up the picture. Dupre's work is generally keyed up to the highest possible pitch, and it is no little merit that, with the constant insistence on this ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... be successful, must be intelligently applied. In unskilful hands it may work more damage than benefit. Mr. Theodore S. Van Dyke, who may always be quoted with confidence, says that the ground should never he flooded; that water must not touch the plant or tree, or come near enough to make the soil bake around it; and that it should be let in in small streams for ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett

... and still stately dwelling, lately owned by Jos. Shehyn, M.P.P., is a house formerly tenanted by Mr. J. Dyke. In the beginning of this century it was occupied by an old countryman, remarkable, if not for deep scientific attainments, at least for shrewd common sense and great success in life—Mr. P. Paterson, the proprietor of the extensive mills at Montmorency—now ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... wonderment was that long-armed creature on the point of land to Hans Houten and Heinrich Elkens, sailing up the James in the White Dove with good Holland sack for barter. These sturdy mariners from the dyke-and-windmill country would regard the contrivance with more critical eyes than could the red man from the ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... like ourselves, felt considerable reluctance to join in the expedition. Remonstrance, however, would have been idle; we therefore submitted with the best grace we could, and in a few minutes were bestriding Terence's favourite hunter, and crossing the country over ditch, dyke, and drain, as if we were tallying at the tail of a fox. The night was dark, and a recent fall of rain had so swollen a mountain stream which lay in our road, that when we reached the ford, which was generally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... my companion, "when it was customary for the English to cut off the ears of every Welshman who was found to the east of the dyke, and for the Welsh to hang every Englishman whom they found to the west of it. Let us be thankful that we are now more humane to each other. We are now on the north side of Pen y Coed. Do you know the meaning ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... met a young woman whom I had seen only once and that was twelve years ago. She came to me after a service and said, "Will you tell Van Dyke's 'Lump of Clay' to-night? Twelve years ago I heard you tell it. I was so discouraged at the time, for everything seemed going wrong and life seemed so useless. But I dropped into a church and heard you ...
— Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens • Margaret White Eggleston

... sleep—when four soldiers belonging to the Holy Brotherhood, bearing with them one whose manacles proclaimed him a prisoner, passed in steady silence to a huge tent in the neighbourhood of the royal pavilion. A deep dyke, formidable barricadoes, and sentries stationed at frequent intervals, testified the estimation in which the safety of this segment of the camp was held. The tent to which the soldiers approached was, in extent, larger than even the king's pavilion itself—a mansion of ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... regret to learn that a fire broke out early on Saturday morning, in the warehouse of Messrs James Acroyd and Son, worsted manufacturers, Bowling Dyke, near Halifax, when the building, together with a large quantity of goods, was entirely destroyed. We understand that Messrs Acroyd were insured to the extent of six or seven thousand pounds, but that the loss considerably ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... coat and handsome checked trowsers, a decidedly big derby hat (flat on top), an English walking coat, with plaid trowsers to match, the whole about a dozen checks high. This? An inventory of the wardrobe of Dr. Henry van Dyke, as it has been displayed to our appreciation. Has not the handsome wardrobe been a familiar feature in the history of literature? And does anybody like Dr. Goldsmith the less for having loved ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... contagion. The doctor's third case happened at midnight, being called on duty to the workhouse at that hour. It was about a mile from the town—something less perhaps. Halfway on his journey he found a man trying to raise a poor woman out of the dyke. He went to his assistance, and found the woman paralyzed with cold, and speechless. Locked in her arms, which were as rigid as bars of iron, was a dead child, whilst another with its tiny icy fingers was holding a death-grip ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... addresses have we seen the twig bent; in how many the giant oak which none can train? How often have we heard of that boy in Holland who saved his country by the simple expedient of pushing his finger into a hole in the dyke through which the dammed-up waters had begun to escape? There is that other lad, too, who has come down in history by reason of his insane resolve to climb "one niche the higher"—how often have we been told his thrilling story? These two ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson

