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Snatch up   /snætʃ əp/   Listen
Snatch up

verb
1.
To grasp hastily or eagerly.  Synonyms: snap, snatch.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Snatch up" Quotes from Famous Books



... placed with their backs to us between two of the windows; but we saw the audience, and were amused by the varying expression upon their faces as they listened to their leaders. X.'s insatiable curiosity led him to snatch up an opera-glass that was lying on F.'s dressing-table, and, despite my remonstrance, he took a long survey of the Tory gathering through this instrument. Suddenly I saw a man in the body of the ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... Only waiting to snatch up a sandwich left from her brothers' lunch,—for she knew the noon hour would be a busy time at the Bugle office,— Dorothy hurried out ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose

... cry, however. These few instants of time had been enough for the bather to jump up, snatch up the remainder of his clothes and set off through the woods with the ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock

... and maddened rush. Every one wanted to get to the camp in the briefest possible space of time. There was no chance for the actors to change their clothes. They were glad enough of an opportunity to snatch up a heavy fur-lined coat, either their own or some other person's. With this to hide their ludicrous attire, and also give some needed warmth once they went aloft, they hastened to find a waiting car, which, when loaded to its capacity, would be sent like mad along the road ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach

... next morning, and an hour after setting out were in the sweep of the rapids. The passage was an intensely exciting one. The Indians stood, paddle in hand, one at each corner of the front of the raft; their poles lay ready to snatch up in case any rock was approached, but the paddles were needed to keep the raft from being dragged out into the full force of the current. Here the water rose in steep ridges, and had the raft got among these it would have ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty

... he knew about the fellow, from past experiences, Paul thought no dependence could be placed on Ted. As likely as not if his hands were free, he would seize the very first chance to snatch up the bag and scamper off, leaving the others to bear the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... twenty pigtailed men come sliding down the ropes from above, and snatch up the cutlasses and rifles laid ready beneath a tarpaulin; but all the time I was seeing, in obedience to orders, two parties of the crew going forward at the double, and I knew that the captain was communicating with the two ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... impulse was to snatch up the wronged child, and, if necessary, face the half-drunken men in battle. But this would be worse than useless his second sober thought told him, for there stood Mirandy looking carelessly on from the kitchen door behind. The child was doubtless ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins

... but a second, or less, whilst the words were spoken outside his door, and whilst all other thoughts in him were absorbed in this one mad desire for escape. He even made a movement, as if to snatch up the letter-case and to hide it about his person. But it was heavy and bulky; it would be sure to attract attention, and might bring upon him the additional indignity of being forced to submit ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... to snatch up a baby spirit sometimes and whirl along towards some woman he wishes to discredit, and through the medium of this woman he incarnates perhaps twins, or at least one baby. No doubt were it not for signs of teeth in a spirit-baby of immaculate conception, ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... which belongs to the enlightenment of the day. Instinctive recognition of this need manifests itself in a simultaneous move in the direction of universal education at government expense throughout the two continents. All the populations snatch up their satchels and hurry to school. Athens revives the Academe and reinstates the Olympic games under a literary avatar. Italy follows suit. Hornbooks open and shut with a suggestive snap under the pope's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... replied Zillah. "And don't you think that whoever seized that diamond would have the sense to snatch up anything connected with it! I believe in what Mr. Penniket said just now—you find Levendale. If there's a man living who knows who killed my grandfather, Levendale's ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher

... feats of strength and endurance in transferring the provisions to safety. Ellen and Jean, regardless of unbound hair and thin night-robes, dashed out time after time into the ever rising tide to snatch up sacks of flour or boxes of canned goods, running with them far above the beachline. In the face of the threatened catastrophe they were hardly aware of wet or cold or the weight of objects. They were small women, but in ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... for some days. He knew no one, no one knew him. He would lay his hat down on a table, and walk up and down at a brisk pace for half an hour without speaking to any one, or seeming to pay attention to anything that was going forward. Then he would snatch up his hat, pay his money at the bar, and walk off, without having opened his lips. The frequenters of the room had christened him "the mad parson." One evening, as Mr. Addison and the rest were observing him, they saw him cast his eyes several times upon a gentleman ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... answered the apparitor, "if thou wilt anything with it;" whereupon, as the apparitor deposeth, the said Henry Clitheroe did hurl at him from off his finger that instrument of his art called the "thymmelle," and he, the apparitor, drawing his sword, "the said Henry did snatch up his virga, Anglice, his yard, and did pursue the apparitor into the public streets, and after multiplying of many blows did break the head of the said apparitor."[212] These are light matters, but they were ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... insane desire to snatch up the sovereign and fling it at the clerk's head, but restraining herself merely flicked it back across the table to him, just touching it with the back of her hand as though it ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... and Asiatic apes, while, similarly, the American apes were the progenitors of the human beings of the New World. The cause of this palpable error in a too eager disciple{13} one might hope was not anxiety to snatch up all or any arms available against Christianity, were it not for the tone unhappily adopted by this author. But it is unfortunately quite impossible to mistake his meaning and intention, for he is a writer whose offensiveness is gross, while it ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... hill, yet were there no sands between the hill and the sea: "Likewise by the clefts and breaches many broken sands were driven," whence may be understood how violent the cross winds blow here, as they snatch up and drive the sand from out of the sea and lift it to the tops of the hills. These cross winds, as I noticed by the lying of the sands, were from the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... help for fear of discovering more, quite upset me. I began to think any fate was better than playing bo-peep in the caverns, and so I said, "We will take our chance on the rock, for we have many things ready by the waterfall which were meant for the ship, and we need but snatch up a bundle a-piece." ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton

... seemed not so much like death, or life, as like a waxwork, wrought into the perfect image of a child asleep, and dreaming of its mother's smile. Rose thought her too fair a thing to be hidden in the grave, and wondered that an angel did not snatch up little Mary's coffin, and bear the slumbering babe to heaven, and bid her wake immortal. But when the sods were laid on little Mary, the heart of Rose was troubled. She shuddered at the fantasy, that, in ...
— Edward Fane's Rosebud (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... looking forward to it with eagerness. At a Yugoslav assembly held in Triest in the summer of 1919 the other delegates were electrified by two priests from Istria who declared that their people were straining at the leash, anxious for the word to snatch up their weapons. (Many of these weapons, by the way, were of Italian origin, as there had been no great difficulty in purchasing them from the more pacific or the more Socialistic Italian soldiers; the usual price ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... wait on them. Felix refused every time, and Phil did too at first, until those common fellows began to twit him about it,—as much as saying that he was afraid to take anything 'cause Fee would "go home and tell on him." What did Phil do then—the silly fellow! 'twas just what they wanted—but snatch up a glass and swallow down a lot of that vile stuff! Well, I was so mad with Phil! I'd have liked to go right in and punch him. Felix never said a word ('twouldn't have done the least good,—Phil can be like a mule sometimes); he just sat there with his lips pressed tight ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... others. They were tall men with somber faces, which he had never seen brightened with the light of a smile. Yet their eyes gleamed when the whistling lash fell upon their shoulders or when a passer-by threw them the chewed and broken stub of a cigar, which the nearest would snatch up and hide in his salakot, while the rest remained gazing at the passers-by with ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to snatch up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and inarticulate voices outside. Then came ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... such crimes unpunished; beware, if you allow yourselves to be led astray by the eloquent sentimentality of the defence; beware, I tell you, if you fail in your duty as the instrument of justice; beware, lest those above you snatch up the sword which has fallen from your feeble hands, when the blood that you have not avenged will be spilt upon you and yours!" That was fine! Very fine! And ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... club whistling around his head in crashing blows that wrought murderous havoc in the close-packed hordes, he drove them back for one breathless moment that gave him time to leap forward and snatch up the pistol. ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells

... search for scalps and plunder, penetrated into Virginia a hundred miles beyond the frontier,[27] wasting the country with tomahawk and brand up to the Seven-Mile Ford. The roads leading to the wooden forts were crowded with settlers, who, in their mortal need of hurry, had barely time to snatch up a few of the household goods, and, if especially lucky, to mount the women and children on horses; as usual in such a flight, there occurred many deeds of cowardly selfishness, offset by many feats of courage and self-sacrifice. Once in the fort, the backwoodsmen ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... at this language, obeyed his first impulse, which was to snatch up the letters and attempt ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... itself into a fierce wrestle for the possession of the weapon which must give victory to the one into whose hands it fell. Once Samory, wiry and muscular like all Arabs, notwithstanding his age, stooped swiftly in an endeavour to snatch up the blade, but seeing his intention, my fingers tightened their grip upon his throat, and he was compelled to spring up again without obtaining possession of the weapon. For several minutes our struggle was desperate, for he had managed ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... must stop there. Danny was inclined to rebel, and Isabel failed to explain such conduct. But Scotty found ample compensation for their restriction in the happy change in Callum. His old gaiety came back, his eyes sparkled, and he would snatch up Isabel and go leaping about the house with her perched shrieking upon his shoulder, just as he used to do in the happy days before the Orangemen came to ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... though they are, they typify feelings and conduct daily observable in many families. Who has not repeatedly seen a child slapped by nurse or parent for a fretfulness probably resulting from bodily derangement? Who, when watching a mother snatch up a fallen little one, has not often traced, both in the rough manner and in the sharply-uttered exclamation—"You stupid little thing!"—an irascibility foretelling endless future squabbles? Is there not in the harsh tones in which a father bids his children be ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... unfurled. The gentry want to extirpate us by means of poison, we will extirpate them with fire and sword. The brave shall live, the cowards shall die. Ye, who see your children, your parents tormented and grovelling in the dust, snatch up your arms and avenge them. Fear not the soldiers, they also will be on our side. Let none go who has short-cropped hair. Two deputies must proceed forthwith from every village to Hetfalu, which is to be the centre of our operations, ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... Kenric entered the grove when the laughter he had heard was changed into a scream of terror. Little Ronald, dragging his sister by the hand, came running towards him, pursued by a score of savage Norsemen. Kenric was about to snatch up the children in his arms when he saw it was too late. The Norsemen were upon him. He gripped his sword and stood his ground. At the same moment Ailsa Redmain brushed past him and took the little Ronald by the hand. One of the men of Colonsay darted forward, levelling his spear, ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... also perceive several faces thrust out of the doors, and rather than miss a sight of you, a grotesque visage peeping by a short cut through the paneless windows—or a tattered female flying to snatch up her urchin that has been tumbling itself, heels up, in the dust of the road, lest "the gentleman's horse might ride over it;" and if you happen to look behind, you may observe a shaggy-headed youth in ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... spontaneous impulse—instinctive homage to what is pure, admiration of what is good. But how I envied her the privilege of truth! how bitterly I contrasted her fate with mine! when, one day, I saw her snatch up her little sister to her knees, while Mr. Escourt was asserting that there was no one who would willingly consent to lay open their thoughts to another, and devouring her with kisses, exclaim, "Now, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... one can turn me out of literature either for young or old age, if I choose to make a name in it! Think of that, my Mary! The glorious independence of it! An author is a law unto himself, and if he succeeds, he is the master of his own fate. Publishers are his humble servants—waiting eagerly to snatch up his work that they may get all they can for themselves out of it,—and the public—the great public which, apart from all 'interested' critical bias, delivers its own verdict, is always ready to hearken and ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... great relief. It