to answer a charge or accusation

A Red-breasted Water lizard, appropriately christened “Robin,” seemed more especially to excite its ire in the vain pursuit of which the hatteria would rush out from its lair with angry gruntings whenever that lizard chanced to trespass too closely […]

Nevertheless osteopaths are coming to regard themselves not so much as thrusters, or even as repositioners, of bones, but as releasers of the patient's own recuperative forces.

Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar, / I have not slept.