"Trencher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... youth next announced that he smelt bacon frying, and that his stomach cried "Trencher!" and started off in a lope for the quarters, now only a few yards distant. Landless followed more sedately, and reached his cabin without being observed ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... the memory of his discomfiture could not long check the flow of Mr. Fetherbee's spirits, and ten minutes later the valiant little trencher-man was climbing with cheerful alacrity into the wagon, which had been, in the interim, subjected to a judicious ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... Michael, the "trencher favorite" of Arden of Feversham, in love with Maria, sister of Mosby. A weak man, who both loves and honors Arden, but is inveigled by Mosby to admit ruffians into Arden's house to murder him.—Geo. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the better certainty, the Mistriss commands her to draw some Wine in a glass that was very clean rinsed; which she no sooner brought back, but the Mistriss observed that greasy lips had been at it; yet before she sent her the second time, she takes a trencher and holds it over the smoke of a Candle to grow black, then with her finger rubs that soot upon the edge or hollow part of the glass; and commanded her, as she did before, to draw some Wine; but when she came back ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... (medical) kuracado. Treaty kontrakto, traktajxo. Tree arbo. Trefoil trifolio. Trellis palisplektajxo. Tremble tremi. Trembling tremo—ado. Tremendous grandega. Tremor tremeto, skueto. Tremulous trema, skueta. Trench fosajxo. Trenchant akra. Trencher lignotelero. Trepidation tremeco, tremado. Trespass transpasxo, ofendo. Tress (hair) harligo. Tress plektajxo. Trestle (bench) stablo. Trial (an attempt) provo—ajxo—ado. Triangle triangulo. Tribe gento. Tribulation ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... grated window. Embedded in the wall was a huge iron ring, and chained to it was a gaunt skeleton, that was stretched out at full length on the stone floor, and seemed to be trying to grasp with its long fleshless fingers an old-fashioned trencher and ewer, that were placed just out of its reach. The jug had evidently been once filled with water, as it was covered inside with green mold. There was nothing on the trencher but a pile of dust. Virginia knelt down beside the skeleton, ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... was an age of luxury; but on the farms the laborer was glad to get a bundle of straw for a bed, and a wooden trencher to eat from. Vegetables were scarcely known, and fresh meat was eaten only by the well to do. The cottages were built of sticks and mud, without chimneys, and were nearly as bare of furniture as the wigwam of an ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... as if these lazy ones delighted in filth. Again and again have I seen one or another throw the scrapings of the trencher bowls just outside the door of the tent or hut, where those who came or went must of a necessity tread upon them, and one need not struggle hard to realize what soon was the condition of ...
— Richard of Jamestown - A Story of the Virginia Colony • James Otis
... looke backe to Eighty Eight, That Spanish glasse shall tell you, shew each wrinckle. England that yeare was but a bit pickd out To be layd on their Kinges Trencher. Who were their Cookes? Marry, sir, his Grandees and great Dons of Spaine, A Navy was provided, a royall fleete, Infinite for the bravery of Admiralls, Viceadmirall [sic], Generalls, Colonells and Commanders, Soldiers, and all the warlike furniture Cost or experience ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... preceese hurry, gudewife," said the butler, suffering himself to be dragged to a seat without much resistance; "and as to eating," for he observed the mistress of the dwelling bustling about to place a trencher for him—"as for eating—lack-a-day, we are just killed up yonder wi' eating frae morning to night! It's shamefu' epicurism; but that's what we hae gotten frae the English pock-puddings." "Hout, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... that it was good; then, observing that little Oscar had just finished his fourth venison steak, he politely handed him the trencher. The greasy-fingered boy gravely helped himself to number five, and assailed it as if he had only just begun to terminate ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the lads, though not exactly as they desired. A mattress was brought them, and a coarse and not over-clean covering; food also on a trencher, and a mug of ale was sent in, but the food was badly cooked, and the ale was none of the best. There was, however, a sufficiency to satisfy hunger and thirst; and they hoped for little more than ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... sayes that death is naturall, when nature Is with the onely thought of it dismaid? I have had lotteries set up for my death, And I have drawne beneath my trencher one, Knit in my hand-kerchiefe another lot, 5 The word being, "Y'are a dead man if you enter"; And these words this imperfect bloud and flesh Shrincke at in spight of me, their solidst part Melting like snow within mee with colde fire. I hate my selfe, ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... the taste of it. [201] In the cost of wheat there has been very little change. The average price of the quarter, during the last twelve years of Charles the Second, was fifty shillings. Bread, therefore, such as is now given to the inmates of a workhouse, was then seldom seen, even on the trencher of a yeoman or of a shopkeeper. The great majority of the nation lived almost entirely ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Brother Maximus, we are not worthy of so great a treasure.' As he repeated these words many times, Brother Maximus made answer: 'Father, how can you talk of treasures when there is such great poverty and such lack of all things needful? Here is neither napkin nor knife, neither board nor trencher, neither house nor