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Wildcat   /wˈaɪldkˌæt/   Listen
Wildcat

noun
1.
An exploratory oil well drilled in land not known to be an oil field.  Synonym: wildcat well.
2.
A cruelly rapacious person.  Synonyms: beast, brute, savage, wolf.
3.
Any small or medium-sized cat resembling the domestic cat and living in the wild.



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"Wildcat" Quotes from Famous Books



... somewhat, but since they had already served their purpose and were in process of obliteration he paid little attention to them. In his more ambitious rambles during late fall and winter, he had run across too many tracks of deer and bear and wildcat to become excited by these signs of some ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... anywhere. You and him are partners, but I don't believe you know him clean to the bottom as well as I do. You wouldn't be in business with him if you did, for you are a straight man—a body can tell that by your eye and voice—and I've never heard of any shady, wildcat scheme that you ever ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... see these markings I recognized 'em and remembered something, and I says right off that he's got some cat there; and he says how do I know? And I tell him that there kitten has got at least a quarter wildcat in it. Its grandmother, or mebbe its great-grandmother, was took up to the Tuttle Ranch when there wasn't another cat within forty miles, and it got to running round nights; and quite a long time after that they found it with a mess of kittens ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... the olden time; down in a deep dell, sheltered by uplands north, east, and west; looking south down the valley to the Sussex downs, which were seen in the hazy distance uplifting their graceful outlines to the blue sky, across a vast canopy of treetops; beneath whose shade the wolf and the wildcat, the badger and the fox, yet roamed at large, and preyed upon the wild deer and the lesser game. It bore the name of Walderne, which signifies a sylvan spot frequented by the wild beasts; the castle lay beneath; the parish church rose on the summit ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... came, he crept through the bushes to the little stream in the ravine and drank deep again. His glance caught a pair of red eyes gleaming through the dusk and he saw a wildcat treading lightly. But the cat did not snarl or arch its back. Instead it moved away without any sign of hostility and climbed a big oak, in the brown foliage of which it was lost to Henry's sight. In his mind the thought grew stronger that he was being accepted as a brother to the wild, ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler

... references to old companies and their latest projects, and to new companies and new finds; talk about the menace of the runs pinching out, and talk about the danger of over-stocking the world's zinc markets; grumbling talk about the wildcat exploitation going on at every corner, and envious talk about a report that some wildcat promoter had just succeeded in selling a face of ore that had cut blind under the drill of the buyer in a few lamentable days; condemnatory talk about what an extremely gold-brick country this was, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... a very little man, with nervous hands and remarkable steady eyes. He had punched cows over those ranges for ten years, and his experience had made him a wildcat in a fight. Oscar Larsen was a huge Swede, with a perpetual and foolish grin. Sour Creek had laughed at Oscar for five years, considered him dubiously for five years more, and then suddenly admitted him as a man among men. He was stronger than Buck Mason, quicker than Denver ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... frowned savagely at my visitor. Apparently, however, she was not alarmed. Her eyes flashed fire and she began to gnash her teeth, seemingly bent upon serious hostilities. Aware of my danger, I immediately made great haste and snatched this cylindrical ruler from the desk, but the wildcat was too quick ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson

... through the darkness made by the overhanging bushes and rocks. At the bottom the light was not obscured, and they beheld the striped body of a large wildcat caught in ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... Peter. "Now I'll tell you something. If you had gone away in that ambulance to an anesthetic and an operation, no wildcat that ever indulged in a hunger hunt through this canyon could have put up a howl equal to the one that I would have ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... Hester made a discovery. "Oh, come and see! Here is something with toes. As big as a wildcat, or maybe a ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... grind themselves to foam; We trod the moose's lofty home, And heard, high on the yellow hills, The wildcat clamor ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... it. After a while the boys were silent, and the thing became grim earnest. At length, by some accident rather than my own strength, both his shoulders touched the ground. I released him. But he was on his feet in an instant and at me again like a wildcat. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... across the face, had not the master, according to a little affectation of the times, promoted him to be his game-keeper. Many a day did these two living magazines of wrath spend together in the dismal swamps and on the meagre intersecting ridges, making war upon deer and bear and wildcat; or on the Mississippi after wild goose and pelican; when even a word misplaced would have made either the slayer of the other. Yet the months ran smoothly round and the wedding night drew nigh[3]. A goodly company had assembled. ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... sneaking wildcat, Puppy Reiss crept up and listened to the two women bewailing to each other how they had worked all the past week to clean up the house and scour the kitchen things, and complaining about all they had to do before Passover, so that not a crumb of leavened bread should stick to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... gentlemen; I will depart and leave you to organize. I wish you all the success you deserve to obtain through a wildcat scheme of a simple boy, who knows just about as much about business and business methods as a yellow dog knows ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... as much!" replied La Corriveau, with a sardonic smile which showed her small teeth, white, even, and cruel as those of a wildcat. "The jewel you have lost is the heart of your lover, and you thought La Corriveau had a charm to win it back; was not that ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... away with the golden-haired lass. The last I saw of Joe he was braced up agin a rock fightin' like a wildcat. I tried to cut Jim loose as I was goin' by. I s'pect the wust fer the ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey

... takes in say, three local posts called patrols, each of which has eight members. It is known by a number, as Troop One of Boston; and each minor organization takes a name of some animal, such as wildcat or fox. If it is called Fox, every boy belonging to it is supposed to be able to bark like a fox, so as to be able to signal a comrade while scouting in ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... up joyfully, and his hoofs made the cave resound, as they shouted, "Come out, Father Cheiron; come out and see our game." And one cried, "I have killed two deer," and another, "I took a wildcat among the crags"; and Heracles dragged a wild goat after him by its horns, for he was as huge as a mountain crag; and Caeneus carried a bear cub under each arm, and laughed when they scratched and bit; for neither tooth nor steel ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... %341. Wildcat State Banks.%—As soon as the reelection of Jackson made it certain that the charter of the Bank of the United States would not be renewed, the same thing happened in 1833 that had occurred in 1811. The legislature of every state ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... reeled, and on Herminius He leaned one breathing space; Then, like a wildcat mad with wounds, Sprang right at Astur's face. Through teeth, and skull, and helmet, So fierce a thrust he sped, The good sword stood a handbreadth out Behind the ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... store through rows and rows, very neat and orderly, of upturned carts and antiquated coupes, and mules and horses and a courtyard full of liveried servants. Inside, it still looked barbaric, with its magnificent display of rich silks and furs. Great skins of tiger, panther, leopard, wildcat, sable, were hanging in profusion on all sides, interspersed with costly embroideries, wonderful brocades, and all the magnificence and color of the gorgeous East. It was the idea of Kwong, our pet rickshaw-boy, ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte

... other feeble folk were to gather food for the warriors, of whom the principal ones were the Bear, Wolf, Wildcat and Bison. The Swallow served as messenger to the birds, and the swift Trout carried the news to the finny tribes, for all were to join ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman

... your father's claim—Harry was to get twenty-five per cent—and early the next morning your dad was waiting to file on it, while Harry was waiting for them three. And what a fight it must have been—that Harry was a wildcat in those younger days." She laughed, then her voice grew serious. "But all had its effect. Rodaine did n't jump that claim, and a few of us around here filed dummy claims enough in the vicinity to keep him off of getting too close—but there ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... roots, and root-bread, and we purchased from them three dogs. The houses of these people are similar to those of the Indians above, and their language is the same; their dress also, consisting of robes or skins of wolves, deer, elk, and wildcat, is made nearly after the same model; their hair is worn in plaits down each shoulder, and round their neck is put a strip of some skin with the tail of the animal hanging down over the breast; like the Indians above, they are fond of otter-skins, ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks

... me," returned Isaac, eager to improve the moment of apparent sympathy. "I love mine own, even as the hunted fox, the tortured wildcat loves ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... owner one hundred and five thousand dollars; a two-year-old colt, Arion, one hundred and twenty-five thousand. A town site is located in a barren waste and lots sell at ten to one hundred dollars a front foot. All kinds of wildcat schemes are promoted, and the people bite at the bait. An era of extravagance is on and "sight unseen" investments are made. Several years ago my brother said to me: "Are you going West soon, as far as Kansas City?" When I replied that I ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... there is revealed the whole workings of a great American railroad system. There are adventures in abundance—railroad wrecks, dashes through forest fires, the pursuit of a "wildcat" locomotive, the disappearance of a pay car with a large sum of money on board—but there is much more than this—the intense rivalry among railroads and railroad men, the working out of running schedules, the getting through "on time" in spite of ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)

... table in the middle was comfortably littered with books and magazines. All the available wall space, from floor to ceiling, was occupied by filled bookshelves. It seemed to Daylight that he had never seen so many books assembled in one place. Skins of wildcat, 'coon, and deer lay about on the ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... he went on, grinning, "they fought with nails and teeth, or with a stick or a stone snatched from the ground." Then laughing loud, he added, "No wonder that in the old days people lived in trees, and ran if they saw a wildcat." ...
— The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone • Margaret A. McIntyre

... granary, the larger following to prey on them. To-night there would be owls and in the darkness tragedies. In the morning, perhaps, he would find a feather which had floated from a breast. A hundred years ago, he reflected, the wolves would have gathered here also and the cougar and the wildcat for ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... was a wildcat, and was scarder'n a rabbit. Hello! There he goes again! Say! ain't he a little corker, though? Did you ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... empty the prison's, and be expeditious in doing their work.—In this profession of slaughtering, destructive instincts, long repressed by civilization, become aroused. His feline physiognomy, at first "that of a domestic cat, restless but mild, changes into the savage appearance of the wildcat, and close to the ferocious exterior of the tiger. In the Constituent Assembly he speaks with a whine, in the Convention he froths at the mouth."[31146] The monotonous drone of a stiff sub-professor changes into the personal accent ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... speak his dialect, and spent many hours in his company. He told us the folk lore of his tribe. More than forty myths or animal stories of his have been recorded and preserved. They are as interesting as the stories of Uncle Remus. The escapades of wildcat, the lion, the grizzly bear, the bluejay, the lizard, and the coyote are as full of excitement and comedy as ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten, have disappeared; the otter is rarely if ever seen here at present; and the mink is less ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau

... background of modern economic conditions must lead to such rational and recommendable behaviour. A psychological problem appears only when such a course of wisdom is abandoned, and either the savings are hidden away instead of being made productive, or are thrown away in wildcat schemes. Yet of the two extremes the first again is easily understood. A hysteric fear of possible loss, an unreasonable distrust of banks and bankers, keeps the overcautious away from the market. But while such ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... barn. He gave first aid to the helpless guard, and, without dreaming he could be got to a surgeon alive, rushed him in a light wagon to the hospital at Sleepy Cat, where it was said that he must have more lives than a wildcat. Sassoon, not caring to brave de Spain's anger in town, went temporarily into hiding. A second surgeon was brought from Medicine Bend, and heroic efforts were put forth to nurse again into life the feeble spark the assassin had ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... planned for another little camping trip, over on Wildcat Island, which had quite a bad name on account of the ferocious animals known to exist in its dense thickets, and also because a wild man was said to have been seen there many times. What the four ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen

... instant he was in his saddle. He swung far to one side and caught her in his arms. Vaguely he heard the yell of excitement from the outlaws. All he was vividly conscious of was the white horror of her face. She fought like a wildcat. She did not cry out. She struck him full in the face with the strength of a man, almost. He prisoned her with a stronger grip, and in so doing nearly toppled from the saddle, for ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand

... worse than the way wildcat "mining" men have robbed the unsuspecting public. For these rupture swindlers take ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons

... business of taking directorships has never quite appealed to me. I don't know anything about the game, and I should probably run up against some wildcat company. I can't say I like the directorship wheeze much. It's the idea of knowing that one's name would be being used as a bait. Every time I saw it on a prospectus I should feel like a ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... land which had been sold to settlers. In countless cases the district irrigation bonds-which were offered broadcast by Eastern banks to their small investors—were hardly worth the paper on which they were written. One after another these wildcat irrigation schemes, purporting to assure sudden wealth in apples, pears, celery, garden truck, cherries, small fruits, alfalfa, pecans, eucalyptus or catalpa trees-anything you liked—went to the wall. Sometimes whole communities became straitened by the collapse of these overblown ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough

... and the straightness of his mouth. If he had been a ghost, men could not have avoided him more sedulously, and the giant servant who stalked at his back. Not that The Corner was peopled with cowards. The true Westerner avoids trouble, but cornered, he will fight like a wildcat. ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand

... immediately saleable securities will be placed at your disposal for a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. I never indulge in wildcat stock myself. And let me tell you there can be no question of your permitting or not permitting. I'm your father, and please don't forget it. It doesn't happen to suit me that my infant prodigy of a son should make a mess of his career; and I won't have it. If there's ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... chances, sit unmoved. Mr. Snivel thinks the woman better be removed. "Our half-starved mechanics," he says, "are a depraved set; and these wives they bring with them from the North are a sort of cross between a lean stage-driver and a wildcat. She seems a poor, destitute creature-just what they all come to, out here." Mr. Snivel shrugs his shoulders, bids George good night, and takes his departure. "Take care of yourself, George," he says admonitiously, as ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... up against an enraged wildcat mother," Jack told him, "and without a sign of a gun to back you, that's the time to spell prudence in big capital letters. They've got terrible claws, and can use them to tear a fellow's clothes to ribbons, not to mention what they'll do to your hide. No use talking, Steve, if the ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton

... that all opposition must be worse than vain, quietly yielded the point and followed his conductor. But Faustina's animal nature got the ascendency, and she resisted, fought and screamed like a wildcat. It took half a dozen policemen to put her into the carriage, and then the handcuffs had to be ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... Though now and then they heard the yell of a wildcat far back in the woods, or the tramping of an occasional bulk through the forest, and though once a cinnamon bear poked his muzzle out into the clearing, sniffed and departed with a grunt of disapproval, they could not bring ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... Mistuh Wildcat, den. I done got me a couple o' guinea-fowls for watch, en dey sho does set up a mighty potrackin' w'en anything strange comes ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... safety pin to the inside pocket of the vest he wore only when he felt need of a safe and secret pocket, Casey Ryan carried a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, made payable to himself. A check for twenty-five thousand dollars in Casey's pocket was like a wildcat clawing at his imagination and spitting at every moment's delay. Casey had endured solitude and some hardship while he coaxed Starvation Mountain to reveal a little of its secret treasure. Now he wanted action, light, life and plenty of it. While he drove he ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... the Huns have got him," said Frank gloomily. "He isn't among the dead or wounded as far as we've been able to find. But I'll bet they thought they had hold of a wildcat ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall

... are stopping says, that, the night before we came, a wildcat glared in at her as she sat at ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... not see you sooner, Meinherr," said Hayraddin, very submissively, "there is a young Scot, with as quick an eye as the wildcat, who watches my least motions. He suspects me already, and, should he find his suspicion confirmed, I were a dead man on the spot, and he would carry back the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... they remained at Gloucester — Wilson thanked him for his generous manner of proceeding, and was discharged. On our return to our lodgings, my nephew explained the whole mystery; and I own I was exceedingly incensed — Liddy being questioned on the subject, and very severely reproached by that wildcat my sister Tabby, first swooned away, then dissolving in a flood of tears, confessed all the particulars of the correspondence, at the same time giving up three letters, which was all she had received from her admirer. The last, which Jery intercepted, I send you inclosed, and when ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... bully-ragged all day by the builder, by his foreman, by the architect, by the tapestry devil who is to upholster the furniture, by the idiot who is putting down the carpets, by the scoundrel who is setting up the billiard-table (and has left the balls in New York), by the wildcat who is sodding the ground and finishing the driveway (after the sun went down), by a book agent, whose body is in the back yard and the coroner notified. Just think of this thing going on the whole day long, and I a man who loathes details ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... day in, day out, passes my comprehension. You had not been gone fifteen minutes when Missy tuned up. I patted and, 'She-e-d' her, but she got her head above cover, squinted around the room, and not finding you, set up a squall that would have scared a wildcat. The more I patted, the worse she screamed, and her feet and hands flew around like a wind-mill. I took her up, and trotted her on my knee, but bless you! she squirmed like an eel, and her little bald head bobbed up and down faster than ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... wildcat, and peep through bark so close he could almos' touch her; but he only lift edge of bark, and slide in wampum belt. Coquan work war-belt for him, and know who it is at once. Then she go out, an' they talk together, far from ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... observed Horne Fisher. "If you meet a cat in a wood you think it's a wildcat, though it may have just strolled from the drawing-room sofa. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that is not the woodman's chopper. It's the kitchen chopper, or meat ax, or something like that, that somebody has thrown away in the wood. I saw it in the kitchen myself ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... said so, Lysander did not doubt but that it would be so. He concluded, therefore, not to catch Toby—that night. Moreover, he resolved to go back to his quarters and sleep. He was afraid of that wildcat; he dreaded the thought of trusting himself in the house with her. He durst not kill her, and he durst not go to sleep, leaving her alive. The Germans, perceiving his fear, looked at each other and grunted. That grunt was the German ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. "I ain't attempting," says he, "to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty- pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... amicably, "some of us more, some of us less. Dona Dolores probably spells politics, but Dona Jocasta is a wildcat of the sierras, and I can't figure out any harmonious days for a man who picks ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... of the moon is no more fanciful than several of the proposals seriously received by Englishmen under the spell of speculation. As in the kingdom of Cacklogallinia, so in London, men mortgaged their homes and women sold their jewels [4] in order to purchase shares in wildcat companies, born one day, only to die the next. As the anonymous author of one of many South Sea Ballads wrote in his "Merry ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... has an office with about a hundred other corporations of various kinds—most of them with names that sound like the zoo—Yellow Wildcat, Jumping Leapfrog, and that sort of thing. It seems Horse's Neck is played out and they are going ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... Thomson who wrote the "Seasons." I thought him both great and grand in an incident which soon occurred. A burly, bull-necked fellow in the car was attacked with an epileptic fit. He roared, kicked, screamed like a wildcat; and among fifty men in the vehicle, I venture to say that only Thomson and I, in a lesser degree, showed any plain common sense. I darted at the epileptic, grappled with him, held him down by what might be called brutal kindness, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... the brute plumped down on my back, and with a tremendous splash, limb, wildcat, and myself went into ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... travellers slept in a row on their hay bed; for two long-remembered days the five boys roamed the country round the clearing, starting deer, catching glimpses of a wildcat, a marten or two, and of another coon. Then came, to use Dol's expression, "the beastly ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... He appeals to the thought and reason of his hearers, and he never appeals in vain, and rarely has he made a stronger appeal than in his Music Hall speech. The three issues discussed by him were wildcat currency, the silver question, and the protective tariff question. His discussion of the wildcat currency was exhaustive, and he pictured the evils that must flow from its resumption in forcible ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... regular young wildcat, Desmond. She very nearly got my hand in her mouth, and if she had she would have bitten a piece out. Well, I shouldn't think there will be ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty

... mink, coon, muskrat, wildcat, and beaver. Besides this the stores advertised that they would take for their articles cash, beeswax, and country produce or tallow, hogs' lard in white walnut kegs, butter, pork, new feathers, good horses, and also corn, rye, oats, flax, and "old Congress money," the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... bent, and the stern eyes of the woodman were fixed on his mark. Slowly the minute passed, while Nigel breathed a prayer to his three soldier saints, not that they should save his body in this life, but that they should have a kindly care for his soul in the next. Some thought of a fierce wildcat sally crossed his mind, but once out of his corner he was lost indeed. Yet at the last he would have rushed among his enemies, and his body was bent for the spring, when with a deep sonorous hum, like a breaking harp-string, the cord of ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... or wildcat might have been about; or a party of Indians might have happened along and taken you off," she said. "And we should never have known what had ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis

... me, did you?" growled the trader. "You didn't stop any too soon to save your bacon, you she-wildcat. Stand still now, or you'll git ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... It was a picture of what is going on in our own little community year after year. I wish you could see what I have to see. I wish you could see the thousands of hard-earned dollars that go out of our community every year into just such wildcat enterprises as you described. The saddest part of it is that the money nearly always goes out of the pockets of the people who can least ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette

... fully persuaded himself that he should be carried off a prisoner to this wildcat regiment, and he could hardly believe his senses when he found himself again safely floating down the rapid tide of the Shenandoah. His impudence and his self-possession had saved him; but it was a mystery to him that his uniform, or the absence of his fish-line, or the answers he gave, ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... lonely night in the woods, in the woods! Hail to the darkness and God's murmuring between the trees, to the sweet, simple melody of silence in my ears, to green leaves and yellow! Hail to the life-sound I hear; a snout against the grass, a dog sniffing over the ground! A wild hail to the wildcat lying crouched, sighting and ready to spring on a sparrow in the dark, in the dark! Hail to the merciful silence upon earth, to the stars and the half moon; ay, to them ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun

... home. In this way a man may become chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, because he knows how to pack a caucus in Catawampus County, or sent ambassador to Barataria, because he has drunk bad whiskey with every voter in Wildcat City. Should we ever attain to a conscious nationality, it will have the advantage of lessening the number of our great men, and widening our appreciation to the larger scale of the two or three that are left,—if there should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... city of the kingdom lived a young man known by the name of Juan Pusong. He had as friends an ape, named Amo-Mongo, and a wildcat, whose name was Singalong. The three friends were passing one day in front of the palace, and, seeing the three young ladies, were greatly charmed ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,

... in all directions to gain the earlies possible intelligence of the progress of the movement, and to make such resistance to it as might be possible. One of these outposts was stationed at Wildcat Gap, an inexpressibly wild and desolate region, sixty miles from Camp Dick Robinson, where the road entering Kentucky from Tennessee at Cumberland Gap crosses the Wildcat range ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... projectiles hit Devers' ship," said Roger. "One of them on the power deck. Must've smashed the reaction tanks and made the stuff wildcat, because it blew him ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell

... it better to leave the porcupine to himself, and his innocent occupation of "barking" the trees. He generally proves more than a match for any of them; and, in fact, neither wolf, panther, nor wildcat, can kill him—as there is not a spot of his body which they can touch when he prepares himself for their attack. On the other hand, he frequently kills them— only in self-defence, however, as he never attacks ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... cry, which is not unlike that of a deer; he can grunt like a startled boar, and squeak like the monkeys cowering at his approach in the branches overhead; he can shake the earth with a vibrating, resonant purr, like the sound of faint thunder in the foot-hills; he can mew and snarl like an angry wildcat; and he can roar like a lusty lion cub. But it is when he lifts up his voice in the long-drawn moan that the jungle chiefly fears him. This cry means that he is hungry, and, moreover, that he is so sure of his kill ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... construction of ships, the mariner's compass, and astronomy. The stories of the land pioneers open up a still richer field of natural science study for the common schools. Among animals are the beaver, otter, squirrel, coon, bear, fox, wildcat, deer, buffalo, domestic animals, wild turkeys, ducks, pigeons, eagle, hawk, wild bees, cat-fish, sword-fish, turtle, alligator, and many more. Among native products and fruits are mentioned corn, pumpkins, beans, huckleberries, grapes, strawberries, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... ever done that was rational?" cried his mother sharply. "From the beginning, when she was a baby of three months old, and howled at me because I kissed her, and that dreadful mother of hers flew at me like a wildcat and said I had the evil eye, Leam Dundas has been more like some changeling than an ordinary English girl. I declare it sometimes makes my heart ache to, see her with those awful eyes of hers, looking as if she had seen one does not know what—as if she was being literally ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... a scheme that'll knock all these wildcat ones just to flinders, see if it don't," remarked Tom Betts, waving ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren

... taken for play or comfort, just as the bull caribou comes up to lie in the snow, with the strong sea wind in his face, to escape the flies which swarm in the thickets below. Owl and hawk, fox and weasel and wildcat,—all the prowlers of the day and night have long since discovered these good hunting-grounds and leave the prints of wing and claw over the records of the wood-mice; but still Tookhees returns, led by his love of the snow-fields, ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... bustards, and swans. We met from time to time monstrous fish, which struck so violently against our canoes, that at first we took them to be large trees, which threatened to upset us. We saw also a hideous monster; his head was like that of a tiger, his nose was sharp, and somewhat resembled a wildcat; his beard was long; his ears stood upright; the color of his head was gray; and his neck black. He looked upon us for some time, but as we came near him our oars frightened him away. When we threw our nets ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... thought it was a wild animal—a coon, or a wildcat, coming down a tree. Then there were two wildcats, descending together, or preparing to descend. Then the wildcats became two human legs clasped around the trunk, and two human arms appeared enjoying an equally close hug above them. The body to which these ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... the horns of the cattle tied to the trek-tow. Presently, however, I saw another glint of light which I guessed came from the spear of Saduko, who was seated by the ashes of the cooking fire wrapped in his kaross of wildcat skins. Slipping from the voorkisse, or driving-box, I came behind him softly and touched him on the shoulder. He leapt up with a start which revealed his nervous nature, then recognising me through the soft ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard

... of the joys of Arcady are here—bright, singing birds, wide adventurous rivers, innumerable streams, the squirrel in the wood and the bracken, the wildcat stealing through the undergrowth, the lizard glittering by the stone, the fish leaping in the stream, the plaint of the whippoorwill, the call of the bluebird, the golden flash of the oriole, the honk of the wild ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... stood there like a flock o' sheep, without a single thought among us. The' didn't seem to be a thing to do, but just watch 'em plunge two hundred feet into the ravine. I glanced at Bill, but I hardly knew him. His brows was drawn down like a wildcat's, his jaws was clamped so tight you could hear 'em grit, an' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... Pearl. Speaking with all possible respect, the Senora Montfort, though high-born and accomplished, is a hysterical wildcat. You did well, my child; you did extremely well. So long as I have found you, nothing matters; but, nothing at all. As my great, my gigantic friend, my colossal preserver, el Capitan Gimmo, ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards

... play wildcat on her han's an' knees, Honest! 'T would give ye the gibberees! An' she sneaks along an' jumps at you An' gives sech a yell!—my ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... an unholy lot of weapons," he soliloquized on his way back to Johnny. "An' they're all second-hand. Cannons, too—an' machetes!" he exclaimed, suddenly understanding. "Jumping Jerusalem!—a filibustering expedition bound for Cuba, or one of them wildcat republics down south! Oh, ho, my friends; I see where you have bit off more'n you can chew." In his haste to impart the joyous news to his companion, he barked his ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... him, kicking his shins with her feet, poking him with her knees, and gouging his eyes and digging his face with her nails. As well might Sandy try to make love to a cornered wildcat. He threw her from him, and Tess, springing up, uninjured, raced up the hill. Sandy's words, broken ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... her head, of course. She took me for a wildcat once, poor child. No, no—when she was sane she addressed me very properly. She's back on the old decorous ground now. Made me a beautiful little speech this morning, informing me that I had to stop calling her 'little girl,' for she ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond

... talked, and was black and strong. She drank it eagerly, and a wave of nervous energy rushed over her, surging up to her brain like light and electricity. It gave to her a sort of reckless valour to say just the thing she felt. She turned towards Julian with a manner that was half shrew, half wildcat—street girls cannot always compass the impressive, though they may feel the great eternities nestling round their ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... up at the window of the sleeping room over the garage where Koku was supposed to spend the night. But Tom knew the giant was seldom there during the dark hours. He was as much of a night-prowler as a wildcat or an owl. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton

... Wildcat Thompson, cowboy, sprang to his feet; lithe, active, eager. Swiftness, alertness, poise, certainty were in every line of his splendid body. His was the assured, resourceful bearing of the man of action, whose hands have kept his head, contrasting sharply with the Miner's heavy and tentative ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... him yell, yes," he said. "But I didn't know what was the matter. And then this wildcat jumped me—" He paused and his eyes widened. "Which way did he go?" he asked swiftly. I pointed down the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... the rudely improvised prison, Mizzoo defended himself. "He wasn't too old and rheumatic to fight like a wildcat—why, he had to be lifted up bodily and carried into his cell. Not a word can we get out of him, or a bite of grub into him. I believe that old codger's just too obstinate ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... had builded in our yews, and so, on one side at least, he inherited blind loyalty to my name. I say on one side, for his blood was mixed; his father had married a vagrant, a half-gypsy Irish girl who begged among the villages. It was the union of a stolid ox and a wildcat, and I had much amusement watching the two breeds fight for the mastery in the huge Pierre. The cat was quicker of wit, but the ox was of more use to me in the long run, so I tried to keep an excess of stimulants—whether of brandy or adventure—out ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... along he thought it was a wildcat—I saw it in his eye. But I saved him. And I was careful not to do it in a way that could hurt his pride. I just spoke up in a quite natural way of pleasing surprise, and not as if I was dreaming of conveying information, and said, "Well, I do declare, if there ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... I won't whip her," I says, thinking to break the ice by pulling her down on my knee. But she struggled like a wildcat, and Tom, he ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... kindly talk wore off in a fortnight. Yet he was popular with teachers as well as pupils. His head was crowned with a mass of sandy hair and his impertinent face plastered with freckles. The boy was quick and full of grace as a wildcat and so well built and lithe that he was a terror on ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... inclined to scratch her mother, like a wildcat; but the apprentices were coming. So she cooled her head in a basin of cold water and dressed with all speed, assisted by Ma, who perhaps regretted having been so hasty; but you had to be, with devils like that! And Ma's anger returned when, on reaching the stage again, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... that year the meat-markets in that section of the country were remarkably bad. It was sometimes difficult for a panther or a wildcat to find enough food to keep her family at all decently, and there were cases of great destitution. In years before there had been plenty of deer, wild turkey, raccoons, and all sorts of good things, but they were very scarce now. This was not the first time that ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... the camp is, I believe, a wildcat, worrying over our fine ham," remarked Frank, quietly raising the hammers ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen

... plied him with questions until they learned the chief facts in his history. When the long conversation ended they knew that Deerfoot was the son of a Shawanoe chief, and that he was born in the Dark and Bloody Ground. When but a small boy he was like a spitting wildcat in his hatred of the white people, and it was not until he was wounded and nearly beaten to death, that he could be taken prisoner on one of the excursions of his ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... to have saved HER from something, and not her husband. Yet he had no ill-feeling for Burroughs, only a desire to circumvent him, on behalf of the unprotected, as he would have baffled a hawk or a wildcat. He went home in dismal spirits, but later that evening constructed a boyish letter of thanks to the apocryphal Belcher and ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... Financial Argus," she said, "of which you really must take notice. It's most abusive. It's about the Wildcat Reef. They assert that there never was any gold in the mine, and that you knew it when ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... push Leila about what Tom did. John slapped his face and got knocked down. He got up and went at Tom like a wildcat. Tom knocked him down again and held him. He said that John must say he ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... an' rasslin' with the logs. That put meat on my bones! I could 'a' gone back an' made a mess o' the hull party with the toe o' my boot but I ain't overly fond o' killin'. Never have been. I took my time an' slopped erlong toward shore with the runt under my arm cussin' like a wildcat. We got ashore an' I made the leetle sergeant empty his pockets an' give me all the papers he had. I took the strip o' rawhide from round my belt an' put a noose above his knees an' 'nother on my wrist an' sot down to wait ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... have seen, came up to his chest, the giant's strength and swiftness were such that the woodsmen were taken by surprise, and Uncle Adam, who was in front, was almost caught. In spite of his bulk, he turned and sprang away with the agility of a wildcat; but if his snowshoes had turned and hindered him for one half second, he would have been struck down and trodden to a jelly in the smother of snow. Seeing the imminence of his peril, the other woodsmen threw up their rifles; but Uncle Adam, though extremely busy for the moment, ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... it, sahib!" he shouted. "I knew that one would come for me! This hill wildcat has fought until the ropes cut both of us; but take time, sahib! I can wait. Attend to the duty first. Only let him who comes bring water with him, for ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... went on outside, the three people, the man, woman and child, in the cave slept as soundly as sleep the drunken or the just. They were full-fed and warm and safe. No beast of a size greater than that of a lank wolf or sinewy wildcat could enter the cave through the narrow entrance between the heaped-up rocks, and of these, as of any other dangerous beast, there was none which would face what barred even the narrow passage, for it was fire. Just at the entrance the all-night fire of knots and ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... Squire Hall, "that'll never do in the world. Suppose Levi West should come back again, what then? I'm responsible for that money. If you wanted to borrow it now for any reasonable venture, you should have it and welcome, but for such a wildcat scheme—" ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... his signals again. Only eight yards to go and four downs to do it in. Clint scented victory and his nerves grew tense as he waited. Then he was pushing and wrenching and once more the hole was opened wide and once more Freer, playing like a wildcat, smashed past him. Clint followed through, met a Claflin back and sent him staggering aside. Freer, tackled but still fighting, dragged himself on and on. And then ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour

... wood seemed to awake. Owls insisted to the ears of the sleeping Humphrey that the morrow would be a fair day. Leaves rustled in the gentle wind. Far off sounded a wildcat's cry. And with these sounds in his ears ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... out his hand when I entered the room, and he said, "I don't blame you, Bill. It was mean of me, but I wanted to be smart." I was so full, so choked with emotion, that it was some time before I could say a word. But after a time I spoke of the rain, and told him that I thought that I had heard a wildcat as I came along, which was a lie, for I had heard nothing save the wind and the rain falling on the dead leaves. He laughed and said that he did not suppose that I would have been very much frightened had the cat jumped at me. Then I told him that I was the biggest coward on earth, and sought to ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... a pacifically detaining hand on Nahum Beals's arm as he strode past him. "Oh, Lord, stop rampagin' up and down like a wildcat," he said. "What good do you think you're doin' tearin' and shoutin' and insultin' people? He ain't talkin' like a scab, he's only talkin' ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... five hundred miles among the mountains, in a country where these beasts of prey abound, and yet see never a hair of a living Wildcat. But how many do you suppose see you? Peeping from a thicket, near the trail, glimpsing you across some open valley in the mountains, or inspecting you from various points as you recline by the campfire, they size you up and decide they want no ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton



Words linked to "Wildcat" :   unofficial, oil well, margay cat, Felis yagouaroundi, Felis wiedi, jaguarondi, Felis tigrina, catamountain, ocelot, Pallas's cat, cougar, wolf, savage, jungle cat, cat, catamount, Felis silvestris, true cat, panther, unauthorised, wildcat strike, tiger cat, eyra, assailant, Felis, assaulter, wildcat well, brute, Felis bengalensis, explorative, kaffir cat, Felis concolor, serval, Felis chaus, panther cat, Felis manul, mountain lion, Felis serval, aggressor, Felis pardalis, lynx, unauthorized, Felis ocreata, genus Felis, exploratory, leopard cat, jaguarundi, sand cat, caffer cat, unsound, painter, oiler, puma, manul, margay, jaguarundi cat, attacker



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