And yet she was subjected relentlessly to a phenomenon that has come to be called becking: To be "becked" is to be held up as such an evil and destructive person that someone, somewhere, will interpret it as a call to eliminate that problem through violence. ❋ Unknown (2011)
As, in going downstairs, he passed the shop where Dame Christie stood becking, he made civil inquiries after her husband. ❋ Unknown (2004)
I've never seen prostitution so blatant as in China, and this although it's a hanging offence; all through our meal, shabby tarts with white-painted faces had been becking and giggling in the door-way, calling out and displaying the mutilated feet by which the Chinese set such store, and the lads had been eating faster and faster in anticipation. ❋ Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- (1985)
The house was surrendered to the King in 1539, the warden and ten brethren being compelled to sign a humiliating document, in which they professed to "profoundly consider that the perfection of Christian living doth not consist in dumb ceremonies, wearing of a grey coat, disguising ourself after strange fashions, ducking, nodding and becking, in girding our selves with a girdle full of knots and other like Papisticall ceremonies." ❋ Frederick W. Woodhouse (N/A)
I risked him the flash of an eye as he stood, a becking black body on a bough, his yellow beak shaking out a flutey note of passionate serenade. ❋ Neil Munro (N/A)
But now the pen was caught suddenly from my fingers, the paper torn in shreds, and there was Master Pottery shaking us both by the hand, nodding and becking, and smiling the while all over his big red face. ❋ Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (1903)
I am not a mountain that I should obey the becking call of any Mahomet. ❋ F. Anstey (1895)
The matrons of surrounding parishes, the ladies of Beorminster society, the damsels of town and country, were all present in their best attire, chattering and smiling, and becking and bowing, after the observant and diplomatic ways of their sex. ❋ Fergus Hume (1895)
With menacing becking thee branches palsye before tyme, ❋ George Saintsbury (1889)
There are two rows facing each other, each singing their own line, becking (bending backward) and bowing at the appropriate points. ❋ Unknown (1887)
The becking waiter, that with wreathed smiles, wont to spread for Samuel and Bozzy their "supper of the gods," has long since pocketed his last sixpence; and vanished, sixpence and all, like a ghost at cock-crowing. ❋ Various (1885)
Busking a bride for the Pope of Rome, the bishop of Rome, even for antichrist? becking and bingeing to this table and that altar, bringing in the tapistry of antichristian hangings, and endeavouring to set the crown on another man's head, nor Christ's? ❋ Various (1876)
Tailor and Upholsterer mainly, and men were buckram masks that went about becking and grimacing there, -- on a sudden, the Earth yawns asunder, and amid Tartarean smoke, and glare of fierce brightness, rises ❋ Thomas Carlyle (1838)
Relentless becking in the media and at the water cooler feeds their deepest fears and targets an "enemy." ❋ Unknown (2011)
She seems to be a plump and jocose little woman; gleg, blithe, and throwgaun for her years, and on an easy footing with the lower orders -- coming to the window when they call for her, and becking to them, which is very civil of her, and gets them to take her part against the government. ❋ John Galt (1809)
Wilderness (Palmyra) had sat in dirt; to gape, too, at a Jerusalem which in twenty years had crossed the Valley of Jehosophat, and might really then be called "the Golden", a purged Babylon, a London burnt to ashes and rebuilt somewhere else: for the Shophet proved true Duke and Leader, born mountaineer, climbing from pinnacle to wild pinnacle, becking his people after him with many a meaningful gesture skyward and suggesting smile; and Israel followed his thrilling way, hearing always the Excelsior of his calling as it were the voice direct of Heaven. ❋ Unknown (1906)
There was less shaking hands with your partners, less nodding and becking, and none of that modern forwardness which is called, I believe, camaraderie. " ❋ Henry Seton Merriman (1882)
"I'll buy so many acres of old Scotland and call them by the Lockerby's name; and I'll have nobles and great men come bowing and becking to ❋ Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (1875)