... the sun. I hated the grass roots, and dreamed horribly of them piercing into my heart, and drawing the life-blood to feed the bloated sweaty leaves, but the graveyard had an awful fascination for me. Sometimes old men would wander inside the dyke and move slowly to a rude stone and sit there, and I would hear great sighs bursting into the quiet afternoon, when the sun always beat down. But I liked the old men for being there when the ivy rustled on the ruined old chapel wall ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars

... was known in many country places as "hag-ridden." Such superstitions are now nearly, if not quite, extinct, but still linger in old place-names, for it was usual in former times to attribute any uncommon or surprising physical appearance to supernatural agency. Thus we have such names as "Devil's Dyke," "Devil's Punchbowl," "Puck Pits," "Pokes-down" (Puck's Down), and ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... and magnificent resolve they came at us. We fought with sticks and all the power of our lungs. Rest was out of the question. The leafy dyke and "bed" stood ever in need of repair; the sallies were continuous and determined. The "bed" was not made for those knightly fish to lie ignobly upon. A single fish would slip down-stream, and, gathering speed and effort, leap with the glitter of heroism in its eyes. One such George caught in his ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... the sea dyke the Germans have posted heavy artillery.... They have also posted gunes in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various

... is a specimen of the conduct of that weak King governed by that first minister to whom poets and historians have given the glory they have stripped from his master; as, for instance, all the works of the siege of Rochelle, and the invention and unheard-of success of the celebrated dyke, all solely due to ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... beaux, are strangely constituted; and so it needed only this—the sudden stark brute jealousy of one male animal for another. That was the clumsy hand which now unlocked the dyke; and like a flood, tall and resistless, came the recollection of their far-off past and of its least dear trifle, of all the aspirations and absurdities and splendors of their common youth, and found him ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... Council under this scheme was formed in 1912 and held office for three years as prescribed by the Order in Council. The chairman was the Right Honourable A.H. Dyke Acland and the members included the Vice-Chancellors of several universities and representatives of forty-two associations of teachers. The first duty of the Council was to devise conditions of registration ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... white landscape, find a spell appropriate to the season in the words. The reverberation of the snow increases the pale daylight, and brings all objects nearer the eye. The Pentlands are smooth and glittering, with here and there the black ribbon of a dry-stone dyke, and here and there, if there be wind, a cloud of blowing snow upon a shoulder. The Firth seems a leaden creek, that a man might almost jump across, between well-powdered Lothian and well-powdered Fife. And the effect is not, as in other cities, a thing of half a day; the streets are soon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Kentish men he wrested a large piece of the country lying west of the Severn from the Welsh, took the chief town of the district which was afterwards called Shrewsbury, and like another Severus made a great dyke from the mouth of the Wye to that of the Dee which became henceforth the boundary between Wales and England, a position it has held with few changes to the present day. In church history Offa is of no less importance than in secular, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher

... Elisabeth went along the dyke, gathering the ring-shaped seeds of the wild mallow in her apron, with the object of making herself chains and necklaces out of them; so that when Reinhard had at last finished his bench in spite of ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm

... however, that as food portions diminished, soothing-syrup doses for the public increased. Whenever a wave of complaints over food shortage began to rise the Press would build a dyke of accounts of the trials of meatless days in Russia, of England's scarcity of things to eat, and of the dread in France of another winter. The professors writing in the Press grew particularly comforting. Thus on June 30 one of them comforted the public in a lengthy and serious article in the ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... this, may there not be a place for more of what may be named inspirational literature? Henry Van Dyke has coined a happy phrase in giving title to his delightful volume on "The Poetry of Tennyson," calling his papers "Essays in Vital Criticism." I like the thought. Literature is life, always that, in so far as literature is great; for ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... scattered about the surrounding hills. After passing a reservoir on the left the road reaches the lonely "Shepherd's Shore," nearly 600 feet up. Just past this point the mysterious Wansdyke is crossed. Hereabouts the Dyke runs in a fairly straight line east and west, where this direction keeps to the summit of the hills. It is well seen from our road as it descends on the right from Horton Down. To the east it eventually becomes lost in the fastnesses of Savernake ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... her husband, who was still talking with Judge Brewster. She was leaning on the arm of a tall, handsome man with a dark Van Dyke beard. ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow

... garth, it is strongly walled about with a dyke newly dug; on the top thereof are they building a wall made of clay, and burned like pots into ashlar stones hard and red, and these ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris

... YOU answer a personal?" Fifth avenue stage from Grand to Twenty-third street. Please address BEN. VAN DYKE, —- office, appointing interview. To prevent mistake, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... heart and strength, and by this time habitual training was beginning to tell and my second wind had come. Before me the ground rose slightly. I rushed up the slope and found before me a waste of watery slime, with a low dyke or bank looking black and grim beyond. I felt that if I could but reach that dyke in safety I could there, with solid ground under my feet and some kind of path to guide me, find with comparative ease a way out of my ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... before an April tempest. White flakes of spray, salt and luminous, were dashed into my face. The sea, indriven up the creeks, swept the road in many places. The cattle, trembling with fear, had left the marshland, and were coming, lowing, along the high path which bordered the dyke. And all the time an undernote of terror, the thunder of the sea rushing in upon the land, came like a deep monotonous refrain to the roaring of ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... becomes a dyke around the invision from within. And, as a consequence even of this, the appearance, as it is seen in art to-day, tends to be more removed from everyday objective reality than at any former period of art. A new religion is being ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various

... adieu, I was round the corner and out of sight in an instant. But my heart was too full and sore to carry me farther, so I darted into the side of the road and wept for a time. Then, rising up cautiously, I climbed the dyke to see if he yet stood where I had left him; and just at that moment I caught a glimpse of him climbing the dyke and looking out for me! He did not see me, and after he had gazed eagerly in my direction for a while he got down, set his face towards home, and began ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... confesseth that he carried his wife over a certain wainbridge, called Bishop Dyke Bridge, between Cawood and Sherburn; and within a lane about one hundred yards from the said bridge, and on the left hand of the said bridge, he and his wife went over a stile, on the left hand of a certain gate, entering into ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would build a dyke to keep the floods back from the people crowded ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... defensive works, many centuries old, which are as yet but little known. We may mention amongst them the so-called dyke of Zeedyck, near Tongres, a formidable intrenchment some 2,186 yards long by more than 325 feet wide at the base, and of a height varying from 49 to 65 feet; the earthen ramparts of Willem on the Geule, the not less important ones of Houlem, with many others far away from the great highways of ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... Anthony Van Dyke's father was neither a gentleman nor an ill-born person. He was "betwixt-and-between," being a silk merchant, who met so many fine folk that he seemed to be "fine folk" himself; and by the time Anthony had grown up, he actually believed ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... history. Offa ruled over the subject princes with rigour, and seems to have made his power really felt. He drove the Prince of Powys from Shrewsbury, and carried his ravages into the heart of Wales. He conquered the land between the Severn and the Wye, and his dyke from the Dee to the Severn, and the Wye, marked the new limits of the Welsh and English borders; while his laws codified the customs of Mercia, as those of AEthelberht and Ine had done with the customs of Kent and Wessex. ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen

... No. 63 shows a Venetian sunset by Turner, two portraits by Goya, another attributed to Velasquez, a splendid Raffaelesque altar-piece by Tiepolo, the like of which rarely leaves Italy, and canvases by Guido Reni, Ribera, and Van Dyke. Almost all the remaining space is taken up by excellent examples of the British art that influenced the early American painters, with some of prior date. Here are canvases by Lely, Kneller, Hogarth, Reynolds, Gainsborough, ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... no sooner was the surface soil exposed to the influence of light and moisture, than it became covered with a crop of wild-mustard or charlock." And he instances these facts to show that the seeds of this charlock, and these dyke plants, had lain dormant in the soil from the time the dykes were built, and the house erected. But these physiological facts, however well authenticated they may have been, are no more conclusive of the ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... that have a mechanical turn about them, hints on the best way of reaching the water or the possibility of a steeper slope for the sand-walls, are listened to with attention and respect. You are rewarded by an invitation which allows you to witness the very moment when the dyke is broken and the sea admitted into basin and canal, or the yet more ecstatic moment when the Union Jack waves over ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... and the Mare scrambled to her feet. For a moment she stood looking at her deliverer. Then crying, "We shall met again, Lysbeth van Hout!" suddenly she turned and sped up a dyke at extraordinary speed. In a few seconds there was nothing to be seen of her but a black spot upon the white landscape, and presently she had ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... and maketh trial of the ranks of men, and wheresoever he maketh onset there the ranks of men give way, even so Hector went and besought his comrades through the press, and spurred them on to cross the dyke. But his swift-footed horses dared not, but loud they neighed, standing by the sheer edge, for the wide fosse affrighted them, neither easy to leap from hard by, nor to cross, for overhanging banks stood ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)

