hair-lifting

There was no escape after that; Jim had to buy some of those plums, whose acid was of the hair-lifting aqua-fortis variety, and all the rest of the day he stewed them, adding sugar, trying to make them palatable, tasting them now and then, boasting meanwhile of their nectar-like deliciousness.

Mark Twain: A Biography 2003

At evening the Clemens children, big and little, gathered about the great open fireplace while Jennie and Uncle Ned told tales and hair-lifting legends.

Mark Twain: A Biography 2003

Perceiving this at last, Rod had proceeded to amuse himself not a little by assuming a false air of bravado, and spinning some highly preposterous yarns of his hair-lifting adventures upon the plains; a course which, however, adopted too late to be effective, simply confirmed the doubters -- who could not realize that they were being joshed -- in their belief that the fellow was an out-and-out fraud.

Rival Pitchers of Oakdale Morgan Scott

You wouldn't call that a very demonstrative greeting between two old _amigos_ who'd bucked mesquite and hair-lifting Comanches together, all over the Southwest.

Raw Gold A Novel Bertrand W. Sinclair 1926

When his back was turned, Angel even unsheathed his razor and flourished it, for one hair-lifting second.

Explorers of the Dawn Mazo De la Roche 1920

It followed the regular High School yell, hair-lifting in its fierceness:

Play the Game! Ruth Comfort Mitchell 1918

There was a wide hearth and always plenty of wood, and here after supper the children would gather, with Jennie and Uncle Ned, and the latter would tell hair-lifting tales of "ha'nts," and lonely roads, and witch-work that would make his hearers shiver with terror and delight, and look furtively over their shoulders toward the dark window-panes and the hovering shadows on the walls.

The Boys' Life of Mark Twain Paine, Albert Bigelow, 1861-1937 1916

The famous Mrs Tinker, it appeared, from the latest account of her vagaries, had enlivened the lives of Noonoon inhabitants by swearing in a hair-lifting manner at one of the local shows because her horses had not been awarded first prize, &c., &c.

Some Everyday Folk and Dawn Miles Franklin 1916

Her romantic mother, immersed in the prenatal period in the hair-lifting adventures of one Señorita Carmena, could think of no lovelier appellation when her darling came than the first portion of that sloe-eyed and restless lady's title, which she conceived to be baptismal; and in due course she had conferred it, together with her own pronunciation, on her child.

The Best Short Stories of 1917 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story Various 1915

It is a hair-lifting sound when you know the cause, but it left Meeus unmoved.

The Pools of Silence 1907