Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A wild or natural musical tone, like that of a forest-bird, as the wood-lark, wood-thrush, or nightingale.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun rare A wild or natural note, as of a forest bird.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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What kind of words are _straw-roofed, heath-flower, wood-note, _ & c.?
Sanders' Union Fourth Reader Charles W. Sanders
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A woman laughs nowadays, where, before, as an ideal she smiled, or as a caricature giggled; and I think that the great symphony of sex has been deepened, heightened wellnigh beyond recognition, by that confident and delicate wood-note.
Browning's Heroines Ethel Colburn Mayne
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I could not tell where, a "wood-note wild" of some bird I had not heard for half a century nearly, and in an instant the beauty, the mystery, the holiness of nature came back to me just as it came in childhood when sometimes my playmates left me alone in the great orchard of my home in Cumberland.
Literary Hearthstones of Dixie La Salle Corbell Pickett 1889
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Boswell writes that he got rid of the coarse part of his Scotch accent, retaining only so much of the "native wood-note wild" as to mark his country, "which if any Scotchman should affect to forget I should heartily despise him," so that by degrees he formed a mode of speaking to which Englishmen did not deny the praise of eloquence.
A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) Justin McCarthy 1871
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My good wife too has a charming "wood-note wild;" now could we four get together, etc.
The Letters of Robert Burns Robert Burns 1777
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Mrs. Burns, who by the bye has a glorious "wood-note wild" at either old song or psalmody, joins me with the pathos of Handel's Messiah.
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Mrs. Burns's wood-note wild, is very fond of it, and has given it a celebrity by teaching it to some young ladies of the first fashion here.
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Edinburgh, he adds, to complete the picture, "I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and kindest heart in the country: a certain late publication of Scots 'poems she has perused very devoutly, and all the ballads in the land, as she has the finest wood-note wild you ever heard."
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Caledonian to acquire the genuine English cadence, yet so successful were Mr. Wedderburne's instructors, and his own unabating endeavours, that he got rid of the coarse part of his Scotch accent, retaining only as much of the 'native wood-note wild [1143],' as to mark his country; which, if any Scotchman should affect to forget, I should heartily despise him.
Life of Johnson, Volume 1 1709-1765 James Boswell 1767
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Mr. Macklin [3], indeed, shared with Mr. Sheridan the honour of instructing Mr. Wedderburne; and though it was too late in life for a Caledonian to acquire the genuine English cadence, yet so successful were Mr. Wedderburne's instructors, and his own unabating endeavours, that he got rid of the coarse part of his Scotch accent, retaining only as much of the 'native wood-note wild [4],' as to mark his country; which, if any Scotchman should affect to forget, I should heartily despise him.
Life Of Johnson Boswell, James, 1740-1795 1887
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