... doubt you,' said Chillon. 'But "the world's a flood at a dyke for women, and they must ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... extended annually, the raising of dykes against overflow by the Rhone and by the sea. Drains have been cut in all directions to carry off the stagnant water, opening by traps into the sea. The extent of dyke now reaches two hundred and thirty miles. The banks of the two main branches of the Rhone are protected, as well as the sea-face of the Camargue, the triangle between them, and the annual cost to the country to keep them in repair is one hundred and twenty thousand francs. A ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... light beatin' on their faces. I ran, too, and yelled out curses like the rest. Then I heard a great cracklin' of wood, and I knew that the palisades were doon. There was a loud whistlin' in my ears, and I was aware that arrows were flyin' past me. I got to the bottom of a dyke, and I saw a hand stretched doon from above. I took it, and was dragged to the top. We looked doon, and there were silver men beneath us holdin' up their spears. Some of our folk sprang on to the spears. Then we others followed, and we ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... twilight did my grannie summon To say her prayers, douce honest woman! Aft yont the dyke she's heard you bummin' Wi' eerie drone; Or, rustlin', thro' the boortrees comin', Wi' ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... various walls and terraces in a steeply sloping garden, all which had to be constructed of such rough stones as lay nearest. Under the dextrous hands of a neighbour farmer's son, the pier projected, and the walls rose, as if enchanted; every stone taking its proper place, and the loose dyke holding itself as firmly upright as if the gripping cement of the Florentine towers had fastened it. My own better acquaintance with the laws of gravity and of statics did not enable me, myself, to build six inches of dyke that would stand; and ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... known an irrigating ditch when it was a brook, and to have lived by it, to mark the morning and evening tone of its crooning, rising and falling to the excess of snow water; to have watched far across the valley, south to the Eclipse and north to the Twisted Dyke, the shining wall of the village water gate; to see still blue herons stalking the little ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... cross the road to Antoinette: and Antoinette tried to go to meet him. But the insensate current of the passing throng carried her along like a windlestraw, while the horse of an omnibus, falling on the slippery asphalt, made a sort of dyke in front of Christophe, by which the opposing streams of carriages were dammed, so that for a few moments there was an impassable barrier. Christophe tried to force his way through in spite of everything: but he was trapped in the ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... same day, he walked into Ballochcoil, and when he returned, he offered her, with a solemn twinkle in his eye, a good-sized paper bag of the seductive sweetmeat; taking up his position on the top of a low dyke, and watching her, while she proceeded to make of that plump white bag, a lank and emaciated bag, surprising to behold. He sat and looked on, enjoying his idleness with the zest of a hard worker. The ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... in the manner I have previously described, the animals make ready to establish their dyke. They intermix their materials—driftwood, green willows, birch, poplars, etc.—in the bed of the river, with mud and stones, so making a solid bank, capable of resisting a great force of water; sometimes the trees will shoot up forming a hedge. The ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... well along in the afternoon when Kennedy took a train for the famous seaside resort, leaving me in New York with a roving commission to do nothing. All that I was able to learn at the Hotel Amsterdam was that a man with a Van Dyke beard had stung the office with a bogus check, although he had seemed to come well recommended. The description of the woman with him who seemed to be his wife might have fitted either Mrs. Dawson or Adele DeMott. The only person who had called had been a man ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve



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