table, neither man-servant nor maid-servant.' St. Francis replied: 'And this is what I reckon a great treasure, where naught is made ready by human industry, but all that is here is ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... they think, could do up the work in half the time, and not feel it a bit. Scarcely a man of them but thinks the dishes might be just rinsed off under the faucet, and stood up to dry. Scarcely a man of them who, if this were tried, would not cast more than inquiring glances at his trencher; for it is always what is not done that a man sees. If one chair-round escapes dusting, it is that chair-round which he particularly notices. In his mind then are two ideas: one is of the whole long day, the other ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... stout trencher man; one who has a good appetite, or, as the term is, plays a good knife ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... voices, and presently came upon the Scobels and the school-children. The juveniles were in a state of alarm at having lost you. They had been playing the game in severe silence, and at a turn in the grove missed you altogether. Oh, here comes Scobel, with his trencher on the ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... supper was served, but when every man had his trencher filled Rainouart entered the hall, armed with his staff, and stood leaning against a pillar, watching the noble company. 'Sir,' said Aimeri, the man whom the Saracens most dreaded, 'who is it that I see standing there holding a piece of wood that five peasants could hardly lift? Does he mean ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... write a Comedy, Wherein shall be compos'd dark sentences, Pleasing to factious brains: And every other where place me a Jest, Whose high abuse shall more torment than blows: Then I my self (quicker than Lightning) Will fly me to a puissant magistrate, And weighting with a Trencher at his back, In midst of jollity, rehearse those gauls, (With some additions) So lately vented in your Theater. He, upon this, cannot but make complaint, To your great danger, or ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... which primitive dainty he has so gallantly defended against the disparaging sneers of Dr. Johnson and his bear-leader.[109] A huge brown loaf flanked his elbow, and it was placed upon a broad wooden trencher, that he might cut and come again with the bolder knife. Often did the Clerks' {p.252} coach, commonly called among themselves the Lively—which trundled round every morning to pick up the brotherhood, and then deposited them at the proper minute in the Parliament Close—often did ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... cousins, and an old woman, and Mr. Mills and his wife; and a good dinner, and all our plate out, and mighty fine and merry, only I a little vexed at burning a new table-cloth myself, with one of my trencher-salts. Dinner done, I out with W. Hewer and Mr. Spong, who by accident come to dine with me, and good talk with him: to White Hall by coach, and there left him, and I with my Lord Brouncker to attend the Duke of York, and then up ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... painful to connect the venerable, almost sacred, name of Richard Hooker with such a specimen of puerile sophistry, scarcely worthy of a court bishop's trencher chaplain in the slavering times of our Scotch Solomon. It is, however, of some value, some interest at least, as a striking example of the confusion of an idea with a conception. Every conception has its sole reality in its being referable to a thing or class of ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... King, Archbishop of Dublin, having invited several persons of distinction to dine with him, had, amongst a great variety of dishes, a fine leg of mutton and caper sauce; but the doctor, who was not fond of butter, and remarkable for preferring a trencher to a plate, had some of the abovementioned pickle introduced dry for his use; which, as he was mincing, he called aloud to the company to observe him; "I here present you, my lords and gentlemen," said he, "with a sight that may henceforward ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... serving boy! I knew him, at Caius' trencher, when for hire He prostituted his abused body To that great gormond, fat Apicius; And was the noted pathic of ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... make for fish; Nor fetch in firing 170 At requiring; Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish: 'Ban, 'Ban, Cacaliban Has a new master:—get a ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... better ground. This, too, might be thought a praise by some.' But hear Nash, who was far from praising: 'I leaue all these to the mercy of their mother-tongue, that feed on nought but the crums that fall from the translator's trencher,—that could scarcely Latinize their neck verse if they should haue neede; yet English Seneca, read by candle-light, yeelds many good sentences—hee will affoord you whole Hamlets, I should say, handfuls ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... some time after this, steered his course for Oxford, where he visited Messrs. Treby, Stanford, Cooke, and other collegians, his particular friends, of whom he got a trencher-cap.