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Barbed   Listen
adjective
Barbed  adj.  Furnished with a barb or barbs; as, a barbed arrow; barbed wire.
Barbed wire, a wire, or a strand of twisted wires, armed with barbs or sharp points. It is used for fences.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Barbed" Quotes from Famous Books



... for an Oliver. In the heat of debate, he was often guilty of harsh, bitter invective. His manner betrayed a lack of fineness and good-breeding. But his resentment vanished with the spoken word. He repented the barbed shaft, the moment it quitted his bow. He would invite to his table the very men with whom he had been in acrimonious controversy, and perhaps renew the controversy next day. Greeley testified to this absence of resentment. On a certain occasion, after the New York Tribune had attacked ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... raiment thin and spare Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, For it was just at the Christmas time; 260 So he mused, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, And sought for a shelter from cold and snow In the light and warmth of long ago; He sees the snake-like caravan crawl O'er the edge of the desert, black and ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... to go on; but as he moved be saw a foot-long piece of barbed wire lying in the trench bottom. He asked gravely whether he would be allowed to take it, and, receiving a somewhat puzzled and grudging assent, picked it up, carefully rolled it in a small coil, and placed it in a side jacket ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)

... though the night riders were getting busy now in the counties adjacent to the Blue-grass, and were threatening raids into the colonel's own county—the proudest in the State. Other "independents" hardly less lonely, hardly less hated, had electrified their barbed-wire fences, and had hired guards—fighting men from the mountains—to watch their barns and houses, but such an example the colonel would not follow, though John Burnham pleaded with him, and even Jason dared at last to give him a covert warning, ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... business of ranching began. Lew Cawley was sent out with Tresler to instruct him in mending barbed-wire fences. A distant pasture had been broken into by the roving cattle outside. Lew remained with him long enough to show him how to strain the wires up and splice them, then he rode off ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... of problems. The village was unfortunately out of bounds, so that, except on stated occasions, when they were escorted by a mistress, the girls were unable to do shopping "on their own". There are ways, however, of crawling through even the most barbed-wire fence of rules. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... service. I could give you many more instances of the splendid courage of these men and women who, though deprived of the most important of the special senses in adult life, are cheerfully doing their best, wasting no time in straining after the fruit just over "Fate's barbed ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley

... into the hands of the besiegers. The manner in which the fire was communicated to the fortress was very remarkable. During the fight, an arrow from the bow of one of the garrison was lodged in the eye of one of the pirates, standing near his chief. Extracting the barbed shaft from his head with his own hand, and binding some cotton around the missile, he set it on fire, and shot it back into the fortress from the barrel of his gun. The burning arrow fell upon the roof of a house thatched with palm leaves, which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... form. Went for the SQUIRE OF MALWOOD round after round; occasionally turned to aim a "wonner" at his "Right Hon. Friend" JOHN MORELY. Conservatives delighted; had always thought just what JOE was saying, but hadn't managed to put their ideas into such easily fleeting, barbed sentences. Only once was there any shade on the faces of the country gentlemen opposite. That spread when JOE proposed to quote the "lines ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 20, 1892 • Various

... petticoat, satin shoes and no stockings," and with hair streaming like a meteor, described in Letter XX, is clearly a cruel mockery of Cecilia's distressful plight in Miss Burney's novel. Even Scott is not immune from Barrett's barbed arrows, and Byron is glanced at in the bogus antique language of "Eftsoones." Barrett, indeed, jeers at the mediaeval revival in its various manifestations and even at "Romanticism" generally, not merely at the new school of fiction represented by Mrs. Radcliffe, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... penetrated the valley for a distance of some two miles, as far as the base of the hills at its higher extremity, and had there come upon a small Indian village, the inhabitants of which had at first fled at their approach, but had afterwards been induced to return and barter with them, giving barbed spears, feather head-dresses, parrots, monkeys and a queer-looking little animal something like a miniature pig encased in a shell-like coat—which the men had incontinently named a "hog in armour"—now known as the armadillo, ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... abuse terminate? For the result, as it respects myself, I care not; for I have a consolation within that no earthly efforts can deprive me of, and that is, that neither ambition nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore, however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable part of me; though, whilst I am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed. The publications in Freneau's and Bache's papers are outrages in that style in proportion as their ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer

... bodies over the barbed-wire fence which marked the dividing-line between the Centipede Ranch and their own, staring mournfully into a summer night such as only the far southwestern country knows. Big yellow stars hung thick and low-so low that it seemed they ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... like a lion, you go out like a lamb. By Saint Paul! this is not in accordance with the De Gamelyn traditions. Take up thy arms! Come along!" said the stranger tapping him on the shoulder with a barbed shaft trimmed ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... resumed, "is woman's weapon, even as the fist is man's. And it is a far deadlier weapon. Words break no bones—they break hearts, instead. Yet were men one-tenth part so ready with their fists, as women are with their barbed and envenomed tongues, what savage brutes you would think us—would n't you?—and what a rushing trade the police-courts would drive, to be sure. That is one of the good old cliches that came back to me during my walk. All women are alike—there's no choice amongst ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... road who was willing to take it in tow, but they had no rope for a tow line. Over in the field by the roadside the sharp eyes of the adjutant discovered some old rusty wire. He pulled it out from the tangle of long grass, and behold it was a part of old barbed-wire entanglements! ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... temporary deadlock. Both had adopted trench tactics, and for over three hundred miles, from the sea to the Swiss border, two systems of entrenchments paralleled one another. The trenches were protected in front by intricate networks of barbed wire. Looked at from above, the trenches seemed to be dug with little system. But they rigidly adhered to one military maxim,—that fortifications must not continue in a straight line, because such straight trenches are liable to be enfiladed from either end. Hence ...
— A School History of the Great War • Albert E. McKinley, Charles A. Coulomb, and Armand J. Gerson

... There is rich human blood in everything he writes. He is a satirist whose arrows are never barbed with vitriol, but with the milk of human kindness; a humanist who never surfeits our senses, but leaves much for our willing imagination; an optimist whose message is as compelling for its reasonableness as it is welcome for ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... a long way from the White House to Archangel—and still longer if you measured it through the ramifications of the army machine, a route more thoroughly criss-crossed with red tape than any sector of the Hindenburg line with barbed wire. ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... man was one of the leading nobles at the Court of Henry III, and the stubborn defender of Kenilworth Castle, acting as King's Champion at the Coronation of Edward I on August 19th, 1274. The duty of the King's Champion on the day of Coronation was to ride completely armed on a barbed horse into Westminster Hall, and there to challenge to combat any who should gainsay the king's title. On the death of Philip de Marmion the Castle of Tamworth passed by marriage to the Trevilles, Sir Alexander Treville, as owner of the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... long-drawn clarion of the look-out's B—l—o—w! sounded aloft than the boats were lowered from the davits and began pulling away towards the likeliest spot for a rise. Two barbed harpoons, always known as 'irons,' were carried on the same line, always called the 'warp.' It both could be used, so much the better, especially as they were some distance apart on the warp, the bight of which formed a considerable ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood

... period 1860 to 1880 was one of great mechanical and industrial progress. During this time dynamite and the barbed-wire fence were introduced; the compressed-air rock drill, the typewriter, the Westinghouse air brake, the Janney car coupler, the cable car, the trolley systems, the electric light, the search light, electric motors, the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... heart of the abyss crashed the body of the unfortunate soldier; but a sharp thrill of pain ran through Wendot's frame, and a barbed arrow, well aimed at the joint of his leather jerkin, plunged into ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green

... his reign of terror in the coke regions. Secretly, and while peace negotiations were being purposely prolonged, Frick supervised the military preparations, the fortification of the Homestead Steel Works, the erection of a high board fence, capped with barbed wire and provided with loopholes for sharpshooters. And then, in the dead of night, he attempted to smuggle his army of hired Pinkerton thugs into Homestead, which act precipitated the terrible carnage of the steel workers. Not content with the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... the bow; and fitted with a noose, to go over the other end, when strung. The arrow is a cane of about four feet long, into which a pointed piece of the hard, heavy, casuarina wood, is firmly and neatly fitted; and some of them were barbed. Their clubs are made of the casuarina, and are powerful weapons. The hand part is indented, and has a small knob, by which the firmness of the grasp is much assisted; and the heavy end is usually carved with some device: One had the form of a parrot's ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... start, everybody was ordered to attend prayers, and as they were embarking about twenty naked savages came running and shouting toward them, each carrying a long barbed spear, but the English made all haste to put ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... notice-board amidst green and yellow branches reared itself above the rich tones of the first fallen leaves and announced that "Trespassers in these Woods will be Prosecuted." The dark shadow of a gap in the hedge threw a stretch of barbed wire ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... before attending a watermelon recital in the country, and having contributed a portion of his clothing to a barbed-wire fence and the balance to an open-faced Waterbury bull-dog, some one asked him what he thought of the dog as ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye

... thou dost confide[15] in thy powers of a horse; with a wound, {and} not with my feet, will I overtake thee." {These} last words he confirms by deeds, and pierces him through the back, as he is flying, with an arrow discharged {at him}. The barbed steel stands out from his breast; soon as it is wrenched out, the blood gushes forth from both wounds, mingled with the venom of the Lernaean poison. Nessus takes it out, and says to himself, "And yet I shall ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... rayed out and flattened on the hinder part of its back, even as if it had lain on that part, but were erect and long between this and the tail. Their points, closely examined, were seen to be finely bearded or barbed, and shaped like an awl, that is, a little concave, to give the barbs effect. After about a mile of still water, we prepared our camp on the right side, just at the foot of a considerable fall. Little chopping was done that night, for fear of scaring the moose. We had moose- ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... piercers, having its point a little longer than the other, first darts into the flesh, and being fixed by its foremost beard, the other strikes in also, and they alternately penetrate deeper and deeper, till they acquire a firm hold of the flesh with their barbed hooks, and then follows the sheath, conveying the poison into the wound. The action of the sting, says Paley, affords an example of the union of chemistry and mechanism; of chemistry in respect to the venom, which can produce such powerful effects; of mechanism as the sting is a compound ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth

... surprise the first time it occurs. You drop suddenly out of a sweetly tangled lane into a veritable bit of the Black Country, and go on with loathing in your soul for your fellow-creatures. There is also an abundance of that last product of civilisation, barbed wire. Oh that I were Gideon! with thorns and briers of the wilderness would I teach these elders of Sutton! But ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... had to be abandoned, and the pole called into requisition, so that it was nearly dark when we reached Ganderbul. Passed a number of men wading in the water up to their necks, and spearing the ground with poles armed with a single barbed spike. Although this seems an insane way of attempting to catch fish, their boat was well laden with a small species of trout, and I saw several drawn from the water impaled and wriggling upon the sharp point. Sreenuggur seen in the distance at the extremity ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster

... smooth'd his wrinkled front; And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds, To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber, To the lascivious pleasing of ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... betrayed, was hardest. The whispers of her young maids of honor, "Really, Aimee, he looks so young! One would never surmise," were more galling in their intended consolation, more revealing in their betrayal of her friends' own shrinking from that arrogant, dandified old man than the barbed dart of the uncaring, inquisitive, "How do you find him, my dear? He has ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley

... he lived to see these days, he would have cursed the hour he ever drew sword in their cause. But more of this hereafter—I promise thee full surely that thy hour will come, and then the words thou hast now heard will stick in thy bosom like barbed arrows. My road ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... leave the gun as long as a shell remained and a man lived. Deuced pleasant! The ground in front of us was well drilled with concealed holes all the way from four to six feet deep, in each of which strands of barbed wire had been placed and the opening carefully concealed with clumps of grass, brush ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... insults too foul to be described. His mendacity and his effrontery passed into proverbs. Of all the liars of his time he was the most deliberate, the most inventive and the most circumstantial. What shame meant he did not seem to understand. No reproaches, even when pointed and barbed with the sharpest wit, appeared to give him pain. Great satirists, animated by a deadly personal aversion, exhausted all their strength in attacks upon him. They assailed him with keen invective; they assailed him with still keener irony; but they found that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... thirteenth century, in a convent near Coventry. It is solid stitchery on a canvas ground, "wrought about with divers colours" on green. The design is laid out in a series of interlacing square forms, with rounded and barbed sides and corners. In each of these is a figure or a scriptural scene. The orphreys, or straight borders which go down both fronts of the cope, are decorated with heraldic charges. Much of the embroidery is raised, and wrought in the stitch known as Opus Anglicanum. ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... were returning harnessed together, and dragging behind them an enormous catapult. Tied across their backs were two stout darts, seemingly twelve feet long and three inches square. Each of them had a wicked-looking barbed tip. ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... of how the Pratt girl blundered with Piggy Pennington's note would be depressing. For it holds in its barbed meshes a record of one agonizing second in which Piggy saw the folded paper begin to slip and slide down the incline of his Heart's Desire's desk, whereon the Pratt girl had dropped it; saw the two girls grab for it; heard it crash from the seat ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White

