Taunt

“ A taunt was a thing that I never could endure, and that I never would put up wi' from any man that ever was born—and I hope none of ye ever will, or, as I am your faither! ye should be no longer my sons!
"'Weel, this night be it,' said I to your uncle, 'The Tweed will be fordable at Norham—I will have my shelty and weapons ready precisely at eleven, and get two friends to accompany us that I can trust. ”

“ Churchmen are very ready with the taunt, “You are but a handful of’ fanatics. Nearly the whole intellect of the nation is for us and against you.” In general the taunt is merely parried by a “What matter, if we are right?” ”

“ They see in her cool courage a taunt that rouses them to desperation. All unarmed as they are, except with stones and sticks and such like unmilitary weapons, they are ready to give battle to her troops. ”

“ In spite of one's teeth, In the teeth of, in defiance of opposition; Show one's teeth, to threaten, to show one's anger and power to injure; Throw, Cast, in one's teeth, to fling at one, as a taunt, or in challenge ”

“ Notwithstanding the boasts of the braves, the chief will sometimes playfully taunt them, intimating, that from their appearance he should judge them to be better acquainted with spades than clubs, and fitter to use the digging stick than the musket.
With taunting scorn the antagonist would reply much in the same strain, sometimes mingling affected pity with his denunciations. When they had finished their harangue, the omoreaa club of insult or insulting spear was raised and the onset commenced. Sometimes it was a single combat fought in the space between two armies and in sight of both. ”

“ A fling is careless and commonly pettish; a taunt is intentionally insulting and provoking; the sneer is supercilious; the taunt is defiant. The jeer and gibe are uttered; the gibe is bitter, and often sly or covert; the jeer is rude and open. A scoff may be in act or word, and is commonly directed against that which claims honor, reverence, or worship. ”

“ It is held to be a good taunt, and somehow or other to clinch the question logically, when an old gentleman waggles his head and says: ‘Ah, so I thought when I was your age.’ It is not thought an answer at all, if the young man retorts: My venerable sir, so I shall most probably think when I am yours.’ And yet the one is as good as the other: pass for pass, tit for tat, a Roland for an Oliver. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the fighting instinct often finds expression in the direct effort to excite others to anger by provoking words. Such taunts are frequently thrown into rhythmical form, and so constitute a primitive lyric in which the musical element is not wanting. ”

“ The mortification of the army was increased by the taunts of the foreigners, taunts which neither orders nor punishments could entirely restrain. [5] At several places the anger which a brave and highspirited body of men might, in such circumstances, be expected to feel, showed itself in an alarming manner. ”

“ The other laughed tauntingly.
"You must needs have wings, fair sirs, to gain entrance here;" and with a scornful gesture he disappeared below the parapet, and the blast of a trumpet signified that the truce was ended. ”

“ Let me tell the honorable senator from Illinois, that these taunts, so often flung out about the equality of races, about amalgamation, and the mingling of blood, are the emanations of low and vulgar minds. These taunts usually come from men with the odor of amalgamation upon them. ”

“ These new taunts that had finally made a man of Shelley was no taunts from boys, which he could handle easy, but the taunts of heedless girls, who naturally loathed a boy with curls even more than male humans of any age loathe him; and girls can be a lot tauntier when they start out to. Well, Shelley couldn't lick girls, and he had reached an age when their taunts cut into his hide like whiplashes, so he knew right well he had to do something desperate. ”

“ The whites in the immediate vicinity bore their midnight levies with tolerable resignation, and would, doubtless, have dismissed their taunts as meaningless, if these had not been supported by acts which left no doubt as to the warlike quality of their designs. ”

“ When, by means of interposing these taunts with shouts and yells, dancing from one foot to the other, quivering and poising their spears, and other mechanical modes of exciting themselves, they have worked themselves up to the requisite pitch of fury, they begin to throw the spears, and the combat becomes general. ”

“ As the flattery of friends corrupts, so often do the taunts of enemies instruct. ”

