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Foul   /faʊl/   Listen
Foul

adjective
(compar. fouler; superl. foulest)
1.
Highly offensive; arousing aversion or disgust.  Synonyms: disgustful, disgusting, distasteful, loathly, loathsome, repellant, repellent, repelling, revolting, skanky, wicked, yucky.  "Distasteful language" , "A loathsome disease" , "The idea of eating meat is repellent to me" , "Revolting food" , "A wicked stench"
2.
Offensively malodorous.  Synonyms: fetid, foetid, foul-smelling, funky, ill-scented, noisome, smelly, stinking.  "The kitchen smelled really funky"
3.
Violating accepted standards or rules.  Synonyms: cheating, dirty, unsporting, unsportsmanlike.  "Used foul means to gain power" , "A nasty unsporting serve" , "Fined for unsportsmanlike behavior"
4.
(of a baseball) not hit between the foul lines.
5.
(of a manuscript) defaced with changes.  Synonyms: dirty, marked-up.
6.
Characterized by obscenity.  Synonyms: cruddy, filthy, nasty, smutty.  "Foul language" , "Smutty jokes"
7.
Disgustingly dirty; filled or smeared with offensive matter.  Synonyms: filthy, nasty.  "A foul pond" , "A nasty pigsty of a room"
8.
Especially of a ship's lines etc.  Synonyms: afoul, fouled.  "A foul anchor"



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"Foul" Quotes from Famous Books



... of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne

... the only preparation for our entering 'the Foul wards.' They were in an old building squeezed away in a corner of a paved yard, quite detached from the more modern and spacious main body of the workhouse. They were in a building most monstrously behind the time—a mere series of garrets or lofts, with every inconvenient and objectionable ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... likely, a better sort of life might have been arranged, and a wiser care bestowed on them; but, such as it is, it enables them to spend a sluggish, careless, comfortable old age, grumbling, growling, gruff, as if all the foul weather of their past years were pent up within them, yet not much more discontented than such weather-beaten and battle-battered fragments of human kind must inevitably be. Their home, in its outward form, is on a very magnificent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... find a way," declared the old sailor, with a hopefulness he was far from feeling, for he knew well, by hearsay, of the terrible swamp quagmires that swiftly suck their victims down to a horrible death in the foul mud. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... the foul place was fed from the Thames. By that duct, with the outgoing tide, my body would pass, in the wake of Mason, Cadby, and many ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... and of the patients' appreciation of what was done for them. "Very frequently," she wrote at the close of the year, "I hear the patients say, 'Truly my own parents, brothers, and sisters could never be so good, so patient, and do so carefully for us; especially when we are so filthy and foul in these sore places. Yes, this religion must be ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton

... and no flower will glad thee. O my Friends, when we view the fair clustering flowers that over-wreathe, for example, the Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance and hues of Heaven, what hand will not smite the foul plunderer that grubs them up by the roots, and with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows us the dung they flourish in! Men speak much of the Printing-Press with its Newspapers: du Himmel! what are these to Clothes and the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... unprepared-for assault was perpetrated upon an orderly procession of Brownsville's honest toilers, who were assaulted in the darkness of night with murderous missiles and other things, in a heated campaign with momentous issues involved. The hurling of foul epithets is bad enough but when political opponents hurl such things as were hurled at the Potts adherents it is time to call a halt. Many who were injured by the fusillade declare the onslaught was ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... with rifles. The difficulty of a military rifle lay in the rapid fouling of the barrel, which necessitated a bullet too small to expand sufficiently to fill the grooves; this resulted in inaccuracy. Even if the bullet were properly fitted, it became impossible to load when the barrel began to foul after ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... limb from limb and devoured them, with huge draughts of milk between, leaving not a morsel, not even the very bones. But the others, when they saw the dreadful deed, could only weep and pray to Zeus for help. And when the giant had ended his foul meal, he lay down among his ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various

... both speech and conduct), who is a thief, or who subsists by the sale of living creatures or by trade in general, becomes worthy of invitation to Sraddhas, O king, if he happens to offer all to the deities first and subsequently drink Soma. That man who having acquired wealth by foul or cruel means subsequently spends it in adoring the deities and discharging the duties of hospitality, becomes worthy, O king, of being invited to Sraddhas. The wealth that one has acquired by the sale of Vedic ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... fall to your hand afresh I give you leave for the sin, That you cram my throat with the foul pig's flesh, And ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... looking up with a start: "perfectly satisfied. It was unexpected, of course, but such cases are by no means unusual. He was formerly a keen athlete, remember. 'Tis often so. Surely you don't suspect foul play? I understood you to mean that his apprehensions ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer

... compositions are the most brilliant of bastards, the most lamentable of legitimate things. They smite us with both admiration and aversion, affect us as though the scarlet satin robes of a patrician of Venice were to betray the presence beneath them of foul, unsightly rags. They remind us of the facades of the palaces of Vicenza, which, designed by the pompous and classicizing Palladio, are executed in stucco and other ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... greater Bloud, Did, as one man, themselves together joyn To stop the Baalites, and Hell's curst design. Not wicked, or seduc'd by impious Arts, But Loyal all, and Patriots in their Hearts. For they beheld the Baalites foul intent, Religion to o'rethrow and Government. These at the Monarch's Power did not grutch, Since bound by Laws, he could not have too much. What Laws prescribe, they thought he well might have, How could he else his Realm in danger save? But Baal's or Egypt's Yoke they would ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.

... impart, But souse the cabbage with a bounteous heart. He knows to live, who keeps the middle state, And neither leans on this side, nor on that; Nor stops, for one bad cork, his butler's pay, Swears, like Albutius, a good cook away; Nor lets, like Naevius, every error pass, The musty wine, foul cloth, or greasy glass. Now hear what blessings temperance can bring: (Thus said our friend, and what he said I sing,) First health: The stomach (crammed from every dish, A tomb of boiled and roast, and flesh and fish, Where bile, and ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... law of the cache. In a land where food is the god supreme, this law has made itself. White and native alike bow before it. It means life. The food cache, no matter where found, is inviolate. Than robbing a cache there is no more foul or cowardly crime. And ranked with the cache robber is the man who goes back on his promise, or fails, through neglect, to furnish food to those who depend on him. Death, Ellen knew, is the penalty for both crimes in the remote places ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... thought there was nothing in the world so well worth shewing as the glorious works which he and my uncle Toby had made, Trim courteously and gallantly took her by the hand, and led her in: this was not done so privately, but that the foul-mouth'd trumpet of Fame carried it from ear to ear, till at length it reach'd my father's, with this untoward circumstance along with it, that my uncle Toby's curious draw-bridge, constructed and painted after the Dutch fashion, and ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... My mouth, foul-tasting and stiff, fumbled at the shapes of words. "Wha' happened? Wha' y' want?" My eyes throbbed. When I got them open I saw two men in black leathers bending over me. We were ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... my thoughts, and not unskill'd Have I the future and the past combin'd In quiet meditation. Long, perchance, Hath ripen'd in the counsel of the gods The great event. Diana wish d to leave This savage region foul with human blood. We were selected for the high emprize; To us it is assign'd, and strangely thus We are ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... to poor Tom? whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and whirlpool, o'er bog and quagmire; that hath laid knives under his pillow, and halters in his pew; set ratsbane ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding

... of a decent, ambitious man, employed in a sweatshop tailoring establishment, who contracted tuberculosis from the foul air, and who dragged down with him, in his agonizing descent to the very depths of misery, a wife and two children. He was now dead, and his wife was living in a corner of a moldy, damp basement, a pile of rags the only bed for her and her children, their only heat ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... foregoes the gold Wrung from the o'er-worn poor. The perjurer, Whose tongue was lithe, e'en now, and voluble Against his neighbor's life, and he who laughed And leaped for joy to see a spotless fame Blasted before his own foul calumnies, Are smit with deadly silence. He, who sold His conscience to preserve a worthless life, Even while he hugs himself on his escape, Trembles, as, doubly terrible, at length, Thy steps o'ertake ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... the house, however; and it was for that purpose he had walked back with Alessandro, When he saw the neat whitewashed adobe, with its broad veranda, the sheds and corrals all in good order, he instantly resolved to get possession of them by fair means or foul. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... sprung up humility, that strange virtue, which has its deepest roots in the soil of shame. But all his old yearning after goodness revived in their presence. When he was with them he felt that the cloud of foul experience was lifted for a moment from his mind; they gave him sweet thoughts instead of bitter for a ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... vain. The old man's sightless eyes stared up at the silken roof. The long, heavy beard that lay across the breast stirred. The beady, glittering eyes of an infant spider peeped out. Penrun uttered a curse of loathing. His pistol stabbed death into the foul insect. ...
— Loot of the Void • Edwin K. Sloat

