English edit

Noun edit

chapparal (plural chapparals)

  1. Archaic spelling of chaparral.
    • 1910, Francis Rolt-Wheeler, The Boy With the U. S. Foresters[1]:
      The road wound onward toward the middle Sierras, thickly wooded with oak and digger pine, and, of course, the chapparal, and towering to the clouds rose the mighty serrated peaks of the range, where magnificent forests of pine, fir, and cedar swept upwards to the limits of eternal snow.
    • 1898, Murat Halstead, The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions,[2]:
      Nothing in the lucid page of Thucydides nor in the terse commentaries of Caesar, nothing in the vivid narrative of Napier or the glowing battle scenes of Allison, can surpass the story how, spurning the chapparal and the barbed wire, pressing their rifles to their throbbing hearts, toiling up the heights, and all the while the machine guns and the Mausers mowing the jungle as if with a mighty reaper, on and yet right on, they won the fiery crests, and Santiago fell.
    • 1880, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), Roughing It[3]:
      In a minute and a half the fire seized upon a dense growth of dry manzanita chapparal six or eight feet high, and then the roaring and popping and crackling was something terrific.
    • 1870, Bret Harte, Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte[4]:
      So spake that pensive man--this Thompson, the hero of Angels, Bitterly smiled to himself, as he strode through the chapparal musing.
    • 1866, George T. Stevens, Three Years in the Sixth Corps[5]:
      As our line advanced, it would suddenly come upon a line of gray-coated rebels, lying upon the ground, covered with dried leaves, and concealed by the chapparal, when the rebels would rise, deliver a murderous fire, and retire.
    • 1861, James Russell Lowell, The Biglow Papers[6]:
      He talked about delishis froots, but then it wuz a wopper all, The holl on't 's mud an' prickly pears, with here an' there a chapparal; You see a feller peekin' out, an', fust you know, a lariat Is round your throat an' you a copse, 'fore you can say, "Wut air ye at?"