—Having staid at Oxford as long as was agreeable to his inclinations, he set out for Abington, and from thence to Marlborough, having put on a pair of white stockings, a grey waistcoat, and the trencher-cap. Thus equipped, he pretended ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... could be prevailed on to go with us till the return of the other chief; and that the Chayennes were a wild people, afraid to go. He invited Captain Clark to his house, and gave him two carrots of tobacco, two beaver-skins, and a trencher of boiled corn and beans. It is the custom of all the nations on the Missouri to offer to every white man food and refreshment when he first enters ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... rooms, and out of one room into the other, as thrown with some great force. Captain Hart, being in a slumber, was taken by the shoulder and shaked until he did sit up in his bed, thinking that it had been one of his fellows, when suddenly he was taken on the pate with a trencher, that it made him shrink down into the bed-clothes, and all of them, in both rooms, kept their heads at least within their sheets, so fiercely did three dozen of trenchers fly about the rooms; yet Captain Hart ventured again to peep out to see what ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... instead of dance music, let there haunt around thee the service for the dead! I know that sprig of Mistletoe, O Spirit in the midst! Under it I swung the girl I loved—girl no more now than I am a boy—and kissed her spite of blush and pretty shriek. And thee, too, with fragrant trencher in hand, over which blue tongues of flame are playing, do I know—most ancient apparition of them all. I remember thy reigning night. Back to very days of childhood am I taken by the ghostly raisins simmering in a ghostly brandy flame. Where now the merry boys ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... him to come in, but I dare say I had hard work to do it. At last he came in, and I will say that for my Lord, He carried it wonderful lovingly to Mr. Fearing. There were but a few good bits at the table, but some of it was laid upon his trencher." In this way the guide tells us his first introduction to Mr. Fearing, and how Mr. Fearing behaved himself in the Interpreter's House. For instance, in the parlour full of dust, when the Interpreter said that the dust is original sin and inward corruption, you would have thought ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... Trencher—to give him the name by which of all the names he used he best was known—had kept his temper in hobbles, no matter what or how great the provocation. As one whose mode of livelihood was trick and device outside the law it had behooved him ever to restrain himself ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... white and black marble, the money wrested from the Jews was to be eighteen million dollars, etc. The word "banquet" occurs twenty times in this short story and only twenty times in all the remaining thirty-eight books of the Old Testament. In other words, Ahasuerus and his trencher-mates ate and drank as much in five days as had been eaten and drunk by all the other Old Testament characters from "Genesis" ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... costlie cupbords of plate worth five or six hundred or a thousand pounds."[39] The lord of the manor no longer took his meals with all his retainers in the great hall, throwing the bones and scraps from his wooden trencher to his dogs. He withdrew into a separate apartment, and dined with a new refinement. A hitherto unknown variety of food covered the table, served on pewter, china, or silver, ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... winne an opinion of holinesse: or pray still apace, but neuer do good deede, and geue a begger a penny and spend a pound on a harlot, to speake faire to a mans face, and foule behinde his backe, to set him at his trencher and yet sit on his skirts for so we vse to say by a fayned friend, then also to be rough and churlish in speach and apparance, but inwardly affectionate and fauouring, as I haue sene of the greatest podestates and grauest iudges and Presidentes ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... of bread whiter than hoar-frost, and piles of purple and golden fruit followed, while the half-starved boy warmed his fingers at the blaze, and then ate and drank his fill of such viands as he had never before tasted, even in dreams. But when he could do no more good trencher-service, and the little old woman reminded him of the wish he was to ask the Dwarf-king to grant, he sat a long time pondering ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... besides that of parasitism, and in this expectation one is not disappointed. There are two other species of cowbirds in the Argentine country—the screaming cowbird (Molothrus rufoaxillaris) and the bay-winged cowbird (Molothrus badius). The latter is only partly a trencher on the rights of other birds—only half a parasite. Indeed, it sometimes builds its own nest, which is quite a respectable affair; but, as if to prove that it still has some remnants of cowbird depravity ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... would gladly entertain Into his house some trencher-chaplain; Some willing man that might instruct his sons, And that would stand to good conditions. First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed, Whilst his young master lieth o'er his head. Secondly, that he do, on no default, Ever presume to sit ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... bonnet of straw You once thought a great matter, And tied it so pretty and neat; Now see how 'tis crumpled, No trencher is flatter, It grieves your ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... number of sheep bequeathed by one man, of a quantity of cotton cloth worth nine shillings presented by another, of a pewter flagon worth ten shillings by a third, of a fruit-dish, a sugar-spoon, a silver-tipped jug, one great salt, and one small trencher salt, by others; and of presents or legacies, amounting severally to five shillings, one pound, two pounds, &c., all faithfully recorded with the names of the donors, we are at first tempted to smile; but a little reflection will soon change ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... "be not cast down. The foundations of your house are built upon a basis too broad and firm to be blown down by the disorderly breaths of lackeys and trencher-scrapers. Pardon me, if in my zeal I apply ignominious terms to ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... just come from the Borough, Will you buy a pudding stirrer. I hope I am not too soon, For you to buy a wooden spoon. I've come quick as I was able, Thinking you might want a ladle, And if I'm not too late, Buy a trencher or wood plate. Or if not it's no great matter, So you take a wooden platter. It may help us both to