... harmless as he was happy; chiefly not to bark at old ladies and babies, no matter how threatening their aspect, as they passed our house. A few things he had already learned—to avoid fences of the barbed wire, to respect the big cat from across the way who sometimes called and treated him with watchful disdain, and not to chew a baby robin if by any chance he caught one. This last had been a hard lesson, his first contact with a problem only a few ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... how the Irish was a great nation, and what shall I do now, anyhow? And I says to myself: "Danny, you was a fool to let that circus walk off and leave you asleep in this here town with nothing over you but a barbed wire fence this morning. Fur what ARE you going to do next? First thing you know, you WILL be a reg'lar tramp, which some folks can't be made to see you ain't now." And jest when I was thinking that, a feller comes ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... lady seemed to await his coming. She gathered her countenance into an expression of as perfect unconcern as a little heightening of her colour would allow her, and returned his salute with rather a distant bow. But Mr Bunker was not to be damped by this hint of barbed wire. He held out his hand and exclaimed cordially, "My dear Lady Alicia! this is charming ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston

... the kite wire could be seen. It had hooked its coils into a bale of barbed wire, and in trying to lift this had entangled ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... the other people, are they well, those, I mean, who skip the pages as though they were blank that record the dismemberment, the mutilation, the crushing of their brothers, the slow writhing to death of men caught in barbed wire entanglements? ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko

... me sleeping: half awake 480 I sought for her smooth arms and lips, to slake My greedy thirst with nectarous camel-draughts; But she was gone. Whereat the barbed shafts Of disappointment stuck in me so sore, That out I ran and search'd the forest o'er. Wandering about in pine and cedar gloom Damp awe assail'd me; for there 'gan to boom A sound of moan, an agony of sound, Sepulchral ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... take refuge behind theological barbed wire fences, quite often wish they could have more freedom of thought, but fear the change to the great ocean of scientific truth as they ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... mouth, and held up three fingers, signifying that they recollected my first visit and number, which they do not seem to have forgotten, and seem to dread the appearance of a gun. The first one that came up had a very long spear, with a flat, sharp, and barbed point. They were two elderly stout men, one very much diseased and lame. They remained a long time looking at us. None of the others came up. In a little more than three hours they went off and we saw no more of them during the evening. Wind, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... applied his brakes. The big car trembled, slowed down, and came to a stop less than a foot away from three ugly bars of barbed wire which had been placed across the road. They were now just beside the buildings, and a triumphant shout greeted them from their captors, the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne

... the young man visibly hardened. He shook hands with them both and exchanged the usual inane greetings as to the weather. It was just as they were parting that he sent his barbed shot into Joyce. ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine

... Burs are even more clinging than those of the Burdock. These are the Acaenas; they are mostly natives of America and New Zealand, and some of them (especially A. sarmentosa and A. microphylla) form excellent carpet plants, but their points being furnished with double hooks, like a double-barbed arrow, they ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... shalt, and be, If so thou will, more wild than the wild sea; But know, thou art thy little ones' betrayer! If thou die now, shall child of thine be heir To Theseus' castle? Nay, not thine, I ween, But hers! That barbed Amazonian Queen Hath left a child to bend thy children low, A ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides

... out of the northwest, blind with snow and barbed with ice crystals. All the way up the half-mile precipice it fingered and wrenched away at groaning ice-slabs. It screamed over the top, whirled snow in a dervish dance around the hollow there, piled snow into the long ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily

... gone, and he'd no had to wait lang the noo." Then the little man sat down and burst into tears. Gradually, however, he resigned himself, and the more readily when he realized that David by his act had exposed a fresh wound into which he might plunge his barbed shafts. And he availed himself to the full of his new opportunities. Often and often David was sore ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... treach'rous circles swell Wide and wider where it fell, Guiding sure the angler's arm Where to find the puny swarm; And with artificial fly, Best to lure the victim's eye, Till, emerging from the brook, Brisk it bites the barbed hook; Struggling in the unequal strife, With its death, disguised as life, Till it breathless beats the shore Ne'er to cleave ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... finished and inlaid with mother-of-pearl and gold; those of Boondi are the best. The shield of the rhinoceros-hide offers the best resistance, and is often ornamented with animals beautifully painted and enamelled in gold and silver. The bow is of buffalo-horn, and the arrows of reed, which are barbed in a variety of fashions, as the crescent, the trident, the snake's tongue, and other fanciful forms." It is probable that the forms were in reality by no means fanciful, but were copied from sacred or divine objects; and similarly the animals painted on the shields may have been originally ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... read both him and Emma, whose inner bosom was revealed to her, without an effort to see. But her characteristic chasteness of mind, not coldness of the 'blood,—which had supported an arduous conflict, past all existing rights closely to depict, and which barbed her to pierce to the wishes threatening her freedom, deceived her now to think her flaming blushes came of her relentless divination on behalf of her recovered treasure: whereby the clear reading ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... eagles on the wind On deathly mission borne. The conflict fierce Waxed fiercer—fiercer still; the rain of gore Wetted the soddened plain, and arrows flew Thicker and faster through the darkening air. The barbed spear, flung forth with stalwart arm, Sped like a whirlwind on its flight of death. Along the ranks the warrior's clarion call Inspired to valorous life the struggling hosts, And shouts of victory from contending hordes Blended with ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... fellow rabbit longa scrub, budgery way north, budgery way south; budgery way eblywhere. Ba'al good barbed wire fence do, ba'al good poison ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner

... arrow with its barbed hooks was torn out of my heart; and the question then was, how the inward sanative power of youth could be brought to one's aid? I really put on the man; and the first thing instantly laid aside ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... I am certain. Chios loves Saronia. Who knows but that she loves Chios? Of this I am not quite sure. No mortal knows the mind of that strange being. Ah! shall I say that she loves clandestinely and meets her lover?—whirl an arrow barbed perchance with lies and bring her down? That will be revenge, but I may in some way implicate Chios, and, besides, if I cannot prove my saying, I ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... as they were, it is related that there was a little confusion on the occasion of their first battle, when the regiment encountered barbed wire entanglements for the first time at a place in the woods where the Germans had brought their crack gunners to keep the line. But there was no cowardice and the confusion soon subsided. They quickly got used to the wire, cut their way through ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney

... paused, for two good reasons. That the barbed shaft might sink deep and rankle from Andrea's belief that her supplanter was a girl of her tribe, but principally because, just then, she went down under the ruins of her own olla. A fighter, after her kind, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... up barbed wire, not so much, I think, from any real deep-seated affection for the stuff itself, or from any confidence in the protection it affords—its disintegration being one of the assumed preliminaries of an attack—as for the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various

... the tongue were French, Latin, or German; Whatever he preached in, I give you my word The meaning was easy to all that heard; Famous preachers there have been and be, But never was one so convincing as he; So blunt was never a begging friar, No Jesuit's tongue so barbed with fire, Cameronian never, nor Methodist, Wrung gall out of Scripture with such ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... extricating his imprisoned leg, and was ready to spring to his feet, when he was caught firmly by the throat, and looking up, saw a clumsy barbed weapon, commonly known as a hay fork, within ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... said, the Indian mode of warfare is, without exception, the most inhuman and revolting. But I do not know that those who die by the barbed and poisoned arrow linger in any more unendurable torment than those who are mangled with powder and lead balls, and the custom of scalping among Christian murderers would save thousands from groaning days, and perhaps weeks, among heaps ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson

... tea. It is a large enclosure, full of the remains of mud huts, and fitted with close rows of tall iron posts for the electric light, which must have turned night into day. It is surrounded by an elaborate barbed-wire entanglement. In one place was a tunnel made by some prisoners to escape by. It began at a hole inside a hut, and ran underground for quite forty yards, to a point about five yards outside the enclosure. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... nations; the sovereign frequently armed himself against his subjects; subjects waged war with their sovereign; citizens gave activity to the most sanguinary hostility against each other; parents detested their offspring; children plunged the pointed steel, the barbed arrow, into the bosoms of those who gave them existence; husbands and wives disunited, became the scourges of each other; relations forgetting the ties of consanguinity, tore each other to pieces, or else reciprocally consigned them to ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... for more engineers, a lot of hand grenades, trench mortars, periscopes and tools. The barbed wire bothers me! Am specially keen about trench mortars; if it comes to close fighting on the Peninsula with its restricted area trench mortars may make up for our lack of artillery and especially of howitzers. Luckily, they can be turned ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... first barbed-wire entanglement," said Archer, as they approached. "You keep your mouth shut, but if you have to answer any questions, tell 'em the truth. ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... his rays, the son of Pandu destroyed with his own shafts that shower of weapons over-spread in the welkin. Then a force of Mlecchas riding thirteen hundred ever-infuriated elephants, at the command of thy son, assailed Partha in the flank. With barbed arrows and Nalikas and cloth-yard shafts and lances and spears and darts and Kampanas and short arrows, they afflicted Partha on his car. That matchless shower of weapons, some of which were hurled by the elephants with their tusks, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... last night added a barbed point to it. She said nothing in reply, but turned her chair from the table towards the fire. Uncle, after making one more pause, blew a dismal wail and ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... On the prow with the Vikings; But War-thief whenas I set widows a-weeping; Spear-thief when I Sent forth the barbed shafts; Battle-thief when I Burst forth on the king; Hel-thief when I Tossed up the small babies: Isle-thief when I In the outer isles harried; Slaws-thief when I Sat aloft over men: Yet since have I drifted With salt-boiling carls, Needy of ...
— The Story Of Frithiof The Bold - 1875 • Anonymous

