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verb
Cower  v. i.  (past & past part. cowered; pres. part. cowering)  To stoop by bending the knees; to crouch; to squat; hence, to quail; to sink through fear. "Our dame sits cowering o'er a kitchen fire." "Like falcons, cowering on the nest."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cower" Quotes from Famous Books



... be the Pilot in the dreadful hour When a great nation, like a ship at sea With the wroth breakers whitening at her lee, Feels her last shudder if her Helmsman cower; A godlike manhood be his mighty dower! Such and so gifted, Lincoln, may'st thou be With thy high wisdom's low simplicity And awful tenderness of voted power: From our hot records then thy name shall stand On Time's calm ledger out of passionate days— ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... not after brother, no man for another cares. The gods in heaven are frightened, refuge they seek, Upward they mount to the heaven of Anu. Like a dog in his lair, So cower the gods together at the bars of heaven. Ishtar cries out in pain, loud cries the exalted goddess:— All is turned to mire. This evil to the gods I announced, to the gods foretold the evil. This exterminating ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... by a thunderbolt, released his hold, and, staggering back a few paces, seemed to cower, abashed and humbled, before the eye of the priest, as it glared upon ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... and finished their packing. About the house hovered the profound silence of the cold night, such a night as makes all living things, men and beasts, cower away for warmth into the depths of sleep. Antoinette's teeth were chattering: she was frozen body ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... mental vision is so clear, when the mind is so sane, as when death has come very near to us. There is a light which he brings with him, which he holds before the eyes of the dying, the stern light, seldom seen, of reality, before which self-deception and meanness, and that which maketh a lie, cower in their native deformity ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... his power: Or, if he was, knew not its full extent. He knew his glance would make a wild beast cower, And yet he knew not that his large eyes sent Into the heart of woman the same thrill That made the lion servant of his will. And even strong ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... make their cells in hexagons only because that figure best admits of junction. Before I quitted the premises, however, I learned that Tarleton, the actor of those times, was not buried at St. Saviour's, Southwark, as he wished, near Massinger and Cower, but at Shoreditch Church. He was the first of the profession whose fame was high enough to have his portrait solicited for to be set up as a Sign; and none but he and Garrick, I believe, ever obtained that honour. Mr. Dance's picture of our friend ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... mounts the outer stair Where chilly sparrows cower— And bells ring down the winter air From forth the snowy tower; For, muffled deep in drift, the clock Hath struck ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... we are both of us wiser and stronger: we have gone through fire. Who foretold it? This day, and this misery and perversion that we can turn to joy, if we will—if you will! No heart to dare is no heart to love!—answer that! Shall I see you cower away from me ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... boldness and presence of mind, and Obed himself had said this much in his criticisms upon Black Bill's story; but at the present moment there was something in the tremendous figure of Obed, and also in the fear which he had that all was discovered, which made him cower into nothingness before his antagonist. Yet he ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... I to win? Therein I seek not to enter, but only to have Nicolete, my sweet lady that I love so well. For into Paradise go none but such folk as I shall tell thee now: Thither go these same old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and night cower continually before the altars, and in the crypts; and such folk as wear old amices and old clouted frocks, and naked folk and shoeless, and covered with sores, perishing of hunger and thirst, and of cold, and of little ease. These be they that go into Paradise, with them ...
— Aucassin and Nicolete • Andrew Lang