dinner, If you'll buy a wooden skimmer. Come, neighbours, don't be shy, for I deal just and fair, Come, quickly come and buy, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the flesh, and spread the board, And stood behind, and waited on the three. And seeing her so sweet and serviceable, Geraint had longing in him evermore To stoop and kiss the tender little thumb, That crost the trencher as she laid it down: But after all had eaten, then Geraint, For now the wine made summer in his veins, Let his eye rove in following, or rest On Enid at her lowly handmaid-work, Now here, now there, about the dusky hall; Then suddenly addrest ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... put them into Salt and Water for about two Hours; then boil them very tender till a Pin will easily go into them; then drain them well from the Water, and put them into your preserving Pan, putting as much clarified Sugar to them as will cover them, laying some Trencher or Plate on them to keep them down; then set them over a Fire, and by Degrees heat them till they boil; then let them have a quick boil till the Sugar comes all over them in a Froth; then set them by till next Day, when ...
— The Art of Confectionary • Edward Lambert
... Roch and Dace, a good bait is the young brood of Wasps or Bees, baked or hardened in their husks in an Oven, after the bread is taken out of it, or on a fire-shovel; and so also is the thick blood of Sheep, being half dryed on a trencher that you may cut it into such pieces as may best fit the size of your hook, and a little salt keeps it from growing black, and makes it not the worse but better; this is taken to be a ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... mode of opening the conversation, they had arrived at the church, and here, in front of the open door, there lay the most singular contribution that ever was offered to the cause of Christianity. Many dozens of church-door plates rolled into one enormous trencher would have been insufficient to contain it, for it was given not in money (of course) but in kind. There were a number of lengths of hollow bamboo containing cocoa-nut oil, various fine mats and pieces of native cloth, and sundry articles of an ornamental character, besides a large supply ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... plain, as Patricius holds, which Austin, Lactamius, and some others, held of old as round as a trencher. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... extraordinary sweetness in the grass, suffer the cattle to eat the grass closer till Lammas (August 1). Though some do not hold with him, he thinks reading and writing not unprofitable to a husbandman, but not much material 'to his bailiff'; for there is more trust in an honest score chalked on a trencher than 'in a commen writen scrowle'. Landowners derived a good income from their woods and coppices. An acre of underwood of twenty-one years' growth, was at this time worth from L20 to L30; of twelve years' growth, L5 to L6; but on many of the best ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... recipe, which is a secret of the Order, is of excellent quality, and deserves its reputation. The monastery bread, made from the wheat grown by the monks, was of the substantial and honest kind which in England would probably be called 'farmhouse bread,' although the great wheel or trencher-shaped loaves of the French provinces might cause some surprise there. My meal, therefore, might have been worse than it was, and as it was given to me for nothing, it would have been very bad manners not to appear pleased. The truth is, the novelty ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... yoke-beasts standing or lying down unharnessed as yet to them: but in the very midst of that place was a wain unlike to them; smaller than they but higher; square of shape as to the floor of it; built lighter than they, yet far stronger; as the warrior is stronger than the big carle and trencher-licker that loiters about the hall; and from the midst of this wain arose a mast made of a tall straight fir-tree, and thereon hung the banner of the Wolfings, wherein was wrought the image of the Wolf, but red of hue as a token of war, and with his mouth open ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... their rags ripped again! There was a knight of old times who built the dining-hall of his castle across the highway, so that every wayfarer must perforce pass through; there the traveler, rich or poor, found always a trencher and wherewithal to fill it. Three times a day in my own chair at my own table, do I envy that knight and wish that I might do as ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... remnant of the sirloin was now much abated, leaving in its stead that placid quiet which is apt to linger about the palate long after the cravings of the appetite have been appeased. He had seated himself on one of the trunks of Borroughcliffe, utterly disdaining the use of a chair; and, with the trencher in his lap, was using his own jack-knife on the dilapidated fragment of the ox, with something of that nicety with which the female ghoul of the Arabian Tales might be supposed to pick her rice ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the luscious huckleberries in tasteful baskets of her own braiding, and Tontz Main de Fer, the chivalric companion and friend of La Salle, was moved like Geraint, served by Enid, "to stoop and kiss the dainty little thumb that crossed the trencher." The salutation was received with unconscious dignity by little Marie; once only was Pere Francois Xavier annoyed by the absence of a display of childish pleasure in an ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... of fellowship. As to the hardy feats, both of sword and trencher, performed by this "curtal fryar," behold are they not recorded at length in the ancient ballads, and in the ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... to the pretty little bedroom he was to occupy—one which opened out of the room set apart for Harry and Philip; and soon after he was down in the dining-room eating a meal that called forth the remarks and comparisons of his cousins, who were dreadful trencher-men. They told him that he must learn what a country appetite meant, and so, by way of teaching him, they dragged him off, as soon as dinner was over, to look at all the wonders of the place. First over the flower-garden, and round by the aviary, where Mamma's gold and silver pheasants were ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... well picked and beaten in a Mortar, and put them into a Syrup, so much as the Flowers will stain, boil them, and stir them till you see it will turn Sugar again, then pour it upon a wet trencher, and when it is cold cut it into Lozenges, and that which remaineth in the bottom of the Posnet scrape it clean out, and beat it and searce it, then work it with some Gum Dragon steeped in Rosewater and ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley
... knife; and he was dressed in a cotton doublet, yet his own had been of fine black silk. Also they had put on him a miserable pair of hose, torn from the half of the leg downwards; and a red cap with a trencher was upon his head, and it was rather a long cap, and the narrator believed that the gaolers had dressed him thus as an insult. 'And I Stephen, the scribe, saw it with my eyes, and with my hands I buried him, with Prosper of Cicigliano, who had ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... to convince the emperor that they have not lost their faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summersault several times together upon a trencher,[20] fixed on a rope, which is no thicker than a common packthread in England. My friend Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial, the second after the treasurer; the rest of the great officers ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... surrounding a barley loaf and a cheese, this meagre irregular supper being considered as a sufficient supplement to the funeral baked meats which had abounded at Beaulieu. John Birkenholt sat at the table with a trencher and horn before him, uneasily using his knife to crumble, rather than cut, his bread. His wife, a thin, pale, shrewish-looking woman, was warming her child's feet at the fire, before putting him to bed, and an old woman sat spinning and nodding on a settle ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and writhe my fawning tayle, To some great Patron for my best avayle. Such hunger-starven trencher-poetrie, Or let it never live, or ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... began to grow fond of the pigeon. He always took care to scatter some oats for it in his father's yard; and the pigeon grew so tame at last that it would hop about the kitchen, and eat off the same trencher with the dog. ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... he enjoyed himself amazingly, and made more marks than ever on the white tablecloth—for he began jumping about like a pea on a trencher, in order to make his particularly large supper ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... nourishment, pabulum, nutrition, fare, diet, bread, meat, rations, victuals, subsistence, commons, provisions, viands, regimen, finding, sustenance, eatables, refreshments, comestibles, trencher, ambrosia, broma, manna. Associated Words: bromatology, bromatologist, alimental, alimentary, pabular, appetite, alimentation, nutrition, superalimentation, pantophagist, pantophagous, pantophagy, polyphagous, polyphagy, bromography, dietary, regimen, dietarian, dietetics, dieter, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... desist from your sport, about two or three days: and in the meantime, on the place you late baited, and again intend to bait, you shall take a turf of green but short grass, as big or bigger than a round trencher; to the top of this turf, on the green side, you shall, with a needle and green thread, fasten one by one, as many little red worms as will near cover all the turf: then take a round board or trencher, make a hole in the middle thereof, and through ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... with your mete / salt in the saler [Sidenote: Don't dip your meat in the saltcellar,] Lest folk apoynte you of vnconnyngnesse Dresse it aparte / vpon a clene trencher 213 Farse not your mouth to ful / for wantonesse Lene not vpon the table / for that rude is [Sidenote: lean on the table,] And yf I shal to you playnly saye Ouer the table / ye shal not spetel conueye 217 [Sidenote: ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... king's courtier would be as friendly as Kit's lover. And I was still thinking of this without having settled the point to my satisfaction, when the curtain was thrust aside again. A very tall man, wearing a splendid suit of black and silver and a stiff trencher-like ruff, came quickly in, and stood smiling at us, a little dog in his arms. The little dog sat up and snarled: and Croisette gasped. It was not our old friend Louis certainly! It was not Louis de Pavannes at all. It was no old friend ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... coach drove up to that ancient and comfortable inn the Trencher, which stands in Main Street, Oxbridge, and Pen with delight and eagerness remarked, for the first time, gownsmen going about, chapel bells clinking (bells in Oxbridge are ringing from morning-tide till even-song)—towers and pinnacles rising calm and stately over the gables and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the worthy Van Kortlandt was observed to be particularly zealous in his devotions to the trencher; for having the cares of the expedition especially committed to his care he deemed it incumbent on him to eat profoundly for the public good. In proportion as he filled himself to the very brim with the dainty viands ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... together; then they fell to tumbling and vaulting one after another, that it was most pleasant to behold; then they leaped out of the window and vanished away. Then they set before Dr. Faustus a roasted calf's head, which one of the students cut a piece off, and laid it on Dr. Faustus his trencher, which piece was no sooner laid