When the stalk was over (the antelope took alarm and
ran off before I was within rifle shot) I came back.
--T.
Roosevelt.
As for shooting a man from behind a wall, it is cruelly
like to stalking a deer. --Sir W.
Scott.
Thus twice before, . . . With martial stalk hath he
gone by our watch. --Shak.
The which with monstrous stalk behind him stepped.
--Spenser.
Into the chamber he stalked him full still.
--Chaucer.
[Bertran] stalks close behind her, like a witch's
fiend, Pressing to be employed. --Dryden.
2. To walk behind something as a screen, for the purpose of
approaching game; to proceed under clover.
The king . . . crept under the shoulder of his led
horse; . . . ``I must stalk,'' said he. --Bacon.
One underneath his horse, to get a shoot doth stalk.
--Drayton.
3. To walk with high and proud steps; usually implying the
affectation of dignity, and indicating dislike. The word
is used, however, especially by the poets, to express
dignity of step.
With manly mien he stalked along the ground.
--Dryden.
Then stalking through the deep, He fords the ocean.
--Addison.
I forbear myself from entering the lists in which he
has long stalked alone and unchallenged. --Mericale.
2. That which resembes the stalk of a plant, as the stem of a
quill. --Grew.
3. (Arch.) An ornament in the Corinthian capital resembling
the stalk of a plant, from which the volutes and helices
spring.
4. One of the two upright pieces of a ladder. [Obs.]
To climd by the rungs and the stalks. --Chaucer.
5. (Zo["o]l.)
(a) A stem or peduncle, as of certain barnacles and
crinoids.
(b) The narrow basal portion of the abdomen of a
hymenopterous insect.
(c) The peduncle of the eyes of decapod crustaceans.
6. (Founding) An iron bar with projections inserted in a core
to strengthen it; a core arbor.
{Stalk borer} (Zo["o]l.), the larva of a noctuid moth
({Gortyna nitela}), which bores in the stalks of the
raspberry, strawberry, tomato, asters, and many other
garden plants, often doing much injury.