CENTIPEDE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Centipede

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/sˈɛntɪpˌid/ Listen

Centipede

noun

(Formerly also centiped)

Chiefly nocturnal predacious arthropod having a flattened body of 15 to 173 segments each with a pair of legs, the foremost pair being modified as prehensors.

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Etymology of 'Centipede'

Related searches:

garden centipede

house centipede

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"Centipede" Quotes from Famous Books

... staggering young men, and after him came the aged morris dancers, only upheld from collapse in the mire by mutual upholdings, until they seemed like some monstrous animal moving with uncouth sprawls of legs as multifold as a centipede, and wavering drunkenly from one side of the road to the other, lurching into the dewy bushes, then recovering by the joint ...

— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins

... weighted down heavily with railroad iron and concrete to form the roof of the commander's dugout. The sides of the decrepit structure bulged outward and were prevented from bursting by timber props radiating on all sides like the legs of a centipede. A mule team stood in front ...

— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... brought Sallie and Julia and (for a disgusted moment) the Senior from across the hall. It was caused by a centipede like this: only worse. Just as I had finished the last sentence and was thinking what to say next—plump!—it fell off the ceiling and landed at my side. I tipped two cups off the tea table in trying to get away. Sallie whacked it with the back of my hair brush—which I shall never be able ...

— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... every man was at his post; and though all were quick, there was no time to spare, for by this time the black column of the enemy was distinctly visible curling along the valley like a great centipede; and, with the daring enterprise so common among the troops of Napoleon, had begun in silence to mount the breach. It was an awful and eventful moment; but the coolness and determination of the little garrison was ...

— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... to 'ave the big gal. I will say that for ye. She's a gad-about grinny, she is, if ever was. A gad-about grinny. Mucked up my mushroom bed to rights, she did, and I 'aven't forgot it. Got the feet of a centipede, she 'as—ll over everything and neither with your leave nor by your leave. Like a stray 'en in a pea patch. Cluck! cluck! Trying to laugh it off. I laughed 'er off, I did. ...

— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... time his father put him at school; and now he experienced the ill consequences of having a bad name. A centipede was found upon another boy's desk, and he was of course suspected of having brought it into the school-room. But it so happened that on this one occasion he was innocent; it was another boy's centipede; and Thomas denied the charge. ...

— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... mud right after. I thought I'd a' had to stand an' iron pants for that young heathen till the crack o' doom, an' I had just one pair too many so I had. An' I up an' told her you'd think she kep' a young centipede much less a human boy with only two legs to him. And then I ...

— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith

Words linked to "Centipede" : garden centipede, Scutigera coleoptrata, Chilopoda, class Chilopoda, arthropod, house centipede