down but the calf's head began to cry mainly out like a man, "Murder, murder! Out, alas! what dost thou to me?" Whereat they were all amazed, but after a while, considering of Faustus's jesting tricks, they began to laugh, and they pulled asunder the calf's ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... darling, And your ladies' sport and pleasure; Tongue and bauble are his treasure. E'en his face begetteth laughter, And he speaks truth free from slaughter; He's the grace of every feast, And sometimes the chiefest guest; Hath his trencher and his stool, When wit waits upon the fool: O, who would ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... being strangers in a strange land, which my Dutch relatives predicted would of necessity prove annoying. We were hungry, and the hotel supper was anything but satisfying. As everyone knows, the New Netherlanders are hearty good trencher-folk. At our house, we always had a full table, and at Grandpa Van Der Zee's there had to be more on the board than could possibly be consumed or there was not enough to please the Baas. At the Massasoit, there was ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... even know the quarter from whence it comes. Build high your walls and your bulwarks; they shall but prove the greater peril when they crumble under the impact of our lord's hammer. You will believe; yes, when trencher-mate and bedfellow are stricken at your side, and yet no man shall be able to say at what instant the avenger's shadow passed between, or catch the faintest sound of his retreating footsteps. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... memories, it bewitched him like the perfume of a woman's dress. At the entrance of a college they glanced in at the cool grey patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of a window flowerbox—secluded, mysteriously calm—a narrow vision of the sacred past. Pale and trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face and random nose, grabbing at his cloven gown, was gazing at the noticeboard. The college porter—large man, fresh-faced, and small-mouthed—stood at his lodge door in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... exceeding hungry, and looking forth into the court he had it in his mind to carve meat from the dead boar. But he was astounded beyond measure to find that it was not there. In its place was a great trencher of steaming hot collops of meat, and toasted bread, with hot milk ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... fishermen, and became only by Act of Parliament poachers, smugglers, and illicit distillers; the province of the male portion of the family was to find food for the rest; and a pair of spurs laid on an empty trencher was well understood by the goodman as a token that the ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... him stood a black bottle, an empty trencher, and a thick scatter of crumbs, showing that the old notary had despatched a hearty breakfast before commencing his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... high men and low men both prosper alike, langrets, fullams, and all the whole fellowshippe of them will not affoord a man his dinner, some other means must be inuented to preuent imminent extremitie. My state, you are not ignorant, depends on trencher seruice, your aduancement must be deriued from the valour of your arme. In the delayes of siege, desert hardly gets a daye of hearing, tis gowns must direct and guns enact all the wars that is to bee made against walls. Resteth no waie for you ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... lover's side and looked out over the courtyard of the castle. Beneath her she saw the cobble-stones all scratched and marred with gray bruises from the horses' hoofs, a faded purple ribbon dropped from the mandolin of a minstrel, three slightly imperfect wassails and a trencher with a nick on the rim, all that had not been used of the wild boar at last night's feast, a peach-stone like a wrinkled almond nestling in a sardine tin. ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed to cut a caper on the straight rope, at least an inch higher than any other lord in the whole empire. I have seen him do the summerset several times together, upon a trencher fixed on a rope which is no thicker than a common packthread in England. My friend Reldresal, principal secretary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, if I am not partial, the second after the treasurer; the rest of the great officers are ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... would divorce all that goodnesse; and why? for a little letchery of revenge? it's a lye: the Burre that stickes in your throat is a throane: let him out of his messe of Kingdomes cut out but one, and lay Sicilia, Arragon, Naples or any else upon your trencher, and you'll prayse Bastard[196] for the sweetest wine in the world and call for another quart of it. 'Tis not because the man has left you but because you are not the woman you would be, that mads you: a shee-cuckold is an ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... Over the mantel-piece he was represented in a hunting costume, on his favorite horse; there was a sticking-plaster silhouette of him in the widow's bedroom, and a miniature in the drawing-room, where he was drawn in a gown of black and gold, holding a gold-tasselled trencher cap with one hand, and with the other pointing to a diagram of Pons Asinorum. This likeness was taken when he was a fellow-commoner at St. John's College, Cambridge, and before the growth of that blue beard which was the ornament of ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... though, with one of his most excellent touches of art, the author has suggested the contrast of youth and age by a single gipsy interview in one of the later chapters. Borrow, like all sensible men, was at no time indifferent to good food and drink, especially good ale; but the trencher plays in Wild Wales a part, the importance of which may perhaps have shocked some of our latter-day delicates, to whom strong beer is a word of loathing, and who wonder how on earth our