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Scurvy   Listen
adjective
Scurvy  adj.  (compar. scurvier; superl. scurviest)  
1.
Covered or affected with scurf or scabs; scabby; scurfy; specifically, diseased with the scurvy. "Whatsoever man... be scurvy or scabbed."
2.
Vile; mean; low; vulgar; contemptible. "A scurvy trick." "That scurvy custom of taking tobacco." "(He) spoke spoke such scurvy and provoking terms."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Scurvy" Quotes from Famous Books



... Jack, a brief glimpse of the James B. Potter at anchor in the bay, surrounded by a whole flotilla of boats, with steam winches hard at work, and great cases swinging over the side from all three hatchways at the same moment. It was a scurvy trick of fate, he explained to Jack, that he should have been so very near to making a capture important enough to have insured his promotion, and to have had success snatched from him at the moment when it was all but within his grasp. Jack ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... was the "San Carlos," which sailed almost a month earlier than the "San Antonio"? She was struggling with difficulties,—leaking water-casks, bad water, scurvy, cold weather. Therefore it was not until April 29 that she appeared. In vain the captain of the "San Antonio" waited for the "San Carlos" to launch a boat and to send him word as to the cause of the late arrival of ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... appropriate sign. The earliest reference to such use may be found in Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," 1614, where, in the first scene, Humphrey Waspe says: "I thought he would have run mad o' the Black Boy in Bucklersbury, that takes the scurvy, roguy tobacco there." Later, the "Black Boy," like other once significant signs, became meaningless and was used in connexion with various trades. Early in the eighteenth century a bookseller at the sign of ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson

... the Bosphorus," replied John. The Baron looked at him in astonishment and raised his finger in warning; but John continued. "On the vessel I did not fare much better. The scurvy broke out; whoever was not absolutely helpless was compelled to work beyond his strength, and the ship's tow ruled as severely as the Turkish whip. At last," he concluded, "when we arrived in Holland, at Amsterdam, they let me go free because I was useless, and the merchant to whom ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... of the good are never at an end, and so it was with these honest giants, who were always being pestered with some kind of scurvy knaves or others who would not leave them in peace. For anon the chief announced that this time a Kookwes—a burly, beastly villain, not two points better than his cousin the Chenoo—was coming to play at rough murder with them. And, verily, by this time the Micmac began to believe, without bating ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... thought was for his dear cousin. "Ah, where is she?" he cried movingly; "without doubt that villain Reynard has served her some scurvy trick." ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... criminally mean. Their lean souls and contracted little minds could only grasp the idea of making money, and hoarding it after it was made. Hundreds of fine fellows had their blood poisoned so that their teeth would drop out, and their bones become saturated with virulent scurvy owing to the unwholesome food the law provided they should eat. The hereditary effects of this were in some cases appalling, and yet while this was going on never a voice in the country was raised effectually against it; and if the conditions under which the sailor lives to-day are vastly ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... show that he was probably in some places at no great distance from the coast, and, considering that his work was carried out in the days of sailing-ships, in unsuitable craft, under the most adverse weather conditions, with crews scurvy-stricken and discontented, it is wonderful how much was achieved. We may amply testify that he did more than open ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... "Dysentery and scurvy are prevalent among the Egyptians. Four Egyptian soldiers and two Soudanis have deserted. Where these wretched fools intend to wander is quite a speculation;—they appear to have yielded to a temptation to run away upon the first dry land that ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... a scurvy clogdogdo, an unlucky thing, a very foresaid bear-whelp, without any good fashion or breeding: ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... was confined to his cabin by illness, and the crew suffered severely from scurvy. "At one period," says Steller, "only ten persons were capable of duty, and they were too weak to furl the sails, so that the ship was left to the mercy of the elements. Not only the sick died, but those who pretended to be healthy fainted and fell down dead ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox

... evergreen Empetrum nigrum slowly ripens its glossy crow-berries; and from where the sea-spray dashes at full tide along the beach, to where the snow gleams at midsummer on the mountain-summits, the thin short sward is dotted by the minute cruciform stars of the scurvy-grass, and the crimson blossoms of the sea-pink. Not a few of the plants of our existing sea-shores and of our loftier hill-tops are still identical in species; but wide zones of rich herbage, with many a fertile field and many a stately tree, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... considerable degree antiseptic; and since it is extracted in great plenty from fermenting vegetables, he had recommended the use of wort (that is an infusion of malt in water) as what would probably give relief in the sea-scurvy, which is said ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley

... in England, and fame to Vernon, when the news came: 'Took it with Six Ships,' cry they; 'the scurvy Ministry, who had heard him, in the fire of Parliamentary debate, say Six, would grant him no more: invincible Vernon!' Nay, next Year, I see, 'London was illuminated on the Anniversary of Porto-Bello:'—day ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... sharpness of her little face, divested of all its counterbalancing roundness—a keen, worn little face since the day it had smiled so confusedly but generously out of the scurvy silk in the church at Redwater—was a sweet-looking woman under her care-laden air. Some women retain sweetness under nought but skin and bone; they will not pinch into meanness and spite; they have still faith and charity. One would ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... my love so beggarly a thing that the only answer deigned to its utterance is a scurvy request to get beyond its hearing? Nay, I have looked upon thy frozen greetings long enough, and they, I tell thee, have poorly matched my ardor. Listen! Thou dost wish to go?" he questioned, placing himself before the door and holding to the curtains for support. "Well, ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley

... Sir? Double but my Farm, and kiss her till thy heart ake. These Smock-vermine, how eagerly they leap at old mens kisses, they lick their lips at profit, not at pleasure; and if 't were not for the scurvy name of Cuckold, he should lie with her. I know she'll labour at length with a good Lordship. If he had a Wife now, but that's all one, I'le fit him. I must up unto my Master, he'll ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... potters of the peas, who wanted to sell their article to the Crown, declared that an extensive,—perhaps we may say, an unlimited,—use of the article would save the whole army and navy from the scourges of scurvy, dyspepsia, and rheumatism, would be the best safeguard against typhus and other fevers, and would be an invaluable aid in all other maladies to which soldiers and sailors are peculiarly subject. The peas in question were grown on a large scale in Holstein, ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... cases, one hundred, years. Up to three hundred years ago even the most highly civilized countries of Europe were subject to periodic attacks of famine; our armies and navies were swept and decimated with scurvy, from bad and rotten food-supplies; almost every winter saw epidemics breaking out from the use of half-putrid salted and cured foods; only forty years ago, a careful investigation of one of our most conservative sociologists ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... enough of your ordering, Claggett. You may order your scurvy men about as you wish—half-wits, rascals, thieves and murderers who know no better than to do your bidding, knowing they may well die by your hands as by some other. But you have met your match. I, Osterbridge ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... are heart-shaped; the saphena riparum is to be applied to fresh wounds, because its leaves are spotted as with flecks of blood. A species of dentaria, whose roots resemble teeth, is a cure for toothache and scurvy."—Vaughan, Hours with the Mystics, vol. ii. p. 77. It is said that some traces of this quaint superstition survive even in the modern materia medica. The alliance between medicine and Mysticism subsisted for a long time, and forms a curious ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... provisions have been cached, hoping to fall in with the relief ships or steam whalers on the way. Our party consists of the following twelve persons: ... All well with the exception of Mr. Ferriss, the chief engineer, whose left hand has been badly frostbitten. No scurvy in the party as yet. We have eighteen Ostiak dogs with us in prime condition, and expect to drag our ship's ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... the ship was provisioned for more than a year, but most of the provisions were salt, and Tom Singleton could have told them, had they required to be told, that without fresh provisions they stood a poor chance of escaping that dire disease, scurvy, before which have fallen so many gallant tars whom nothing in the shape of dangers or difficulties could subdue. There were, indeed, myriads of wild fowl flying about the ship, on which the men feasted ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... luck should study the career of Robert Lansing. Mr. Lansing probably thinks that the goddess of chance played him a scurvy trick, after having admitted him to the Olympian heights, to break him as suddenly as she ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... and the cold, With anxious care he watch'd the gold, Till wholly negligent of food, A ling'ring death at length ensued. Upon his corse a Vulture stood, And thus descanted:— "It is good, O Dog, that there thou liest bereaved Who in the highway wast conceived, And on a scurvy dunghill bred, Hadst ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... dripping, and the crossing promised to be unpleasant. Wrapped in a thick sea-ulster Hetty sat huddled up in the lea of the deck-house, sick at heart and miserable. She reproached herself for the scurvy trick she was playing on him, reviled herself and yet pitied herself. After all, she was doing him a good turn in forcing him to despise her for the shameless way in which she treated his devotion, his fairness, his loyalty. He would be happier in the end for the brief spasm of pain and disgust ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... are the two prevalent diseases. The abdominal complaints are confined principally to dysentery. This disorder is most common among the poorer classes and new comers. In these it is generally intimately connected with scurvy, and in both cases it is for the most part greatly aggravated by the excessive use of spirituous liquors, to which the mass of the colonists are ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth

... when he told his followers that they were no more. Grizel heard his tale with disdain, and said she hated Miss Ailie for giving him the silly book, but he reproved these unchristian sentiments, while admitting that Miss Ailie had played on him a scurvy trick. ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... morning before eating, for this fortifieth the wit and the memory. It is reported of the Prophet that, when anyone complained to him of a pain in the head or legs, he would bid him be cupped and after cupping not eat salt food, fasting, for it engendereth scurvy; neither eat sour things as curded milk[FN408] immediately after cupping." Q "When is cupping to be avoided?" "On Sabbaths or Saturdays and Wednesdays; and let him who is cupped on these days blame none but himself. Moreover, one should not be cupped in very hot weather nor in very cold weather; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... want of vegetables or acid of some kind, I had been troubled for a week or so with an attack of scurvy in my mouth, the gums being swollen because of the alkali dust. This not only caused me pain and misery, but created a strong and constant desire for something sour. While riding past an ox team I noticed a jug in the front end of the wagon. Upon inquiry of the driver, I found that the ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole

... concentrated milk, meat-biscuit, and sausages, but somehow the men preferred the simpler and more familiar forms of food, and usually styled these "desecrated vegetables and consecrated milk." We were also supplied liberally with lime-juice, sauerkraut, and pickles, as an antidote to scurvy, and I now recall the extreme anxiety of my medical director, Dr. Kittoe, about the scurvy, which he reported at one time as spreading and imperiling the army. This occurred at a crisis about Kenesaw, when the railroad ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... have carried off the fisherman's son, they will be punished, but the law cannot touch him or his vessel for that, and so, you see, he will laugh at us, as he has done for these years past. But the master he serves will play him a scurvy trick in the end, as he does all his willing slaves, I have no manner of doubt. But, in the meantime, if he keeps his wits awake, as he has hitherto done, he may do all ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... of various kinds of preserved food, but from fear of the scurvy he hunted every day for fresh meat. He was an excellent shot but not a sufficiently careful sportsman, and it happened that when a few days before he thoughtlessly drew near a wild boar which had fallen from his shot, the beast started up and tore his legs frightfully, and afterwards ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... says I, 'like Great Britain ought to be made to keep such gin-swilling, scurvy, unbecoming mud larks as you at home instead of sending 'em over here to degrade and taint foreign lands. We kicked you out of America once and we ought to put on rubber boots and ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... (the name we gave him) "eats the bread of idleness on board of my ship: work keeps the scurvy out of ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... themselves Merry, is sufficient to drown Twice the Number of Flutes or Violins; whereas with one Pair of Organs they can make the whole House ring, and are at no other Charge than the keeping of one scurvy Musician, which can cost them but little, yet notwithstanding the good Rules and strict Discipline that are observ'd in these Markets of Love, the Schout and his Officers are always vexing, mulcting, and, upon the least Complaint, removing the miserable Keepers of them: Which Policy is of ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville

... the 1st of November. Here their men had a scurvy trick played them by the Banyai. The Makololo had shot a hippopotamus, when a number of the natives came across, pretending to assist them in rolling it ashore, and advised them to cast off the rope, saying that it was an encumbrance. All were shouting and talking, when suddenly the carcass ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... around his heart again. It did seem to him as if he were losing everything that made life good. In the old country he had yielded up the little that was left after happiness had been stolen from him. Here he had yearned for friendship, and it had played him a scurvy trick; he had begun to see a faint glimmer of hope at the end of the black cavern—just a point of light that gave promise of a land of sun and cheer beyond. And now he felt that he had no right to travel towards that point of light, to strive to reach it and make that ...
— A Tar-Heel Baron • Mabell Shippie Clarke Pelton

... Manolo!" shouted the officer, as he halted his party in front of the house; "what scurvy hospitality is this? What are you fastening doors and ringing alarm-bells for, as if there were more thieves than honest men in the land? We come to pay you a friendly visit, and, instead of welcome and the wine-skin, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... were put on board. The amount of provisions was increased, and spirits and charcoal were added; for it might be that they would have to winter at some point on the Greenland coast. They also procured, with much difficulty and at a high price, a quantity of lemons, for preventing or curing the scurvy, that terrible disease which decimates crews in the icy regions. The ship's hold was filled with salt meat, biscuits, brandy, &c., as the steward's room no longer sufficed. They provided themselves, moreover, with a large quantity of "pemmican," an Indian preparation which concentrates a great ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... listless and sluggish, their faces turned sallow and their eyes appeared sunken. They found it difficult to breathe and their gums were swollen and spongy. Macdonell, a veteran in hardship, saw at once that scurvy had broken out among them; but he had a simple remedy and the supply was without limit. The sap of the white spruce was extracted and administered to the sufferers. Almost immediately their health showed improvement, and soon all were on ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood

... or two years old in bottle, and this re-testing resulted last year in a condemnation of several hundred gallons owing to deterioration during storage. This juice is principally for use in the Mercantile Marine to combat scurvy." ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... patient unmurmuring resignation with which they suffer. I think my Irish friend had an indistinct idea of a "muddle" somewhere, which had kept him for weeks on salt meat and biscuit, until it gave him the "scurvy," for he is very anxious that I should take over plenty of vegetables, of every sort. "And, oh! mother!"—and it is strange to hear his almost plaintive tone as he urges this—"take them plenty of eggs, mother; we never saw eggs ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... was found drawn up in battle array, formidable in numbers, and most fully prepared for their visitors from Wesel. The party most astonished was that which came to surprise. In an instant one of those uncontrollable panics broke out to which even veterans are as subject as to dysentery or scurvy. The best cavalry of Maurice's army turned their backs at the very sight of the foe, and galloped off much faster than they ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... lad," cried Dr Thorpe, "when he can put his hand into the King's treasury, and draw it out full of rose nobles? The scurvy rogue! I ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt

... well victualled; but I heard Madame say that the sick were suffering somewhat from scurvy, and that she wished she had fruit to distribute amongst them. Some of them have come off the ships, where the illness is frequent. Madame Drucour visits the sick constantly, and dresses their wounds with her own hands when the surgeons are busy. And, indeed, they need all the help they can get, ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... Common house were crowded to their utmost capacity with the beds of the ill and dying. The terrible colds taken in the various explorations, the vile food and bad air of the brig, with the want of ordinary comforts on shore, were at last bearing their fruit in a combination of scurvy, rheumatism, and typhoid fever of a malignant type. On board ship matters were even worse than on shore, and Jones, who would willingly have abandoned the settlers as soon as they were debarked, found himself, perforce, a sharer in their distress through the illness and death of his crew, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... immigrant to Virginia beset on all sides with deadly perils. If he escaped the plague, the yellow fever and the scurvy during his voyage across the Atlantic, he was more than apt to fall a victim to malaria or dysentery after he reached his new home. Even if he survived all these dangers, he might perish miserably of hunger, or be butchered by the savage Indians. No wonder he cursed the country, calling it "a ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... the expedition had gradually focussed to three points: (1) the charting of the Arctic coast; (2) the exploration of Japan; (3) the finding of what lay between Asia and America. Some two hundred men, of whom a score had already perished of scurvy, had gone down the Siberian rivers to the Arctic coast. Spanberg, the Dane, with a hundred others, had thoroughly charted Japan, and had seen his results vetoed by the authorities at St. Petersburg because there was no ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... armed vessel, accompanied by a grave charge, and the worst possible of characters. Luckily for them, however, and especially luckily for the Irishman and his friend, the war-ship was so weakened by scurvy, at that time the untamed pest of the navy, that scarce two dozen of her crew could do duty aloft A fierce tropical tempest, too, which broke out not long after, pleaded powerfully in their favour; and the affair terminated in the ultimate promotion of the Irishman ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... thirty days from Liverpool to 'Frisco. Think of it, sir. Two hundred and thirty days! And we was loaded with cement and creosote, and the creosote got loose. We buried the captain right here off the Horn. The grub gave out. Most of us nearly died of scurvy. Every man Jack of us was carted to hospital in 'Frisco. It was plain hell, sir, that's what it was, an' two hundred ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... da Rabatta and Master Giotto the painter coming from Mugello, each jestingly rallieth the other on his scurvy ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... runs about very fairly, but the mange has assumed that character of scurvy which I do not know how to grapple with. Continue the alterative ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt

... progress of his efforts ideas of his greatness disappeared. No matter what might be his skill with the sword—and the priest already had shown its limitations—his inexperience in literature was patent. Ah! If he could but win the head of this scurvy cleric. His mind now was totally removed from thoughts of himself. For two days and two nights he never closed his eyes, which were fastened on the infernal ideographs—palpably so full of a meaning he could not grasp. Then he was worn out. He went to sleep, and slept ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... as if eager to meet their new burden. He turned to me with a smile that would have conquered enmity in a wolf. "This is great news, Montlivet. I could almost ask you to drink the health of the Baron, and all his scurvy, seditious crew. For, look you, even if the Englishman is a spy, and the Hurons have brought him here to make a secret treaty, why, he is in our hands, and Boston is a continent away. He will have opportunity to learn ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... protein and (except olives) in fat, but dried fruit is rich in carbohydrates. Fruit acid (that of prunes, dried apricots, and dehydrated cranberries, when fresh fruit cannot be carried) is a good corrective of a too fatty and starchy or sugary diet, and a preventive of scurvy. Most fruits are laxative, and for that reason, if none other, a good proportion of dried fruit should be included in the ration, no matter how light one travels; otherwise one is likely to suffer from constipation when he changes from 'town grub' ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... finish. This extraordinary man was in the habit of tantalizing his guests on a Sunday afternoon with sundry abstruse speculations, and putting them off to the following week for a satisfaction of their doubts; but why should he treat posterity in the same scurvy manner, or leave the world without quitting scores with it? I question whether Mr. Tooke was himself in possession of his pretended nostrum, and whether, after trying hard at a definition of the verb as a distinct part of speech, as a terrier-dog mumbles ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... gentleman, we are prone to infer that he is also a man of upright principles and honorable feelings. But we are very often mistaken in this inference; the nice garment proves to be little better than a nice disguise; and the robe of respectability may cover the heart of a very scurvy fellow. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... was seeing his young wife slowly dying of hunger, and his horror at the thought of seeing her fall, as others were falling, a victim to scurvy, that made him steal. He broke into a cabin in the dead of night and stole two cans of beans and a pan of potatoes, more precious than a thousand times their weight in gold. And he was caught. Of course, ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... come instinctively by nature. While Tam was still quite a child, he loved to wander by himself out into the country, along the green banks of the Dee, or among the tidal islands at the mouth of the river, overgrown by waving seaweeds, and fringed with great white bunches of blossoming scurvy-grass. He loved to hunt for crabs and sea- anemones beside the ebbing channels, or to watch the jelly-fish left high and dry upon the shore by the retreating water. Already, in his simple way, the little ragged bare-footed Scotch laddie was at heart ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen

... in every direction. But, what took me very much by surprise, there was no firing or cutting down, though there was a good deal of smiting with the flat of the sword. And at the entrance of the ice-mound I saw a great many very scurvy fellows come trickling out, all burned and scorched, to run the gauntlet of a row of men on foot, who drubbed them soundly with cudgels ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... my Lord, I have the bliss To date to you a line from this "Demoralized" metropolis; Where, by plebeians low and scurvy, The throne was turned quite topsy-turvy, And Kingship, tumbled from its seat, "Stood prostrate" at the people's feet; Where (still to use your Lordship's tropes) The level of obedience slopes ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... other reason for his sentence was given. I handed this fearful record to sister Backus, and we both read with heavy hearts. Every free State was represented. What can we do, we asked ourselves, for these poor men, some of whom are sick and dying with scurvy? This was a query hard to answer. I retired to bed, but not to sleep, wrestling in prayer to Him who hears the sighs of the prisoner to lead me to a door that would open for the 3,000 men in irons. The ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... he'd caught in the pool, and there was a bit of root like a stick half gnawed through. He'd been potted, and got two bullet wounds in the thigh; but he could walk already. It's evident he was just waiting till we were gone, to clear off after his people. He'd got that beastly scurvy look a nigger gets when he hasn't had anything to eat for ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner

... movable, by which means a bad neighbourhood might be avoided; and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighbourhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves." ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... but they'd not the spunk to scoot till I Was blind and crippled. The scurvy rats skidaddled As the old barn-roof fell in. While I'd my sight, They'd scarce the nerve to look me in the eye, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

... embryo! Sure I was born with budding antlers like a young satyr, or a citizen's child, 'sdeath, to be out-witted, to be out-jilted, out-matrimonied. If I had kept my speed like a stag, 'twere somewhat, but to crawl after, with my horns like a snail, and be outstripped by my wife—'tis scurvy wedlock. ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... collection of facts, the proper view of which appears to me to be this. The potato is an article of diet throughout the whole of this country, particularly useful to the working classes, and its importance to them seems to be fully illustrated by the pretty frequent occurrence of scurvy in many places, where it had been unknown for more than a century, since the beginning of the winter 1846-7,—that is, since the use of the potato ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various

... late, which made it impossible to practise manoeuvres before sailing for the front. Then, in the bungling hurry of fitting out, the hulls of several vessels were left foul, which made them dull sailers; while nearly all the holds were left unscoured, which, of course, helped to propagate the fevers, scurvy, plague, and pestilence brought on by bad food badly stowed. Nor was this all. Officers who had put in so little sea time with working fleets were naturally slack and inclined to be discontented. The fact that they were under sealed orders, ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... their impious heads will pour (1) A shower of snares Of snares (1) and flames a dismal shower; on a man's head would And this their bitter cup must be do wonderful execution. (2) To drink to all eternity: However, I grant it is a scurvy thing enough to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... thoroughly undermined. For nearly a year, remarks his biographer, 'he had never quitted the "foul and defective" flag-ship. Want of exercise and sweet food, beer, wine, water, bread, and vegetables, had helped to develop scurvy and dropsy; and his sufferings from these diseases were now acute and continuous.' But his services were indispensable, and Blake was not the man to shrink from dying in harness. His sun set gloriously at Santa Cruz—that miraculous and unparalleled action, as Clarendon calls it, which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... yet obscure, and I have no right to give an opinion on it. Another element, and a more potent one, is to be found in the discharged soldiers who came home from foreign war, and the sailors who returned from our voyages of discovery, and from our raids against the Spaniards, too often crippled by scurvy, or by Tropic fevers, with perhaps a little prize money, which was as hastily spent as it had been hastily gained. The later years of Elizabeth, and the whole of James the First's reign, disclose to us an ugly ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... being discovered by the purchaser, of course made him very indignant, and he demanded his money back, complaining at the same time to the boy's father, who passes for a person of high character and good sense, about the scurvy trick his son had played him. "Well," said this respectable old gentleman, "I am glad to see that the lad is so sharp; for, if he could get the better of you so well, he will make a capital merchant, and be ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... rurvy-scurvy, and the rumble-gumption of a man who has been seven years dead or more, and can make an old woman of sixty look like a girl ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford

... on the north coast of Australia, failing to find water or to make friends with the aboriginals, scurvy broke out amongst his somewhat mutinous crew, and he sailed to New Guinea, the coast of which he saw ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... the little skunk up to yonder tree? or shall we set him up fur a target an' practice firing at a mark fur about five minutes? Will do whatever you say, young lady. We're a rough set; but we don't lay out to see no wimmen treated scurvy." ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... where Tradesmans Bills are printed at the Letter-press, and off Copper-plates, [**Symbol: three asterisks] Where Maredant's Antiscorbutic Drops are Sold at Six Shillings the Bottle, which Cures the most inveterate Scurvy, Leprosy, &c. [n.d.] B.M. ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... and other valuable Decorations, in which every young Widow that sacrificed her self on her Husband's Funeral-pile, were their customary Fees, 'tis no great Wonder, indeed, that they were inclin'd to burn poor Zadig, for playing them such a scurvy Trick. Zadig therefore, was accus'd of holding heretical and damnable Tenets, in regard to the Celestial Host: They depos'd, and swore point-blank, that he had been heard to aver, that the Stars never sat in the Sea. This horrid blasphemous Declaration thunder-struck all the Judges, and they ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... apiece, and of these covers not one for thee! There are purses full of gold which is poured out right and left, and not a crown of it falls to thee! A thousand witlings without parts and without worth, a thousand paltry creatures without a charm, a thousand scurvy intriguers, are all well clad, while thou must go bare! Canst thou be such a nincompoop as all this? Couldst thou not flatter as well as anybody else? Couldst thou not find out how to lie, swear, forswear, promise, keep ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... canvas or any covering to our backs except what summer-clothing we had when we started, we had tramped through the valleys of the Rosebud, Tongue, and Powder Rivers, had loosened the teeth of some men with scurvy before we struck the Yellowstone, had weeded out the wounded and ineffective there and sent them to the East by river, had taken a fresh start and gone rapidly on in pursuit of the scattering bands, had forded ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... enormous appetites with which they are usually accredited. The Eskimo who accompanied Lieutenant May, of the Nares Expedition, on his sledge journey, is reported to have been a small eater, and the only case of scurvy, by the way; several Eskimo who were employed on board the Corwin as dog-drivers and interpreters were as a rule smaller eaters than our own men, and I have observed on numerous occasions among the Eskimo I have visited, that instead of ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... additions to our daily diet on account of the potash and other salts which they contain. These vegetables help to keep the blood pure. The anti-scorbutic properties of the potato are so great, that since its introduction into England leprosy is said to have entirely disappeared; neither is scurvy ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison

... doing, sometimes encouraged and led on by shallow pools in some fragmentary creek bed, at others, seeing nothing before him but hopeless aridity. Now, too, he found himself attacked with what he then thought was rheumatism, but proved to be scurvy, and Poole and Browne too were afflicted in the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... Lancaster. We left behind 50 men in the Royal Merchant, Captain Abraham Kendal, of whom a good many were well recovered, thinking proper, for many reasons, to send home that ship. The disease that consumed our men was the scurvy. Our soldiers, who had not been used to the sea, held out best, while our mariners dropt away, which, in my judgment, proceeded from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... your scurvy face-physic. To behold thee not painted inclines somewhat near a miracle. These in thy face here were deep ruts and foul sloughs the last progress. There was a lady in France that, having had the small-pox, flayed the skin off her face to ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... flood, is it?" growled Job. "And us wi' scarce any water and half on us rotten wi' scurvy or calenture, an' no luck this cruise, neither! 'Sail wi' the flood,' says she—'be damned,' says I. By hookey, but I marvel she lives; I wonder no one don't snuff her out for good an' all—aye, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... Winter sets in. Canadian cold is new to these Frenchmen. They huddle indoors instead of keeping vigorous with exercise. Ice hangs from the dismantled masts. Drifts heap almost to top of palisades. Fear of the future falls on the crew. Will they ever see France again? Then scurvy breaks out. The fort is prostrate. Cartier is afraid to ask aid of the wandering Indians lest they learn his weakness. To keep up show of strength he has his men fire off muskets, batter the fort walls, march and drill and {18} tramp and stamp, though twenty-five ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... would result which is before mentioned. Salt meat is not as good as fresh for soups, but it gives an higher flavor to the vegetables boiled with it. The experience of a great part of America, which is fed almost entirely on it, proves it to be as wholesome as fresh meat. The sea scurvy, ascribed by some to the use of salt meat, is equally unknown in America as in Europe. It is the want of vegetables at sea which produces the scurvy. I have thus hastily mentioned reasons and objections, to save you ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... which frequents the seas which fringe the Antarctic continent was a standby for most of our wants; for he can at a pinch provide not only meat to eat, fuel for your fire and oil for your lamp, but also leather for your finnesko and an antidote to scurvy. As he lies out on the sea-ice, a great ungainly shape, nothing short of an actual prod will persuade him to take much notice of an Antarctic explorer. Even then he is as likely as not to yawn in your face and go to sleep again. His instincts are all to avoid the water when alarmed, for he ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... before the business of careening and refitting commenced; and, needless to say, they were delighted at the prospect of having a little more space wherein to walk about than the narrow decks of their own ships, and also of being able to get some fresh fruit—of which they stood in great need, scurvy having already appeared ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... true the ship was provisioned for more than a year, but most of the provisions were salt, and Tom Singleton could have told them, had they required to be told, that without fresh provisions they stood a poor chance of escaping that dire disease scurvy, before which have fallen so many gallant tars whom nothing in the shape of dangers or difficulties could subdue. There were, indeed, myriads of wild-fowl flying about the ship, on which the men ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... Evangelistas, and there the mate got her in irons and she took three big ones over the taffrail and cost us eight men. Working short-handed, we couldn't get any canvas on her to speak of—long voyage, you know, and the rest of the crew got scurvy." ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... other household appliances; but we decline their help until we arrive at the mysterious spot. At last we float off—two lighters full of infected, though respectable, material, towed by oarsmen of most scurvy appearance, but free from ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... 24th had been contrary, hauled round to the south, and we ran westward. The next day being Christmas, we had the satisfaction to learn by our noon-day observation that we had weathered the cape, and were, consequently, now in the Pacific ocean. Up to that date we had but one man attacked with scurvy, a malady to which those who make long voyages are subject, and which is occasioned by the constant use of salt provisions, by the humidity of ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... supper customer! I'll brain you! I had rather parted with my shoes at a dolly shop and gone gadding the hoof, without a doss to sleep on—a town pauper, done on the vag—than to have been made scurvy in the sight of that child and deserve ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various