... neither to the right nor left, and did not stoop nor cower, but strode boldly as if with right to the large residence of the Zanes, where in a minute it ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... her eyes as if to shut out some dreadful vision, and seemed to cower and shrink as if some one was smiting ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... list at the office to see whether our names were there—in order to avoid us. But you cannot avoid us. We do not mean that you shall avoid us. We will dog you now through life—not by lies or subterfuges, as you say, but openly and honestly. It is YOU who need to slink and cower, not we. The prosecutor need not descend to the sordid shifts ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... boatswain's mate, Manliest of men in his own natural senses; But driven stark mad by the devil's drugged stuff, Storming all aboard from his run-ashore late, Challenging to battle, vouchsafing no pretenses, A reeling King Ogg, delirious in power, The quarter-deck carronades he seemed to make cower. "Put him in brig there!" said Lieutenant Marrot. "Put him in brig!" back he mocked like a parrot; "Try it, then!" swaying a fist like Thor's sledge, And making the pigmy constables hedge— Ship's corporals and the ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... some time after, I found that two had walked boldly up to our fires, while the others continued to cower over a few embers at the spot where I left them; the evening being very cold and stormy. Piper, who at first seemed much disposed to make friends of these people, had found that his endeavours to conciliate ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... his chaotic domain disparagingly, "and they say they may have to have me out here next Sunday—somebody's sick or missing. But they won't," he continued darkly. It was a threat, we felt—a threat that would make some presumptuous superior cower and conform. "I really belong at our branch in Dellwood Park, where there is something; not out here, beyond the last of everything." And he said more to indicate that his energies and abilities were ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... Not only did it show what noble stuff there is in Englishmen, and how naturally they take to arms, but also it inspired with martial feeling and happy faith the wives and mothers of all the gallant warriors there. It would make the blood-stained despot cower upon his throne of murder, and teach him the madness of invading any ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... you walk, sir?" She turned into a narrow path in the shadow of arches, clothed by a great Austrian brier, on which here and there a yellow flame still glowed. "Mr. Boyce—when I meet you in company you shrink and cower detestably; when I meet you alone, you fence with me impudently enough and shrewdly; and always you avoid me while you can. I suppose there's in all this something more than the freaks of a fool. Then it's fear. Prithee, sir, why in God's name ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... would cower down in the bottom of the cart and cry and pray. Storms terrified her. It seemed as if all the anger of the heavens were levelled at her. She would cry and moan pitifully whilst O'Connell would try to soothe her and tell her that neither God nor man would harm ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... smiled. For what can long depress the youthful and the loving when they dream that they are entirely beloved? Lands and thrones may perish, plague and devastation walk abroad with death, misery and beggary crawl naked to the doorway, and crime cower in the hedges; but to the egregious egotism of young love there are only two identities bulking in the crowded universe. To these immensities all other beings are audacious who dream of being even comfortable and obscure—happiness would be a presumption; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Richard Forester is connected with Chaucer's first in 1378, when Chaucer, about to go abroad on a mission for the King, had letters of attorney under the names of John Cower and Richard Forester, [Footnote: Life Records, No. 120, p. 216.] and again in 1386, when a lease for the house over Aldgate which Chaucer had occupied during his years as controller of the customs in London was made out by the Mayor ...
— Chaucer's Official Life • James Root Hulbert

... one of nature's marvels. Everyone says so. A Bobby Burns might well write a poem on this "wee, timorous, cowerin' beastie," except that the flea is not, strictly speaking, timorous or cowering. A flea, when it is in good health and spirits, will not cower worth a cent. It has ten times the bravery of a lion—in fact, one single little flea, alone and unaided, will step right up and attack the noisiest lion, and never brag about it. A lion is a rank ...
— Mike Flannery On Duty and Off • Ellis Parker Butler

... swagger and noisy bravado of his fraternity. There was an easy air of independence about him; a calm self-possession, and a sternness of glance, which might well daunt hearts less timid than those of poor slaves, accustomed from childhood and through life to cower before a driver's lash. The home plantation of Col. Lloyd afforded an ample field for the exercise of the qualifications for overseership, which he possessed in such ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... strong, Clatter'd a hundred steeds along, Their peal the merry horns rung out, A hundred voices join'd the shout; With hark, and whoop, and wild halloo, No rest Benvoirlich's echoes knew. Far from the tumult fled the roe, Close in her covert cower'd the doe; The falcon, from her cairn on high, Cast on the rout a wondering eye, Till far beyond her piercing ken The hurricane had swept the glen. Faint, and more faint, its failing din Return'd from cavern, cliff, and linn, And silence settled, wide and still, On the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... to fill it with life, to move at ease in it, to press it into soft and rounded lines. Her linked companions also were beauties of their day—that sleek and sleepy Nicoletta, that ruddy Guglielmotta; but they seemed to cower in their rigid clothes, and they were ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... however, before which even Eliza herself, hardened wretch as she seemed, used to cower and shiver; and that was the great black bumble-bee, the largest and most powerful of the British bee-kind. When one of these dangerous monsters, a burly, buzzing bourgeois, got entangled in her web, Eliza, shaking in her shoes ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... of immodesty, or of making personal reflections, when I say that the Department has had several notorious failures of late. It is not what it used to be. Crime is becoming impertinent. It no longer knows its place, so to speak. It throws down the gauntlet where once it used to cower in its fastnesses. I repeat, I make these remarks solely in the interest of law and order. I do not for one moment believe that Arthur Constant killed himself, and if Scotland Yard satisfies itself with that explanation, and turns on its other side and goes to sleep again, then, sir, one of the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... stand here like fat oxen waiting for the butcher's knife; if ye are men, follow me! strike down yon sentinel, and gain the mountain passes, and there do bloody work as did your sires at old Thermopyl! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that ye do crouch and cower like base-born slaves, beneath your master's lash? O! comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves; if we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors; if we must die, let us die under the open sky, by the bright ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... made Janice cower in her place on the reach and cling more tightly to Marty's hand. They listened to Manuel chattering a reply in which was included Don Jos['e]'s name. In a moment ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long

