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Terrapin   Listen
noun
Terrapin  n.  (Written also terapin, terrapen, terrapene, turpen, and turapen)  (Zool.) Any one of numerous species of tortoises living in fresh and brackish waters. Many of them are valued for food. Note: The yellow-bellied terrapin (Pseudemys scabra) of the Southern United States, the red-bellied terrapin (Pseudemys rugosa or Chrysemys rubriventris), native of the tributaries Chesapeake Bay (called also potter, slider, and redfender), and the diamond-back or salt-marsh terrapin (Malaclemmys palustris), are the most important American species. The diamond-back terrapin is native of nearly the whole of the Atlantic coast of the United States.
Alligator terrapin, the snapping turtle.
Mud terrapin, any one of numerous species of American tortoises of the genus Cinosternon.
Painted terrapin, the painted turtle. See under Painted.
Speckled terrapin, a small fresh-water American terrapin (Chelopus guttatus) having the carapace black with round yellow spots; called also spotted turtle.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Terrapin" Quotes from Famous Books



... does not take kindly to the wine of the country, which is really guiltless of alcohol to any extent; but over this rather insipid drink she was not particularly enthusiastic. Like the English woman when she made her first acquaintance with terrapin, the most that Miss Cassandra could be induced to say was that the eau des fleurs d'oranges sucree was not so very bad. The English dame, of course, said "it is not so very nasty"; but we have not become sufficiently Anglicized to say "nasty" in company. ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... mine that some people have no control of their appetites and passions. Men will abuse almost anything to their own hurt. I saw as many of our guests over-eat last night as over-drink, and there will be quite as many headaches to-day from excess of terrapin and oysters as from excess of wine. It's no use, Margaret. Intemperance is not to be cured in this way. Men who have a taste for wine will get it, if not in one place then in another; if not in a gentleman's dining-room, then in ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur

... is in the same square as the Temple, and just west of it, is aptly described by Mr. P. Donan as one of the architectural curios of the world. It looks like a vast terrapin back, or half of a prodigious egg-shell cut in two lengthwise, and is built wholly of iron, glass and stone. It is 250 feet long, 150 feet wide, and 100 feet high in the center of the roof, which is a single mighty arch, unsupported by pillar or post, and is said to have but one counterpart ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... of his own. He called them "sentences." One day he found some of the boys being cruel to a terrapin, or turtle. He made them stop. Then he wrote a composition in which he said that animals had ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah

... comes from the South, Baltimore being the great terrapin market. It belongs to the turtle family. It is always sold alive, and is a very expensive fish, the diamond backs costing from one to two dollars apiece. Three varieties are found in the market, the diamond backs, little bulls and red fenders. The first named are considered ...
— Miss Parloa's New Cook Book • Maria Parloa

... The other night I had to go to Talcott's uncle's to dine, and how I wished that I was home! The uncle is a respectable old man, too, who has never done anything either, and all he talked about was terrapin and gout. When he had finished with them in the smoking-room, his mind seemed exhausted, and he left me to the mercy of another man who tried to pump me about International Steel common. Is that pleasure?" Rufus Blight waved his cigar with a gesture of contempt. "I suppose Penelope would ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... the intervals of the courses, we were bored with hints to admire numerous objects of vertu: bow-legged stools of mangrove wood; zig-zag rapiers of bone; armlets of grampus-vertebrae; outlandish tureens of the callipees of terrapin; and cannakins of ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... it?" exclaimed Pettingill, "when you have risen from terrapin and artichokes to chops and chicory? When have you given us nectar and ambrosia ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... 6 o'clock a. m. The country extremely hilly and not quite so fertile. Independent people in log cabins. They make their own clothes, sugar and salt, and paint their own signs. They picture a lion like a dove, a cat like a terrapin, and Gen. Washington like a bird's nest. Salt wells and sugar orchards are common in this country. Steep hills, frightful precipices, little or no water, and even a scarcity of new whisky. Ragged and ignorant children and but little appearance of industry. Met a number of ...
— Narrative of Richard Lee Mason in the Pioneer West, 1819 • Richard Lee Mason