“ They were always excited into starting a real fight with each other off stage just before they were brought on. In the blows they struck were anger and pain and bewilderment and fear. And the gloves just would come off, so that they were ripping and tearing at each other, biting as well as making the fur fly, like furies, when the curtain went down. ”

“ There is a teasing that is pleasurable, and is only another form of innocent raillery, but that which provokes, and irritates, and makes the eye flash with anger is to be reprehended. It would be less blameworthy to take a bunch of thorns and draw them across your sister's cheek, or to take a knife and draw its sharp edge across your brother's hand till the blood spurts, for that would damage only the body, but teasing is the thorn and the knife, scratching and lacerating the disposition and the soul. ”

“ But for it, one would linger upon the Pope and the Doge, thinking them to be the motive and supreme feature of the picture; whereas one is drawn along, almost unconsciously, to see what the trouble is about. Now at the very end of this riot, within four feet of the end of the picture, and full thirty-six feet from the beginning of it, the Hair Trunk bursts with an electrifying suddenness upon the spectator, in all its matchless perfection, and the great master’s triumph is sweeping and complete. ”

“ If a warrior throws out a defiance to his enemy, it is done in a dance, in which he brandishes his spear and kris, pronouncing an emphatic challenge. If a native of the same country runs a muck, ten to one but he braves death in a dancing posture. When they swear eternal hatred to their enemies, or fidelity to their friends, the solemnity is accompanied by a dance, in which a great deal of vivacity is displayed. All orders executed in the presence of a Javanese raonarcli, on public occasions, are accompanied by a dance. ”

“ Punch, that godless old rebel, breaks every law and laughs at it with odious triumph, outwits his lawyer, bullies the beadle, knocks his wife about the head, and hangs the hangman,—don't you see in the comedy, in the song, in the dance, in the ragged little Punch's puppet-show,—the Pagan protest? Doesn't it seem as if Life puts in its plea and sings its comment? ”

“ I have not slain a single man of your troop. I have no arms, and carry nothing but this one brass trumpet." "That is the very reason for which you should be put to death," they said; "for, while you do not fight yourself, your trumpet stirs up all the others to battle." ”

“ Naturally, the moment the men stand up again and commence work, the blood gushes out again, half blinding them, and rendering the ground beneath them slippery. Now and then you see a man’s teeth laid bare almost to the ear, so that for the rest of the duel he appears to be grinning at one half of the spectators, his other side, remaining serious; and sometimes a man’s nose gets slit, which gives to him as he fights a singularly supercilious air. ”

“ He lays the point of his sword between the bull's horns, as lightly as a lady who touches her cavalier with her fan, and he falls dead as a stone.
If the blow is a clean, well-delivered one, the enthusiasm of the people is unbounded. ”

“ First they advanced, bowed and retired, then they repeated what they had done before, and again, each time getting faster and faster in their movements, changing their bows into pirouettes, craning their long necks and making such antics as they went through the figures of their dance, and replacing their dignity with such grotesqueness, as to make their large audience shake with laughter, they themselves keeping throughout all their grotesque measures a solemn air, which only seemed to heighten the effect of their antics. ”

“ In a masked dance it is easy to give a death-blow between the shoulders. Two crowds meet and laugh and shout and mingle almost inextricably, and if a shriek of pain should arise, it is not noticed in the din, and when they part, if one should stagger and fall bleeding to the ground, who can tell who has given the blow? ”

“ I was conscious of being guilty of great folly in exposing my life with such an adversary. I might have broken my engagement with him without implicating my honour, but, the fact is that I felt well disposed for a fight, and as I was certainly in the right I thought the prospect of a duel very delightful. A visit to a dancer, a brute professing to be a nobleman, who insults her in my presence, who wants to kill her, who allows her to be carried off in his very teeth, and whose only opposition is to give me an appointment! ”