... and more ill at ease than I can ever remember. My mind is a seething blank, and I think my left sock-suspender is coming down. However ... Of course, it is beginning to be forcibly what they call 'borne in upon' me that we ought to have brought some barbed wire and a turnstile. As it is, we shall miss about two-thirds of them. Here's your chance," he added, nodding at a stout lady with a green suit-case and a defiant glare. "I'll take ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... when it was obvious that the entry of Bulgaria into the conflict meant the ruin of Serbia? Why had they permitted the Austrians to build their big gun emplacements on the Danube without interruption? Why had they not withdrawn to the hills and then built proper defences with barbed wire entanglements and labyrinths? for properly entrenched they might have defied the Austro-German forces for months. Some day, perhaps, these questions may have to ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... down the road to the swamp, climbed the snake fence, followed the path to the old trail and then turned south upon it. Elnora indicated to Philip the trail with remnants of sagging barbed wire. ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... from her: her pride and her faith in the man to whom she was bound. The death of love had been so gradual that she had not noticed it in time for decent obsequies; she had not sent a regret in its wake....She had had enough left, more than many women who had made the same blind plunge into the barbed wire maze of matrimony....And now she had nothing. She would have liked to drive right out on to a liner about to sail through the Golden Gate...but she would no doubt have to live on...and on...in changed, possibly humble, conditions...despising the man she must meet sometime every ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... working party to a near by farm. They were locked in the room as usual at nine o'clock that night after the day's work and then waited until they had heard the sentry pass by a couple of times on his rounds. The window was covered with barbed wire which they had no difficulty in removing. By morning they were well on the way to Switzerland. They figured that they, too, could do it in six weeks' of walking by night, laying their course by the stars. They had no money and ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson

... side of the road he had "improved;" it gloried in what looked at a little distance like a single-file procession of glaring new posts, which on approaching were found to be the supports of one of man's neighborly devices—barbed wire. Rejoicing in this work of his hands on the left, he longed to turn his murderous weapons against the right side. He was labored with; he bided his time; but I knew in my heart that whoever went there next summer ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller

... That horrible cemetery, surrounded by a fence of barbed wire and superannuated railroad ties, to receive that beloved clay. He pictured her as he had seen her every day for ten years, and a rush of vain regret brought the big tears to his buttermilk eyes; the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... in this primitive manner he contrived to make way with a rapidity that astonished us all. He had two spears on the raft, besides the one he used for paddling; one of them was about 12 feet long, also pointed at each end, though not barbed; and a small stick, similar to that used by other natives for throwing at birds, and small animals. As well as we could understand by his signs, it appeared that he had been anxiously waiting our arrival, and had pushed off from the main to intercept the boat, on our leaving Bathurst ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... P. 14. "I know that men used to suspect Dr. Newman, I have been inclined to do so myself, of writing a whole sermon ... for the sake of one single passing hint, one phrase, one epithet, one little barbed arrow which ... he delivered unheeded, as with his finger tip, to the very heart of an initiated hearer, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... brought down the new tariff. It was at once recognized as a well-considered measure, an honest and a long first step in redeeming platform promises. In the revision of the old tariff beneficent changes were effected, such as abolition of the duties on binder twine, barbed wire, and Indian corn, substantial reductions on flour and sugar, the substitution of ad valorem for specific duties, and a provision for reducing the duty on goods controlled by trusts or combines. The duties on iron and ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... shining horn tips, which he carried, and bent it with no seeming effort; then he reached out his hand over his shoulder and drew out a long arrow, smooth, white, beautifully balanced, with a barbed iron head at one end, a horn nock and three strong goose feathers at the other. He held it loosely between the finger and thumb of his right hand, and there he stood with a thoughtful look on his face, and in his hands one of the most terrible ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris

... Juarez and puts on a regular metropolitan production, with the original all-star cast. There is the gallant performer known as the armadilla, who teases the bull to desperation by waving a red shawl at him; the no less daring parabola, sticking little barbed boleros in the bull's withers; and, last of all, the intrepid mantilla, who calmly meets the final rush of the infuriated beast and, with one unerring thrust of his trusty sword, delivers the porte-cochere, or fatal stroke, just behind the left shoulder-blade, while all about ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... asking one another if they knew. Once, as he passed out from the doors of the Greater Testimony, the rector heard some one say: "The Church would be all right if that old mugwump was out of the pulpit." It went to his heart like a barbed thorn, and ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock

... and Macfarlane helped him through the barbed wire, and he set off, making a wide detour behind the houses that faced the river, meaning to join the Indians from ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... enlightened eyes in all her disharmony. And I, who in wanton Paris had passed as an innocent child through a hotbed of sensuality and a hailstorm of seduction, on a single twilight eve in London had four or five encounters the particulars of which remained in my memory as barbed arrows remain imbedded in the flesh, smarting and itching and burning like the thorny fibres of cactus or sweetbriar seed with which one has ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden

... who was ahead, reined in and pointed; the others saw where the barbed-wire strands of the fence they had been following were clipped. A number of horse and calf tracks led through the opening, and after an ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... own opinion! Have done with thy wheezing,"—he continued, vehemently thumping the struggling old gentleman on the back—"Here is another one of the minstrel craft thou hatest,—hast aught of bitterness in thy barbed tongue wherewith to welcome him as guest to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... barbed dart from his arm and poured a powerful antiseptic into the open wound, unmindful of the pain. As best he could, he disinfected his other cuts and bandaged them. Ora had raised herself and now sat there, swaying weakly and regarding him ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent

... days spent in this bivouac—the days of the awakening of Anzac—to Mac and a dozen of his mates fell the duty of guarding the exit from the main position to the outposts. The exit consisted of a large barbed-wire gate across a great communication trench, close to the stone wall on the beach. They did four-hour watches there night and day, taking a tally of all who came and went, and watching keenly for spies. During ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... with a decided feeling of depression that Patty Sinclair approached the Watts ranch. Long before she reached the buildings an air of shiftless dilapidation was manifest in the ill-lined barbed wire fences whose rotting posts sagged drunkenly upon loosely strung wire. A dry weed-choked irrigation ditch paralleled the trail, its wooden flumes, like the fence posts, rotting where they stood, and its walls all but obliterated by the wash of spring freshets. The depression increased ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... and then between Olivier's eyes and Christophe there was a veil of irony. However, they tried to conceal what they felt. Christophe went often to see them, and Jacqueline innocently let fly at him her barbed and poisoned shafts. He suffered her. But when he returned home he would feel sad ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... BARBED WIRE, a protective variety of fencing, consisting usually of several strands of wire twisted together with sharp spikes or points clinched or fastened into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... almost as silently as a passing cloud shadow, the great Wolfhound streaked across the thirty yards of moonlit paddock which divided the camp from the ring-barked bush, and melted away among that crowded assembly of tree ghosts. The barbed wire fence of the paddock was no more than four feet high, and this Finn took in his ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... a flight of steps outside and above it rises the tower, terminating in a metal spire. But whereas in the Phra: chedis these spires are simple, in the Phra: prangs they bear three crescents representing the trident of Siva and appear like barbed arrows. A large Wat is sure to contain a number of these structures and may also comprise halls for preaching, a pavilion covering a model of Buddha's foot print, tanks for ablution and a bell tower. It is said ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... the once lovely region around Verdun, where the homes were shot full of holes. In many places only heaps of blackened stone remained. The beautiful meadows of the Meuse had been torn full of pits, some small, others large and deep enough to bury a truck; and trenches, barbed wire entanglements and shattered trees were scattered all about. The American cannonading roared along the Argonne front, and the German artillery answered, until the air trembled with an overload ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand



Words linked to "Barbed" :   burry, pungent, briery, briary, setaceous, biting, spiny, thorny, setose, sarcastic, nipping, barbellate, barbed wire, bristled, armed, mordacious



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