soldier (n.)
- ant
- bold
- brave
- dodge
- doughboy
- drive
- drudge
- duck
- emmet
- fighter
- goldbrick
- grind
- guerrilla
- halberdier
- infantryman
- legionary
- malingerer
- man-at-arms
- martial
- mercenary
- militant
- partisan
- pismire
- queen
- recruit
- rifle
- rifleman
- serve
- serviceman
- shirker
- skulker
- slack
- slacker
- stalwart
- supporter
- sweat
- termite
- trooper
- truant
- warrior
- welsh
- welsher
- worker
soldier (v.)
Although too much of a soldier among sovereigns, no one could claim with better right to be a sovereign among soldiers.
I said, an elder soldier, not a better:
Did I say "better"?
Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard?
So mourn'd the dame of Ephesus her love,
And thus the soldier arm'd with resolution
Told his soft tale, and was a thriving wooer.
Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,—a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array.
That in the captain's but a choleric word
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.
The first who was king was a fortunate soldier:
Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.
That in the captain's but a choleric word
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard;
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Shall I ask the brave soldier who fights by my side
In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree?
Cold on Canadian hills or Minden's plain,
Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain;
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew
Gave the sad presage of his future years,—
The child of misery, baptized in tears.
You may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar.
What can they see in the longest kingly line in Europe, save that it runs back to a successful soldier?
The sex is ever to a soldier kind.
How shall we rank thee upon glory's page,
Thou more than soldier, and just less than sage?
And telling me, the sovereign'st thing on earth
Was parmaceti for an inward bruise;
And that it was great pity, so it was,
This villanous saltpetre should be digg'd
Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
So cowardly; and but for these vile guns,
He would himself have been a soldier.