was a good thing to write doggedly and obstinately until he was desperate, and then snatch up the ruler and whirl it about the brown head-dress with the consciousness that he could have it off if he liked. It was a good thing to draw it back, and rub his nose very hard with it, if he thought Miss Sally was going ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... interval of rest; of a small Madonna and Child, [115] peeping sideways in half-reassured terror, as a mighty griffin with batlike wings, one of Leonardo's finest inventions, descends suddenly from the air to snatch up a great wild beast wandering near them. But note in these, as that which especially belongs to art, the contour of the young man's hair, the poise of the slave's arm above his head, and the curves of the head of the child, following the little skull within, thin and fine as ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... her! My husband was absent from the house, when one evening I received notice that some officers of justice, as they were called, were approaching, in search of Protestants. I had just time to snatch up my little Elise, and to hurry off to the woods, where, in a hut which had been prepared by a faithful attendant, and known only to him, we were able to conceal ourselves. My dear husband, not aware of the personages who had possession of our house, returned late ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... fall, gave way altogether under the pressure of his hand, and part of it fell out. The fragment was followed by a rouleau of dark blue paper, which emitted a dull chink as it struck the ground. Tchartkoff's eye glanced upon an inscription; it was—1000 DUCATS. To snatch up the packet, and thrust it into his pocket, was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... like cats—or like bull-dogs rather. They were borne down to the floor, but even here for a while the struggle heaved and swayed this way and that, and I had barely time to snatch up one of the candles before table, bottles, glasses, went over in a general ruin. Above the clatter of it and the cursing, as I turned to stick the candle upright in a bottle on the dresser, I heard a cheer raised from somewhere in the back premises, ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... shock— and then stabbed the villain to the heart—see how the blood rushed over me! Then the Prince pulled me up, and called me a brave lad, and set me on my feet, and asked me if I were sure I was not hurt. And by that time the archers were coming in, when all was over; and Long Robin must needs snatch up a joint stool and have a stroke at the Moor's head. I trow the Prince was wrath with the cowardly clown for striking a dead man. He said I alone ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Gervaise, who had no longer the smallest motive for self-control, and she abandoned herself at once to a wild orgy that lasted three days. Coupeau gave his daughter up and smoked his pipe quietly. Occasionally, however, when eating his dinner, he would snatch up a knife and wave it wildly in the air, crying out that he was dishonored and then, laying it down as suddenly, resumed eating ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... afraid, sisterkin," continued Mr. John encouragingly. "I'll bring you such a nice bridegroom that even your grandpapa, when he sees him, will snatch up his crutches in order to go and meet him half-way." Here the old man growled something which John smothered with a laugh. "Yes, and if he won't give you up we'll carry ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... it must drive the attacking force back. But fighting at such desperately uneven odds could not in the nature of things last long. There came a minute when Billy, turning to reload, found that before he could snatch up a handful of cartridges a huge Arab ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... ears; and if they be not received in what they offer at, they shift a point of the compass, and turn their tale, presently tack about, deny what they confessed, and confess what they denied; fit their discourse to the persons and occasions. What they snatch up and devour at one table, utter at another; and grow suspected of the master, hated of the servants, while they inquire, and reprehend, and compound, and dilate business of the house they have nothing to do with. ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... sight and down they rushed. Just before they struck the bad part of the rapids, Bill was seen to hold up his paddle broken short off at the handle. He turned around to snatch up the extra paddle but in doing so he was too hasty and in another moment, the canoe was caught by a swell and overturned. Anxiously the party at the foot of the rapids watched for the heads of Joe and Bill. Joe came up and was ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton

... in a light sleigh, flogging the horses, or had galloped clear with morning over the border, some had trudged roads for days from their capital in disguise, yet many had had time just as they left to snatch up some small thing without price in markets, for the sake of old times as they said, but quite as much, I thought, with an eye to the future. And there these treasures glittered on that long table in the banqueting-hall of the basement of that strange club. Merely to see them was ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany

... the fighting to appraise our chances, expected to die there and then. A vastly greater force was attacking us, and we were divided as well as outnumbered. But if we were to die, we were determined to die fighting; so with our backs to the bulwark and with whatever weapons we had been able to snatch up in our hands, we defended ourselves as best we could and had no more respite to think of ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... they seemed to me bats and asses—One really pitied the poor saints and martyrs for having such blind biographers—such dunghill cocks, who overlooked the pearl of real human love and nobleness in them, in their greediness to snatch up and parade the rotten chaff of superstition, and self-torture, and spiritual dyspepsia, which had overlaid it. My dear fellow, that Calendar ruins your cause—you are "sacres aristocrates"—kings and queens, bishops and virgins by the hundred at one end; a beggar or two at ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... trouble of some sort from the strange actions of his chum, waited to snatch up the old faithful Marlin twelve-bore. It had seen them through other scrapes, and might come ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne

... of a look at the well-remembered Hogarths and the memorable portraits by Sir Joshua. I carried away a confused mass of impressions, much as the soldiers that sack a city go off with all the precious things they can snatch up, huddled into clothes-bags and pillow-cases. I am reminded, too, of Mr. Galton's composite portraits; a thousand glimpses, as one passes through the long halls lined with paintings, all blending in one not unpleasing general effect, out of which emerges from time ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... set apart for a deluge. They tell me, also, that while it will be pouring with rain just in the village the sun will be shining brightly all round about, and that the villagers, when the water begins to come in through their roofs, snatch up their children and hurry off to the nearest field, where they sit and wait until the ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... through all the ceremony of summoning the Archangel of the Law, but at the crucial moment of the invocation Rabbi Israel cried out, "We have made a slip. The Angel of Fire is coming instead. He will burn up the town. Run and tell the people to quit their dwellings and snatch up their ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... anger and chagrin the head broke off. Before he could snatch up another and strike it viciously, there came from close at hand a sudden rustle, a creak, the clatter of something on the floor, followed by dead silence. When the light flared up, illumining dimly ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames

... well-furnished rooms and waited on by a close-cropped nun. She had been surprised in the bungalow and overpowered by three of the Chinamen before she realised her danger or could seize a weapon with which to defend herself. Had she been able to snatch up a revolver she would have made a desperate fight for freedom. But with fettered hands, a helpless captive, she had been carried away on a mule. From the first she had recognised the pock-marked, one-eyed leader of the gang as the Amban's officer, ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... elms, and I lost sight of him beyond them. Now, the kestrel is but a small bird, and taking into consideration the size of the bird, and the weight of a rat, it seems as great a feat in proportion as for an eagle to snatch up a lamb. ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... eyes! Under the waggons. Nearer, nearer, nearer! Then, the throwing ones in your midst. Shower of 'em. Right and left. 'Halloa! stand by, boys!' Look up; see 'em swarming, black like ants, over the waggons. Inside the laager. Snatch up rifles! All up! Oxen stampeding, men running, blacks sticking 'em like pigs in the back with their assegais. Bad job, the whole thing. Don't care for it, myself. Very tough 'uns to fight. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... Kilcarney was, alas! not to be thought of. Ah! if Mr. Burke were only Lord Kilcarney! But he was not. However, Captain Hibbert would be a fairly good match. He was of excellent family, had two thousand a year, and a place in the country and in England too. But why snatch up the very first fish that came by? There was no saying whom they would meet at the Castle. Still, to encourage a flirtation could be no harm. If they met anything better, it could be broken off; if they did not, it would be a very nice match indeed. Besides, there was no denying ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... looks of the oncoming dog any more than did Billy. Being more pugnacious by nature, however, instead of making a frantic dash over the wire fence, and trying to crawl through between the strands at the risk of tearing their clothes, they hurried to snatch up some clubs which would serve them as a means ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster

... of their sleep to find a howling force of French and Indians in their midst, hastily barricaded their doors, and fought desperately with any weapons they could snatch up. In some cases the defenders succeeded in keeping the enemy at bay; but others were not so successful. The French and the Indians, hacked openings in the doors and the windows of some of the houses, and through these shot down the inmates. Finally, ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee

... You snatch up the children and hurry out of the room. After a while, when things have settled down, you venture to look in again. Maybe it was only a mild explosion. A ten-pound note and a couple of plumbers in the house for a week will put things ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome

... room, beside the large open fire-place, was a pile of long sticks of firewood. Tom Halstead stopped to snatch up one of these, and ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock

... must prove its practical value to a world constitutionally skeptical, and he must persevere through trials and discouragements of every kind, with a sublime faith in the ultimate success of his efforts, until the fight be won. Otherwise, if he retires beaten from the field of battle, another will snatch up his sword and hew ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... to remember just where their guns had been placed, so that as soon as they donned clothes it was easy to snatch up these weapons, after which they ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson

... but he pitied them from above. He certainly did not enter into their position; did not share their ideas, or feel their sorrows as part of his own experience. In an amazing passage he says that, when we snatch up a vehement opinion in ignorance and passion, when we long to crush an adversary by sheer violence, when we are envious, when we are brutal, when "we add our voices to swell a blind clamour against some unpopular personage," when "we trample ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... them. When you have entered the house, you will find a razor, a pair of scissors, and a knife; take something and polish them. When you have done this, go in and deliver your letter to my mother's friend. When she wants to make you enter, snatch up a little box on the table, and run away. Take care to do all the things I have told you, or else ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... Maude's room and his mother always in tears, that it was a relief to go to Le Bateau and be made much of as if he were a prince and treated to nice little lunches and suppers, even if old Peterkin did make one of the party and disgust him so at times that he felt as if he must snatch up his hat and fly. ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... shoe-buckles had caught in the thin silk covering of the cushion and slit it. Helene Vauquier let her fall. She felt composedly in her pocket, and drew from it an aluminium flask—the same flask which Lemerre was afterward to snatch up in the bedroom in Geneva. Celia stared at her in dread. She saw the flask flashing in the light. She shrank from it. She wondered what new horror was to grip her. Helene unscrewed the ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason

... any other evidence, must be submitted to conscientious processes of testing and sifting. Contradictory instances must be hunted for sedulously. Nothing can be less scientific than to snatch up any traveller's tale which makes for our theory, and to ignore evidence, perhaps earlier, or later, or better observed, which makes against it. Yet this, unfortunately, in certain instances (which ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... the party be so distributed that each, or as many as possible of the gentlemen present, can have one at hand to snatch up and use for a fender should an attack ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various

... of the hog, and forms a striking contrast to its beautiful plumage. Numberless fly-catchers and shrikes (Muscicapidae and Laniadae) hover on tree and bush, watching for the passing insects, which they snatch up with extraordinary dexterity. Finches twitter on the summits of the loftiest trees beyond the reach of the hunter's shot: they are distinguished, like the Ampelidae, who, however, live amongst the lower bushes, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... respecting the best route to Timbuctoo, and promised to furnish him with guides. During his residence Medina was entirely destroyed by a conflagration, and Major Houghton was forced, along with the inhabitants, to flee into the fields, carrying with him only a few such articles as he could hastily snatch up. Thence he journeyed on to Bambouk, and after crossing the Faleme arrived at Ferbanna, where the king sent a guide along with him, and likewise furnished him with money to defray the expenses of the journey. He was imprudent enough to carry with him ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... so eager before; I felt so apathetic now. I looked across the way. I dimly saw Courvoisier snatch up his boy, hold him in the air, and then, gathering him to him, cover him with kisses. I smiled. At the moment I felt neutral—experienced neither pleasure nor pain from the sight. I had loved the man so eagerly and intensely—with such warmth, fervor, and ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... work of an instant to snatch up the new will, thrust it into her bosom, and return, pale, trembling, and ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey

... ten minutes after Beatrice had left, when he was inclined to snatch up his hat and go after Cromwell to tell him to do his own dirty work; but his training had told, and he had laughed at the folly of the thought. Why, of course, the work had to be done! England was rotten with dreams and superstition. Ecclesiasticism ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... Lamachus came to their aid from the Athenian left with a few archers and with the Argives, and crossing a ditch, was left alone with a few that had crossed with him, and was killed with five or six of his men. These the Syracusans managed immediately to snatch up in haste and get across the river into a place of security, themselves retreating as the rest of the ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides

... he was, he took with him a brass pestle. Why that? Why not some other weapon? But since he had been contemplating his plan and preparing himself for it for a whole month, he would snatch up anything like a weapon that caught his eye. He had realized for a month past that any object of the kind would serve as a weapon, so he instantly, without hesitation, recognized that it would serve his purpose. So it was by no means unconsciously, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... laugh at him. He would be like a man who took his gun and went out all alone to fight against Spain when we were at war with her. Or it would be as if a man in a city should say that he wanted to fight fire, but instead of joining a fire company, he would snatch up his pail and run alone to put out the fire every ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley

... who stamp them. All the types are carved in blocks of wood, and the whole formed into a frame; then, in a little space just large enough for work,—for the printer has no immense establishment with signs on the outside of "Book and Job Printing,"—a Chinaman will sit down, snatch up a paper in one hand, and stamp it instantly with the wooden block letters, moistened with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various



Words linked to "Snatch up" :   snap, seize, snatch, swoop, prehend, clutch, swoop up



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