... Birmingham over, and we will wind up with a display of fireworks, and any other attraction which, after thinking the matter over, you can suggest, shall be adopted. I have greatly at heart the interests of my pitmen, and the fact that last year they were led away to play me a scurvy trick is all forgotten now. A good work has been set on foot here, and if we can foster it and keep it going, Stokebridge will in future years be a very different place to ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... and in the lifeboat, among other things, a small keg of lime-juice. The surgeon spied it out, and literally shouted for joy. "It may be the saving of our lives," he exclaimed; "and will at all events keep scurvy at bay." That night we were able to erect a tent for the poor women and children, as also for some of the men passengers, and two or three of the seamen and boys who were suffering from exposure. Still my friend the surgeon ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston

... days of canned goods, scurvy was a common disease among mariners and other people who had to subsist for long periods of time on salted meats and were deprived of fresh vegetables. The disease manifested as a breaking down of the gums and other tissues of the body, accompanied by bleeding and much soreness. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... passed their first winter in America on an island in the St. Croix river. Their experience was disastrous in the extreme. Nearly half of their party died of "mal de la terre," or scurvy, and others were at the point of death. Pierre Biard, the Jesuit missionary, attributed the fatality of the disease to the mode of life of the people, of whom only eleven remained well. "These were a jolly company of hunters who preferred rabbit hunting to the air of the fireside, ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond

... that the difference of longitude, between the Cape and the Lizard, is 29 deg. 20', or very nearly. Though we had then only left the Cape of Good Hope three months before, and were only two months and nine days from St Helena, more than half our company was now laid up by the scurvy, of which two had died. Yet we had plenty of victuals, as beef, bread, wine, rice, oil, vinegar, and sugar, as much as every one chose. All our men have taken their sickness since we fell in with Flores and Corvo; since which we have ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... Mr Barlow, "a ship arrived there by accident, which took three of them on board, and carried them in safety to their own country." "And what became of the fourth?" said Tommy. "He," said Mr Barlow, "was seized with a dangerous disease, called the scurvy; and, being of an indolent temper, and therefore not using the exercise which was necessary to preserve his life, after having lingered some time, died, and was buried in the ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... a numerous host, Strathbungo pleases me the most, While I can court reluctant slumber By murmuring thy name, Stogumber. Were I beginning life anew From Swadlincote I'd take my cue, But shun as I would shun the scurvy The perilous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various

... cholera went staggering on without food or water, leading their children. The trail was literally lined with dead animals. Often in the middle of the desert could be seen the camps of death, the wagons drawn in a circle, the dead animals tainting the air, every living human being crippled from scurvy and other diseases. There was no fodder for the cattle, and very little water The loads had to be lightened almost every mile by the discarding of valuable goods. Many of the immigrants who survived the struggle reached the goal in an impoverished condition. The road ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... for which, in no event, was he to render any quid pro quo. But of this he said nothing. It was not his business to look after the interests of a "sassy nigger." In fact, he felt that the money was in a sense due to him on account of the scurvy trick that Nimbus had played him, in deserting to the Yankees after agreeing to look after his "niggers" on the breast-works, although, as the event proved, his master would have gained nothing by his remaining. So the former master ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee

... ultimately dies from malnutrition. Cereals which have been "refined" of their husks present a highly starchy food, and unless they are properly balanced by base-forming substances, trouble is sure to follow. Scurvy, beri-beri, and acidosis have been fatal to many expeditions, though these diseases no doubt can be avoided by a judicious selection of provisions that insure acid and base forming nutrition in the right ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... food contains vitamines. It has long been known that an exclusive rice diet sometimes causes beri-beri, a form of general neuritis, and that a diet of dry cereals and preserved food in time gives rise to scurvy, but the reason was a profound mystery. In very recent years it has been learned that the real cause of beri-beri and scurvy is the lack of vitamines which are associated with the bran of cereals and so are removed in the process of polishing rice and in the bolting of wheat ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... served for waistcoat and trousers and all, imparting to him the cool atmospheric effect so much admired in that curious picture of Gainsborough's, known to connoisseurs as "The Blue Boy." Then he fished the waters with a will; and it was but a scurvy remark of Flashy Joe, who said that "it was about an even chance whether he took porgy or porgy took him." But it seems to me that this unskilled labor of fishing from a steamboat must be epidemic, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... be denied that government patronage, even when dispensed by the dirty hands of such scurvy nursing fathers as Fletcher and Lord Cornbury, may give strength of a certain sort to a religious organization. Whatever could be done in the way of endowment or of social preferment in behalf of the English church was done eagerly. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... whatever lay in their power to deprive me of my means of support. Oh, noble souls! Oh, ye of great heart! I salute you from a safe distance, and wish you the most uncomfortable beds in the most intolerable wards set apart for scurvy patients, in any hospital of your choosing, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... researches in this direction they will find puzzles enough. I will give them one which I shall be most thankful to hear they have solved within the next seven years—How is it that we find certain plants, namely, the thrift and the scurvy grass, abundant on the sea-shore and common on certain mountain-tops, but nowhere between the two? Answer me that. For I have looked at the fact for years—before, behind, sideways, upside down, and inside out—and I ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley

... Within the coach, on board the boat, Let every pedant "take a note;" Endure, for public approbation, Each critic's "close investigation," And brave—nay, court it as a flattery— Each spectacled Philistine's battery. Just as it suits some scurvy carcase In which she hails an Aristarchus, Ready to fly with kindred souls, O'er blooming flowers or burning coals, To fame or shame, to shrine or gallows, Let him but lead—sublimely callous! A Leipsic man—(confound the wretch!) Has made her topographic sketch, A ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... the Portuguese fell, and two only of the pirates. By this time the fleet was alarmed: signals of top-gallant sheets flying and guns fired to give notice to the men-of-war, who rid still at an anchor, and made but scurvy haste out to their assistance; and if what the pirates themselves related to be true, the commanders of those ships were blameable to the highest degree, and unworthy the title, or so much as the name, of ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... there is bravery in facing scurvy, dysentery, locusts, poisoned arrows, as my ancestor St. Louis did. Do you know those fellows still use poisoned arrows? And then, you know me of old, I fancy, and you know that when I once make up my mind to a thing, I perform it ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... spell,— Mi appetite aw'm fain to tell Ne'er plays noa scurvy tricks on me, Nowt ivver ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... every whaler carries an axe to cut the line if necessary, and I was able to split their skulls as they crawled in before they could get fairly on to their feet and use their paws. I was getting very weak with scurvy towards the end; but as soon as the snow melted plants began to shoot, and I was able to collect green stuff, so that I was nearly well by the ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... supper with some of the wilder and more reckless outcasts of this steady-going community that frequent the back store, results in my appearing at the manse door late at night, very unsteady of leg and incoherent of speech. By a most unhappy chance, a most scurvy trick my familiar devil played upon me, the door is opened by the minister's wife. I can see her look of fear, horror, and loathing yet. It did more to pull me together than a cold bath, so that I saved myself the humiliation of speech and ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor

... him in its hasty course a place which he could call his birthplace, there were others, who, deceased, were buried at the bottom of the sea, the Ensign von Stedel of the Regiment von Donop, among the first victims. Scurvy was developed as a result of tainted humors, for which the drinking of sea water was used as a medicine, and also the chewing of tobacco, which the Hessians had learned from the sailors and later kept up as a habit in their own ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister

... Gethin—and begged and prayed him to join in petitioning in her son's favor. She got down there the very day after his lying daughter was married to Solomon Coe, he as has got Dunloppel, and is a big man now. But he'll never be any thing but a scurvy lot, if he was to be king o' Cornwall. I shall never forget the way he insulted that poor young fellow when he was took up. Damme, I would have given a ten-pound note to have had him charged with something, and I'd ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... return trip in the Alert, I find that every incident there recorded, from running aground at the start at San Diego Harbor, through the perilous icebergs round the Horn, the St. Elmo's fire, the scurvy of the crew and the small matters like the painting of the vessel, to the final sail up Boston Harbor, confirms my father's record. His former shipmate, the late B. G. Stimson, a distinguished citizen of Detroit, said the account of the flogging was far from an exaggeration, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... suffering of the next season, after he had divided his last bread with his men, in the summer of 1611, while near the western coast of Labrador, half way back to the Straits, by an ungrateful crew he was thrust into a sail boat with his son John and five sailors sick and blind with scurvy, and was left to perish in the great waste of waters, which, bearing his name, is "his tomb and his monument." Cole, with his mind and imagination filled with these facts, involuntarily took his knife and carved his name ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley

... a scurvy trick, Louis," said I. "You've let me into a pretty scrape with your idiotic heroics about paying back a fancied grudge. To save a mouse from the tigers, Louis, and then feed him to your cats! Fie, man! I like your son-of-a-seigneur ideas ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... the sea and lived among men since he was sixteen years old. During these earlier years he had made two voyages in the Pacific, and another to the whaling-ground in the Arctic seas. On this last voyage, in a gale of wind, he had saved all the lives aboard a brig, the crew helpless from scurvy. When the lifeboat reached the lee of her stern, Carl at the risk of his life climbed aboard, caught a line, and lowered the men, one by one, into the rescuing yawl. He could with perfect equanimity have faced another storm and rescued a second crew any hour of the day or night, but he could ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith

... uselessness and objectlessness of it. Sane men require reasonable employment; idleness, or irrational work disintegrates their minds. They want to see and to foresee intelligible results from their toil; mere toil without such results is maddening, or it rots men's minds as scurvy rots their bodies. The reason is, that the men are human; and if you have hitherto supposed that convicts are not human, the insanity which so constantly follows upon prison idleness or ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... will tell you the reason; this afternoon the rat played me a very mean and scurvy trick; he disgraced me before the king, and made me a common laughing-stock to all the council, for which I swore to have his life. Besides, upon one occasion he bit his teeth right through my ear—the marks of it are there still. See for yourself." So the weasel ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... ashore for breakfast, so I told my Indians to run ashore near them. As we approached, I saw that there were five gentlemen assembled, with whom I was acquainted, so that I was rather anxious to get ashore; but, alas! fortune had determined to play me a scurvy trick, for no sooner had my foot touched the slippery stone on which I intended to land, than down I came squash on my breast in a most humiliating manner, while my legs kept playfully waving about in the cooling element. This unfortunate accident, I saw, occasioned a strange elongation ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... surprised him at a very unseasonable time; being afterwards himself engaged upon the same account, the horror of the former story on a sudden so strangely possessed his imagination, that he ran the same fortune the other had done; and from that time forward, the scurvy remembrance of his disaster running in his mind and tyrannising over him, he was subject to relapse into the same misfortune. He found some remedy, however, for this fancy in another fancy, by himself frankly confessing ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... cannonades, in the battle between the Guerriere and Constitution; and another incomprehensible story about a sort of fairy sea-queen, who used to be dunning a sea-captain all the time for his autograph to boil in some eel soup, for a spell against the scurvy. ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... half an eye, scrambling out of the galley nearly naked, in his trowsers, shirt, and greasy nightcap, and sprawling on all fours after two tubsful of yams, which the third thump had capsized all over the deck. "Oh you scurvy—looking tief," said he, eying the pilot; "if it was running us ashore you were set on, why the blazes couldn't ye wait until the yams, were in the copper, bad luck to ye—and them all scraped too! I do believe, if they even had been taties, it ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... often had to content themselves with going on foot through the streets, and it may be that, in this halcyon period of their felicity, they regarded the circumstance rather as a favor than as a scurvy trick of Fortune. Their tender and confidential communications were not disturbed by the loud rattle of the wheels, and they were not obliged to interrupt their sweet interchange of sentiment while getting into and out of a vehicle. Arm-in-arm, they strolled together along the promenades, he smiling ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... suggested to me that we should await his regular calls with dogs, blood-thirsty terriers. I cannot take so scurvy an advantage ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various

