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Muck   Listen
noun
Muck  n.  
1.
Dung in a moist state; manure.
2.
Vegetable mold mixed with earth, as found in low, damp places and swamps.
3.
Anything filthy or vile.
4.
Money; in contempt. "The fatal muck we quarreled for."
5.
(Mining) The unwanted material, especially rock or soil, that must be excavated in order to reach the valuable ore; also, the unwanted material after being excavated or crushed by blasting, or after being removed to a waste pile. In the latter sense, also called a muck pile.
Muck bar, bar iron which has been through the rolls only once.
Muck iron, crude puddled iron ready for the squeezer or rollers.
muck pile see muck pile in the vocabulary.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Muck" Quotes from Famous Books



... unto the garden, Maud; I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the muck of the ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... breathing frostily in the chill air. "I shall muck it. I know I shall," whispered Stalky uneasily; and his discomfort was not lightened by a murmur from the rear rank that the old gentleman was General Collinson, a member of the College Board ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... "The biggest thing you need to win elections, Doc, is plenty of dough. And I'll have that. But I'll also have the way to do more muck-raking than anybody in history. I'll sit in on every important private get-together those crook politicians have. I'll get the details of every scheme they cook up. I'll get into any safe or safe deposit box. I'll have the common people, you ...
— The Common Man • Guy McCord (AKA Dallas McCord Reynolds)

... kinds of ornaments: "I seemed to myself to see some coming in, others going out; some tottering with drunkenness, others yawning from yesterday's carousing. In the midst of these was Gallius, bedaubed with essences, and crowned with flowers. The floor of their apartment was all in a muck of dirt, streaming with wine, and strewed all about with chaplets of faded flowers, and fish-bones." Who could have seen more had he ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser

... obeyed. Mr. Tower and William stripped their feet, and rolled their trousers. Into the creek they went setting stones, packing with sod and muck, using sticks and leaves until in a short time they had a dam before which the water began ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... it into the turbid mass, turning it round and round. As he lifted it up, the drops which trickled from it hardened into earth of their own accord; and thus dry land was formed. As Izanagi was cleansing his spear the lumps of muck and mud which had adhered to it flew off into space, and were changed into ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... cropped convict, released from prison, was followed everywhere by the jeers and branding of a society which gloated over his downfall and which forever reminded him of his infamy. But the men who waded on to wealth through the muck of base practices and by means of crimes a millionfold more insidious and dangerous than the offense of the convict, were not only honored as leading citizens, but they became the extolled and unquestioned dictators of that supreme trading ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... a hurry did they twain fare, The gent, and the son of the stout porter, Who fled like an arrow, nor turned a hair, Through all the mire and muck: "A ticket, a ticket, sir clerk, I pray: For by two of the clock must I needs away." "That may hardly be," the clerk did say, "For indeed—the clocks ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.

... all, I want to set them free. How can I lie? How can I crawl through the muck and filth of a divorce? I can't. (Moves to end of table and stands there facing front.) But I must set them free somehow. They're such good people, my wife and Victor. I can't ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... of Florida. People said there were mines so bright with jewels that they had to be approached at night lest the flashing light should strike men blind. Florida became proverbial; and Elizabethan wits made endless fun of it. Stolida, or the land of fools, and Sordida, or the land of muck-worms, were some of their jeux d'esprit. Everyone was 'bound for Florida,' whether he meant to go there or not, despite Spanish spheres of influence, the native cannibals, and ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... sought to discover whether the offer of an honour-able love would be displeasing to his master's sister, a lady of the most illustrious lineage in Flanders, who had been twice widowed, and was a woman of muck spirit. Meeting with a reply contrary to his desires, he attempted to possess her by force; but she resisted him successfully, and by the advice of her lady of honour, without seeming to take notice of his designs ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... whatever is the world coming to next? We shall have them spirit-rapping and table-turning and such-like muck, I suppose." ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... a man who had come up in the draft with me on the 4th, rolling around in the death agony, tossing his head loosely about in the wild pain of it, his pallid face a white mark in the muck underfoot. A burly German reached the spot and without hesitation plunged his saw-edged bayonet ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... money for?" he boomed. "They'll only spend it on all kinds of muck they don't want; what the missionaries leave them, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... ask? That one, whom ye see strutting awkwardly, stagily, and stiffly, and with a laugh on her mouth like a Gallic whelp. Throng round her, and claim them back. "O putrid punk, hand back our writing tablets; hand back, O putrid punk, our writing tablets." Not a jot dost heed? O Muck, Brothel-Spawn, or e'en loathsomer if it is possible so to be! Yet think not yet that this is enough. For if naught else we can extort a blush on thy brazened bitch's face. We'll yell again in heightened tones, "O putrid punk, hand back our writing tablets, hand back, O putrid ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus

... to mention, because this Malay (partly from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him, worse than himself, that ran "a-muck" {18} at me, and led me into a world of troubles. But to quit this episode, and to return to my intercalary year of happiness. I have said already, that on a subject so important to us all as happiness, we should listen with pleasure to any man's experience or experiments, even though he were ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey

... bravely, but believe more bravely still"—this is the chef d'oeuvre of the muck-rakers in Luther's life. The reader has the entire passage which contains the outrageous statement of Luther before him, and will be able to judge the connection in which the words occur. What caused Luther to write those words? Did Melanchthon ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... rigour of the law? WINSER, the cabman, who gave his false evidence so gaily in the Thirkettle Case, has been had up, and sentenced. Having dealt with WINSER, it is only a short step from WINSER to SLOUGH—but perhaps such a slough of muck, that it wants the pluck of a Hercules in the Augaean stable to commence operations, and a deus ex-machina—that is, the Public Prosecutor from the Treasury—to see that the proceedings are not abortive. Oh, where, and Oh, where is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various

... magazine muck-rake, doctor," I said as I got out of the motor (he had taken me up through the Park to Morningside and back, while I was telling him), "and I'll probably be a ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... the last chapter of the Epistle of James. The deep, even voice of Nathaniel North sounded through that terrible denunciation of unholy riches with a gravity of conviction far more impressive than the anger of the modern muck-raker. The hearts of the children, remembering their conversation, were disturbed and vaguely troubled. Then came the gentler words about patience and pity and truthfulness and the healing of the sick. At the end each member of the house-hold was to read a sentence in turn and try to explain its ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... said the Indian woman, uncovering the steaming mass and placing the clams on a sliver found near by. "De-late kloshe muck a muck alta."[5] ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker

... any particular idea?" Cash looked slightingly down at the assayer's report. "Such as she is, we've done all we can do to the Burro Lode, for a year at least," he said. "The assessment work is all done—or will be when we muck out after that last shot. The claim is filed—I don't know what more we can do right ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower

... afternoon," he said. "You remember Appleby setting me a hundred-and-fifty the day before yesterday? Well, I showed them up to-day, and he looked through them and chucked them into the waste-paper basket under his desk. I thought at the time I hadn't seen him muck them up at all with his pencil, which is his usual game, so after he had gone at the end of school I nipped to the basket and fished them out. They were as good as new, so I saved them up in case I get ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... She-she-took-a-muck was a ferocious whale supposed to have lived at Hell's Gate, and to have swallowed Indians and their canoes. The whale was killed by the ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael

... remembering His former talks with Edith, on him breathed Far purelier in his rushings to and fro, After his books, to flush his blood with air, Then to his books again. My lady's cousin, Half-sickening of his pension'd afternoon, Drove in upon the student once or twice, Ran a Malayan muck against the times, Had golden hopes for France and all mankind, Answer'd all queries touching those at home With a heaved shoulder and a saucy smile, And fain had haled him out into the world, And air'd him there: his nearer friend ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson

... either, and yet that mare, although, as you say, Miss Catharine, she was never healthy, has the most wonderful pluck, as you know. I remember once I had two ton o' muck in the waggon, and we were stuck. Jack and Blossom couldn't stir it, and, after a bit, chucked up. I put in Maggie—you should have seen her! She moved it, a'most all herself, aye, as far as from here to the gate, and then of course the others took ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford

... turn his back, the divil 'ud snatch it up an' fling it aff the wall; till wid his knockin' over the wather-bucket, an' shcrapin' aff the morthar, an' upsettin' the hod o' bricks, an' makin' the monks forgit where they'd put things, it got so that they were in a muck o' shweat every hour o' the day; an' from that time it got to be said, when anything wint wrong widout a raizon, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... Book. The American Muck Book; treating of the Nature, Properties, Sources, History, and Operations of all the principal Fertilizers and Manures in Common Use, with Specific Directions for their Preservation, and Application ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby

... by exposure and hard usage. The more direct the transfer from nursery to orchard, the better. It is to be placed in good ground, well drained and deeply spaded or plowed. The apple-tree thrives on many kinds of land, but light sand, hard clay, and muck are equally to be avoided. "Good corn land" is commonly considered to be good apple land. Certain soils and regions are particularly adaptable to commercial apple-growing, but the amateur may plant quite independently of this fact. The ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey

... only I ain't going to have you going up to yon big parson all one muck-heap! Come on, and make no ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... it shows every sign of having been written to please the opera-goers of those days. Curiously, the critics of the time, in the words of the "Daily Telegraph," saw in "the Bayreuth master another form of Bunyan's man with the muck-rake," who "never sought to disguise the garbage he found in the Newgate Calendar of Mythland, or set his imagination to invent," and they were disgusted, also like the "Daily Telegraph," by "approaching incest" in "The Valkyrie"; yet they saw no harm whatever in the charming story ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... be that in which all hits are allowed, which might be given by a rough in a street row, or a Soudanese running a-muck. The old trial for teachers of fencing was not a bad test of real excellence in the mastery of their weapon—a fight with three skilled masters of fence (one at a time, of course), then three bouts with valiant unskilled men, and then three bouts against three half-drunken men. A man who ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn

... enough for a convict ship—biscuits as is dropping to pieces, salt junk as 'as been twenty years in cask, and which was mostly horse to begin with. No wonder as they grumbles and growls. A convict is a man, you see, though he be a convict; and it ain't in human nature to eat such muck as ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty

... loft overhead with some straw, where we might get some sleep, in spite of the rain and the midges; a double layer of boards, standing at a very acute angle, would keep off the former, while the mingled refuse hay and muck beneath would nurse a smoke that would prove a thorough protection against the latter. And then, when Jim, the two-handed, mounting the trunk of a prostrate maple near by, had severed it thrice with easy and familiar stroke, and, rolling ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs

... about, still the carpenter plies the creaking saw and the stunning hammer, still the plumber plumbs and the bellhanger rattles, still the cisterns overflow and the unfinished drains send forth odorous fumes, still the rains descend and all around the house is a muddle of muck and mire, and still there is so much to do that we look forward to some far distant futurity, when all that we are now suffering will be over, and we may look back upon it as upon some strange yet not ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... your health, friend, Or drink to the 'Thirteen's' luck. I must dine on—Eucalyptus, And Sulphur, or some such muck. I have no Salt to be spilling; My only knife is a spoon; And I have not the smallest notion If there ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... islands is composed mostly of a fine sandy loam, very easily cultivated. In most of them are swamps and marshes, which serve to furnish muck and other vegetable deposits for fertilizing; but the idea of furnishing anything to aid the long over-worked soil seems to these proprietors like returning to the slave some of the earnings taken from him or his ancestors, and is seldom done till nature is at last exhausted, and then it ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... eagul And the dipper-dapper-duck And the Jew-fish And the blue-fish And the turtle in the muck; And the squir'l And the girl And the flippy floppy bat Are differ-ent As gent from gent. So let it ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... we were sitting at breakfast, Mr. Carter's servant informed us that there was an "Amok" in the village—in other words, that a man was "running a muck." Orders were immediately given to shut and fasten the gates of our enclosure; but hearing nothing for some time, we went out, and found there had been a false alarm, owing to a slave having run away, declaring he would "amok," ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... occasional muck rakings, society's esteem for the capitalist has been unbounded. He is in general the only man with a national reputation. Society bestows upon him unstinted praise and the most generous rewards for ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott

... Why do people send the medicines to me? Why do perfect strangers assume that, because I have taken up the task of muck-raking the Atlantic Ocean, I am in need of antidotes for mal de mer? Even suppose that I do suffer thus at sea? Is it anybody else's ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street

... he gave me condensed essence of mixed farming, with excursions into sugar-beet (did you know they are making sugar in Alberta?), and he talked of farmyard muck, our dark mother of all things, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... be, squoire,' said Ralph Holt, who was going about in his Sunday clothes, as though it was a day much too sacred for muck and work. He had caught hold of Caldigate in the stable yard, and was now walking with him down towards ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... you, come down yere to-morrer, and you'll git to know wot stinks is. Let Teddy show you that 'ere bloomin' ditch at the back. They calls it a stream, but I dussn't say wot I thinks it is afore the nipper. All the dead cats and muck in the bloomin' crehation gits dumped in there. On 'ot days you wants a nosebag on, I tell you, and ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman

... which may, in a slight degree, affect the growth of plants, but their practical importance is of too doubtful a character to justify us in considering them. The application of manures, containing organic matter, such as peat, muck, animal manure, etc., supplies the soil with carbon on the same principle, and the decomposing matters also generate[Q] carbonic acid gas while being decomposed. The agricultural value of carbon in the soil depends (as we have stated), not on the fact that ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring

... "Well, it's a muck of a world," he declared cheerfully, taking off his coarse harvest hat and running his hand through his clustering fair hair. In the mellow light the almost brutal strength of his jaw was softened, and his sunburned face paled to the beauty of ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... could not succeed in blinding himself to that fact. Even the garish, cheap environments, the glitter and tinsel, the noise and brutality, had utterly failed to tarnish Beth Norvell. She stood forth different, distinct, a perfectly developed flower, rarely beautiful, although blooming in muck that was overgrown with noxious weeds. Winston remained clearly conscious that some peculiar essence of her native character had mysteriously perfumed the whole place—it glorified her slight bit of stage work, and had ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... chivalry they burned 'em at the stake or locked 'em up in convents or castles. But don't you worry, Jim, Charity has you for a champion and she's mighty lucky. Go on and fight the muckers and the muck-rakers, and don't let the reporters or the preachers scare you away from doing the ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... don't it?" the other went on, in his sneering way. "You're the Great Muck-a-muck, and will carry off the prize for the long distance run, I suppose you mean? Well, with the great luck you have, perhaps you will—if you're there when the pistol cracks for the start. Now, go on and tell me what you mean, and how could I get you ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... for all his respectable appearance, his features become debased, and he emits a jet of disgusting profanity and brings most of the Trinity into the thunderous assertion that he has paid his fare. Then a man passes wheeling a muck-cart. And he stops and talks a long time with the other uniforms, because he, too, wears vestiges of a uniform. And the crowd never moves nor ceases to stare. Then the new arrival stoops and picks up the unclaimed, masterless puppy, and flings it, all soft and yielding, ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett

... whisked here, there, every where, in attempts to strike the hog; one man giving a strong blow, strikes another one who was stooping down to arrange his garters, where he dislikes to be struck, and instantly the one struck runs a muck, hitting wildly left and right. Two or three men charge on one another and brooms fly in splinters all round. One champion got a head-blow and had his wind knocked out by another blow simultaneously; round they go, and at it they go, beating the air and each other, while ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... muck-rakers, I found that I was popular with the British ruling classes; they found my books useful in their campaigns against democracy, and they were surprised and disconcerted when they found I did not ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... mean house, with little accommodation for man or beast, being, indeed, as much farmhouse as hostel, with naught but the flaming sign to tell me I might wade through the muck and litter to the door and ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... when I was having a little sit down stairs, with my supper and half pint of ale (that comes like drawing a long breath to us when spared out of sickrooms, miss), and having no nursery now on my mind, was thinking of all the sad business, with only a little girl in the back kitchen come in to muck up the dishes, there appeared a good knock at the garden door, and I knew it for the thumb of the Captain. I locked the young girl up, by knowing what their tongues are, and then I let your father in, and the candle-sight of him ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... from Duncan's labouring bosom. His broadsword flashed from its sheath, and brokenly panting out the words: "Clenlyon! Ta creat dufil! Haf I peen trinking with ta hellhount, Clenlyon?"—he would have run a Malay muck through the room with his huge weapon. But he was already struggling in the arms of his grandson, who succeeded at length in forcing from his bony grasp the hilt of the terrible claymore. But as Duncan yielded his weapon, Malcolm ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... shall not he The heart of Hamlet's mystery pluck? Or, where most unclean beasts are rife, Some Junius—am I right?—shall tuck His sleeve, and forth with flaying-knife! Some Chatterton shall have the luck Of calling Rowley into life! Some one shall somehow run a muck With this old world for want of strife Sound asleep. Contrive, contrive To rouse us, Waring! Who's alive? Our men scarce seem in earnest now. Distinguished names!—but 'tis, somehow, As if they played at being names Still more distinguished, like the games ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... flood of light upon the sumptuous table beneath and left the rest of the closely guarded room shrouded in Stygian darkness, plans were laid and decrees adopted which seated judges, silenced clergymen, elected senators, and influenced presidents. There a muck-raking, hostile press was muffled. There business opposition was crushed and competition throttled. There tax rates were determined and tariff schedules formulated. There public opinion was disrupted, character ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... to the driver for pleasure to find in rainy weather almost bottomless muck and mud on portions of the main travelled highway between New York and Buffalo, but that, for the present, is normal. The manufacturer may regret the condition and wish for better, but he cannot be heard to complain, and if the machine, with reasonably ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... think it would much matter if it did; it is that turned already with the sight of these blackamoors and their filthy, thieving ways. They are only fit for muck, they are; and they smell bad enough ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... treated as for oats. If designed to cut for green fodder, half a bushel of seed to the acre should be used; if to ripen seed, twelve quarts, sown broadcast, about the last of May or early in June. A moist loam or muck is the best soil adapted to millet; but very great crops have been grown on dry upland. It is very palatable and nutritious for milch cows, both green and when properly cured. The curing should be very much like that ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... free. Bah! what's the use of speculating about it? Anyhow my doom is fixed, and poor Flinders with his friends will lose their money. My only regret is that that unmitigated villain Gashford will get it. It would not be a bad thing, now that my hands are free, to run a-muck amongst 'em. I feel strength enough in me to rid the camp of a lot of devils before I should be killed! But, after all, what good would that do me when I couldn't know it—couldn't know it! Perhaps I could know it! No, no! Better to die quietly, without the stain of human blood on my soul—if ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... human blood; he has been persuaded that a prince is not bound to observe an edict extorted by his subjects." To all these warnings Coligny replied at one time by affirming the king's good faith, and at another by saying, "I would rather be dragged dead through the muck-heaps of Paris than go back to civil war." This great soul had his seasons, not of doubt as to his faith or discouragement as to his cause, but of profound sorrow at the atrocious or shameful spectacles and the public or private woes which had to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... of all kinds from every available source. Remember that anything which will rot will add to the value of your manure pile. Muck, lime, old plastering, sods, weeds (earth and all), street, stable and yard sweepings—all these and numerous others will increase your garden ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell

... and it is with regret that I feel myself compelled to say that I wholly disapprove of your seeking my daughter's consent, before you first thought proper to obtain mine. This seems to me very muck like an ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... not afraid of the wrongness that inhabited this muck of house and grove and matted bush. He said this loudly to the prostrate form; then, waiting a little, repeated it. He would smash the print with its fallacious expanse of peace. The broken glass of the smitten picture jingled thinly on the floor. Woolfolk turned suddenly ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... mon; a guede clean shot as ere were made out thot muck!" exclaimed Kirkaldy, his face mantled with a grin ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... hangars. Time, about eleven, The air full chill, the ground a mess of muck, And long time gazed I on the wintry heaven And thought of many a deed of Saxon pluck; How DRAKE, for instance, good old DRAKE of Devon, Played bowls at Plymouth Hoe. Twelve-thirty struck. No one had vaulted through the air's abyss; DRAKE ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various

... the steel masts rising and carrying huge yards of steel, rising higher and higher, until steel masts and yards gave way to slender spars of wood, while ropes and stays turned into a delicate tracery of spider-thread against the sky. That such a wretched muck of men should be able to work this magnificent ship through all storm and darkness and peril of the sea was beyond all seeming. I remembered the two mates, the super-efficiency, mental and physical, of Mr. Mellaire and Mr. Pike—could ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... the maidens, while the older squaws, shut out from this by virtue of having fulfilled the end of their existence in reproduction, gossiped as they braided rope from the green roots of trailing vines. At their feet their naked progeny played and squabbled, or rolled in the muck with the ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London

... his path the loiterers at the inn door. They whose company he had quitted were silent for a moment; then said Sir Mortimer, slowly: "I remember now—there was a Thomas Baldry, master of the Speedwell. Well, it was a sorry business that day! If from that muck of blood and ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston

... of soil from 1 foot to 2 feet thick; (2) a layer of burnt clay from 3 to 12 inches thick (though usually varying from 4 to 8 inches) and broken into lumps, never in a uniform, unbroken layer; immediately below this (3) a thin layer of hardened muck or dark clay, though this does not always seem to be distinct. At this depth in the mounds of the eastern part of Arkansas are usually ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas

... for things to cool down. As soon as the muck-rakers wear out their rakes, and the great American public finds some other kind of hysterics to keep it worked up to a proper temperature, I shall mosey back and resume business at the old stand. But why tell you the story of my life? Play fair now, ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... not slow to learn the meaning of the word, and to this day the firm hold "tanuk" has on the language is only equalled by the thirst for the fluid which the name implies. Among the Asiatic Eskimo the word "um-muck" is common for "rum," while "em-mik" means water. Even words brought by whalers from the South Sea islands have obtained a footing, such as "kow-kow" for food, a word in general use, and "pow" for "no," or "not any." They also call their babies "pick-a-nee-nee," which to ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... exhausted with struggling under the pole. The other, saved only from drowning by the fact that its collar had held its head against the bank, had evidently kicked and splashed until the water was thick with the black muck stirred up ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... and submitted to be stroked and caressed; and before they were a fortnight in the stable. Alice and Edith could go up to them without danger. They were soon broken in; for the yard being full of muck, Pablo took them into it and mounted them. They plunged and kicked at first, and tried all they could to get rid of him, but they sank so deep into the muck that they were soon tired out; and after a month they were all three tolerably ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... fell into a very particularly dirty little pond near the cowshed at the farm. Mary, the nurse, no doubt was the sufferer, and she said that she did not suppose that black nurses minded being covered with muck—how should they?—and she supposed she must be treated as if she were a negro herself, but time would show whether she were a black slave or an Englishwoman with a house of her own which she could have now if she liked for the asking. While Mary spoke she pushed and pulled, and, in general ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... eight knots. We'll jog down to forty-nine, forty-five, or four about, and three east. That puts us say forty miles from Torbay by nine o'clock to-morrow morning. We'll have to muck about till dusk before we run in and try our luck with ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... seen the Jack o' Judgment once. A figure in gossamer silk who had stood beside the bed in which the Scandinavian lay and had talked wisdom whilst Olaf quaked in a muck sweat of fear. ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace

... and he alone, who has wisdom, love, patience, who possesses friends, who creates kindly thoughts, whose life with simple joy abounds. Once again and often do we need to see Bunyan's picture of the man bending over his refuse, gathered with the muck rake, and heedless of the angel holding the crown that only waits ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... he begs the Society to be cautious and offer no encouragement to any disposed "'to run the muck' (sic) (it is Sir George's expression) against the religious and political INSTITUTIONS of Spain"; but "the delicacy of the situation does not appear to have been thoroughly understood at the time even by the Committee at home." {224b} ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... by quickly executed decrees of vigilance committees. Self-appointed popular leaders, crafty politicians, scheming preachers, aspiring editors, and ambitious demagogues crop up. They are the mushroom growth of the muck-heap of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... portrait to which Hawthorne perhaps had done justice; and yet not Hawthorne either, for he was mildly minded, and it lay not in him to create for us that throb of the miser's pulse, his fretful energy of gusto, his vast arms of ambition clutching in he knows not what: insatiable, insane, a god with a muck-rake. Thus, at least, looking in the bosom of the miser, consideration detects the poet in the full tide of life, with more, indeed, of the poetic fire than usually goes to epics; and tracing that mean man about his cold hearth, and to and fro in his ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson

... once, a mile or two after starting, when he came to a stream. Into this he had waded, and had washed the muck stains from his ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... degree superficial. We make a great fuss over a flea; hardly mention it in polite company; but we tolerate the dirty housefly on all our food. We eat high game which our cook's more natural taste calls muck. We are only just beginning to realise the indescribable filthiness of carious teeth, than which anything more unclean, a few diseases excepted, can scarcely be found in slums. Even in this great age of pseudo-scientific enlightenment, we do not have a carious tooth extracted ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... what is the virtue of a classic, or of the deliberate and stately billows going with the wind when the world has sweep and is fair, or of a child with a flower, or of the little smile on the face of the dead boy in the muck when the guns were filling us with fear and horror of mankind? I don't know; but something in us appears to save us from the punishing comet ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... wrong, but it is so frightfully easy to displease a cook. 'It's them children: there's that there new carpet in their room, covered thick with mud, both sides, beastly yellow mud, and sakes alive knows where they got it. And all that muck to clean up on a Sunday! It's not my place, and it's not my intentions, so I don't deceive you, ma'am, and but for them limbs, which they is if ever there was, it's not a bad place, though I says it, and I wouldn't ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit

... an' reckons your throne'll wan day be as bright. He'll break you, an' bring you to your knees, an' that 'fore your gray hairs be turned, as mine, to white. Oh, Christ Jesus, look you at this blind sawl an' give en somethin' better to lay hold 'pon than his poor bally-muck o' religion what's nort but a ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... leggings and a smock appeared at the entrance of the barn, and came tramping across the straw towards them at her call. "Just take this into the kitchen," said his sister in commanding tones. "Now," turning to Lilac, "we can go t'other way across the fields. The lane's all in a muck." ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... I've always loved you, Eleanor," went on Carley, earnestly. "I'm as deep in this—this damned stagnant muck as you, or anyone. But I'm no longer blind. There's something terribly wrong with us women, and it's not what ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... you have him then?" he asked. "Red, yaller, muck-dirt colour?"—and he stared significantly at the Tailless Tyke, who was lying at his master's feet. The little man ceased rubbing his knees and eyed the boy. David shifted uneasily ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... in Indiana, doing very well in all sections except in certain portions of the northwestern part of the state and on muck or sandy soils. The tree loves company or does well alone. When the hickory stands alone, the trees are well formed and make a good specimen tree. Many hickory trees are found growing in the river ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various

... by the same hand: "Their squab noses poking out of bladders of lard that did duty for their faces;" not to speak of the characterization of a "Sacred Heart" too revolting to reproduce? Surely when, after having reviled M. Tissot almost personally, he describes his works as painted with "muck, wine-sauce, and mud," it is difficult not to answer with a tu quoque as far as this word-painting is concerned—difficult not to see here some morbid and "frightful appetite for the hideous" struggling with the healthy appetite for ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... you to want me to muck up out of the window, wasn't it?" demanded the obstinate barbarian, becoming passionate in his bearing rather than reluctantly, but with courteous grace, lessening the price to a trifling degree, as we regard the proper way of carrying ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... Muck: that's my opinion of him: muck. I'll mop the floor up with him any day, if so be as you or any on 'em 'll make it worth my while. If not, muck! That's my motto. Wot I now ses is, about that 'ere crib at Leslie's, wos I right, ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson

... a dozen times a day by the bath nurses in the receiving department of a charity hospital. When she returned, Susan too was in her chemise and ready to begin the search for the man, if man there was left deep buried in that muck. While Susan took off the stinking and rotten rags, and flung them into the hall, Clara went to the bathroom they and Mollie shared, and filled the tub with water as hot as her hand could bear. With her foot Susan pushed the rags along the hall floor and into the garbage closet. Then she and Clara ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... old gentleman did take on when you were carried away by the pressgang. If ever I saw him inclined to run a-muck, it was then. We had a hard matter, I can tell you, to prevent him from posting off to London to see the First Lord of the Admiralty, to grapple him by the throat if he did not send an order down at once to have you liberated. I don't know, indeed, what he'd ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... later I had another adventure with a weasel that had its den in a bank on the margin of a muck swamp in the same neighborhood. We had cleared and drained and redeemed the swamp and made it into a garden, and I had built me a lodge there. The weasel's hunting-grounds, where doubtless he had been wont to gather his supply of mice, had ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... of disgust.) I know him. It was he that wrote the Standard Oil side of the story, after having abused Standard Oil for years in the pseudo-muck-raking magazines. He made them come up to his price, that was all. He's the star writer on Cartwright's, now, since that magazine changed its policy and became subsidizedly reactionary. I know him—a thoroughly dishonest man. Truly am I Ali Baba, and truly ...
— Theft - A Play In Four Acts • Jack London

... he would exclaim, "What! give up my blessed religion and return to thy swill-tub agean; I should be a great fooil to do that,—does th' want to mak' me like an owd saa (sow), that's been weshed, and then runs back into t' muck agean; nay, thaa's rolled me i' sin lang enough; I'm thankful to be aat o' thy mud-hoil, and by the help of God, thaa'll get me there no maar." Then perhaps, when in conversation with some unconverted neighbour on the all-absorbing theme of religion, he would break out, "Aye, mun, ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell

... glacial drift in the northern states; and more numerous than the lakes which still remain are those already thus filled with carbonaceous matter derived from the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere. Such fossil lakes are marked by swamps or level meadows underlain with muck. ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton



Words linked to "Muck" :   colly, ordure, spread, slime, scatter, cow chip, sapropel, cow pie, cow dung, gunk, mud, manure, coprolite, take, bm, feces, droppings, matter, sludge, cowpie, muck about, ooze, fecal matter, soil, chip, muck up, buffalo chip, gook, pigeon droppings, grime, mire, stool, dung, bemire, begrime, high-muck-a-muck, goo, take away



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