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Wooden Horse   /wˈʊdən hɔrs/   Listen
Wooden Horse

noun
1.
A large hollow wooden figure of a horse (filled with Greek soldiers) left by the Greeks outside Troy during the Trojan War.  Synonym: Trojan Horse.






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"Wooden Horse" Quotes from Famous Books



... fogy of a horse he is! I am sure he must be made of wood," exclaimed Gaspar; and he gave a great pound on the horse's neck. "Hollow, I declare! Nothing but a wooden horse, after all, and goes by machinery. I wonder how long he is wound up to go, and whether I shall ever get off the dreadful nightmare's back. What a fool I was to change my good cantering horse for such a machine as this! But I must endure it now I ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... Edward I. Major, the Scots philosopher and master of John Knox, makes a guess (taken up by Scott in Ivanhoe) as the period of Richard I. Kuhn seeks to show that Hood is a survival of Woden, or of his Wooden, "wooden horse" or hobby horse. The Robin Hood play was parallel with the May games, which, as Mr. Frazer shows in his Golden Bough, were really survivals of a world-wide religious practice. But Robin Hood need not be confused with the legendary May King. Mr. Child judiciously ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang

... that instead of the horse we have an elephant. But he rightly remarked that the coincidence was accidental. In the one case, after a siege of nine years, the principal heroes of the Greek army are concealed in a wooden horse, dragged into Troy by a stratagem, and the story ends by their falling upon the Trojans and conquering the city of Priam. In the other story a king bent on securing a son-in-law, had an elephant constructed by able artists, and filled with armed men. The ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... old-fashioned dress, making a curtsy to a little boy dressed like an old gentleman and carrying a toy ship in his hand. The box was filled with old toys, most of them chipped or broken. There was a very small tea-set with at least half of the cups missing, a wooden horse which only possessed three legs, and the remains of a regiment ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels

... band of noisy emasculated priests; and this was what they opened their gates to, and took up into their holy of holies, the Palatine hill, the birthplace of Rome. The Greeks had again come bearing gifts, and like the Trojans who broke down their walls and took the wooden horse up into their citadel, Romans, the reputed descendents of these Trojans, were carrying up to their most sacred hill another gift of Greece which was to capture their city. They put the image in the temple of Victoria on ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter

... back, and that it had seemed dull without me; he has done fifty little simple things in our absence, in his tranquil and faithful way, and is pleased to have them noticed. Alec, who was with me to-day, delighted me by finding his stolid wooden horse in the summer-house, rather damp and dishevelled, and almost bursting into tears at the pathos of the neglect. "Did you think we had forgotten you?" he said as he hugged it. I suggested that he should have ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson

... This queer wooden horse was a great favorite with Princess Ozma, who had caused the bottoms of its legs to be shod with plates of gold, so the wood would not wear away. Its saddle was made of cloth-of-gold richly encrusted with precious gems. It ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... debutante to-night; she was by far the most beautiful at the ball—sans exception! Even the adorable Lady Tilchester had not her grand air. Les demoiselles anglaises! Ce sont des fagotages inouis pour la plus part, with their movements of the wooden horse and their skins of the goddess! As for le fiance, il etait assez retenu, il avait pourtant l'air maussade, mais il se consolait avec du champagne—il fera ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn

... casting of accounts was taught in Latin, which I held not far less painful or penal than the very Greek. I wept for Dido's death, who made herself away with the sword,' he declares, 'and even so, the saying that two and two makes four was an ungrateful song in mine ears, whereas the wooden horse full of armed men, the burning of Troy, and the very Ghost of Creusa, was a most delightful spectacle ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various

