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Leech   /litʃ/   Listen
Leech

verb
(past & past part. leeched; pres. part. leeching)
1.
Draw blood.  Synonyms: bleed, phlebotomise, phlebotomize.



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"Leech" Quotes from Famous Books



... puffed up O'erblown with haste. See how our years weigh, cousin. Who'd judge me with this paunch a temperate man, A man of modest means, a man withal Scarce overpast his prime? Well, God be praised, If age bring no worse burden! Who is this stranger? Simon the Leech tells me he claims to bear Some special message from the Lord—no doubt To-morrow, fresh from rest, he'll publish it Within ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... thee appear? A surprise,—an emotion! When life leaps in the veins, when it beats in the heart, When it thrills as it fills every animate part, Where lurks it? how works it?... We scarcely detect it. But life goes: the heart dies: haste, O leech, and dissect it! This accursed aesthetical, ethical age Hath so finger'd life's hornbook, so blurr'd every page, That the old glad romance, the gay chivalrous story With its fables of faery, its legends of glory, Is turn'd to ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... had so embarrassed myself, that my whole attention was engaged in contriving excuses, and raising small sums to quiet such as words would no longer mollify. It cost me eighty pounds in presents to Mr. Leech the attorney, for his forbearance of one hundred, which he solicited me to take when I had no need. I was perpetually harassed with importunate demands, and insulted by wretches, who a few months before would not have dared to raise ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... Inn friend, on a time, hurt one of his legs, and it became seriously inflamed. Not knowing of his indisposition, I was on my way to visit him as usual, one summer evening, when I was much surprised by meeting a lively leech in Field-court, Gray's Inn, seemingly on his way to the West End of London. As the leech was alone, and was of course unable to explain his position, even if he had been inclined to do so (which he had not the appearance of being), I passed him and went ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... then back at the Saxon, who moved no muscle of his face, though one might see that his eyes twinkled. And I looked at the riggers also, and saw that the Saxon was right, and that the men had the square-cut sail turned over with the leech forward and the luff aft. The sail was half laced to the yard, and none but a man who knew much of ships would have seen that ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler

... haemorrhage till the vessel can be secured. This sounds easy enough, and has been done several times with success. Thus, John Bell, by an incision two feet long, as he tells us in his hyperbolical language, was enabled to tie the vessel in the case of the leech-gatherer who had punctured the artery by a pair of long scissors. Carmichael of Dublin used a smaller incision, removed one or two pounds of clots, and tied the vessel, in a case of wound by ...
— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... "How did I know how the case would go?... Why did he take my advice, if he didn't want to? He was surely old enough to know his own interest.... He's simply disgusting now; he's getting fat and bloated, and always demanding money, money, money, like a daughter of the horse-leech—just as if he had a claim ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... Micawber", that is to say, his father, in the Navy Pay yacht, though he long afterwards pursued his studies of them more exhaustively at Wapping and the Isle of Dogs, and in expeditions with the Thames police. It was from a walk with Leech through Chatham by-streets that he gathered the hint of Charley Hexam and his father, for Our Mutual Friend, from the sight of "the uneducated father in fustian and the educated boy ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... his sleeve at this girl-teacher, sometimes hanging round her to fawn on her. But this made her dislike him more. He had a kind of leech-like power. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

... tree again. I see I don't even know the A B C of this business. In the old days the leech was a physician. You don't mean I'm ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr

... bottom. The elephant, which was trying to climb the hillock, was up to its belly; it seemed to be crawling over them with delight; and its shortened trunk, which was broad at the extremity, rose from time to time like an enormous leech. ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... the door. The gentlemen were about concluding to alight where they were, when Mr. Middleton was heard calling out, "Ho, thar, driver, don't run agin that ar ox-cart; turn a leetle to the right, can't ye? Now be keerful and not run afoul of the plaguey lye leech. I b'lieve the niggers would move the hut, Josh and all, into the yard, if they could only make ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... given way, her larboard main-topmast studding-sail boom-iron had hooked on to the leech rope of our main-topsail, and was producing so powerful a strain on the mast that it seemed as if it could not possibly stand a minute longer. Seeing this, a brave fellow named Burgess, a maintop man, sprang aloft, and, ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... chief, although in some places it has suffered from various disturbances, the principal of which occur in the neighbourhood of Coleford, extending in a line from Worcester Lodge to Berry Hill, and is marked on the surface by a succession of pools, named Howler's Well, Leech Pool, Crabtree Pool, Hooper's Pool, and Hall's Pool. Mr. Buddle describes the width as varying from 170 to 340 yards in the most defined part, called by the colliers the "Horse," and the dislocations adjoining, the "Lows." "It is not," he remarks, "what geologists term a fault, ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... castle, albeit it lacketh now but the length of a barleycorn till the tenth hour. Sir Frank de Dock hath hied him home for he is truly a senile varlet and when I did supplicate him to regale me with a pasty this night he quoth, "Out upon thee, thou scurvy leech!" "Beshrew thyself, thou hoary dotard!" quoth I, nor tarried I in his presence the saying of a pater noster, but departing hence did sup with that lusty blade, Sir Paul of Hull, and verily he did regale me as well beseemeth a good knight and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... wanted to stay with the army before the Tourelles, to be ready for the assault in the morning. The chiefs argued with her, and at last persuaded her to go home and prepare for the great work by taking proper rest, and also by having a leech look to a wound which she had received in her foot. So we crossed ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... instead of one unbroken thoroughfare I was rattled in my cab through squares and streets innumerable, the names of none of which had I been able to read upon my plan. My next impression was one of delight at the fidelity with which little bits of street scenery had been portrayed by John Leech in Punch. In Newcastle we knew nothing of the kitchen area and the portico. I was filled with joy when, in passing through the Bloomsbury squares, I recognised, as I thought, the very houses, porticoes, ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... of a leech, deeming her lover, who has taken an opiate, to be dead, puts him in a chest, which, with him therein, two usurers carry off to their house. He comes to himself, and is taken for a thief; but, the lady's maid giving the Signory to understand that she had put him in ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... JOHN LEECH, a hundred years ago, When you were born and after, There shone a sort of kindly glow Of airy fun and laughter; It was a sound that seemed to sing, A universal humming That made the echoing rafters ring And so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various

... artist in no more and no less a degree, particularly no less. How often have I seen an exquisite drawing of Abbey's or Du Maurier's almost ruined by the slipping of the burin the one-thousandth part of an inch! How infinitely superior are the originals of John Leech's immortal caricatures in Punch to the reproductions, all because the shadow line under an eye, or that little dot which denotes the difference between amusement and curiosity in the expression of a face, has been cut away the thousandth ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith

... combining the principles of the gimlet and the air-pump, it soon relieves the little human bud of its superfluous juices. It is, in fact, a born surgeon, a Sangrado of the Air, and rivals that celebrated Spanish Leech in its fondness for phlebotomy. Some infidels, who do not subscribe to the doctrine that nothing was made in vain, consider it an unmitigated nuisance, but the devout and thoughtful Christian recognizes it as Nature's preventive of plethora, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various

... to be taken out, but his father felt that he had more need to go to school than to sea; so he refused, and Fred, after sighing very deeply once or twice, gave in with a good grace. Buzzby, too, who stuck to his old commander like a leech, was equally anxious to go, but Buzzby, in a sudden and unaccountable fit of tenderness, had, just two months before, married a wife, who might be appropriately described as "fat, fair, and forty," and Buzzby's wife absolutely forbade him to go. Alas! Buzzby was no longer his ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... southward of her the Herring Bone with mean old Jed Martin aboard. Bijonah Tanner had tried his best to shake Martin, but the hard-fisted old skipper, knowing and recognizing Tanner's "nose" for fish, had clung like a leech and ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... done not only without a murmur, but with cheerfulness and thankfulness to God that their condition was no worse. I have heard hopeful accents from the plodding charwoman, that have made me ashamed, as Wordsworth stood rebuked before the 'leech-gatherer, upon the lonely moor.' Let England look to it. These women, mothers of men, are abandoning her shores for foreign lands. When good and dutiful children desert the maternal home, what provocation must they ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... for the use of those who either cannot swim, or who are not expert in this art, so very important to all seafaring people. Half a dozen of the ship's boys were floundering about in the sails, and sometimes even venturing beyond the leech rope. One of the least of these urchins, but not the least courageous of their number, when taunted by his more skilful companions with being afraid, struck out boldly beyond the prescribed bounds. He had not gone much further than his own length, however, along the surface of the fathomless sea, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... Turning, he drew Black Star closer and closer toward Night, till they ran side by side, as one horse. Then Card raised himself in the saddle, slipped out of the stirrups, and, somehow twisting himself, leaped upon Black Star. He did not even lose the swing of the horse. Like a leech he was there in the other saddle, and as the horses separated, his right foot, that had been apparently doubled under him, shot down to catch the stirrup. The grace and dexterity and daring of that rider's act won something ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey

... duke yet never changed cheer, But grieved to see his friends lamenting stand; The leech prepared his cloths and cleansing gear, And with a belt his gown about him band, Now with his herbs the steely head to tear Out of the flesh he proved, now with his hand, Now with his hand, now with his instrument He shaked and plucked it, yet ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... pressed a key, and as he did so a sharp sting, hardly worse than a leech's bite, pricked Ronald Wyde's breast. A sense of languor crept slowly upon him, his feet tingled, his breath came slowly, and waves of light and shade pulsed in indistinct alternation before his sight; but through them the old man's eyes peered into his, like a dream. Presently ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... order of proceeding had been introduced. The masters and midshipmen perched themselves in the rigging, where they could see the movements of every seaman. The adult forward officers—Peaks, the boatswain, Bitts, the carpenter, and Leech, the sailmaker—also went aloft, and stationed themselves on the topmast-stays, so that, besides the lieutenants on deck, the commodore, and the past officers, there were three pairs of sharp eyes aloft to inspect the operations on ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... however, being a man of determination, stuck to his text like a horse-leech; so, after a great to-do, and considerable argle-bargling, he got me, by dint of powerful persuasion, to give him my hand on the subject. Accordingly, at the hour appointed, I popped up the back loan with my stick in my hand—Peter having agreed to be ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... for stones to tally with his dead list, and when he don't find any he makes a note of it; so, you see, havin' Dick's name down, an' not knowin' the full particulars, he hunted us up, thinkin' we was unsupplied in his line. So, you see, that's why he made sech a leech of hisse'f ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... Most unseemly woe Thou sufferest, and dost stagger from the sense Bewildered! like a bad leech falling sick, Thou art faint at soul, and canst not find the drugs ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton

... usual, about daybreak, over to her cousin, Molly Dugan's, fer a bucket o' fresh milk, an' we never missed 'er until it was time she was back, an' then we went all the way to Dugan's before we found out she hadn't been thar at all. Then her ma tuck up a quar notion, an' helt to it like a leech fer a long time. My hoss had got out o' the stable an' strayed off some'rs in the woods, an' Sally's mother firmly believed the gal had run off. I don't know why she 'lowed Sally would do sech a thing, but she did, and jest paced up an' down the yard yellin' an' takin' on an' beggin' us to ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben

... if that had ever been doubted. Well, then, when you have got your man into the net, you must take great care to land him cleverly. You see, my son, the way I have managed is thus: as soon as I was on the scent I stuck to my candidate like a leech; I drank brotherhood with him, and, nota bene, you must always pay the score. That costs a pretty penny, it is true, but never mind that. You must go further; introduce him to gaming-houses and brothels; entangle him in broils and rogueries till he ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... if I kill you it's nothing, but if you kill me, by Jingo, it's murder." This remark was put by JOHN LEECH into the lips of a small Special Constable, represented as menacing a gigantic ruffian, and was not, as you might think, addressed by a Sinn Feiner to a member of the Royal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various