... cower down in the brush, though Bobolink muttered something to the effect that he had received another jab in the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... only to induce an augmented bellow of the exhaust with an instantaneous acceleration of impetus. Then something was struck and tossed aside as a bull might toss a dog—a dark shape whirling and flopping hideously; and an agonized screaming made the girl cower, sick with horror, and cover her ears ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... myself together out of the pools of the individual that have held me dispersed so long. I gather my billion thoughts into science and my million wills into a common purpose. Well may you slink down behind the mountains from me, well may you cower....' ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... Odo ventured to return, "is as flattering to the intelligence as to the senses; for surely it better becomes a reasoning being to face fate as an equal than to cower before it like a slave; but, since you have opened yourself so freely on the subject, may I carry your argument a point farther and ask how you reconcile your conception of man's destiny with the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... grace? Nay, drawn into ourselves, in that deep place Where good and evil meet, we bode our hour. For not inexorable is our power. And we are hunted of the prey we chase, Soonest gain ground on them that flee apace, And draw temerity from hearts that cower. ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... tail which it wagged beseechingly, at once deprecating severity and asking kindness. The poor animal had evidently been used to gentle treatment; it would look up in a boy's face, and give a leap, fawning on him, and then bark in a small doubtful voice, and cower a moment on the ground, astonished perhaps at the strangeness, the bustle and animation. The boys were beside themselves with eagerness; there was quite a babble of voices, arguing, discussing, suggesting. Each one ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... the hermit, roused to an unexpected burst of wrath. His eyes kindled with rage, and he darted a glance at the intruders which made them cower and shrink from his rebuke. In a moment he grew calm, relapsing into his usual moody and thoughtful attitude. Taking ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... men, which still haunted rather than participated in the world of to-day. But with an effort I sent such thoughts to the right-about. The long, draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and one fled before me into the darkness overhead. I came to the landing and stopped there for a moment, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... from out his sleeves. Rat-tat-tat, upon the entrance, brought Aunt Hannah to the door; Parched lips humbly plead for water, as she scanned his misery o'er; Wrathful came the dame's quick answer; made him cower, shame, and start Out of sight, despairing, saddened, hurt and angry to the heart. "Drink! You've had enough, you rascal. Faugh! The smell now makes me sick, Move, you thief! Leave now these grounds, sir, or our dogs will help you quick." ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... guards lead out the Queen. Nobody else moves. The townspeople cower and stare. The two little pages that bore her train as she entered remain back of the throne, not knowing what to do. As she goes by them, her train dragging on the ground, the two ragged little boys of Lisa, the wood-gatherer, run out from the group of citizens, ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... in the interest of the cargo of bananas, the Captain steered straight for the Newfoundland Banks, so in five days the temperature dropped from 90 degrees to 40 degrees, and the unfortunate West Indian passengers would cower and shiver in their thickest clothes over the radiators, where the steam ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... me out," speaking now bitterly and swiftly, "retaining my few belongings, and calling me a foul name which made me cower away like a whipped child. I had nothing left—nothing. For a week I had listened to no kind word, met with no kind act. I was upon the street, alone, at night, purposeless, homeless, wandering aimlessly from place to place, ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... it be with this great nation, When woman tests her high vocation; Persuasion proves a futile power To quell the joints, but quick they cower At ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... safely because He is so. There are many tender shapes in which this great promise is presented to our faith. Sometimes God is thought of as covering the weak fugitive, as the arching sides of His cave sheltered David from Saul. Sometimes He is represented as covering His beloved, who cower under His wings, 'as the hen gathereth her chickens' when hawks are in the sky. Sometimes He appears as covering them from tempest, 'when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall,' and 'the shadow of a great ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... then, You should falter, should cling to your pitiful breath; Cower down into beasts, when you might have stood men, And prefer the slave's life of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... all is one huge grievance. And the climax is reached, when you find yourself eclipsed by some minion, some dancing- master, some vile Alexandrian patterer of Ionic lays. How should you hope to rank with the minister of Love's pleasures, with the stealthy conveyer of billets-doux? You cower shamefaced in your corner, and bewail your hard lot, as well you may; cursing your luck that you have never a smattering of such graceful accomplishments yourself. I believe you wish that you could turn love-songs, or sing other men's with a good ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... Lord, And Ruler of the height, Who, robing day in light, hast poured Soft slumbers o'er the night, That to our limbs the power Of toil may be renew'd, And hearts be rais'd that sink and cower, And sorrows ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... Can Europe stand them six months? We think not. Must not Europe see that if they are successful in destroying US, that their own time is not far off when they will be swept from off this continent? Will not this coming Yankee Congress force all the world either to cower before them, or check them by upholding us? We think it must. This is a streak of dawn that we imagine we see. Perhaps we are only nodding—and only dream. Still we fancy the thing. Let us stand to our arms, and watch for ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer

... cannot dwell with slaves, nor reign O'er those who cower to take a tyrant's yoke; She left the down-trod nations in disdain, And flew to Greece, when Liberty awoke, New-born, amid those glorious vales, and broke Sceptre and chain with her fair youthful hands: As rocks are shivered in the thunder-stroke. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... the finest of the characters in the ranks of his admirable fiction is that old manageress of the narrow things of the house whose daughter is dying insane. I have called the dialect a shelter. This it is; but the poor lady does not cower within; her resigned head erect, she is shut out from that homely refuge, suffering and inarticulate. The two dramatists in their several centuries also recognized the inability of the dialect. They laid ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... women then and since. She did not realise that it was the system to which she had stubbornly committed herself, that drove the people of the fields to cut their crops green to be baked in the oven, because their hunger could not wait; or made them cower whole days in their beds, because misery seemed to gnaw them there with a duller fang. That she was unconscious of its effect, makes no difference in the real drift of her policy; makes no difference in the judgment that we ought to pass upon ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley

... himself for the worst, and did not cower or show signs of fear, as Socrates expected ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... and have our being, floating in it like some sea flower which spreads its filmy beauty and waves its long tresses in the depths of mid-ocean. The sound of its waters is ever in our ears, and above, beneath, around us, its mighty currents run evermore. We need not cower before the fixed gaze of some stony god, looking on us unmoved like those Egyptian deities that sit pitiless with idle hands on their laps, and wide-open lidless eyes gazing out across the sands. We need not fear the Omnipresence of Love, nor ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... has no weapon, and that man did have one. It was the sight of your pistol that made him cower. You couldn't have chosen a ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd

... the dead girl cringe and whine, And cower in the weeping air— But, oh, she was no kin of mine, And ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie

... controls, for we leaped forward almost with the speed of light. I caught a glimpse of luminous immensities on the verge of which we flew; of depths inconceivable, and flitting through the incredible spaces—gigantic shadows as of the wings of Israfel, which are so wide, say the Arabs, the world can cower under them like a nestling—and then—again the ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... hiding-places until thy bleached bones would tell that Rome findeth starvation oft cheaper than the sword. From Dan to Beersheba doth the heathen purple fly over tower and wall, and under the dark shadow of her mighty eagle do the nations of the earth cower. Whence then could come thy succor? To lift the sword is but to bring it down on thine own neck. If he whom our hearts love escape, by the wit of man's mind must the thing be accomplished. Go thou, Lazarus, with these disciples and rouse the sleeping people that they be ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... over the coals is the same as to cower over the coals, as a gipsy over a fire. Thus Hodge says of Gammer Gurton ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... him, because he not only reads, but acts. If it is a woman speaking, he pipes a falsetto such as no woman outside a reciter's brain ever possessed. If it is a rustic, he affects a dialect from no known district. In emotional passages one does not dare to look at him at all, but we all cower with our heads in our hands, as though we were convicted but penitent criminals. So much for dramatic or dialogue pieces. When it comes to lyric poetry—his favourite form of literature—Leeson sings, or rather cantillates, swaying his body to the rhythm of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various

... with Messidors, Pluvioses, and such like;—and having given it well forth, shall depart by the death they call Roman. Sieyes old-Constituent comes; to make new Constitutions as many as wanted: for the rest, peering out of his clear cautious eyes, he will cower low in many an emergency, and find silence safest. Young Saint-Just is coming, deputed by Aisne in the North; more like a Student than a Senator: not four-and-twenty yet; who has written Books; a youth ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... fact to one of the opposite sex. When it became absolutely necessary to change a woman's preconceived notions as to what she should do—as, for instance, discouraging her riding through quicksand—he would persuade somebody else to issue the advice. And he would cower in the background blushing his absurd little blushes at his second-hand temerity. Add to this narrow, sloping shoulders, a soft voice, and ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... moaning of a dying man. A fitful storm was brewing, and between the plashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments, the trees writhe in pain and hide their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short time before I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived me and the friend had stretched me on a bed of pain. I could not clearly distinguish what was passing in my head; it seemed ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... done. And 'tis an enemy who, scattering tares Amid the corn sown in Creation's field, With deadly coil the growing plant ensnares. And no mean enemy, nor one unsteeled For bold defiance, nor reduced to cower Ever in covert ambuscade concealed, But at whose hest the ravening hell-hounds scour A wasted world, while himself prowls to seek, Like roaring lion, whom he may devour, And upon whom his rancorous wrath to wreak, Sniffing the tainted steam of slaughter's breath, And lulled by agony's ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... at last it must be the Queen Sudarshana who is approaching near. [Aside to SUVARNA.] Suvarna, you must not hide and cower behind me like that. Mind, the umbrella in your ...
— The King of the Dark Chamber • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... to ye, Marcella—I think often, now, of that poor wee broken arm, and how ye used to cower away from me! I wish I'd got a grip on ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... has pointed out that this conception has its roots deep in primitive human nature: The Birth of Humility, Oxford, 1910, p. 17. 'It would, perhaps, be fanciful to say that man tends to run away from the sacred as uncanny, to cower before it as secret, and to prostrate himself before it as tabu. On the other hand, it seems plain that to these three negative qualities of the sacred taken together there corresponds on the part of man a certain negative attitude of mind. Psychologists class the feelings bound ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... room for hope? Such wrath is child of hell. Before his righteous ire I shrink, I cower; Revenge I dread—and vengeance linked ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille

... their intelligence render more worthy of freedom than all the rest of the world." It would have been impossible for the sycophants of Louis XIV to flatter more dexterously. For my part, I am persuaded that in all governments, whatever their nature may be, servility will cower to force, and adulation will cling to power. The only means of preventing men from degrading themselves is to invest no one with that unlimited authority which is the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... before thee. And cower in the straw; The chickens[011] are submissive, And own thy will for law; Bullfinches and canary Thy bidding do obey; And e'en the tortoise in its shell Doth never ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... still smaller. The wind in the Venn chases along whistling and shrieking, clamouring and howling, pries into the quagmires and turf pits, whips up the muddy puddles, throws itself forcibly into the thickets of fir trees that have just been replanted, so that they groan and moan and creak as they cower, and then rages ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig

... and active movement on Toby's part to enable him to get hold of that paw, in order to discover what it was which Mr. Stubbs had captured; but the instant he did succeed, there went up from his heart such a cry of sorrow as caused Old Ben to start up in alarm and the monkey to cower and ...
— Toby Tyler • James Otis

