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Whisker   Listen
noun
Whisker  n.  
1.
One who, or that which, whisks, or moves with a quick, sweeping motion.
2.
Formerly, the hair of the upper lip; a mustache; usually in the plural. "Hoary whiskers and a forky beard."
3.
pl. That part of the beard which grows upon the sides of the face, or upon the chin, or upon both; as, side whiskers; chin whiskers.
4.
A hair of the beard.
5.
One of the long, projecting hairs growing at the sides of the mouth of a cat, or other animal.
6.
pl. (Naut.) Iron rods extending on either side of the bowsprit, to spread, or guy out, the stays, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Whisker" Quotes from Famous Books



... man for dissipline I ever shipped with was Cap'n Tasker, of the Lapwing. He'd got it on the brain bad. He was a prim, clean-shaved man except for a little side-whisker, an' always used to try an' look as much like a ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs

... dames give routs and reels, And ape high-titled prancers, When City misses dance quadrilles, Or waltz with whisker'd Lancers; When City gold is quickly spent In trinkets, feasts, and raiment, And none suspend their merriment Until they all stop payment, Then Gog shall start, and Magog ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various

... to carry him to the little hall leading from the sitting room toward the ell at the side of the house. This hall was almost pitch black. The minister felt his guide's chin whisker brush his ear as the following sentence ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... Produced tremendous caterwauling. Their advocate, against such rules as these, Advised recurrence to the old decrees. They search'd in vain, for, hidden in a nook, The thievish mice had eaten up the book. Another quarrel, in a trice, Made many sufferers with the mice; For many a veteran whisker'd-face, With craft and cunning richly stored, And grudges old against the race, Now watch'd to put them to the sword; Nor mourn'd for ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... cried the contriver of the passage indignantly, "her Grace might sleep there herself and take no harm. There is not even the whisker of a rat." ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... Englishman did something more respectable, yet quite as extraordinary, at Paris, not a hundred years ago, for a small bet. He was one of the stoutest, thickest-built men possible, yet being but eighteen, had neither whisker nor moustache to masculate his clear English complexion. At the Maison Doree one night he offered to ride in the Champs Elysees in a lady's habit, and not be mistaken for a man. A friend undertook to dress him, and went all over Paris to hire ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... paused to brush the dust from knee and elbow while my uncle Jervas, lounging against the balustrade, viewed me languidly through his glass, and uncle George stared at me very round of eye and groped at his close-trimmed whisker. ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... 'of the Savage and Savile,' was taken by surprise, and looked a little uncomfortable. He stroked one pussy whisker. ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... enough question; but little Hamlyn went red from the edge of his clipped whisker on the right to the edge of his mathematically equal whisker on ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... up and caught us. And wasn't he in a jolly good rage? that's all. He stamped, and called me names, and got hold of me to shake me, but I know I kicked him well, and I had quite a handful out of his whisker; but you see poor little Awkey is only a girl, and couldn't help squalling, so ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... crystal mounted, as that was more satisfactory, the book said. After all the parts of the radio set had been assembled and the connections made, the first essential operation, if they were to make use of the invention at once, was to adjust the tiny piece of wire—the "cat's whisker"—which lightly rests on the crystal-detector, ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose

... saw another boy like him, and I used to wonder why Bob Chowne and I should be a couple of ordinary robust boys of fourteen, while he was five feet ten, broad-shouldered, with a good deal of dark downy whisker and moustache, ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... slowly, "I reckin you're right—that's motherhood." He tugged at his tab of white chin whisker, and his puckered old eyes behind their glasses were shadowed with a deep compassion. Then with a jerk he ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... fine as Elfride's own; the pink of his cheeks as delicate. His mouth as perfect as Cupid's bow in form, and as cherry-red in colour as hers. Bright curly hair; bright sparkling blue-gray eyes; a boy's blush and manner; neither whisker nor moustache, unless a little light-brown fur on his upper lip deserved the latter title: this composed the London professional man, the prospect of whose advent had so ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... bored expression on his round face. His hands were folded on his stomach; his short legs were stuck out before him; his head was quite bald, his color high, his gray eyes weak, though they had some laughter hidden in them. His double chin was shaved, but a very white bristle of stubbly whisker surrounded it and ascended to where all that remained of his hair stuck, like two patches of cotton wool, above his ears. The old man wore a suit of gray tweed and blinked benignly through a pair of spectacles. He had already heard ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... him up and down. He saw a man of about fifty nervously fingering the little bits of fluffy red whisker which grew at the sides of his face, and trying to still the agitation of ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... small children looked at Mary O'Reilly—who sat staring at the fire, with her whiskers sticking up in the air, and then felt their faces with their little fat hands. They did not find the least scrap of a whisker anywhere on their round cheeks; and Pet said—"But I a ittle girl; I not a kitty"—at which all the family laughed, and ran to kiss her—and she thought she had been very smart, I can tell you; and clapped her hands ...
— Little Mittens for The Little Darlings - Being the Second Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... her eyes In innocent surprise, And waved each trembling whisker end. "A crumb I have not taken, But Bose ought to be shaken. And then, perhaps, his thieving, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... off his beard and wig, and had put on the small whisker, which is the general fashion of wearing the hair throughout Spain. Thus he trusted, if surprised in the dark, to pass as one of the band. So quiet was the village when he entered, that he at first thought it was deserted; at last, however, he saw a light ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty

... sea-kale; a man of under, rather than over middle height, not of slight make, but lean as if the flesh had been all worn off his bones; a man with sad, anxious, outlooking, abstracted eyes, with a nose slightly hooked, without a trace of whisker, with hair thin and straight and flaked with white, active and lithe in his movements, a swift walker, though he had a slight halt. While looking at him thrown up in relief against the glowing western sky, I ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... days' passage. In fact, we had not been in more than half an hour and I was still busy making her fast to the stone posts of a very narrow quay in front of a lofty warehouse. An old man with a gray whisker under the chin and brass buttons on his pilot-cloth jacket, hurried up along the quay hailing my ship by name. He was one of those officials called berthing-masters— not the one who had berthed us, but another, who, apparently, had been busy securing a steamer at the other end of the dock. I could ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... that have dashed over him like waves, and he seemed caught in the tangling undertow of death. There was no evidence in his appearance of being a "fence." He looked rather an aged Hebrew who simply wished to go his way. The white semi-circle of whisker under his chin, the trembling hands, the bald head, like a globular map with the veins as rivers, all attested extreme decrepitude. He was dressed in a light suit of fluttering linen that blew about him as if his legs were topmasts and he was a ship running in close-reefed on a stormy coast. He ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe

... kittens are under the stove, and Susan keeps hissing at a big tiger-striped tomcat crouching under the sofa. He turns his head away from her and looks like he never intended to get mixed up with family life. For a stray cat he's sleek and healthy-looking. Every time he moves a whisker, Susan hisses again, warningly. She believes in no visiting ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville

... identical with his own? Who was more fit to control the country than a man who had breathed the atmosphere of State from childhood, and learnt history from the breast-plates, the swords, the cloaks, the wigs, and the side-whisker portraits of men whose very blood ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... night, the swaying of distant lanterns, the tinkle of sheep bells. He told her of his father, of the things that he himself had once planned to be and do. He told her of his friends: of Lily, his pal, so-called because he used a safety razor every morning of his life; of Whisker, the finest dog in Colorado; of Ruby, the ruddy brown horse that would follow him miles through the mountains and always find the master at the end of the trail. And he told her it was a lonely life. And it was. Prince Ingram had lived here fourteen years, with no more consciousness of being ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston

... bitterly, and combed one auburn whisker with knotty fingers. "Haven't been able to get a man that was any good since. It's nothing but worry, worry, worry in business. And where might you have come across him, captain, if it's fair ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... who came home full of Malaria and Lead were met at the Station by Hezekiah, who had grown a Chin Whisker and was sporting a White Vest. He gave each one a Card announcing that all of our country's Brave Defenders who had failed to become well fixed on $13 per, would get what Money they needed at 2 per cent. a Month, with Real Estate ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... face which comes from great nasal prolongation. His upper lip was short, and his mouth large and manly. The strength of his character was better shown by his mouth than by any other feature. He wore hardly any beard, as beards go now,—unless indeed a whisker can be called a beard, which came down, closely shorn, about half an inch below his ear. "A very common sort of individual," he said of himself, as he looked in the glass when Mary Lawrie had been already twelve months in the house; ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope

... wiry man, in a ragged greatcoat, a cap pulled over his ears, sparkling, little, light-blue eyes of phenomenal shrewdness, and a sparse, strawcolor chin-whisker. ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... borrowed a thousand pistoles from the citizens of Goa he pledged one of his whiskers, saying, "All the gold in the world cannot equal this natural ornament of my valour." And it is said the people of Goa were so much affected by the noble message that they remitted the money and returned the whisker—though of what earthly use it could prove to the gallant admiral, unless, perhaps, to stuff a tennis ball, it ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... it said; 'the end of the twelfth hair of my top left whisker - I feel the place still in damp weather. It was only once, but it was quite enough for me. I went away as soon as the sun had dried my poor dear whisker. I scurried away to the back of the beach, and dug myself ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... plane tilted dangerously. For a moment, Bleak, who was watching the plane, thought it was going to careen into a tail-spin and crash down fatally. Then he saw Quimbleton, still recognizable by an adhering shred of whisker, lean over the side ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... a man-o'-war, after all! I can see the captain's whisker all gilt at the edges! We took 'ee for the Bournemouth steamer. Three cheers for the ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... answered Lee; "it's a run he's goin' to hit, with one spur in the shoulder an' th' other in th' flank. Why, th' way he's throwin' that whisker-cutter at his face, he's plumb shore to dewlap and wattle his fool self till you could spot him in airy herd o' humans as fer as ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson

... with wonder saw: A whisker first, and then a claw, With many an ardent wish, She stretched in vain to reach the prize: What female heart can gold despise? What Cat's ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... when I shied an apple at the family tabby as it sat sunning itself on the well-curb, and bowled it in. Naturally, I hadn't meant to hit it; the beast stepped forward just as I fired. I nearly fell in, myself, trying to get it out, but the well was deep and I couldn't raise a meow or a whisker. It was a fine November Sunday, I remember, and while I was busy the family drove into the yard, home from church. I bolted. No one saw me go, but by and by I began to remember all the yarns I ever had heard about people getting typhoid fever from polluted well-water, and to imagine ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... with bright sunshine. It had rained all night; but by eleven o'clock the dear old garden was quite dry, and how sweet it did look! The pink roses twinkled and winked their whisker-like calyxes as she went by; the white ones shook their serene leaves, and sent out delicious smells. Every green thing looked greener than it had done before the rain. The blue sky, swept clear of clouds, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... melancholy, especially in his smile, the amiability of which seemed breaking from under clouds of grief, and still more so from the mute appeal to sympathy in the empty sleeve of his right arm, which was looped to the breast-button of his coat. His eyes were large and soft. He had no beard or whisker, and only delicate moustaches. The sorrow, quiet but profound, the amiable smile and the lost arm, were appealing details which at once arrested attention and excited sympathy. But to me this sympathy was ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... dome between, While thy sea softly kiss'd its grassy shore. Darting across whose blue expanse was seen Of sculptured barques and galleys many a score; Whence noise was none save that of plashing oar; Nor word was spoke, to break the calm serene. Unhear'd is whisker'd boatman's hail or joke; Who, mute as Sinbad's man of copper, rows, And only intermits the sturdy stroke When fearless gull too nigh his pinnace goes. I, hardly conscious if I dream'd or woke, Mark'd that strange piece of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various

... sink into himself and settle down upon the deck, his feet sliding ever the farther out, and the whole body canting towards the stern, so that his face became, little by little, hid from me; and at last I could see nothing beyond his ear and the frayed ringlet of one whisker. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a grocer's; thirty-five years of age; five feet ten inches in height; sandy hair; grey eyes; fair face; good looking; short whisker, light; rather slight person, dresses ... Supposed ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... tall, raw-boned, typical "Uncle Sam," even to the chin whisker and quid of tobacco, had an eye like an eagle. He shot a keen glance at Mr. St. Clair ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... cannot commend him for this trait of character. But it was one of his faults, and all men have their failings. It would have given him great pleasure, could he have induced Abel Lee to set up a rivalry in the moustache and whisker line; but Abel had too much good sense for that, and Marston, be it said to his credit, was rejoiced to find that he had. Still, the idea having once entered his head, he could not drive it away. He had a most unconquerable desire to see some one start in opposition to Glover, ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur

... might actually be heard by the busy clerks in the hall without. He knew Bryan from Hobson at once—that unlucky little accident in the go-cart having left its mark forever on the nose of Sir Bryan Newcome. He had a bald head and light hair, a short whisker cut to his cheek, a buff waistcoat, very neat boots and hands, and was altogether dignified, bland, smiling, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... still. The glimpse of a passing grey whisker, caught and lost in the same instant, had evoked the complete image of Prince K—-, the man who once had pressed his hand as no other man had pressed it—a faint but lingering pressure like a secret sign, like a ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... sit so gravely and busily engaged with breakfast as though they had not the prospect of another meal that year? Two young men and a young girl. One young man is broad and powerful though short, with an incipient moustache and a fluff of whisker. The other is rather tall, slim, and gentlemanly, and still beardless. The girl is little, neat, well-made, at the budding period of life, brown-haired, brown-eyed, round, soft—just such a creature as one feels disposed to pat on the head and say, ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne

... Clennam's card in his hand, had a youthful aspect, and the fluffiest little whisker, perhaps, that ever was seen. Such a downy tip was on his callow chin, that he seemed half fledged like a young bird; and a compassionate observer might have urged that, if he had not singed the calves of his legs, he would have died of cold. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... suddenly bethought herself of the pitcher of water, and, hoping that it might have some magic power, she ran to fetch it, and sprinkled a few drops over the fierce-looking swarm of rats. In a moment not a tail or a whisker was to be seen. Each one had made for his hole as fast as his legs could carry him, so that the Princess could safely take her pot of pinks. She found them nearly dying for want of water, and hastily poured all that was left in the pitcher upon ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... Mahrattas the palm, as liars, over all the other races of India. He may be right, but where excellence is so universal, comparison becomes doubly odious. Some Mahrattas put rao after their names and treat themselves with much respect, especially if they can grow a little island of whisker on each cheek and run the moustache into it. These men differ from common Mahrattas in the same way as Mr. Wilberforce Jones, or Mr. Palmerston Smith, differs from the ordinary ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... was with comb, scissors, and brush; going round and round, smoothing a curl here, clipping an unruly whisker-hair there, giving a graceful sweep to the temple-lock, with other impromptu touches evincing the hand of a master; while, like any resigned gentleman in barber's hands, Don Benito bore all, much less uneasily, at least than he had done the razoring; indeed, he sat so pale and rigid now, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... melancholy letter, for I have nothing to tell your ladyship but tragical stories. Poor Dr. Shawe(967) being sent for in great haste to Claremont—(It seems the Duchess had caught a violent cold by a hair of her own whisker getting up her nose and making her sneeze)—the poor Doctor, I say, having eaten a few mushrooms before he set out, was taken so ill, that he was forced to stop at Kingston; and, being carried to the first apothecary's, prescribed a medicine for himself which immediately ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... Griswold called he brought his uncle, an elderly widower, with a bald, intellectual forehead and large billows of whisker. The uncle beamed upon Eulalie with fatherly benignance, and then established friendly communication ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... them all, in fact; and by no one more than Mr. Peggotty himself, whom she could have coaxed into anything, by only going and laying her cheek against his rough whisker. That was my opinion, at least, when I saw her do it; and I held Mr. Peggotty to be thoroughly in the right. But she was so affectionate and sweet-natured, and had such a pleasant manner of being both sly and shy at once, that she captivated me ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... an old man, with mustaches and red, bushy whiskers. Zebede seized one of the latter, but received two blows in the face. Nevertheless, a fist-full of the whisker remained in his grasp, and, as the dispute had attracted a crowd to the spot, the ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... these two Napoleons of mattress stuffing and they kindly consented to be imitated for one day only. Old Booth and Barrett had a tremendous layout of whiskers in his valise and before he got through he had produced a couple of mighty close copies of Pacey and Driggs. That afternoon the two real whisker kings went out in football suits and ran signals with the team until their wind was gone. Then they went back into the gym and their improved editions came out. Most of the college cried when they found that the two eminent authorities on tonsorial art were going to try to interfere ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... that gun was fired, a thing that never occurred but once, the head of the rash man who fired it was afterwards found in the Old Woman's Tank, eleven miles from the spot, without so much as a blemish, except a slight singing of the right whisker." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... this outrage at all," insisted Bundy, pulling in calculation at his little chin-whisker, "let us do it thoroughly. A hundred dollars can't take Potts any too far. We must see that he keeps going until he could never get back—" We all nodded ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... things up considerable around the Chanta Seechee and vicinity. Gee! What a diving into wannegans and a fetching out of good clothes there was. And trading of useful coats and things for useless but decorating silk handkerchers and things! And what a hair cutting and whisker trimming! ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips

... he carried a neat Area of Human Ivy, so that he could speak up at a Meeting of Directors. Until the year 1895, the restricted Side-Whisker was an ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... the flower, it scratches your nose." But on this occasion she had come with a propitiatory gift—introducing her friend Mr. Leavenworth. Mr. Leavenworth was a tall, expansive, bland gentleman, with a carefully brushed whisker and a spacious, fair, well-favored face, which seemed, somehow, to have more room in it than was occupied by a smile of superior benevolence, so that (with his smooth, white forehead) it bore a certain resemblance to a large parlor with a very florid carpet, but no pictures on the walls. He ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... I own, was much brighter and brisker, 20 But then he is sadly deficient in whisker; And wore but a starless blue coat, and in kersey- mere breeches whisked round, in a waltz with the Jersey,[61] Who, lovely as ever, seemed just as delighted With Majesty's presence as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... narrated, of some individual wearing a fine beard or 'whiskers,' and who is said to have sold them to a vulgar practical joker, who had one shaved off, but suffered the other to remain for a long time on the face of his victim, annoying him meantime with inquiries as to 'my whisker.' It is the true type of a great number of stories which originated in the Southern and South-Western United States, the point of which almost invariably turns on vexing, grieving, or maltreating some victim, who is an inferior as regards wit, fortune, or physique. It is worth remarking that the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... once more to better thoughts inclin'd, The sea-man, mounting, clamour'd in the wind. The soldier told his tales of love and war; [t] The courtier sung—sung to his gay guitar. Round, at Primero, sate a whisker'd band; So Fortune smil'd, careless of sea or land! [u] LEON, MONTALVAN, (serving side by side; Two with one soul—and, as they liv'd, they died) VASCO the brave, thrice found among the slain, Thrice, and how soon, ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... red paper enough to go on the broken one, so if anything happens to the other one, deary me! I don't know whatever in the world we could do. Now run and get the cup of paste in the woodshed, and in the shake of a lobster's whisker I'll have it all done," ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... genial-faced man of forty, sat on the floor where the revelation of his victim's identity had overtaken him. He was breathing hard and feeling tenderly of his neck. This was ruffled ornamentally by a style of whisker much in vogue at the time. It had proved, however, but an inferior defense against the onslaught of the younger man in his frantic efforts ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... is an excellent man, He scratches off verses as fast as he can, With a hat on one whisker and an air that says go it,— He says I'm the great North American poet. Hey, fellow, bright fellow, Professor Longfellow, He's the man that ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... weakling. He snatched the pot of grease from the woman's hands, daubed gobs of the stuff liberally on his face and hands, and sat up—resembling an unknown kind of angry animal with his eyebrows and mustache burned off except for a stray, outstanding whisker here and there. In a voice like a bull's at the smell of blood he reversed what he had shouted through the flames, and commanded his Turks to arrest the lot ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... wonder saw; A whisker first, and then a claw With many an ardent wish She stretch'd, in vain, to reach the prize— What female heart can gold despise? What ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... frowned heavily. "Hell! you don't mean to say that we've got that damned ham bone again," he growled. "However, we ought to pick up something when they've finished the exhibition and get down to their lunch. . . ." He thoughtfully pulled his left whisker. "And by the way, my love, tell Jane not to go wandering about this afternoon, even if she is in love. There's an abominable dog of the most dangerous description on the warpath. Let me know when those ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... young officer, verging on thirty, with a cheerful open face and fiery black eyes. According to the military regulations of the period, he had a clean-shaven face, with the exception of a small crescent-shaped whisker. This warrior wore a violet tunic, with collar and cuffs of pink velvet, the uniform of the engineers. Timar knew him too. It was Herr Katschuka, first lieutenant at the fort, and also a commissariat officer—rather a hybrid position, ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... To earn it one must return the rag-doll lost, strayed, or stolen from the Millionaire's mansion. It seemed that grief still ravaged, unchecked, in the bosom of the too faithful Child. Flip, the terrier, capered and shook his absurd whisker before her, powerless to distract. She wailed for her Betsy in the faces of walking, talking, mama-ing, and eye-closing French Mabelles and Violettes. The advertisement was ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry

... said Kidd, pulling his chin whisker in perplexity as he and his fellow-pirates gathered about the capstan to discuss the situation. "I'm blessed if in all my experience I ever sailed athwart anything like it afore! Pirating with a lot of low-down ruffians like you gentlemen is bad enough, but on a craft loaded to the ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... ten the first carriage, that of James, drove up. It contained James and his son-in-law Dartie, a fine man, with a square chest, buttoned very tightly into a frock coat, and a sallow, fattish face adorned with dark, well-curled moustaches, and that incorrigible commencement of whisker which, eluding the strictest attempts at shaving, seems the mark of something deeply ingrained in the personality of the shaver, being especially ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... and banging had ceased, and the most curiously twisted face Tresler had ever seen glanced back over the man's bowed shoulder. A red, perspiring face, tufted at the point of the chin with a knot of gray whisker, a pair of keen gray eyes, and a mouth—yes, it was the mouth that held Tresler's attention. It went up on one side, and had somehow got mixed up with his cheek, while a suggestion of it was continued by means of a dark red scar right up to ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum

... twitching at his cap-tassel, which fell over by his whisker, and continued: "Well, I am very sorry. In fact, I had something for him here."—Then drawing nearer, "you see, he applied to me for relief, no, I do him injustice, not that, but he began to intimate, you understand. Well, being very busy just then, I declined; quite rudely, ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... did not change. It merely fixed itself as one sees the face of a watching cat fix itself, when the longed for mouse shows a whisker. ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... man, five feet eleven inches high, very square shouldered and deep chested, but so symmetrical, and light in his movements, that his size hardly struck one at first. He was smooth shaved, all but a short, thick, auburn whisker; his hair was brown. His features no more then comely: the brow full, the eyes wide apart and deep-seated, the lips rather thin, but expressive, the chin solid and square. It was a face of power, and capable of harshness; but relieved by an eye of unusual color, between ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... Feaveryear.] Good-beer, Godbehere, Gotobed are classed by Bardsley under Godbeorht, whence Godber. But in these three names the face value of the words may well be accepted (pp. 156, 203, 206). Wisgar or Wisgeard has given the imitative Whisker and Vizard, and, through French, the Scottish Wishart, which is thus the same as the famous Norman Guiscard. Garment and Rayment are for Garmund and Regenmund, ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... with wonder saw A whisker first, and then a claw, With many an ardent wish, She stretched in vain to reach the prize; What female heart can gold despise? What Cat's averse ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... old friend of Anderson's, fidgeted a little and in silence. He took off his glasses and put them on again. His tanned face, long and slightly twisted, with square harsh brows, and powerful jaw set in a white fringe of whisker, showed an unusual amount of disturbance. At last he said, clearing his throat: "We are much obliged to you, Mr. Anderson, for your frankness towards this court. There's not a man here that don't feel for you, and don't wish to offer you his respectful sympathy. We know you—and I reckon we know ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... wizened old face, with its fringe of white whisker, beamed with the joy of a scientist who has made a new and important discovery. He had a long, hooked nose, and was painfully near-sighted, but refused to wear glasses. Just now he sniffed inquiringly ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... the brim of his weather-beaten hat back from his tanned face. He wore a mustache and a chin whisker of that variety designated in the mountains by the most opprobrious of epithets. But his smile, which drew his cheeks into wrinkles all about his long, round nose, was not unfriendly. He looked with open interest from his frank but not overtrustworthy ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... so near to handsome that nobody would have contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its natural colour. His eye, which glared so strangely through his stain, was in itself attractive—keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist. He had neither whisker nor moustache, which allowed the soft curves of the lower part of his face to be apparent. His lips were thin, and though, as it seemed, compressed by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at their corners now and then. He was ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... you only a moment from your whisker-parterres, Cov! When you go back into that downstairs garden please give some of those beards a good hard yank for ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... beneath; an antique and dirty red woolen muffler swathed his neck almost to the ears. Surmounting these woeful garments appeared a yellow, wrinkled face surrounded by a straggling fringe of gray whisker; gray locks strayed from an old red handkerchief tied round the brows under a dilapidated wide-awake hat. To add to his woe-begone aspect, the poor wretch was streaming with wet, for a Scottish mist had been steadily falling all ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... the only boy at Glorieta. From what I've heard most of them weren't old enough to grow a good whisker crop." Topham's voice had lost its detached note. "And he sure wasn't the only Confederate to surrender. Hunt, he's got to learn that losing a war doesn't mean that a man has lost the rest of his life. But the way he's been acting these past ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton

... sharply his simple face, overcharged by a terrible growth of whisker, and emitted his usual ejaculations: "Bless my soul, ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... no speech as we understand it, but they have a way of conveying ideas by a system of sounds, signs, scents, whisker-touches, movements, and example that answers the purpose of speech; and it must be remembered that though in telling this story I freely translate from rabbit into English, I repeat nothing ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson

... the conditions, that the A. D. T. boy rapped long and was not heard. No wonder that the ultimate opening of the door was unnoted by those present, or that no one observed the tall man with whisker extensions to a mustache naturally too large, who came in after the messenger. Observed or not, however, he entered and walked ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick

... New Hampshire, who found the climate of New Orleans very warm, came in in a minute or two, and his was a figure to attract the attention of anybody. Middle aged, nearly as tall as Jim Hart, red haired, with a sharp little tuft of red whisker on his chin, and with features that seemed to be carved out of some kind of metal, he was a combination of the seaman and landsman, as tough and wiry as they ever grow to be. He regarded Oliver Pollock out of twinkling little blue eyes that could ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... least, startled and surprised. I dodged the threatening club and turned a dazed face toward the person brandishing it. He appeared to be a middle-sized, elderly person, in oilskins and souwester, and when he spoke a gray whisker wagged above the chin strap ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln

... its barrel; item, three wooden daggers, assorted sizes; item, one tomahawk, home-made. The mate was scarcely less terrifying, for though a blue petticoat showed beneath his oilskin jacket, and curls flowed from under his sou'wester, he made up for it by a mass of oakum beard and whisker that was truly awe-inspiring. Also, he had the truncheon which used to be a curling stick, and a deadly weapon of singular appearance which was understood to ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards

... usual native class; our host's family, and one other, consisting of parents and three grown children, seemed to represent all the aristocracy. These better-class guests came to join us on the veranda. The older people did not greatly differ from our host and his wife, except in cut of masculine whisker, or amount of feminine fat. The younger members consisted of a young lady, tall and graceful, a young girl in white, and a man of twenty or thereabout. He was most gaudily gotten up, for a male creature, ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... a broadly-built man, whose large, flat, pale face was bounded on the North by a fringe of hair, on the East and West by a fringe of whisker, and on the South by a fringe of beard—the whole constituting a uniform halo of stubbly whitey-brown bristles. His features were so entirely destitute of expression that I could not help saying to myself—helplessly, as if in the clutches ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll

... whom the young huzzar, The whisker'd votary of waltz and war, His night devotes, despite of spurs and boots; A sight unmatch'd since Orpheus and his brutes: Hail, spirit-stirring Waltz! beneath whose banners A modern hero fought for modish manners; On Hounslow's heath to rival Wellesley's ...
— English Satires • Various

... names in a foreign language, as of military officers, or of authors who have written on a particular subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been named by the child's rigmarole,—IERY FIERY ICHERY VAN, TITTLE-TOL-TAN. I see in my mind a herd of wild creatures ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau

... interest even in the modern face, if there be a modern face apart from a modern setting; I am not sure what he thinks of its complications and refinements of expression, but he has certainly little relish for its banal, vulgar mustache, its prosaic, mercantile whisker, surmounting the last new thing in shirt-collars. Dear to him is the physiognomy of clean-shaven periods, when cheek and lip and chin, abounding in line and surface, had the air of soliciting the pencil. Impeccable as he ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... brows of ivy; and this porch led into the long low hall, where the breakfast was beginning. To say what was on the table would be only waste of time, because it has all been eaten so long ago; but the farmer was vexed because there were no shrimps. Not that he cared half the clip of a whisker for all the shrimps that ever bearded the sea, only that he liked to seem to love them, to keep Mary at work for him. The flower of his flock, and of all the flocks of the world of the universe to his mind, was his darling daughter Mary: the strength of his love was upon her, and he liked to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... certain occasions he returned home with one of those appendages looking decidedly ragged. Yet his plump, healthy-looking cheeks were so robustly constituted, and contained such an abundance of recreative vigour, that a new whisker soon sprouted in place of the old one, and even surpassed its predecessor. Again (and the following is a phenomenon peculiar to Russia) a very short time would have elapsed before once more he would be consorting with the very cronies who had recently cuffed him—and consorting ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... carriage of it extremely spirited. The hair, so scant and grizzled in later days, was then of a rich brown and the most luxuriant abundance, and the bearded face of the last two decades had hardly a vestige of hair or whisker, but there was that in the face, as I first recollect it, which no time could change, and which remained implanted on it unalterably to the last. This was the quickness, keenness, and practical power, the eager, restless, energetic look on each several feature, that seemed to tell so little of a ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... musquash to get out of my trap. I'd fix it so that it would go off if he touched it with a whisker." ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May

... no mount'ns down here, and dat's de reason we don't hab none on 'em," added Sopsy as he went to the pantry; but presently returned with a plate of pickles in one hand and the whiskey bottle in the other. "Does dem sea-hosses drink whisker, ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... fresh-coloured young gentleman, with as good a promise of light whisker as one might wish to see, and possessed of a very velvet-like, soft-looking countenance. We do not use the latter term invidiously, but merely to denote a pair of smooth, plump, highly-coloured cheeks of capacious dimensions, and a mouth rather remarkable for the fresh hue of the lips than for any ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... veranda of a cottage, finishing the late breakfast. He received me with enthusiasm. Tall, very spare, and his skin pale despite his wearing only a pareu and never a hat, Choti's black eyes shone under long, black hair, and over a Montmartre whisker that covered his boyish ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... seated at his desk penning a scathing indictment of the President for lack of firmness and decision on the tariff question, Ann, putting her thin arms round his neck and rubbing her little sallow face against his right-hand whisker, took him ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome

... Cooperstown, in his later years, G. Pomeroy Keese was a picturesque and characteristic figure. His face seemed weather-beaten rather than old; his eye was like that of a sailor, with a focus for distant horizons; the style of thin side-whisker affected by a former generation gave full play to every expression of his countenance. It was a common sight, of a winter's day, to glimpse his slight and dapper form with quick step ambling to the post-office, while, quite innocent of overcoat, he compromised with ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... muggy, as exquisitely descriptive of weather, not uncommon in this climate, where a fog gives one the idea, suggested by Dickens, that nature is brewing on an extensive scale outside, and there's dampness everywhere, taking the curl from ringlet and whisker, and causing our adhesive envelopes to fasten themselves on our writing-table, as though practising the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... borrowed coat so tight under the arms that he could not keep his elbows down, and his waistcoat pinned back so far that the empty button-hole in his front quite put the studded ones to shame, might have passed in a crowd; but Gosse, with his hair parted in the middle and his "whisker" elaborately curled; Pauncefote, with his light blue silk handkerchief protruding half out of his waistcoat pocket; and Smith, with the cuffs that hid the tips of his fingers, were beyond gravity, and a ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... scared By this fierce whisker'd crew, The poor seven cats Soon had nothing to do; So, as any one idle She ne'er loved to see, She sent them to school, Did ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... to shut her in with the dead. She waited in the passage. After an age—seven minutes by any honest clock—Grodman made his appearance, looking as dressed as usual, but with unkempt hair and with disconsolate side-whisker. He was not quite used to that side-whisker yet, for it had only recently come within the margin of cultivation. In active service Grodman had been clean-shaven, like all members of the profession—for surely your detective is the most versatile of actors. Mrs. Drabdump closed the street door quietly, ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... gazing out of the door beside Cap'n Joab, whose deeply tanned, whisker-fringed countenance ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper

... and cry'd, 'Zounds, Downs, what sucking scaramouch have you sent on there?' 'Sir,' replied Downs, 'He's good enough for a Spaniard; the part is small.' Betterton return'd, 'If he had made his eyebrows his whiskers, and each whisker a line, the part would have been two lines too much for such ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... through the ominous haze that preceded the worst visitation of cholera New York was to know. Alexander, whom, early widowed and a victim of that visitation, I evoke as with something of a premature baldness, of a blackness of short whisker, of an expanse of light waistcoat and of a harmless pomp of manner, appeared to have quite predominantly "come in" for the values in question, which he promptly transmitted to his small motherless son and which were destined so greatly to increase. There are clues I have ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... lumber-camp, was an open space, about two acres in extent, lighted up like day by a bonfire at each end. In the centre, alongside a stump, his figure boldly revealed by the firelight, stood a man with dishevelled hair and a stubby growth of black whisker. He wore the corduroys and Strathcona boots of a shantyman; about his waist was a bright red scarf. Inverted upon the stump was an empty wooden box and in each hand he flourished an ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... all mouth and nose meat, being careful not to cut off the whisker pockets, which are usually very prominent when the side nose ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray

... that Sampson's foxes have been so very long and so very often tied together, that it is high time to part them. It may be because something very like it is to be found in a printed sermon, which was preached thirty-eight years ago: it is no flam nor whisker. It is the forty-third page upon the right hand. Yours go thus, viz. Papist and Puritan, like Sampson's Foxes, though looking and running two several ways, yet are ever joyned together the tail. My author has it thus, viz. The Separatists and the Romanists consequently ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... Mr. Bodge took the whisker from the Cap'n's hand, pinched its butt firmly between thumb and forefinger and elevated it in front of his face. It stuck straight up. Then it began to bend until its tip almost touched his lips. A moment thus and it bent ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day

... fringe of whisker under his jaws and said faintly, "It's the fourth time up to now. I thought it ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke

... about, and the Mate had another little deal in burned paint. Courses were hauled up, and the Active came along our starboard side to pass the towing wire aboard. The paint hid the patch, and in the manoeuvre of keeping clear of our whisker-booms, the smell escaped notice, and the marks of our distress were not noticed by her crew. We hauled the wire aboard and secured the end, and the Active's crew heard nothing significant in the cheer with which we set about clewing-up ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... to give me instructions. I am quick to learn. The short time I have been so happy as to be in your company I have gained much knowledge. I am sure I can imitate the mew-sic of your voice. I know I can gently wave my tail, and touch my left whisker with my paw as you do. When I leave you I shall spend every moment till we meet again in practising your airs and graces, till I make them all my own. Dear friend,—if you will let me call you so,—help ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... grand head it is!" cried the young enthusiast, gazing rapt upon the complacent marble whisker so delightfully curled and bristling with ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... kill me in the Council because he had not killed me when I was a cub. Thus and thus, then, do we beat dogs when we are men. Stir a whisker, Lungri, and I ram the Red Flower down thy gullet!' He beat Shere Khan over the head with the branch, and the tiger whimpered and whined in an agony ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... a sailor, evidently,—a tall, stout, and muscular-looking person, with a certain dare-devil expression of countenance, not altogether unprepossessing. His face, greatly sunburnt, was more than half hidden by whisker and mustachio. He had with him a huge oaken cudgel, but appeared to be otherwise unarmed. He bowed awkwardly, and bade us "good evening," in French accents, which, although somewhat Neufchatelish, were still sufficiently indicative of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... continued—(at the thrilling word Quilp became tense with excitement), cats are another affair. Personally I don't care two pence if Mr. McKenna taxes them a guinea a whisker. There is only one moment in the life of a cat that is tolerable, and that is when it is not a cat but a kitten. Who was the Frenchman who said that women ought to be born at seventeen and die at thirty? Cats ought to die when they cease to be ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... hope to escape detection—their real purpose might be cleverly masked until it was too late. Leisurely approaching the object of attack, lulling the suspicions of a dull-witted sentinel or patrol by stopping now to cull a leaf, now to wash a whisker, the well-trained rabbit would have no difficulty in creeping to within striking distance. Then suddenly rushing forward and throwing its whole weight against the nearest wheel of the cannon it would tilt it from its foundation and fling it headlong to irretrievable destruction, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various

... Saxon ancestry. His arms were like young oaks; and his hand grasping the muzzle of his gun, appeared large, fleshless, and muscular. His cheek was broad and firm, and was partially covered with a bushy whisker, that met over the chin; while a beard of the same colour—dull brown—fringed his lips. The eye was grey, or bluish grey, small, well-set, and rarely wandering. The hair was light brown; and the complexion of the face, which had evidently once been blonde, was now nearly as dark as that of a ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid



Words linked to "Whisker" :   small indefinite quantity, whisker jack, hairsbreadth, whiskery, render, vibrissa, furnish



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