... She went forth and fared on among the rubbish heaps, I still following her without her knowledge, till she came to a reed fence, within which was a hut of brick. She entered the hut and I climbed up on the roof and looking down, saw my wife standing by a scurvy black slave, with blubber lips, one of which overlapped the other, like a coverlet, and swept up the sand from the gravel floor, lying upon a bed of sugar-cane refuse and wrapped in an old cloak and a few rags. She kissed the earth before him, and he raised his head to her and said, "Out on thee! ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... today learn of such a dramatic killer as the bubonic plague, but even its terrible ravages do not dwarf the toll of ague (malaria), smallpox, typhoid and typhus, diphtheria, respiratory disorders, scurvy, beriberi, and flux ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... century it must have seemed a far cry from Versailles to Quebec. The ocean was crossed only by small sailing vessels haunted by both tempest and pestilence, the one likely to prolong the voyage by many weeks, the other to involve the sacrifice of scores of lives through scurvy and other maladies. Yet, remote as the colony seemed, Quebec was the child of Versailles, protected and nourished by Louis XIV and directed by him in its minutest affairs. The King spent laborious hours over papers relating to the cherished colony ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... guided the main body of the invaders through the mountains of the Urchy and into our territory. They came on in three bands, Alasdair Mac-Donald and the Captain of Clanranald (as they called John MacDonald, the beast—a scurvy knave!), separating at Accurach at the forking of the two glens, and entering both, Montrose himself coming on the rear as a support As if to favour the people of the Glens, a thaw came that day with rain and mist that cloaked them largely from view as they ran for the hills to shelter in the ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... to guide them, there were no lighthouses to warn the strange mariner of dangerous coast and angry surf, no books of travel to relate the weird doings of fierce and inhospitable savages, no tinned foods to prevent the terrible scourge of sailors, scurvy. In their little wooden sailing ships the men of old faced every conceivable danger, and surmounted ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge

... into the sunshine of the world to be loved by men. The Narcissus was one of that perfect brood. Less perfect than many perhaps, but she was ours, and, consequently, incomparable. We were proud of her. In Bombay, ignorant landlubbers alluded to her as that "pretty grey ship." Pretty! A scurvy meed of commendation! We knew she was the most magnificent sea-boat ever launched. We tried to forget that, like many good sea-boats, she was at times rather crank. She was exacting. She wanted care in loading and handling, and no one knew exactly how much care would ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad

... eating, and sleeping: in eating, sleeping, and drinking: and in sleeping, drinking, and eating. Still he wallowed and rolled up and down himself in the mire and dirt—he blurred and sullied his nose with filth—he blotted and smutched his face with any kind of scurvy stuff—he trod down his shoes in the heel—at the flies he did oftentimes yawn, and ran very heartily after the butterflies, the empire whereof belonged to his father. He pissed in his shoes, shit in his shirt, and wiped his nose on his ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... Parliament had ignored, whose Press had abused him. The ridiculous balance made him wilfully oblivious that he had seen his name of late eulogized in articles and in books for the right martial qualities. Can a country treating a good soldier—not serving it for pay—in so scurvy a fashion, be struck too hard with our disdain? One cannot tell it in too plain a language how one despises its laws, its moralities, its sham of society. The Club, some choice anecdotists, two or three listeners to his dolences clothed as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... perhaps not so adroit in his profession, nor so well fitted for its command, he was possessed of many of those qualities which are apt to be taking with "the fierce democratic!" He was a prince of hail fellows—was thoroughly versed in low jest and scurvy anecdote—could play at pushpins, and drink at every point in the game; and, strange to say, though always drinking, was never drunk. Nor, though thus accomplished, and thus prone to these accomplishments, did he ever neglect those duties which he assumed to perform. No ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... respond as briefly as possible, Mr. Carter," Venner quickly rejoined, as they took chairs around the office table. "I do not fancy being robbed in this scurvy fashion, sir, and you may go to any reasonable expense to discover and arrest the thieves. Now, ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter

... nothing's all, an' twice all is cold-cream, milk-shakes, an' calico horses. You've got a system. Figgers beat the figgerin'. What ain't is, an' what isn't has to be. The sun rises in the west, the moon's a pay-streak, the stars is canned corn-beef, scurvy's the blessin' of God, him that dies kicks again, rocks floats, water's gas, I ain't me, you're somebody else, an' mebbe we're twins if we ain't hashed-brown potatoes fried in verdigris. Wake me up! ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... peacefully," the young man told his brother, "and she was quite calm to the end, for she believed in God. But she could not rid herself of memories of the past. How could she when the present shows such an awful contrast? Famine, scurvy, typhus, sorrow brood over the countryside. Our old home is the hands of strangers: we ourselves are outcasts living in a peasant's cabin. Imagine what this meant to a delicately nurtured woman! Men are ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... which truly was not very high, with a secret disquietude; for I had had a scurvy hope that after all I should be too late, and so the noose which I felt tightening about my neck might unknot itself. Wind and tide were against me, and an hour later saw me nearing the peninsula and marveling at the shipping which crowded its waters. It was as if every sloop, barge, canoe, ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... Ball, eagerly, "certain you do." It did not seem to occur to him that it was unfair to make him responsible for the scurvy ingratitude of his townsmen. He stepped gingerly down into the dust and climbed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill



Words linked to "Scurvy" :   scummy, miserable, low, contemptible, scorbutus, Alpine scurvy, low-down, scorbutic, common scurvy grass



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