grandfathers and fathers ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... victuall, and he hath holpe to ease it: he's a very valiant Trencher-man, hee hath an ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... hounds and spaniels. One or two of the great chairs had litters of cats in them, which were not to be disturbed. Of these, three or four always attended him at dinner, and a little white wand lay by his trencher, to defend it if they were too troublesome. In the windows, which were very large, lay his arrows, cross-bows, and other accoutrements. The corners of the room were filled with his best hunting and hawking poles. His oyster table stood at the lower ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... chief, and serve him with blood and bayonet; and march o' nights if need, and limber up the guns if need, and shoe a horse if need, and draw a cork if need, and cook a potato if need; and be a hussar, or a tirailleur, or a trencher, or a general, if need. But yes, that's it; no pride but the love of France and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... March, Sukey writes to Sam, remarking that as Hetty and Emily are also writing "so particularly," she need not say much. "One thing I believe you do not know, that is, last Sunday, to my father's no small amazement, his trencher danced upon the table a pretty while, without anybody's stirring the table. . . . Send me some news for we are excluded from the sight or hearing of any versal thing, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... wooden dishes. As for knives and forks—nobody used those! Every one ate with his fingers. Think how primitive it must have been to go to a banquet of the Lord-Mayor of London arrayed in your silk or velvet costume, and eat roasted ox with your fingers from a trencher, or square slab of wood! Yet such a procedure was considered entirely proper ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... quite different from Jacqueline's victims. He was a singular-looking old man, clad in worn butternut jeans; an uncouth, uncombed, manifestly unwashed person at whose side on the floor rested a peddler's pack. He was doing some alarming trencher-work with his knife, and kept a supply of food convenient in his cheek while he greeted Channing ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... be, I suppose, with women. The drunken exultation of Caliban is no bad illustration of the emancipation of a slave; and the ladies, more gracefully intoxicated with the elixir vitae of liberty, may rejoice no more to "scrape trencher or wash dish," but write books ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... stopped. Turning out of the private cloister-entrance of the deanery, right upon them, had come Dr. Gardner, one of the prebendaries. He cast a displeased glance at Yorke, not speaking; and little Channing, touching his trencher to the doctor, flew to the place where he had left his books, caught them up, and ran out of the ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... been called to a banquet, even to the banquet of God's grace, and thou hast been disposed to go; but behold, thou hast not believed that he would of his own cost make thee a feast when thou comest: wherefore of thy own store thou hast brought with thee, and hast laid upon thy trencher on his table thy mouldy crusts in the presence of the angels, and of this poor Publican; yea, and hast vauntingly said upon the whole, "God, I thank thee, I am not as other men are." I am no such needy man; Luke xviii. 11. "I am no extortioner, nor unjust, nor adulterer, nor even as this Publican." ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... alone Is clothing, meat and trencher, drink and can, Boat, cable, sail, and needle, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... honourable blood of Lancaster, Must not be shed by such a jaded groom. Hast thou not kiss'd thy hand and held my stirrup? Bare-headed plodded by my foot-cloth mule And thought thee happy when I shook my head? How often hast thou waited at my cup, Fed from my trencher, kneel'd down at the board, When I have feasted with Queen Margaret? Remember it and let it make thee crest-fallen, Ay, and allay thus thy abortive pride, How in our voiding lobby hast thou stood And duly waited for my coming forth. This hand of mine hath writ in thy behalf, ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... corners by draping. The tea service on it consists of two thick cups and saucers of the plainest ware, with milk jug and bowl to match, each large enough to contain nearly a quart, on a black japanned tray, and, in the middle of the table, a wooden trencher with a big loaf upon it, and a square half pound block of butter in a crock. The big oak press facing the fire from the opposite side of the room, is for use and storage, not for ornament; and the minister's house coat ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... these words from his pen: 'The gospel of dirt is bad enough, but the gospel of mere material comfort is much worse.' He contemptuously calls the Comtist championship of the working man, 'the championship of the trencher.' He would place 'the leanest liberty which brought with it the dignity and power of self-help' higher than 'any prospect of a full plate without it.' Such is the moral doctrine taught by this 'atheistic' leader; and no Christian, I apprehend, need ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Vicar was not to be cheated out of this new chance of helping another. Striding into the kitchen, he laid hands upon the pewter dishes, of whose polish Sally Lawrence was so proud, and handed them to the widow with the remark that "a wooden trencher served better." ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... slowly back into the vessel, showing a yellow turbid fluid. The appearance of it evidently reassured him, for the look of anxiety cleared away from his features, and he uttered an exclamation of relief. Taking a handful of a whitish powder from a trencher at his side he threw it into the pipkin, the contents of which began immediately to seethe and froth over into the fire, causing the flames to assume the strange greenish hue which we had observed before entering. ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... fastened a thin rope reaching to the ground, as it will be told later. The said stout bar of iron had eight arms, spreading out in an arc large enough to fill the space within the hollow half-globe, and at the end of each arm there was a stand about the size of a trencher; on each stand was a boy about nine years old, well secured by an iron soldered on to the upper part of the arm, but loosely enough to allow him to turn in every direction. These eight angels, supported by the said iron, were lowered from the space within the half-globe by means of a small ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... the table; as the authors there seemed to possess the greatest courage of the tongue. As to the crew at the lower end, if they did not make much figure in talking, they did in eating. Never was there a more determined, inveterate, thoroughly-sustained attack on the trencher, than by this phalanx of masticators. When the cloth was removed, and the wine began to circulate, they grew very merry and jocose among themselves. Their jokes, however, if by chance any of them reached the upper end of the table, seldom produced much ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... eater, as men of his figure often are. Being a hard sleeper likewise, he divided his time pretty equally between these two recreations, always falling asleep when he had done eating, and always taking another turn at the trencher when he had done sleeping, by which means he grew more corpulent and more drowsy every day of his life. Indeed it used to be currently reported that when he sauntered up and down the sunny side of the street before dinner (as he never ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... of the glowing coal-pit, that its contents may become gradually warm while other operations are in progress. He then takes a dirty knotted rag out of a niche in the wall close by, and having untied it, empties out of it three or four handfuls of unroasted coffee, the which he places on a little trencher of platted grass, and picks carefully out any blackened grains, or other non-homologous substances, commonly to be found intermixed with the berries when purchased in gross; then, after much cleansing and shaking, he pours the grain so cleansed into a large open iron ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... upper end of the table, blazing with plate and crystal, stood the royal chair, with the Queen's plate and knife and fork before it, exactly as if she had been present, while Leicester's trencher and stool were set respectfully quite at the edge of the board. In the neighbourhood of this post of honour sat Count Maurice, the Elector, the Pretender, and many illustrious English personages, with the fair Agnes Mansfeld, Princess Chimay, the daughters ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Trencher, n. [trncher] Trinchero; la mesa; las viandas; la comida. Tagagaw ng trinchera; ang ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... I lived in days of yore, When outlaws bold were rife, The days of dagger and of bowl, Of dungeon and of strife. Oh! for the days when forks were not, On skewers came the meat; When from one trencher ate three foes: Oh! but those times were sweet! When hooded hawks sat overhead, And underfoot was straw Where hounds and beggars fought ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little more about it; only Will Green saying quietly, "Well, the tidings shall be told when our fellowship is greater; fall-to now on the meat, brother, that we may the sooner have thy tale." As he spoke the blue-clad damsel bestirred herself and brought me a clean trencher—that is, a square piece of thin oak board scraped clean—and a pewter pot of liquor. So without more ado, and as one used to it, I drew my knife out of my girdle and cut myself what I would of the flesh and bread on the table. But Will Green mocked at me as I cut, ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... that would rather be King of a mole hill, then a Keysars slaue: Better it is mongst fidlers to be chiefe, Then at plaiers trencher beg reliefe. But ist not strange this mimick apes should prize Vnhappy Schollers at a hireling rate. Vile world, that lifts them vp to hye degree, And treades vs downe in groueling misery. England affordes those glorious vagabonds, That carried earst their fardels ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... all his force And found each river sweeter than the source. Like rats, obscure beneath a kitchen floor, Gnawing and rising till obscure no more, He ate his way to eminence, and Fame Inscribes in gravy his immortal name. A trencher-knight, he, mounted on his belly, So spurred his charger that its sides were jelly. Grown desperate at last, it reared and threw him, And Indigestion, overtaking, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... Eustace, in a trance?" said d'Aubricour. "Waken, and carry this trencher of beef to your brother. Best that you should do it," he added in a low voice, taking up a flask of wine, "and save our comrade from at once making himself ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at this hour my wife with watchful care Was wont each humbler dainty to prepare, The keenest sauce by hunger was supplied And my poor children prattled at my side. Methinks I see the old oak table spread, The clean white trencher and the good brown bread, The cheese my daily food which Mary made, For Mary knew full well the housewife's trade: The jug of cyder,—cyder I could make, And then the knives—I won 'em at the wake. Another has them now! I toiling here Look ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... and dressed for dinner. But during the meal his mind was in such a turmoil he had trouble keeping himself outwardly calm. For the first time in more years than he could remember he merely toyed with his food ... and he had always been a good trencher-man. ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans |
