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noun
Louse  n.  (pl. lice)  (Zool.)
1.
Any one of numerous species of small, wingless, suctorial, parasitic insects belonging to a tribe (Pediculina), now usually regarded as degraded Hemiptera. To this group belong of the lice of man and other mammals; as, the head louse of man (Pediculus capitis), the body louse (Pediculus vestimenti), and the crab louse (Phthirius pubis), and many others. See Crab louse, Dog louse, Cattle louse, etc., under Crab, Dog, etc.
2.
Any one of numerous small mandibulate insects, mostly parasitic on birds, and feeding on the feathers. They are known as Mallophaga, or bird lice, though some occur on the hair of mammals. They are usually regarded as degraded Pseudoneuroptera. See Mallophaga.
3.
Any one of the numerous species of aphids, or plant lice. See Aphid.
4.
Any small crustacean parasitic on fishes. See Branchiura, and Ichthvophthira. Note: The term is also applied to various other parasites; as, the whale louse, beelouse, horse louse.
Louse fly (Zool.), a parasitic dipterous insect of the group Pupipara. Some of them are wingless, as the bee louse.
Louse mite (Zool.), any one of numerous species of mites which infest mammals and birds, clinging to the hair and feathers like lice. They belong to Myobia, Dermaleichus, Mycoptes, and several other genera.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Louse" Quotes from Famous Books



... 'us a-gittin' up, shores you're born. De louse go to supper, an' de flea blow de horn. Dat raccoon paced, an' dat 'possum trot; Dat ole goose laid, ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley

... the Wings and Head of a Fly; the Teeth of a Snail; the Eggs of Silk-worms; the Blue Fly; a water Insect; the Tufted Gnat; a White Moth; the Shepheards-spider; the Hunting Spider, the Ant; the wandring Mite; the Crab-like insect, the Book-worm, the Flea, the Louse, Mites, Vine mites. He concludeth with taking occasion to discourse of two or three very considerable subjects, viz. The inflexion of the Rays of Lights in the Air; ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... changes of a chameleon with the form and manner of travel of a measuring-worm, looping along the fronds of seaweed or swimming with the same motion. Another variety of shrimp resembles the common wood-louse found under pieces of bark, but is most beautifully iridescent, glowing like an opal at the bottom of the pool. The curious little sea-spiders keep me guessing for a long time where their internal organs can be, as they consist of legs with ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... red-dyed beards are a record that their wearers have made the pilgrimage to Mecca; that the respirator often worn by the Jains is to prevent the death of even a fly in inhalation. I was shown a Jain woman carefully emptying a piece of wood with holes in it into the road, each hole containing a louse which had crawled there during the night but must not be killed. The Jains adore every living creature; the Hindus chiefly the cow. As for this divinity, she drifts about the cities as though they were built for her, and one sees the passers-by touching her, hoping ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... no watch. There was nothing to give the least notion of how much time had passed. I even counted the boy's snores for a while, and watched one lonely louse moving along the wall—so many snores to the minute—so many snores to an inch of crawling; but the louse changed what little mind he had and did not walk straight, and I gave up trying to calculate the distance he traveled in zigzags and curves, although it would have been an interesting problem ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy

... indolently laid Under a poppy's spreading shade. The jealous queen started in rage; She kick'd her crown, and beat her page: "Bring me my magic wand," she cries; "Under that primrose, there it lies; I'll change the silly, saucy chit, Into a flea, a louse, a nit, A worm, a grasshopper, a rat, An owl, a monkey, hedgehog, bat. But hold, why not by fairy art Transform the wretch into— Ixion once a cloud embraced, By Jove and jealousy well placed; What sport to see proud Oberon stare, And flirt it with a pet en l'air!" ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... see, but skirted it upon high ground and came down to the foreshore a short two miles beyond it; where we found a beach and a spit of rock, and on the spit a tumble-down tower standing, as lonely as a combed louse. Above the beach ran a tolerable coast road, which divided itself into two, after crossing a bridge behind the tower; the one following the shore, the other striking inland up the devil of a gorge. This inland road we took, for two reasons; the first, that by the map it appeared to cut ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... waste, and sit ye down to fry: Did ye think of that theft for yourself?" said he; and Tomlinson said, "Ay!" The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from care:— "Ye have scarce the soul of a louse," he said, "but the roots of sin are there, And for that sin should ye come in were I the lord alone. But sinful pride has rule inside—and mightier ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... as it is, would crush a fragile plant louse. I picked another burr, squeezing it gently, when there issued from the hole at the base a drop of crystal-clear liquid, held in the thinnest of envelopes, which I tasted and found sweet. In burr after burr I found these sacks or cysts of sweets secreted by the aphides ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... with fossils in the shale, with trilobites, such as the Asaphus Canadensis, a crustacean, closely allied to the wood-louse, and occasionally found rolled up, like it, into a defensive ball, together with other ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... the prospects were not as good as was wished, three of us concluded to go and try to find a better place. The next day was Sunday and all lay in bed late. Before I rose I felt something crawling on my breast, and when I looked I found it to be an insect, slow in motion, resembling a louse, but larger. He was a new emigrant to me and I wondered what he was. I now took off my pants and found many of his kind in the seams. I murdered all I could find, and when I got up I told Williams what I had found. He said they hurt nobody and were called piojos, more commonly ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... a few rude—sometimes very rude—chalk or paint scratches told where he had gone. Thus: 'Lutuf Ullah is gone to Kurdistan.' Below, in coarse verse: 'O Allah, who sufferest lice to live on the coat of a Kabuli, why hast thou allowed this louse ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... And thirdly, if we consider that Nature does always appropriate the instruments, so as they are the most fit and convenient to perform their offices, and the most simple and plain that possibly can be; this we may see further verify'd also in the foot of a Louse which is very much differing from those I have been describing, but more convenient and necessary for the place of its habitation, each of his leggs being footed with a couple of small claws which he can open or shut at pleasure, shap'd almost like the claws ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... Department of the Board of Trade. Are Shackleton, Bell, and Barnes honester men than Gompers, Mitchell, and Tobin? As Dr. Johnson very coarsely expressed it: 'It is difficult to settle the question of precedence between a bug and a louse.'"[394] ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... Bolingbroke, he replied, "True, my Lord; but let me tell you a story. In a sea fight in the reign of Charles the Second, there was a very bloody engagement between the English and Dutch fleets, in the heat of which a Scotch sea-man was very severely bit by a louse on his neck, which he caught; and stooping down to crack it between his nails, many of the sailors near him had their heads taken off by a chain-shot from the enemy, which dashed their blood and brains about him; on which he had compassion upon the poor ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... aphis or bark-louse attacks weak, feeble-growing trees, and can usually be removed by scrubbing the bark with ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... in the King's Bench Battery; Miss Foote putting her Foot in it; and A Foot on the Stage and Asses in the Pit, or a New Year's Piece for 1825. Other pictorial satires of Robert's bearing the date of 1824, are: A Civic Louse in the State Bed; A Cut at the City Cauliflower; The Corinthian Auctioneer; two very coarse but well drawn subjects—Moments of Prattle and Pleasure and Moments of Parting with Treasure; and an exquisitely drawn sketch bearing ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... thousand clear, which we spend at whoam, among you, in old English hospitality. All my vorevathers have been parliament-men, and I can prove that ne'er a one o' um gave a zingle vote for the court since the Revolution. Vor my own peart, I value not the ministry three skips of a louse, as the zaying is—I ne'er knew but one minister that was an honest man, and vor all the rest, I care not if they were hanged as high as Haman, with a pox to' un. I am, thank God, a vree-born, true-hearted Englishman, and a loyal, thof unworthy, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... of the bungalow just now," Capehart snorted. "We'd searched the place. Didn't think there was room for a louse to be hid in it. Got by the boys. I stopped him at the hedge and drove him into the open. Now Worth's got him. That is Worth, ain't it? Fights ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan

... moth, to be destroyed by paper bands, or with Paris green showered in water. The round-headed apple-tree borer is to be cut out, and the eggs excluded with a sheet of tarred paper around the stem, and slightly sunk in the earth. For the oyster-shell bark louse, apply linseed oil. Paris green, in water, will kill the canker worm. Tobacco water does the work for plant lice. Peach-tree borers are excluded with tarred or felt paper, and cut out with a knife. Jar the grape ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... chalky character, and very poor, but having been terraced and enriched with fertilizers, it produces the champagne grape in such abundance that the region, once considered valueless, and named by the peasantry the "land of the louse," now supports a dense population. We remained in Rheims eight days, and through the politeness of the American Consul—Mr. Adolph Gill—had the pleasure of seeing all the famous wine cellars, and inspecting the processes ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... began. In addition there were heard the barks and howls and cries of nearly all the animals of the forest and prairies. The sounds were like that proceeding from a wild beast show when all the animals are let louse and are uttering their discordant notes. The tent quivered as though in a cyclone. Thus, for a time it went on—the drum beating, the beasts howling, the tent quivering—until it seemed utterly inexplicable how one man, could create such ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young

... did welcome Robin Good-fellow into their company. Obreon took Robin by the hand and led him a dance: their musician was little Tom Thumb; for he had an excellent bag-pipe made of a wren's quill, and the skin of a Greenland louse: this pipe was so shrill, and so sweet, that a Scottish pipe compared to it, it would no more come near it, than a Jew's-trump doth to an Irish harp. After they had danced, King Obreon spake to his son, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... foul, psalm-singin' tongue, but you ain't got no grit. Say," he added witheringly, "I'd hate to see such a miser'ble spectacle as you goin' to a man's death. I'd git sick feelin' sore I belonged to the human race. Nope, you couldn't never be a man. Say, you ain't even a—louse." ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... (lice). Every soldier had a brigade of lice on him, and I have seen fellows so busily engaged in cracking them that it reminded me of an old woman knitting. At first the boys would go off in the woods and hide to louse themselves, but that was unnecessary, the ground fairly crawled with lice. Pharaoh's people, when they were resisting old Moses, never enjoyed the curse of lice more than we did. The boys would frequently have a louse race. There was one fellow who was winning all the money; ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... Glad you slobs got memories. Glad to be of assistance, anytime. Les is no louse—he'll help old friends. I'll bring him the camera, out of the safe at my hotel, as soon ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... of our fruit-growers. Professor Berlese of Italy, and Dr. Reh, of Germany, will attempt the introduction into Europe of some of the parasites of injurious insects which occur in the United States, and particularly those of the woolly root-louse of the apple, known in Europe as the "American blight"—one of the few injurious insects which probably went to Europe from this country, and which in the United States is not so injurious as it is ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... was in, with a louse of a husband that prevented her from crawling under her own blankets and a low skunk behind her just waiting to take advantage of the situation to possess her again. She begged Lantier to be quiet. Turning toward the small room where Nana ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... cultivation of cotton involving harder work than that of corn. In the early stages of its growth it is more tender than corn, and requires more care,—which it does not get, since we find Southern writers deploring that the cut-worm and the louse are charged with many sins which are caused by careless cultivation and the bruises inflicted by the clumsy negro hoes. The soil is very light, and most of the work might be done by the plow and cultivator. ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... thoroughly enervated, good-for-nothing parasite, who can only exist under the most special conditions, who can only exist when thousands of people toil at the preservation of this life which is utterly useless to every one. And I, that plant-louse, which devours the foliage of trees, wish to help the tree in its growth and health, and I ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi

... but all truth is not poetry. When Burns treats a natural-history theme, as in his verses on the mouse and the daisy, and even on the louse, how much more there is in them than mere natural history! With what a broad and tender philosophy he clothes them! how he identifies himself with the mouse and regards himself as its fellow mortal! So have Emerson's "Titmouse" and "Humble-Bee" a better ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... peaceful departing, had laid a strict command that no harm should be done to any one of them unless he should be caught bloody-handed. 'Well and good!' writes Milo; 'but this meant to say that no man might scratch himself for fear he should kill a louse.' Nature could not endure such a direction, so Richard then (whose own temper was none of the longest) let himself go, fell upon a party of these brigands, put half to the sword and hanged the other half in rows before the landward gate of Messina. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... all the inhabitants and neighbours near adjoining." The Ram Alley, Fleet Street, mentioned above, was notorious in sundry ways. Mr. Bell mentions that in 1618 the wardmote laid complaint against Timothy Louse and John Barker, of Ram Alley, "for keeping their tobacco-shoppes open all night and fyers in the same without any chimney and suffering hot waters [spirits] and selling also without licence, to the great disquietness and annoyance of that neighbourhood." There were sad ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... or plant-louse," said Uncle Ben. "They suck the juices of the leaves. These juices become in their bodies a sort of honey, which they yield from certain pores. The ants are very fond of this honey-dew, and lap it up eagerly. And if you watch close you may see ...
— Harper's Young People, October 19, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the plant louse that infests pear trees is the pear-tree psylla. It is very destructive to pear trees, sucking out the ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley

... to search and soon found a big swollen louse. I crushed it with my thumb-nail so that the blood spurted out. I heard several faint cracks coming from the opposite side of the tent and knew that others ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt

... man and me? The difference between a mortal and an immortal? between a cloud and a spirit?" He picked up a wood-louse that was creeping along a piece of bark: "What is the ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... found her full of grief: (Now, you must know, of all things in the world I hate a thief:) However, I was resolved to bring the discourse slily about: "Mrs. Duke," said I, "here's an ugly accident has happened out: 'Tis not that I value the money three skips of a louse:[10] But the thing I stand upon is the credit of the house. 'Tis true, seven pounds, four shillings, and sixpence makes a great hole in my wages: Besides, as they say, service is no inheritance in these ages. Now, Mrs. Duke, you know, and everybody understands, That ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... till late last night because of these air raids... I vanted to be sure that ole Mac and 'is daughter should be asleep. I god in from the back of the louse, oi, oi, bot it vos dead easy! through the scollery vindow. I cleared op a bagful of stuff in the dining-room... there vosn't, anything vorth snatching outer the parlor... and sixty-five quid out of an old cigar-box in the desk. The police ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... the highways, and his rendezvous is commonly in an ale-house. His study is to counterfeit impotency, and his practice to cozen simplicity of charity. The juice of the malt is the liquor of his life, and at bed and at board a louse is his companion. He fears no such enemy as a constable, and being acquainted with the stocks, must visit them as he goes by them. He is a drone that feeds upon the labours of the bee, and unhappily begotten that is born for no goodness. His staff and his scrip ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... the terebinth louse; it is just a little yellow mite; but is it nothing else? Its genealogical history teaches us "by what amazing essays of passion and variety the universal law which rules the transmission of life is evolved. ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... that day, I trow, Wi' Sir George Hearoune of Schipsydehouse; Because we were not men enow, They counted us not worth a louse. Sir George was gentle, meek, and douse, But he was hail and het as fire; And yet, for all his cracking crouse[147], He rewd the raid o' ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott

... now, Bounce, for a full charge of Small Shot; here he has gather'd up a heap of Epithets together, without any words between, or connexion to make 'em sense; and this he says I divert the Ladies with—Snotty nose, filthy vermin in the Beard, Nitty Jerkin, and Louse snapper, with the Letter in the Chamber-pot, and natural evacuation. Why truly this is pretty stuff indeed, as his Ingenuity has put it together—but I hope every one will own, that each of these singly, when they are tagg'd to their sensible ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet

... in vain. At length he had recourse to this device. 'Pray, Sir, (said he,) whether do you reckon Derrick or Smart the best poet?' Johnson at once felt himself roused; and answered, 'Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... you know well enough, and you can find it without going to the seaside, I mean the wood-louse, which I used to hear called a "carpenter" when I was a child. In damp places, you can hardly turn over a mossy stone, or pick off a bit of bark from a fallen tree, without disturbing a whole colony of ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... louse with a microscope, its external deformity strikes us with disgust. It has six feet, two eyes, and a sort of sting, proboscis, or sucker, with which it pierces the skin, and sucks the blood. The skin of the louse is hard and transparent, with here and there several ...
— The History of Insects • Unknown

... an animal on any account, not even a fly, or a flea, or a louse,[NOTE 7] or anything in fact that has life; for they say these have all souls, and it would be sin to do so. They eat no vegetable in a green state, only such as are dry. And they sleep on the ground stark naked, without a scrap of clothing on them or under them, so that it is a marvel ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... he tells us; 300 What figur'd slates are best to make On watry surface duck or drake; What bowling-stones, in running race Upon a board, have swiftest pace; Whether a pulse beat in the black 305 List of a dappled louse's back; If systole or diastole move Quickest when he's in wrath or love When two of them do run a race, Whether they gallop, trot, or pace: 310 How many scores a flea will jump, Of his own length, from head to rump; Which SOCRATES and CHAEREPHON, In vain, assay'd so long ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... present seven of the enemies' heads to the king, is made noble: where they live in that rare and unsociable opinion of the mortality of the soul: where the women are delivered without pain or fear: where the women wear copper leggings upon both legs, and if a louse bite them, are bound in magnanimity to bite them again, and dare not marry, till first they have made their king a tender of their virginity, if he please to accept it: where the ordinary way of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... to Marlboro! (All the slaves) Ten days or two weeks going. PeeDee bridge, stop! Go in gentlemen barn! Turn duh bridge! Been dere a week. Had to go and look the louse on we. Three hundred head o' people been dere. Couldn't pull we clothes off. (On flat.) Boat name Riprey. Woman confine on boat. Name the baby 'RIPREY!' Mama ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... bilgewater^; rinsings, cheeseparings; sweepings &c (useless refuse) 645; offscourings^, outscourings^; off scum; caput mortuum [Lat.], residuum, sprue, fecula [Lat.], clinker, draff^; scurf, scurfiness^; exuviae [Lat.], morphea; fur, furfur^; dandruff, tartar. riffraff; vermin, louse, flea, bug, chinch^. mud, mire, quagmire, alluvium, silt, sludge, slime, slush, slosh, sposh [U.S.]. spawn, offal, gurry [U.S.]; lientery^; garbage, carrion; excreta &c 299; slough, peccant humor, pus, matter, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... or green plant louse is the most commonly encountered of all the insect pests. It used to be dreaded, but with modern methods it may be readily and effectively exterminated. There are several forms and colors of these pests. If you have attempted ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell

... little balls, and in this condition he removed them to the stone, and placed them like marbles in a row, Monsieur Crapaud watching the proceeding with rapt attention. After awhile the balls would slowly open and begin to crawl away; but he was a very active wood-louse indeed who escaped the suction of Monsieur Crapaud's tongue, as, his eyes glowing with eager enjoyment, he bolted one after another, and Monsieur the Viscount clapped ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... friends or comrades, of course part of their duty, in taking care of him, was to "louse" his clothing. One of the most effectual ways of doing this was to turn the garments wrong side out and hold the seams as close to the fire as possible, without burning the cloth. In a short time the lice ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... us to win every match? Why, Preston North End itself"— here he spoke solemnly, of heroes—"Preston North End itself in its great days didn't win every match—it lost to Accrington. But did the Preston public desert it? No! You—you haven't got the pluck of a louse, nor the faithfulness of a cat. You've starved your football club to death, and now you call a meeting to weep and grumble. And you have the insolence to write letters to the Signal about bad management, forsooth! If anybody in the hall thinks he can manage this club better than me ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... it makes me mad to git busy," the loafer declared. "Have you seen that pore feller with his face all mussed? Gee! Say, Zip wouldn't hurt a louse; he's that gentle-natured I'd say if ther' was only a baulky mule between him an' starvation he'd hate to live. He ain't no more savvee than a fool cat motherin' a china dog, but he's got the grit o' ten men. He's hunted out James with no more thought than ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... understood what the good-looking old man was saying, because his attention was riveted to a large, dark-grey, many-legged louse that was creeping along ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy

... or chicken acari. MALADY: Poultry acariasis.—This is a large-sized acarus, though usually miscalled "hen louse," and the disease "poultry lousiness." The mite (Pl. XXXIX, fig. 4) lives in droppings and in crevices of chicken houses, but temporarily passes on to the skin of man and of the horse and other quadrupeds, when occasion serves. It causes much irritation, with the eruption ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... same thing where insects were the cause of all the trouble. A little downy species of the aphis, or plant louse, had completely overrun a Stump apple tree and really caused it to die. The owner told me that tree was blighted. But here also no sign of blight could be detected. Nothing but insects caused the tree to die, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... the companies of dusty Union infantry that used to stop to drink at her mother's cold mountain spring. She had seen them take off their boots and wash their bleeding feet in the run. Her mother had given one louse-bitten boy a clean shirt, and she had never forgotten the sight of his back, "as raw as beef where he'd scratched it." Five of her brothers were in the Confederate army. When one was wounded in the second battle of Bull Run, her mother had borrowed a wagon and horses, gone ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... in a voice that sounded like a nutmeg grater, "Rambaugh was a louse and he tried to kill me first. If it's revenge you want—why not let's talk ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith

... he than the High-toby-cracks of old! They were as brave as lions; he is a very louse for timidity. His conduct is meaner than the conduct of the most ruffianly burglar that ever worked a centre-bit. Of art he has not the remotest inkling: though his greed is bounded by the Bank of England, he understands ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... crawling over the winter-locked plain. In the aching circle of its immensity they were like little black ants. One, the leader, was of great bulk and of a vast strength; while the other was small and wiry, of the breed that clings like a louse to life while better ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... which also belong to this order are suspected of carrying some of these same diseases. It is thought that the common louse on rats (Haematopinus spinulosus) is responsible for the spread from rat to rat of a certain parasite. (Trypanosoma lewisi), which, however, does not produce any disease in the rats, but if they are capable of acting as alternative hosts for ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane

... small, each one no larger than a plant louse, that you would not think they could ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley

... codfish. The house fly is said to have 20,000,000 descendants in a season, counting several generations of progeny, from its several broods. And some scientist has computed that the aphis, or plant-louse, breeds so rapidly, and in such enormous quantity, that the tenth generation of one set of parents would be so large that it would contain more ponderable animal matter than would the population of China, which is estimated at 500,000,000! ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... the warres, and their gouernours for the peace time. Their language is a speache mixte of the Scithians and Medes. Their appareil at the firste, was aftre their facion vnlike to all other. But when thei grewe vnto power, louse and large, and so thinne: that a man mighte see thoroughe it, aftre the facion of the Medes. Their maner of weapon, and armour, was the same that the Scithians vsed. But their armies ware altogether almoste of slaues and bondemen, contrary to the maner of other peoples. And for that ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... their kail. Ye'r nobbut an auld blatherskite, 'Becca, as preaches mair charity in a day ner ye'r ready to stand by in a twelvemonth. Come, Reuben, whip up yer dobbin. Let's away to my own house. I'd hev to be as poor as a kirk louse afore I'd turn my back on a motherless lad as is nigh to ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... happy, and in this manner wished to make him feel what passed unceasingly in himself. M. du Maine, who willingly expressed in pleasantry the most serious things, frankly said to his familiars, that he was "like a louse between two fingernails" (the Princes of the blood and the peers), by which he could not fail to be cracked if he did not take care! This reflection troubled the excess of his pleasure, and that ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... well. Many of our best hop-breeders thought that when the hop-pole began to wither and die, the hop-louse could not survive the intense dry heat; but hop-lice have never looked better in this State than ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... you about. You remember, the plant-lice live on plants, and with their sucking beaks pump the sap from the plants. The aphis-lions crawling over the plants come across the little aphid. Quick as a wink they stick their sharp claws in the soft body of the plant-louse and drink the blood with their sharp-pointed jaws. They are very fond of eggs, too, and Mamma Lace-Wing is careful of her eggs, because she knows the mischievous ways of ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody

... from the theater in New York the night before, he had bought an "extra" which had contained a brief account of the Ella's return. He seems to have gone into a frenzy of excitement at once. He borrowed a small car,—one scornfully designated as a "road louse,"—and assembled in it, in wild confusion, one suit of clothes for me, his own and much too small, one hypodermic case, an armful of newspapers with red scare-heads, a bottle of brandy, a bottle of digitalis, ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... fish feels it, the borage as the bee sees it, the intricate sounds of the hedgerow as heard by the rabbit, the impact of light on the eager face of the primrose, the landscape as known in its vastness to the wood-louse and ant—all these experiences, denied to him for ever, have just as much claim to the attribute of Being as his own partial and subjective ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill

... wot I wants to know is, why it wasn't me was took? I've only got meself, 'e stands for three. I'm plainer than a louse, while 'e was 'andsome as a dook; 'E always was a better man than me. 'E was goin' 'ome next Toosday; 'e was 'appy as a lark, And 'e'd just received a letter from 'is kid; And 'e struck a match to show me, as we stood there in the dark, When ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service

... it seems, is ordered to take place of all Dukes, and so to follow Prince Rupert now, before the Duke of Buckingham, or any else. Whether the wind and the cold did cause it or no I know not, but having been this day or two mightily troubled with an itching all over my body' which I took to be a louse or two that might bite me, I found this afternoon that all my body is inflamed, and my face in a sad redness and swelling and pimpled, so that I was before we had done walking not only sick but ashamed of myself to see myself so changed in my countenance, so that ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... well." So the poor widow agreed and spent the day picking out the lice and at evening the rich woman brought out a measure of rice to give her as her wages and, as she was measuring it, she felt her head itch and she put up her hand and scratched and pulled out a large louse. ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas

... he went up to the cross-roads store and tried to give out his literature there, and got into a controversy with some of the cracker-box loungers, one of whom jumped up and shook his fist in Jimmie's face, shouting, "Get out of here, you dirty little louse! If you don't stop talking your treason round here, we'll come down some night and ride you out of ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... They show up like that on both scopes, see? You can always spot heat-ray charges. They look like nothing else. Only trouble is, they louse up the range ...
— The Best Made Plans • Everett B. Cole

... Willie's Prayer' 'brought down the house'. So I was glad to give the bard a pass And a few pence for toll at Peter's gate; For if the roof of Hell were made of brass Bob Burns would shake it off as sure as fate. I mind it well—that poem on a louse! 'O wad some pow'r the giftie gie us,' Monk, 'To see oursels as others see us'—drunk; 'It wad frae monie a blunder free us'—list!— 'And foolish notion.' Abbot, bishop, priest, 'What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e' you all, 'And ev'n devotion.' Cowls ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... Well sider than his chin they shivered for cold: And as a bondman of his bacon his beard was bidrauled, With a hood on his head, and a lousy hat above. And in a tawny tabard,[1] of twelve winter age, Alle torn and baudy, and full of lice creeping; But that if a louse could have leapen the better, She had not walked on the welt, so was it threadbare. 'I have been Covetise,' quoth this caitiff, 'For sometime I served Symme at style, And was his prentice plight, his profit ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... he yelled. "Ten of you driven back like sheep by a raw youth. I'll settle with ye for it. Think I picked ye out of the stews and stink-holes of London to stand this? There isn't one of ye with the guts of a louse. I'll take the skin off the ribs of you for this, damn ye, and most of your pimp's flesh along ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... one could wipe his hands on her bosom; a thousand dinars it cost me, too. I was chosen priest of Augustus without paying the fee, and I hope that I won't need to blush in my grave after I'm dead. But you're so busy that you can't look behind you; you can spot a louse on someone else, all right, but you can't see the tick on yourself. You're the only one that thinks we're so funny; look at your professor, he's older than you are, and we're good enough for him, but ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter

... in Massachusetts: I have just discovered the most contemptible of all God's creatures in Kansas City. Some may suppose that the first discovery excludes the last; but such forget that there is the same difference between cussedness and contemptibility that exists between the leopard and the louse, between a Cuban hurricane and the crapulous eructations of a chronic hoodlum. I want the world to take an attentive look at one Walter S. Halliwell, to make a labored perscrutation of this priorient social pewee, this arbiter eligantarium ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... previous lives,—"BE KINDLY AFFECTIONED ONE TO ANOTHER." One sentence, over a door communicating with the Master's side of the house, is addressed to that dignitary,—"HE THAT RULETH OVER MEN MUST BE JUST." All these are charactered in black-letter, and form part of the elaborate ornamentation of the Louse. Everywhere—on the walls, over windows and doors, and at all points where there is room to place them—appear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, emblazoned in their proper colors, and illuminating the ancient quadrangle with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... foul sort of vermin is supposed to be bred by perspiration. It is an epoch in the civilised traveller's life when he catches his first louse. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... stuffs you all morning with Greek, and Latin, and Logic, and all that. Egad I have a dry-nurse too, but I never looked into a book with him in my life; I have not so much as seen the face of him this week, and don't care a louse if I ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... cannot be sold on account of the presence of the sugar louse. It is thought that Mr. POCOCK, who has so successfully brought the Zoo's rations into conformity with war conditions, might probably persuade the animal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various

... and soars on the other side, arming martyrs with independence; but in all, in their degrees, it is a bosom thought: - Not in man alone, for we trace it in dogs and cats whom we know fairly well, and doubtless some similar point of honour sways the elephant, the oyster, and the louse, of whom we know so little: - But in man, at least, it sways with so complete an empire that merely selfish things come second, even with the selfish: that appetites are starved, fears are conquered, pains supported; that almost the ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and he therefore advised that the present form should be continued in. "Watty's a sensible chap," said the shepherd, speaking familiarly of Sir Walter, "and if he laid a finger on o'or venerable psalmody, I wad pitch a louse at him, wha hae ever loved the man ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various

... once: "Who? Me? The colonel! Say, you'd better get this and get it right: I'm nothing here. I'm less than nothing. Why, the colonel could walk right over me on the parade ground and never even know he'd stepped on anything. If I was a louse and he was a can of ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... sons of the chief thunder-god, fell violently in love with the same Aino woman. Said one of them to the other, in a joking way: "I will become a flea, so as to be able to hop into her bosom." Said the other: "I will become a louse, so as to be able to stay ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain

... all over fifty star systems that the Emperor was a louse, and all you'd get is a poke in the eye for ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett

... tiresome," Sunderland said. "I advise you, do not make me think of you again," and he struck his bell. But when Mr. Waverton was gone: "I fear he has not the spirit of a louse," my lord remarked to himself ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... S. E. Murder!—murder a louse! Who's hurting you, old gentleman? Don't make such a noise. We'll try and make some use of you when we have time, but we must bustle now. Come on, Jack. Stop a bit, though; where's the Clerk of the Court? Oh, there! ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris

... term applied to that condition of local or general cutaneous irritation due to the presence of the animal parasite, the pediculus, or louse. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... use, are suffered, or rather invited, to multiply without limitation. But luxury cuts off the beast, the pig, the sheep, and the fowl, and ill treatment the horse: vermin of every kind, from the lion to the louse, are hunted to death; a perpetual contest seems to exist between them and us; they for their preservation, and we for their extinction. The kitten and the puppy are cast into the water, to end their lives; out of which the fishes ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... saw him coming, I rolled myself up as tight as a wood-louse, and as my ears were inside I really did not hear what else he said. But I was not a whit the less resolved ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... considerable support from the observations of one of its most zealous supporters, Bonnet. In 1745 he discovered, in the plant-louse, a case of parthenogenesis, or virgin-birth, an interesting form of reproduction that has lately been found by Siebold and others among various classes of the articulata, especially crustacea and insects. Among these and other animals of ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... as we could, some notion of optics to our auditory; but as we perceived that the theory excited but little interest, we proceeded at once to experiments. We asked if any person in the company would favor us with a louse. The thing was far easier to obtain than a butterfly. A noble Lama, who was secretary to his Excellency the first Kalon, had only to slip his hand beneath his silk robe to produce a fully developed specimen. We seized it immediately with our ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... poems, that open a new intercourse with the most despised of the animal and insect race. I think this vein may be further opened; Peter Pindar hath very prettily apostrophized a fly; Burns hath his mouse and his louse; Coleridge, less successfully, hath made overtures of intimacy to a jackass,—therein only following at unresembling distance Sterne and greater Cervantes. Besides these, I know of no other examples of breaking down the partition between us ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb

... Russell, Jr., I visited the camp. Typhus fever seems to be continually present in Russia. It is carried by the body louse and it is transmitted from one person to another. Russian soldiers seem to carry this disease with them without apparently suffering much from it themselves. The Russian soldiers arriving at Wittenberg were not properly disinfected and, in consequence, typhus fever broke out in camp. Several ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard

... play that by ear a little. It depends on how things look in there. But I have a few ideas, based on what you've learned of the operation. Now, just what I can do when I get that far, I don't know yet. I'll simply try to louse the deal up as much as I can. That may take time, and, of course, it might turn out to be impossible to get word out ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz

... crab louse or "crab" inhabits the skin covered by hair about and above the sexual organs most frequently, and from thence spreads to the hairy region on the abdomen, chest, armpits, beard, and eye lashes. Itching and scratching first call attention to the presence of the parasites, which are even ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various



Words linked to "Louse" :   oak blight, Pediculus corporis, Menopon palladum, lousy, woolly plant louse, common louse, plant louse, homopterous insect, aphid, order Mallophaga, grape phylloxera, onion louse, sucking louse, Menopon gallinae, shaft louse, dirt ball, worm, jumping plant louse, grape louse, unpleasant person, chicken louse, adelgid, Pediculus humanus, disagreeable person, psylla, bird louse, bark-louse, fish louse, Pediculus capitis, louse fly, crab, biting louse, psyllid, pubic louse, head louse, Anoplura, whale louse, order Anoplura, Mallophaga, crab louse, Phthirius pubis, Phylloxera vitifoleae, bark louse, body louse, cootie, homopteran, sea louse, book louse, louse up



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