... case of others. After awhile they found the matter gone too far for laughter, as violence and deadly outrage stained the hand of robbery, until every woman clutched her child, and every man turned pale at the very name of Doone. For the sons and grandsons of Sir Ensor grew up in foul liberty, and haughtiness, and hatred, to utter scorn of God and man, and brutality towards dumb animals. There was only one good thing about them, if indeed it were good, to wit, their faith to one another, and truth to their wild eyry. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... speak of the hurricane unchained— The Union's strands parted in the hawser over-strained; Our flag blown to shreds, anchors gone altogether— The dashed fleet o' States in Secession's foul weather. ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... still an exile, she still dowerless. You forget that I am pursued by Peschiera; that I would rather see her a beggar's wife—than—Pah, the very thought maddens me, it is so foul. Corpo di Bacco! I have been glad to find her ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a chip of the old block—neck or nothing— carry on all sail till you tear the masts out of her! Reef the t'gallant sails of your temper, boy, and don't run foul of an old man who has been all but a wet-nurse to ye—taught ye to walk, and swim, and pull an oar, and build ships, and has hauled ye out o' the sea when ye fell in—from the time ye could barely stump along on two legs, ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... side Had it been possible to stay!" She sighed, She wondered o'er his face, she looked her fill, Museful, still doubting, smiling half, athrill, All virgin to his praise. "O wonderful," She said, "Such store of love for one so foul As I am now!" O fatal hot-and-cold, O love, whose iris wings not long can hold The upper air! Sudden her thought smote hot On him. "Thou sayest! True it is, God wot! Warm from his bed, and tears for thy unworth; Warm from his bed, and tears to meet my mirth; Then back ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett

... the past of thee, What single page from foul disgrace is free; Bend, weeping Mary, Scotland's lovely Queen, With noblest grace, and sad, yet royal mien, Bend from yon dome of pure, celestial blue, Say, when a fugitive from sorrow flew, To Britain's ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... rights in the lands of the West bought by Southern blood and brains and added to our inheritance against their furious protests. These are the men who burn the sacred charters of American Liberty in their public squares, and inscribe on their banners the foul motto: ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... one he had befriended, and however he happened to be here, whether he was leagued with these evil men or not, Dick knew that he would help him. The boy went ahead, down a flight of stairs to a damp cellar, and along a passage to some place where there was a damp smell and foul odors from the ...
— The Liberty Boys Running the Blockade - or, Getting Out of New York • Harry Moore

... he answered: "No more of that, I pray thee; it can never be." Then, addressing Nestor, he said: "I would fain ask thee more concerning the manner of Agamemnon's death. Where was Menelaus when that foul deed was done? And how did AEgisthus contrive to slay a man mightier far ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... required of me," he answered, with touching dignity and modesty combined, "and so I went on the hunt myself, and I fell foul of a few of ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... qualities and properties. It returns by the venous route, poor, blue and dull, being laden down with the waste matter of the system. It goes out like a fresh stream from the mountains; it returns as a stream of sewer water. This foul stream goes to the right auricle of the heart. When this auricle becomes filled, it contracts and forces the stream of blood through an opening in the right ventricle of the heart, which in turn sends ...
— The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath • Yogi Ramacharaka

... whose black visage fronted his own. He tried to break away, but his bones were like rope, his muscles were flabby and shaking. He exerted no more force than a child. In front of him something sickening, something unspeakably foul and horrible, was going on, and in its presence he was wholly unmanned. More hands seized him quickly, but he lacked the vigor to attempt an escape. On the contrary, he hung limp and paralyzed with terror. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... 'Foul play—is there? What is he doing now?' said Lake in the same languid way, his elbows on the arms of his chair, stooping forward, and looking serenely on the floor, like a man who is tired of his work, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... tolerably severe weather on its passage to Old England. Not that the Commodore was much given to think about foul weather or fine; blow high or blow low, it was all the same to him; but as the gales were from the eastward, the squadron was considerably delayed, and at length, being in want of water, the Commodore ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... up to every particular, yet apparently with such indifference, together with the stranger's treacherous look and several minor things all bearing a suspicious cast, more than half convinced Algernon that the other was a spy, and that some foul play was assuredly meditated; though what, and to whom, or for what purpose, he was at a loss ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett

... of various constructions, supplied with air from tubes or canals of small diameter, or from apertures covered with wire-gauze, placed below the flame, through which explosions cannot be communicated; and having a chimney at the upper part, for carrying off the foul air. Sir Humphry soon afterwards found that a constant flame might be kept up from the explosive mixture issuing from the apertures of a wire-gauze sieve. He introduced a very small lamp in a cylinder, made of wire-gauze, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction—Volume 13 - Index to Vol. 13 • Various