... motion of the car, and soothed by the air from Paradise that, for his virtues, he was being permitted to breathe, lapsed into calm and grateful slumber: and dreamed (nor could a worthy Philadelphian desire a better dream) of a certain meeting of the Saturday Night Club, in December, 1875, whereat the terrapin was remarkable, ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... re-admit their host. Mr. Lavington advanced with an air of recovered composure. He seated himself, picked up his napkin and consulted the gold-monogrammed menu. "No, don't bring back the filet.... Some terrapin; yes...." He looked affably about the table. "Sorry to have deserted you, but the storm has played the deuce with the wires, and I had to wait a long time before I could get a good connection. It must be blowing up for ...
— The Triumph Of Night - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... knew that terrapin wuz a hen before, and why is it any better to lay on Maryland than anywhere else? Mebby eggs are higher there; wall, Maryland hain't much too big for a good-sized hen's nest, ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... me," said Millard to Philip Gouverneur, who was sitting so as to draw his small form into the easy-chair as he smoked by the open fire in the newspaper room at the Terrapin Club. Millard, who had never liked tobacco, was pretending to smoke a cigarette because smoking seemed to him the right thing to do. He had no taste for any more desperate vice, and tobacco smoke served to take the gloss off a character ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... switches itself around the angle of the fireplace, I felt there was little doubt in his mind who would be left to do business after the final drag-out and clean-up. At the same time it did not dissipate a sort of come-and-go confidence I had that the old terrapin around whom so many of Wall Street's eddies have swirled would cause the 26-Broadway crowd many a broken knife-blade before crawling or being pushed into his shell. Turtles are not much good as sprinters, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... it was settled. That very night Fussie supped off, not rats, but terrapin and other ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... reply; "but not necessarily at Beaufort. Aside from the hatching of diamond-back terrapin, there's nothing going on there in which you could be of any service. Besides, you'll get 'stale' unless you have a vacation. 'All work and no ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... bid a guest to our board. Emphatically, it is to our board. If that hospitality has a flaw, it is to be found in the fact that we make the eating and drinking part of our festivities of far too much importance. Terrapin and Roederer take the place of dress and of diamonds. Our cooks, and not our mantuamakers, are set in a flutter at the rumor of a projected ball. We are less learned in point lace than we are in croquettes. There ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... set down to begin at seven o'clock, so that the guests, as was proper, sauntered slowly in between that hour and eight. The menu was particularly choice, the shades of countless canvas-back ducks, terrapin, and sheep having been called into requisition, and cooked by no less a person than Brillat-Savarin, in the hottest oven he could find in the famous cooking establishment superintended by the government. Washington was on hand early, sampling the olives and the ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs

... him. I had endured "terrapin-buzzards," hurled at the group by my woman child, perceiving need of relief for her pent-up passion. I had, moreover, for the same reason, permitted my namesake to roll under his tongue the formidable and satisfying expletive, "John B. Gough!" But I felt that the ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... "That terrapin stew does taste kind of good," his mother admitted, "but, land's sakes! it has so many little bits of bones in it I always get nervous eating it. It makes me feel as if all my teeth was ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... Lord! That supper! Canvasback! Terrapin! Champagne! The general had seated me at his right. Somewhere toward the close those expressive gray eyes looked at me keenly, and across his ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... frogs abound; the latter make an astonishing noise in marshy places during the summer evening by their harsh croaking. The land crab is found on the northern shore of Lake Erie. A small tortoise, called a terrapin,[198] is taken in some rivers, creeks, and swampy grounds, and is used as an article of food. Seals have been occasionally seen on the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... lost within me. A quail is but an inferior chicken—a poor relation outside the exclusive hennery. Terrapin sits low in my regard, even though it has wallowed in the most aristocratic marsh. Through such dinners I hack and saw my way without even gaining a memory of my progress. If asked the courses, I balk after the recital of the soup. Indeed, I am so forgetful of food, even when ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks

... in a sort of procession of tastes, and what changeful bouquets it left in my mouth,—a strange variety of varying impressions, like the play of colors. In these days of more unspiritual health and coarser sense I am almost ashamed to say what pleasure I found in a dish of terrapin. ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... indispensable at a fashionable American dinner is the terrapin. Those who eat these things say that their flesh has a most agreeable and delicate flavor, and that their gelatinous skinny necks and fins are delicious, but apparently the most palatable tidbits pall the taste in time, ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang

... we were not conscious, at first, as we sat in the cabin, that she was in motion and proceeding down the harbor. There was no beating or churning of the sea, no struggling to get forward; her paddles played in the water as smoothly as those of a terrapin, without jar or noise. The Tennessee is one of the tightest and strongest boats that navigate our coast; the very flooring of her deck is composed of timbers instead of planks, and helps to keep her massive frame more compactly and solidly together. It was her first voyage; her fifty-one ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... in the terrapins, and let them remain in it till quite dead. Then take them out, pull off the outer skin and the toe-nails, wash the terrapins in warm water and boil them again, allowing a tea-spoonful of salt to each terrapin. When the flesh becomes quite tender so that you can pinch it off, take them out of the shell, remove the sand-bag, and the gall, which you must be careful not to break, as it will make the terrapin so bitter as to be uneatable. Cut up all the other parts of the inside with the meat, and season ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie

... do I belong?" asked the Captain, turning toward her more openly and leaving his terrapin untasted, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... this and from all this our ancestors evolved cults of cookery which, though they differed perhaps as between themselves, were all purely American and all absolutely unapproachable. France lent a strain to New Orleans cooking and Spain did the same for California. Scrapple was Pennsylvania's, terrapin was Maryland's, the baked bean was Massachusetts', and along with a few other things spoon-bread ranked as Kentucky's fairest product. Indiana had dishes of which Texas wotted not, nor kilowatted either, this being before the day of electrical cooking contrivances. Virginia, mother of presidents ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... everything, after all. If you dined with the Lovell Mingotts you got canvas-back and terrapin and vintage wines; at Adeline Archer's you could talk about Alpine scenery and "The Marble Faun"; and luckily the Archer Madeira had gone round the Cape. Therefore when a friendly summons came from Mrs. Archer, ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... the city until noon, uncertain how to act. I felt a strong disposition to travel, and see the world;—but I could not make up my mind in what direction to go. After a sumptuous dinner at Sandy Welch's "Terrapin Lunch,"—one of the most famous restaurants of the day—I indulged in a contemplative walk up Broadway. Such thoughts as these ran through my mind:—"I cannot help contrasting my present situation with the position I was in, ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson

... couldn't have got it all on a billiard table. Say, that list they gave me had everything on it that was ever et or drunk, but I told dad they would fire us out if we ordered the whole prescription, so all I ordered was terrapin, canvasback duck, oysters, clams, crabs, a lot of new kinds of fish, and some beef and mutton, and turkey, and woodcock, and partridge, and quail, and English pheasant, and lobster and salads and ices, and pie and things, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck

... acquaintance of a gentleman who invited me to lunch at the leading diplomatic and social club. I had no claim upon him of any sort, beyond the most casual introduction. He regaled me with little-neck clams, terrapin, and all the delicacies of the season, and invited to meet me half a dozen of the most interesting men in the city, all of them strangers to me until that moment. I found myself seated next an exceedingly amiable man, whose ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer



Words linked to "Terrapin" :   family Emydidae, painted terrapin, yellow-bellied terrapin, turtle, red-bellied terrapin, diamondback terrapin, Malaclemys centrata, Emydidae



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