... indulgence of the intelligent and broad-minded as well as the easily inducted reader. Cleopatra was smuggled into Caesar's presence in a roll of tapestry; the Greeks introduced their men into Troy by means of a wooden horse; and the discoverer of the broad Pacific Ocean made his escape from his importunate creditors disguised as a cask of merchandise. So, when we wish to accomplish an object, we must adopt appropriate means, even if they may apparently seem to have an entirely diametrically ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... whose authorship is ascribed to sundry poets, including Homer, next describes the madness and death of Ajax, the arrival of Philoctetes with the arrows of Hercules, the death of Paris, the purloining of the Palladium, the stratagem of the wooden horse, ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... aghast at the disproportion between the dream and the reality. His delusion was like that of Don Quixote,—he believed himself in the Empyrean, and took the vapors from the kitchen for the breath of heaven, and, seated on his wooden horse, felt all the shock of an imaginary fall.. Had he been in such a state of mental exaltation merely to produce those two lines? Were these the only result of that frantic rubbing of his dishevelled hair, of that weary pacing ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... other people's wifes. So Helener shall stop here." Paris stamped his foot. When Menelayus got home, he stamped his foot. And he called round him all his soldiers, and they stood round Troy for eleven years. At last they thought it was no use standing any longer, so they built a wooden horse in memory of Helener and the Trojans and it was ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... missionary efforts were directed chiefly against the spiritual darkness of his superiors in rank, though he would turn aside from pursuit of his erring commander to set a chicken-thieving orderly astride a wooden horse, with a heavy stone attached to each foot. "Hazen," said a brother brigadier, "is a synonym of insubordination." For my commander and my friend, my master in the art of war, now unable to answer for himself, let this fact answer: when he ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce

... Jim," one of the men exclaimed. "If you knew it two days ago, why in thunder didn't you report. We'd have made a wooden horse gallop to Wykerton ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... around the dark playground and said gaily, "I see no wooden horse. There should be one, I know. Master Dryden says so, and he knows all ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... is preparing to fight, now," he decided. "His 'wooden horse' is within Berthe Loiuson's camp. If she is not wary, she may never leave India, Johnstone can be very ugly. But what must I do? Shall I warn Berthe, now? If I do, she will both doubt me and make a scene. Old Johnstone will then know at once that I have betrayed him." An hour's cogitation led Alan ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... Aethiopian Memnon, the death of Achilles under the arrow of Paris, and the dispute between Odysseus and Aias for the arms of Achilles. The "Sack of Ilium" [1113] as analysed by Proclus was very similar to Vergil's version in "Aeneid" ii, comprising the episodes of the wooden horse, of Laocoon, of Sinon, the return of the Achaeans from Tenedos, the actual Sack of Troy, the division of spoils and the burning of ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod

... questioned as to who he was and whence he came, the stranger told an artful story. He was a Greek, he said, and his name was Si'non. His countrymen had long been weary of the war, and had often resolved to return home, but were hindered by storms from making the attempt. And when the wooden horse was built, the tempests raged and the thunder ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke

... him. "No," says he, "I revere him. But when he comes to ringin' in ancient history, he'll find that I'm a wooden horse that can gallop—that I'm only called Agamemnon for fun. That, really, I used to spank our former friend, Achilles, to develop his nervous system. Oh, no!" says Ag, "Troy to me is only a system of measurements, a myth, or the damnedest hole in the U. S. However, we shall be at the Christmas ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... blindness which Aphrodite had sent her in persuading her to abandon home and daughter and a husband who lacked naught, neither wit not manhood." Menelaus then recounted how Odysseus saved him when they were in the wooden horse, when one false sound would have betrayed them. On the next morning Telemachus told the story of the ruin of his home; Menelaus prophesied the end of the suitors, then preceded to recount how in Egypt he waylaid and captured Proteus, ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... parti-colored glow-worms. Following one of these paths, we came presently to an open space, brilliantly lighted and crowded by holiday-makers. Here were refreshment stalls, and Russian swings, and queer-looking merry-go-rounds, where each individual sat on a wooden horse and went gravely round and round with a stick in his hand, trying to knock off a ring from the top of a pole in the middle. Here, also, was a band in a gaily decorated orchestra; a circular area roped off for dancers; a mysterious tent with a ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... that?—a poor old man, almost bent double, drawing a little wooden horse upon the pavement, and laughing and talking to it as if he were seven years old, instead of seventy! How white his hair is; and see—his hat is without a crown, and one of the flaps of his coat is torn ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... try to be content with it; but it's hard for one who has roamed the air like a hawk all his life to be content with ridin' a wooden horse. I couldn't endure it if it weren't ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... no attention to the rebuke. He was a small, freckle-faced boy. In one hand he held a whip, and in the other the broken head of a wooden horse. He picked himself up, and began slashing his toys with the whip. Bumper gave him one terrified glance, and made a desperate dive for Mary's open waist. But Toby had ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh

... fate of his four-footed friend he was, of course, intensely enraged, but that was all the good it did him. The only revenge possible was to sentence more prisoners to ride the cruel wooden horse which he used as ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... authors, and the pursuit of his favorite studies. He is already deep in the question, 'whether the walls of Troy were accommodated with thirty-three or thirty-nine gates,' and also in this, 'what was the method of construction adopted in the case of the wooden horse, and what was its capacity?' Of his progress in these matters, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... you have been saying, my dear wife, is true. I have travelled much, and have had much to do with heroes, but I have never seen such another man as Ulysses. What endurance too, and what courage he displayed within the wooden horse, wherein all the bravest of the Argives were lying in wait to bring death and destruction upon the Trojans. {43} At that moment you came up to us; some god who wished well to the Trojans must have set you on to it and you had Deiphobus with you. Three times did you go ...
— The Odyssey • Homer

... years, and in the tenth the Greeks conquered Troy, not in battle, but by means of a trick which had come into the mind of Odysseus. He told a skilful carpenter to build a wooden horse of gigantic size, and in it he hid the bravest Greek warriors. When he had done this he advised all the other Greeks to depart without leaving anything behind them, and so lead the Trojans to believe that they had given up the fight ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer

... some places there were tiny school-houses, much like those now seen in rural America. Such an one, renovated, may be still visited at Mansfeld, and its quaint inscription read over the door, to the effect that a good school is like the wooden horse of Troy. When the boys left home they lived more as they do now at college, being given a good deal of freedom out of hours. The poorer scholars used their free times to beg, for as many were supported in this way then ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... he endeavored to extricate them. They then hastened to the temple of Pallas, where, placing themselves at the foot of the goddess, they hid themselves under her shield. The people saw in this omen, Laocooen's punishment for his impiety in having pierced with his spear, the wooden horse which was consecrated to Minerva. Thus Virgil relates the story in the AEneid; others, as Hyginus, give different accounts, though agreeing in the main points. The fable is chiefly interesting to us, as having ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... are established between the self and some external object: mother, father, sister, cat, dog, bird, or even tree or plant, or even further still, some particular place, some particular inanimate object, a knife or a chair or a cap or a doll or a wooden horse. For we must insist that every object which really enters effectively into our lives does so by direct connection. If I love my mother, it is because there is established between me and her a direct, powerful circuit of vital magnetism, call it what ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... Greeks in their battles, she was obliged to save the city itself while it contained her sacred statue. But the Palladium being no longer within the walls, she was now at liberty to help the Greeks to capture and destroy the city. She therefore put into the mind of Ulysses the idea of the wooden horse, and she instructed the Greek chief E-peʹus how to make it. This horse was of vast size, large enough to contain about a hundred men, for it was ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke

... consolation. He assured his passenger that he would be quite well by and by, when he had been half an hour on terra firma, and that he hoped to drink a can and smoke a pipe with him at Father Crackenthorp's, for all that he felt a little out of the way for riding the wooden horse. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... carols and ringing their bells, and are generally remunerated for the amusement they occasion by a largess of money, or beer and cake. This ceremony is called "a hoodening." The figure which we have described is designated "a hooden," or wooden horse. The ceremony prevails in many parts of the Isle of Thanet, and may probably be traced as the relic of some religious ceremony practised in the early ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various

... learned when a boy About the Wooden Horse of Troy; And you assume these steeds to ...
— Children of Our Town • Carolyn Wells

... adventure led to a war of ten years between the Greeks and King Priam, for the rescue of the beautiful Helen. Menelaus and some of his countrymen at last contrived to conceal themselves in a hollow wooden horse, in which they were taken into Troy. Once inside, it was an easy task to open the gates and let the whole army in also. The city was then taken and burned. Menelaus was naturally one of the first to hasten from the smoking ruins, though he was almost the last to reach his home. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman



Words linked to "Wooden Horse" :   figure, trojan horse, Greece, Ellas, Hellenic Republic



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