... Belle impatiently. "We can't hide like bears that go into hollow trees and suck their paws for half a dozen years, more or less"—Belle's zoological ideas were startling rather than accurate—"I don't want to hide and cower. Why should we? We've done nothing we need be ashamed of. Father's been unfortunate; so have hundreds and thousands of other men in these hard times. Roger showed me an estimate, cut from a newspaper, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... the Pilot in the dreadful hour When a great nation, like a ship at sea With the wroth breakers whitening at her lee, Feels her last shudder if her helmsman cower; A godlike manhood be his mighty dower! Such and so gifted, Lincoln, may'st thou be With thy high wisdom's low simplicity And awful tenderness of voted power. From our hot records then thy name shall stand On Time's calm ledger out of passionate days— With the pure debt ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... capitals, Resting in prayer to God for power, He will shake down your marble walls, Abiding heaven's appointed hour, And those that fly shall hide and cower. ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... there came a sound which could only be likened to rolling thunder by one uninitiated, but which caused Ixtli to shrink and almost cower, ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... with your irons! Shall we, men who followed Red Jabez through a sea of blood, cower to a woman of such soft mettle? Dolores, queen or woman or wench, it is for you, not us, to explain. Lads—" he shrieked, flashing about and haranguing his companions—"back me in this. We will know why the sloop lacked powder; why to-day's ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... Now draws nigh the solemn hour, Which, O maid of childlike grace, Well might make the bravest cower! Thundering down the awful steep, Hear Niagara's waters leap, Tossing, surging, flecked with foam, Child, my child, ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... thine eagles tower'd Resistless o'er the humbled world; There was a time the empires cower'd Before the bolt thy hand had hurl'd: The standards, thy proud will obeying, Flapp'd wrath and woe on every wind— A few short years, and thou wert laying Thine iron yoke ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... her work—turning neither to the right nor to the left, doing her duty with the bravery and patience of a soldier on the firing-line, knowing that any moment some stray bullet might end her usefulness. She would not dodge, nor would she cower; the danger was no greater than others she had faced, and no precaution, she knew, could save her. Her lips were still sealed, and would be to the end; some tongue other than her own must betray her sister and her trust. In the meantime she ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... words rang through the tent they were followed by the awful roar of the descending avalanche, and all awoke on the instant. But no one could do anything to save himself. They could only cower and pray to Heaven ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis

... helpless in the grasp of old Boreas, the inhabitants did little except cower in their lodges around their fires and eat and sleep. This sort of existence grew almost intolerable to the brothers. With every muscle and nerve yearning for action, they became impatient and sometimes fretful. When they spoke of themselves as ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... flower 'Neath a great oak tree: When the tempest 'gan to lower Little heeded she: No need had she to cower, For she dreaded not its power - She was happy in the bower Of her great oak tree! Sing hey, Lackaday! Let the tears fall free For the pretty little flower and the ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... became ashamed. God had preserved me from deadly perils, but not that I might cower in some shelter. I had a mission as clear as Laputa's. For the first time I became conscious to what a little thing I owed my salvation. That matter of the broken halter was like the finger of Divine Providence. I had been saved for a purpose, and ...
— Prester John • John Buchan

... it would rather rest and fall into disorder the way Tenney would let it, if he were here alone. That was it. He had had enough of threats that made him sick with the reaction of nervous violence. He had had enough of real violence that recoiled on himself and made him cower under the shadow of the law. He was going to turn her out of the house, the baby with her. And he did not seem to be suffering much over it, now he had made up his mind. Perhaps, now that the scene of the morning—three together in May sunshine—had ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... long wished to see, and they were in no sense a disappointment. Desolate, death-haunted, they pushed their white domes into the blue sky in savage grandeur. The little snow-covered towns seemed to cower at their feet like timid animals lost in the immensity of the forest. All day we rode among these heights, and at night we went to sleep feeling the ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... fashion for weeks on end; Sbeitla, to be sure, lay at a high point of the line, but the cold was no better at the present terminus, Henchir Souatir, whither he was bound on some business connected with the big phosphate company. On such occasions the natives barricade their doors and cower within over a warming-pan filled with the glowing embers of desert shrubs; as for Europeans—a dog's life, he said; in winter we are shrivelled to mummies, in summer ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... the staff- officer did the audience let loose their pent-up feelings. The place pulsated with a roar like that of a great waterfall in a deep gorge, salvo after salvo of cheers swelling and merging. The deep boom of their applause pursued Brinnaria and made her cower. The people would never forget her now. They were in ecstasy. ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... jubilantly outside, Chenier and his eighty followers call out: "We are done! We are sold! Let us jump!" Chenier jumps from the steeple, is hit by the flying bullets, and perishes as he falls. His men cower back in the flaming steeple till it falls with a crash into the burning ruins. Amid the ash heap are afterwards found the corpses of seventy-two patriots. The troopers take one hundred prisoners in the region, then set fire to all houses where loyalist flags ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... shall shrink and wither, Custom-straitened like her waist, All her thought to cower together, Huddling sheep-like with the rest, With the flock of soulless bodies on a ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... Astute mimicry is even more necessary when the one to be duped is an amphitryon at whose cost the parasite's family is to be established. The Tachinae seem to declare as much: they are grey or greyish, of a colour as undecided as the dusty soil on which they cower while waiting for the arrival of the huntress laden with her capture. But they dissemble in vain: the Bembex, the Philanthus and the others see them from above, before touching ground; they recognize them perfectly at ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... why then should man fear any more The voice of Pytho's dome, or cower before These birds that shriek above us? They foretold Me for my father's murderer; and behold, He lies in Corinth dead, and here am I And never touched the sword.... Or did he die In grief for me who left him? In that way I may have wrought ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles

... Which only merits—and should only—scorn. Oh, let me see the Negro night and morn, Pressing and fighting in, for place and power! All earth is place—all time th' auspicious hour, While heaven leans forth to look, oh, will he quail or cower? ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... see her cower and shrink as men had often done under the glare of his angry gaze; but she stood before him tall, straight and calm—so near that he might have felled her to the ground; there was no fear in her deep eyes while she gave him back his look of hatred, unflinching; dimly ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... your capital, do I defy you. Have I not conquered your armies, fired your towns, and dragged your generals at my chariot wheels, since first my youthful arms could wield a spear? And do you think to see me crouch and cower before a tamed and shattered senate? The tearing of flesh and rending of sinews is but pastime compared with the mental ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... for others have before, Why should I fear to view the storm-cloud's form? I answered to the Voice. In One I trust, Upon whose blazing path the clouds are dust, Why should I cower 'neath the whirlwind's roar? God's chariot is the whirlwind and ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard

... through clans of savage men, Untamed by arts, untaught by pen; Or cower within some squalid den ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi

... stands, Immaculate One, radiant upon her height, searching, with fearless eyes, our hearts, and those of that multitude that kneel, and lift their arms to her in supplication!—And some can raise their eyes to hers and smile; and some—look you, alas, how many!—must shrink and cower away beneath the scrutiny before which no deception will avail.—Those now withdraw themselves, to begin their bitter journey backward and down—down to their native Philistia: but never again will ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... saved answering her just then. Another figure had emerged from the front door—a rather largish figure, all in black—her left hand clutching the right hand of a child, aged, possibly, five. And this figure did not cower and hurry away. This ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.

... paused here. In the crowd before him he saw scores of frightened faces. He saw men pointing and heard women cry out in terror. He saw children cower and scamper for the ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump

... was an art which Helen had not exerted herself to understand; she only knew that every now and then there was a minute of bluster and excitement when her uncle shouted to her, and she was obliged to cower while the beam and the sail swung over her head with a sound of fluttering wind. When she was allowed to take her seat after this little hurly-burly the two lighthouses upon the lake and all the lights upon the shore had performed a mysterious ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... sullen pass, high-crowned with snow, Where Afghans cower with eyes of gleaming hate. He hurls himself against the hidden foe. They try to rally — ah, too late, too late! Again, defenseless, with fierce eyes that wait For death, he stands, like baited bull at bay, And flouts the Boers, ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service



Words linked to "Cower" :   grovel, bend, huddle, fawn, coward, creep, crawl, cringe, flex



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