“ They begin by smearing the whole of their clothing and by painting their faces with scarlet ochre, so as to make themselves as hideous as possible. When they assemble for the dance, they arrange themselves in lines, mostly three deep, and excite their naturally passionate disposition to the highest pitch by contorting their faces and thrusting out their tongues as an act of defiance, interspersing these gestures with shouts, yells, and challenges to the enemy. ”

“ There was but one exchange of shots. The student was hit. "He put his hand on his breast, his body began to bend slowly forward, then collapsed in death and sank to the ground."
It is pathetic. There are other duels in my list, but I find in each and all of them one and the same ever-recurring defect—the principals are never present, but only their sham representatives. The real principals in any duel are not the duellists themselves, but their families. They do the mourning, the suffering, theirs is the loss and theirs the misery. ”

“ Punch, when the squire, the colonel, and the admiral are to be at once expressed, together with all that they legislate or fight for, in the symbolic figure of the nation, to present the incarnate Mr. Bull always as a farmer—never as a manufacturer or shopkeeper—and to conceive and exhibit him rather as paymaster for the faults of his neighbours than as watching for opportunity of gain out of their follies? ”

“ Each man smote down his brother, and was himself smitten down before he had time to exult in his victory. The trumpeters, all the while, blew their blasts shriller and shriller; each soldier shouted a battle-cry, and often fell with it on his lips. ”

“ Every tongue is loosed, and to the uninitiated stranger who approaches one of these commercial orgies for the first time, and when it is at its height, it seems sure that a riot is going on or that a free fight is in hilarious progress. ”

“ Some, brought up as mountebanks and ballet-dancers, were performing a figure-dance (he regretted to observe that, of the fleas so employed, several were females) ; others were in training, in a small card-board box, for pedestrians—mere sporting characters —and two were actually engaged in the cold-blooded and barbarous occupation of dueling; a pursuit from which humanity recoiled with horror and disgust. ”

“ In this dance it was customary for each warrior in turn to tell the story of some deed against the enemy, putting his words into a song which he first whispered to the drummer, who then sang with him, drumming all the while. Usually it is serious business, but occasionally, for a joke, a man will act the clown or sing of some extravagant performance that is so clearly impossible that all the people laugh. One man after another stepped into the ring and sang of what he had done against the enemies of his tribe. ”

“ The faster he played, the more violent springs was she forced to make, and the thorns tore her clothes from her body, and pricked her and wounded her till she bled, and as he did not stop, she had to dance till she lay dead on the ground. ”

“ Empanoplied and plumed We entered in, and waited, fifty there Opposed to fifty, till the trumpet blared At the barrier like a wild horn in a land Of echoes, and a moment, and once more The trumpet, and again: at which the storm Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears And riders front to front, until they closed In conflict with the crash of shivering points, And thunder. Yet it seemed a dream, I dreamed Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed, And into fiery splinters leapt the lance, And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire. ”

“ After a rapid plunge into excitement, the brawlers alternately advance and recede, pointing the finger of threat, howling and screaming, cursing and using terms of insult which an inferior ingenuity—not want of will—causes to fall short of the Asiatic's model vituperation. ”

“ The corrobboree of a fight is presented by an imaginary spear duel between two angry men. They are “armed” with a light reed each, and upon entering the arena, composed of the time-beating chorus, place themselves in defiance of each other and cut all sorts of antics. They brandish their imaginary weapons, roll their eyes, and throw their bodies about wildly. Then they start running around the ring, slapping their thighs together, with their heads thrown back and their arms upwards. ”

“ The laughter which greets a successful cartoon in Punch, and the prompt recognition which greets a happy allusion to current events, do little to shake a government or to disturb public order, but when the representatives of law and order are held up to ridicule by the unmistakeable gestures of a skilled actor in a large theatre, not only is the effectiveness of ridicule enormously increased, but the conflicting sympathies of the spectators provoke an immediate riot. ”

“ But this is the A B C of the ‘codice cavalleresco’, if the insult be followed by an assault, he who receives the blow is the offended party, and the threat of an assault is equivalent to an actual assault. The offended party has the choice of a duel, weapons and conditions. ”