... the history of the other. Both had their mysteries. One blot there was in the otherwise proud escutcheon of the Rookwoods, that dimmed its splendor, and made pale its pretensions: their sun was eclipsed in blood from its rising to its meridian; and so it seemed would be its setting. This foul reproach attached to all the race; none escaped it. Traditional rumors were handed down from father to son, throughout the county, and, like all other rumors, had taken to themselves wings, and flown abroad; their crimes became a by-word. How was it they escaped ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... might have been worn eighty or a hundred years ago by a gentleman of some rank—costly steel buttons and buckles, like those yet worn in court-dresses, a handsome court sword—in a waistcoat which had once been rich with gold lace, but which was now blackened and foul with damp, we found five guineas, a few silver coins, and an ivory ticket, probably for some place of entertainment long since passed away. But our main discovery was in a kind of iron safe fixed to the wall, the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... again. The strong trees shuddered at his touch, And shook their foliage to the plain. A sheaf of darts was in his clutch; And wheresoe'er he turned the head Of any dart, its power was such That Nature quailed with mortal dread, And crippling pain and foul disease For sorrowing leagues around him spread. Whene'er he cast o'er lands and seas That fatal shaft, there rose a groan; And borne along on every breeze Came up the church-bell's solemn tone, And cries that swept o'er open graves, And equal sobs ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... old Seden his squint-eyed wife, limping like a lame dog, and put it to my daughter whether she would not go into the service of the sheriff; praised him as a good and pious man; and vowed that all the world said of him were foul lies, as she herself could bear witness, seeing that she had lived in his service for above ten years. Item, she praised the good cheer they had there, and the handsome beer-money that the great lords ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... as the Father of Falsehood himself! When thorns produce figs, or the deadly nightshade nectarines; when eaglets are hatched in owls' nests and young lions spring from rat holes, then I may believe these foul slanders of Ishmael and his parents. Shame on you, Claudia Merlin, for repeating them! You have shown me much evil in your heart to-night; but nothing so bad as that! Ishmael is nature's gentleman! His mother must have been pure and lovely and loving! his father ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... objected in a speech of some length, characterized by more venom and vulgarity than it had ever before been our fortune to hear; and such as the most foul-mouthed politician or bar-room orator would have hesitated to utter before respectable audiences. He denounced the Woman's State Temperance Society, and all women who took an active public part in promoting the cause. Spoke contemptuously of woman going from ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... little and making the work as hard and unremunerative as possible. What we know of foot-rests, swivel-back chairs, dining-rooms for the girls, clean aprons and curling irons supplied free, and a decent cloak room, were unthought of. The washrooms were disagreeable, crude, if not foul places, and the whole atmosphere ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... to employ charcoal ventilators, consisting of a thin layer of charcoal enclosed between two thin sheets of wire gauze, to purify the foul air which is apt to accumulate in water-closets, in the close wards of hospitals, and in the impure atmospheres of many of the back courts and mews-lanes of large cities, all the impurities being absorbed and retained by the charcoal, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... Did some foul and evil thing, wandering homeless around that fatal spot, enter then and there, unbidden, into her sin-stained soul? Or had the hellish spirit been always there within her, only biding its time to burst forth in all its ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... then be question and reply, saddening, but proud. "He fell at Port Hudson, cheering on the forlorn hope." "He lies beneath the forest-trees of Chancellorsville." "He was slain upon the glacis of Fredericksburg." "He died in the foul prisons of Richmond." We cannot forget them, and we would fain leave the memorial of them to future generations. Their fame belongs to Harvard; for what they learned there could not be other than noble, inspiring, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country should leave us no more! Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution; No refuge should save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave: And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... inquest; it read like honest evidence. Or—the question would never be silenced, though he scorned it—had she lain expecting the footstep in the room and the whisper that should tell her it was done? Among the foul possibilities of human nature, was it possible that black ruthlessness and black deceit as well were hidden behind that good and straight ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley

... half after the death of Cicero, and he no doubt speaks evil enough of our hero. What was the special cause of jealousy on his part cannot probably be now known, but the nature of his hatred may be gathered from the passage in the note, which is so foul-mouthed that it can be only inserted under the veil of his own language.[25] Among other absurdities Dio Cassius says of Cicero that in his latter days he put away a gay young wife, forty years younger than himself, in order that he might enjoy without disturbance the ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... Prescott had to run twice. The first time he was left at first base. The second time he had reached second, and was cautiously stealing third, when Gridley's batsman, Captain Purcell, struck his side out on a foul hit. ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... the child of Gallia's school The foul Philosophy that sins by rule, With all her train of reasoning, damning arts, Begot by brilliant heads on worthless hearts, Like things that quicken after Nilus' flood, The venomed birth of sunshine and of mud,— Already has she poured her poison here O'er every ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... feet of cattle usually consist in overgrowth of horn, generally from want of wear in animals which are stabled. The hoof may turn inward, outward, or upward, and may give rise to lameness, inability to walk, foul foot, etc. Bulls which are continually stabled and dairy cows very frequently have misshapen feet from want of an occasional trimming, and this deformity may ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... the Spanish proverb—'Subtract from a Spaniard all his good qualities, and the remainder makes a pretty fair Portuguese;' but, as there was nobody else to gamble with, she entered freely into their society. Very soon she suspected that there was foul play: all modes of doctoring dice had been made familiar to her by the experience of camps. She watched; and, by the time she had lost her final coin, she was satisfied that she had been plundered. In her first ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... went to Africa, loaded his ships with negroes, sold them to planters in Haiti, and came home with hides and pearls. Such trade for one not a Spaniard was against the law of Spain. But Hawkins cared not, arid came again and again. When foul weather drove him into a Mexican port, the Spaniards sank most of his ships, but Hawkins escaped with two vessels, in one of which was Francis ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... in the mere placing of that cord before the eyes of these living men. It had wrought the death of another man, who, an hour before, had been as full of vigorous life as themselves; some man, equally vigorous, had used it as the instrument of a foul murder. Insignificant in itself, a mere piece of strongly spun and twisted hemp, it was yet singularly suggestive—one man, at any rate, amongst those who stood looking at it, was reminded by it that the murderer who had used it must even now have the fear ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher

... Simi, after the oil had been rafted off to the ship's side. Karta, too, came on board to be paid for his oil. He had been drinking much grog and his face was flushed and angry. With him were three beachcombers whose foul language and insolent demeanour angered both the captain and Simi, who were quiet men. There were six or seven of these beachcombers living on the island, and they all disliked Simi, who would have none of their company; but in Karta's house they ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke

... maybe Astro's right, Roger," he said coldly. "I think you're a foul ball, a space-gassing hot-shot that can't take it when ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... had sent her to the house, telling her to obtain an entree by fair means or foul; and as she was well dressed and quiet in manner, she was not repulsed by an amiable hostess. This lady realized that the reporter has his or her living to make, and must be either helped or hindered by the willingness or unwillingness of people to furnish material for copy. ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... may also say very disgraceful, taking into consideration, as we should do in forming our judgement on the subject, the very large sums of Sir Cosmo's money which she spent in this way. But she seldom did fail. She knew how to select her days, so as not to fall foul of other events. It seldom happened that people could not come to her because of a division which occupied all the Members of Parliament, or that they were drawn away by the superior magnitude of some other attraction in the world of fashion. This giving of parties was her business, and ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... living, for the burning of the effected districts, widening the streets and enforcement of sanitary rules have tended to lessen its virulence, although it has been yearly in its visitations; for while foul surroundings are recognized as hot-beds for the propagation of the germs of this pest, recent experience has demonstrated that while cleanliness and rigid sanitary measures are less inviting, they are not positive barriers ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... take place; a most toilsome, all-but 'impossible' return to Nature, and her veracities and her integrities, take place: that so the inner fountains of life may again begin, like eternal Light-fountains, to irradiate and purify your bloated, swollen, foul existence, drawing nigh, as at present, to nameless death! Either death, or else all this will take place. Judge if, with such diagnosis, any Morrison's Pill is ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... Sidney Rigdon, our boat is an old snag boat and has never been out of Snag-harbour. But it will root up the snags, run them down, split them, and scatter them to the four quarters. Our ship is the old ship of Zion; and nothing that runs foul of her can withstand her ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... although we knew it was there, immensely high and remote, far away above the great buttresses of the Rhone valley. So completely was it blotted out by the conversion of that most excellent canopy, the air, into a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours, that it was difficult to imagine that it was still existing, and perhaps even glowing in sunshine above the pall of cloud. Italy, surely, we thought, would be free from ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... nightly, as men meet at their club—a terror to the neighbourhood. Their chief diversion was to guy the pedestrians, leaping from insult to swift retaliation if one resented their foul comments. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... not put out good air in the daytime and poison air at night. It is the same pure air at night, only cooler. Therefore use more clothing while you sleep. But while the outdoor air is pure, the indoor may be foul. Therefore sleep out of doors, and you will learn the blessedness of the night, and the night air, with its cooling kindly ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... political prostitutes who have had the effrontery to come here in the employ of a damnable system of political tyranny and frustrate our plans for the liberation of our comrades in slavery, I apprehend the fact that we have been basely betrayed by some foul Judas among us. I am left with no alternative but to advise that you surrender your bodies to these minions of what they please to ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... to strike at this weakness in Southern armour; they repeatedly used a phrase, "The Foul Blot," and by mere iteration gave such currency to it that even in Southern meetings it was repeated. The Index, as early as February, 1864, felt compelled to meet the phrase and in an editorial, headed "The Foul Blot," argued the error of Southern friends. As long as they could use the ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... seated between Philip and the driver. On the farther side of Crow there were two other passengers, a farmer and a fisherman. The farmer, a foul-mouthed fellow with a long staff and two dogs racing and barking on the road, was returning from Midsummer fair, at which he had sold his sheep; the fisherman, a simple creature, was coming home from the mackerel-fishing at Kinsale, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine

... dead! Foul thought From lies of vaunting Treason caught, And Fear's pale minions, wrapped in sorrow's pall. Great Freedom dead! In God-like power, 'Tis Freedom rules e'en this dread hour, And guides the tempest 'neath whose blows we fall. Yea! War and Anarchy Discord and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... off the intruders he would look upon the face of his friend, the man who for months had shared food with him, and the scented bedding of the woods, and the toil, and the downpours, and the clouds of black flies and mosquitoes, and who had always smiled through fair days and foul, and who, at the risk of his life, had ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... Pretty, "but the pond is so full o' them cold, slimy efts; I don't fancy them crawling up agin me, and, besides that, there's such a lot o' deep holes in it. And wotever you do don't put your 'ead under; you know 'ow foul that water is." ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... we remember the words of the legend that 'some say she was married to Finn.' The curtain falls—a happy touch of purely modern cynicism—upon the solitary figure of Conan, the Thersites of the play, the prophet of evil chances, the scorner of high things, the prompter of foul suggestions." ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... injuries and wrongs, and to return good for their evil.... I desired only a liberty of conscience might be allowed to the members of the National Church of England; which, notwithstanding, they seemed unwilling to grant, and left no means untried, both foul and fair, to prevent the settling the church among them; for one of their justices came to my lodging and forewarned me, at my peril, from preaching, telling me that I did an illegal thing in bringing in new ways ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... world into the hand of Augustus, the sly Father of the Fire has willed by hints to prefigure an everlasting war of light and darkness, the irreconcilable hostility of the Wits and Dunces, and the sudden interposition of some divine poet, clothed with preternatural power, for the "foul dissipation and forced rout" of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... could interfere they were at it, and in less than a couple of minutes Sarreo had the supercargo by the throat, lifted him off his feet, and dashes him down on the poop. He lay there stunned, an' I tell you, mister, I was mighty pleased, for we all hated him for his beastly bullyin' ways, and his foul talk. So none of us rushed at him too violently to pick him up. Presently up comes the skipper and orders me to put Sarreo in irons, though I could see he didn't half like doing it. But it had to be done, and I had to do it However, Sarreo held ...
— Sarreo - 1901 • Louis Becke

... Parsee's godown, over against me, to the gate of the pucca house wherein my look-out is, I watch with interest the frequent eddies occasioned by the clear-steerings of caste,—Brahmin, Warrior, and Merchant keeping severely to the Parsee side, so that the foul shadow of Soodra or Pariah may not pollute their sacred persons. It is as though my window were a tower of Allahabad, and below me, in Cossitollah, were the shy meeting of the waters. Thus, looking up or down, I mark how the limpid Jumna of high caste holds its way in a common bed, but never mingling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... judgment passed on her before was contradicted, and she was declared a good and innocent woman. They would have given the whole world then to have had her back and to have made amends to her for their foul injustice. But the opinions of men no longer mattered to her. The twenty-five years since she had been burnt at Rouen had been the first twenty-five of her ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... Grove avenue, and Halsted street, and Jefferson, and South State, where she should never have walked. There is an ugliness about Chicago's ugly streets that, for sheer, naked brutality, is equaled nowhere in the world. London has its foul streets, smoke-blackened, sinister. But they are ugly as crime is ugly—and as fascinating. It is like the ugliness of an old hag who has lived a life, and who could tell you strange tales, if she would. Walking through ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... Are these foul creatures more dreadful than some of the men, the women, who dwelt in these palaces—the more evil because of the human brain that plotted and foresaw? That is known only to the mysterious Law that in ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck

... your mental house was built before your birth. You may open the windows and let in the sun and air. By the best education and habit you may fill that house with art and beauty and light and comfort, or, by the worst, you may render it ugly, foul, bleak and dark; but you can never add a new floor. Shakespeare's brain was not only built by mother Nature in three storeys, but those storeys were lofty and roomy in an astonishing degree. They were also ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... cranny. Then as a last prophylaxis you put on a night-cap. Mr. Pickwick's was tied under the chin like a sunbonnet and the cords dangled against his chest, but this was a matter of taste. It was behind such triple rampart that you slept, and were adjudged safe from the foul contagion of the dark. Consequently your bed was not exactly like a little boat. Rather it was like a Pullman sleeper, which, as you will remember, was invented early in the nineteenth century and stands as a ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... Calms succeeded them, and obliged us to labour continually at the oars. We lost ground fast, and it was astonishing to remark how soon the men's spirits drooped again under their first efforts. They fancied the boat pulled heavily, and that her bottom was foul; but such was not the case. The current was not so strong as when we passed down, since the river had evidently fallen more than a foot, and was so shallow in several places, that we were obliged ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... was the cliff base in fine weather, in foul, the waves would lash and dash and beat fifty feet up, there was not a guillemot ledge lower than eighty feet, puffins, razorbills and kittiwakes, who always build above the guillemots did not seem to come here at all, keeping to the seaward rocks and the coast line where the cliffs drew ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... necessary to have a new election. Fisher minor here," (tremendous cheers, amidst which the culprits, considering that the storm had blown over, remounted their perches) "would scorn to be treasurer of the clubs, and everybody would scorn him too, if there was any suspicion of foul play about his election. He has resigned, like an honest man; and our business is now to elect a treasurer." (Cheers and "Vote for Fisher major" ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... pure clear sand best of all. It must not have other soil mixed with it, or any vegetable matter. The kind I use is white, and very like such as is found at the sea shore. Of course the roof end of the pipe should have wire gauze fastened over it so that no foul stuff can be carried down, and the eaves-troughs must be kept clean, the roof and chimneys also, and never be painted, or the latter even whitewashed. The sand is an excellent absorber of even the finest of foul stuff, and this is the reason, in addition to ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... statesman that was always prating of liberty, and had the grandest philosophic maxims in his mouth, it must be owned that Mr. St. John sometimes rather acted like a Turkish than a Greek philosopher, and especially fell foul of one unfortunate set of men, the men of letters, with a tyranny a little extraordinary in a man who professed to respect their calling so much. The literary controversy at this time was very bitter, the Government side was the winning one, the popular one, and I think might have been the merciful ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... it is for the better. I refer, of course, only to the books of those real investigators—real artists. I refer to the fountain-heads, not to the hydrants laid down by the water companies at the end of about ten miles of foul piping. I don't like the product of the hydrants. I like the springs, and, however natural they may be, I don't find anything impure in them. Why I love the Bible is because it is so ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... ways found stumbling-blocks in the first foster-children of the excellent Jedediah. The very pious and learned, if not exactly humorous or shrewd, Dr. M'Crie, fell foul of the picture of the Covenanters given in Old Mortality. No one who knows the documents is likely to agree with him now, and from hardly any point of view but his could the greatness of the book be denied. ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... time that his horse was brought close to Haynes's, Prescott had his eyes open for any foul play that might be ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock

... warehouse! Perhaps some of my readers conjure up horrible visions of such a place. They fancy some foul, obscure den, some horrible Tartarus "informis, ingens, cui lumen ademptum." But no, innocent friend; in these days men have learned the art of sinning expertly and genteelly, so as not to shock the eyes and senses of respectable society. Human property is high in the ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... across polished marble that struck a chill through the soles of her natty brown shoes, and so into the lofty drawing-room with pilasters and elaborate architraves to the doors. What a place for a sane man to build in bleak old Delverton, even before there was any Northborough to blacken and foul the north-east wind on its way from the sea! What a place for a sane man to buy; and yet, in its cool white smoothness, its glaring individuality, its alien air—how like ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung

... Serravalle having fallen to Castruccio, so on they came in haste, and encamped above it, hoping to pass the straits next day. There Castruccio fell upon them about midnight, putting all to confusion. Horse and foot fell foul upon one another, and both upon the baggage. There was no way left for them but to run, which they did helter-skelter in the plain of Pistoja, where each man shifted for himself. But Castruccio followed them even to Peretola at the gates of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... fault,' says he, 'for not looking after your Army better. There was mutiny in the midst, and you didn't know—you damned engine-driving, plate-laying, missionary's-pass-hunting hound!' He sat upon a rock and called me every foul name he could lay tongue to. I was too heart-sick to care, though it was all his foolishness that ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various

... Brahmin arrived at sunrise to find his vocation gone he set up a wailing which awakened the household. The Khan was furious and ordered a general search. He vowed death to the foul hands which had done ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... some of the scenes in Timon of Athens were in all probability composed: scenes which resemble Coriolanus in their lack of characterisation and abundance of rhetoric, but differ from it in the peculiar grossness of their tone. For sheer virulence of foul-mouthed abuse, some of the speeches in Timon are probably unsurpassed in any literature; an outraged drayman would speak so, if draymen were in the habit of talking poetry. From this whirlwind of furious ejaculation, this splendid storm ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... suppose that a Frenchman is afraid of them?" and so, with an ostentatious sign of the cross, he took his place upon his knees beside the others. Foul, bedraggled, and wretched, the seven figures knelt and waited humbly for their fate under the black shadow ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... thirsty: many of us had been chewing pebbles during the morning, yet, afraid of demands for tobacco, the Bedouins would have pursued the march without water had I not forced them to halt. We found three holes in the sand; one was dry, a second foul, and the third contained a scanty supply of the pure element from twenty to twenty-five feet below the surface. A youth stood in the water and filled a wicker- pail, which he tossed to a companion ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... better," said Raffles. "Then it will be man to man, and devil take the worst shot. You don't suppose I prefer foul play to fair, do you? But die he must, by one or the other, or it's a long stretch for you ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung

... have greatly stimulated, for McGuire chained him to a bitter existence. The air—the man's only chance for life—he commanded to be kept out by closed windows and drawn curtains. The room was always blue and foul with cigarette smoke; whosoever entered it must sit, suffocating, and listen to the imp's interminable ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... bank and go wading, wading in, till out of her depth and weighed down by her clothes she would sink out of sight, out of trouble, out of life. She had no illusions about the enfolding in the "cool and comforting arms of death." She knew quite well the horror of it, the choke, with the rank, foul-tasting river in her mouth, its weeds and offal winding her limbs. But that would pass, and she would be out of it. Far rather would she be dead at the bottom of the river than married to her benefactor, Mr. George Boult. If only she was sure it might ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann

... foul and rainy day," he went on; "so Austin told me. My Lord Archbishop was led from Bocardo to Saint Mary Church, betwixt two friars that mumbled certain Psalms, and at the church door they began the Nunc ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... loves the young lady, who is really very pretty; and, as he is quite handsome, I suppose his love is reciprocated. This love-affair vexes the banker, who, not knowing how to get rid of the importunate lover by fair means, has to resort to foul, and plans this imaginary robbery, ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... a span of grass rope, had been thrown overboard from the pursued vessel, in the hope that the submarine would foul her propellers in the tangle of line. Once a blade picked up that trailing rope, the latter would coil round the boss as tightly as ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman

... nearsightedness; How to have a beautiful mouth and lips; To make lip salve; French lip salve; German lip salve; To care for the teeth; To cure toothache; Premium tooth powder; Feuchtwanger's tooth paste; Fine tooth powder; Rye tooth powder; To cure foul breath; To have white and beautiful teeth; For decayed teeth; To remove yellow color from teeth; Camphor paste; Powerfully cleansing dentifrice; Infallible cure for toothache; Mixture for decayed teeth; To whiten and ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... walking down the street the other day with his wife, when a filthy fellow on a passing wagon insulted her with foul words. Instantly the temptation came to the man to want to get hold of him and punish him, but as instantly the indwelling Comforter whispered, "If ye will forgive men their trespasses;" and instantly the clean heart of the man responded, ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... plainly, that Lord —— had no intention to risk his person, though he endeavoured with all his might to persuade me, that his principal was desperate and determined. I knew my little husband too well to think he would bring matters to any dangerous issue, and was apprehensive of nothing but foul play, from the villainy of H—d—n, with which I was equally well acquainted. Indeed, I signified my doubts on that score to Mr. B—, who would have attended his kinsman to the field, had he not thought he might be liable to censure, if anything should happen to Lord B—, because he himself ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... been the result! The colonel would have been dismissed, if not imprisoned; an apology from the government, with the corporal punishment of the insolent soldiers, and every satisfaction that could have washed away such foul treatment, would have assuredly followed. For, though the law allows the arrest of persons going through the streets at night without a light; yet, the officer, seeing they were gentlemen, and just arrived by sea, had full discretionary power to send them home with a guard; or, if it was thought ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... to camp, through the foul womb of night, The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fixed sentinels almost receive The secret whispers ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson

... Lord KINNAIRD, who once was hot upon the ball, Give our Arabs chance of football and of cricket. And you'll fairly earn the hearty thanks of all; For the young City Children, doomed to rummage In dim alleys foul as Styx, Never else may know the rapture of a "scrummage," Or "a slashing drive ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various

... mistake! I beg your pardon!" But the chaplain was cut to the soul, and walked on. Harry heard the door of the street as the parson slammed it. It thumped on his own breast. He entered his room, and sank back on his luxurious chair there. He was Prodigal, amongst the swine—his foul remorses; they had tripped him up, and were wallowing over him. Gambling, extravagance, debauchery, dissolute life, reckless companions, dangerous women—they were all upon him in a herd, and were trampling upon the prostrate ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray



Words linked to "Foul" :   soiled, obstruct, distasteful, obturate, dishonour, taint, stinky, malodourous, violation, silt up, soil, occlude, grime, tangled, repellant, sport, hit, infringement, technical, out-of-bounds, close up, impede, crap up, gum up, malodorous, colly, shame, infect, baseball game, athletics, unfair, begrime, block, choke up, lug, foul up, ill-smelling, unpleasant-smelling, loathsome, silt, illegible, disgrace, dishonor, baseball, unjust, unclog, unclean, offensive, jam, change, play, noisome, bemire, fair, stuff, attaint, hack



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