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Wolfish

adjective
1.
Resembling or characteristic (or considered characteristic) of a wolf.  Synonym: wolflike.  "Wolfish rapacity"
2.
Devouring or craving food in great quantities.  Synonyms: edacious, esurient, rapacious, ravening, ravenous, voracious.  "A rapacious appetite" , "Ravenous as wolves" , "Voracious sharks"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wolfish" Quotes from Famous Books



... Baffin's Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not remember to have stood before; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers, or Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did not know whether they were giants or pygmies. I took this course when I went to lecture in Lincoln ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... the terror and disgust of a people among whom, till lately, the worst that a soldier had to fear in a pitched battle was the loss of his horse and the expense of his ransom. The swinish intemperance of Switzerland, the wolfish avarice of Spain, the gross licentiousness of the French, indulged in violation of hospitality, of decency, of love itself, the wanton inhumanity which was common to all the invaders, had made them objects of deadly hatred to the inhabitants of the Peninsula. The wealth ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Wolf River—the Texan's open insult and the pilgrim's swift shot in the dark. Here, helpless, completely in his power to do with as he pleased, lay the woman who had been the unwitting cause of his undoing! Vengeance was his at last, and he licked his lips in wolfish anticipation of the wrecking of that vengeance. The thought of revenge was more sweet in that he never anticipated it. The Texan had disappeared altogether, and he had heard from Long Bill that the girl had married the pilgrim in Timber ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx

... from door to door, And find no comrade more. The wolfish fear that children feel Is ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... emphatic curve, was almost gaunt in the moment when she fixed her eyes on the wolfish face of that tousle-headed giant who encircled her. Her shoulder blades were pinched back; the line of the marvelous full throat lengthened; she devoured the man with a vehemence of love, brief and fierce as the summer lightning which played ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... along in front of the rest. His face was on fire with wine, his little red eyes glared dully from under swollen lids, and as he bawled his song with mouth wide open, one might have tossed an apple between his wolfish teeth. In his right hand he held an earthen jug in which there was still a little wine; with his left he brandished a banner that had been made by sewing a broad red cross upon a towel tied to one of those long wands with which farmers' boys drive geese to feed. ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... into town I was subjected to wolfish leers from some member of this gang. Evidently they had taken up Lamborn's cause. Something was preying upon him. He was drinking more heavily. Perhaps he was tormented with the thought that I knew his secret and abided some vengeance upon him. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... clouded, and more like the instinct of a dog than the mind of a human being. There was another more wonderful, but hardly so well-authenticated, story of a boy who never could get rid of a strong wolfish smell, and who was seen, not long after his capture, to be visited by three wolves, which came evidently with hostile intentions, but which, after closely examining him—he seeming not the least alarmed—played with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... cutlas. And as the schooner's crew roared at Hanglip's heels, storming over to the pitching sloop's decks to pursue mercilessly the panic-stricken runaways, the girl pitted agility and splendid knife-craft against the terror-driven strength and wolfish fury of ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... each prepared to go his separate way to seek food, and first they made a compact that they would risk the attack of seven men; but if more set upon them, each would howl for the other in wolfish wise. ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton

... youthful serving maids—for a consideration. He was advocate for many an unclean thing, but it is not recorded that he ever took a fee from a negro rape-fiend—that he ever defended a lecherous son of Ham who had dared raise his wolfish eyes to the fair face of Japhet's humblest daughter. Even when put on trial for his own worthless life he did not seek to save himself by the perjured testimony of the ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... a look profound, The Dominie lays ope the learned page; (So be it called) although he doth expound Without a book, both Greek and Latin sage; Now telleth he of Rome's rude infant age, How Romulus was bred in savage wood, By wet-nurse wolf, devoid of wolfish rage; And laid foundation-stone of walls of mud, But watered it, alas! with ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... sees that he must die of cold or of the bear's teeth. His dark mind—product of a brain primitive and poor in convolutions—contemplates vaguely the prospect ahead of him. He hopes that after death he may through some mysterious kindness be permitted to meet again the red-haired women and the wolfish cave children ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... follow her example, and call their nations to the field. Till then she will be invincible, but then her conquests will vanish; and the world, exhausted by carnage, will be quiet for a while. But the wolfish spirit of human nature will again hunger for prey; some new system of havoc will be discovered by some great genius, who ought to be cursed to the lowest depths of human memory; but who will be exalted to the most rapturous heights ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various

... the day's long run. Five train dogs, lean, powerful huskies, crouched down upon the snow. They gave no sign beyond the alertness of their pose and the watchfulness of their furtive eyes. Their haunches were tucked under them. And their long, wolfish muzzles, so indicative of their parentage, were pressed down ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... leaned forward, his wolfish face very serious. "Lieutenant, the exploitation of the Jupiter satellites is in its earliest stages. There is every reason to believe that the new sources of radioactives on Callisto alone may mean the needed power edge that can give ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... the wolf, in some of the Indian dialects, and Hugo's friend seemed but little removed from a wolfish ancestry. He evidently did his best to bear the punishment bravely, for he never whimpered. At times, however, he sought hard to pull his muzzle away. Finally, to his great relief, the last serrated ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... changed. Her purpose being disclosed, her well-bred ease appeared sinister, her aristocratic repose a treacherous device, her venerable graciousness a mask of unbounded contempt for all human beings whatever. She was a terrible old woman with those straight, white wolfish eye-brows. How blind I had been! Those eyebrows alone ought to have been enough to give her away. Yet they were as beautifully smooth as her voice when she admitted: "That protection naturally is only partial. There is the danger of her ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... own good time had joined in the attack. Rome the Mighty, the Eternal, invincible as Fate, whose power no man believed could have an end, was brought to bay at last, impotent, drained by internal sores, goaded and tortured by foes without, with a horde of wolfish barbarians snarling and snapping at her throat. From one distant province after another her legions were called home. The fated twelve centuries of her power were ended; the direst ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... casements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain; the storm booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... the frozen Saskatchewan, was almost empty. The clerk had locked his cigar-case and had gone to bed. In one corner, partly shrouded in gloom, sat a half-breed trapper who had come in that day from the Lac la Ronge country, and at his feet crouched one of his wolfish sledge-dogs. Both were wide-awake and stared curiously at Howland as he came in. In front of the two large windows sat half a dozen men, as silent as the half-breed, clad in moccasins and thick caribou skin coats. One of them was the factor from a Hudson Bay post at Lac Bain who had not been ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood

... deadly famine, they counted the leagues of barren ocean that still stretched before. With haggard, wolfish eyes they gazed on each other, till a whisper passed from man to man, that one, by his death, might ransom all the rest. The choice was made. It fell on La Chere, the same wretched man whom Albert had doomed to starvation on a lonely island, and whose mind was burdened with the fresh memories ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... flew. The very instant it struck, the bloodthirsty monster fell dead. When John reached the spot, there was scarcely the quiver of a limb, so well had the work of death been accomplished. Yet the wolfish face grinned still a savage, ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage

... him and lifted his big hands. Drennen was standing waiting for him, his own hands at his sides, his steely eyes filled with an evil light. He made no answer beyond the silent one of a slight lifting of his lip, like a soundless wolfish snarl. ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... you always come across a worse man than you are trying to be,—a more apish man, who can tumble and play monkey-tricks for people's amusement better than you can; or a more swinish man, who can get at more of the pig's-wash than you can; or a more wolfish man, who will eat you up if you do not get out of his way; and so she will disappoint and disgust you, my child, with that greedy, selfish, vain animal life, till you turn round and see your mistake, and try to live the true human life, which also is divine;—to be just and honourable, gentle ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley

... fifty years of outlawry had made the Frochard clan a wolfish breed; battening on crime, thievery and beggary. The head of the house had suffered the extreme penalty meted out to highwaymen. The precious young hopeful, Jacques, was a chip of the old block—possibly a shade more drunken ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon

... were! It was no dream, no illusion, no nightmare—there they were, three powerful desperadoes armed with bowie knives and revolvers, the nearest one crouching low and watching her with his wolfish eyes, that shone like ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... lives dependent on him. Men loved women in those days, as now. God knows how they dared be fathers, but they had babies as sweet, no doubt, to them as ours to us, whom they must feed, clothe, educate. The gentlest creatures are fierce when they have young to provide for, and in that wolfish society the struggle for bread borrowed a peculiar desperation from the tenderest sentiments. For the sake of those dependent on him, a man might not choose, but must plunge into the foul fight,—cheat, overreach, supplant, defraud, buy below ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... shadow in the room. Her dress rustled with an uneasy sound as the doctor came in. His first act was to turn on the electric light. In a flash the rustling shadow was converted into substance. Cuckoo and the doctor stood face to face, and Cuckoo's tired eyes fastened with a hungry, almost a wolfish, scrutiny upon this stranger. She wanted so much of him. The look was so full of intense meaning that, coming in a flash with the electric flash, it startled the doctor. Yet he had seen something like it ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... give himself completely over to an excitement he could not control. His eyes were fixed on the door and he began clutching the tablecloth with both hands. Again his face was screened by the loathsome shadow. It grew wild, wolfish. As through a mask, that concealed, and yet was thin enough to let through a suggestion of, the beast crouching behind, there leaped into his countenance the strange look of the animal in the human—the expression of the were-wolf, the monster. The change in all its loathsomeness ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... the Agency, and so, silently, we rose and slipped away into the darkness, leaving the dancers to end their immemorial festival without the aliens' presence. They had no need of us, no care for us. At a little distance I turned and looked back. The songs, interrupted by shrill, wolfish howlings and owl-like hootings, rang through the night with singular savage charm, a chant out of the past, a chorus which was carrying forward into an individualistic white man's world the voices of ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... figures, a slight froth on their lips, the lips themselves curling back farther from the strong white teeth. The outer ends of the concave semicircle also drew in. The whole pack was about to spring upon its unresisting prey, and it is, no doubt, true that many a wolfish pulse beat a little higher in anticipation. With a suddenness as startling figures raised themselves, five long, dark tubes leaped to their shoulders, and with a suddenness that was yet more terrifying, a gush of flame shot from five muzzles. Five ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... brings his wolfish pack About my legs, as, dripping from the sea, I pick my way thro' shingle and wet wrack Beleaguered by ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various

... children, so that they should not be hampered in their flight; of their life in the woods, like wild beasts, and the ignoble ferocity of their ends. Scarcely less sombre reading is the account of how they were hunted down, and of the wolfish eagerness the borderers showed to massacre the women and children as well ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... ignorance of his character, child, and nothing else, which makes that dream enter your head. Pray, don't imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He's not a rough diamond—a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man. I never say to him, "Let this or that enemy alone, because it would be ungenerous or cruel to harm them;" I say, "Let them alone, because I should hate them to be wronged:" and he'd crush you like a sparrow's egg, Isabella, if he found you a ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... recoiled slightly, and the arms that had been about to encircle the girl, fell slowly to his sides. Patty had suddenly drawn herself erect and looked him eye for eye: and as she looked, from behind the soft glow of the velvet eyes, leaped a wolfish gleam—a glint of baffled rage, a flash of hate. In a moment it was gone and the ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx

... of Sioux appeared, with their wolfish dogs and their sturdy and all-enduring squaws burdened with the heavy hide coverings of their teepees, or buffalo-skin tents. They professed friendship and begged for arms. Those of one band had blackened their faces in mourning for a dead chief, and calling on Le Sueur to share ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... staggered me, but I thanked him, and drawing out my slender purse, gave him a piece of silver. He fastened on it with wolfish eagerness and the next instant had disappeared, leaving me to find La Boule d'Or as ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... me, ready for a chase. Old Rattler was a little lame—a bear bit him in the shoulder; but Soundwell, Tiger, and the rest of 'em were all mighty anxious. We got a bite, and saddled our horses. I went by to git a neighbor to drive for us, and off we started for the Harricane. My dogs looked mighty wolfish; they kept jumping on one another and growling. I knew they were run mad for a fight, for they hadn't had one for two or three days. We were in fine spirits, and going 'long through very open woods, when one of the strangers said, 'I would give my horse ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... is free for any man to speak in presence of your greatness, I must say that my heart puts on a wolfish inclination to tear and to devour, hearing your speech, that these suitors should with such injustice rage, where you should have the rule solely. What should the cause be? do you wilfully give way to their ill ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... past a farm-house with never a light to show upon its front, there was a ferocious hullabaloo, something between the angry snorting of a buffalo and the puffing of a railroad engine going up a steep grade. It was the wolfish welcome of three canine brigands, the bloodthirsty watch-dogs that surrounded and guarded this lonely and poverty-stricken little farm-house from the approach of any one evil- ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes

... faces heap in layers before me; drawn, wolfish, brutal in the flaring lights they peer and gasp and sob, like uncouth inhabitants of another world—wait a bit, Jerry, it is your world, just the same, and perhaps you are responsible ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... called into requisition, for the announcement that all this "property" was to be relinquished absolutely was received by the more important section of the slave-hunters with a sullen silence more eloquent even that the wolfish growls of the Wangoni. The latter's disappointment lay in the fact that they were balked in giving vent to their instincts of sheer savagery—the delight of plunder and massacre. That of the former, however, was a more weighty factor ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... graceful birch canoes, such as the northern tribes excel in making, were drawn up on the river bank; paddles and spears leaned against the lodges, smoke-blackened kettles and other rude cooking-utensils were scattered about the smouldering fires, and a throng of wolfish-looking dogs added their discordant baying to the ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... his deed. He rose from his cot, removed the coarse brown robe that normally he wore to bed as well as in his daily rounds so that his long-unwashed body stood naked. There must be no chance for tell-tale blood to stain his clothes, when his fierce talons and wolfish teeth tore and rended at ...
— G-r-r-r...! • Roger Arcot

... day passed. In the darkness of the third night out they crossed the river themselves, and side-stepping the village and its wolfish dogs struck south once more. They had to dodge night-roving Indians, as before, but they traveled steadily; there was no sign, by any of the Indians they met, that the island had been taken. This gave ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin

... exalt them into fit themes for the poets and painters. Having trudged along, at least three miles, in one direction, I struck a large mot, that jutted out into the prairie. Here I concluded it was best to hang up for the night. I was soaking wet—hungry and wolfish enough. My utter desperation induced me to work for an hour with some percussion caps, powder, and a piece of greased tow linen, to get a blaze of fire, Ingins or no Ingins. I began to wish I was a Camanche myself, or that the red devils would surround me, give me one bite and a drink, and I'd ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... detective stooped and retrieved this damning bit of evidence, while the manager moved quickly to his side, to inspect the find. And P. Sybarite looked up with blank eyes in a pallid, wizened face in time to see Shaynon bare his teeth—his lips curling back in a manner peculiarly wolfish and irritating—and snarl ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... a "championship" of a very superior order. Being somewhat modest, he committed it through the trap-door to the mercy of the wind, and for a time it was lost in the straggling rubbish which tailed away to the north. Even the prowling dogs in their wolfish hunger could not overcome a certain prejudice. Of course some one found it, and the public hailed it with delight. A searching inquiry was made, but the perpetrator was never discovered. That loaf, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... When at last the wolfish cold of the Labrador night had come, it found Trafford and Marjorie seated almost warmly on a bed of pine boughs between the sheltering dark rock behind and a big but well-husbanded fire in front, drinking a queer-tasting but not unsavory soup of lynx-flesh, which she had fortified with the remainder ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various

... wolfish feeding were the manners of Oliver Laurence. He toyed with his victuals, cutting them into the littlest pieces and almost flirting with ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee

... the bodies of wolves, in which they dwell and are carried about for the prescribed space of time. Some of those who have stated that they came long distances after escaping from the chains of their wolfish imprisonment, being questioned how they got out of that confinement, and why they returned, and how they could cross such wide and deep rivers, gave answer that the imprisoning forms no longer confined them, that they felt ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... raising himself for the first time out of his lounging position on the saddle. "Guess you're gettin' wolfish. I'm for you—stick, fist, or whiphandle, rifle or bowie-knife. Should like to see the man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... as if it were a golden salver. When he was not serving, he stood upright behind his master's chair, as though he wore royal livery of scarlet and gold. To the boy who had gnawed a bone or munched a crust wheresoever he found them, and with no thought but of the appeasing of his own wolfish hunger, to watch the two with whom he sat eat their simple food was a new thing. He knew nothing of the every-day decencies of civilized people. The Rat liked to look at them, and he found himself trying ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... his first convert. The wild Namoqua warrior was turned into a gentle child. The change in this chief was a moral miracle. Wolfish rapacity, leonine ferocity, leopardish treachery, gave way before the meekness and mildness of the calf or kid. His sole aim and ambition had been to rob and to slay, to lead his people on expeditions for plunder and violence, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... completely covered with snow, and I knew that they would find but little food. As I could not venture out, most of the day passed away in a half-unconscious dreamy state; part of it I slept. The next night I was awoke soon after dark by the wolfish chorus; it was much nearer than before. The sounds formed themselves into words to my disordered senses. "We'll eat you up; we'll eat you up ere long," they appeared to say. A third night came. The ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... and frozen—why, then, they will remain white and frozen and enchanted. If there is no personal prince to find the Sleeping Beauty she will simply sleep. Fables repose upon quite the opposite idea; that everything is itself, and will in any case speak for itself. The wolf will be always wolfish; the fox will be always foxy. Something of the same sort may have been meant by the animal worship, in which Egyptian and Indian and many other great peoples have combined. Men do not, I think, love beetles or cats or crocodiles with a wholly personal ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop

... volunteers and all determined to fight, judging from myself, for I felt wolfish all over. I verily believe that the whole army was of the real grit." Is felt wolfish all over a fine phrase? Is it an expressive phrase? What was to be judged from himself—that all were determined to fight, or that the whole army was of the real grit? Does the fact that Crockett felt ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... it were ascertained that he was a remote descendant of the mastiff or some other breed, or that both these and other breeds came (as is suspected) from some wolf? If not, how is the argument for design in the structure of our particular dog affected by the supposition that his wolfish progenitor came from a post-tertiary wolf, perhaps less unlike an existing one than the dog in question is to some other of the numerous existing races of dogs, and that this post-tertiary came from an equally or more different tertiary wolf? And if the argument from structure to design ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... we may be far off from the Kingdom of Heaven, because we are not in our lives doing the will of our Father which is in Heaven. If we are selfish, self-willed, proud, lovers of our own selves, our religion is but the sheep's clothing covering the wolfish heart, or the white paint hiding the corruption of the sepulchre. It is easy enough to assume the character and manner of a Christian, but to live the Christian life is not so easy. A man can make a sham diamond in a very short time, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... eatin' soup. Wat for you'spect nice grub? You don' work none." 'Poleon removed a layer of fat, divided it, and tossed a portion to each animal. The morsels vanished with a single gulp, with one wolfish click of sharp white teeth, "No, I give ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... tongue; at which the lady only bowed her head, seeming of all in the hut to be the least surprised or concerned at the death of her brother. As for us, the complicated horrors of the night had left us stunned and stupified till the rapid diminution of the wolfish din, the sounds of shots and voices, and the glare of flambeaux lighting up the forest, brought most of us to the window. The wolves were scouring away in all directions, there was a grayness in the eastern sky, for Christmas-day was breaking; and from all ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various

... to adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... horses, till Hazel's nerves were strained to the snapping point. Continually she was reminded of that vivid episode, of which she had been the unwitting cause. Sometimes she would open the door, and from out the dark would arise the sound of wolfish quarrels over the feast, disembodied snappings and snarlings. Or when the low-swimming moon shed a misty glimmer on the open she would peer through a thawed place on the window-pane, and see gray shapes circling about the half-picked ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... him. After a time he came to himself, and again began to beg the rat to help him; but the rat, having had his revenge on the mouse, did not much care to trouble about it, and, besides, he remembered how very wolfish and fierce the weasel had looked at him when in his hole. At least he thought he would have a night's sleep in comfort first, for he had been afraid to sleep a wink with the weasel so near. Now the weasel was in the gin ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies

... passage of a great, thick-set man in the uniform of a Colonel of Volunteers. The fellow was unusually swarthy and he wore a black scowl upon his face, while a long puckering scar the full length of one cheek lifted his mouth into a crooked sneer and left exposed a glimpse of wolfish teeth. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... living scarecrow pass With a wild and wolfish stare At each empty absinthe glass, As if he saw Heaven there. Poor damned wretch, to end your pain There is still the Greater Drink. Yonder waits the sanguine Seine . . . It is ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service

... Shannon, turning once more to the jury], think of the colossal, wolfish nerve that would permit a man to say to Albert Stires that he had just purchased sixty thousand dollars' worth additional of city loan, and that he would then and there take the check for it! Had he actually purchased ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... water we saw a strange, wild, graceful fish, the like of which we had never beheld. He was long, slender, yet singularly round and muscular. His color appeared to be blue, green, silver crossed by bars. His tail was big like that of a tuna, and his head sharper, more wolfish than a barracuda. He had a long, low, straight dorsal fin. We watched him swimming slowly to and fro beside the boat, and we speculated upon his species. But all I could decide was that I had a rare specimen for ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey

... the men, ready to spring out upon them, when there came a terrific interruption. There was a sudden crash in the brush behind him, a menacing snarl, and a huge wolfish brute launched itself at his throat. The swift instinct of self-preservation turned the weapon intended for the men over the fire upon this unexpected assailant. The snarling fangs of the husky were gleaming in his face and the animal's body was against the muzzle ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood

... in Constantinople. The Turkish dogs are by no means beautiful as a rule, they are too much like jackals, and as they are apt to be maimed and covered with scars from fights with each other, they do not make much of what good looks they have. However, Jack was rather less wild and wolfish-looking than most of his friends. He was of a fine tawny yellow, and had an intelligent face, poor fellow. He belonged to our Quarter—in fact the cemetery was his home till he took to lying ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... know you, Gato, for the wolfish coward that you are," Tom Reade shouted mockingly. "You are desperately afraid when you won't meet ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock

... expected. It was a very weird and desolate place; and everything looked dark and dismal, under the moonlight, as it streamed between stormy black clouds. In that light Dot could see the Blacks hurrying forward. Already one of the dogs had far outrun the others, and with wolfish gait and savage sounds, was pressing towards ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... "Wolfish protector of a lamb," the old man replied, "I ought to throw you out; but it is not my mission ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... gain. Was it for this," he cries, "I subdued my life, lost my youth, rooted out love; for the sake of this wolfish thirst of knowledge?" No dog, said Faust, in Goethe's poem, driven to the same point by the weariness of knowledge, no dog would longer live this life. My tyrant aim has brought me into a desert; worse still, the purity of my aim is lost. Can I ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... a rifle. He was very serious when he entered the room, for one should be very serious in a real good Indian game. Then he raised his rifle slowly over his head in greeting and the four childish voices rang out in the war-cry. It was a prolonged wolfish howl which Dimples had been known to offer to teach elderly ladies in hotel corridors. "You can't be in our tribe without it, you know. There is none body about. Now just try once if you can do it." At this moment there ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... his Indian Journal gives two remarkable instances of language and unity of work among animals which he saw at Ranee Bennore, while he was on a hunting trip. He witnessed, one morning, a striking case of wolfish generalship, which in his belief proved that animals are endowed to a certain extent not only with reason but are able to communicate their ideas to others. He was scanning the horizon one morning to see if any game was in sight ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... last, but somebody else had got their nine points of the law out of it. So the man sent on beforehand had pitched a tent on the grass, which we went into like Indians just returned from a hunting-party—dusty, thirsty, and sort of wolfish for ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... does 'em any good," laughed the other; and if he felt the slightest bit of uneasiness himself on account of those wolfish howls, Thad at least managed to conceal it; because he knew Step Hen was feeling "creepy" enough as it was, without having his alarm augmented by seeing ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... with the slightest sort of accent that merely added distinction to whatever she said. Madame Saratoff was still young, and though not a beautiful woman, had an air of privilege and breeding, with something odd in the glitter of her eyes and the wolfish way in which her curving upper lip revealed strong white teeth. She had a good figure, as Milly had already recognized, and she dressed well, with great simplicity. Milly felt interested in her, and the women talked for an hour. Milly reported ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... landlord's guidance, set out to see the town. They climbed up street to the cathedral, a fine old pile trembling with music and filled with worshippers, paintings of saints in extremis, flowers, wax candles, votary offerings, and heat; then coming out, and feeling wolfish, looked round for a place where they could find dinner! Here it was! a scene that would have cheered Teniers: a very large room, its walls brown with smoke; long wooden tables, destitute of cloth, but crowded with country people eating, drinking, talking, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... conversation at a little distance, "I can't say that I'm any more favorably impressed with Mr. Buncombe, or whatever his name is, than I was with old Boomerang yesterday. That fellow looked like a silly, pompous, old fool, and this one like a sly, old villain. I wish he'd stop that confounded, wolfish grin of his, it makes me feel uncomfortable, he looks as if he knew he had his prey just dead easy, and his chops were watering in anticipation. I say, old fellow, I don't think much of this Buncombe-Boomerang combination ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... thee with my hands, Had I but some one who would back them off And cast them from me that I might be clean— For washing would not cleanse them, even if I dipped them in thy blood. Away! Away! So stood'st thou not to deal the deadly blow, Thy wolfish eyes fixed on him steadily, With fiendish grin disclosing thy intent Before the time! But slyly didst thou creep Behind him, ever shrinking from his gaze, As wild beasts do that fear the human eye, And peered to find the spot, that I—Thou dog, What ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... F'touh cemetery is also a kind of fondak. Poor caravans camp there under the walls in a mire of offal and chicken-feathers and stripped date-branches prowled through by wolfish dogs and buzzed over by fat blue flies. Camel-drivers squat beside iron kettles over heaps of embers, sorcerers from the Sahara offer their amulets to negro women, peddlers with portable wooden booths sell greasy cakes that look as if they had been made out of the garbage of the caravans, and in ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... brute to anger!" thought I. He was undoubtedly well aware of the feelings of horror and repulsion that he inspired in the breasts of others, and seemed rather to pride himself upon it, I thought; for as I was led forward into his presence he paused in his wolfish feeding and glared upon me with an expression of concentrated malignity that seemed to freeze the very marrow in my bones. But I believed that he was deliberately striving to frighten me, and horrified though I actually ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... had drawn back his lips so that the canine teeth stood out like tusks. There was something wolfish about the face, from which all the color had been driven. It expressed something so deadly, so menacing, that the young man across from him felt a shock almost of fear. "We'd better get out of here," he said, glancing toward the group near the ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... he was, I could not, when he trusted me, betray him. I said nothing, but I was there at the hour. He entered through the window, and implored me to give him the money. He was terribly changed; gaunt, wolfish, and spoke like a madman. I told him that I had spent the money. He gnashed his teeth at me, and swore it was his money. I told him that I had spent it on him. He asked me how. I said in trying to ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle

... it was the polish of long wear, not the velvety glow of newness. There was a growing bald spot, scarcely hidden by the Hyperion Polish curls; there were crows'-feet around the bold, insolent eyes, and the man's smile was lean and wolfish when the glittering white teeth flashed through the professional smirk of the traveling artist. The old, easy assurance was still there, but cognac had dulled the fires of genius; the tones of the violin trembled, even under the weakening but still magic fingers, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... house was yet concealed by the brow of the steep hill. Inside and along the fence, pokeberries, elders, sassafras, and sumac grew high and dense. At a rustle of their branches, both Goree and Coltrane glanced up, and saw a long, yellow, wolfish face above the fence, staring at them with pale, unwinking eyes. The head quickly disappeared; there was a violent swaying of the bushes, and an ungainly figure ran up through the apple orchard in the direction of the house, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... the food their limbs were affected with a shivering, and tears came into their eyes. Then they fell upon it, and devoured it with sobs of joy. In astonishment and pity we watched them at their wolfish meal. When they had finished I asked de Castro for some account of what had ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... life, he will not sever truth from enjoyment; he will snatch at the meanest delights; before death comes, something at least shall thus be gained. And yet he has almost lost the capacity for pleasures apart from those of a wolfish hunger for knowledge; and he despises his baser aims and his extravagant speeches. Could life only be begun anew with temperate hopes and sane aspirings! But he has given his pledges and will abide ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... covert, had been shot in the face, and his scream echoed among the rocks in multiplied accents of agony; while Wyman lay tossing and moaning, mercifully unconscious. The others rested in their places, scarcely venturing to stir a limb, their roving, wolfish eyes the only visible evidence of remaining life, every hope vanished, yet each man clinging to his assigned post of duty in desperation. There was but little firing—the defenders nursing their slender stock, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... called Waggoner. He seemed old, sixty at least, yet at that only in the prime of a wonderful physical life. Unlike most of the others, he wore his grizzled beard close-cropped, so close that it showed the lean, wolfish line of his jaw. All his features were of striking sharpness. His eyes, of a singularly brilliant blue, were yet cold and pale. The brow had a serious, thoughtful cast; long furrows sloped down the cheeks. It ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... lethargic wife. For a few moments there was a scene of wild disorder, of fighting Malemutes buried under a rush of angry huskies, while men shouted, and the yelling Frenchman leaped about and cut his caribou- gut in vicious slashes over the wolfish horde ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... that still lay in its scabbard. The Winchester covered every step of his progress, but he neither hastened nor faltered, though he knew his life hung in the balance. If his steely blue eyes had released for one moment the wolfish ones of the villain, if he had hesitated or hurried, he would have been ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine

... me! Seeing that this was their mode of salutation, we determined to conform to their custom, so we rubbed noses heartily with the whole party, women and all! The only disagreeable part of the process was, when we came to rub noses with Mahine, and Peterkin afterwards said, that when he saw his wolfish eyes glaring so close to his face, he felt much more inclined to bang than to rub his nose. Avatea was the last to take leave of us, and we experienced a feeling of real sorrow when she approached to ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... from the sleeping girl, and a wolfish glare seemed to shoot from his eyes as they rested on something which lay in ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne

... nor made a sound. With an oath he turned on his heel and went out to the table. Eating his breakfast in his usual wolfish fashion, he went out into the hot sun with his team and ridding plow, not a little disturbed by this new phase of his wife's "cantankerousness." He plowed steadily and sullenly all the forenoon, in the terrific heat and dust. The air was full ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... upper parts of the colony were infested by wolfish bands howling around the forts, which they rarely ventured to attack. At length, help came. A squadron from France, strong enough to beat off the New England privateers which blockaded the St. Lawrence, arrived at Quebec with men and supplies; and a strong force was despatched to ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... confusion, and the light flashed on the man who had spoken and was gone. But that flash had shown me the face of a man I could never forget—a man whose destiny was bound up for a brief period with mine, and whose wicked plans have proved the master influence of my life. It was a strong, cruel, wolfish face—the face of a man near sixty, with a fierce yellow-gray mustache and imperial—a face broad at the temples and tapering down into a firm, unyielding jaw, and marked then with all the lines of rage, hatred, and chagrin at the failure of ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... them. He had talent to paint beautiful things without resorting to the assistance of those ordinary old men and above all, of those women with their disheveled hair, their flashing eyes and their wolfish teeth, who, in the solitude and silence of the studio, actually terrified her. Renovales laughed. What nonsense! Jealous little girl! As if he were capable of thinking of anything but art with a palette ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... leant his back against the plank. His pursuer confronted him upon the road; the pipe was no longer in his mouth, but the dusky red glow still lingered round him. He uttered some inarticulate cavernous sounds, which were wolfish and indescribable, while he seemed employed in pouring out ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... the least scared by the wolfish concert. Not so Hannibal, who rolled his eyes up and down the woods, whipped up the horses, and uttered sundry ejaculations in the negro dialect expressive of his alarm and apprehension on the young ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... the range side, and when the others joined me even Harry surveyed the bear with wolfish eyes, while it did not take long to perform what the French-Canadians call the eventrer, and, smeared red all over, we bore the dismembered carcass into camp. We feasted like wild beasts—we were frankly animal then—and it was not until ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss

... continued to suffer, at intervals, for two days more, but on the fifth day out he appeared with a little pink tinge on his cheek and a wolfish appetite. Dr. Staines controlled his diet severely, as to quality, and, when they had been at sea just eleven days, the physician's heavy heart was not a little lightened by the marvellous change in him. The unthinking, who believe in the drug system, should have seen what ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... looked sharply at Mhtoon Pah when he came into the room. Usually the curio dealer had a smile and a suave, pleasant manner, but on this occasion all his suavity was gone, and his eyes, usually so inexpressive and secret, were lighted with a strange, wolfish look of anger and rage that ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie

... of aught save wrong on wrong, Wrought by our mother's deed? Though now she fawn for pardon, sternly strong Standeth our wrath, and will nor hear nor heed; Her children's soul is wolfish, born from hers, And softens ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus

... about the stove, the Swede insisted on another game of High Five. Scully gently deprecated the plan at first, but the Swede turned a wolfish glare upon him. The old man subsided, and the Swede canvassed the others. In his tone there was always a great threat. The cowboy and the Easterner both remarked indifferently that they would play. Scully said that he would presently have to go to meet the 6.58 train, and so the Swede turned menacingly ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane

... adjectives, imports diminution; and added to substantives, imports similitude or tendency to a character; as green, greenish; white, whitish; soft, softish; a thief, thievish; a wolf, wolfish; a child, childish. ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson

... face—and such a face! I turn'd away— Then gazed again—'twas not to be forgot:— There was a fascination in the eyes— Even in their stony stare; like the ribb'd sand Of ocean was the eager brow; the mouth Had a hyena grin; the nose, compress'd With curling sneer, of wolfish cunning spake; O'er the lank temples, long entwisted curls Adown the scraggy neck in masses fell; And fancy, aided by the time and place, Read in the whole the effigies of a fiend— Who, and what art thou? ask'd my beating heart— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... with Pythagoras, That souls of animals infuse themselves Into the trunks of men: thy currish spirit Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter, Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet, And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam, Infus'd itself in thee; for thy desires Are wolfish, bloody, starv'd, and ravenous. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... which he had crossed the road, in his uneasy prowling up and down before the house, and now in his attitude as he stood motionless with head raised there was something ominous, animal-like, almost wolfish. ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... the night and the north, Freighters on prairies and plains, Carrying cargoes from field and flood They scent the trail through their wild red blood, The wolfish blood in ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... near that the beast in you can grab us with its claws! Love—who is it you love? Shall I tell you? 'Tis yourselves! You beasts! We're just pretty dolls, and sweet little pets to be played with, aren't we? Until you fall on us with your wolfish lust ... 'tis all you think or ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski

... of the battle about, stood looking down at Zaidos. His bloodshot eyes were narrowed to slits, his lips drawn back in a wolfish snarl. In his hand was a revolver. He leaned forward a little. He spoke, but in the din Zaidos could not hear his words. He could read the twisting ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... moved on in silence. The surf grew suddenly louder, as they emerged from the forest upon a stretch of sand dunes bordering the sea. A few goats were browsing among the sandy hillocks, and a skin-clad boy, aided by a wolfish-looking dog that was only faintly reminiscent of a collie, was watching them. Mingled with the roar of the surf was a continuous, deep-throated barking or bellowing, which came from a cluster of jagged rocks a hundred yards out from shore. Here huge sea-lions hauled themselves up to lie in the ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London

... evening at an inn I know almost at the water's edge? We could sit out on the little terrace and take our coffee in peace under the broad vine leaves while watching the silver pathway of the moon widen on the waters. We could smile at the miseries of London and its wolfish courts shivering in cold grey mist hundreds of miles away. Does not ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... afraid,—indefinably, superstitiously afraid. Perhaps what I am writing will seem to you absurd; but you would not think it absurd if you once heard her howl. She does not howl like the common street-dogs. She belongs to some ruder Northern breed, much more wolfish, and retaining wild traits of a ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... particularly successful. Ferguson knew no neutrals or conscientious objectors; any man who would not carry arms for the King was a traitor, and his life and goods were forfeit. A report of his reads: "The attack being made at night, no quarter could be given." Hence his wolfish fame. "Werewolf" would have been a fit name for him for, though he was a wolf at night, in the daylight he was a man and, as we ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... his hand got at something in his pocket and clutched it almost unconsciously. Slowly, slowly, he raised that hand, still clutching that something,—and his lips parted in a breathless way, showing the wolfish glimmer of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... galloped like the wind, and my brave little traveller overtook the hindmost of the troop, and retained the position. Thrice there were discharges ahead; I caught glimpses of the Major, the Captain, and the wolfish sergeant, far in the advance; and once saw, through the cloud of dust that beset them, the pursued and their individual pursuers, turning the top of a hill. But for the most part, I saw nothing; I felt all the intense, ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... once the transom swung violently and the wolfish faces of Tough McCarty, the White Mountain Canary, Cheyenne and the ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... news from his home, foreseeing the final collapse in Virginia, assured that the sea is lost to the South, the colonel's mood is daily sadder. His hungry eyes are wolfish in their steady glare. Only a soldier now. His flag is his altar of ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... the trail back in these sand-hills, there he was, not a mile ahead, and you can see there was no chance to get around. I intended to take the Dodge trail, from this creek where we are now, but there we were, blocked in! I was getting a trifle wolfish over the way they were acting, so I rode forward to see what ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... stomach, accompanied by nausea. The unfortunate sufferer still desires food, but with loss of strength he loses that eager craving which is felt in the earlier stages. Should he chance to obtain a morsel or two of food, as was occasionally the case with us, he swallows it with a wolfish avidity; but five minutes afterward his sufferings are more intense than ever. He feels as if he had swallowed a living lobster, which is clawing and feeding upon the very foundation of his existence. On ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... to breed answering vices in those who are powerless and suffering. What more direct plan than the course presented by European history could have been pursued in order to give the Jews a spirit of bitter isolation, of scorn for the wolfish hypocrisy that made victims of them, of triumph in prospering at the expense of the blunderers who stoned them away from the open paths of industry?—or, on the other hand, to encourage in the less defiant a lying conformity, a pretence of conversion for the ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... the liberty of a dog; he may sleep in your stable, exercise himself in the coachyard, and may stand or run behind your carriage, but he must not enter the house, for he is offensive, nor eat at your table, for the way he devours his food is wolfish; you unchain him, and that is all. But before the collar was unfastened he was well and regularly fed, now he has to forage for it; and if he can't pay for his grub, he can and will steal it. Abolition has done great things for him. He was once a life-labourer ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... admire the delightful tranquillity of that beautiful Lake St. Francis into which it expands. Then the boat shudders into the Coteau Rapids, and down through the Cedars and Cascades. On the rocks of the last lies the skeleton of a steamer wrecked upon them, and gnawed at still by the white-tusked wolfish rapids. No one, they say, was lost from her. "But how," Basil thought, "would it fare with all these people packed here upon her bow, if the Banshee should swing round upon a ledge?" As to Isabel, she looked upon ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... monastery at Culross: he is tempted by the devil in a cave in the parish of Dysart (the Desert), in Fifeshire, which still retains that name. The daemon, fleeing from him, enters an unfortunate man, who is forthwith plagued with a wolfish appetite. St. Serf cures him by putting his thumb into his mouth. A man is accused of stealing and eating a lamb, and denies the theft. St. Serf, however, makes the lamb bleat in the robber's stomach, and so substantiates the charge beyond all doubt. He works other wonders; ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... much obliged to you, not that one; for this pool of water in particular has something very sinister about it; the spot feels raw, and has an unpleasant wolfish air." ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... snowy gale, The pink hands fluttered them out, and spread them on their knees. Who knew what gouts might drop, what filthy flakes of grease, Now that o'er every shoulder, through the coiling steam, Inhuman faces peered, with wolfish eyes a-gleam, And grey-faced vampire Lusts that whinneyed in each ear ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... the same. A horde of mange-corroded curs lived off his bounty, wolfish, ungrateful, often marking him with their teeth, yet never knowing the meaning of a harsh word. A burro, over-fed, lazy, incorrigible, browsed on the hill back of the Mission, obstinately refusing to be harnessed to Sarria's ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... a wolf, or a being with a literally wolfish appetite, under the presumed influence of a charm or some ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... an hour. At the end of it the young merchant departed for the City. It has been remarked that from that time there came a change over both the father and the son—a change so subtle that It could hardly be described, though it left its mark upon them both. It was not that the grey, wolfish face of the old man looked even greyer and fiercer, or that the hard, arrogant expression of Ezra deepened into something even more sinister. It was that a shadow hung over both their brows—a vague indefinable shadow—as of men who carry a thought ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... lingered in Antwerp. The political state of things became worse than ever, increased to its height by the scarcity of food consequent on many deficient harvests. I saw groups of fierce, squalid men, at every corner of the street, glaring out with wolfish eyes at my sleek skin and ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... interesting features of the farm is the dairy. Each farm boasts of one, and sometimes as many as three dogs. These dogs are never allowed to roam at will as in England or Canada. They are a fine robust breed, like small mastiffs with pointed wolfish ears. On the outside of each farmhouse one of the most prominent features is a big upright wheel like a water wheel, fully fourteen feet in diameter. All day long the dogs run in this wheel driving the machinery for the dairy. After one dog gets tired he is taken out, and if the ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... accurately thought of, the quality of Frankness glances only with the flat side of it into any meaning of 'Libre,' but with all its cutting edge, determinedly, and to all time, it signifies Brave, strong, and honest, above other men.[15] The old woodland race were never in any wolfish sense 'free,' but in a most human sense Frank, outspoken, meaning what they had said, and standing to it, when they had got it out. Quick and clear in word and act, fearless utterly and restless always;—but idly lawless, or weakly ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... Nine wolfish sheep-dogs were scattering, one writhed before the porch; and Denton, tasting that strange delight of combat that slumbers still in the blood of even the most civilised man, was shouting and running across the garden space. And then she saw something that for a moment he did not see. The ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... streams, Val d'Arno, Val di Tevere, the hills of Perugia, the valleys of Umbria, the lean, wolfish country of the Marche, the rugged mountains of Romagna. There, on the summit of La Verna, you look down on the broken fortresses of countless wars, the passes through which army after army, company upon company, has marched to victory or fled in defeat; ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... likely to be some wolfish, ma'am," he agreed. In hope that she would be deterred by exaggeration, he dwelt on the subject. "The gunmen and hoss thieves and tinhorn gamblers all come in on the rush. There's a lot of them hobos ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter

... to attain it. Professor E. A. Ross has recently stated in The American Journal of Sociology that although restriction 'results in diffusion of economic well-being; lessens infant mortality; ceases population pressure, which is the principal cause of war, mass poverty, wolfish competition and class conflict,' yet there are 'disquieting effects, and in one-child or two-child families both parents and children miss many of the best lessons of life; the type to be standardised is not the family of one to three but the family ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... been unaware of Latimer's gaze; he had noted the wolfish gleam in the other's eyes—and because he was interested in Latimer, he watched ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer

... enough so they could hear me, mebbe, "Why is it that when anybody wants to do a mean, ungenerous act, they will try to quote a verse of Scripter to uphold 'em, jest as a wolf will pull a lock of pure white wool over his wolfish foretop, and try to ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley

... the candidate was of whitened wool, we know. Does 'wolvish' or 'woolvish' mean 'made of wool?' If it means 'wolfish,' what is the sense? ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... occasion was the sickly young student—more pale and haggard than ever, and halfway nearer the grave since his first sermon. He still set himself to frighten the sheep into the fold by wolfish cries; but it must be allowed that, in this sermon at least, his representations of the miseries of the lost were not by any means so gross as those usually favoured by preachers of his kind. His imagination was sensitive enough to be roused by the words of Scripture ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... do Saturday mornings, Marty?" asked the visitor, at the breakfast table. Janice had already been to the Shower Bath and back, and the thrill of the early day was in her veins. Only a wolfish appetite had driven her indoors when she smelled the ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... Till mitre and cowl bow down And crumble as a crown, Till Caesar driven to lair and hounded Pope Reel breathless and drop heartless out of hope, And one the uncleanest kinless beast of all Lower than his fortune fall; 270 The wolfish waif of casual empire, born To turn all hate and horror cold ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Brbeuf, Relation des Hurons, 1636, 168 (Cramoisy). ] Their fisheries, too, were regulated by customs having the force of laws. These pursuits, with their hunting,—in which they were aided by a wolfish breed of dogs unable to bark,—consumed the autumn and early winter; but before the new year the greater part of the men were gathered ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman

... Langham's hot breath on his cheek, he read murder by the wolfish light in his eyes. He wrenched himself free of the other's desperate clutch, but as he did so his foot caught against one of the rails and he slipped and fell to his knees. In the intervals of his own labored breathing, he heard the flow of the river, a dull ceaseless roar, ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester

... side of that window stood a mirror, set at an angle, and suddenly Lanyard caught its presentment of himself—a gaunt and hungry apparition, with a wolfish air he had never worn when rejoicing in his sobriquet, staring with eyes ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... into the wilderness. Smoke is curling slowly upward from an Indian camp on the prairie not far from the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. Fifteen or twenty cone-shaped lodges, each made of mats stretched on a frame-work of poles, compose the village. It swarms with wolfish-looking dogs and dirty, unclad children. Heaps of refuse, heads and feet of game, lie decaying among the wigwams, tainting the air with their disgusting odor. Here and there an ancient withered specimen of humanity sits in the sun, absorbing its rays ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch



Words linked to "Wolfish" :   gluttonous, wolf



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