... writes is extempore wit, and written currente calamo. But I doubt not to shew, that though he would be thought to imitate the silk-worm, that spins its web from its own bowels, yet I shall make him appear like the leech, that lives upon the blood of other men, drawn from the gums; and, when he is rubbed with salt, spews it ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... most strict, and even a small cut was sufficient to render a young man ineligible; a corn was considered as a blemish—and a young man even having been bled by a leech to save his life, lost him all chance ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... had not been fasting, the shock must have killed him," pronounced the leech. "He was over-tired, and that saved him," and with a few directions as to the patient's treatment, he went to prepare a composing draught himself. M. de Sucy was better the next morning, but the doctor had insisted on sitting up ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... weary time his fortitude never gave way, and the vein of humor which had stood him in such good stead all his life did not fail him even now. On the Monday when he was suffering torments, they tried the application of leeches. One leech escaped, and they had a great hunt for it, Raeburn astonishing them all by coming out with one of his quaint flashes of wit and positively making them laugh in spite ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... gleams bright above the brine, And the wake-line foam behind him lies. But the water-sprites are gathering near To check his course along the tide; Their warriors come in swift career And hem him round on every side; On his thigh the leech has fixed his hold, The quarl's long arms are round him roll'd, The prickly prong has pierced his skin, And the squab has thrown his javelin, The gritty star has rubbed him raw, And the crab has struck with his giant ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... exceptionally high, combing sea, hung poised for an instant on its crest, and then, with a wide yaw to starboard which the rudder was powerless to check, swooped down sidewise into the hollow, rolling heavily to port and pointing her boom high up into the gale. When I saw the dark outline of the leech of the mainsail waver for an instant, flap once or twice, and then suddenly collapse, I knew what was coming, and shouting at the top of my voice, "Look out Heck! She'll jibe!" I instinctively threw myself into the bottom of the boat to escape the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... to another chamber, the physician ordered restoratives and immediate bleeding;—but time did more than the leech's art; and the first wish he formed was, that he might once more wend his way to the Isle of Shepey, and gaze again, and for the last time, upon the form of her ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... guide had prepared that way before us. The natural history of a region may thus be read without resorting to a book. Count the fauna: Eagle River, Bald Eagle, Buffalo Lake, Great Bear Lake, Salmon Falls, Snake River, Wolf Creek, White Fish River, Leech Lake, Beaver Bay, Carp River, Pigeon Falls, Elkhorn, Wolverine, Crane Hill, Rabbit Butte, Owl, Rattlesnake, Curlew, Little Crow, Mullet Lake, Clam Lake, Turtle Creek, Deerfield, Porcupine Tail, Pelican Lake, Kingfisher, Ravens' Spring, Deer Ears, Bee Hill, Fox Creek, White Rabbit—can any one mistake ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... becoming a man again. He had bathed his bruises and scratches in the burn, and Will o' Phawhope, who had skill as a leech, had set his arm and bound it to his side in splints of ash and raw hide. He had eaten grossly of flesh—the first time since the spring, and then it had only been braxy lamb. The ale had warmed his blood and quickened his wits. He began to feel pleased with himself. He had done well ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... he grew no better; soon he could not even sit upon his horse, but became so pale and wasted that he could hardly rise from his chair. And some thought that a spell was cast upon him, but that mended not matters at all; the king's own leech came to visit him, and shook his head, saying that no art could avail, since the spring of life was somehow broken within him and he must die unless God were good ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... in meditation. The young man in the pool swore softly, even though he perceived the tear that trembled upon the lady's eyelash. It was impossible to be sympathetic while a leech was fastened to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various

... thus held responsible for all the stranger's moral and social vagaries. "It's the merest chance acquaintance. I know nothing of his antecedents. I—er—I lent him a bag, and he's fastened himself upon me ever since like a leech, and come constantly to my sister's. But I haven't the remotest idea who he is or where he hails from. He keeps his business wrapped up from all of us ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen

... against an apricot sky, chords of guitar and mandoline from gondola or caique? Did it change into the cry of the wind, plaintive at first, angrily shrill as it freshened, rising to a tearing whistle, sinking to a musical trickle of air from the leech of the bellying sail? All these sounds the spellbound listener seemed to hear, and with them the hungry complaint of the gulls and the sea-mews, the soft thunder of the breaking wave, the cry of the protesting shingle. Back into speech again ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... roused me at last from my stupor, making me understand that she was not dead, but in a deep swoon, the result of the shock she had undergone. A leech, for whom he had despatched a neighbour, came in as I rose, and taking my place, presently restored her to consciousness. But her extreme feebleness warned me not to hope for more than a temporary recovery; nor had I sat by her long before I discerned that this last blow, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... should tip, By Cupid shot down from above, Which, cut into spots for thy lip, Should still barb the arrows of love. The God who from others flies quick, With us should be slow as a slug; As close as a leech he should stick To ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith

... and arms and shanks, and cracking crowns, that not a thief of all the sixty-one was left alive. Next morning, when Ubbe rode past and saw the sixty-one dead bodies, and heard what Havelok had done, he sent and brought both him and Goldborough to his own castle, and fetched a leech to tend his wounds, and would not hear of his going away; for, said he, "This man is better ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... door of the establishment, they met the leech who had been summoned some little time ago to hold himself in ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... she does; her own and anybody else's that she can get hold of. For a downright leech, recommend me always to a woman. When a woman does go in for it, she is much more thorough than any man." Then Broughton turned over the little pages of his book, and Musselboro pondered over the big pages of his book, and there was silence for a ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... next few years little was heard of him. He read in chambers, drew pleadings and indictments, and gathered many useful tricks from the criminal advocate to whom he attached himself like a leech. During this period he also made the acquaintance of a Solicitor who had retired from the noon-day glare of professional rectitude to the congenial atmosphere of shady cases. He also struck up ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various

... muddy that we sank to the knees, and could make our way through the wood only by walking on an intermediate layer of palm leaves and fallen branches. The search for evertebrates did not yield very much. A half-score mollusca, among them a very remarkable naked leech of quite the same colour-marking and raggedness as the bark of tree on which it lived, was all that we could find here. It struck me as very peculiar not to find a single insect group represented. The remarkable poverty in animals must be ascribed, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... pole removed and the horse liberated with me on its back, then the fun would commence. The colt would run, jump, kick and pitch around the barn yard in his efforts to throw me off. But he might as well tried to jump out of his skin because I held on to his mane and stuck to him like a leech. The colt would usually keep up his bucking until he could buck no more, and then I would get my ten cents. Ten cents is a small amount of money these days, but in those days that amount was worth more to me than ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love

... journals, for the nonce aroused out of their dignified calm, indulging in "display" headlines that, quite apart from the mere text, could not but have startled their equally stately and dignified readers. The Gray Seal, the leech that fed upon society, the murderer, the thief, the menace to the lives and property of law-abiding citizens, the scourge that for years New York had combated in the no more effective fashion than that of gnashing its teeth in impotent fury, had suddenly reappeared with ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... been given to English readers before. The King's headquarters, though close to Mont St. Catherine were beyond the range of the cannon of those days, and between him and the fortress Lord Salisbury's men were placed, with Lieutenant Philip Leech on the south side, and Sir John Gray to the west. Opposite the Porte Martainville was the Earl of Warwick's camp; and Edmund Beaufort, Count of Mortain, who became Duke of Somerset when he was made governor of Normandy, ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... fishes vary. In different streams, in the same country even, you will find the trout to be quite different to each other and easily recognisable by those who fish in the particular streams. There is the same differences in leeches; leech collectors can easily point out to you the differences and the peculiarities which you yourself would probably pass by; so with fresh-water mussels; so, in fact, with every animal you ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley

... heard it I turned back and met him on his ship. I'm sorry that Telt's dead—but he found what we were looking for. I couldn't ignore his report of radioactive traces. Your girl friend arrived with the hacked-up corpse at the same time I did, and we all took a long look at the green leech in its skull. Her explanation of what it is made significant sense. We were already carrying out landings when we had your call about something having been stored in the magter tower. After that it was just a matter of following tracks—and ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... dare to threaten me, a loyal Englishman, you false priest and foreign traitor," he shouted, "whom all men know to be in the pay of Spain, and using the cover of a monk's dress to plot against the land on which you fatten like a horse-leech? Why was John Foterell murdered in the forest two nights gone? You won't answer? Then I will. Because he rode to Court to prove the truth about you and your treachery, and therefore you butchered him. Why do you claim my wife as your ward? ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... one another twice. He heard the scandal, and put two and two together. I shipped him off to Australia when I came into the title. He has come back. Lately, I can tell you, he has pretty well drained me dry. He has become a regular parasite a cold-blooded leech. He doesn't get drunk now. He looks after his health. I believe he even saves his, money. There's scarcely a week I don't hear from him. He keeps me a pauper. He has brought me at last to that state when I feel that there ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... remora. conglomerate, concrete &c (density) 321. V. cohere, adhere, stick, cling, cleave, hold, take hold of, hold fast, close with, clasp, hug; grow together, hang together; twine round &c (join) 43. stick like a leech, stick like wax; stick close; cling like ivy, cling like a bur; adhere like a remora, adhere like Dejanira's shirt. glue; agglutinate, conglutinate^; cement, lute, paste, gum; solder, weld; cake, consolidate &c (solidify) 321; agglomerate. Adj. cohesive, adhesive, adhering, cohering &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... before it be too late, before more blood stain the pages of our present history, before we exasperate and arouse bitter animosities, let us try and do justice to our sister land. Abolish once and for all the land laws, which in their iniquitous operation have ruined her peasantry. Sweep away the leech-like Church which has sucked her vitality, and has given her back no word even of comfort in her degradation. Turn her barracks into flax mills, encourage a spirit of independence in her citizens, restore to her people the protection of the law, so that they may speak ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... for four Spanish dollars I became the proud possessor of a three-year old male. No sooner was the struggling animal deposited in the bottom of my own boat than it savagely seized the calf of my devoted leg and endeavored to bite therefrom a generous cross section. My leggings and my leech stockings saved my life. That implacable little beast never gave up; and two days later it died,—apparently to ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... Patrick, Ailbhe, Bishop Ibar, and the young boy—is in the place where the boy was resuscitated. His father said: "God cures by the hand of the physician." Four persons stole Patrick's horses southwards. Patrick forgave it. One of them was a leech, whose name was Caencomhrac; another was a carpenter; another was a bondman; but the fourth was a groom, whose name was Aedh. Patrick called the latter, and blessed his hands, and told him that his name should be Lamaedh from that day; and ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... skilled practitioners employed to "cure" individual ailments. Very slowly and tortuously do the methods of the profession adapt themselves to the modern conception of an army of devoted men working as a whole under God for the health of mankind as a whole, broadening out from the frowsy den of the "leech," with its crocodile and bottles and hieroglyphic prescriptions, to a skilled and illuminating co-operation with those who deal with the food and housing and economic life of ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... to check night sweats and to relieve diarrhea. It is also used in treating painter's colic after the constipation has been relieved, as an antidote to poisoning by caustic alkalies; externally to prevent bed sores, relieves headaches, checks moderate bleeding from leech bites, superficial wounds, nosebleed and in post-partum hemorrhage. It inhibits the growth of micro-organisms. Cases of catarrhal, membranous and diphtheric croup are benefited by the vapor of vinegar diffused through the sick room. A compress saturated in vinegar and placed over the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... would quickly have it broken with the pity of it all. A city's tragedies often require search to reveal them, but upon the frontier tragedy stalks unsepulchered in the background of nearly every life, ready to leap out in all its naked horror and settle itself leech-like upon the sympathetic heart, stifling it with the burden of ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... and hypocrisy. He preaches unselfishness, while himself the embodiment of self. Max Nordau is his antithesis. Nordau gives with generous enthusiasm—of his time, his learning, his genius, most of all, of himself. Tolstoy fastens himself upon each newcomer politely, like a courteous leech, sucks him dry, and ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... too serious a case to be quacked. Coma with stertor, and a full, bounding pulse, indicates liberal bloodletting. I would try venesection; then cup, if necessary, or leech the temple. I need not say, sir, calomel must complete the cure. The case is simple, and, at present, surgical: I leave it in competent hands." And he retired, leaving the inferior practitioner well pleased with him and with himself; no insignificant part ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... came in the morning, according to his promise; but there was nothing to be done, so he looked wise, wagged his head very solemnly, and said, "I will come again after two days more, when the fever must be near to its height, and bring a famous leech out ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... a mercantile appearance, more brutal and yet less wretched than those worthless bindings of French books; here and there, in the midst of the opened albums, reproducing humorous scenes from Du Maurier and John Leech, or the delirious cavalcades of Caldecott, some French novels appeared, blending placid and satisfied vulgarities to these rich verjuice hues. He tore himself away from his contemplation, opened the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... room, with a high wooden dado, painted olive green, and a high-art paper of amazing ugliness, whereon brown and red storks disported themselves on a dull green ground. The high-art paper was enlivened with horsey caricatures by Leech, and a menagerie of pottery ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon

... twisted with all her splendid, lithe strength, but it was in vain. He clung like a leech, dragging her closer in spite of all she could do. She beat at his snarling face and the mouth out of which were whining things she fortunately did not understand. His yellow fangs were bare and saliva dripped ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... It's a tricky place. I shall never forget the look of relief on that old fellow's face at sight of me. I believe he thinks to this day that I saved his life. He stuck to me like a leech all the way through the further caves and till we got back to ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... country to the richer class of smokers, but when he wrote it was "in universal use." The wonder is that with so many men smoking cigars the old domestic and club restrictions, as pilloried in Thackeray's pages, were maintained so long. In 1853 Leech had an admirably drawn sketch in Punch of paterfamilias, in the absence of his wife, giving a little dinner. Beside him sits his small son, and on either side of the table sit two of his cronies. One has a cigar in his hand and is blowing ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... never subdue their minds to follow any alien example; nor let a foreign city of fire be their beacon. Watching over his Italy; her wrist in his meditative clasp year by year; he stood like a mystic leech by the couch of a fair and hopeless frame, pledged to revive it by the inspired assurance, shared by none, that life had not forsaken it. A body given over to death and vultures-he stood by it in the desert. Is it a marvel to you that when the carrion-wings swooped low, and the claws ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... pronounced "wani." As for the "curved jewels," which appear on so many occasions, the mineral jade, or jadelike stone, of which many of them were made, has never been met with in Japan and must therefore have come from the continent of Asia. The reed boat in which the leech, first offspring of Izanagi and Izanami, was sent adrift, "recalls the Accadian legend of Sargon and his ark of rushes, the biblical story of Moses as an infant and many more," though it has no known counterpart ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... rapidly learning a modified wisdom of the ancient irrigators of Egypt, and already knows how to drain the irrigated acres and leech these old alluvial plains. From the days when the frosty glacial plowman ran his deep basaltic furrows for the majestic Snake and other streams, these gorges of nature had been only mossy beds over which lazily slid the unmeasured volumes down ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan

... hue of the lips, and certain dark-colored spots visible on the skin, aroused suspicions which those who entertained them were too timid to express. Apoplexy, induced by the excesses of the preceding night, Sir Giles's confidential leech pronounced to be the cause of his sudden dissolution. The body was buried in peace; and though some shook their heads as they witnessed the haste with which the funeral rites were hurried on, none ventured to murmur. Other events arose to distract the attention of ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough

... Rothieden the events of the night began to wear the doubtful aspect of a dream. No allusion was made to what had occurred while Robert slept; but all the journey Ericson felt towards Miss St. John as Wordsworth felt towards the leech-gatherer, who, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... body. Touch the bared nerve with a piece of zinc, and the muscle with a piece of silver, and strong contractions take place the instant these metals are brought into contact. The same effect may be produced by placing a piece of silver on a larger piece of zinc, and putting a worm or a leech on the silver; in moving about, the instant it touches the zinc it is thrown ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett

... six years of age, dressed in a braided frock-coat, with a huge tassel to his fez, exceeding fat, and of a most solemn demeanour. The young Aga came for a pair of shoes, and his contortions were so delightful as he tried them, that I remained looking on with great pleasure, wishing for Leech to be at hand to sketch his lordship and his fat mamma, who sat on the counter. That lady fancied I was looking at her, though, as far as I could see, she had the figure and complexion of a roly-poly pudding; and so, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... announced the retirement of Assistant-Surgeon Haggarty from the 120th, where he was replaced by Assistant-Surgeon Angus Rothsay Leech, a Scotchman, probably; with whom I have not the least acquaintance, and who has nothing whatever to ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the wilderness provides but few real perils, and in a hammock one is safely removed from these. One lies in a stratum above all damp and chill of the ground, beyond the reach of crawling tick and looping leech; and with an enveloping mosquitaro, or mosquito shirt, as the Venezuelans call it, one is fortified even in the worst haunts of these ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... very private market of his own, the breakfast-room of a sunny and secluded house far uptown, where lived, in an aroma of the domestic virtues, a benevolent-looking old gentleman who combined the attributes of the ferret, the leech, and the vulture in his capacity as editor of that famous weekly publication, The Searchlight. Ives did not sell in that mart; he traded for other information. This time he wanted something about Judge Willis Enderby, for he was far enough on the inside politically to see ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... I have even fascinated Mrs. Clemens with this yarn for youth. My stuff generally gets considerable damning with faint praise out of her, but this time it is all the other way. She is become the horse-leech's daughter, and my mill doesn't grind fast enough to suit her. This is no mean ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... succeeded, all the sub-contractors I employ, and who say that I speculate on their poverty, and the thousands of workmen who work for me, and swear that I grind them down to the dust. Already they call me brigand, slaver, thief, leech. What would it be, if they saw me living in a beautiful house of my own? They'd swear that I could not possibly have got so rich honestly, and that I must have committed some crimes. Besides, to build me a handsome house on the street would be, in case of a ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... Lobourne was the medical attendant, who, with head-shaking, and gathering of lips, and reminiscences of ancient arguments, guaranteed to do all that leech could do in the matter. The old doctor did admit that Richard's constitution was admirable, and answered to his prescriptions like a piano to the musician. "But," he said at a family consultation, for Sir Austin had told him how it stood with the young man, "drugs ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... early books in belles-lettres, books with presentation inscriptions from their authors, books containing unusual examples of early engravers, or those made famous by the illustrative work of such artists as Rowlandson, Leech, and Cruikshank; these are a few of the lines in which there are numerous collectors, but it should be understood that they are only a few of the more conspicuous out of hundreds of similar lines of interest. The number of collectors is multiplying with the increase of the ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... could keep from being hurled out of one's berth was to cling like a leech to a rope fastened to a ring in the wall, for the little ship was bouncing back and forth so fast and so far that it was impossible to compare it with the motion of any other craft. Day began to dawn about 3 A.M. By the dim light I could make out mighty mountains ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... character, or, rather, absence of character, was applied alike to many totally dissimilar creatures. The term Articulata included not only Linnaeus's insects but a number of soft-skinned, apparently jointed, worm-like animals such as the leech and earthworm. Lastly, the name Radiata meant no more than that the organs of the creatures so designated were more or less disposed around a centre, as the sepals and petals of a flower are grouped around the central pistil; and it included animals so different as the starfish ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... Jocasta and forcing brandy between the white lips, while Elena bustled around the padre whose head she had been bathing. A basin of water, ruby red, was evidence of the fact that Padre Andreas was not in immediate need of the services of a leech. He sat with his bandaged head held in his hands, and shrank perceptibly when the general entered ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... his tea and departed to the surgery, catching sight of the coat-tails of Mr. Bitterworth's servant leaving it. Master Cheese was seated with the leech basin before him. It was filled with Orleans plums, of which he was eating with uncommon satisfaction. Liking variations of flavour in fruit, he occasionally diversified the plums with a sour codlin apple, a dozen ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... that any Woman of illustrious blood Who from his delusive passions Can divert him, by her charms Curing him of all his sadness, Shall become his wife, how humble Her estate, her wealth how scanty. And if this be not sufficient, I will give a golden talent Yearly to the leech who cures him By some happy stroke of ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca

... selfish"—-how Phin squirmed in his seat!—-"that, in sending the envelopes through the mail he was not even man enough to pay full postage. Four cents was the postage required for each envelope, but this small-souled sneak, this ungenerous leech actually made the receivers pay half of the postage on ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock

... its own humble way, as quietly beautiful, as simplex munditiis, as the scenes of Tell. No other has even approached them; though some gifted persons have attempted it. Mr. Wordsworth is no ordinary man; nor are his pedlars, and leech-gatherers, and dalesmen, without their attractions and their moral; but they sink into whining drivellers beside Roesselmann the Priest, Ulric the Smith, Hans of the Wall, and the other sturdy confederates ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... from an attendant elicited that Philippe had just dropped asleep under the influence of a potion from his leech. ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... drove his sheep to the banks of the river Amphrysus, and there he sat to watch them browse. The country-folk that passed drew near to wonder at him, without daring to ask questions. He seemed to have a knowledge of leech-craft, and knew how to cure the ills of any wayfarer with any weed that grew near by; and he would pipe for hours in the sun. A simple-spoken man he was, yet he seemed to know much more than he would say, and he ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody

... imputation back into thy teeth base knave. Thou thyself art a very daughter of a horse-leech with a canteen ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... Taught thee to make vast Neptune weep for aye On thy low grave, on faults forgiven. Dead Is noble Timon, of whose memory Hereafter more. Bring me into your city, And I will use the olive with my sword; Make war breed peace, make peace stint war, make each Prescribe to other,as each other's leech. Let our drums strike. ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... day I reported at Fulham. More hours of waiting. I discovered an old postman who had also enlisted in the R.A.M.C., and as he "knew the ropes" I stuck to him like a leech. In the afternoon an old recruiting sergeant with a husky voice fell us in, and we marched, a mob of civilians, through the London streets to the railway station. Although this was quite a short distance, the sergeant fell us out near a public-house, ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... long, long time, but at last there was a noise on the stairs. That was her nurse's step, but she was not alone. Had she brought the leech and the exorciser? The door opened and the old steward came in, carrying a three-branched lamp; then followed the slave-woman, and then—her heart stood still then came ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... As this interesting work may not be generally accessible, it is as well to quote the passage intact. It has reference to the Guild of Literature and Art, for the promotion of which Dickens, Lord Lytton, John Forster, Mark Lemon, John Leech, and others, gave so much valuable time and energy, in addition to liberal pecuniary support. The following ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... the hall, wrestling with that leech-like hug. He tore free from the fellow; and as he did he caught a glimpse of Captain Carew through the open door. The man had not moved from ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... fell, her arm she brak, A compound fracture as could be; Nae leech the cure wad undertak, Whate'er was the gratuity. It 's cured! she handles 't like a flail, It does as weel in bits as hale; But I 'm a broken man mysel' Wi' her ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... things' my mind was now so turned, that it lay like a horse leech at the vein, still crying out, Give, give (Prov 30:15); yea, it was so fixed on eternity, and on the things about the kingdom of heaven, that is, so far as I knew, though as yet, God knows, I knew but little; that neither pleasures, nor profits, nor persuasions, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... character, and in part of their manners, deficient as above noticed) were nearly always readable—and sometimes very amusing—even to those who are not exactly Nimrods: and they were greatly commended to others still by the admirable illustrations of Leech. There is not a little sound sport in Kingsley and afterwards in Anthony Trollope: while the novels of Frank Smedley, Frank Fairlegh (1850), Lewis Arundel (1852), and Harry Coverdale's Courtship (1855), mix a good deal more of it with some good fun and some ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... his hammock, and saw it much stained with blood. 'There,' said he, thrusting his foot out of the hammock, 'see how these imps have been drawing my life's blood.' On examining his foot, I found the vampire had tapped his great toe. There was a wound somewhat less than that made by a leech. The blood was still oozing from it, and I conjectured he might have lost from ten ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee



Words linked to "Leech" :   annelid, bloodsucker, class Hirudinea, parasite, segmented worm, practice of medicine, care for, Hirudo medicinalis, medicine, sponge, annelid worm, horseleech, hirudinean, Hirudinea, follower, treat



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